knitting a life

Philosophical interlude

February 8, 2010 by knitting a life

I am not a professional blogger. When I started this blog I wasn’t really sure what my posts would be about, or how often I would post, or how the posts would fit together. The name of my blog, Knitting a Life, seemed like a good idea at the time; among other things, I am a knitter, and I had a hard time imagining that any blog I authored wouldn’t have some knitting in it somewhere.

To tell you the truth, once I came up with a title for this blog I didn’t worry about it much. Until a friend told me that he didn’t read my blog because it was about knitting.

That stopped me. I tried to explain to him that my blog is NOT about knitting, but he was convinced that it was and that he would never read it as a result.

Of course, knowing that one person isn’t reading my blog won’t make me stop writing it. If I worried a lot about who was reading these posts I would do things a lot differently than I do. My friend’s comment did make me think about what I mean by “Knitting a Life.” Not necessarily what I meant when I started this project, but what it has come to mean over the few months I have been working on it.

What is this blog about? One way to answer that is to look at what I post about. Knitting, sometimes, but also food and family,

travel and teaching, places and passions.

Is this blog about knitting? I guess some people would say that, since there have been posts about my knitting projects and about yarn. I don’t think of it that way, though; I think this blog is about knitting a life, mine.

Posted in opinion | 1 Comment »

Making granola at home

February 1, 2010 by knitting a life

I have to be honest. This didn’t begin as a post about granola. In fact, I was searching for a recipe for healthy, home-made granola bars. The crunchy kind.

After a long search I found a recipe that looked promising in the Baking Illustrated cookbook, another source that I frequently turn to when looking for baking ideas. After reading the recipe, of course I felt the need to make some changes.

I started by substituting some Bob’s Red Mill Muesli cereal for some of oats called for in the original recipe. Mixing this with the oats prior to toasting them added a few more grains and, I hoped, some extra nutrition and flavor.

While the grains were toasting, I heated maple syrup (which I used instead of the honey the original recipe listed) with brown sugar

and chopped some walnuts.

At the last minute, I also added some wheat germ as I mixed the toasted grains with the maple-brown sugar syrup and nuts. The mixture was nice and sticky as it went into the oven for the final baking.

I’m not sure if the maple syrup-for-honey substitution was the cause, or if I just didn’t press the mixture into the pan firmly enough

but I ended up with wonderful, crunchy, maple-walnut granola instead of granola bars. Not what I had been aiming for, but incredibly good all the same. I’ll definitely be making it again soon.

I’m going to get some milk and eat some right now!

Maple-Walnut Granola

5 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
2 cups Bob’s Red Mill Muesli Cereal
½ cup canola oil
½ teaspoon kosher salt
2 cups whole walnuts
¾ cup maple syrup
¾ cup packed dark brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
¼ cup toasted wheat germ

Place an oven rack in the center of the oven and preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

Line an 18 x 12 inch rimmed baking sheet with aluminum foil.

Combine the oats, Muesli cereal, canola oil and salt in a large bowl and mix until oats and cereal are evenly coated.

Spread the mixture into an even layer on the baking sheet (reserve the bowl for later) and bake, stirring every 10 minutes, until the oats are pale gold in color and smell toasty, about 30 minutes.

Remove from the oven and lower the heat to 300 degrees F.

While the oats are toasting, place the nuts in a food processor and pulse until coarsely chopped (about 10 1 second pulses). Remove ½ of the nuts and continue to process the remaining nuts until finely ground. Mix the coarse and fine nuts together in a small bowl and set aside.

Combine the maple syrup and the brown sugar in a small sauce pan over medium heat and cook, stirring often, until the brown sugar is completely dissolved, about 5 minutes. Add the vanilla and set aside.

Combine the toasted oats with the nuts, wheat germ and maple syrup mixture and stir until everything is evenly coated.

Pour the mixture into the rimmed baking sheet and spread evenly.

Bake until golden, about 45 – 50 minutes.

Cool completely before storing in an air-tight container.

Posted in cooking, food | 2 Comments »

Having the courage of your convictions

January 29, 2010 by knitting a life

By now I am guessing that most of you have seen Julie & Julia, the movie about Julia Child and Julie Powell. Even if you haven’t seen it, you might have seen the original episode of The French Chef where Julia Child flips some potatoes in a pan and talks about the need to have the courage of your convictions when doing something that’s just a little risky.

Last night when I was thinking about what my next blog post should be (over a wonderful dinner with S at Ned Ludd here in Portland) it came to me that a recent experience with my current knitting project had required me to invoke the courage of my convictions too.

A very dear friend is about to embark on a great adventure — heading to Thailand to provide mental health services for refugees. Unable to think of exactly what to do to support her in this endeavor, I decided to knit her a hat to take with her. I chose cotton yarn thinking it might be a bit warmer over there than here, dug around in my voluminous yarn stash for a bit and got started.

The pattern I chose starts at the top with only 4 stitches. After knitting a bit of I-cord, you increase to 8 stitches, move your nascent hat onto 4 double pointed needles, and start knitting around and around, increasing at the end of each needle (adding 4 stitches in every row) until the circumference is as big as you want it to be. At that point you stop increasing and keep knitting until the hat is long enough, cast off and voila! a hat is born.

Pausing at several points along the way to check my gauge (a measure of how many stitches there are to an inch), I calculated that I would need 112 stitches to create a hat of the right size. And so I proceeded merrily along and finished the hat after two evenings in front of the TV. And it was WAY too big. And not really long enough to cover even my ears.

And so here’s where the courage of my convictions part comes in (I know you were wondering about that by now). At this point — after finishing my project (I hesitate to call it a hat) and finding it was not going to work for the person I had made it for I had a few choices.

(1) I could throw it away.

(2) I could give it to someone else.

(3) I could rip it out and start again.

The third option was really the only courageous one, and this gets back to Julia Child and the potatoes. Ripping out knitting is not something to be undertaken timidly. I mean, you can carefully take out every stitch, one at a time, gently moving stitches from one needle to the other as you slip the yarn out of each stitch. Or you can just pull your needles out of your knitting and rip courageously, confident that when you have ripped back as far as you need to go you’ll be able to slide the stitches back onto the needles and start knitting again.

And that’s what I did. I ripped it out. Rows and rows of stitches (well, it was only a hat, so it was not really that many rows, but it felt like a lot of rows when I was ripping). And when I had ripped it back to almost the start, I slid the stitches back onto the needles.