Monday Musings --- or Rant?

Ok, honestly it's a rant.  A mere couple of hundred years ago, to be considered "educated"  a person (ok, usually a man) had to speak another language, as well as Greek or Latin, had to be able to write poetry, know about literature, it was the age of Enlightenment - had to know about various newly discovered scientific principles, keep up with political events, etc etc. In all fairness to today's humans, he was probably also well to do and had servants to see to the basic needs of life.  But that isn't what this rant is about.

Today, we as a species, know far more about the universe and things in it, than those people ever could have imagined.  We have advanced medicine, engineering, science, psychology etc.  But as individuals we know less.  We're losing that basic curiosity to know what and why and how.  Oh, we're really good at who,  turn on the television or glance a the magazines and tabloids at the grocery store and clearly we are interested in the whos.

Liberal Arts education was developed to create "well rounded individuals"  who had a good basics in many different areas.  These people, and the "Bachelors of Arts"  are supposed to be flexible enough to deal with many different facets of the modern world.  I know as someone who went to school for a "bachelors of Science"  many of these people were perceived to be Nerds and Geeks.  The questions... so you really don't have to take a foreign language? ... so you take Freshman comp, humanities 1 and 2 and then only need 3 classes total from literature, history, art, music etc??... you only have to take one social science??  outright asking - don't you want to be "well rounded"?

Well now, just over 30 years since I picked a college , I'd say the well roundedness has not been achieved.  I think it's all the overfootnoted papers and essays they wrote.  To get a good grade, they had to justify their instructors opinion.  They spent 4 years of college without provable right and wrong answers , and it taught them how to kiss up to the person in power (instructor grading) by substantiating that person's opinion.  It taught them that as long as they knew the answers to the test questions, they were smart. Their version of what - what does the teacher think, their version of how - how does the teacher think this happened, and their version of why - because the teacher or the book or whatever says...

If you're wondering what has me upset about all the useless drone robots I'm surrounded by, it's actually a few things.  First, have a new person at work, who working part time while she goes back to grad school.  Who seriously asked me how many lines on a tape measure was 3/16.  This was after she asked how much to cut off of each side of a blind to make it 3/8 smaller.  And was very sure that 3/16 was BIGGER than 3/8.  Another, who is going to school part-time to be a NURSE, who could not understand how the vagina, could both have natural bacteria AND be a self cleaning organ, and how steam cleaning said self cleaning organ was probably bad because it was bound to change the dynamics of said bacteria.  Then a customer, who insisted we put "DR" in front of their name - even though our computer system DOES NOT HAVE A SPOT FOR TITLE!!!  (sometimes I wish it did, when I'm guessing if the person I'm calling is male or female, because I'm not familiar with their name) SO I made her first name Dr. Margaret.  could not understand that when buying something like carpet that comes in specific widths, I needed the room dimensions - not the square footage.  I tried several approaches to explain that 240 is great if her room is 12 x 20, but if her room is 10 x 24 she won't have enough carpet.  She then got mad when I said that a WALK IN closet can't be 4 square feet.  And that is she can hang a standard hanger in a 4 square foot closet - that would imply that her closet is 2 feet wide and she might get 10 hangers on the rod. And the man who was with her could not grasp the difference between a special order - you look at all the pretty samples of stuff that exists in a vendor's warehouse somewhere and pick the one you want and I order it.  And a custom order - you want a color between that blue and that green which unless you want like a million square feet, my vendors aren't going to make for you.  He just kept saying well just put it in the computer in the order we want between these two colors!!

 I guess this rant is just about all the people who lack any sort of cognitive function who are allowed to walk around in society and annoy those of us with brains.    

Breakfast cheesy grits.

I love good Southern food.  I love shrimp 'n grits.  I love cheesy grits.  Curt makes great grits when he makes me breakfast on the weekends when I'm home, but he's not really into cheesy grits.  It's easier to make a pot of grits than one serving of grits.  Recently though, I think I've got it figured out - and instead of shrimp (Curt's allergic, so I'd have to decide I wanted shrimp 'n grits and go buy shrimp... sometimes I use chicken)  I decided to use my breakfast wrap ingredients instead ( when I do the wrap there would be feta or goat cheese and egg whites)



First the grits, Curt uses Quaker Old Fashioned grits (quick grits have a different texture... and if you ever saw "My Cousin Vinnie" you know about the stuff called instant grits)  I like these stone ground grits for when I make something 'n grits for dinner.  They are more like the texture of polenta - only white.  If you have stone ground polenta that works exactly the same - it will just come out yellow.

In a small (hopefully heavy bottomed) sauce pan  put
 2 TBSP of grits 
 1/4 cup + 1TBSP water
 1/4 cup + 2TBSP milk or cream ( I used skim because that's what I have)
 2 TSP of butter ( I use unsalted)
 and a pinch of coarse sea salt

Bring to a boil, and then turn down to a VERY LOW simmer, whisking often.

Start some water heating for the poached egg.

While that cooks, I cut up 7 baby portabellas, a 1 1/2 inch piece of andouille (you can use any meat, or skip the meat) and minced a clove of garlic ( you can add some onions, I didn't when I made this) cook them over medium heat until the meat starts to brown and the mushrooms caramelize.







Don't forget to occasionally stir the grits!!!  Add about 2 cups of fresh spinach/greens or 1/4-1/2 cup frozen and a palm full of Herbs de Provence (those are my go to herb blend - you can use Italian or whatever your favorite herb is)   I use these greens, I go through about 3 bags a week by myself for breakfast:

While the greens cook down, we're going back to the grits for a minute ( at this point the grits should have been simmering about 20 minutes ) I add in:

1 TBSP (ish) goat cheese
1 TBSP (ish) cream cheese
1/4 cup (slightly heaping) of shredded cheddar ( I used Mexican cheese blend that was left over from chilli on Sunday)



Stir often until cheese melts and incorporates into a creamy cheesy grits.



(I took the picture before I added the pepper- my real life friends will tell you that I use a LOT of pepper.. Lots..)

 

Now, add a splash of stock or even water to the mushroom/meat mixture - just enough to get any bits off the bottom and create a bit of pan sauce.  Add a spoon of vinegar to the water and drop in the egg to simmer.  Once the egg is poached to your liking (in my opinion poached eggs should always be super runny - then you get the yolk oozing onto the mushroom/meat topping and into the grits) make sure to drain it well put the mixture on top of the grits and topo with the poached egg ( I took the picture on  top before peppering the egg - pictures of egg look funny with as much pepper as I use)  I also use a dash of hot sauce - but that's just me.

Perfect Knitting?

 

Christopher's Prescott Vest

Last week at breakfast, Grace brought up an interesting topic, and it's a conversation that I've had with more than a few of my Ravelry friends as well.   Here's how it goes:  You see a knitted item (could be a sweater, a shawl, socks, a toy, but we'll use sweater in this example)  You really, really want to make that item.  You look at the materials list.  The yarn for that amazing sweater is going to cost you $200+ !! That's eight hanks of hand dyed sock yarn!!!  (hand dyed sock yarn is my personal weakness... fortunately my favorite weight of yarn to knit with, but really since my catphew lives almost 2 hours away, I pet my sock yarn instead) That's a lot of money for yarn for just one project.  Sometimes it can be justified, a knitter I know knit a full length swirly duster coat from Dream in Color's Starry in winter white with clear, silver lined white and pearl white beads, to wear over her wedding dress (it was a Vermont winter month wedding) Or what I think about - how often will I wear/use this?  If it's a cardigan I'll wear 4 times a week all  winter and it's style is classic enough I know I'll wear it for a lot of winters the cost per wear goes down.  ( I justify  a lot of things via cost per use) 

My Moustache Cowl

Realistically though, what a lot of knitters do, because we aren't independently wealthy and have developed a habit of eating occasionally, and we like not living in a tent (where would you keep your yarn if you lived in a tent???) is we look at other more economically priced yarns.  Now, unless you want to do a shit ton of maths (I love math, but not in terms of converting an entire pattern) the most important thing to look at in a substitute yarn is the gauge.  You want a yarn that knits up at the same number of stitches per inch.  You can finagle this a little bit by changing up your needle size - but if you stray too far one way or the other you will totally change the fabric, making it too loose or too tight.  

The trouble with just looking at the yarn gauge, is there are a lot of other factors.  The twist of the plies, the sheen, the halo, the type of fiber - all these affect how the finished project comes out.  There is also how you knit.  Some people knit so evenly the stitches could be machine made.  Some people knit a little lumpier.  My stockinette stitch has a texture  to it because when I taught myself to knit, my yarn gets wrapped under the needle when I purl instead of over it. It took me a long number of years to figure out WHY my purls twisted, and then I decided I liked the more textured stockinette anyway.  And finishing techniques.  You can be sure the finishers that work for Vogue are perfect at the seams they make, never a buckle or a gap anywhere.  ( I personally despise seaming... ok hate weaving in ends more, but ugh) 

Blocking skills also come into play.  Not just how well you block, but what type of blocking you use.  There's wet blocking, steam locking, mist blocking - all affect the yarn finish look.  Different yarns and stitch patterns respond differently to the different types of blocking, yet the magazines never seem to mention how it was blocked.

So with all this - is it any wonder that our projects don't look exactly like the picture in the magazine??  (not even touching on lighting, computer editing of the photos after they are shot etc)

These discrepancies normally don't bother me.  I rarely want exactly what's in the picture, I usually have a different yarn in mind,  I hate haloed yarn - it just seems too fuzzy.  Even then, I don't always end up with the picture that was in my mind.  I think that's why it's easier to cast on a bunch of projects than finish them.  When you cast on - perfect is still possible, finishing is admitting it isn't perfect.   I'm not a perfectionist when it comes to knitting.  I'm a I'm happy with it, if I'm not- I'll give it away.  I think this is why some knitters also are afraid to try new techniques.  A knitter I work with will do phenomenal lace work, has never knit a single cable - because it looks hard!!!!!!   It took a really good friend of mine (yes you!) a really really long time to try DPNs.  Now she makes a ton of toys.

My only suggestion??? Knit what makes you happy, be happy with what you knit.  Don't try to duplicate another project - if the person who knit it made two they probably wouldn't be identical either.  And as much as I hate to admit it - when in doubt swatch.  One of the best things I gained from NerdWars is that you had to submit a swatch with your dissertation proposals.  While I am convinced swatches lie - especially about gauge, if you swatch and block you can get a better feel for how the final fabric will turn out.  Do I do this?  Mostly NO.  But, these things don't bother me, I'm just trying to understand why others get so bothered.  

My two pictures above show a successful and a not so successful substitution.  I knit Christopher's vest in Knit Picks Brava, don't trust his mom with anything not seriously machine washable.  Here's the pattern picture. I actually like how my yarn choice shows off the stitches better.  (granted both yarns from same manufacturer and approximately the same price)

My moustache cowl was a different story.  I used Cascade 220 fingering.  it's the first time I used this yarn in a fingering weight.  Cascade 220 is a workhorse yarn , great color selection, blocks well, felts well (if you don't accidentally get the superwash)  I've made a lot of projects with it - and loved it.  So I felt very confident when I decided to substitute the 220 fingering for my cowl.  I hated working with this yarn!!  SO much that I haven't worn the cowl! I even did a small swatch since learning double knitting was my dissertation theme last spring.  The brown yarn seemed thinner and more twisted than the cream yarn, so there were tiny gaps- that didn't block out. I may try reblocking it now that I have a steamer to see if that helps.  Here's the pattern picture - much smoother, even taller..

   

Review- The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging.

This book was the first of the three I requested from my library to arrive.  I really wasn't that thrilled with it.  If you have a concept for a blog with a single focus, it would probably be an awesome book, but my blog is more like a blog magazine with different weekly sections than a focused on one thing blog book.

The book is split into three parts.  The first part is the "How-to" part of the book.  How to start a blog, how to find a server to host your blog on, why the ability to immediately react to something going on in the world or your life is advantageous, how to write in a more conversational mode rather than a more edited "newspaper" mode. These chapters were helpful. Then the section goes on to how to narrow down the focus of the blog, how to be seen as an expert at something within the blogosphere, how to expand your readership, get more followers, get more links back to your blog, getting other bloggers to link to your site and/or guest blog on your site, how to get up higher on the search engines results page.  These sections were not that helpful, because becoming an internet expert on something or having thousands of followers isn't really my personal goal in blogging, if it is yours read these sections.  The last chapter of this part is about building a community. I kind of already know who mine will be.  Mostly either A. People I know.  B. People I "know" online from Ravelry or Twitter. C. People who the last two groups know and are linked over here for a post or as a suggestion to read. D. People who accidentally stumble on here and either leave or stay.  ( I do actually have some good virtual friends  - and their pets because of interactions when I first started blogging) The part I found helpful here was using the comments sections to have conversations - by replying to comments (which I rarely did before) and actual conversation can occur and be joined by whoever else reads the posts and comments.

The second part is called "The Blog Revolution is Here!! Be a Part of It.  This is basically an excuse for the writers and founders of The Huffington Post to give themselves huge kudos and pats on the back, and kiss Arianna Huffington's  well connected ass. I'm not taking away the fact that the HuffPost did revolutionize the way a lot of people, myself included keep up with current events, form opinions and learn about breaking news.  They did totally, in my opinion force mainstream media to create more useful web presences as well.  However the syrupy nauseating, blatant "Yay us!" tone in this section was a real turn off.  If you are looking for lessons in ass-kissing for whatever reason, (well if you are the type of person who is - you probably aren't the kind of person reading my blog) this is the section to read.  With some Bush hating thrown in ( although this I pretty much expected from anything written by the HuffPost- I've learned to take that with a huge chunk of salt) and some celebrity guest comments.

The final part is the resource section.  The Huffington Post's blogroll- granted the book came out 6 years ago - but you've either heard of these blogs and follow or look at them or you don't, maybe 6 years ago they were good suggestions.  A glossary of blogging terms - if you are going to blog, you probably have a computer and can Google these terms if need be faster than flipping to a glossary which is 2 pages long 45 pages from the actual end of the book.  A Website Resource list - also somewhat outdated (MySpace anyone?) And the "Best of" several of what they consider the best posts from their site. 

I think I actually read the whole book so I could list it as finished on Goodreads and count it toward my 2015 Reading challenge. 

Fitness Trackers and Apps

I'm looking at a few different fitness app and trackers.  I'm also looking at a couple pain tracker apps.  I keep saying I'm going to track my headaches, and migraines but never actually do.  The magic of me and my phone is I'll actually use apps on my phone. I have a list of 20 different apps I'm checking out, so it will be awhile before I've drawn any conclusions about them.  Quick note: when I wrote about the water app last week I got the name wrong. It's actually WATER YOUR BODY.  Really sorry about that.

Right now I'm shopping for a wearable tracker.  There are phone apps that will track some of the data I'm interested in - but most are for iPhone, and I'm never leaving Android, and most kill the battery pretty quickly (since battery life was a HUGE deciding factor when I got my phone - I can't live with having to recharge halfway through your day- this is also a consideration for apps as well)   There are a LOT of wearables on the market.  I didn't look at iOS only products, I also didn't look at products that weren't reviewed in what I consider "reputable review sites". The top three for me when I'm in the market for electronic devices are: PCMag.com (ironic since in computers I'm definitely a MAC girl) CNET.com and Wired.  There were a few devices that the only reviews I found were on Amazon, and other retailers, and I don't necessarily trust those reviews, so I eliminated them from the lineup.

Process Vs Product

It's kind of weird when thoughts from two, seemingly unrelated  parts of your life are basically the same and parallel.  It makes me ponder.  If you read my post title and you're one of the people I just finished taking my class with ( I actually know 4 in real life!!!) or one of the people I've been talking about my class with- you will jump to Perfectionism causing Procrastination.  If you're one of my knitting friends, you will think of the division of types of knitters.  This also ties in to a conversation I had over breakfast last week with my friend Grace ( you can check out her blog "Knit On" on my sidebar) about knitting patterns, yarns and finished products.