pepperknit

OK, I’m pushing the bounds of this blog, but I get emails from people asking about food in Philly more often than you’d think!

Last night, to celebrate the boy’s birthday, we went to Pumpkin, a delightful byo on South Street between 17th and 18th (two blocks from Loop). We’d never been, though it’s gotten good reviews since it opened, and friends I told during the day raved.

It’s small and cute, quite like Pif and some of the other byos I really like. The service was very hands-off (I saw some negative reviews online), but the real important part is the food, right?

First, we split an appetizer of grilled lamb loin on rosemary foccacia over a ragu of tomatoes and chiles, with a yogurt sauce that was kind of spicy. I cannot say enough good things about this appetizer. We requested the lamb rare, and it was the softest, most impressive lamb ever (and I eat lamb whenever I go out). The flavors were perfectly balanced–roasted garlic offest by the chiles, the smokiness of the grill tempered by the yogurt. Excellent, excellent appetizer.

The entrees were good but, in truth, not as good as that appetizer. I got the hanger steak, served with some kind of potato gratin thing and haricots vert. The steak, also rare (yes, I’m a bloody meat girl), was soft and tender but needed some other punch of flavor. Texture-wise, it couldn’t be beat. The boy got pork two ways–a grilled loin and slow-cooked shoulder. I am not a huge pork fan, but I really liked the shoulder. He said, too, that it needed some other layer of flavor. I’m coming off as fairly disappointed in the entrees, and compared with the appetizer I was, but don’t misunderstand: the entrees were still quite good.

For dessert we split the vanilla creme brulee, which was very nice. I’m a huge custard fan, and the custard was rich but soft. The proportion of brulee to custard wasn’t my ideal (this had more brulee than I like), but it was perfectly well done.

We were there for two hours, never felt rushed once. Go! Enjoy.

I finished the toe-up Pomatomus sock. The other one in this pair, of course, will be top-down so that the scales go in opposite directions.

I’m really happy with it. The last time I tried a toe-up Pomatomus, I got to the heel and was pretty much flummoxed. This time, though, the Widdershins socks had come out from Knitty, and I was able to read those directions and have them make sense. Of course, the increases I needed to match the original counts of the Pomatomus socks were completely different than those in the Widdershins, so I really sort of just did it as I went, and made it work.

The yarn is Lisa Souza Sock!Merino in peacock. The photo gives off a sheen, and it’s kind of a hidden quality of the yarn. Looking at the sock here sitting next to me on the couch, it’s not highly shiny, but there’s a lustrousness to the color, definitely. The yarn is easy to work with, though it can split on US 1s and become kind of fuzzy if worked repeatedly. And I had to work it several times, eventually doing the heel 3 times (mostly to finesse the sides of the heel flap and to shorten it–nothing to do with the actual turning of the heel).

Last night, when I finished sewing the cuff (using the Elizabeth Zimmerman sewn cast-off), I immediately cast on for the second, and I’ve been intermittently doing a row here and there during the day today. I came down with a cold or severe allergy attack yesterday–nose-blowing continuously, feeling pretty crappy–so I took the day off today, but I’ve been doing work. Any excuse to play on my new computer! I’ve finished what I was working on, so I’m going to nestle down into the nest I’ve built on the couch and knit away. I did a hand-felting test Friday night, with an eye toward a laptop case, but I’m not so sure how I feel about it, so that’s on hold for now.

Here’s what we’re doing this evening . . .

Note the bottle of honey, to drizzle over the blue cheese. There’s nothing better than your sweetie, your new laptop, a bottle of tempranillo, and blue cheese + honey.

Click to see bigger!

This spiderweb, hanging off a house in West Philly, was enormous. It had to have been three or four feet tall and a foot and a half or more wide. It was impossible to capture in its entirety, and the sunlight hid behind a cloud once I got the camera out, so it wasn’t catching the light enough, but I did my best!

In other news, I wore my kid slique scarf to work today! It was a nippy 52 degrees F, and as we all know a covered neck means a warm body.

And here’s a mini-restaurant review for Liz: Pod, like most Steven Starr restaurants, is all about spectacle, and if you like that kind of thing, you’ll love the atmosphere. The food, like most of his restaurants, is decently well thought out and is best consumed from the appetizer/small plate menu. The entrees tend to leave me a little disappointed, so since this was my second time at Pod, I recommended my friend and I split things. The tempura vegetables appetizer was a little lackluster, but the tuna roll with lump crabmeat was divine (it’s actually lump crab rolled in a thin sheet of raw tuna). Lettuce wraps were messy but yummy, and shrimp dumplings rounded out the meal. We were stuffed afterward! Oh, definitely sample the drinks, which you order by color: We can recommend Pink and Orange. Be sure to use the restroom while there; the design is pretty awesome.

I ordered a laptop–the cheapest MacBook out there–on Sunday, and it arrived today! Oh, I am in love. It is delightful. And now it needs a protective sleeve. I’m thinking of trying my hand at felting for the first time. I’ve got some Manos I snagged from my mom that’s not doing anything . . . This may be my weekend adventure. I worry a bit about fuzz getting on the computer, though–anyone have experience with this?

The past two nights I’ve had mid-evening plans, so have killed the time beforehand by working on another pair of Pomatomus. On Tuesday my friend and I sat in Clark Park, and I knit before yoga, and last night the boy and I sat outside with coffee in West Philly, and I knit before I met a friend for dinner. I don’t know how in the last week I’ve become this bold knit-in-public sort of girl, but it’s been liberating. I notice people giving the work a peek, but no one has asked me what I’m working on or what I’m doing. Heck, last night we stopped a woman with a clipboard to ask her what the heck she was doing (a project for a city planning class), so I’m fully prepared for the questions, but none are forthcoming.

This pair of Pomatomus (no picture yet, sorry) is a renewed effort on the pair for the boy’s mom. Since I used the original yarn for his tie, I went with my Lisa Souza yarn in Peacock. It’s a beautifully deep but bright blue, and the scaly, watery look of the socks works very nicely with the color. I continued with my plan to knit one sock toe up and the other top down, to get scales going in opposite directions. I read up on the Widdershins heel, which works for reversing the heel flap heel shaping, though I had to do a zillion more increases than the actual Widdershins pattern calls for, and I don’t know if it’s going to match exactly. I’m sure it will be close enough. I had to redo the heel flap a few times, because I was finessing how to handle the p2togs (tbl? normal? in the end, I twisted the first stitch of the two to be p2togged and p2togged normally, which gives something approximating the ktbl that makes these socks so awesome), and now I’m firmly ensconced in the leg. Going top down shouldn’t be a big problem, but figuring out where the heel gets placed to make the socks “identical” is going to be tricky: the length of the foot didn’t come out to a complete pattern repeat, so it’s “off” a little bit (like, turned to the side . . . it’s hard to explain). Eh, I’ll get it close enough and no one will be the wiser!

Still, I’m a little bored with socks at the moment, and I’m thinking of taking two weeks off in preparation for Socktoberfest! A felted laptop bag will be just the thing to divert my attention; I’m not sure I can go two full weeks.

I’ve got a new blog for you all to check out. Feed Dog. It’s pretty new, but I can vouch for the proprietor: impeccable sense of style and a good writer, to boot. Go send him some love, and watch for all the cool things he’s going to do! I can’t tell you how much his real-life influence (coupled with Ashley’s virtual influence) has me wanting to make a quilt!

I’m filing this under “oddities” because it makes me giggle to do so. I’m sure he’ll appreciate it, too.

Finally, an FO! I looked in my archives, and I haven’t finished a damn thing since the Anastasia Socks. That was in July. July! But tonight, after some minor surgery, I finished something, for real.

That’s right, I finished the necktie. First, it was too short. I took the whole thing out and knit it anew, making it narrower and thus longer (I knit until I was out of yarn). Then after blocking, it was too long (which I found out in a sleepy haze this morning while the boy was getting ready for work; he’d planned to wear it today). We assessed the surgery that was needed, and I did an end-of-tie-ectomy this evening, taking scissors to stockinette for the first time ever (it was totally painless). The details:

Necktie
Pattern: Loosely adapted from Interweave Knits’ Traditional Neckties; find free patterns for other neckties by IK here. I basically used their measurements for length in the first part of the tie (11.5 inches until decreasing, approximately 11.5 inches of decreasing, etc.) and ignored the magazine for the last half, increasing when I thought I should and working straight until I was out of yarn.
Yarn: Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock in Denim, 1 skein
Needles: US size 3
Technique: Knit in a tube using magic cast on, magic loop, and a kitchenered end. Huzzah for no 5.5-foot long seam!
Gauge: 9 st/in
Stitches: At bottom front, 46 stitches; at end tip, 30 stitches; at narrowest, 18 stitches
Started: Friday, September 1
Restarted: Tuesday, September 5
Restarted Again: Friday, September 8
Blocked and Ready (or so I thought): Tuesday, September 12
Actually Finished, for Real: Wednesday, September 13 (Oops, needs a little band for tucking the small end through. Perhaps ribbon.)
Notes: Not much else to say. I enjoyed the miles of stockinette, though when the band was narrowest (1 inch wide), turning the work was rather tedious. I should have taken the opportunity to teach myself how to work backward, but I didn’t want to risk wonky tension. I’d originally planned to use the double knitting technique (k1, sl1 wyf to end; repeat) but my first stitches were a complete mess, so I started over last Friday and used magic loop instead.

Using sock yarn in a new way was nice–I feel as though neckties can offer you a nice blank canvas for playing with textures. Of course, the boy prefers nice plain stockinette best, so I may not get a chance to experiment much with knit/purl patterns on ties for him. He floated the idea of a striped tie next–self-striping probably wouldn’t work, since the height of the stripes would change as the width of the tie changed, but on second thought that might create a cool effect.

He seems to like the result a lot, and I’m happy. As they say, knitting is love. Of course, I just knitted him a little noose . . .

where the heck would you be??

I seem to have completely lost my size 1 circ. I can find the sleeve it originally came in. I can find my 0, my 2s, my 3s, and even larger sizes. I’ve looked under the couch cushions (found one size 1 dpn in there!); I’ve looked under the couch. I don’t know where else to look or what I last used the 1s for. Waaahhhh!! I want to start a new pair of socks!!!

I know, last week you missed the extremely random things I’d been posting, and even the yummy pie. I’m going to veer in a new direction this week, too, for some nostalgia and some (to me) gorgeous buildings.

I might go so far as to say that I think this is the most perfect photograph I have ever taken. It was a complete and total fluke, as well. I was 17 years old, had just arrived at my new institue of higher learning, Bryn Mawr College, and wanted to have some photos to show people when I would be home for fall break. I had a disposable camera, and I just looked up and clicked. This was before I was a tour guide, but I probably traversed a similar path as the one I would introduce to prospective students, walking through Pembroke Arch and up Senior Row, stopping briefly to capture Taylor Hall, the home of my very first college French class (a junior-level course that completely kicked my ass–I never took French again), the president of the college (then the absolutely adored Mary Pat, now Nancy J), and of course, the Taylor Bell (which seniors ring on the last day of finals to celebrate their accomplishments). You can’t see them, but at the bottom of the bell tower are steps, the Senior Steps, where the seniors would sit when the whole school would gather to sing songs to candle- and lanternlight. (Yeah, we have some arcane traditions, quite a few involving fire.)

It was almost eleven years ago to the day that I took these pictures. Wow, how I’ve changed so much since then! This second shot was my first dorm, Rockefeller, my first time living away from home. Linnea’s mom lived down the hall. My roommate and I had this fabulous two-room space, which looked out on an old tree, and we spent hours sitting on our windowseat (for which her mother made an awesome cushion) thinking about our future lives. Gosh, she was going to be a physician and I was going to be a physicist. Neither of us do those things now.

I guess I’m in this Bryn Mawr remembrance mode because of all the hoopla going on there this weekend. Katharine Hepburn, our most recognized alumna, is being honored with the opening of the Katharine Houghton Hepburn Center (named for Kate’s mom, also an alumna), which “challenges women to lead publicly engaged lives and to take on important and timely issues affecting women.” Lauren Bacall and Blythe Danner (who did not go to BMC) are being given medals from the Center this weekend. Some friends are coming into town to go to the festivities, but I’m too cheap and won’t shell out for even the greatly reduced “young alumnae” price, which still seems too high to me. Some of the celebration will be happening at the Kimmel Center in town, even, so it’s a huge big deal.

Anyway, as all this collegiate stuff is going on, I can’t help thinking back to those days, when I didn’t sit at a desk for 8 hours at a stretch. It’s nice to remember from time to time.

My eye candy requires a lot of words. I know some other people are just posting pretty pictures on Eye Candy Friday, but I’m a word girl, so I hope these aren’t too boring for you all.