Marathon Cooking and Eating

This year, we did more marathon eating, but we did manage to make a few dishes.

This is all the fixings for a traditional sticky rice stuffing (nuo mi fan) that my family makes in addition to bread stuffing. If you are lucky enough score an invitation to a Cantonese banquet, one fancy banquet food is a deboned, whole chicken stuffed with nuo mi fan, and then deep fried. In my family, when we make this at home, we skip the whole stuffing of the chicken, or turkey, and simply serve the nuo mi fan alongside the roasted poultry. I've turned my in-laws onto this traditional food, too, and they request "sticky rice" at the holiday table now.

I also made a couple loaves of whole wheat bread, sans starter (it died!), but I didn't bring them to the dinner table because they turned out like hockey pucks. I could've sliced it up and said it was German bread, but I suspected that there would be plenty of other carbs for us to enjoy. We speedily made some coconut pumpkin pie ice cream in place of the bread. No one seemed to mind the substitution, but homemade ice cream does have a way of covering a multitude of cooking errors.

I don't think I've posted this yet: the boy's first sweater. He knit the parts on the knitting machine, and it took me about twice as long to seam the sucker up. And, apparently, it takes me a million times longer to post the finished product. He is almost done with another sweater, but I told him in no uncertain terms that I am not seaming it again, so this one will be seamed by sewing machine. He sealed the deal (of me not seaming) when he said that it would only take him 10 minutes to seam up his sweater. Fine. Knock yourself out, kiddo.

The Sweater that was Knit in a Weekend

In 2 days, the boy knit his first sweater. This is terrific because now I am off the hook for knitting him one since he's been pestering me the last two years to make him a plain cotton sweater. Since knitting miles of stockinette stitches in either black or dirt-brown yarn is not compelling, I never promised him a sweater, but I did feel guilty whenever I saw my friends knitting complex items for their SOs. I assuaged my guilt by offering up small items like a hat and a pair of fingerless mitts, out of fancy pants yarn, nonetheless. Still, he kept on bugging me about that sweater.

And then, the solution fell into our lap. The knitting machine. While we were assembling it, he said, "Now, I can make myself a sweater" and I replied quickly, "Why, yes! Yes you can!"

Late afternoon on Saturday, while discussing yarn options, he grabbed a 1-lb cone of kitchen cotton from my stash and told me that he wanted his sweater made out of that yarn. I do not fancy myself a yarn snob, but this statement made me recoil. Then, I sat down to do the yarn calculations. Suddenly, spending $20 on yarn vs. $100+ didn't sound so bad. After all, it's his first sweater, right? We procured the right dirt-colored cotton yarn at JoAnn's. We bought 3-lbs of yarn, but it turns out that he only needed 2-lbs (around 1400 yards of worsted weight).

Using a diagram for The Manly Sweater in Stitch 'N Bitch, we set to work. The first thing the boy did was knit a gauge swatch. We both measured the stitches per inch horizontally and vertically, and compared our answers. Same same. Then, we recorded his chest size, arm length, shoulder width, and torso length. Armed with those measurements, I reached for my knitting notebook to do some more calculations, but he insisted on using his own boring graph paper project notebook.

A sweater knit in pieces is the perfect project for him since he already has experience sewing bike jerseys. This was both of our first set-in-sleeve sweater, but since I had knit some (OK, only 2) top down raglan pieces, I had a clue as to how to do this.

Armed with his swatch's stitches per inch, the boy did all the calculations for the sweater on his own. I was only consulted a few times to brainstorm about sleeve shaping and other such tricky bits. I didn't even knit a single row. He finished the last piece last night, after about 4 hours of machine knitting. He had the audacity to complain that it took too long, but when I told him it would probably take me a year to finish a sweater for him if I had to hand knit it in dirt-brown, kitchen cotton yarn (is my non-motivation showing?), he merely said that his next attempt will be much quicker. Show off.

Because I am a sucker, or perhaps because occasionally I can be nice, I am seaming the pieces together. My reasoning is that I got out of knitting him a sweater, plus I am in need of honing my seaming skills. Better to practice on his garment than mine! I am using the kitchener stitch for the shoulder seams (I told the boy to not bind off the shoulder stitches) and a "somewhat mattress" stitch for the sleeves and sweater sides. My deadline for this project is Thursday since the boy is out of town until then.

Additionally, I have to note that the yarn we used, Bernat Handicrafter Cotton Ultrasoft, makes pleasant fabric. I don't know about ultrasoft (I'll reserve that adjective for Blue Sky Alpaca's cotton yarn), but it is soft. In fact, it doesn't feel any less nice than the boy's JCrew cotton sweater.

So, the guy who doesn't know what a purl stitch is can knit a sweater in 4 hours using the machine. I think he should be in knitting machine commercials. The target audience? Women like me who are tired of their husbands* bugging them for a hand knit sweater. Does your husband bug you about knitting him a sweater? Tell him to do it himself!


*We all know about the boyfriend sweater curse, right?

New toy!

A knitting machine fell into my lap yesterday! My aunt's mother was an avid knitter and crocheter. How avid? Well, she crocheted and knit both of her daughters' wedding dresses. That's dedication! After years of hanging on to her mother's knitting supplies (and this is just a small fraction of it - my aunt originally filled up a 14-foot moving truck with yarn!), my aunt realized that she would never use any of it so she asked if the boy and I would be up for a new toy. Of course we would!

The boy is actually the one who is really digging the machine, since he talks to machines like a duck to water. Who knew that all I had to do to get him interested in knitting was to mechanize it?

Below is his first swatch. The machine that we have only does stockinette fabric. I'll have to do the ribbing by hand.


My aunt also passed on a Brother ribbing machine accessory, but it is not compatible with the White knitting machine. :/ I guess I'll hang onto this for a spell, though, since the Brother machines are built like tanks. If the boy decides that the current machine is too limiting, we can upgrade.


Not to be left out, Mingus also worked on a little craft project. Luckily, this seat was out of commission. Anyone want a malamute?

I have a ton of vintage yarn and needles that need a new home as well. Anyone who knows of any charities in the Berkeley area, or anyone interested in vintage yarn (surprisingly, a lot of it is wool, not acrylic), lemme know and I can get back to you with specifics.

Some of the yarn even has my aunt's mother's WIPs still attached. It was bittersweet for my aunt to give these away. I wish I knew how to finish them, but I am ignorant in the ways of crochet.