Why I love the internet

I've had this book “Tea drinking in 18th-century America: Its Etiquette and Equipage”on my Amazon wish list of years. It's out of print. There is one copy available on AbeBooks for $144. This afternoon, I applied my best Google-fu and I managed to find a course syllabus from 2005 that had this listed as one of the readings. Lo and behold, the email for the professor was included as well. I figured what did I have to lose? So I shot a brief note asking if she knew how I could acquire a copy and she got right back to me with the name of an anthology that includes it. It's now on the way for under $15, shipped.

Why now, all of a sudden? Well, Military Through the Ages is less than 2 1/2 months away, and it's time to build up to "full panic" mode. Our cook has some rather ambitious ideas for a menu, and we're trying to find some warm bodies to play wounded soldiers.

Another knit cap

The knitting deities have not been kind to me this past year. Regardless, upon flipping through my print-outs from The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, I found this cap: [original]

The description is courtesy of Google Translate. It's not really an ikat, but it gets the point across.

and decided I wanted to try to reproduce it. Why? I have no idea. Maybe because it’s so completely unlike anything I’ve seen. Maybe it’s because I’m a glutton for punishment. But on Christmas Day, I got started. Technically, I should have dyed some blue wool and then taken that and some white wool and spun them into a variegated yarn. Not happening, so I went with Plan B.

So first, I took a skein of blue wool yarn that very closely matched the original picture, and I tried to see if I could bleach the blue out of it. Nope. Using a few strands to experiment, I increased the ratio of bleach to water and found it started to dissolve the wool but it didn’t lighten the color. On to Plan C. Next I took a skein of natural merino wool, and wrapped it around and around the back of a dining room chair until I had a giant donut of yarn. Then I loosely tied it in a few places and pre-wet it. Then I folded it in half, and in half again, and put two of the resulting bends into a small crock-pot, with the other two bends sticking up.

Yes, that's Sweet Daughter's Hello Kitty toaster in the background.

I went down to my Rubbermaid tub marked “dyeing” and dug around hoping I had some acid dye in blue left over from a project over 15 years ago. Score! It was a rather bright blue, but it was all I had. I trotted back upstairs, read the directions for using it in a washing machine, and then extrapolated what I would need for the crock-pot. This highly scientific method meant I took an old rum bottle (it was all I had handy, really! *hic!*), and put some water in it. Then I added approximately ½ teaspoon of dye and shook it up until it was well dissolved.

This used to hold Cruzan Blackstrap Rum. You recycle your way, I'll recycle mine.

Then I carefully poured it into the center of the crock-pot, trying to keep it near the bottom. Then I added more water until the crock-pot was almost full. I turned it on (no “high” or “low” on this one) and went and played with Sweet Daughter for an hour or so.

I removed the yarn from the crock-pot and dumped it in a colander and let it cool a bit before rinsing it so it wouldn’t felt into a giant wad. (Agitation and/or rapid temperature change will felt wool.) I squeezed out as much water as I could by wrapping it in a towel and then hung it to dry.

One side.

The other side.

Then I rolled it into a ball.

I got out some size 8 needles and started knitting a swatch. Got my gauge. Started knitting the actual hat, and one of my big fears came to pass. See that original hat? See how the colors just sort of magically seemed to alternate with a minimum puddling of colors? Well, I got the blocks of color.  Sort of like this, but bigger.

I couldn’t have gotten the colors to line up like that if I tried. So I quit while I was ahead, and swore quietly under my breath and then it came to me … change the size of the needles, and that should shift everything one way or the other. I found a size 5 circular needle, knit a swatch, calculated my stitches, and started again.

Victory!

I knit for an inch and a half or so, did a row of purl stitches (so it would turn nicely) and then another inch and a half. I then picked up the bottom edge in the next round, knitting them together, and then just knit in a circle for a while. The next challenge was figuring out how tall to make it, so when I felted it it would come out looking right. One thing I’ve found over the past year is that when you double the bottom edge, it doesn’t shrink (much) when you try to felt. The diameter of the rest will shrink some, but proportionately the length shrinks much more. No, I didn’t remember how much more, so this time I decided to get all scientific and measure. But first I had to figure out the decrease at the top. I decreased 4 stitches every row until I had eight stitches left which I looped onto the end of the yarn, pulled to the inside and secured.

Then I put it in a lingerie bag and threw it in the wash with some other laundry, not noticing that the cycle was set on “delicate”. It came out of the wash the same size it went in. So back in it went, by itself, set on “regular”. I stood there and pulled it out every few minutes to measure the progress. After the length had shrunk 2”, I spun the water out and blocked (shaped) it over two mixing bowls to get the curve at the top and the slight flare at the bottom. The color also mellowed out a bit but is still well within the realm of possibility for indigo dye.

Sorry - picture's a little crooked.

Not a perfect match, but recognizable. And I'm not trying to recreate a couple-of-hundred-years-old cap. I'm trying to make it look like it did when it was new. I’ll call it a win.

Peppermint Bark

I tried making peppermint bark this Christmas. I researched recipes, found one that looked good and scaled it down a bit. I dutifully spread the chocolate into a brownie pan. I followed up with the peppermint/white layer and spread carefully crushed candy canes on top. It was too thick, and the crushed peppermint didn’t stick to the top layer.

So I tried again, tweaking a few details, and I still wasn’t happy with it.  I boxed it up and gave it to my sister to take with her on her travels. I figured somebody would eat it and maybe by then my name would have been left out of the loop. Well, Sister A gave some to Sister B.

Sister B emailed me today with the following tacked on to the end of her message.

This missive gives me an opportunity to tell you how banging excellent that peppermint bark was! Yes, was. I was hoarding it. I like peppermint bark, but this was the absolute best I've ever had. Now, we had some friend's down from Rhode Island this weekend, and they found it. It was gone in two hours. Damn. So now I need to ask you for the recipe. It wasn't just chocolate under that peppermint, it was fudge, wasn't it?

So do an older sister a favor, and share the recipe, so I can share with [more friends] (who also put a hefty dent in my supply).

And my response …

Are you sure that was *my* peppermint bark?? It looked like something the cat horked up in my opinion, not that there is anything wrong with that. I just read a bunch of recipes and then made up my own which is as follows.

Bottom layer: one regular bag Hershey dark chocolate chips. Nuke in the microwave, stir, repeat until melty. Then pour onto a waxed paper covered cookie sheet (I used a jelly roll pan). Put in the fridge to harden. While you’re nuking and chilling;

Take a box of candy canes. Unwrap and snap into pieces. If you have the patience, put them in a ziplock bag and abuse them with a rolling pin until they are of a nicely broke-up size. This will cause tiny little holes to appear in the bag, and peppermint dust to waft about your kitchen which is similar to cotton candy goo – it sticks to everything – but your bark will look nicer. Otherwise, toss it into a food processor and try to get it a somewhat uniform size so you don’t end up with a range of sizes from “chunks” to “sub-atomic particles”. The dust will still stick to everything, but it will be more localized.

White layer: one regular bag Hershey (we don’t get a lot of high-end choices here in [rural location]) white chocolate chips. Melt and stir as above. Then stir in 1 teaspoon peppermint extract and wonder why the mixture suddenly seizes up like a Mopar slant-six with no oil. Ponder what to do to salvage it and decide to stir in a little butter and a little vegetable oil. Heat it up a bit. Realize that it’s helping some, but you don’t have a lovely glossy, homogeneous mass, and the best thing to do is just dump in the crushed peppermint and punt. This is accomplished by dropping/spreading it onto the chilled chocolate and hoping it doesn’t melt the dark chocolate too badly. Put it back in the fridge to harden.

When cold, take it out and peel off the waxed paper and break/cut it into bite-sized pieces. Enjoy. You just may not want to look at too closely.

Happy New Year!

We're in Williamsburg, having rung in the New Year with Michael W. and his lovely (and as Mike adds both long-suffering and sainted) wife and a couple of locals. I want to wish everyone who stops by a happy and healthy 2012. I'm not sure why most of you stop by, but I do appreciate it.

Sweet Daughter and Nancy R. waiting for midnight on New Year's Eve.

The Battle of Trenton

Today they are reenacting the Battle of Trenton.

Here's a good summary from my buddy, Chris.

Ten years ago I participated in the 225^th anniversary of the Battle of Trenton, and it was only few months after the terrorist attacks on September 11^th.  There was something like 900 hundred participants. They did a pre-dawn crossing of the river (and another later in the day for the benefit of the public) and then marched 9 miles into Trenton. A handful of women wanted to make the march, and so we followed the army  in. We’d missed breakfast, be unlike Washington’s army I wasn’t starving. My feet were cold in my straight-lasted shoes, but at least I had shoes. I had fresh water in my canteen. I was reasonably well rested, having slept on a cot with adequate blankets.

We stepped off in the pre-dawn walking as close as we could to the original route. The hush was broken only by the sound of hobnails on the road, and I didn’t see a single car at that hour. I watched the sky brighten, and as we started passing through more residential areas, I noticed the occasional family standing on their front porch – some waving, some just watching. And some came out and started marching with us. But the part that I’ll never forget was the WWII Veteran standing out in front of his modest home in the biting cold, back-lit by his porch light. He had a 3’ x 5’ American flag on a short pole in one hand, the bottom of it braced against his thigh as he saluted, not us, but what we represented.

And I burst into very quiet tears.

Here's a longer description, including footage from that day 10 years ago.  (No, it's not embedding.)

http://youtu.be/4vzBz4Nc_lY

An old job

The Adaptive Curmudgeon has a post up about, um, some interesting past home repairs.

Which reminds me of a previous life when I used to manage some properties. There were about a dozen, and some were historic and residential, some were historic and commercial, and some were just old farmhouses. I’m convinced that when The AC’s hicks moved on, they must have worked on some of these properties. I mean, who installs a heating oil tank directly over the sewer line leading to the drain field?

Or the plasterer that had a rather fluid understanding of schedules and deadlines. We found that a cold 12-pack of his favorite brew depositing on the scaffolding (I don’t remember if they were 12 or 14 foot ceilings) early in the afternoon offered an excellent incentive to show up and yielded outstanding results. (I can feel the OSHA reps out there cringing.)

Then there was the water heater that had split open, top to bottom, with water pouring into the cellar under the house. It was a tiny little farmhouse, and the cellar was dug out enough so I could stand upright under about 2/3 of the foundation. The other 1/3 wasn’t dug down as far, and the top of the water heater was sitting on that ledge, and the top of the water heater was about level with the top of my head. I don’t remember who turned the water off, but I do remember standing down in the cellar wearing rubber boots with the water well over halfway up my shins and thinking “You can’t have a water heater turned on with no water in it – that’s dangerous!” So I went over to flip the switch to the water heater and saw that it didn’t have a switch. Instead, it was simply hooked up to the Romex with a couple of wire nuts.

Okay. So I realize that the wiring in this house was put in B.C. (Before Code. Or “In Spite of Code”. Or, “What’s the hell is ‘Code’?”). And I realize that heaven only knows what interesting shortcuts have been taken. And that there is a bare bulb swinging from the ceiling and that I’ve got water halfway to my knees. So I beat it out of the cellar into the house and find the main electrical panel and ... nothing’s labeled. I throw the main and shut down power to the whole house, and pray that the water heater was included.

I then went back down into the pitch black cellar with a flashlight. This was 20 years ago, and it was your basic big old dim flashlight. I waded over to the water heater and realized that if I stood on my tip toes, I could reach the wire nuts. And since I wasn’t 100% sure that the wiring wasn’t still hot, I needed two hands to make sure nothing touched anything it shouldn’t. So I held the flashlight between my teeth and I carefully reached over my head and unscrewed one of the wire nuts, pulled the wires apart and put the wire nut back on the end of the Romex. Repeat on the other side.  And sloshed back to the door, went upstairs and turned the power back on.

And then I believe I went home and had a drink.

Music Meme

Tam started it, and now all the cool kids are doing it, so I'm jumping on the bandwagon.

Top 25 songs on your playlist. (I will say that about a third of these are of Sweet Daughter's choosing, and no, she doesn't listen to Nine Inch Nails. )

Rolling in the Deep; Adele

Hey Soul Sister; Train

Say Hey (I Love You); Michael Franti & Spearhead

Twilight Zone; Golden Earring

Perfect; Pink

Rhythm of Love; Plain White T's

Fall at Your Feet, Crowded House

Firework; Katy Perry

Take Me Home Tonight; Eddie Money

Pain Lies on the Riverside; Live

Amazing Grace; Dropkick Murphys

Fields of Gold, Sting

I Still Believe; The Call

Everlong; Foo Fighters

Let there be Love; Ice House & Iva Davies

The Impression that I get; The Mighty Mighty Bosstones

Favourite Shirts; Haircut 100

Cuts You Up; Peter Murphy

Good Enough; Evanescence

Walk the Last Mile; Love and Money

Our Day Will Come; Seven Nations

Take Me on the Floor; The Veronicas

No One Like You; Scorpions

Private Idaho; B-52's

Head Like a Hole; Nine Inch Nails