Field and Fen

Yesterday, wondering what to do for lunch, I decided on the banza (chickpea) pasta. I was just trying it for a change, but for some people it's a gluten free option.

So I tried it, with another new item, a great crushed tomato sauce with garlic and basil. I figured with this sauce, a chunk of parmesan rind added in, the pasta couldn't go far wrong.

And, waste not, want not, when I rinsed the jar, I saved the rinse water for soup, not wanting to throw away flavor. I do the same with the blender, too, when I've blended something like pesto.

Anyway, the pasta: the instructions say expect foam. So I thought, yes, chickpeas do foam up, not a problem. However at the point of being cooked, the pasta began to give off huge billows of foam, like a stovetop volcano. 

It ended happily though, 

and most of it will be lunch tomorrow for Handsome Son, with roast chicken and hot sausage.  We'll see how he likes the banza. I found it okay, not wonderful, acceptable.

 We're moving to monthly lunches rather than dinners because of his work schedule, because he gets only one day off a week, and getting into beach season, I think he'd rather go to the shore. He works late afternoon through evening, so lunch fits in.

Did you notice in the background up there, a banana bread! I forgot to mention that. I was baking that for tomorrow's dessert.

With ginger and golden raisins. Samples now happily received next door and down the street. 

I realized one of the reasons my spirits were down was the loss of Jackie, friend and keen bakery tester. So I realized that Chris, another good cook and neighbor, might enjoy a little something, too. She did. 

Contrary to expectations, good cooks are terrific audiences because they're so appreciative. Artists are terrific art students, same reason. And now I have a new addition to the little something distribution list. And I've cheered up.

Yesterday was beautiful, good for walking and seeing spring in action, complete with dragonflies like this biplane friend, on a twig near a huge fallen tree trunk, no doubt a great place for wildlife needing shelter.

And flowers, official and otherwise

And rabbits like this baby, too young to realize he should run

The experiment in brioche knitting continues, with different yarn, same game plan. 

It needs a yarn with good stitch definition, translation: where you can see what you're doing. So I'm trying yet again, with a cotton yarn, before I finish the other one of this pair. 

I did a super stretchy cast on for the brioche, which I either invented or adapted, anyway good for a sock top. This is a pale mauve, not as white as it looks here.

And when I wanted a change from knitting, I started installing the lining on the vest.

So far so good. Today there's a Textiles and Tea event. Lately the offerings in general of various textile events I follow have been a bit feeble. 

Either they were so plagued with technical breakdowns they were nonstarters, or they were really really dull. Nice people doing  projects like buying an old weaving mill, overhauling the looms and talking about gears. Just not my thing, more like Mechanics Quarterly than textile art. But it has its place. 

So, as an insurance policy, in case this afternoon's presentation doesn't enchant, here's a couple of textile art offerings

Happy day everyone! 

 

This week I saw the first swallows of the year, always a joyful moment. They're back! They flew all that way, and they're back. 

Where I live they have plenty of undisturbed places to return to and nest, including the condo development where the building design is perfect, sheltered spots, close to the marsh, open water, endless supply of insects for feeding young, very desirable. And we don't have any people trying to block entryways, which happens elsewhere.

On that note, the current book group selection is

As brilliantly written as H is for Hawk, about falconry, which even persuaded me to suspend my total dislike of harnessing the lives of wild birds to serve people.

This one is a series of essays, all separate, all, as far as I've got, illuminating and encouraging, even while she's squarely facing up to the extinction we have caused. 

There's still such a lot to love and defend.  She talks about one form of observation that any of us can try -- binoculars trained on the full moon. You'd be amazed at how many birds, bats and butterflies as well as other insects cross your small visual field. Best about now when a lot of spring migration is in progress, but you can do it any time there's a clear full moon. I did it years ago and couldn't believe the extent of bird activity when I had assumed they were sleeping.

I hugely recommend her, as a writer as well as a defender of nature. She understands that the planet isn't ours. We're newcomers flailing about, damaging what we don't understand. She helps us understand. 

Come to think of it, it would be good to read or revisit Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. That's another great, warm account of caring for our surroundings, by a native American who's a scholar, teacher and great writer.

I came upon Vespers when I was halfway through No One's Talking About This. It's a wild headlong dash, Twitter style through many fragmented ideas, jokes, some very funny and I'm not quoting them here, and is as mentally exhausting as following all the tangents on Twitter at once. 

I had not yet got to the second half where a real life tragedy strikes the narrator's family. And the book had so paled in the company of Vesper Flights, that I couldn't give it any more time and energy. 

This happens now and then when you read as much as I do. Some books just don't hold up once the bigs appear. But I'd still recommend it. Just not when you're reading something which leaves it in the dust.

And here's the first iris in my front yard. 

A bicolor bearded iris, it's a descendant of a friend's iris collection which were originally planted by her grandmother on her NJ farm about 80 years ago. I have quite a few out there, and have donated roots to neighbors and freecyclers. 

And, from west Yorkshire, yesterday's picture of daisies in full flight.

Meanwhile, speaking of mental health, which we were indirectly, I thought I'd like to learn a new to me knitting stitch. I've been doing all color work, stripes, blocks, on the Ministry Socks, and thought, since I'm getting down to quite a bit of  dull beigey yarn, maybe a stitch variety might be good. It's soft, a mix of wool and cotton, probably nice to wear but dull to knit.

So while this 

was in progress, I took a break to learn this

It's a lovely comfy stitch to snug around your legs, like a rib on steroids, so the current plan is to knit flat, transfer to dpns when I reach the heel, and resume plain knitting for the rest of the sock.

I can make an unobtrusive join up the back of the leg, when I'm doing the finishing. I'll do a shortrow heel and toe, but in the reverse order from the toe up approach. And if this sounds complicated, it's nothing to what I went through getting to here. Whoever said knitting was relaxing??

And then there's two-color brioche but I'm not going there.

We're expecting temps suddenly in the high 90s f this weekend, so I'm wondering how to protect my seedlings from heatstroke. Maybe a sheet thrown over for shade.  We'll see.

Meanwhile happy Friday. Stay cool, fight on!