After much consideration, I have decided to knit down my stash this year. It’s not a decision born out of economic necessity or a champagne-soaked New Year’s Resolution. It’s a challenge. It’s a change. It’s … going to keep me the hell out of the yarn store.

I should explain.

My local yarn store is 95% amazing. It has a wide selection of fiber, a gorgeous color palate, a decent selection of books and it just began carrying the much-sought-after Malabrigo this past fall. My LYS is ten minutes away from my office, and for the past few years, I’ve made it a bolt-hole, a place where I could escape when work was getting a little to liberal with the morale crushing. My MO was to pop in, say hello to whichever lady was running the till and then spend forty minutes picking up and putting down skein after skein, until I had made a decision and it was time to go.

I liked to take my friends — knitters and non-knitters — to the LYS and present it to them like Ali Baba’s cave of wonders, stuffed to the rafters with bright jewels.

I really, really liked my yarn store. (Emphasis on the liked.)

It had its foibles, the LYS. There was the one yarn lady who had to pick on any flaw she found in a finished product of mine. I think her goal was to shake a little sense into me about careless mistakes, but she went about it with just a dash of condescension. “Well, if you can’t be bothered to properly weave in your ends, you really shouldn’t be bothered with even trying.” But hey, y’know, she was rarely there and she’d go out of her way to be polite if I turned up at the shop with my mother. I always put it down to her being peeved by my relative youth, and that she had written me off as a hipster knitter, someone who followed a trend blindly and wasn’t going to graduate from worsted-weight scarfs.

And then they hired the other one.

I don’t know who this woman is, or how long she’s really worked there. She cropped up on my radar towards the end of the summer. She didn’t just go out of her way to be picky with her clients, she went out of her way to be downright mean to them. It got so bad that every time I saw her, all I could think of was, “Oh, no. Not Belittling Belinda.”

I don’t know what her name actually is, but Belittling Belinda has stuck. Every visit to the LYS since August has featured her brand of sneering customer service, which features her saying things like, “There’s no such thing as a 7″ double pointed needle” or “I’ve never heard of that yarn, so I just assume you’re making it up” to women who just wanted a little guidance. To be helpful would be to go out of her way.

After my first encounter with Belittling Belinda, I always tried to shut her down with quick and dirty transactions: here’s my frequent shopper card, my debit card, my driver’s license (since she’d always card me, as if I were a knock-kneed seventeen-year-old McLovin’, trying to buy booze with a fake ID). I wouldn’t make chit-chat, the way I did with the other women behind the counter. I’d try to keep my face arranged in a neutral, but pleasant, expression. It wouldn’t deter her. She’d call my choice of color tacky, or make a snide remark about how the button I was buying being “a little too arty” for the likes of her.

I couldn’t avoid her. She was always there.

The last straw came on December 23. I needed one skein of yarn for a last-minute project. One skein of Mission Falls 1824 Merino, one of my favorite workhorses. I found it and queued up to pay. In front of me was a novice knitter looking for a little guidance, and unfortunately, she got stuck with Belinda.

I had enough time to study the woman ahead of me that I made up a little biography for her: she went to law school in the early eighties, had a daughter and a nasty divorce, decided in the early 1990s that she wanted to do something more with her life, and went back to school for a Ph.D. in linguistics or Latin American politics. Taught at UNM or CNM or St. John’s for a few years, until her daughter graduated from high school and went off to one of the minor Ivies, which is when she decided to learn how to knit — not just as a hobby, but as a philosophical and political statement and a chance to take part in a sisterhood of crafters dating back to the Middle Ages. Also, she had noticed one of the Flying Star Stitch and Bitches and thought it’d be a good way to get out of the house during the week. So she learned to knit. (Seriously, I could tell all of this from her wire-rimmed glasses, salt-and-pepper hair and the way she clutched at her project book.)

And she had come to the LYS to support local business, and because someone had said the ladies there were helpful and patient with novice knitters. So she had picked out her project — an ambitious sweater — and had gone to the yarn store for help. And instead, she got Belinda.

Belinda scanned the pattern and said, “You have got to be joking. This is the second thing you’re going to make? Yeah, you may as well give up and go home.” When the woman said she was determined to give it a try, Belinda sighed and started throwing out as much technical jargon as she could muster. “Well, you’re gonna need at least a 42-inch circ, and a set of DPNs, unless you decide you want to go the Magic Loop route, and of course you don’t even understand a word I’m saying, do you? Do you even know what kind of yarn you want to work with?”

The woman held up a skein of Cascade 220 wool in a nice shade of oatmeal. “No,” Belinda said, shaking her head. “No, that’s worsted and you want an aran yarn. And you don’t even know what that means, do you? No, because this is your first project and you thought you’d go into this headfirst without bothering to learn a darn thing.”

The woman said something in her defense like, “well, that’s why I’m here.” Belinda’s response. “Well, you’re wasting my time and yours.” She then shooed the woman to the side so as to ring me up. “Can you believe the nerve of some people?” she asked. But I was trying not to say a word. I was horrified at her treatment of this woman, and I was afraid if I opened my mouth, I wouldn’t be able to close it again until I was forcibly shown the door. I got out my cards and my identification and handed over my one skein of Mission Falls, a fine wool produced in Canada.

“Mission Falls?” she asked. “Do you know you’re just taking money out of the hands of hardworking American farmers by buying from them.”

That did it. My cool was completely gone. I put down my card and my cash, counted to ten in three languages, and then I loaded for bear. I let her know that it was not her job to be picking on my yarn purchases, that her opinion, when not solicited, should not come into play during the transaction. I let her know that in my case, I was happy to buy Mission Falls, because Mission Falls kicks all sort of ass, but that I was also sorry that I wasn’t buying Australian merino, since one of my friends just happened to run a merino farm in New South Wales. I also let her know that from a professional standpoint, I was not impressed with her level of service in a retail position and that if I hadn’t needed one more skein to finish one more Christmas present, I would be walking out of the store empty handed. I let her know that instead of having to show off her incredible wealth of knowledge, and wield it like a cudgel with the novice knitter, she should have said something along the lines of, “Oh, that looks like an ambitious project, however, we’re offering a sweater class in the new year, and it might be the best way to transition.” She could have been helpful, but instead she was cruel, and I was freaking tired of putting up with it.

She kind of stared at me open-mouthed, and I was glad that I had just enough cash to cover the purchase.

And that was it Internet. I was through. After I left, I made a fist-shaking, Scarlet O’Hara oath that, as God as my witness, I wasn’t going back in there again.

And I won’t. Not for a long time. I have a lot of yarn squirreled away, enough yarn to keep me busy for months. So begins Knitdown 2010.

You would probably notice how, inevitably, in the comments section of those particular brands of LadyBlog, there would be the chorus of, “that’s great but — or should I say ‘butter?’” followed by 83 women chiming in about how Julia Was Great for Feminism, But I Would So Get Fat if I Tried to Cook Like That (Butter, Don’t Do It), or alternately, She Was Revolutionary For Her Time, But Alice Waters Says I Should Eat Local, And Besides, Julia’s Recipes Are Kind of Fussy (Also, Did I Mention the Butter?).

To which I hold up tonight’s meal as proof that those women are doing themselves a great disservice by not cracking open the copy of MtAoFC that Amazon shipped them three weeks ago (when we were belly-deep in the J&J hype) and make cream of mushroom soup.

Before today, on the off-chance that my mind flittered to the notion of mushroom soup, it went straight to the red-and-white can of condensed white glop that was added to some casserole recipe before the potato chips, but after the green chile. It was a base, never to be eaten by itself.

But the Capt’n likes cream of mushroom soup, and there it was, the fourth recipe in the book, and it was rainy today and I have this new green Le Creuset pot just aching to be put to use and what the hell? Soup.

An hour later, we had soup. It was amazing. It tasted just like cream of mushroom soup, but in its platonic ideal. There was no need for it to be baked with tuna and potato chips with a crunchy noodle crust. This soup had no time for such plebeian froofery. This soup is like the self-assured geek: a loner who knows that lesser folk have to have the crunch and the tuna, but this soup, this geek can stand alone and be taken straight up and be praised for it.

(I could be reaching.)

It was good, fine soup. I was impressed.

And yes, it had butter in it. It also had heavy cream, chicken stock and some onion. It also had flavor. And that’s when I started feeling bad for the LadyBlog chorus. It’s a mixture of pity and frustration, more like. Pity, because by turning up their noses at a perceived passing trend (I mean, dear lord, the movie has made made $85 worldwide! That’s so … plebeian!) and saying redonkulous things like “butter gives me cellulite” these women are cutting themselves out of the opportunity to have the satisfaction of making (and eating) a simple, yet profoundly tasty dish. Frustrating, because butter doesn’t cause cellulite.

And, really, Julia Child was a freakin’ member of the OSS. She was a spy. Who doesn’t want to get down with some of her recipes?

And butter is good. There, I said it.

(But this soup is so much better.)

So that happened.

I’ve had this monster for about a month and I am a bad, bad person for not writing about it sooner, but hell, I had this brand spankin’ new Janome DC 3018 computerized marvel taking up my time and the point of hobbies is to spend time away from the internet, right?

Buying the beast was a one-and-done, and I’m almost (almost) ashamed by the lack of shopping around. But when the saleswoman proceeded to run eight layers of denim through the floor model with nary a snag, I was hooked. She reeled me in when she knocked an additional $150 off the price tag and threw in a spare food, five extra bobbins, two spools of thread and (and!) was nice to me.

Bob’s Sew and Vac has a customer for life.

I did what you’re supposed to do with a brand new machine: test runs, project completions, ritualistic blood sacrifices. It hums along, pleased as punch.

The old Singer has been relegated to a corner of the workroom until we can think of something to do with it. I’m reluctant to sell it. I wouldn’t wish that foul craftsmanship on anyone.

And speaking of foul craftsmanship!

In May, I will be inflicting my shoddy wares on the unsuspecting public!

The wonderful women of Hip Stitch have asked me to be their featured artist for the month of May. They’ll be showing off (and, ahem, selling) some of my handmade items, which will act as the soft launch of the D’oh!Mestic homewears-and-leggings* line.

The above photo is just a taste, just a hint of what I’ve been up to. I can’t wait to show off the project in full, but I want to built a little buzz, whet a few appetites and take some decent pictures in natural light. But believe me when I say that it’s going to be a good five seconds worth of awesome, and you might just want to call dibs now. Local readers are encouraged to line up starting Thursday, April 30. (What, we’re all geeks here. Geeks do line events.) Out-of-towners will either have to book their tickets now or wait until we roll out D’oh!Mestic, The Shopping Experience, sometime in June.

Or, y’know, not.

*I am kidding about the leggings. I am not Lindsay Lohan.

Hey, look! I finished another quilt, and this time it even has a binding and everything.

I wish that I had a couple of more days to really photograph the heck out of this sucker and take it around to the parents’ and show it off and take it to the Awesome Fabric Shop and show it off, but it’s a baby quilt for a colleague who goes on her leave tomorrow and we’re not close enough for me to do a post-delivery delivery.

Well, I do dawdle.

Tomorrow, I will give the quilt and the Sock Monkey away, which might explain why he looks a little forlorn.

Deets
The fabric is “Five Funky Monkeys” in cream from Moda. The binding and back piece is “Five Funky Monkeys Dots” in brown and red from the same line. Both were designed by Erin Michael. The brown was just plain ol’ brown cotton broadcloth.

Each patch was cut 12″x12″ and the binding was cut at 3″. It took about two weeks of puttering to complete the project. It’s my second quilt ever, and the first with a proper binding, but I may have said that already.

I hope the mama likes it. I’m honestly worried about it.

I know, I know, you’re stumbling over the “topped with coleslaw.” To the uninitiated, it’s like slathering chocolate cake with ketchup — stomach-churningly gross. But life is an adventure, nobody likes a picky eater and my mother always taught me to respect the regional cuisine, so put some damn coleslaw on your chili dogs already.

Or not, because this post really isn’t about having a come-to-Jesus moment with you over the slaw.

This post is about the most fantastic hot dog chili, which is especially timely, given tomorrow’s high holy holiday of Super Bowl Sunday.

All week I had planned on a Friday night where I would come home, open a cold Guinness and make up a mess of chili dogs before settling down on the couch to watch the new X-Files movie.

There were some problems, of course, like where I managed to leave the grocery store without hot dogs or buns, and, um, barbecue sauce for the chili.

And yeah, I remembered that last item just a few minutes before Adam returned from the emergency store run for the hot dogs and buns.

It was a stressful week.

But I am resourceful, sort of, and I have the Gourmet Big Yellow Book of Answers, so I consulted the Big Yellow Book of Answers and came up with their recipe for barbecue sauce and then realized that hell, a little modification would make a fine, straight up chili, which I present to you now.

3 dried red chiles
1 red onion diced
4 cloves garlic, diced
1 14.5 oz can diced tomatoes (drained)
1 2″ length of ginger, minced
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup orange juice
1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce
1/4 cup cider vinegar
1/4 cup soy sauce
2 Tbs dried mustard
2 tps cumin
Olive oil
1 pound ground beef
Salt and pepper to taste

In a cast iron skillet, toast the red chiles, turning them when the get hot and the skin color has darkened somewhat. (I did it more off the smell — when it starts smelling like autumn in Albuquerque, turn those suckers). Once toasted, place the chiles in a bowl and cover with hot water just off the boil and allow to soak for five minutes.

In a large pot, throw in the diced tomatoes and about two tablespoons of olive oil and a couple of pinches of salt and let simmer on medium heat.

Meanwhile, slice up the onions and throw into the cast iron skillet with another couple of tablespoons of olive oil and cook until the onion is soft and nearly translucent. Add in the garlic and the ginger and cook on medium low for another couple of minutes, and then add to the pot with the tomatoes.

Dice up the chiles and add them to the tomato mixture.

Throw in the rest of the ingredients, give a good stir and allow to simmer.

Going back to the cast iron skillet, throw in the ground beef and brown, seasoning with garlic powder, onion powder and red chile powder. Once the beef is browned through, add to the tomato mixture and allow to simmer on low heat. At this point, taste the chili. If it doesn’t have quite enough heat, throw in a little red pepper, just to kick up the capsaicin content to reasonable levels.

Add in the hot dogs, pushing them to the bottom of the pot and covering with chili. Allow to cook for five to seven minutes longer. Serve with mustard and coleslaw.

New feature! Friday Flaws is designed to be a space where I point out irregularities in my projects as an act of — I was going to say “love,” but that comes off as way too dippy — respect for my imperfections and impatience?

The first flaw I’m highlighting comes from a baby quilt I’ve worked on this week. I have one set of blocks that don’t quite line up, and I’ve decided to live with it. It’s a quilt for a baby. Just as an infant is incapable of judging its parents for not owning a 60″ flat screen, so (goes the logic, that) this particular infant cannot judge Anonymous Quilt Maker (me) for her inability to line up blocks.

I suppose I could rip out the blocks and repress and resew and re-rip and re-repress and re-resew until I had perfect alignment, but that does not fall within the D’oh!Mestic experience. We’re not aiming for groundbreaking design or craftsmanship which would leave Martha breathless. We’re (and of course, by we, I mean me) aiming for handmade objects which could survive at least three rounds in the washing machine, maybe, if the machine was set to delicate. And also, flaws.

We like our flaws and we embrace them.

It goes from being busy to being dead to being JAMPACKEDINSANITY before coasting into another lull. Right now, we’re in a JPI period, and I can tell my stress levels have been jacked by the way my jaw aches from being clenched, by the basketball-sized stress hump that’s popped up between my shoulder blades and by the increase in off-the-clock craftiness.

I admit that I’ve been doing the rounds at lunch — in the last week, I’ve hit the yarn shop, the woefully undercapitalized but wonderful fabric shop and the Fascist Fabric Boutique, all. I bought engineering paper and colored pencils and started sketching, and in the evenings, I’ve been up in the sewing room/photo room, not doing a whole lot outside of pressing fabric.

Oh my god, there is something enormously therapeutic in pressing fabric.

Anyway.

Last night I decided that the kitchen cafe curtain had to go. It was a Pottery Barn 75% refuge from five years ago. It was yellow and brown and kind of ugly.

See?

OOog-lay.

I wanted to replace it with something cheerful, but not perky — or lord forbid, cutesy.

Let’s face it. I straight up wanted skulls.

Oh, look. Skulls!

The Fascist Fabric Boutique came through with this Alexander Henry pattern. It took a half a yard and a half an hour to whip a new curtain, which I like a bit more than the last curtain, though Adam’s still not sold. It’s cheerful. It’s slightly morbid. It . . . still doesn’t go with our ugly tract housing cabinets.

But it’ll do for now.

The cat is sprawled across my lap and spilling onto my keyboard. She’s purring like a motorboat, with her left front leg out in front, paw hovering over the escape key. A travel mug of tea is shoved precariously between my knee and a pillow. The Capt’n’s in his chair, perpendicular to mine, with his laptop open to a car website.

It’s just another mundane Monday night, though “mundane” might be playing things down somewhat — there is a cheesecake in the oven, and how often does that happen on a Monday?

Actually, strike mundane. This is no ordinary Monday night. This is the last night of the George W. Bush administration. This is the night before Barack Obama becomes the combo breaker. Sure, we’re sitting in the living room loafing around, but it feels momentous and important, which could explain the cheesecake.

In that stack was Warrant’s comeback attempt, although they’d had the foresight to dub themselves Warrant 97, as if it were going to totally distract from that 80s hairband. The sound was like this: “Warrant? Us? Not us. We are not the ‘Cherry Pie’ guys, even though we totally sound like them. We are totally different and way more grungy. I mean, it’s 1996! Grunge is still totally in, right? Where’s my Aqua Net?”

I talk about this because I made a cherry pie and, because I am a predictable creature, I had “Cherry Pie” running through my head for the better part of twenty-four hours. I made a cherry pie. A sweet cherry pie. A sweet cherry pie with a lattice top — another first. Sing it, Warrant.

It was decent as my pies go. The filling was grade-A perfect and more or less the same recipe as my apple pie. I’m guessing that most fruit pies are a variation of sugar, lemon juice and corn starch enveloped in two flaky crusts. Nom. Pie. The lattice crust was my first and the strips were less rectangles and more rhombuses, but the Capt’n has since bestowed me with an engineer’s ruler for lattices lines straight and true, and I’ve promised myself to pick up a fluted dough cutter the next time I’m near Williams Sonoma.

Oh, and mental note — tent the pie with foil at the 25 minute mark, not the 40.

The Capt’n was totally down with the pie and then asked what I’d put in it. I rattled of the ingredients and then we discussed the ingredients list of canned cherry pie filling — two types of corn syrup, red dye #40 and a random acid to keep that red dye red — and how it took me about the same amount of time to make this pie from scratch that it would take the anonymous middle American to pop open a can of this cherry filling/topping concoction and slather it between two slices of pre-made dough. And while I know and you know that it’s not the case, not really, I still don’t understand why someone wouldn’t take the extra ten minutes and make the filling from scratch. It’s so much more satisfying, gratifying, and healthy. Cherries. Sugar. Lemon juice. Corn starch.

I mean, it’s pie. Pie, by the very nature of its being, equal a special occasion, because there is pie! Why not take that extra ten minutes? Why not? Why not?

The Capt’n reminded me that I’m an odd one in the world — that I care about taking the time out to do things from the base up, but that I tend to do things in a lovely, half-assed manner, that I’m not Martha Stewart and have no aspirations in that direction, but that he understands why my delicate kitty sensibilities can be thrown out of whack by the casual, slipshodness of everyday life, and that’s why he loves me.

Or at least, that’s what I think he was saying. His mouth was filled with pie.

It’s been overcast this weekend, and it finally started to rain this morning, and while I wouldn’t go so far as to say I find the dark and slightly dank inspiring, I will tell you that I’ve always liked the way rain-splotched light looks in my kitchen. It’s soft and cool — rare commodities for New Mexican light. Rainy days soften the edges and lend a bit of gentrified glamor. Well, maybe “gentrified” isn’t the right word, but you get my meaning. Nothin’ like a bit of an overcast to give my kitchen and my cupcakes a touch of that Muffin-in-the-Aspirational-Lifestyle-Magazine feel.

These are Devil’s Food jobbies with a banana cream cheese icing. The cake itself is standard — any recipe you dig up for Devil’s Food will do — it’s the icing I’m bragging on. It came out runny, lumpy and tasting like heaven. I’m not quite sure why I haven’t run across this flavor before; it seems like the sort of thing the local cupcake shops would be down with.

And another thing to brag on — this is the first time in the new year that I’ve felt well enough to bake. The Capt’n and I were both felled with a Milwaukeeian Death Cold over the holidays. I went to bed on Christmas feeling kind of stuffy and woke up the day after New Year’s with a chapped nose and no memory of the preceding week, with the exception of one blurred recollection of me standing in the kitchen in mismatched pajamas trying to replicate a hot toddy for the Capt’n, who couldn’t do much past coughing.

Evil, evil virus.

Banana Cream Cheese Icing
8 oz. package of cream cheese
1 stick of butter, softened and cubed
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 ripe banana
3 cups sifted powdered sugar

In a mixer, beat banana until mushy. Add butter, vanilla and cream cheese, and beat until fluffly. Slowly add powdered sugar and beat until smooth. For frosting (rather than dribblely icing) add two to three extra cups of sugar.

The Capt’n's Hot Toddy
In a mug, combine two packets of instant hot apple cider, two tablespoons of honey, several drops of lemon juice, a jigger of rum (optional) and hot water. Stir until everything dissolved and add cinnamon stick. Serve to grateful invalid