Finding comfort in a winter storm

The whole west coast is getting a big old wallop of winter, complete with a bit of shake, rattle and rolling up in the Haida Gwaii. So my wonderful DH and I hunkered down and enjoyed a warm, cozy romantic, lazy Saturday.
We started the day with a big plate of Danish pancakes, known otherwise as crepes. My wonderful DH insists that the only way to eat them is rolled up with raspberry jam. Luckily we had some of that in the house. It was even locally made. Yippee!














I spent most of the day knitting up a Healing Shawl for a cousin who's recovering from a car accident and daydreaming about all the projects for this coming year.
For my wonderful DH, I have a pair of Gaston Socks, a Bog Jacket and a Tree of Gondor sweater to do. For myself, I'm brainstorming a few ideas for my Tolkien Yarn project.
I've also had my heart set on knitting a corset. It's been on the back burner for years but I think it's time.
Annie Modesitt's gorgeous knitted corset.

I've sewed and constructed a number of corsets for myself and friends in the past. My fascination with corsets started about 15 years ago when I and a bunch of a guerilla feminist friends took part of an installation that looked at the politicization of the female body. I made a papier-mâché corset using strips of paper that had my rants and raves and general soapboxing about women's bodies. My entry was probably the most tame of all the installations. Well, from a well-meaning, albeit neophytish criticism of fashion, media and society's unrealistic expectations of women and their bodies, I took the corset the other direction. I began celebrating it.
Well, actually, more precisely, I started celebrating women's body of curves and reclaimed the corset as a symbol of a woman's tool to self-definition of her body and her life. You have to remember, this was during the whole Grunge era and everyone including me was dressed like a lumberjack. To peel away all that frumpy, cloaking fabric and to re-introduce myself to my silhouette was quite refreshing.
Corsets don't have to mean constriction and conformity. They can be a tool for a woman (and men) to underline and redefine themselves. They can be a way for a women to say " I want to accentuate all the things that make me who I am." Corsets can be made with paper, flowers, feathers, metal, wood, fabric, leather, latex, bark or anything else you can get your hands on. You tie all that together with my love for historical clothing and you have quite a fun hobby:).
Well, if anything, at least a corset does wonders for your posture.
For a bit more information on corset building, check out this general overview.

*****
Back to dinner...
To help keep us warm during this weekend storm, I decided to make up a lamb curry with some lamb shanks from Heritage Horizon organic farm that I had in the freezer. In fact, most of the lamb is still in the freezer. It's amazing how much meat can come from one small lamb.
(some of our lamb order)













This is one those all day cooking affairs but it's mostly hands-off since most of the cooking time is letting the curry simmer and do it's magic. The recipe and summary of the curry is at end of this entry. Obviously, the curry paste itself can be used with wide range of meats, seafoods and veggies. It's a great sauce to make up and freeze for another time. You can also use the curry sauce, uncooked as a form of meat marinate/rub.
For the curry, I decided to make a curry paste based on a chermoula. Here's my chermoula, one red onion, 1 large bunch of cilantro, a couple of black hot peppers, 2 thumbs of ginger, a head of garlic. All except for the ginger were either from local farms or from my garden.














I then took the handblender to it made it a chunky sort of paste. You can also do this in the food processor.














To this I added my curry powder and threw it all into my wok with some veggie oil. I cooked up until it started taking on some colour and the whole house smelled like Little India.














Then I added about 4 cups of my tomato sauce. You can use chopped tomatoes, either frozen or canned. I used a homemade tomato sauce from my freezer stash that didn't have any seasoning, just veggies (red and golden tomatoes, carrots, mushrooms, red peppers.)














My sauce came out more yellow due to the fact that most of my tomatoes were golden tomatoes from my garden. If you use red tomatoes or canned tomatoes, your sauce will end up red, of course. I tossed the curry sauce into a crockpot and let it simmer on high for about an hour and half. This will develop and bring together all the flavours.
Then I browned some gorgeous lamb shanks in some veggie oil on medium high heat. Be careful not the crowd the meat in the pan or else you'll up steaming it instead of browning it.
Then I dump the shanks into the crockpot and cover them with the curry sauce and let it simmer away for a few hours. The aromas will now start permeating through the walls and will waft through the neighbourhood.
DH considers having to smell this wonderful curry cooking away all day as a form of torture:) All evening, he kept asking when dinner was going to be done, groaning that he was so hungry and it was smelling so good. Ah well, it's about time his Id learns some patience :P



Once the meat is all cooked and tender, I simply pull the meat off the bone and cut it into bitesize chunks. I keep the bones in the curry for it continue releasing it's flavours. Here's the finished product:














It was sooooo good. I don't think we said a single word to each other while eating. It was that good. The best thing....leftovers!

Not so Fast but still Dirty Lamb Curry

Curry Paste:
1 medium red onion
1 large bunch of cilantro
2 thumbs of ginger, peeled and minced
1 head of garlic, peeled and minced
chili peppers (you can use whatever heat bombs. I used 3 small black hot peppers which are about the same heat as 3 thai red chilis for a bit of heat kick)
3-4 tablespoons of curry powder (I used a homemade curry powder but you can use store bought)

3-4 cups of chopped tomatoes (fresh, canned, frozen)
4 lamb shanks
3 tablespoons of veg oil or butter
salt & pepper to taste

1- Chop and combine all the ingredients of the curry paste except for the curry powder. Blend with a hand blender or food processor until it makes a chunky paste. Add curry powder.
2- Heat up a tablespoon of oil over medium heat in a wok or large pan/skillet. Toss the curry paste into the pan and cook for 5-7 minutes or until it takes on a bit of colour and the onions have softened.
3- Add the tomatoes. Stir and bring the sauce to a boil
4- Either continue simmering in the pot on the stove over low heat for an hour or transfer to a crockpot and continue cooking on high for an hour or more.
5- An hour later, heat up 2 tablespoons of oil over high heat in a skillet/frying pan. Add lamb shanks and let them sit and sear for 4 minutes on each side. Don't move the meat around when searing, just leave it alone!
6- When the lamb has been browned on all sides, add to the sauce.
7-Continue cooking until the meat starts falling off the bone, about 2 hours later.
8- Pull meat off the bone and cut into bite size pieces.
9- Serve with chopped cilantro, mint, yogurt and your favorite chutney!

Happy Eating!

One last pot of soup

James Barber passed away quietly last week in his home in the Cowichan Valley. He left a pot of soup simmering on the stove. I wonder what sort of soup...

Good night James. Thanks for all the years of keeping it real in the kitchen for all these years.







So it did this all weekend:

Snow! Snow! Snow!!!!! Supposedly that's what it looked like across the whole country. Now it's raining and apparently, it's never going to stop raining.

Ironically all the snow prevent DH and I from getting up to the mountains for a much needed snow play. Oh well, instead we stayed in and drank lots of mulled Merridale cider and hot buttered rum.



For dinner, I cracked open a spaghetti squash from my garden.













It's amazing how much more colour and flavor my garden grown squash had over those pale yellow spaghetti squashes. The flesh was a deep saffron yellow. I toss it with some pesto made with my own basil and garlic and island grown hazelnuts and cheese. Along side the squash, I also roasted up a pan of local sausages to see us through the weekend.
With it I served a homemade plum-rhubarb chutney.














For Sunday's dinner, I took some of leftover sausages, some local turnip, carrot, mushrooms and green cabbage and made a Fast & Dirty soup. I think James would have approved.
You'd think with a weekend at home that I would be whipping up a storm in the kitchen. Normally I would. But instead I spent the time working on some charity knitting. Here's one of the EZ inspired baby jacket that I'm donating as shown by my wonderful DH. It's not quite his size :P
Have a great week!

Jen

Wonky belly and sock fever

Well, it's been an very unpredictable summer, to say the least. The weather has been flippant, to say the least. Work has been a deluge of out of the blue deadlines and last minute project changes. My top secret superhero work have been steady all summer long. We've also been running up and down the island and across the water for family stuff from both side of the family and to see friends from Japan.
Wouldn't you know it, just when the weather finally starts looking like summer, I got sick over the weekend. Not just 'meh' sick but puking my guts out for a whole ferry ride stomach flu sick. The fact that the ferries were running late didn't help either. There was a frightening moment when the packed waiting room was queuing up to board the ferry and my wonky belly my I had to decide whether I ought to get in the front of the line and risk puking while waiting in line so as to ensure a seat by the washroom or to stay in the waiting room washroom, hovering over the toilet and wait for all the other passengers to file in before boarding and hope that there was a seat by the washroom. The ferry ride was a blur of stomach flu bleariness. I managed to crawl home by midnight with my throat bruised from dry heaving and flop my queasy body into my bed.
I'm not very good at being sick. I can't stand just sitting on the couch all day waiting to get better. With the stomach flu, there is no other option. I could barely sit up on Monday without my head and belly doing backflips. Yesterday, I managed to get some ginger ale and a few water crackers into me. Today, the backflipping belly has quieted down to a wonky belly but a killer headache has moved in. It feels like someone has plunged an ice axe into my left frontal lobe.

Needless to say, I don't really have an appetite. In fact, I still get a bit queasy watching food commercials, especially fast food commercials. But for the rest of you who still have a healthy appetite, eat up! The summer bounty is rolling in. I hear that blackberries are in full glory out there!

DH has been a perfect darling, bringing me ginger ale, making sympathetic soothing sounds whenever I start whining about my wonky belly and migraine crushed head and making sure that I'm comfortable. I guess I'd better get working on his next sock project.

He finally took the handknit socks I made for him for a test hike. He loves them and can't stop raving about them. He's been asking for a pair of mountaineering socks like the ones that the old school alpinists use to wear. So I figured since the LYS was having a sale, I'd go pick up a couple balls of yarn in manly black and light grey and do up what I figured would be a relatively simple sock for a second pair. When I returned home, he gleefully brought out an old school mountaineering book and point to a picture and said, "These. These are the socks I want! I want Gaston socks"

Here is the picture he showed me:












A close up of the 'Gaston Socks':

My man definitely believes in the adage : Go big or go home :)
So after a spell of me asking, "These?!? You want me to knit you these? Are you sure? You will wear these if I knit them for you? Are you certain? Really? You want these? These are what you've been wanting all this time?"
Obviously, I needed more yarn than I had bought. I returned to the LYS with the book in hand to give the ladies at the yarn store a giggle or two. Believe me, when they say that picture, they had a few giggles at my expense. Oh well, I'm just thrilled that he wants something more exciting than just another ribbed sock. Now I've just gotta draw up that pattern...

Ok. That's it for now. My head is getting woozy again. Hope everyone else is doing better than I am out there. Hope to be back in the swing of things next week.

Take care,
Jen

Mountain & Market Jewels

Just got back from the Nanaimo Farmer's Market. Despite the soggy weather, it was a great shopping trips complete with a mini reunion with an old friend. Here's what treasures I found:
Free range eggs, chicken, tomatoes, peppers, chard, strawberries, new potatoes and artisan foccacia bread.

Each week, the variety of produce grows. I also saw spinach, beets, rhubarb, garlic chives, canned veggies and jams, veggie seedlings and bedding plants.

Along with locally grown food, I also found another source of locally grown fibre for all my 100 mile spinning and knitting project!

Island Fibre Friends sells locally raised alpaca yarns and fleeces. Their stall offers everything from handknit garments, to yarn to fleece. This small company is run by fleece gurus, Janet MacKenzie and Sylvia Gaunt. They can be found at the Nanaimo Farmer's Market in Fridays, the Qualicum Farmer's Market on Saturdays and the Campbell Rive Pier Street Market on Sundays. Here's more info about these other Vancouver Island farmer's markets.




Yesterday, my wonderful, darling DH came back from his top secret superhero mission with a pocketful of handpicked jewels:

I wonder how many jewels he was storing in his belly:)
So lovely! They're almost too beautiful to eat. Almost....






To celebrate his berry booty, I made a spring version of 100 Mile Diet Poutine with new potatoes. The potatoes were leftovers from a previous dinner. Whenever I make potatoes or rice, I usually make a double or triple batch since it doesn't take any more effort to cook extra and they have a gzillion uses. The cheese curds were from Natural Pastures and the gravy was made with homemade locally raised chicken stock and smoked bacon fat. Yep, I think my heart skipped a beat just writing that last sentence.

A quick ride under the broiler for the cheese curd topped potatoes and a ladle or two or three of the gravy and it was good to go.



To compliment the potatoes, I made a quick slaw with marinated pork and pesto dressing:



The pork was sliced thin and marinated in some local apple cider , a dollop of Gabriola Gourmet minced garlic and wildflower honey from the Jinglepot Apiaries for a few hours.

I stir fried it over high heat until there was no more pink meat and set it aside to cool as I assembled the slaw. When I say 'assembled' I mean chopped up a bunch of local veggies to thin slaw strips and throw on some dressing. I used my pesto dressing. here's the recipe.
Fast & Dirty Pesto Dressing:

3 parts olive oil
3 parts balsamic vinegar (I use Auld Alliance Farm's fig balsamic vinegar)
1 part homemade pesto (recipe at bottom)

Throw into a jar, squeeze bottle, bowl and shake, whip, stir, rattle and roll until it's all mixed up.
Really. That's it. There's a reason why these are called 'Fast & Dirty' recipes.

Have a great weekend!

Jen
Nanaimo's 100 Mile Diet Challenge

One book, two visitors and a sock

Here's what I'm reading. It's a collection of essays about the present state of food. Not only does it explore the problems and issues but also present some very realistic solutions or at least directions towards a viable solution. Definitely put it on your 'Food for Thought' summer reading list.



I've been busy managing the garden. 'Managing since' I'm not really doing any of the grunt work. I'm just sitting back and directing where the pea pod stalks should lead to and how far the strawberry runners should, well run, before getting redirected back to their patch. But mostly, I've just been enjoying the fresh, yummy bounty that's already popping up in the garden.

I view my garden as a subtle but subversive Pptthhbb blown into the face for agribusiness and food corporations. Many of the plants, like my black edamame (soy bean) and waxed beans were from seeds saved from previous harvests. Others were seedlings traded amongst friends. Some were bought from the local Community Gardens weekend organic plant sale or from Christex nursery who plant and raise their own seedlings. In many cases, the source of the seeds can be traced to back to an actual person that I've had direct and personal contact with. So different that the faceless, anonymous, factory farmed food that shows up the shelves.
It's also a blessing to have friends and family that share in my zeal for local food. My cousin Paul and his lovely wife, Ai , popped by for a visit on their whirlwind Vancouver Island tour. They were excited to see all the fleece I've been dyeing and all that has been happening in the garden. They were amazed at all the wonderful local food that they found along their tour of the island. I think sometimes it takes outsiders to remind us Islanders just how lucky were are to have the cornucopia that is our backyard.


They even came bearing gifts, a beautiful bouquet of flowers and a bottle of Pinot Noir from one of my favorite vineyards, Cherry Point Vineyards. They managed to swing by the vineyard as part of the their visit. This is ripe medium bodied red that both DH and I give raving two thumbs up. It works very well with salmon and can even hold up next to a meaty steak or match up to some summertime grilled veggies.





Dinner was a simple affair with some greens from the garden, stir fried with Gabriola Island minced garlic, local beef sauteed with sweet peppers and pan-fried udon noodles. Unfortunately, Paul & Ai had to run to catch the ferry back to the mainland.


That night, I managed to finish the first of a pair of socks for DH. Basic dark grey ribbed socks. My DH is a pretty easy-peasy guy with a wardrobe dominated by navy blue t-shirts and khakis. So far he's thrilled with the sock. I'm thrilled that he's thrilled but in the back of my selfish knitter brain I'm already dreading a future with a handknit sock addict for a DH. I'm not a sock knitter. I knit them but I don't drool over sock yarn or swoon over heel shaping techniques. That said, I do appreciate the warmth and joy of a handknit sock. I've already warned DH that since it took my over 8 years for me to knit him one sock, he may have to wait another 8 years for its partner :p

Just kidding. I've already thrown the second sock onto the needles in an effort to thwart the dreaded Second Sock Syndrome. Luckily for him, my newly dyed fleece is still drying and I don't have anything else on needles. Hopefully I'll get the second sock done by the end of the week.

Enjoy the rest of the week!

What do you get when you cross…(updated)

...a Bog Jacket with Tubey?

A) Booby Jacket :p

B) Tog Jacket

C) Boog Jacket

Whatever you want to call it, it looks something like this:

After finishing my ‘Broken Brocade’ a couple weeks ago I’ve been letting by brain mellow out with lots and lots of spinning. Between bouts of spinning, I worked on a prototype that would bring together two of my favorite sweater designs, the Bog Jacket from Elizabeth Zimmerman (in Knitting Around) and Tubey from Knitty.com. I love the simplicity and the innovative construction ideas of both. Most of all, I love the lack of seaming :)

The beauty of this sweater is that needs only one simple line of 3 needle bind off to finish it. This sweater served as a no-brainer project that I could do while catching up on my reading and it goes well with red wine :p

Knit one, read one...

It also serves as a prototype for my first big 100 mile fiber project that I’m going to dye, spin and knit. I’ll jabber more about that project at a later date.

For this jacket I used a cotton yarn that used to reside in this skirt:

That’s my Knitting Olympics skirt which was quite lovely but it just didn’t fall the way that I wanted it to. I only wore it a handful of times and I figured it didn’t really want to be a skirt. I wish it would have told me that before I started knitting it into a skirt. Oh well, it’s now happily a jacket.

I took the all-over construction idea of a bog jacket which basically is a rectangle cut up so it forms all the parts of shirt. It’s the basic design of the tops found worn by the famous bog people. Weavers love this design because it is simply matter of weaving up a rectangle and no part of the woven fabric is wasted.
The jacket before it's seamed up . The thumb trick has been removed and replaced with stitch holders.

I also used EZ’s thumb trick to open up the fabric to separate the front of the jacket from the sleeves. She also uses the same technique to form a neckhole. I substituted that neck shaping technique by borrowing the upper torso design construction from Tubey with a few modifications.

In Tubey, the neckline connects near the armhole. I needed the neckline to connect with the front inside edge and to also form a collar of sorts. To do that, I simply M1 by way of yarnovers every other row. I began these increases halfway through the sleeves portion of the rectangle. Once I finished the square, I also added about a dozen rows of short rows to make a semicircle to help make it fit a bit better.

The wavy inner edge is simply a matter of increased and decreases at 10 row intervals with a set of 10 regular rows in between.
My general inspiration for the look of the jacket was the result my ponderings of what a knitter in the Shire would make. Couldn’t you imagine a Hobbit lass sporting this little number?

For function, I needed a little something to throw onto myself when I’m in the garden. The cotton is machine washable and the sleeves are long enough to give me a bit of coverage but short enough to stay out of the way when I’m mucking about.

I’m calling this jacket ‘Fiddlehead’ after the fiddlehead shaped I-cord closure and it’s lovely fern color.

ETA: Thanks everyone for all your lovely comments! The Bog Jacket pattern can be found in Elizabeth Zimmerman's 'Knitting Around' and it's simply called the Bog Jacket. The thumb trick is also in that book and probably in all her other books. It's a nifty trick and I've found it to be a very useful technique for opening up the fabric for armholes, pockets and, of course, thumbs.

There is probably a knitting circle or two floating around Nanaimo. There is this Yahoo group link

Beyond the usual spontaneous and impromptu knitting circles that seem to blossom wherever I go, I belong to the Mid-Island Weavers & Spinners Guild. The members are a treasure of wisdom and inspiration and explore a whole range of textile arts beyond spinning and weaving. When I joined I was only driving a drop spindle and within a few months I was geared up with a second-hand wheel, drum carder, mountains of fleece and tribe of expert spinners that were more than happy to teach me the ropes. We meet once a month except for over the summer. If you're interested, drop a note to Eva Ryan at jbtufnail@bc.sympatico.ca or drop off a note in my comment box.

Enjoy!

Jen

Nanaimo's 100 Mile Diet Challenge

Peachy day in on the Rusty Coast

Yesterday was an intensive day of baking and an impromptu knitting lesson and even a wine lesson for me. At the end of the day, I was tired and blissed out on the joys of the day. This was dinner I managed to cobble together:

Island grown free ranged chicken, local onions and BC mushrooms sautéed and deglazed with a glassful of Cherry Point’s Coastal white wine. I finished it the sauce off with a pat or 2 of butter. The veggies are collard greens from Nanoose Edibles and were simple steamed with drizzled with some Marley Farms kiwi vinegar. Talk about 100 Mile Diet heaven!

Usually I would leave the chicken breast in one piece but DH’s left arm is in a sling due to his surgical overhaul. He looks like one part hunky husband and one part gimped T-Rex. LOL! Obviously he can’t use a knife and fork so everything has to be cooked bite-size so he shovel it all into his mouth with one utensil.

I’ve been scheming and dreaming a local wine and cheese tasting evening with my tribe of 100 Milers to celebrate spring and all the wonderful island grown vinos and artisan cheeses. As mentioned before, most island grown wines can be found at independent liquor stores and the gov’t stores do carry 1 or 2 of them. I was poking about a local wine store and struck up a conversation with the clerk, who was an local wine fan. I was informed that many of the vineyards on the mainland are bringing in red wine from as far as Chile to blend into their red wines. YIKES! It’s one of those dark secrets of the wine trade. Not all that Okanogan wine is actually from the Okanogan. Together, the wine clerk and I a bit of research and found that most of the local island wineries are truly locally grown wine. Yippee! Bring on the Bete Noire!

After my mini-wine lesson, I popped by a local yarn store for a mid-afternoon pick me up ;) and ran into my latest knitting apprentice. My apprentice has only been knitting for a month but what a month it has been! From the moment the needles were passed into her hands, it’s been full speed ahead.

Like most knitters, I have the honor of being a doorway to the wide world of knitting for non-knitters. Some just poke their heads in. Others take in a few steps, admire the view and find a nice comfortable spot to chill out or wander along the nicely patterned pathways. Every once in a while, I find someone that wants to explore the backcountry of this whole wide world.

I don’t refer to myself as a knitting teacher but more as a knitting guide. Where would you like to go today? The lovely province of Fair Isle? Perhaps a visit to lacework? How about a little bit of intarsia? It’s a nice day for some cabling.

Everyone learns and travel through this world of knits their own particular way. Some are comfortable and happy following patterns and I’m happy to show them any new techniques that come that way. Some just want to knit scarves and their lucky family and friends will have nice and toasty necks. For some, the quiet, meditative unbroken line of stockinette in the round is a perfect way to relax at the end of the day. I have a couple of knitting apprentices that are happy to experiment on their own terms.

The odd thing I’ve noticed is that despite how good they become, they seem to build a mental block about certain techniques. Some are fine playing around with stitch patterns, experimenting with knit and purl variations but are overwhelmed by the idea of cabling. Others are Aran phenoms but think lace is way beyond their capabilities. Many don’t dare venture beyond the printed page and some can’t fathom the idea of altering a pattern to fit their own bodies. Some (the smart ones) stay far away from doing intarsia.

Take it one stitch at a time, I say. It’s the only way to knit an elephant…or afghan…or…you get the picture.

Once in an indigo moon, I find someone who is eager to learn it all and experiment and be led by imagination and intuition. Such a person is my new apprentice. Who's piping in the ‘Emperor’s Theme’ from Star Wars???

Over a cup of tea taught her how to do short rows, mitering and other shaping techniques. You could almost hear the gears in her head turning as she took this new info and imagined all the spiffy ways to apply it. I can’t wait to see the wonderful knitting that will bloom from this new seed!
Samples of shaping experiments




























For the baking part of the day, I made up a small peach galette. It was pretty easy peasy with a homemade pastry dough I found in the freezer and island grown peaches that I had canned from last summer. A sprinkle of island grown hazelnuts and a 30 minute spin in a 350F oven. A really long 30 minutes. Plus another super long 10 minutes to let the darn thing cool down enough so it would only scorch the roof of our mouths but wouldn’t burn it so bad that strips of skin would peel off.

Yes, it was absolutely divine. It’s during these younger months of the year that have me grateful that I spent the time last summer canning and preserving summer and fall’s bounty. Talk about a lesson in delayed gratification :p

The pastry dough is I used is Fast and Dirty pie dough recipe. I used sifted organic flour from True Grains, island butter and a touch of fair trade cane sugar. A bit of cold water and viola, you have a quick pastry dough. It’s a great pastry dough and it keeps for a few days in the fridge or a few months in the freezer. It’s a brilliant thing to have around for those times that you want a little something special or just because it’s so good to eat!

Have a great day!

Jen

Nanaimo's 100 Mile Diet Challenge

Breaking down the Broken Brocade

WARNING!!! Knitting jabbering ahead. Not only is it knitting jabbering but it's geeky knitting jabbering. Proceed with extreme caution!!!!

I finally finished my Broken Brocade sweater!!!Yippee!!. The last leg of seaming and blocking was a much larger task than I had anticipated but then again, seaming and blocking are always hard for me.

The Broken Brocade sweater is my attempt at being clever. First and foremost, I wanted a lighter sweater for the spring. Of course, I'm not just going to knit a sweater simply for the sake of knitting a sweater. Heavens no. That would be just to logical. If I just wanted a sweater, I could just pop over to Value Village and pick up a sweater, But quite frankly, I don't really need a sweater. I needed an outlet for my fashionista id.

So began the journey now known as the Broken Brocade sweater. The Broken Brocade is my Contradiction Chic twist on historical fashion. It's inspired by Elizabethan styles and, of course, my secret love for brocade. I however don't own a stitch of it for clothing or decorating. When I do get a chance to try on something with brocade, I end up looking, well, stuffy and I feel like Mozart in drag. So that's how Broken Brocade began.

With a simple idea to design and knit a brocade sweater. I plotted out a couple different brocade patterns in the next couple of days. All was well until one night, I was smacked with a bad case of insomnia. My brain just wouldn't shut off and next thing you know, my simply brocade sweater became a sardonic commentary on Elizabethan sumpturary laws.

Somewhere between 3 am and dawn, my sleep hungry brain figured I needed to make a statement about the Elizabethan fashion. Queen Elizabeth I in 1576 decreed a series of laws that stated what colours, fabrics and even embellishments people of different titles and classes were allowed to wear. Similar laws were passed in other times and places. These laws were used as a way to control social behaviour and to reinforce class structures. Breaking these laws could mean facing a steep fine, loss of property or title or even execution. Pretty freaking severe, IMHO. Could you imagine losing your head over a slip of silk?

I have a fascination with clothing and identity and how fashion is used to shape a society in present day society as well as historically. The clothing laws are a fascination, ok, occasional obsession of mine. Nowadays, the idea of being punished for wearing a certain colour or fabric is unimaginable which is what makes these laws so interesting. Supposedly women even pushed their husbands to pursue higher social rankings just so they could wear tinselled satin.
So firstly, I had to design a sweater silhouette that would carry a whift of Elizabethan fashion. The silhouettes of that era were very geometrical with emphasis on a tiny little waist. I mimiced the triangular silhouette with a some shaping and ribbing and a wide, open collar.

One word about the collar, I had initially knitted a off the shoulder collar with a linen stitch border but upon trying the finished torso, I found it a bit too sloppy for what I had intended. Unfortunately, I had knitting the torso from the top down and so instead of painstakingly picking away at stitches, I simply threw in a lifeline and cut off the top band of the collar. I threw it back onto my needles and knitted up a new collar. Actually I knitted up 5 incarnations of collars before I was happy with it. I wanted something that would echo the drama of the collars at that time. I wanted a bit of height to the collar but I didn't want ruffles. I think the final collar carries a nice balance of drama and whimsy. It also echoes the poised and drama of Elizabethan gowns. Ack, so much stuffed into a collar! Oy!

My main tool of subverting Elizabethan sumptuary laws was with material choice and colours. I wanted to bring together royalty, upper and and lower classes into one. Firstly, I chose wool since it was one of the few materials lower class women were allowed to wear. I choose Louet Gems superfine merino wool, a superwash fingerling weight yarn and Lorna Laces sportweight yarn.

For the main colour, I chose the closest I could find to a Tyrian purple. Tyrian purple is a purple-red dye that orginiates from the city of Tyre and is madeby squishing up a bunch of sea snails. However, only one drop of dye comes from each snail, making for a very costly and stinky endevour. The resulting dye was a rich, deep colour that didn't fade, making it the darling of the upper class fashionistas. Queen Elizabeth I made it law that only royalty would be allowed to wear purple.

The secondary colour I chose was white, partly because it would provide a nice background for the purple. However it also was subject to Elizabeth's laws. White was a difficult colour to get and one that suggested that you had servants to do you work for you so you wouldn't get your white's dirty. I brought in a blues, greens and browns into the background to break up the white. These colours were of assigned to a range of class standings below nobility and royalty and are a metaphor for the lower classes breaking through the upper standings. (I'm such a geeky proletariat)

With a lower class material, colours of royalty, upper and lower class all mingling together in one garment, what would Queen Lizzy say?

Anyways, here's my fashion spread for the Broken Brocade sweater. I'm going to get a glass of wine. A really big glass of wine ;)

Recharging the Energizer Bunny

I barely managed make my work deadlines this week but it’s done and I have the rest of the weekend to recoup. No deadlines, no housework, no social obligations for this kid. DH is safely sequestered away in a video game coccoon. Just a weekend for myself to recharge my batteries.

Yippee!!!

It’s a sloppy, chilly Friday the 13^th. Here’s how it looks outside my window:

I’m spending the rest of the afternoon here.

Looking out at this lovely tree.

Working on this.

It’s the sleeve design I’ve decided on for the 'Broken Brocade sweater.' It took a couple of different tries but I think this pattern will look best. It provides a nice, elegant pattern without taking away from the torso or adding too much ‘noise’ to the overall piece.
It’s also an easy peasy pattern that lets my tired brain coast for a few hours.

I’ve even been too tired to actually cook. Last night I decided I’d just cobble together a leftover soup from this past week’s dinners that includes:

A couple links of local sausages cut up into bite sized pieces.

The last spoonfuls of orzo with stinging nettle and locally grown pesto.














The vegetable dregs of a moose pot roast. Local veggies, of course.












A bunch of organic collard greens from Nanoose Edibles farm. $2.50 for a huge bunch! Wheee!













Tah-dah!!! Soup du leftovers ;)

I have a pot of it to feed me for a few days. It’s just the sort of soup for early spring to help recharge my body and spirit.

I've received a really cool invite for a spinning and knitting evening at a nearby town. I might make a weekend out of it!

Have a great weekend everyone!

Jen