Dogs Steal Yarn

Sourdough, weeks one and two

The good thing about taking pictures of my first attempt at sourdough bread and then failing to blog about it for a week is that now I can show you the first two attempts at sourdough bread instead, since I gave it another go today.

Last week's sourdough:

This was the first time using my newly established starter. I wasn't expecting much from it, to be honest, and was very pleasantly surprised. It had a really nice, truly sour sourdough tang. The rise was okay, but not great. The resulting bread was dense, but not abnormally so, and it was more than edible. Quite good, actually.

This week's sourdough:

I hoped the rise would improve as the starter aged, and already it is way better this week. That may have more to do with my method than the maturation of the starter, though. Last week I let the loaves rise for two hours, per the instructions in Tassajara. This week I let them rise for three hours. The result? Delicious and nicely risen. I'm extremely happy with the bread this week.

Sourdough bread is so much less time-consuming to make than the yeast breads I've been making! Mix the ingredients for the sponge and let it sit overnight. Fold in the rest of the ingredients, knead for a scant five minutes. Shape and let rise. Bake. That's it. Easy enough that I don't have to wait for Thumper's nap to do it! I predict lots of homemade bread in this family's future.

Next I want to establish rye and whole wheat starters...

So where was I...?

Sourdough. Right. Sourdough.

I'm at the coffee shop, Sunday writing day, taking a quick break from the writing. I remembered to tuck the camera into my backpack so I could upload the sourdough pictures. What I did NOT remember was the cable.

So the sourdough post will wait for later or tomorrow.

For now...I made sourdough with the starter, and lo it was good.

Otherwise, all is well. I'm full of carbs and coffee and the novel is moving along nicely. Thank you, sincerely, to all who have said they've enjoyed the fiction fragments. I thought that because I had no intention of doing anything with those fragments beyond tossing them up on the blog, that I would be less invested in them and it wouldn't hurt me at all to share them, even though they're very raw, unshaped work. I was wrong about that. I did care about them, and it was hard to see some of them up here. Maybe someone, somewhere, has found a way to make fiction work on a blog. It doesn't work for me. Feels too much like hanging out in my underwear while the rest of you are standing around me fully dressed. So no more of that. But I am glad that they were enjoyed, while it lasted.

Okay. Back to the writing. Happy Sunday, all.

So much for that.

#6 will be the last fragment. They're not working in the context of the blog, no matter how much I may like them and enjoy writing them. I'll keep doing them, as I always have--they're like doing scales--but I'm not going to post them anymore. The writing of them is fun, the sharing of them here not always.

I guess a knitting blog isn't the right forum for raw chunks of fiction. Go figure. For those who have enjoyed some of them, and for those who haven't but read them anyway--thanks for reading. When more of my real (non-fragment, non-blog) writing makes its way out into the world, I'll point you toward it. (For that, please direct good thoughts toward my agent's office in Midtown. Thank you.)

Until then, yarn, I guess, and gardens and babies and whatnot.

So yeah. Back tomorrow, most likely, with some knitting content and pictures of sourdough. Yahoo.

I don't know what this blog is for anymore. It seems to keep coming back to that...

Fragment #6

Dawn comes up hard and fast through the window, needle to the eyes and the sick taste of metal and geraniums in his mouth. Nostrils crusted shut and an ache that goes bone deep. Done it again Dwight you’ve done it again you’ve gone and done it. Dammit. She’s gone, gone for good this time and that bitch set him up but still he wishes she was here and she won’t be back. Sound of her shoes on the stairs for the last time last night. Red shoes clickety clackety highheeling across the floor out the door “I mean it this time, Dwight,” and “Don’t you dare follow me, Dwight,” and “It’s over. Over. You stay away now” down the stairs and the front door slam shut and gone baby’s gone she’s gone for good this time. Damn bitch. Damnit Tanya, you set me up.

Her clothes in the closet still, dresses hanging bluelygreenlybrownly over there where the door’s hanging open like a broken jaw, tumble of shoes on the floor all brown and black and white. No red. She’s wearing the red. Red shoes, red dress, red lips and out the door. Left it all behind and she’s gone now. Gone for good. Gone for real. You do it to yourself, Dwight. She set you up but you do it to yourself, every damn time.

Eyes bleary red in the bathroom mirror, red and black the right one swollen till it’s just a slit just a slit. Can barely open the right eye, and what it shows is all tinged red. Red shoes, red dress, red red lips. Damnit Tanya. Black eye, red eye. Not his first black eye, not by far. Not his last, not by far. You do it to yourself Dwight, you do it to yourself.

Mouth breathing, nostrils crusted over with brownred dried blood and my god that man’s fists were as big as dinner plates my god that man’s fists they just kept coming and coming. Not his fault not his fault, not really. No telling what Tanya’d whispered into his ear when Dwight came into the bar. No telling. Tanya, she set him up too. Set em both up and now she’s gone baby gone, red dress, red lips, red shoes highheeling clickety clack across the tired lino floor. Damnit, Tanya. Damnit baby. Dwight, you do it to yourself, Dwight. Gone and underestimated the girl. Should have known better. She’s long gone, gone down those stairs in those red shoes. Gone for good.

Full disclosure: this isn't a new fragment, but an old one pulled from the vault--though it was a freewrite when it was written, so fitting, I think, for a fragment post. It's the beginning of a stalled collaboration project. A project I'd like to pick up again. Whaddya say, Quig?

The garden is dead! Long live the garden!

We spent Saturday (a warm, sunny, gorgeous day--we timed it well) digging out the Toxoplasmosis Garden to make way for a new, improved, cat-proof garden with nice, clean feces-free dirt.

We (meaning Billy, while I toddler-wrangled) dug the dirt out from the old 6' X 8' bed:

Since we were starting over anyway, I decided to improve on what we'd done before. I needed an aisle to work the 6' X 8' garden, which was just wasted space. And we get more sun in the yard than just that little patch. So we put in two 4' X 4' raised beds, and a 2' X 6' raised bed for the asparagus crowns. The container plants will fit in there too. The asparagus bed and one of the other beds is over dirt, one over the patio. I'm guessing the patio bed will have to be reserved for smaller plants with shallower roots, yeah? No beets and parsnips in that one? The beds are 8" deep. I need to come up with new garden maps now...

The beds aren't totally filled with dirt yet in this photo, but they are now. We've got chicken wire anchored down with rocks at the moment, but now that we've got the beds topped off with soil and compost, we're going to fix the wire flush with the dirt and attach it with screw hooks so it can be rolled back if needed. I'm expecting to leave it in place and work through it, snipping larger holes as the plants grow, but I wanted to go with the hooks rather than staples or nails, in case I do find I want to move the chicken wire, particularly before the plants come up. It seems like it's going to be a pain in the ass to work through the wire. But if it deters the cats...

Our new next-door-neighbors, Heather and K., are trying chicken wire on one bed and bird netting draped over another. We figure we'll compare notes at the end of the season and see which method best kept the evil felines at bay. Of course, they have a huge advantage because they've got a rather big dog. (We didn't tell you guys they bought the house next door. Sneaky, hunh? All part of my plan to move all my Brooklyn friends to Portland.)

We celebrated the new garden beds on Saturday night by getting a baby sitter and going out for dinner, just the two of us. At which point I got food poisoning. Fun. That was my Sunday. So I didn't get my writing day, and I didn't get to try out the sourdough starter. Tonight, though, I plan to make a sourdough sponge to sit overnight, and then tomorrow I'll give it a try. The fact that I can even think about baking bread right now is proof I'm feeling better. Yesterday sucked. I'm glad it's today.

But let's not end on such a note. How about a toddler-gardening photo? Much better than talk of food poisoning, yes?

Starter started

On Monday evening, I got the sourdough starter going. I decided to follow the method described in the Tassajara Bread Book, because that book has yet to steer me wrong. The method: combine flour, water, honey, and dry active yeast and stir. Let it sit in a warm spot for five days, stirring each day. That's it. I'm sure there are plenty of purists that would say seeding the starter with commercial yeast is cheating, or produces an inferior starter or etc etc etc. That's fine. To each their own etc etc. All I know is each day I stir that starter and it's happy and bubbling away, and gives off a good beery/hard-ciderish smell that tells me all is working as it should. The whole house smells like sourdough now, in fact. And that's not a bad thing.

The starter will be mature on Saturday. I'm looking forward to baking my first sourdough loaves on Sunday. I'll let you know how it goes.

I'm also curious to see how having had all this sour yeastiness in the air all week will affect the challah when I make it tomorrow.

Fragment #5

All it takes is seeing one red pickup driving down the road and I’m right back there, back to that summer. I think back on Joe, what we did and why. And I wonder if we really did get away with it after all, or if it rides him still the way it rides me. The way the ghost of it can rise up out of the bed of some stranger’s dusty pickup truck and hang over me like hate the whole day through. Some days it seems there’s nothing on the road but pickup trucks. And some days it seems they’re all red.

An explanation, since I haven't posted one of these in a while: These fragments are short bits of fiction. In general I'll write them quickly--in five minutes or so--and post them straight away with minimal (or no) editing. Some of them may later find their way into a story or novel, or may get expanded into longer pieces, but in general I'm trying to write them as quick freewriting exercises with no expectation or pressure of a longer work or of even worrying if they're any good. The exact opposite of what goes on in my regular fiction writing (which carries plenty of pressure, both internal and external, and which I don't post on the blog, and the good or badness of which I worry about quite a bit sometimes).

Frogging the garden?

You know how you start a big knitting project all full of hope and excitement? Thinking about how great the sweater will look on you, thinking of all the places you'll wear it. How flattering it will be, etc etc? You find the perfect yarn. You even swatch, for cripes sake. You swatched! You planned ahead! Let's say you even WASHED the swatch. So then you get to relax and just knit, right?

But then let's say something goes off. The swatch lied, and you start to get the sneaking suspicion that the sweater is actually going to be quite a bit bigger than you'd planned. You might, in fact, be able to fit yourself, your dog, and your husband into the sweater with room to spare. But this is just a suspicion. And if you knit fast enough and don't stop to recheck your gauge, maybe the problem will go away. But it doesn't go away. The gauge is off. The gauge has always been off. You need to rip the damn thing out and start over.

Well... The garden. Oy vey, the garden. Let's start by saying I used to really love cats. &^%*&%P((* Evil heartless cats.

When I turned the winter cover crop under, I found little mounds of cat poop. I cleared them out and kept working. Then each day I'd return to the garden and find more cat poop. I'd clear that out. I told myself it wasn't much poop, and as long as I took it out of the garden it would be fine, but a niggling little suspicion that it wasn't fine was starting to grow in the back of my mind. The next door neighbors moved out and took their cats with them, and I told myself that was the end of it, that it was THOSE cats who'd been using the garden as a litter box, and NOW everything would be fine.

But everyone in this neighborhood has multiple cats (except for us) and everyone lets those cats out. I'm still finding cat poop in the garden every day, and as I was planting those broccoli starts yesterday, I did my best to tell myself I didn't notice that the whole raised bed actually smells like a litter box.

The garden is contaminated. It stinks like a litter box. Cat poop is not compost. It's a nasty disease-bearing thing. (Yes, I'm calling your cat a nasty disease-bearing thing.)

Here's what I want to ask the blog, because many of you have given me much good advice on a number of subjects over our years here together:

Bearing in mind that we're talking about trying for the next baby sometime this summer, and bearing in mind that we're talking about an edible garden, and bearing in mind the dangers of toxoplasmosis...

Do I need to do what I think I need to do...which is rip that raised bed out and get rid of the contaminated soil and start over? Everything I'm finding online says "DO NOT EAT THOSE VEGETABLES!"

If that is what we need to do, Billy and I were talking about doing two 4X4 raised beds a la Square Foot Gardening, and laying those square-foot grids over them, thinking cats wouldn't want to walk on the grids. And maybe chicken wire over the beds until the plants get tall enough?

Help!

Please, help! I need advice here. Pretend I've knit a ridiculously large cashmere sweater. It's feeling that dire. I've invested so much emotionally in this garden. (Growing food to feed your family...it's a loaded thing, isn't it?) I don't want to put in all this work, only to then serve big heaping plates of poison.

Early spring in Utopia

Those garden maps I posted a while ago are already proving to be flexible, guideline-type things. Only March 16th and already I've done some revisions. I had planned to just do broccoli from seeds, but a cute little pack of organic local broccoli starts followed us home from the market today and took the places where the first broccoli seeds were to be sown. (I'll give the seeds a try for later sowings, as I'm planning to do succession sowing with the broccoli.)

See how cute? How could I not bring them home?

Whatsmore, the map-as-it-was allowed room for four plants, but the pack came with six. What to do? Annex the top two feet of the aisle for broccoli plants. This will mean some acrobatics when it comes time for weeding, but hey...if I screw up my back I live with a great physical therapist, so.

Here's the garden as it looks now:

Beet, carrot, chard, and spinach seeds under the dirt and hopefully soon to poke their heads out, and the new broccoli starts planted and settling into place. And a strawberry pot.

Ah, the strawberry pot. I ordered Ranier strawberry plants from Territorial and they arrived on Friday. Picked up a strawberry pot on Friday night, got the strawberries into the pot yesterday (Saturday). Territorial sent 25 plants, and there are only 12 pockets on the strawberry pot (I didn't count the plants before I bought the pot), so I took over part of the ornamental garden on the opposite side of the yard from the vegetable garden, and planted the rest of the strawberry plants on the hill we have there. So a strawberry patch amid the flowers...that pleases me. Though it's also pretty damn funny that only two weeks into my food gardening adventure I'm already stealing space from the decorative plantings. The hydrangeas are lucky I love them, because I've caught myself eyeing their spots too.

About that strawberry pot, though...I decided to trust its design, that one plant could indeed grow in each pocket and because of the vertical nature of the spacings that would give each plant room enough. But if you read the instructions that came with the plants, it doesn't seem like enough space. So I may have sacrificed 12 of those plants to a doomed strawberry pot experiment. If so, at least we'll still have the patch on the little hill.

Also, young strawberry plants look like aliens. Totally. Check it out:

Outside of our little yard, Portland is in bloom. A few examples for you that don't begin to do this city justice. I am so in love with this place:

And soon to come: Actual knitting content. I'm nearly done with the second Trilce sleeve. Should have that sweater done soon.

AND: I bought a big Mason jar today for the sourdough starter, will get that going tonight.

That is all. I hope you all had a wonderful weekend.

Mmmm...soup

Yes, I'm blogging about a totally typical (for us), completely unremarkable dinner we ate. It's come to that. But the soup really was quite good, and I really do recommend it. I found the recipe here. It was a link in Gmail. One of those things that clutter up my email window has actually proven useful. Go figure. (If only I weren't vegetarian, so I could try out some of those spam recipes.) I only made a few changes to the recipe: I used a whole cube of bullion instead of a half as suggested (but used the recommended brand, because it's my staple too.); I added two large carrots; and I left out the paprika because I didn't have any. We also had broccoli and shallots sauteed in olive oil, and a nice sourdough bread from New Seasons.

Speaking of which...I've been wanting to add sourdough to my bread-baking repertoire. I had originally planned to either order the starter online, or get it from a local bakery. Billy asked at the bread department in New Seasons, and the baker said she would give me some of their starter if I wanted to, but that she didn't recommend that. She said I would have better results making the starter myself, because starter that works in their store, with the particular ambient bacteria they have, won't necessarily respond the same way in our house, with a different ambient bacteria. I hadn't thought of that, but it does make a certain kind of sense, doesn't it? And according to my bread bible, it seems pretty damn simple to make your own sourdough starter.

I'm now on the hunt for a lidded crock to keep the starter in. My favorite home goods store didn't have one. I've found some online that look okay... I've got all these romantic ideas tied up in bread-making, though, and the starter is something that's going to live with us for a long, long, long time, so part of me thinks it's worth it to hunt down a charming rustic sorta crock for it. And then part of me says I need to get over it and just buy the big (very big) mason jar I saw at Mirador today that would work just fine. I need to decide soon, though, because I'm itching to get that starter...um...started.

In other news, someone really really really likes his new tool bench.

Here he's shouting "Hammah hammah hammah!"

Life is good, with the occasional stress or bit of free-floating anxiety tossed in to keep us on our toes. Lots (and lots and lots) of time spent playing outside. Settling into a new routine with a playgroup we like a lot. New words and new sentences popping out of the little guy every day. Going up to the next diaper size.

Trilce is growing (the body and 1/2 of the first sleeve done). Thumper is growing. The first round of garden seeds are planted and are (presumably) growing. The new novel is growing. A story I've been working on, nearing final draft.

So not much to say, but not because things are bad. It's just quiet. And quiet is good sometimes.

PS: I'm hoping to get back to posting fiction fragments next week.

half-heartedly apologizing for another pictureless entry

Glum right now and feeling guilty about wasted writing time. I had a bad writing day today. Managed to do a bit of revision on a short story, but wrote exactly one new paragraph on the novel. I spent most of my five precious hours staring at the screen, accomplishing nothing. The bad days have to happen, of course, but it sucks nonetheless to have to walk through them. Now Billy has taken Thumper again for a little bit. They're off in the jogging stroller for a run. Billy was going to go run on his own, but taking Thumper along gives me a wee bit of time to try to drag maybe a page or two out, if I'm lucky. Something to salvage the work day. Which is why I'm blogging instead. Yeah. One of those days.

The whole day has felt off-center and disjointed. Blame it on daylight savings? As good an excuse as any. I will now try to write with the 40 minutes or so I have at hand.

The scourge that is squash

Wait...so in the comments of the previous post, I'm getting the feeling that you guys suggest I scale back the zucchini a wee bit?

Point taken. I'll plant one zucchini plant (okay...sow seeds, actually, and thin back to one plant) and give it plenty of space. Ditto for the yellow squash and the acorn squash. And they'll be positioned on the outside edge as much as possible, so they can spill over to the lawn if need be.

And never fear, the mint will be potted all by its lonesome.

I finally got some time to get the first seeds sown today. Very very exciting. I was going to take a picture, but then I had to rush out to my pilates class (more on that in a minute) and now it's dark. Picture a box filled with dirt, a fence behind it. There ya go. As stuff actually starts to come up, I promise to be better about the photos.

As for pilates... The only exercise I've been able to get with any regularity since Thumper was born has been walking. I do lots and lots of that, but I haven't had any stretching or strength training of any sort, and I've really started to feel it. I'm way out of shape. I don't look it (or so I like to believe) but I certainly feel it. Weak. Weak. Weak. That c-section really took a toll. I've had good intentions of exercising at home, but I'm not very disciplined about that. And so, pilates, which I used to do but it's been ages. It felt SO good. We're working one class a week into the schedule and the budget. It's not much, but combined with the walking and the toddler-wrangling, it's a start.

Swatching for vegetables

Here are the garden maps I made this weekend. I feel like I'm going public with my wonky first knitting. My last attempt at vegetable gardening was at 6 years old, and you can imagine I had a good deal of help with it. The range of dates indicate date of sowing and expected date of harvest.

Spring

Summer

Fall

The maps are for the raised bed, which is 6' x 8'. I also plan to have containers with tomatoes, blueberries, strawberries, a fig tree (which will eventually get planted in the yard), and herbs (cilantro, basil, mint).

I haven't planted anything yet, so if I've made some grave mistake, please feel free to chime in now.

Back in the Sunday writing day coffee shop after two weeks without a writing day. Trying to work myself back into the book. Finding it to be in good shape, better than I remembered it when last I let myself skim through what I've already written. Thinking I can see ahead to the end, beginning to make out the shadowy shapes of the ending, though I'm only 128 pages into the first draft and by the time I get to page 300 or so I'm bound to find out I was wrong about that ending. But starting to see where it could all lead, starting to see how the parallel storylines will diverge, the different paths for the two main characters... The story is a living thing, a very good sign. I recognize the feel of a living, viable book the way I've learned to recognize when the bread dough has risen enough, when it dimples the right way under my fingers. It just feels right. Ready.

The first book felt this way too, when it reached the 1/3 mark. It had taken on a life of its own and all I had to do from that point was follow it and trust it. (I say "all I had to do" as if it was an easy thing. It wasn't. Not in the doing and not in the remembering. But simple. Simple doesn't always mean easy, does it?)

I meant to get the first sowing done in the garden this weekend, but yesterday morning was spent revising the garden plan, because I realized at the last moment that I hadn't properly considered spacing when I mapped out everything I want to plant. And then I planned to sow during naptime, but naptime didn't work out the way we'd hoped, and today the writing comes first. Hopefully tomorrow I can get those first seeds in. I'm planning carefully, because I want to make the best use of the 6' x 8' garden (plus a few containers) that I can, and use succession planting as best I can. The goal is a year-round garden. I'm using this book, and this book, and this one too. Fascinating stuff. Another reason the knitting is languishing. (Though the weather is now just right for Trilce as outdoor-wear, so I do need to get cracking on finishing that up.)

I'll post my garden plans soon, maybe tomorrow. PNW gardeners should feel free to chime in with advice. Non-PNW gardeners should feel free to be eaten up with envy at our four-season-gardening climate.

And now, back to work with me. Happy Sunday, all.