Here, My Friends. Here.

Find enlightenment here. Or, if not that, then at least find THE BEST DAMN RIBS IN THE MOTHER-TRUCKING STATE! Comfort food at it's purest and fattiest. 

Heeeeeeere's Pat!

I know this blog has been lacking in knitting content for awhile, but do not think that there is no knitting in my life. Oh-ho, my little kittens, there has been MUCH knitting. Dare I say it, there's a whole lotta knittin' goin' on. (Sorry, Koizumi's visit to Graceland has been on the edge of my mind lately--so surreal.) I finished my FIRST sock (I've turned five heels, but I've never finished before!); I've been working on a beautiful Flower Garden shawl in Collinette Mohair in an unusual colorway; I knit half of and frogged The One Skein Wonder in Noro Silk Garden; and I'm almost done with Susan's Star of the Day Baby Hat. Sadly, I have photos of none of these because my camera was full of other stuff, including this picture of PAT! The Barbecue King! Pat is the proprietor of Pat's Bar B Que at 115 W. Commonwealth Ave. in SLC (just south of 2100 S. and within easy driving distance of my residence, making the temptation all the greater). Does Pat look like a man who knows his way around a barbecue pit? I have to say that at first glance, he doesn't fit the stereotype. But if you decided that he's not serious about meat based on his appearance, you'd be wrong, friend. Dead wrong. I am a hardcore 'cue lover, and Pat's is the best in the whole damn state. I've tasted 'em all, so I know. Forget Q4U, Sugarhouse Barbecue Company, and, God forbid, Famous Dave's--all merely what one must settle for when Pat's is closed. If you are, like I once was, searching for great ribs, brisket and 'slaw (DAMN, their coleslaw is good too), you can call off the dogs. The search is over. You are home, my friend, if home is a place that sells the best f---ing barbecue you've ever had in your life. Plus, they often have a dude in the back playing blues guitar. Can't beat it with a stick.

Questions. For Me and For You.

I cut the baby's hair for the first time yesterday. He still has some curls, but the ones around his shoulders are gone. He still looks cute, but now I hopefully won't get anymore "wow, your little girl sure can scream" comments. Now I'll get "your son just shattered the store's windows with his shrieking--that will be twelve thousand dollars, ma'am" comments.

Soap Questions: If you want to have a little soap tet-a-tet yourself, talk to me and maybe we could set up a time. It was really fun to teach Laurie and Michaele how to do it, and I've taught a couple of other people in the past. Also, if you're interested (hey, Kathy), Susan Miller Cavitch has written two excellent books called The Natural Soap Book and The Soap Maker's Companion. They're a good foundation and offer a lot of recipes as well. There is also a lot of information online. Google cold-process soapmaking or check out Soapcrafters. I get a lot of supplies from them and they offer a lot of support and information as well. You can also start with "melt and pour" glycerin soap, which is sort of soapmaking lite but still educational and fun. And finally, I was holding the Maglight so that I could see the soap--we were using a black pot and we were having some trouble seeing the color we were ending up with, so the light, um, illuminated things a bit.

T-Shirt Questions: I need to do a little market research here. What sizes do people like to wear? What colors do you like? I'm going to buy the blank shirts this week, and I'm trying to figure out how many, what colors, and in what sizes to purchase. After that, it's off to the print studio.

Crafting on the Edge.

Laurie and Michaele came over last night to make soap in my kitchen and eat Indian food from Bombay House (you get hungry with all that endless stirring). Michaele is moving away from our fair berg next week and she wanted a chance to see soap made before she left, and Laurie's been obsessed with the idea of making soap for a while now. Laurie wanted a lavender and rosemary soap, and she decided that she wanted it to be purple too. When the soap traced (a little technical term there) and we poured it into the molds, it was sort of a peachy-cantolope color, much to our surprise. But by this morning it had totally saponified and turned back to purple.

Look what a weird color it turned! After it saponified and cooled though...

Cutting the purple soap with the crinkle cutter.

On the New Yarn Store.

Make One t-shirt update: The interest has been very high, so I'm exploring options for setting up some sort of online store. I have no experience with this and I'm not sure where to start, but I'm looking into it. Details to come when I actually have a way to exchange money for goods and an efficient way of producing the product. I've also already begun the prep work for a new lino cut. Finally, if you attend my local S'n'B and wanted me to print you a shirt but didn't get it to me in time for the first run, I'll try to rectify that as well, and soon.

Yesterday while a bunch of local yahoos traveled en masse to the Estes Park wool market, a few more refined friends and I made our way to Ogden to visit the Haunted Yarn Shack, Needlepoint Joint, and Roosters Brewpub. It was Susan's idea; also along for the ride were Teri, Eliza, Susan's friend Katelyn, and my own dear mother. I have photographs of the wackiness that ensued, but I'll post them tomorrow. Today I bring you fast breaking news about a new yarn shop in the Sugarhouse district. It's called The Red Sweater and it is situated directly across the street from the post office on 1100 East. They carry yarns that aren't already found commonly in the area, which is smart (their shipment of sock yarn was delayed and should arrive Monday--I will investigate further). Their grand opening was Saturday but the proprietors kindly gave me a tour on Friday when I was in the neighborhood. It's a somewhat small though thoughtfully and well-laid out shop. I have to say that we already have an embarrassment of riches in terms of Local Yarn Shops which portends an uphill battle for them, but it's nice to have them so nearby my own residence. Two doors north is Piper's Quilts and Comforts which has always carried yarn but which recently expanded their lines (perhaps they noticed their new neighbors). They now carry a lot of different yarns and pattern books, including Debbie Bliss and Rowan. If that's your bag, baby, take a look.

The 4th Annual Chicken Show.

Miriam's Trekking sock and Emerson the little chicken meet and make good.

On Saturday, the family attended The 4th Annual Chicken Show. We brought along Mim and her sporting husband in order to better expose them a little big city culture and sophistication. What is a chicken show, you perhaps so rightly ask? They may consist of something else in your neck of the woods, but in this case it was pretty much two ten year old girls from W-Man's school demonstrating their ability to walk around with chickens on their heads, the chickens themselves prone with their feet in the air. I think one of the announced "tricks" also included a chicken walking through the backdoor into the house. Here you see the finale before the chicken races (which could more accurately be called chicken IQ tests). The finale consisted of a chicken on top of a pink cowboy hat and a dog biting a rope being swung in circles. Everything was properly announced and chicken trivia imparted to the audience through a bullhorn. Top-notch culture. They did serve good ol' Three Buck Chuck from Trader Joe's (properly taxed at the state border by a crack agent of the UDABC, no doubt about it); during the race intermission, we had most incredible grilled steak, baked beans, coleslaw, green salad, and melon. All for the price of $2 for adults and $1 per child.

Chickens racing. EXCITING! We were betting on Casper and Emerson, neither of whom did very well. W-Man did win some sort of shooter thingy which used little plastic chickens as ammunition for knowing (via Miriam and his parents) various chicken facts.

Feather and Fan Baby Bonnet.

I haven't been doing a ton of knitting this week, just a little here and there, mostly at red lights. But I made this little bonnet last week in about three days. After show and tell tonight at S'n'B, it's bound for Ohio and the head of my unborn neice, sixth child of The Neefer's older sister. I found the pattern via Hello Yarn on Stitch Marker. I should be working solely on a certain pair of Bay Area socks, but I've been slack. Hopefully I'll be forgiven.

Details:
Feather and Fan Lace Bonnet
Mission Falls 1824 cotton, one skein exactly
A little kitchen cotton for the neckband
Size 5 circular needle for the hat
Size 2 double points for the i-cord

Finito.

The t-shirts are done! The process follows, in numbered order (because I'm not a savvy blogger and don't know how to create a multi-photographic post and haven't the patience to figure it out--my time is severely limited and I'd rather knit).

I

Figuring the press height.

II

Mixing the inks. We used a total of three different ink combinations because the shirt colors were so varied; what worked on the white shirts would not work on the black.

III

The shirt was laid on the white table with the inked blocks laid on top, covered by the press board. Then the shirt went under the press. We're not printing a shirt here, we're still setting the press before the run.

IV

Inking the block.

V

Contemplating the test newsprint run before printing the shirts.

VI

All 25 shirts laid out to cure the next day in my livingroom.

Another Close-up.

Aren't they pretty? Don't you want one? If you gave me shirts to print, you'll get them on Tuesday night at Stitch'n'Bitch. Dinosaur Girl wore the shirt I printed for her today when we ran errands, including a stop at Black Sheep Wool Co. (I promise it wasn't planned), and we stumbled on some interested buyers, so I'm thinking I might print more and sell them. Let me know if you're interested.

This is what I did last night...

...Instead of going out with friends to bars or Battles of the Bands. The text says "make one". I carved the "m1" image last summer and the text last night. I'll be putting in studio time this weekend, probably tonight or tomorrow, printing t-shirts. I'm going to blockprint right on the fabric instead of screen printing. It should be a cool effect. I hope.

P.S. Happy World Wide Knit In Public Day.

Thanks and Thanks.

My Dye-O-Rama sock yarn has come to me!

Here's all the stuff from my Dye-O-Rama pal. I got some serious booty, landlubbers. In addition to the yarn, Devri gave me 4 bars of Scharffen Berger chocolate (two of them bittersweet, two of them dark as sin, the way I likes it), three spice mixes, ginger peach black tea and some tea bags, two different kinds of coffee, Spanish saffron, four cobalt blue ramekins, and a recipe for chocolate souffle. I feel very spoiled.

This is my Dye-O-Rama pal Devri. She actually lives in Seattle, but as luck would have it, she came through Salt Lake City this week, so we arranged to meet at Black Sheep Wool Company. The sock yarn she gave is FABULOUS. The ladies at Black Sheep were suitably impressed and envious; Devri not only dyed the yarn herself, she spun it from Blue-faced Leicester. The skein has over 570 yards on it (Devri, did I get that right?), so I just may skip the socks this time and make a shawl. The yarn is so pretty and so perfect for me that I have to do something with it that shows it off.

Apple Upside-down Cake

Michaele brought an incredible hazelnut flourless torte she had made to Stitch'n'Bitch last night, and I could hardly eat it because I had first gone to a family dinner at my mother's. Aima made French onion soup, and while her soups are always amazing, this one was sublime. My forte has always been in the dessert department, so my contribution to the meal was an apple upside-down cake (adapted from a recipe for plum upside-down cake in the "Moosewood Restaurant Book of Desserts"). As The Neefer always says, life is too short to eat crappy food. (Want to see more Yarnites following the Foodie path? Susan is doing it too.)

Guess what the family did Sunday? If you said, "Attended the Gay Pride parade," you'd be right, and what a good guesser you'd be. This year's theme was "Come As You Are", which I particularly loved. There were at least three floats poking fun at the state's polygamy connection via HBO's "Big Love" and there were also a surprisingly many polititians marching along with all the trannies, queens, bears, and dykes. When the front of the parade began with the SLCPD followed by the Dykes on Bikes, I actually cried. Parades always make my cry. It's all the humanity getting together and creating something--it's sentimental, perhaps, but it makes me tear up, and Pride Day does it most of all. Interestingly, Salt Lake City has one of the biggest (and most family-friendly) Pride Day celebrations in the country. It's a combination of the high percentage of queers per capita combined with the local *ahem* culture, such as it is. My gay friends in more liberal cities say that it doesn't matter much where they live because everyone, including their local gub'ments, have accepted them as a part of society, so there's not much to bang on about. On the other hand, they miss out on a fabulous annual parade. And what we all need is more parades. That's my philosophy.

So much fabulosity.

Aren't they cute?

These are the delusional ones.

All Shiny Clean!

I made another batch of soap today, as I've given all my stash of homemade soap away. I have one measly bar left, besides what's in the shower, and a couple of friends have a birthday celebration coming up. The soap is processing and staying warm in the oven right now while it saponifies. You see here the lovely wooden soap molds that my good friend Uri the Jet-setter gave me for my birthday a few years ago. I can't remember where she ordered them from, but I love working with them. Here's to coming up All Shiny Clean! And thanks again, Uri, for many reasons.

My Shubishu.

It's my lovely home-dyed yarn, my darlings! I love the process of dye-it-yourself yarn in the extreme, and I am so taken with the end result that I leave the hanks propped up casually yet prominantly around the house in case a stranger wanders through and demands that I create more because I am such an ARTISTE! (Much the same way my best friend Shannon and I wandered around London the length of the summer when we were sixteen, spouting Shakespeare in case a casting director from the Royal Shakespeare Company or Kenneth Brannagh, Ian McKellan, or Alan Rickman happened to be in the vicinity and recognized our undeniable dramatic genious.)

The red yarn is Wool2Dye4's worsted weight, and it's really quite nice, although I haven't knit with it yet. I used Gaywool's Tomato and Cranberry sprinkled directly on the yarn while in the pot, and then added a very little bit of Daisy (yellow) and Indigo in random spots. The other two hanks are Wool2Dye4's superwash sock yarn. For the green one I used Ivy and Lucerne, also with a little bit of Daisy and Indigo sparingly sprinkled throughout. Gaywool is a little pricey, but I love how easy and quick it is to use, and a little goes a long way. The middle one is destined for Germany and my Dye-O-Rama exchange pal. I hope she likes it because it's hard for me to part with it.