Happy 7th of July!

So my Independence Day post is a bit late, I suppose I'm still in the relaxed spirit of my wonderful long weekend.  It started off with a trip to the farmer's market.

Twins.

Veronica and I showed up wearing the same dress.  I was going to change but we decided it would be more fun to see if the anyone said anything.  Polite Texas folks, nobody said a word.  On Monday, we decided to make the cookies on the cover of the most recent Martha Stewart Living.  Everybody got in on the act including Veronica's mom who was in town.

The cookies were surprisingly easy to make, just pipe on circles and drag a toothpick through them.  They came out gorgeous and made a delicious end to our grill-out (of which I meant to take pictures, but was distracted by Mike's delicious pork chops).

Foto Friday

Saturday June 25: Space Needle

Sunday June 26: Strutting His Stuff

Monday June 27: Home Away from Home

Tuesday June 28: Happy Birthday!

Wednesday June 29: Canid Skulls

Thursday June 30: Home!!!

Friday July 1: Favorite Trees out My Office Window

June Book Report: Blink

Over about three days in June, I read Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, which was lent to me by Veronica.  I absolutely loved this book.  There was something new and fascinating on nearly every page, many of which I have already brought up in conversations. The premise of the book is that we make split-second, unconscious decisions which are frequently as accurate or more accurate than the more thought-out decisions we make with our conscious mind.  As someone with a tendency to over-analyze and not trust what feels right, it was a shock to me that people actually perform worse on tasks when they are asked to explicitly state their reasoning.

Although understanding and experience enhance our ability to make these quick decisions, Gladwell wisely notes that in our over-saturated information age, "we have come to confuse information with understanding."  He draws imaginative and insightful parallels between war, salesmanship, marriage, and improv and the way that our neural networks process information that really shaped how I think about the unconscious.  I can't wait to read some of his other books.

In a (Triple Dill - Double Garlic) Pickle

I was thrilled to find an abundance of cute little pickling cucumbers at the farmer's market a few weeks ago because I had been waiting for several month to make this recipe from Coconut & Lime.  Dill and garlic are two of my favorite flavors so adding dill seed, dried dill weed and fresh dill to the brine sounded like great pickles to me!

I played with the amounts of herbs a little bit and added 1 tbsp. of dill seed, 1 tsp. of dried dill, and 1/2 tsp. of ground mustard (I didn't have mustard seeds) to each pint jar.

I also doubled up the garlic and crushed it lightly to let more of that great garlic flavor into the pickles.  Dropped in bay leaf and then I was ready to load up the cucumbers.

I filled about three pint jars in this batch, but I wish I had bought more cucumbers! After topping with the fresh dill, I poured on the boiling vinegar (the kitchen didn't smell great at that point!).

Ten minutes of hot water bath processing and then a few days of waiting before they were ready.  The resulting pickles are surprisingly crisp considering they were boiled for 10 minutes.  The dill flavor is assertive but not over-powering and the garlic is surprisingly subtle.  There is a sweet flavor that comes out despite the absence of sugar in the recipe.  Overall, I'm pretty pleased with the outcome and these were by far the easiest produce to can yet!

One Skein Summer Shrug

It is a common affliction among those who indulge in the yarn arts - the single skein.  I have no idea why I purchased this particular lonely skein of electric teal Paton's wool, but I suspect that my though process was something like "OOOOOOO, PRETTY!!!!".  It has been in my stash for at least two years, but I never knew what to do with it. Coincidentally, I have had a pattern for a "capelet" which I though would be a quick and cute little project to use up this small amount of yarn.

I tried to figure out how to adjust the pattern for the thinner yarn and to deal with the fact that there were no measurements in the original pattern.  In the end, I realized it would be easier to start from scratch.  I found this formula for a raglan sweater and calculated it to my measurements.  I also decided that I wanted to work the shrug in an open lace pattern so it would use less yarn and better for summer.  I leafed through my Vogue Guide to Knitting until I found a lace pattern I liked with a relative short repeat (this one is six stitches).  The short repeat length was important because nearly the entire shrug is raglan increases and I wanted to minimize the ugliness created by trying to increase in a lace pattern. All in all, I am quite happy with the resulting shrug. It is light enough for summer, even through it is wool, and it adds a nice pop of color to neutral dresses.  One skein down, lots more to go!