Annie Knits

Thursdays are for Brazing ...

I'm home on Thursdays, and when Hubster is in town, since I have the time, like to make dinners that take awhile.   

Two weeks or so ago, the CSA share included an oxtail.  It was shaped like a cone, and uncut.  Just a tail.  What the heck do you do with that?  I looked in my cooking bible, The Joy of Cooking, and it turns out that you do practically nothing with just one oxtail... they're so bony that one feeds about one person... So I bought several more at the grocery store and got to work.

My recipe called for stock and tomato juice... I used beef stock, red wine, and V8.  Pumped it up a little.  After browning the ox-tails in some olive oil and braising them for the whole afternoon, I had this.

 

Dayum... Yum being the operative part of that expletive... I dumped in the veggies and braised for another hour:

 

Served with pureed cauliflower, noodles, and the gravy made from the de-fatted brazing liquid, we had a pretty darned good dinner.

While the stew brazed, I worked on the gray sweater.  Which, as it turns out, has sleeves of doom.  They seem to be never ending.  And I haven't even begun to apply the cabled bottom portion of the thing.  I'll be lucky if I get to wear it this winter at all.

  
 

 The color on the left is a little more blue than in person, it's a true gun-metal gray as it appears in the picture on the right. I'm pretty happy with the sleeve pick up, even though I had to do both multiple times.  Especially when I was lunching with certain people who distracted me and chatted with various crazy people at the Bread Company and were generally disruptive.

I'd say what you see represents less than two thirds of the sweater.  I'll need more Thursdays at home to finish this one, that's for sure.

Late in the afternoon, Blogless Janet arrived (she drives carpool on Thursdays) wearing her newly finished February Lady sweater.

 

Doesn't she look great?!  

That reminds me.  We're having a February Lady sweater party at the shop the Wednesday before Valentines day.  Wear your FLS (or if you don't have one you can wear one of mine and come anyway).

 And finally, my holiday technology gifts are making me both happy and sad.  The Kindle?  Full of win.  I thought I was a book person, and I think I still am, but my Kindle makes my heart sing.  It's easy to acquire books, they're cheaper, and less bulky.  Will I still buy certain books?  Sure.  Now my MacBook Pro?  
 Yeesh.  Let's just say there is a steep learning curve for the dyed in the wool pc girl.  I love it, but it's interfering with my online activities.  Like I keep wanting to right click pictures etc. and I can't and the photo software I got with the thing keeps killing it.  

Ruminations That Devolve into Rants... As Usual

I'm ruminating again.  

• I've had a new experience.  We've all heard of Tourette's Syndrome, I'm sure, and I've seen it on Oprah or some such show, but until yesterday, I hadn't experienced it first hand.  It's a devastating condition.  One of the receptionists at the singularlyunpleasantdoctor office had what I assume was Tourette's as she let loose eeps and such as well as a great deal of truly foul language along the lines of n*gger and c*cks*cker seemingly directed at a black woman receptionist and a male nurse delivering film (well, certainly not really, but uttered in conversation with same) ...  Kudos to the office for hiring her.  I guess, since it's an osteopathic practice and I was the youngest patient there by at least 20 years, they get very few kids and the adults among us can handle the nature of the outbursts.  Kudos to her too.  I'd be curled up in a ball I think.  The experience put my little hip thing in perspective.  
• Adolphus Busch IV is quoted at the top of our illustrious print newspaper's sports section today.  He's lambasting Mark McGuire's lapse in judgment.  You know, the one on which the statute of limitations for prosecution has run out?  Yes, St. Louis, a neer-do-well of our former first family has something stupid to say about something irrelevant.  Shout it from the mountaintops!  I swear to God, I'm canceling my subscription.
• And along these lines, Al Sharpton visited our fair city last week for the MLK festivities and spoke at a nearby traditionally black college.  The speech was covered breathlessly by the same print newspaper.  It was said that Mr. Sharpton achieved a cadence reminiscent of a Sunday sermon.  Really?  And that his voice climbed as he chided the black population of St. Louis for abandoning the city and moving to Mc Mansions in the county and sending it's kids to private schools and letting them listen to loud music.  What the coverage didn't report was the part where Sharpton intoned his regret at losing his political relevance.  No, wait.  I made that up.  God forbid people should move to good neighborhoods and have normal teens. Shame on them for forgetting that Al Sharpton needs a raison d'etre and they're it!  Gawd.
• The fog and rain and drear is slated to remain in St. Louis for at least the foreseeable future... the clouds thinned somewhat this afternoon, but not really.
• We've got more construction going on Chez Annie.  The kid's bedrooms have been shuffled about and Dear Husband has claimed one for his Man Cave.  We've painted it medium khaki, installed manly window treatments (an oxymoron if I ever saw one ...) and we're in the process of having bookshelves built to house our prodigious collection of books.  He just poked his head out and asked if I wanted to house any of my collections (pottery, milk glass, blown glass) on his new shelves.  I gave him the answer he wanted.  "No, honey, you choose what goes on those shelves, I've put my stuff all over the rest of the house."  He gets credit for asking.

Pics of at least one finished sleeve tomorrow.  I hope.  

Swapity Swap Swap!

Here is the booty from the Mardi Gras Swap I joined -- hosted by of course, the Mistress of Mardi Gras.

 

Tracie from New Orleans sent me a felted beret/cloche with this guy on the front

 

 and these awesome boozy stitch markers.

 

Don't forget beads and coins!  I'm set.  Thanks Tracie and thanks Deborah for organizing...

I sent Tracie's package off today, you'll have to wait to see what I made her.  Until the pair I'm making for myself with the leftover yarn is finished.  And until she receives hers and posts it in our Ravelry group.

The package was a welcome distraction as I've been laid up as of late.  A hip thing.  Deep tissue injury, not bone thank God, or as the singularly most unpleasant health care provider I've had in recent years told me, "I just don't know what this is."  Thanks guy.  He thinks it may be something to do with some large band of ligament and muscle that stretches from butt to knee, but without a direct cause and examination directly after the injury, who knows.  Heck, I don't even know what the injury was.  I'm assuming it was a dog walking incident in November.  Yes, November.  I ignored it, ok?  And played through the pain during the holidays.  Bad idea.  Remember that kids, listen to your body when it tells you that walking is turning into torture.  It's trying to tell you something.

I'm taking meds and the inflammation should abate soon.  So I can walk again.  Right now I'm supposed to limit myself to about an hour a day on my feet.  Not so easy.  Try it.  

On the bright side?  Tons of knitting time.  And streaming Netflix is a blessing.  I'm back to working on the gray sweater.  Oh how I missed her.  I predict that sleeves will be done this weekend.

Baby, It's Cold Outside

Which is of course to be expected.  It is January after all and we have 4 or 5 inches of snow on the ground.

The kids missed school Thursday (whatever...) but both went on Friday.  Unlike some people I know.  Ahem.

I'm going to do a random bullet entry today -- it's just how I'm feeling about the last few weeks ... that they are a series of random events.  Maybe something here will jump start my inclination to expand on a topic.

• My coffee maker has malfunctioned twice in the last two days... malfunctioned translated as splooched brewing coffee all over the counter and floor.  I hope it's not time to get a new one, because I love this coffee maker.  It makes the coffee into a carafe that keeps it hot for hours without scorching it.  Cross your fingers.  I hope it's just user error.
• I've figured out Facebook.  With a vengeance.  There are lots of pictures over there but you'll have to friend me to see them.  What I haven't figured out is all the Farmville stuff.  I have a feeling that I should stay away from that anyway.
• My Christmas decorations are still up.  I like to take them down after Epiphany Sunday, but I had book club here that night and the decorations look so pretty that I wanted to keep them up an then it got to be Friday and they were still there.  My mom takes hers down Christmas night if she can manage it.  I, on the other hand, feel like the house is kind of empty when I take them down.  There was a discussion the other night at dinner about the Christmas Tree Of Doom and whether or not I would be the one decorating it next year.  I was voted in as decorator by a margin of three to one.  Damn traitors.  I hate that thing.  Probably the pre lit ones are just as much of a hassle though, since the light strings seem to burn out on them and then you're stringing lights anyway.  Listen, blog friends.  Next year?  I'll pay you to put up and string the lights on my tree.  Remind me.
• The knitting has slowed down almost completely.  I am working on a stealth project for a Mardi Gras swap, but otherwise?  Sleeve island on the gray sweater.  No socks on needles at all (really,... the horror).  I did finish Dear Husband's Roosevelt Mittens.  He's been wearing them quite a bit.  I don't have a photo yet because I can't figure out the Aperture application on my new computer, but I suppose I will be able to edit photos eventually.  If I don't chuck the damn thing in the fireplace first.  Ahem.
• About the mittens.  It's either me or the pattern, but those things turned out ginormous.  Well, ginormous at least for a women's medium hand.  They fit Husband's man hands though.  I got gauge and everything.  Maybe I can't count.  That's always a possibility.  Or maybe Elinor had man hands.  A possibility as well.
• Also on the knitting front, remember the Mardi Gras Beechwood Cowl I knit last January?  You know, I spun the yarn from Rachel's roving and made myself matching pulse warmers?  It's been absconded with.  Stolen.  Purloined.  By my own dear husband.  He's wearing it now in fact.  At 6:30 a.m. in our kitchen.  And to church.  And to work.  He found it in the scarf basket (every knitter has one of these, right?) and asked where we got it.  I harrumphed and told him that I'd made it.  He kind of hmmmmed as he dropped it over his head and he has hardly removed it since.  One never knows what they'll like, does one?  It is warm.  I offered to make him one to match the mittens, but I didn't get an answer.
• All of the babies from last year are coming up on their first birthdays.  I can hardly condone this.
• Christine Feehan's new book in her Ghost Walker series is annoying me... Too much repetition.  I get that Mack missed Jamie when she left him, but really Mack... get over it.  She's back.
• The flowers I ordered myself for Christmas from Pro Flowers are still going strong.  Really.  except for a few withered rose petals which I've plucked, they're still very serviceable.  Nice.

Ok.  That's enough.  I've got an entire season of Dexter to get through.  My family got season three for me for Christmas.  For those of you who don't know, it's a Showtime series about a sociopathic serial killer who works for the police in the forensic division as an expert on blood spatter.  Ah, me.  My family loves me.