Don't Mind the Ice

Ignore that frost over there in the corner. It's just hell freezing over. Do you know why?

I've got a finished object.

With pictures.

How often does that happen?

I started this super-basic shrug about 2-3 weeks ago at the Ravelry/Pride meetup, and finished it up this afternoon. It was such a lovely, sunny day that I took my mannequin outside for the photoshoot.

The yarn I used is a mystery yarn that I picked up in Italy a few years ago. The ball band is long gone, but I remember that it was 100% linen. To date, this is still the only linen yarn I've ever worked with, but I love it. I bought two or three balls of it (I think it was something like 2-3 euro each; a steal) and used the first one to make a Turkish rib scarf for my mom while I was away. Somehow, it never got entered into Ravelry. :/ I feel like this is a gaping hole, somehow.

At any rate, I do know that it was purchased here, and if I remember correctly, it was the house brand. If you happen to be in Firenze, though, don't go expecting to find this exact yarn--it was on clearance and I grabbed the last two balls, so it's probably discontinued. Do check out some of their other yarns, though. This one was great to work with and I swear each ball has about a billion yards in it. The scarf I made for my mom was rather massive, and a single ball made this shrug--with some leftover.

Oh, did I mention? That yarn shop will also let you buy bulk yarns by weight. I did not take advantage of that when I was there (that would be a dangerous rabbit hole for me) but if I ever go back to Florence, I will.

The shrug itself is extremely easy: yok2tog all the way around the first round, then knit the second round. Repeat those two rows for about an inch, then split and work flat (substituting a purl row for the knit round) and work for 18". Rejoin in the round, and continue for another inch before binding off. For a finishing touch, I picked up stitches to add the ribbing. If I'd had a little more yarn left over, I would have added ribbing around the shoulder/neck/hem area, but I was about two rounds short of what I needed. Missed it by that much.

The conclusion of this project means that I'll be buckling down in earnest to make samples for the book soon--as soon as I nail down the final yarns and relay them to my publisher. At the moment I'm using some of my samples to swatch a couple of patterns that may or may not make their way into CENSORED. Right now the big challenge is that all of my yarn support yarns are much thinner than all of the yarns I worked with originally--by about half, if not more. Writing the patterns with the yarn held double would, I think, make most projects prohibitively expensive for the average knitter (at $32 a pop, who wants to buy eight skeins for a scarf? I feel bad enough asking for four...). At minimum, this means going back and reworking all of my charts and the thus-far-completed patterns...for a third time.

But, considering that last night the cat and I were fighting over who got to use the sample skeins as a teddy bear...I don't mind too much. Hey, when it's THAT soft, who can complain?

(Cautiously) Looking Up

The school extended housing through tonight free of charge. If I have to stay Thursday night, I have to pay 20 euro, but I'm hoping it won't come to that.

After three days of trying to contact the airline and the travel agency, I finally managed to get through and rebook. I am now (hopefully) leaving Thursday morning (fingers crossed). This involved phone calls to six different numbers, all with different variations thanks to the country code, five emails (four of which went unanswered), and then finally me setting up a Skype account which autodialed the booking center for about fifteen minutes before I was finally placed on hold for 25 minutes (isn't it sad when listening to static-y elevator music for 20 minutes is progress?). All of this was in conjunction with the many phone calls my mother made from the other side of the pond.

So I have a place to stay, I've got a bit of cash (thank you Dad and Uncle Sam), and I have a tentative flight. Things are looking up, but I'm keeping an umbrella handy just in case it starts raining shit again.


On my ipod: Take Me Away--Avril Lavigne
On the night stand: Luck in the Shadows--Lynn Flewelling
In the DVD player: The Fellowship of the Ring
On the needles: random crochet hat

Who am I and what have I done with the old me?

I'm back in Florence. I got here on Sunday afternoon, and started classes on Monday. So far, every day that I've been here I've worked out, cleaned, made my bed...it's kind of scary.

Classes are going well, or as well as first-day-of-term classes can go, when it's all review and figuring out what you're going to be doing for the next four months.

Themost shocking bit of all is that I cooked. As soon as my loans came through, I went grocery shopping, since I was living off of peanut butter (brought from home) and bread (purchased by my new roommate) until yesterday afternoon.

Now, before you get excited, it wasn't anything fancy and it didn't take all that long. But it involved a stove and meat, and did not involve anything out of a box with directions printed on the side, so that qualifies it as "cooking" for me.

I love chicken salad, but you can't get seasoned salt, my key ingredient, in Italy, so I made some adjustments. It was inspired by the fact that I bought the wrong flavor of yogurt and the apples I bought (which were wrapped in plastic and styrofoam) were badly bruised on one side (the styrofoam side), so I had to use them as quickly as possible.

Sophie's Florentine Chicken Salad

Ingredients:
1 chicken breast
1 medium green apple (I don't know what variety we get here. It's a little bigger than my fist and light green. It's more sweet than bitter, so it's not a granny smith. I don't think it's green delicious, either. If you're in the states, then just substitute your favorite variety. If you're in Italy, then you probably know what I'm talking about because you see mostly this type of apple in the grocery stores and in the markets.)
Mayo (200-250ml; about 1/3-1/2 of a medium sized jar)
1 tablespoon of coconut yogurt (you can add more and reduce the amount of mayo, but none of us like coconut, so I was trying to sneak it in without anyone noticing)
Parsley
Chives
paprika
Basil
cinnamon
nutmeg
rosemary
salt
black pepper

1. Cut the chicken into bite size pieces. Put in water and heat on low, or low-medium, while mixing everything else.

2. peel, core, and dice the apple into little pieces. Put in a bowl of water to keep from browning, set aside.

3. In a bowl, mix the mayo and the yogurt. Add the spices to taste. I listed them in descending order, so I used a little more parsley than I did pepper. Just a touch of the cinnamon and nutmeg, and rosemary will do. I highly recommend having a taste-tester handy.

4. When the chicken is done cooking (I like to cut it up first so it cooks faster, but you might prefer the texture if you boil it then cut it), drain the apples to remove the excess water, then do the same for the chicken. I ran it under cold water so that it would cool faster. Add the chicken to the dish with the apples.

5. Pour the sauce over the apples and chicken, add additional mayo/yogurt/spices as needed.

6. Chill before serving (I suggest 2-3 hours, but you can also eat it straight away if it's cold enough.

Hope you enjoy!

Teaser

I would like to take a second and ask that people please not spam my comments anymore. I appreciate the feedback I get from people, but I really dislike having to go through and delete the trash that people have tried to post that is completely unrelated. I'm already moderating my comments; please don't make me have to stop allowing anonymous comments, too.

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One thing that completely boggles me about Florence is the number of master painters who lived and worked in this city and yet the lighting is so terrible. Maybe things were different back in the 1500s, when there were fewer buildings, but it's hard to imagine this city as anything other than tightly packed stone buildings.

Please pardon my poor photography. My camera cord is MIA, so I used the webcam on my laptop. It's actually not a bad photo, considering I had to tilt the screen to a 45 degree angle just to get the yarn into the shot.

If you're wondering why that yarn is on toilet paper tubes (yes, you're not mistaken) it's because both of those are my handspun. I've been doing a ton of spinning. I actually used up the last of my fiber that I brought with me the other night (that would be the purple and blue ball. It's tussuh silk). Thankfully, Alice brought her entire, untouched stash of fiber, so I have probably two to three pounds of bamboo, silk, and I think some corn fiber to play around with. It's a great deal--I get to spin her yarn (a task she isn't too crazy about), and she gets pretty yarn to play with. Lately I've been in more of a spinning mood than a knitting on, so I don't even mind that I won't get to use what I've made.

What I have made, however...Well, obviously, this isn't all of it. The solid blue is Navajo plied bamboo. I've tried plying before on my spindle, and it always ended badly, usually with tangled, dirty yarn. So I started winding the singles off onto tp tubes, and then Navajo plying, which means I can turn a single into a three ply. Only one strand to deal with! I am in love with this technique. Because there are more plies, the yarn is more even and stronger. The only problem I'm having is that it can be difficult to prevent tangles if I have to stop in the middle. I have to be very careful about how I put it away and how I pick it back up again. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, here is a youtube video that shows it pretty well. Actually, I think it might be the video I originally learned from. I start out a little differently--make a slipknot from both the leader and the single together, then just cut the knot off when I'm done.

Solace

I'm a baby when I'm sick. I'm an even bigger baby when I'm away from home. Maybe it's because I'm a spoiled only child, but all I want to do is curl up in my own bed (which is a water bed, extra special), under my blankets with my pillow (because no matter how long I stay in another place, my bedding never smells right), talk to my mom once or twice through the day, and sleep with a stack of DVDs on one side of the bed with a nice pile of familiar books on the other. I want to know what medicines I'm taking, how long I have to wait before I see results, and how I will react to them. When I'm away from home, I don't have any of these things. I'm suck with a standard issue mattress, rough sheets, pillows that are too flat, and a funky smelling blanket. I have to guess that I'm taking the correct meds at the right time in the right manner, and hope that they work. Will I feel better by the next day? Or will it take a week?

Yes, I'm whining.

The one constant I've had the last few days have been my books. I recently started re-reading Madelyn Alt's Where there's a Witch (Bewitching Mysteries #5). I started reading this series a few months ago out of curiosity sake. I was looking for a good mystery and I thought, "Paganism? And Mysteries? Perfect!"

I wouldn't call these books great literature. But they're fantastic "popcorn" reads, as I call them. They aren't too serious, often funny, and I really like all of the characters. I love the way Ms. Alt has blended the world of the metaphysical into the here and now, in a way that is easily grasped. These don't feel like fantasy novels. The way magic is described makes the reader feel like they could follow in Maggie's footsteps, see what she sees, feel what she feels. And really, isn't that what magic is all about? Blending it into the everyday?

There's a little romance, lost of mystery, and a touch of fantasy. The perfect read for a day when I'm not feeling well. So, if you want something to read, check out the first book, The Trouble with Magic
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I realized I haven't posted a picture in a while, so here's one from the garden inside the cloister of Santa Maria Novella. We've had two tours there this week for different classes, and I really like the garden, despite the fact that it is small. The important thing is that it has trees! Three of them! I miss growing things. There aren't any flowers here that aren't in pots, no trees by the side of the road, not even grass growing along the sidewalk. The only animals I've seen have been a few dogs on short leashes, and hoards and hoards of pigeons.

I miss Hermes, and also my parents' dogs. So, if you have someone furry in your life, give them a little love from me, 'kay?

Shake, Rattle and Roll (or not)

[<--the Arno, as seen from my favorite street in the city] Ohio gets several tornadoes per year (about 16), and many, many violent thunderstorms. From the time I was little, I usually slept through them. It takes a pretty bad storm to wake me up. I've slept straight through a tornado watch in which my mom was gathering everything to go down to the basement to safety. When she told me about it the next morning, my response was, "What storm?"

It seems I can add a new accomplishment to my list: last night, I slept through an earthquake. According to this article, it was a 4.2, and hit at around 10pm. Alice and I were watching a movie in our bedroom and didn't feel a thing (though I did notice that the faucet was dripping in the hall bathroom after that. Maybe the vibrations loosened something?).

I'm fine, we're all fine. It's just strange to think that I didn't notice an earthquake, though I know why I didn't feel it. Firenze sits on top of a marsh--not terribly unlike the one that used to make up Madison County, in fact. So even if the bedrock is shifting, the marshland acts like one of those foam mattresses, the ones they advertise with the girl jumping up and down and the wine glass that doesn't spill, and absorbs all of the kinetic energy, so the city on top is like that wine glass. A few people might feel a little something in the ground, notice the water in the cup on their nightstand vibrating, but you don't really feel anything unless it's a fairly significant shock. In fact, though Florence has fairly regular earthquakes (which I didn't even know until last week) there's never really been any recorded damage. The David's never been knocked over, none of the sculptures have fallen off the Duomo, Ponte Vecchio has never lost bits of itself into the Arno. Just as an example, here's a picture of the Chapel Saci just finished restoring. It was heavily damaged in the flood of 1966, when (I think) 13 feet of water covered central Florence:

I'm not a big geology buff, but I think that's pretty cool.

Ciao, Bellas.

I didn't fall off the face of the earth. I just moved to the other side of it.

I had to take a few days and acclimated. Between jet lag, insomnia, a cold, and then general whirl wind of figuring what was needed immediately for the apartment, what could wait, what fees still needed paid (ha, that was an adventure in and of itself), topped with "where the hell is all my cash?" (No, it wasn't stolen. I just forgot how quickly one can burn through euros), "Why hasn't my loan disbursed the full amount?" and trying to remember where I left the pharmacy, grocery store, and book shop the last time I was here, it's been a little crazy.

I'm slowly picking up the pieces of the "me" side of my life--hobbies, enjoyments--and trying to fit them against the "them" side of my life--school, the new schedule. On the bright side, insomnia means I've written 10-15,000 words since we got here. I'll go to be around ten or eleven, toss and turn for an hour, get up, and then scribble my soul out. It's like I can't sleep until the words are on paper. Once they're down, I go back to bed and sleep, no problems.

The first day of classes was yesterday. In the morning, we were introduced to the conservation curriculum. In the afternoon, we put together smashed flower pots. This morning was the "graduate seminar," in which we debate some of the ethical issues of conservation (should a statue be left outside for all to see, where the weather can get to it, or shut up where no one can see it, but remain preserved for future generations?).

I haven't taken many pictures yet, just a few of the Arno, which is my favorite part of the city. A lot of people think I'm weird, because I don't spend all of my time in churches and museums, and would rather be outside walking around. The last time I was here, in 2008, I took a really demanding course that was made up almost entirely of field trips. During our 3 day trip to Rome, I happened to be next to a tour guide while waiting in a Queue. He asked to see our itinerary--he was ex-military, and showed American living on local Army bases the sites. His eyes almost fell out of his head. He handed back the sheet and said he'd plan that trip for a week, not a weekend. He didn't understand how we could possibly get through all of that in just a few days.

Honestly, neither do I. The experience left me a little burned out. I'll go to the churches and the museums for class, fine, but I want to spend my free time elsewhere. The only one I visit of my own free will is the costume museum at Palazzo Piti.

But anyway, that's beside the the point.

Up next is painting conservation. Not terribly eager about this one, but it's a requirement so I'll just have to slog through it. Then I'm going home to get a head start on some of these essays. I've got several due at midterm, and since everyone always puts them off to the last minute I'm going to try to get a leg up on things.