kimchi time

So yesterday I stopped by the Lincoln Square farmer's market, a series of booths in the small parking lot outside the Western Brown Line stop every Thursday night in the summer. And I decided to buy a very large head of cabbage, because I've been wanting to try my hand at making kimchi. My mom makes cabbage kimchi pretty regularly- it's a bit easier/more forgiving than the traditional kind made with napa cabbage, and it lasts longer.

So, I started with this:

Step 1: make some paste. My mom uses glutinous rice flour, but I didn't have any, so I just used all-purpose flour. I'm going to say I used about 1/2 c water and 3 tbsp flour, but who really knows? (and this was WAY more than I actually needed). Set this aside, let it cool.

Step 2: cut up the cabbage into manageable pieces. Salt liberally. Recipes for napa cabbage kimchi tend to say to soak it in saltwater for 6 hrs - overnight, but it isn't really necessary here.

Step 3: assemble the rest of the ingredients. Scallions (green onions- I used 4), garlic (about 5 cloves), ginger (about 1.5 in piece), red pepper powder (the Korean kind, probably about 2 tbsp?), and fish sauce (maybe 3 tbsp?). I cut the scallions into about 1 in pieces, and minced the garlic and the ginger. [So I basically made these proportions up. The recipe I had said to use 1 tsp of garlic and ginger for 1 head of napa cabbage. I didn't think that was possibly enough, so I upped the amounts.]

Step 4: Add the above to the cabbage. I also added maybe 2 tsp of sugar. Mix it all together, adding about 3 tbsp of the paste as you do so. Adjust seasoning to taste.

Voila!

One head of cabbage got about 1 gal of kimchi. I hope it tastes good tomorrow, haha.

baby cupcakes, free to a good home ;)

Chocolate cake, orange buttercream, topped with a dried blueberry.

I think I finally found a buttercream recipe that I like. American buttercream from the "Cooking for Engineers" site. Only downside is that the vanilla version is a bit more yellow than I'm used to (because the recipe includes the egg yolks). Can't win it all, I suppose.

please note: delivery not available. Sorry, no refunds.

oil painting

So I took an oil painting class a few weeks ago (it was a 5 week thing), and came out with 4 paintings. Now the question is, what do I do with these? I also bought more canvases. Hmm.

Lesson 1: basic shapes

Lesson 2: still life

Lesson 3: different still life

Lesson 4: abstract

dobby socks and some fingerless gloves

Dobby Socks:

Yes, I'm a Harry Potter fan. And who doesn't love Dobby the house elf, who will take all mis-matched socks he can get? I was determined to finally use up my stash of sock yarn (I use the word "stash" rather loosely- remnants would be a more appropriate word, I suppose, as these were the last bits of various skeins left after finishing other projects).

These were all toe-up socks. Once I started, I loved it. These were made with knitty's Figure 8 toe tutorial (the last example of starting a toe-up sock), on size 2 dp needles. I can't really tell you where the yarn came from, but it's mostly acrylic or acrylic/wool blends of sock yarn.

Rough sock pattern:

Start toe-up pattern with 8 loops on each needle, as described in the Figure 8 toe-up sock. Once you're knitting in the round, increase the toe until there are 48 stitches total. At this point, the toe is complete, and you can throw in a pattern if you'd like. Continue knitting in the round until the foot reaches the start of the heel/ankle.

For the ankle, repeat the following 2 rounds 7 times (62 stitches total):

round 1: k11, M1, K24, M1, k11.

round 2: knit.

For the heel:

On the next round, k6, turn. Repeat the following 2 rows until you're back at the original 48 sts:

Row 1: purl 11, p2tog, turn

Row 2: knit 11, k2tog, turn.

Join in the round again, knit in the round (continuing any pattern) until the ankle is at the desired length. Bind off all stitches loosely.

I kind of made up this heel because I didn't like how any of the heel patterns looked for toe-up socks. Now I have 6 lovely, mismatched socks!

fingerless gloves:

I actually made these a looong time ago (almost a year?) on the train to/from work. I use them at work all the time (more in the summer than in the winter because of the A/C). The pattern is knitty's Fetching gloves, but I continued the cables up the back hand of the glove because I like cables.

Currently working on the Wakefield Scarf, using the rest of my super-nice Helen's Lace yarn used for my swallowtail shawl. Once that's done, I'm going back to stash-busting, this time with something felted. I'm thinking felted bag, but we'll see.

knitty knitty

Sara's wedding was this past weekend. And it was absolutely lovely.

I finished this about a month or so ago, but didn't post because I wanted it to be a surprise when she and Brian actually received it, using a pattern for an aryan sampler afghan. (For the non-knitting folks, a sampler afghan simply means it uses a variety of patterns, giving you a sample of each.) I mixed it up with a few different colors, rather than the monotone the pattern called for. I was also too lazy to do a thick border, sorry guys:

I also knit myself a lace shawl (the swallowtail shawl from interweave)

I need to re-block this. the edging is supposed to be peaked, and I didn't leave it long enough or pin it correctly or some combination of the two, because it looks more ruffled than peaked.