Mo' caterpillars n' stuff.

I haven't been up to too much lately and that includes cookin' and bakin'. I finished the Buttony sweater and have started on another one, but with variations (a vintage stitch on the sleeves). I've been drinking and enjoying green smoothies (I've kept to the same recipe), I've been buying vintage recipe pamphlets from Ebay, and I've been sewing skirts.

Oh, I've also been plucking.

Yes, the caterpillar is poopin'/just pooped in case you were wondering. That's it's butt, not it's face...

Cruanky Bianca is fed up with all of the caterpillar posts and has given me the EW award. As you can see, she thinks I'm nasty. Well stop reading my blog then Bianca! Damn.

Lovely Celine was wondering how I'd describe myself in six words (she enjoys looking at bugs):

1. short-waisted
2. patient
3. crafty
4. friendly
5. platform-wearer
   
6. collector

How about one more caterpillar shot, ya know for posterity?


xo
kittee

From caterpillars to caterpillar rolls...

When I wrote the stinging caterpillar post, I thought It'd be clever to end with a caterpillar sushi roll since tying bugs and food together is always good for a laugh. Somehow, the real caterpillar pictures went on and on, and I knew adding a recipe at the end would be disastrous. Plus, I think I need to work on rolling caterpillar sushi a bit more. The avocado sorta gets mushed out of shape when I apply pressure to the mat-- still tasty, but I need to work on my technique. I'm happily willing to eat these sorts of mistakes, and I'll probably be eating a lot more since these hit my sushi spot and fit in with the way I want to eat this Summer.

My favorite sushi stuffing ideas have been on Pakupaku for ages, though I've yet to get that section finished. Yesterday, I was lazy and didn't want to go to the store for ingredients, so I used what we had in the kitchen: dried shiitakes, cukes, carrots, avocado and beets. If I'd been more ambitious, I would have made some tempura for the innards.


The cucumber pickles were a snap. Peel and seed half a cucumber and cut into strips. Toss in a good squeeze of beet juice (grate and squeeze out the juice with your hand), a small squirt of agave, rice vinegar and toasted sesame oil.

For the mushrooms, I simply hydrated a handful in boiling water, squeezed out the excess water when they were soft, and tossed with tamari. You could be fancier and use a ponzu sauce if you wanted.

The carrots were julienned with an OXO tool that I purchased thinking it was a regular vegetable peeler. I like it, and it's easier than pulling out the ol' Benriner, so no gripes from me.

I made both inside out rolls and regular futomaki, and the rice filling was seasoned traditionally with rice vinegar, salt and a bit of granulated sugar. I went non-traditional too--I used a combo of organic short grain brown rice and a cereal blend I found at Hong Kong Market. I freakin' love this stuff, it's got all kinds of things in it besides rice; oats, barley, job's tears, aduki beans and mung beans. I just used a tiny bit of the blend, so the sushi wouldn't be co-opted with beans.

Also, if you're interested in less standard sushi fillings, you might be interested in Japanese pickles. I have two cookbooks, which give lots of information: Tsukemono Japanese Pickling Recipes by Ikuko Hisamatsu and Easy Japanese Pickling by Seiko Ogawa.

xo
kittee

Caterpillar Onslaught

Caterpillar season is in high gear down here--we have gadjillions of stinging buck moth caterpillars. I didn't think there'd be too many buck moths this year, since we had a cold spell when they came out last year and most of them died. No such luck. It's been going on for weeks, and I cannot really deal anymore.

They come out of the massive live oaks, and they cover most of the city.

Even if you manage to avoid them on the ground, they'll succeed and fall from the trees to get you. I keep promising Vee no more stings, so I have to be really careful when I walk him, he's been foot chewing to survive.

Later in the summer, we get Io moth caterpillars, which sting too--worse in fact, more like wasps.

Though the Ios don't come out in droves, when they hatch I can often find 30 mini sized ones on a single plant. They like to camouflage themselves in hibiscus trees, so I end up grabbing them unintentionally when I garden. Stinging caterpillars are easily one of my least favorite things about living in New Orleans. I grew up lovin' on woolly bear and other tame caterpillars, so it just seems twisted and wrong that we have ones that hurt.

At least we do have the fluffy, innocuous woolly bear caterpillars of my youth. We get 'em in lots of snot like colors here, and they look sorta stingy, so most people leave them alone.

They also eat way more than their weight in my finest greenery--I've been picking them relentlessly from my mint and angel trumpet.

Next up, the dreaded fruitworm.

The destruction left from a group of these is insane. They come reliably every year and cover my garden. They really gross me the f*ck out and it's a necessity to hand pick their squishy bodies and then spray with BT. I loathe them.

Of course, the fruitworms have already crashed my garden party and ate their way through the last of my collards. They've started eye-balling my tomatoes, and I'm sure the tomato hornworms are not very far behind.


While the tomato hornworms are really cool to look at, they are my sworn enemy. Imagine having loose ones running amok in your house. It happened to me. Battle up!

xo
kittee

Green Smoothie Success

Just now, I gobbled down a delicious green smoothie! Thanks so much for all the input you've given me, this was a booty slappin' success.

Here's what I blended:
2 ice cubes
1 banana
1 pitted date
3 cubes frozen mango
a big handful fresh spinach
a big leaf of raw kale
enough unsweetened almond milk to make it whirl.

I'm going to experiment with some canned pineapple too, but it may not be necessary. I found an affordable bag of frozen organic mango, and since this smoothie only uses a few cubes at a time, this works well for me. I'm really happy with the taste and texture of these ingredients. I think I can probably handle a couple a day (which is my goal).

Also, in case some of you want to read more about green smoothies, my friend Dave lent me Green for Life by Victoria Boutenko. It's a pretty easy read, discusses the benefits of green smoothies and has some recipes.

xo
kittee

My second green smoothie.

Thanks for all the great feedback and info about the different green smoothies you drink and enjoy. I'm surprised by the number of responses the post received, I didn't really think it'd generate any interest. I had no idea so many folks were into them. I made my second one today, and I had to literally choke it down. It was quite a bit worse than yesterday--bitter with a bad texture.

The consensus seems to be that I need to add more fruit, namely pineapple and/or mango and use juice. I'm not sure what to do about this since (1) these fruits are $$ and I want to have a shake each day, (2) these fruits aren't in season down here (not like bananas are either, but they are cheap) and (3) using juice adds so much sugar.

Here's what I blended today:
filtered water
1 frozen banana
a small handful of fresh strawberries
a handful of young spinach
a big leaf of deveined dinosaur kale

I'm not giving up yet.
xo
kittee

My first green smoothie.

I've been reading about green smoothies a lot recently. I know it's something that would be good for me, I don't eat enough raw vegetables, and I eat too many sweets. In fact, most of you probably think I only eat sweets, based on the posts in this blog (I'll take a lesson from Dazee and neither deny nor confirm this claim). Whatever the case, I've pledged to try to be healthier this month. I want to eat more raw vegetables and less cooked crap and baked goods and to drink a green smoothie everyday. I'm also especially inspired by my friend Dave, who has been getting wonderful results from McDougall's Program for Maximum Weight Loss. I might try a hybrid of these ideas and see how it goes.


Bubbye delicious peanut butter butterscotch cookies and leftover banana kake.


Hello green smoothie, I'm not sure I really like you yet...


My first green smoothie went like this:
a handful of fresh spinach
a leaf of kale
a ripe banana
three ice cubes
unsweetened plain soymilk

How'd I do and what could make it better? I'm thinking the bananas need to be frozen and almond or rice milk...

xo
kittee

Buttony Sweater KAL?

As I was trolling through Ravelry this morning, I found a sweater that I want to make. It's Buttony by Katie Marcus. The photo from ohmystars (see below), doesn't do it a bit of justice, I saw a lot of really adorable completed cardigans with interesting button combos that didn't look at all frumpy.

I'm inspired to host my first Knit Along so if you'd like to join me, the pattern is free and can be found here. If you're already on Ravelry the pattern is here, let me know who you are so we can hook up. I also started a thread for the KAL on the PPK.

This page on Ravelry discusses gauge for the sweater and links to about 40 discussions of it, and this thread is also very helpful. Apparently, we should be getting about 2.5 stitches per inch if you cast on 96 stitches.

So according to the thread above, all you have to do to make adustments to this sweater is to add or reduce stitches AFTER you knit the neckband. If you decrease at the beginning, the band will be too tight, and vice versa if you increase. Many people said that since this is a neck down sweater, it's easy to adjust for boobs...you just try it on as you go and increase or decrease accordingly based on how it fits. I couldn't find any details about boob darts or waist shaping, though I did read that someone added waist shaping and liked the result. Also, someone posted the following gauge, which is helpful--they had a good result:

Hi Friender - I know that you left your comment 2 months ago, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to answer anyway. I did my Buttony with 15 sts / 20 rows per 10 cm, using the yarn and needles given in the pattern. But my sweater seems a little dense - if I did it again, I’d probably go for a slighter looser gauge. I hope that helps someone! [She then went back and said that her sweater wasn't at all dense, and she didn't know what she had written that in the first place.]

For those of you not on Ravelry, here are some related blog entries about the sweater that might help you:
http://chocolateachuva.blogspot.com/2008/04/fire.html
http://tomboyknits.blogspot.com/2008/01/fo-buttony-sweater.html
http://lickmysticks.com/?p=144
http://spindelicious.vox.com/library/post/buttoney-woes.html?_c=feed-rss
http://www.ninabomba.com/mt/archives/2007_04.html (scroll down)

Also, this blog entry shows how easy it will be to modify the pattern...It's a perfect example of why a raglan top down sweater is a good one to start with.
I'm shooting for a May 1st cast on, anyone with me?

Another great link here.
I also found a KAL on craftster with lots of good info, crap it's got 39 pages and will hopefully answer a lot of questions!

I cheated and cast on today, I couldn't wait. I've noticed that the pattern is really not precise and since there are some new knitters joining this KAL, I want to post notes as I work. Also, I'm posting the pattern for a really easy to follow top down, baby raglan sweater. I think if you refer to this pattern for direction, it will help with Buttony's lack of instructional detail.

Check out this baby pattern for help with the raglan increases.
Waist shaping details here and really great shots of her sweater here.

Notes:

• Don't forget to make your first buttonhole at the beginning, don't wait until the 10th row to add one.
• The raglan increases on row 9 are done a bit differently than I've seen before, and it took me awhile to figure out. Here's what I'm doing, slip the first stitch, knit to within one stitch of the first marker. Make one, knit one, slip the marker, knit one then make one again. Repeat before each marker. Also, I'm not increasing into the bar the way the pattern calls for, I'm knitting into the back of the stitch instead, I like the way it looks better with no holes. Row 9: Slip 1, (K to within 1 st of marker, M1, K2, M1) to end
• When you get to the point you want to try on the sweater and you move stitches to other needles, make sure you remember to put your stitch markers back in! I just made that mistake, what a mess.
• Start your sleeves with a long tail, there will be a little hole, that you can use the tail to sew up when you finish it off. Otherwise, if you want them to be a little wider at the base, pick up stitches around the hole and knit.
• This page explains the ssk decrease that is used for sleeves.
• WIP shots are here.
• I did some succesful waist shaping based on the craftster thread above. I placed one stitch holder under each armpit. On a knit row, I decreased two stitches at each holder like this: ssk, k1, slide holder, k1, k2tog. I made this increase row 3X spacing them 6 rows apart. This worked great, then I started increasing in the same manner, but only was able to do one round of increases before I had to start the ribbing.
• When I started on the sleeves, I had 51 stitches. I picked up an additional 5 under the arm to prevent a hole. I immediately decreased 8 stitches on the first row to get to 48 stitches. I did this by k2togh, k2tog, k1, k2tog, k1, k2tog knitting until the last stitches on the round, and repeating this pattern in reverse.

xo
kittee