And a Kitty New Year

(from the LOLCats).

Grrsday

(Image courtesy Ihasahotdog)

knitting - a 50's style "fur" collar

The idea of going out and buying a new wardrobe every year is one that, to the best of my memory, started in this country in the 1960’s. Prior to that, the woman of the house annually sat down and re-worked, re-vamped, and restyled her clothes as well as the rest of the family’s, so this project, while not vintage, is certainly vintage-inspired. It offers a little touch of affordable luxury and helps transform a plain winter coat in need of a lift.

My best winter coat is a three year old grey flannel London Fog. The collar is a little "rubbed" and the lining is beginning to go, but the rest of it is fine and it still fits well. I am going to replace the lining, using the old one as a pattern, and hide the worn areas with a new collar. I could use a different shade of flannel, or fake suede, or tweed, but I decided to experiment with something more up-market.

Our local hobby chain had a sale before Christmas on novelty yarns, and I splurged on a fake fur yarn ("Beguile" by YarnBee) for $1.99. These types of yarns require a filler of some kind, something that’s a little thicker to add strength and body. I had ¾ of a skein of Lion Brand Homespun in black left over from a long-ago project, and the thick and thin texture combined with the fake fur resulted in a pleasant unevenness. If you decide to make this project, do a small swatch first to determine your gauge; you will need to know your gauge to achieve the right size for the collar. I used a size 13 needle for a fairly closely-knitted fabric. You don’t want this to be see-through.

My gauge was 2.5 stitches to the inch. I measured the coat collar, and knew that I needed the finished fur collar to be about seven inches wide and twenty-three inches long, with a slightly curved outward edge. I cast on 12 stitches treating the fake fur and the Homespun as one yarn.

Row 1 – knit.
Row 2 – K1, M1, knit to the end.
Row 3 – knit.
Row 4 – K1, M1, knit to the end.

Remember to slip the first stitch purlwise and purl the last stitch in each row through the back for a good-looking selvedge. Continue increasing the second stitch every other row until you have added five stitches. Knit until your collar is 9 rows short of the desired length (this is where calculating your gauge comes in). Decrease the second stitch on every even row, knit the odd rows, until you have twelve stitches left on the needle. Bind off and weave in any yarn tails.


You can use any attractive fake fur/filler yarn combination. This particular pairing looks a lot like Persian lamb and is lovely, very soft to the touch and not too bulky. My mother, mother-in-law, and grandmothers would have lined the collar and sewn on snaps. I’m a lazybones and will probably just attach it to the coat collar with small slip-stitches so it can be removed when I send the coat to the cleaners. One skein of the fake fur made one collar with about twenty inches of yarn left over. You could wait for another sale and buy a couple of skeins to make matching cuffs or a band for a Dr. Zhivago-style hat.

Of course, if you want to toss the whole idea of frugality out the window, you could use a luxury mohair yarn as the filler along with one of Paula Lishman’s real fur yarns. It would technically still be recycling but in the end you might be spending enough to pay for a new coat.

CAVEAT KNITTOR: While this a very simple project, all in garter stitch, it’s not really suitable for an absolute novice. Knitting with novelty yarn can be frustrating and a little experience is needed to keep the stitches even, so I would classify this as for the “advanced beginner.” It’s certainly quick to make; I knitted it up in one long powerless afternoon last week. Thank God for a wood-burning stove and a BIG woodpile.

Vintage Sheet Music-Woman Forever March

(Image from Dover. Pity there's only the cover, I'd like to see the lyrics!)

Cat-ass-trophe

The temperature rose to 50F/10C here on Friday, and we awoke Saturday morning to pelting rain and gale-force winds. The river is out of its banks and just outside town on Route 165, a row of 1940s-vintage utility poles sheared off at ground level, putting us without power (again) from just before noon yesterday until shortly after 1o’clock this morning.

Knitting by candlelight has disadvantages, not the least being when the cat jumps up on the end table and sets her tail on fire.

Keeping Up The Sides

Although I come from a Christmas roast-beef family, the spousal unit grew up with turkey as the traditional holiday dinner so that’s what we usually have. Not a sacrifice for me, since I like turkey, and besides, at Christmas and Thanksgiving both, it’s all about the side dishes. These are the sorts of things I eat only at the holidays. For some reason they just don’t taste the same at any other time of the year.

Cranberry-Orange Relish

One package raw cranberries (about 2 pints)
2 navel oranges, washed, cut into eights, and seeded
2 cups sugar or to taste

Wash and pick over the cranberries, discarding any bad ones. Put the rest in the bowl of a food process with the sugar and pulse, adding the orange sections one at a time, until everything is coarsely chopped. Taste for sugar and put somewhere cool. This can be made a day ahead.

If you prefer a molded relish, prepare one 3 oz package of orange-flavored gelatin. You can reduce the amount of sugar in the relish by about ¼ cup. Allow the gelatin to cool until it is the texture of raw egg whites. Mix the relish into the gelatin thoroughly; a fork works well and be sure to use a large mixing bowl as this can spatter. Pour it into a mold and set in the refrigerator until the gelatin has congealed. Again, this can be made ahead of time and I have found that if you don’t have orange Jello on hand, cherry or strawberry works well, or plain gelatin made with a cup of orange juice and a cup of hot water.

Sweet Potatoes

6 to 8 large sweet potatoes
½ cup brown sugar, packed
½ stick of butter, melted
½ t. salt
1 T. vanilla extract or brandy vanilla

Cook the sweet potatoes, two at a time, in the microwave until they are just done. I find that cooking them on full power for five minutes, flipping them, and then cooking five more minutes is plenty. You want to only partially cook them so that the skins are easier to remove. I do not recommend trying to peel raw sweet potatoes unless you are a masochist.

Allow them to cool and then peel them carefully with a sharp kitchen knife. Your vegetable peeler is going to get gunked up if you use it. Cut the partially cooked sweet potatoes in one inch slices and layer them loosely in a slow cooker, sprinkling each layer with sugar and just a pinch of salt. Melt the butter, add the vanilla, and pour it over the sweet potatoes. Cook for six hours on low.

The key to meltingly delicious sweet potatoes is in the long, slow cooking to bring out the natural sugars, which is why I use the slow cooker. If you think you are going to have enough (we never seem to!) keep back two cups of this for the best sweet potato pie you have ever tasted. No brag, just fact. I had full bird colonels standing in line for this pie when I brought it to the office at Camp Lejeune.

Sweet Potato Pie

Combine the 2 cups of sweet potatoes, 2 eggs, 1 cup of milk with 4 T. of butter melted in it, a little cinnamon and nutmeg, and additional sugar if needed (I do but that’s because the spousal unit has a sweet tooth. Molasses is the traditional sweetener in my mother’s Southern family, but you may prefer to add up to half a cup of brown sugar or Karo syrup). Beat well, pour into two pie shells, and bake at 425 degrees for 10 minutes. Reduce the heat to 300 degrees and back about 45 minutes more or until the filling has set in the middle. Protect the edges of the pie shells with strips of aluminum foil as they will dry out and begin to brown before the pie is done. You can remove the foil for the last 15 minutes of baking.

Possibly superfluous cooking tip: For easier pouring, measure the syrup or molasses in the cup in which you melted the butter.

Waldorf Salad

2 crisp eating apples such as Macintosh or York
Half a head of celery, cleaned and trimmed
½ cup chopped walnuts
2 T mayonnaise
2 T lemon juice or mild vinegar
2 T sugar or equivalent in artificial sweetener

Mix the mayonnaise, lemon juice and sugar in the serving bowl and allow the sugar to dissolve. Core and dice the apple without peeling them, and toss with the dressing. Cut the celery into ½ inch slices and add to the apples. Place somewhere cool. Just before serving, stir in the walnuts. This can be made ahead but add the walnuts at the last minute.

Corn Pudding

1 stick of butter
1 box of Jiffy cornbread mix
1 can of cream-style corn
1 can of regular corn
1 egg
6 oz sour cream

Melt the butter. Mix all the ingredients together until they are blended but don’t overmix. The cornbread mix will be still just a little lumpy. Bake in a buttered loaf pan in a preheated 350-degree oven for one hour. Test for done-ness with a skewer; if the pudding is done it will cling to the skewer in distinct clumps and will not look raw. Serve hot.

Caturday!

(photo and caption from the LOLCats).

Out of the mouths of babes?

Christmas afternoon. Youngest nephew, oblivious of the grownups, is amusing himself in the corner with his new Lego set. "Now we're going to play taking cuts in line ahead of Italians!"

His parents have satellite but I'm still trying to figure out where that came from.

Quote of the Day

Let Christmas not become a thing
Merely of merchant's trafficking,
Of tinsel, bell and holly wreath
And surface pleasure, but beneath
The childish glamour, let us find
Nourishment for heart and mind.
Let us follow kinder ways
Through our teeming human maze,
And help the age of peace to come.

Madeline Morse

What does one do with four calling birds, anyway?

Dona nobis pacem

(I had hoped this would post in the larger size, but I'm afraid you'll have to left-click to read it).

Son of Even More Christmas Stuff Rides Again

Patricia at Agence Eureka has several more pages of vintage Christmas children's activities, including a Père Noel to cut out and assemble, puzzles, coloring pages, and half a dozen patterns for toy animals to sew (that would look great stitched in brightly colored felt, and hanging from the Christmas tree). Scroll down to 22 decembre.

(note: I am creating and scheduling all of my posts in the intervals between power and Internet outages. If you have attempted to contact me and I haven't answered, I'm not being a Scrooge, just a victim of Mother Nature!).

Sewing - Men's Scuffs and Case from 1947

A pair of men's scuffs and a matching case to sew, from Crochet and Knitting for Every Woman, pub. 1947. The photo and three pages of instructions may be downloaded from my Flickr account.

There is some corner of a foreign kitchen that is forever England...

(image from Dover Publications).

Once upon a time a British resident of the Crown Colony of Hong Kong collected recipes from her friends to produce a cookbook in aid of the St. John’s Cathedral Michaelmas Fair. Her name was Lady Young and I found her book online. Reading it raises a number of questions.

Who were these people? Could they not afford a local cook, one that knew how to make beggar’s chicken, steamed dumplings and salt-baked prawns? Or did they simply carry their English culinary traditions with them everywhere, along with their passports and le five o’clock, immutably English and unchangeable? Oh, Lady Young did provide five pages of “Chinese” recipes including one for a sort of almond gruel made with Carnation canned cream, but everything else is straight out of Woman and Home and the Sunday cookery columns. For example:

Crab-Meat Casserole

1 can crab meat (6-7 oz)
1 can condensed tomato soup
Milk, ¾ cup, or half evaporated milk and half water
2 t. lemon juice
1 ½ cups soft breadcrumbs
Butter or margarine, melted, 2 T
Salt, ½ t.
Cayenne, dash (optional)
Hard-cooked eggs, sliced 3
Buttered crumbs, ¼ cup

Remove shell tissue and flake crabmeat, combine with soup, milk, lemon juice, bread crumbs, butter or margarine, salt and cayenne, mix well. Add eggs, mix lightly. Pour into greased casserole (1 quart) or 4 individual baking dishes. Sprinkle buttered crumbs over the top and bake in moderate oven 375 degrees for 20 to 25 minutes until lightly browned.

(If I were lucky enough to find myself back in Hong Kong and someone tried to feed me a casserole made with condensed soup, I would probably quietly garrote them and then head for the closest yum cha shop).

Italian Fish Pie

1 teacup boiled macaroni
2 teacups white sauce
1 teacup tinned peas
1 ½ teacups strained flaked tinned salmon
1 teacup diced boiled carrot
½ teacup grated cheese

Drain macaroni well and arrange half of it in the bottom of a shallow greased fireproof dish. Cover with the salmon, then with half the sauce. Mix the carrot with the peas and sprinkle evenly over the top. Cover with the remainder of sauce. Sprinkle cheese on top. Bake in a moderate oven, 350 degrees, for about ¾ of an hour. For six persons.

(I’ll let you find the recipe for tuna loaf with dill-pickle sauce by yourselves).

Golden Prune Salad

Prunes, cooked, 20
Oranges, seedless, 2
Carrot, grated fine, ½ cup
Mayonnaise, 1 tablespoon
Slat, ¼ teaspoon
Red apple, 1
Lettuce

Have all ingredients well chilled. Pit the prunes. Peel and section oranges, holding over bowl to catch juice. Combine carrot, mayonnaise and salt; add orange juice, blend. Fill each prune with 1 teaspoon of carrot mixture. Cut unpared apple into 20 lengthwise slices, removing core. On each plate arrange 5 prunes in center on bed of lettuce, surround with 5 orange sections alternating with apple slices. French dressing is good with this. Makes 4 servings.

Fatal Beauty

Yesterday's ice storm was beautiful. Everything is encased in a coating of silvery ice and even a prosaic chain link fence glitters with a dressing of diamonds.


The aftermath is more heartbreaking. In a village like ours, most of the hardwood trees are the size of houses, at least 60 years old, and highly susceptible to ice damage.


The beautiful maple across the street has lost two large branches and our next-door neighbor’s backyard shade tree snapped off about three feet from the ground, as did the apple tree next to my BIL/SIL’s house.


These last two are not small, each had a trunk at least six inches in diameter. Fortunately, the schools were closed, because the spousal unit was out all morning with his chainsaw helping clear away the debris.


We lost only two minor branches from the maple in the side yard but nearly everyone in town has tree damage. We were without internet access for thirty-six hours but without power for only twelve. I stayed in bed with the Drama Queen as both of us are smart enough to know where the warmest place in the house is. SU went through two pairs of snow boots.


Fortunately the temperature never dropped below 35F/1C. Had it gotten much colder I think the mayor would have opened a warming shelter in the high school gym. Like every little town we have a wrong side of the tracks. In our case its a trailer park on the south side, near the river, and babies/toddlers who live there would have needed someplace warm to sleep if we hadn’t gotten power back that afternoon.


We are normally at daggers drawn with the local utility company (their tree-removal policies are draconian) but when a freezing rain is falling and the road is a skating rink and there’s some guy or gal fifteen feet up a power pole restoring the circuits, I have to take off my hat to them.


The temperature is dropping (from 35F/1C an hour ago, it is now 29F/-1C and the wind is picking up; the spousal unit predicts we’ll lose power again before midnight.

Caturday!

(photo and image from the LOLCats).

Quote of the Day

Today I bent the truth to be kind, and I have no regret, for I am far surer of what is kind than I am of what is true. Robert Brault

(winter scene from Patricia at Agence Eureka, who has some cute vintage cutouts up on her blog right now. The wheelbarrow and the baby carriage could be printed on cardstock, assembled and filled with candy as part of a mantel or table scene).

Signs and Omens

There is a strong possibility that we will be without power and Internet access for the next few days.

Vintage Advertising-Holly Brand Oranges

(copyright-free clipart from Dover).

George Bernard Shaw was Right

England and the US are two countries separated by the same language.