incogkneeto.com blog

Last night we moved. THANKS, BOB, our truck tetris teammate!

I’ve been married and left my homeland and owned a condominium, but I feel far more legitimately grown up after moving into our new 1 bedroom apartment. For the first time, I share a bedroom with my husband. (the condo was a studio) This is wonderful - I close the door and can turn on any lights I want when I get up for work before he does. It has reinforced what home means, which is really cliche about hearts and things; which thus redefines itself, seeing as how my heart can be with many places and people at once. Can’t really say “I’m going home” and expect people to know whether I’m taking a bus or an airplane to get there. (Just as the speech therapist ordered - even higher demands for precise articulation!)

The wood (faux?) floors look really good with all of our wood furniture, which is surprising since I’ve always hated mixing and matching different woods. But this floor unites them. I am going to go walk around on it, putting things away and up.

To clear up the post title, LYS = local yarn store.

I’ve pretty much been on a cantaloupe orange kick since I moved to MN, and am still looking for a kickass opalescent-opaque nail polish in the shade.

I just spent enough time wandering through a yarn store I frequent not quite frequently enough to make the sales clerk sweat, which is what I do; at least, another byproduct of moving to MN has been very very carefully weighing each purchase I am considering making. I was really feeling rather bored with the selection, and thus hopeless, and confused about my priorities of buying yarn at all, and hey it’s getting kind of warm in here, here comes some sweat, and then I just start over touching things and suddenly oh my god there’s this delectably delicate snow bunny white lace-knitted sweater in my hands and I need to know ala what child, what yarn is this?

And so eventually I’m walking around the store again with this little orange ball that feels like a baby bunny rabbit in my hands, knowing not what to do with it but only that it must become mine. And I’m struck by thoughts of something I read recently about the unsustainability of modern America’s “I want it therefore I deserve it” attitude but I don’t really care. I think this is a little different when the magic of creation is looming. And I wander over to the Schaefer yarns because well they are awesome especially this here cotton with a slub of rayon through it that I have been fixating on this entire visit. And I’m holding baby bunny orange up against various colourways and it just about kicks me in the teat - the harmony! The colourway is called “Elizabeth Blackwell” and it’s going to sound cheesy you just have to see it touch it but it’s grey blues and grey purples and grey oranges. And they want to get married, this subduedly colourful cotton-rayon and my little baby bunny orange and my check card is their minister. And is it ever! But it is so worth it because they’re going to make beautiful babies together.

I had gone to this yarn store because they carry some (some.) of the yarns I know I like, but as usual, I end up with something totally new and different and awesome. So that fulfills the second post title’s prophesy: finding new yarns is the real use of a brick-and-mortar LYS.

Oh, and apparently badminton kicks my ass now because I can barely walk today and I cry out in pain when I sit on a toilet. (it must be very interesting to be waiting for public bathrooms I’m in) Granted, there was a bike ride too, but it wasn’t that intense…

The hands-on-the-hips-suck-in-the-tummy-shove-out-the-shoulders stance you’re all getting wild about isn’t haute couture, just freaky.

He’s chasing tornadoes and just waiting calmly
chasing her

I have been dreaming of tornadoes almost every night, and listening almost exclusively to Tori Amos. Her girls are good company…

Last night I dreamed of maybe accepting a proposal for menage-a-trois because the other girl was being inviting and accepting, but there were too many adventures distracting me - including the tornadoes, which we hid from in my parents’ downstairs basement. The night before I doubled back to rescue my razor as Daniel and I sought shelter from a glowering sky: at first in this glassy business tower to which we were denied admission by the asshole CEOs, then in a nook in the weird architecture. Suddenly I had my cat in my arms and he was not happy, biting me, and I was so scared of what might happen to him. A wisp of the tornado reached down to touch my leg, then it was all over. Daniel and I looked at each other, like, “weird”. Then the sky was sunny again, and I went out onto a landing which overlooked the downtown city. There was an asshole CEO grilling hot dogs - he had these really long wieners and short buns, and showed me “how the classy people live” - by breaking their long wieners in half and having double meat in the bun. I was amazed because this is how I have always eaten hot dogs. He was all, wink wink, comrad.

So I have been having tornado dreams for a while and numerous times I have thought the situations the dreams were alluding to had been resolved. (the big one being leaving my crappy old job) So the more I examine my life for potential reasons, the more disillusioned I get. Here is a definition for dreams of tornadoes that seems most accurate to my plague:

Vast life changes, for better or for worse, are looming in the near future. Whether the changes are for better or worse can be deduced from other symbols in the dream.

I think foreclosure is the main affliction and the antidote, and that moving to uptown in October will be the domino shove of solutions to most of our problems.
And at least they’re dream tornadoes, and not real ones!

On the subject of weather, I hope there is more rain soon. There was last year.

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Strike out any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Optional extra: Post a comment at www.verygoodtaste.co.uk linking to your results.

amended italicized step: italicize if you would love to try.

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile (AND alligator)
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. Peanut butter and jelly sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine (tsk tsk! did I really grow up in Canada?)
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

I asked an out-of-touch Daniel for advice the other night. He started, “Well, what I would do is what I would do…”

I love seeing it.

Yum!

This is definitely some of the most successful incorporation I have seen yet; a very sturdy balance between construction and embellishment. Sometimes there is too much attention placed on the structural design of the garment and the dye job loses impact, or the use as attire doesn’t do the dye job justice. Ocelot’s line of attire is very well-considered and executed, particularly how the dye practice inspires shapes and vice versa. For instance this gnarly circular cardigan I chose to highlight on this blog. It works equally well on its own and on the body.

I have had this idea transcribed into a recipe for a while now, and finally found the time and all the ingredients today. Crisps are awesome cause they are so darned easy to make - I would make a crisp over a pie any day. (well, except maybe banana cream.) A quality of a good crisp to me is a nice tartness, so I was a little concerned about abandoning my beloved Granny Smith for the tamer trio highlighting this variation. No worries, in the end - each of the fruits turned out surprisingly and perfectly tart.

I just didn’t feel like photographing this today. I’m sure it will be made again, so I’ll post photos then! For now, refer to memories of golden brown aromatic oats oozing sweet butter into tender fruit slices. Yeah. There you go.

Peach, plum, pear crisp with walnuts for Joanna Newsom

1 peach
1 plum
1 pear

Slice small, into 1/4″ thick and about 3/4″ long pieces. Mix together and pour into greased baking pan. (Crisps are usually done in 9 x 13″ glass pans, I used an aluminum loaf pan with no problem… just make sure to keep an eye on the baking process, either way.)

1/4 c (whole grain pastry) flour
3/4 c rolled oats
1/2 c brown sugar
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

Mix together.

1/2 c (1 stick) butter

Combine into flour mixture with pastry cutter until crumbly.

1/2 c walnuts, chopped

Mix in. Spread evenly over fruit mixture in baking pan. Bake in oven at 350F until top is golden brown, about 30-40 minutes. Serve by scoopful with milky moon. (Seriously, plain yogurt or vanilla ice cream.)

Bon appetit :)

Yesterday I was hired by Andrew Kopplin of Kopplin’s Coffee and today I begin training!

This is very exciting. These people are so passionate about coffee and a slower, more cherishing and absorbent lifestyle, and learning. So am I. Things seem to finally be settling into place. I have been here working on that for a year and a half.

I am trying out Misti Alpaca’s laceweight yarn and spanking myself for avoiding it for so long just because it is two-ply. Well, I have since learned the secret follies of seemingly elegant one-ply (it half-felts!). I have this stuff in a baby grey-blue colour that just screams “lace!!” to me. It’s the same colour I first saw lace crochet work in.

I also picked up some flesh-coloured Louet Kidlin (”doeskin” I guess) and a ball of Noro’s new psychedelic “Hotaru” yarn in the red-purple-orange colourway. I have NO idea what to do with that yet but I know it knows exactly what it wants to be!

I also need to get to work on a commission, but this alpaca is just too fun! Well, I will tire of it eventually.