incogkneeto.com blog

Happy birthday indeed! On June 8th 2008, 21 years after I was born, the Minneapolis Textile Center will be hosting the second day of its Shibori Symposium, and I found out soon enough to register for it!

I am most in awe of the work by Monoleena Banerjee:

Her seminar takes place from 9-11am on my birthday. How cool is that?

I am also eyeballing the following two seminars, respectively 11:15-12:15 and 1:30-3:30:

Thinking Outside the Box by Tricia Spitzmueller
Even creativity gets boxed in. Now that you have increased exposure to the fine art of shibori, what will you do with it? Join others in a lecture/discussion on how to expand and implement your creative energy. We will take shibori to the next level as we open up channels of creativity and engage our inner artist.

It sounds a little cheesy but it’s the kind of thing that depends on how much you put into it. (that doesn’t sound cheesy too does it?) I have also wondered about that very thing… wow, shibori. Now what?

and:

A Twist of Fabric by Candy Kuehn (current resident artist)
Drape squares, circles, rectangles or just plain yardage into jackets, dresses, pants, shirts and skirts using just a twist of fabric to make new shapes. This seminar shows you how to make many shapes for clothing and art with very little cutting or sewing - a great way to transform your shibori yardage without scissors! You’ll leave with simple, nuanced garment patterns you can further invent upon.

I am going to try to register tomorrow, I hope I make it :) Deadline is May 1!

The May Day Cafe in south Minneapolis tragically has no website I can link you to, so maybe I will have to make them one myself :)

I don’t remember where I first read about the May Day cafe - a newspaper or the Best of the Twin Cities (I no longer have copies of either) - but what I read impressed me: the May Day creates perfectly sweet, positively chewy lattes with homemade caramel. Not the pumped hyper-preserved bottled diabetic seizure, be it by mainstream Torani or upstream Monin. No - caramel made in a pan in the kitchen behind the espresso machine, pulled and squeeze-bottled before it reaches wax paper-wrappability stiffness. Always one to go out of my way for a new coffeeshop, especially one with raving reviews, I took the opportunity after lunch with Daniel yesterday to visit the May Day. And granted, this is written after spending about four hours there, so it’s a little early. But I am excited.

The May Day has been added to the currently mental list of dining places that visitors to the Twin Cities should not miss, which includes such gems as the Birchwood cafe and, strictly atmospherically, the Kitty Kat Klub, as well as the tiny list of really good coffeeshops. (for coffee: Kopplin’s. for decibal atmosphere: Cahoots. for nostalgia, and a good-sized bike ride to and fro: Dinkytown’s Espresso Royale.)

First of all, the approach. The May Day Cafe begins as a sign half-visible a block away, but from its bright colours you know you’ve found it. Then it unveils itself from behind cozy houses and tree branches as a textured, incredibly inviting blue cabin that feels like an eclectic discovery on a rural British Columbian or Californian harbour. I was awash with memories of Nelson, Victoria, Vancouver etc. I thought of the shop in California where I traded for money a divine concoction that was blended vanilla ice cream and espresso. The kind of tiny find that really has to be found, it isn’t common knowledge and it won’t be seen advertising in any newspapers (although I have now found a coupon for it in the Blue Sky Guide, which of all advertising venues I am most happy to see it using), but has the most delicious secrets you will regret having lived sort of miserably in new land for over a year for without yet knowing.

It is somewhat larger inside than it appears from the outside, but seating space could really be used more effectively. It is cafeteria-like, and it is a good thing that the clientele was comfortable enough to squish in like family though often strangers, but it would be good to incorporate diversity: some two-toppers for the most common customers: one or two people, couches, booths would be really spatially effective on the left between the bathroom and the counter. It is really currently arranged to host a few large groups. And it was fine. And it is doing very well with this as easily my biggest qualm. Also, an amount of space reserved for preparatory and employees twice the size of customer seating is visible, which I bet could be opened up to customers very well, like we are doing where I work now.

Counter servers were sweet, funny, and the diversity of age and gender I dream of my co-workers being, ranging from male and female about my age to male and female with white hair. I am really sick of working solely with other pretty twenty-ish females, and also only seeing them in coffeeshops. A coffeeshop that employs a variety of people has already guaranteed my return.

I did order the caramel latte (prepared very carefully by a male my age) and it was slightly sweet and chewy and perfect. Caramel, aka scorched sweetness and coffee is one of my very favourite flavour combinations, along with passionfruit and chocolate. I was so intrigued by the delicacy of the espresso flavour that I had to order one alone, despite that I had only yet consumed a mango, two eggs and two slices of toast all day by four o’clock, and I need a little more than that to not end up hyperventilating when caffeine is taken. So I also had a green salad, whose dressing was described by the grandmotherly lady sitting next to me with her toddler “friends”, not even her own blood kin, on a playdate, as “drinkable by the cup”. My espresso did not have much crema left by the time I sat down with it and my salad, which by the way together totaled like $4.45 for a salad serving the size we charge $6.95 alone for where I work, but it was indeed consumable ungarnished by any boob juice or burnt sweetness. A rare thing.

Clientele was very un-snobby, very low key, very friendly and unafraid of interacting with strangers. Also definitely alternative. Very unusual qualities to find all together in the city, a precious thing truly akin to the big-town harbour cafe that May Day feels like. Lots of bicyclists, even on the rainy day ;)

I also discovered, by leafing through local photographers’ greeting cards up for sale, the Mayday Parade hosted by the Heart of the Beast puppet theatre. Looks like a good time :)

I am taking Daniel to the May Day on Sunday, and looking forward to it.

For my birthday I am going to treat myself to some birch syrup and do such things as:

• make bison jerky with it
• make cheesecake and scones other oven goodies with it
• make ice cream with it
• sweeten cold-press coffee with it
• can you say baked birch butternut squash?

I have also read about creating apple syrup by boiling down apple juice and that sounds intriguing. It would be grand to harvest fresh fall apples, juice them at home, and immediately make apple syrup.

You know, these little discoveries can mean totally sourcing my own income someday… investing in real estate would not be so bad if I could have a yard of apple trees that I can harvest for the cost of their maintenance :)
a loft downtown, though, which is my inherited real estate investment… not really my idea of home, despite downtown being my ‘hood. (That is about contrast)

I also want to have mulberry trees for my silkworms to dine on, and harvest their silk peacefully and spin it into yarn to make wedding dresses with. I originally wanted to spin and crochet my own silk wedding dress but didn’t know how to do either yet so it wasn’t worth the investment/learning stress. It would be interesting to do one of these each year, over the years I would maybe garnish enough reputation to be able to coordinate specific commission…
just an idea :)
This reminds me that I had a dream about drop-spindle spinning.

Today proposes a warm, persistently rainy day. It is the first day of my weekend after a seven-day workweek. We woke up late because I can’t distinguish between AM and PM when setting alarm clocks :)

Daniel went to work. I am going to tidy the foot-high floor of our closet which is clothing and anything biodegradeable sitting around, then take a bus to downtown Minneapolis to find umbrellas and harvest ideas at the library. He will punctuate my day with lunch. Maybe I’ll join him at work after that.

I happen to adore rain. It is cleansing, and I like how it slows everybody’s pace. The world moves like a race and I’m not that competitive. Rain is a referee.

Yesterday after work I got on the bus to our evening destination and it was so empty for that bus, so I was not shy about claiming the entire seat with my luggage. Then I got absorbed in the Citypage’s best of the twin cities issue and suddenly the bus was busy and there was a man sitting on my things. He mumbled, oh sorry. I wouldn’t bother with this story if it wasn’t the third or fourth time it’s happened to me! Weird. It’s hard to say, hi, can I sit here? isn’t it?

Yes, and far easier to just sit on my watermelon! Of which he earned none.

There is lots to crochet. The connecting row of a skirt, a cardigan, and a hoodie which I have been reworking and reworking since before the mid-March San Francisco trip. But it’s a sweet design so no hard feelings, just carpal tunnel.

Also, I bought some dandelion greens and lemongrass at Whole Foods the other day, and need to figure out what to do with them. I think the best/only use for a digital library would be cookbooks on a PDA, because you’re at the grocery store and you know you’ve seen an amazing recipe for this seasonal ingredient but you don’t remember it or any of the other ingredients, thus a second grocery trip there will be. Unless of course, you had all your cookbooks in your pocket…

I do love things where various nerdy afflictions intersect: in this case, fibre art and digital storage.

Handfelted USB stick by quackhandmade

The blog is born. Welcome to the blog! We can be anything at the blog…

Two interesting things to know about the blog:

• before it was born, I was leafing through the Squidfingers BG patterns, found this one, and saved it because I thought it would make a good blog BG.
• when I was leafing through Wordpress templates, a quality I selected to filter through the results was the colour “salmon”. Among other colours - I just thought, it would be fun to have a salmon-coloured blog. Lo and behold! I found this template which combined the BG I saved, the colour salmon, and all my girlish design sensibilities.

It was made fo’ me :)