Dentist

Today was Lindsay's first visit to the dentist. I was concerned about her two upper molars looking odd, but fortunately everything was absolutely fine. She has two-tone molars. How original.

But it got me thinking about how parenting has changed since I was a kid. Parents are told to bring their children in to the dentist between age 2 and 3. That seems extremely early to me. I can't imagine that my parents brought me into the dentist before the age of 6, when my baby teeth started falling out.

There seems to be more information for parents these days, but I've come to the realization that there are too many opinions. Instead of giving parents information that is useful, which would calm many fears, there is so much information (mostly alarmist) flying around from thousands of "experts" it has the opposite effect. It can make you downright neurotic about making a decision.

The news just loves to scare the crap out of the general public. Consumer Reports just came out with a story showing babies flying out of car seats. They were trying to say that car seats are normally tested with the vehicle going 30 mph. But now look what happens when you get into an accident going 35mph. Cue the flying baby footage. It had parents flipping out. Turns out that in their great salivating desire to show baby carnage, they jumped the gun and didn't perform the test correctly. I think the cars were really going over 70mph. Bastards!

Turning 3

Yesterday was my daughter's 3rd birthday party. We went to see a puppet show of Alice in Wonderland. The cupcakes reflect the Alice theme. She's growing up so quickly, she doesn't need to eat or drink anything to make her bigger.

The recipe is from Magnolia bakery and is wonderful. I cut the frosting recipe in 1/2 and still had extra.

Chugging along

Knitting with Kid Silk Haze must be what it feels like to spin a spider's web. The yarn is so fine, it feels weightless. What is surprising is how warm the finished garment is.

I've been knitting along on the scarf with #20 edging from Victorian Lace Today. I finished the first edge and knitted on the center panel. The center panel is attached just above the long horizontal line, and is comprised of the short columns with the faggoting in between. The join is not immediately apparent.

Switching to the center panel was a nice break from 22 repeats of the side panel. Now I have to do a crochet cast on and start the other side panel. I will be picking up the center panel stitches on each row. I haven't done that before, so that should be interesting.

This project has been fun. I was originally going to give it away, but I've grown pretty attached to it. I might do a nice worsted weight lace stole to give away instead. I made my kiddo a scarf version for Christmas and it really came out nicely.

No-Knead Bread

I just bought a bread machine at a stoop sale for $10 and have been somewhat obsessive about making bread lately. I was trying different kinds of breads, including sourdough-with the smelly sourdough starter in my fridge and everything. I just dumped the starter because I realized that I wasn't really enjoying the sourdough very much and I had to keep renewing the starter each week to keep it alive. So every week or so I would make another loaf of sourdough that I didn't really enjoy. I have a *very* hard time throwing anything away, even a smelly wet lump of dough in the fridge. But I overcame all obstacles and did it.

I have to say that the crumb of a loaf of bread machine bread isn't the kind of crumb I seek out from a bakery. I prefer a crunchy crust with a chewy, filled-with-holes interior. I was trying different things, such as bread flour, gluten to add to the flour, etc. when my friend Dirk mentioned a recipe for No-Knead Bread he saw in the Times. Mark Bittman went to Sullivan Street bakery, where they have the yummiest white pizza (no cheese, just chewy/rosemary/salty goodness). He got this recipe for bread, which is super easy and produces the crusty/chewy of bread I love. Once you mix the ingredients, you have to let the dough sit for about 12-18 hours, but the actual work is minimal and absolutely worth it. I've made this bread using 1 c. whole wheat flour and 1/4 c. flax seeds and it was still light and airy. Here's a one page printed version of the recipe.

Birthday Card

While this has absolutely nothing to do with either fiber or photography, it still makes me incredibly proud. My almost 3 year old daughter Lindsay is just learning to draw faces. She made this card for my hubby for his birthday. Neil and the cat are on the left and Lindsay and I are on the right. I think it's so wonderful. The kind of kid artwork that adults always try and copy, but never manage to get right.

Merino

These are actually 3 mini skeins of superwash merino wool. Originally I was going to use them for trim on a white sweater I knit for my kiddo, but they bleed a bit when washed. The pattern had cute embroidered dots all over. I tried that and it started to look like a kindergarten project, so I cut my losses. That sweater actually has a bunch of silly problems that I'm trying to sort out. The sweater itself is nice (photos to come), but the sleeves are too short. Usually I find that kid's sweater patterns are designed for small primates, with ridiculously long arms. I was surprised to have the opposite problem.

I think that these mini skeins would make a nice stranded hat mixed with another yarn. Kind of along the lines of this hat at Brooklyn Tweed.

Victorian Lace Today

I got this book for Christmas and there are so many different projects I would love to do. I started on one with the least glamorous title. It's on page 84 called Scarf with the #20 border. I am about halfway through the first edging. It's going along pretty well. I think she has a fairly complicated system of attaching edgings onto her other shawls. This shawl only does knitted on edgings on each side of the center panel, so it is a bit less complicated. This is what the finished shawl looks like.

Testing

Oh yippee! I think I finally have this figured out!! I even figured out how to do the links finally. It wasn't working on Safari, so I switched to Firefox.

This photo is from August 2002. I'm hoping that by doing this blog, I will get better with updating photos and cataloging my knitting projects.