lolajl: March 2006 Archives

Wendy thinks this resume business card is a great idea. Here's a pic, with both sides. I used Avery Matte White Business Cards, 8471. You can use both sides, and the pack comes with instructions on how to set it up in Microsoft Word, if you don't use a business card program. Be sure to pick a font that is legible, sans-serif fonts are usually good ones to go with. Try Helvetica or Arial - Geneva is a little too wide if you're trying to pack in as much info as possible. I went with Lucinda Grande for my cards.

Sorry for the absence; I was kinda quiet last week and just spent my time catching up with blogs and other stuff in my life. Mostly I worked on my Mendocino cardigan and did some spinning. I spun up the brown romney that I'd combed a while ago. I made 2-ply and 3-ply yarns. These came out nicely. With the way I spin, the 2-ply version is going to be good for lace knitting, while the 3-ply would lead itself well for worsted knitting.

Now here are the samples that I knit up.

The one on the left is 3ply, knit with 4mm needles, and the one on the right is 3ply, knit with 3.5mm needles. Even though these look the same, the 4mm version is more drapey, which I very much like. These also have a bit of a stretch lengthwise, which will work out really good for blocking.

This one here is 2ply, knit with 4mm needles, I think. I forgot to mark it down but I don't think it really matters since the gauge may come out very close for 3.5mm needles. I'm really looking forward to picking out a nice lace pattern for this.

I've been spending time with my nephew Kai, and it's really interesting to watch him grow up. He's not yet 6 months old and already he has two bottom teeth. We thought the reason he was fussy was because his gums were bothering him, and it turns out that he was teething. Sister says she isn't ready for him to have teeth. And he's a very smart boy . . . they read to him every night. He may not quite understand the stories being read to him yet, but he sure knows what a book is. And he has lots of energy - loves to thump the floor with his feet when he is lying on his back. I'm going to have to get in shape so that I won't run out of breath chasing him around.

Soon it'll be baseball season. Now, I've never been a baseball fan, but now that we've got a team right here in good ol' DC and a design for the stadium has been selected, I guess I'd better step up to the plate. It's truly a shame, that thanks to the Baltimore Orioles team owner Peter Angelos' greed, we won't be seeing too many games locally on the Comcast cable network. You see, he wanted compensation for having a baseball team so close to Baltimore, so he was allowed to set up a network that would sell access to the Nationals' televised games. Comcast Network is balking at the price being asked for as being unreasonably high. Meanwhile, us budding Nationals fans are fuming and telling them to get on with it.

This week has been a very busy one, since I needed to keep a medical appointment (to get something checked that should be an annual checkup for women). And I attended an employment workshop that was very, very helpful. I learned of resources that I could rely on (and will take advantage of). I learned a really neat tip - create 2x3 business card where you have a mini-resume, complete with your contact info, position you're looking for, a very, very short summary of what you can do, and something about yourself personally that shows how you handle working with such and such, for instance,

I enjoy working in team environments and independently. As internet technology and standards evolve, I make a point to educate myself in new techniques for creating web applications that meet users' unique needs.

Later I plan to make a larger one, using 3x5 or 4x6. There are papers that you can get at your local office supply store to use with printers. I have a program for the Mac that I use, Business Card Composer. It's great, and I've been using it for years. I'm sure there are similar products for Windows user. There's also VistaPrint. I used their service before I got the program. The prices are very reasonable, and you can even get free cards if if you stick with certain templates and a set range of items like address, email, etc, and put up with VistaPrint's advertising. If you're financially challenged and looking for a job, this is a good place to go to.

Okay, moving right along . . . I have been doing some knitting in the meantime. Here's a pic of one of the Mendocino front, It's not quite in focus but it'll give you an idea. I finished it yesterday; I decided to cut 3 cm from the specified length since I'm short. I love this pattern and I can't wait to see how it turns out. And the yarn is really nice to work with as well, even if it is a bit on the stiff side due to mill spinning residuals not being washed out. I threw in the other swatch with my laundry so I could test the claim about its being machine washable. Yes, the claim is mostly true . . . but you'll also get a bit of the felted effect, even if the stitches remain distinct. Looking at the swatch side-by-side, one can definitely detect a difference. This would be a good yarn for patterns where you want a slightly felted appearance.

I've cast on for the other front and hoping that knitting this will go just as fast. I want to get back to the Flyaway Vest so that I can finish it before Pascha; there's 6 more weeks to go and you know how time can fly when you're caught up with the daily life routine.

Here's a pic of the 2ply skein that I spun up. It comes to being about sportweight in size, definitely not thick enough for the Eris cardigan. I'll have to spin up another bobbin so that I can try a 3ply version and see how it comes out. If it is still not quite the right weight, I'm going to have to go up in whorl size and make a conscious effort to not to spin so fine . . . how easy can that be?

Because it will take a while for me to finish Flying Vest (despite my speediness, it does go slowly when you deal with 2 colors at the same time) and I'm still in a snit over not being able to get a good gauge for FLAK, I've decided to start work on the Medocino Cardigan, which can be found in "The Pacific Coast Highway", now only found on eBay with stratospheric pricing (I, of course, dutifully bought it when it was released at Yarns International several years ago).

Downstairs in the rec room, there are two bags of Crestari yarn which were bought at MDSWF several years ago, to be used for a blanket, which has yet to be made. There are two colors, dark blue and forest green. I chose to use forest green, and knit a swatch, which was right on gauge using 4mm needles, with 19sts/4". It's a bit stiff right out of the skein, but when washed is quite softer with a bit of drape. This is 100% wool, and on the label it says that this can be hand or machine washed. I'm kind of skeptical about the machine wash part. I have another swatch which I knitted up using 5mm needle (I didn't like the way it looked, plus the gauge was not on the mark for the pattern).

I started the right front last night, and now as I type this, I'm up to 9 inches. How's this for instant gratification? I should be able to get quite a bit more later tonight when I go with B for a meet-and-greet at a homeowner's association meeting tonite at someone's residence in the community. Pictures up either tomorrow evening or Sunday evening.

Today's supposed to be warm and sunny, with the temps in the 70s. It should be a really nice day to take Kai out for a walk when I go over later today. He loves to go for walks because he falls asleep . . . LOL! And it looks like it will be nice and warm next week as well. So I need to make a to-do list for spring cleaning - there's a lot of work that need to be done around the house and outside and as long as I'm not in a 8-4 job, I might as well use the time to get some work done around the house. Speaking of jobs, I'm going to check on the status of my case transfer to another counselor (the one I have now is not doing a good job of handling my case) later today and be very firm about the need for expedited processing. After all, it's my tax dollars paying for this; shouldn't it be working for me when I need it?

I'm making progress, slowly but surely. I had to rip out about an inch when I discovered that I'd gotten thrown off the color sequence. Two colors are close enough that when viewed in dim rooms, one can be mistaken for other. So I'm thankful for my Ott-Light lamp that I keep by my bedside on the floor. I'd like to put it on my little sidetable, but right now there's, ahem, quite a bit of clutter on top of it so the floor it is. Umm . . . that tells me something - I need to clear it off so that I can make room for it. And start dreaming about an elegant sidetable that will go well with the elegant mahogany bed that will be paid for by that $350mil lottery winnings that so rightfully belong to us.

This past weekend I tried an recipe for blini. This is a Russian dish, much like crepes on which you put melted butter, sour cream, chives, smoked fish, caviar, honey, maple syrup, whatever you can think of that will taste good with the blini. You can even use jam to satisfy your sweet tooth. I looked through my cookbooks for a recipe.

It's really unbelievable how there are so many recipes out there. Some are overkill - you include sour cream in the batter - can you say heart attack in the making? Some require the batter to be raised 3 times, taking 5 or 6 hours (do you really want to make your children wait that long to be fed?); some use only white flour, and others use only buckwheat flour (now, that's an adventure in its own. You won't find it at the regular grocery store; you got to go over to Whole Foods and elbow your way through the crowd of yuppies, some who seem to be perpetually in a foul mood).

But finally, I settled on a simple recipe from "Food for Paradise", a cookbook compiled by The Orthodox Church of Saint John the Russian. This is a great cookbook for those who keep the fast, such as the Great Lent, which starts this week for us Orthodox Christians. There's a chapter for festive foods, and I found the recipe in here. So, here's the recipe, in my own words:

I should notice that the amount of sugar was inadvertedly left out, so I took a look at other recipes and made a guess based on the proportions.

Blini

1 package dry yeast (or, 2 1/2 tablespoon if you have a jar of yeast)
1 c milk
3 egg yolks
6 tbl melted butter
1/2 c warm water (about 110F)
1 1/2 c flour
1/2 tsp salt
3 tsp sugar
3 egg whites

You can either use all white, or all buckwheat, flour. The suggested proportion if you want to use white and buckwheat is 2/3 white and 1/3 buckwheat (hmm, recipe says 1 1/2 c flour; the proportion adds up to 1 c - I guess you'll have to tinker around with this). Preheat the oven and keep on warm; put in a platter that is oven-safe and put foil on top as you will be covering the blini as you put in the cooked ones on the platter.

Dissolve yeast in warm water and let stand for 5 minutes. Mix yeast, milk, flour, yolks, sugar, and melted butter in a bowl, using a mixer. Pour into another bowl and let rise for about 2 hours (make sure there's plenty of room in bowl; it will nearly double in size). Beat egg whites until stiff and fold into batter. Heat up a griddle (cast iron pan if you're fortunate to have one) and brush melted butter, or vegetable oil. Drop the batter (you can go from dollar size if you are intending to serve these as appetizer, or go up to regular pancake or crepe size). Turn over when side is lightly browned and brown the other side as well.

It's very easy to double, or even triple, this recipe. Serve with fixings that I've described above. Yummy!!! The batter keeps very well in the refrigerator and I've been told that blinis freeze well, too. So, I'm going to cook up the rest of the batter, wrap these up and put into the freezer. This is going to be a regular family dish, perfect for a quick dinner (and perfect as well for on the Aga stove).