Ratatouille! Of course. Thank you, Dawn! (And others, for other recipe ideas.) It turned out I had all the ingredients in the house – the courgettes, of course; an aubergine, peppers and onions, fresh from the supermarket the day before; and some tomatoes, precariously near the end of their usable lives. We had it for lunch. Delicious, and that pretty well takes care of the courgettes.
For supper we had Delia Smith’s Broad Bean Salad (bits of bacon and spring onion), warm with tuna. Today I’ll revert to faux-succotash. There’s still a way to go, on the broad bean front. They were Europe’s only, or at any rate, basic, bean before Columbus. They’re dead easy to grow, rabbits don’t like them, and we do.
As for knitting, I’ve abandoned Ravelry for the moment, for the delights of LibraryThing. I’m getting on swimmingly. It’s very quick, because the program tries to find the book for you, the way Ravelry tries to find a yarn or a pattern as you add it. This has resulted, occasionally, in my being credited with the wrong edition, but, hey! we’re not the Library of Congress. It is perfectly possible to add a book by hand, if I had preferred to be pedantic.
I’ve even managed to get LibraryThing into my sidebar. You have to scroll right down.
As for actual knitting, I got back to Ketki’s gansey last night. I tried to take a picture this morning and found the camera battery dead. I should finish a cuff this evening. How to cast off? Brown-Reinsel just says, cast off. What do toe-up sock-knitters do? I’ve got nothing if not lots of books (see above). I’ll poke around a bit.
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Castin off - I would cast off with the Elizabeth Zimmermann sewn cast-off that looks like a cast on, to create a stretchy edge that looks like the bottom edge. Just one of those little tricks we book-hoarding people have picked up over time :)
ReplyDelete/Lene
Yes, I would do EZ's sewn cast-off which is nice and stretchy, or that one where you knit two stitches, put them back on the left-hand needle and knit them together through the back loop, then put that one stitch back on the left needle and repeat - I can't remember what it's called, but it's stretchy too.
ReplyDeleteAhhh....I LOVE Library Thing!!
ReplyDeleteHowever, I haven't been able to figure out how to download books from LT to Ravelry?
I like to use the Icelandic bind-off. I first came across the technique in the Icelandic 3-cornered shawl book; it is also in Myrna Stahman’s ‘Stahman’s Shawls and Scarves’ book. Basically, knit 1 stitch, place it back on the left needle, insert right needle through that knit stitch and knit the next stitch. (The first stitch nestles onto the neck of the second stitch and is thus eliminated.) Place knit stitch back onto the left needle and continue on. It makes a nice stretchy edge which also looks rather like a cast on edge. I noticed it was on the sock-knitters' website, too. I'm almost to Ravelry--can't wait. Pamela
ReplyDeleteRe your mention yesterday of Columbus bringing foods around the world, there's an fascinating book on the subject: "Why We Eat What We Eat", by Raymond Sokolov, which I hope is available in the UK. Makes a ramble through one's larder or cookbook shelf even more interesting.
ReplyDeleteWell, I guess I'm following the crowd in saying EZ's sewn cast-off. But it works great so there's a reason there's a crowd using it. The suspended bind-off is in Vogue's Book, I like it, too. It's stretchy and leaves a tidy apppearing edge
ReplyDeleteSewn cast off is a pain to take out, though, if you have to adjust sleeve length. In that case I'd use the Icelandic or a suspended cast off. On the ratatouille front, I taught my father to make it. He loved it an made it constantly. One visit he made it for me and it was foul. He showed me the 'basil' he had added. It was chrysanthemum...
ReplyDeleteJean, and Valerie who asked, Librarything works pretty well with Ravelry. You export as a comma delimited file, then upload to Ravelry. It'll only pick up the knitting books already in it's files, but that turns out to be quite a few books.
ReplyDeleteSo, in Librarything, click on TOOLS, then on the right hand side of the screen Export as Tabdelimited file (save it to your desktop). Then in Ravelry, go to your Notebook, Books, click on Add a book, then Choose a file, pick the file, upload, and WOOSH! Way cool.