kit

Apropos of everything, the article of the day at wikipedia today was kit. As the term relates to association football, or soccer, kit refers to “the standard equipment and attire worn by players.” The article details the history of jerseys and colors and emblems, and it’s all quite fascinating. And timely as I have spent the past two days up to my eyeballs in gathering uniform orders for Simon’s soccer team—just one of my many team-manager duties. According to the article, the term kit should not be confused with strip. The strip includes the jersey, shorts, and socks, while the kit encompasses those things plus shin guards and shoes (or “boots”), as well as details like colors, logos, and numbers.


The Blackhawks’ U9 boys kit consist of a white jersey, a black jersey, black shorts, and black socks. Plus, I had to assign numbers. Last summer, I numbered the team with our assigned range, 14-24. There must have been some logic to these particular numbers, though I didn’t ask at the time. In theory, the boys can wear their jerseys for two years. But, the boys don’t stay with their same team from season to season, especially as boys move up an age group. So, I’ve got a handful of players who came to the team with their fall numbers, none of which fall in between 14 and 24. For those who need new uniforms, I’ve been given 41-49, but I am to avoid 44 and 48 since boys on other teams already have them. Somehow it all worked out, but I feel a headache creeping up just thinking about it now.

At any rate, go read the article on kits and click on some of the other links. We’re eating, drinking, sleeping soccer at our house, all of which imbuing me with super nostalgic for England, where I couldn’t swing a cat without hitting soccer…on TV, with my mates.

introducing...yarn stash

When I first learned to knit, eighteen years ago, I vowed that I would only work on one project at a time. Why?

1. Knitting can be expensive, especially if you’re making an adult-size sweater, which often requires upward of 12 skeins of yarn. A skein of yard can run from $8 to $30. Yes, a skein. You do the math.

2. Current stashes in other pursuits include more books than I will be able to read in my lifetime. By comparison, eighteen years ago, I owned only a fraction of the books that I now own. The last time we moved, we had over 50 boxes of books. The first time I moved, from my college apartment to my post-college apartment, I had two boxes. Although the inventory (for insurance purposes!) is far from complete, I'll err on the side of caution and say that my personal library holds 2000 books.

3. I love my mother, but I strive, daily, not to become my her. It’s probably too late, but still, a girl can hope. My mother is an accomplished seamstress (what an old-fashioned term!), and I envy her ability to knock off a garment within a few days. In high school, she sewed 80s power suits so I could look intimidating to rival debate teams. I owe some of my success to her! When she built her dream house she had a laundry room that also served as her sewing studio, with amazing natural lighting and loads of cabinets for storing bolts of fabric and bins of patterns and other sewing notions. It didn’t take long to fill those cabinets with stacks of fabric for countless projects. Then she branched out of the sewing room to a closet that had floor to ceiling shelves as then undedicated to any particular purpose. These shelves seemed tailor-made for housing her fabric stash. Projects backed up to infinity. This would would never happen to me (see #2).

All of that said, thanks to a small discount for enrolling in a class, as well as an opportunity to shop The Yarnery's annual sale pre-sale, which coincided with my last knitting class, I have recently acquired a yarn stash. I believe this earns me capital-k Knitter status. I offer no apologies and I am completely unashamed. Since finishing John’s sweater and taking the class on finishing, I have been bitten by an overwhelming need to do creative work, specifically to knit more often. And, I figure, to knit more, I have to have some yarn to choose from.

My plan is to knit more often throughout the year and not just during the winter. The only way I'll be able to knit during the hot, hot days of a midwestern summer is by taking on smaller projects, such as hats, scarves, and mittens. I have my eye on some really neat one- or two-skein patterns, some of which will make wonderful gifts for family and friends. Additionally, I'd like to experiment with yarns in different textures and weights. Pardon the really fuzzy photo...I guess each of my yarns—Lamb's Pride bulky (the color range is pretty amazing, making it difficult to choose), Jo Sharp rare comfort infusion kid mohair, luscious hand-dyed Malabrigo worsted, some fun multicolored dk weight skeins, and a few Rowan yarns, Cocoon in a lovely celadon—possibly the softest yarn I've ever touched—and Cashsoft Classic dk in a mossier green.

what do you stash?

a day in the park

Back a few weekends ago—Easter weekend, to be precise—I traveled to Watertown, little family in tow. It’s inevitable that at some point during our visit with my parents, we will take a long walk in Memorial Park, a county park abutting their property. The park is small, but its beauty is unfettered. Okay, the buckthorn strangles healthy roots of almost every plant, and my parents work very hard to see that the park is properly maintained. Once you look past the results of the upkeep, which my mother is quick to point out, you see the souvenirs of time and the elements. These are the things in nature that move me the most.

Star. I would love to have counted the rings in this sawed-off branch.

Twisted. How long did it take for these branches to intermingle?

Wispy. Without leaves, trees look so crazy...and a little scary.

Smooth. Roots worn satiny and gnarled, like arthritic hands, by lake waves and wind.

open call for music

The weather is getting warmer again, though very windy over the past few days, and I’m preparing for my inaugural bike ride of the year. For the most part, I’m looking for the arm warmers and putting air in the tires. But, more important, I need to set up my tunes. Yes, I know it’s somewhat unsafe to wear earbuds while riding in traffic, but I stick to bike lanes and dedicated trails. Plus music is really necessary to stay motivated while I’m exercising—how else would one make it through a spinning, aerobics, or yoga class.

Here’s last year’s playlist. So far, I’ve got a few songs from recent CD purchases—King Kahn, The Black Keys, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, U2, and The BPA—but I’m looking for more.

What songs motivate you to finish climbing that exercise hill? What songs just generally kick ass?

doing

bailing out the house
purging all the crap, organizing the good and useful items

reading
delicate edible birds (stories by Lauren Groff), fatally flaky (culinary mystery by Diane Mott Davidson), the other side of the island (YA speculative fiction by the incomparable Allegra Goodman), animal, vegetable, miracle (nonfiction by Barbara Kingsolver)

listening
new Yeah Yeah Yeahs'a album, It's Blitz, adoring the first two tracks, as well as acoustic versions of others. Yup, I totally buy into the cult of Karen O. And, the single "Zero" is the purest homage to 80s synth pop that I've ever heard. Check out the video (embedding disabled) Channeling Chrissy Hynde??

eating
launched burger of the week

exercising
yoga, twice—sometimes three—times a week practice at CorePower studio in St. Paul, heated (85 degrees)

parenting
monitoring homework and getting back into respectably earlier bedtimes (the boys and the parents, it’s harder than you’d think). Since spring break in early April, we’ve been way out of synch on these things, and have recently introduced weeknight soccer practices to further foul up schedules.

researching
doors and windows, we need to replace some rotting window frames and warped mechanisms, as well as the damaged door, and we need to upgrade some seriously energy deficient doors. these aren't the kind of sexy home renovations I live for...just that basic home maintenance shit that costs a fortune anyway.

celebrating
April is our busiest birthday month of the year (John, Winston, Krista, Dave, Sarah, Jill, Anders, Ruhi, and my mom)

marveling
buds are unfurling, which I find so magical…how do they know to do that?

knitting homework

Last night, I had a major cram session to complete a knitting assignment for the second session of a three-part class I’m taking at my local yarn shop, The Yarnery. I swear, this is the best homework I have ever had.

Finishing is the knitting term for putting the pieces of a project together, such as sewing together the seams of a sweater front and back or knitting the collar on a sweater. I have knit countless sweaters over the past 18 years, but I have never felt confident about my finish work. The last sweater I knit, which was flawless in every other respect, had my nerves wracked as I tried to sew it together. At the end of the day, I’m pretty pleased with how the sweater turned out—the bulky yarn certainly was very forgiving. But, if I’m going to call myself a Knitter and engage in some of the projects I have my eye on, then I need to come to terms with finish work.

Led by a local knitting luminary, the class has been awesome. For the most part, I am a self-taught knitter, using a glossy book with wonderful illustrations as a reference to every new technique I have needed to learn, as well as a refresher between projects. And guess what I’ve discovered during the course of the class? That I put together sweaters exactly the way you’re supposed to. My book has served me well! But, I certainly don’t know everything, and I’m glad to learn some new tricks. After all, as my guru Theresa Gaffney says, you need to have a variety of tools and know when to use them. Which really means that I need to do more knitting.



For the class, we’ve knit the front, back, and sleeves for a cardigan—wait for this…the cardigan is for a stuffed bear. The small scale lent itself well to knitting up quickly but it’s also a bit of a struggle to sew together. When the edges roll, which is their want, you’re left with not much to hold onto. Sewing together a bear cardigan has been, well, a bit of a bear. Pictured above is a teeny tiny, itty bitty sleeve for the bear cardigan. I'm using a scrumptious superwash merino wool from Karabella that is machine washable, and knit up easily, even on needles that were too long for the tiny project.

Each of the ladies in my class have arrived with a tote bag, burgeoning with yarn skeins and gear. One woman even pulled out an intarsia sweater she's working on, and it was intricate and beautiful and I coveted it. But, I'm trying to, as my yoga instructor encourages, "take my yoga practice off the mat," and resist the temptation to compare myself to the other Knitters in my class. One session remains, and I still feel far from confident of my skills. I know I simply need more practice.

phone old school

I haven't decided yet whether this is the coolest product I've seen, or if it's just silly. A retro phone handset—the likes of which went out of style in the 1970s—with an adapter for your cell phone. Makes sense if, like me, you despise conducting conversations longer than a few minutes on tiny cell phones. I love the colors. You can purchase them here and here and straight from the source.

Just one question: where do you store the handset when you're out and about? The handset seems somewhat incompatible with the simplicity of keeping your cell phone in your front pocket. Another question: Will purses become ridiculously huge again?

Image courtesy of Neiman Marcus

spring cleaning

Last night, John and I watched an MSNBC documentary about a woman with a form of OCD that manifests itself in hording. She collects junk, the neighbors’ trash, and food thrown out by groceries stores because the expiration dates have passed. Repulsive and compelling at once, the documentary was directed by the subject’s daughter and details the steps that were taken to get this woman some help, especially as the city was threatening her with eviction. Her attachment to the trash in her house was so strong that she felt her sons, who had been enlisted to help clean out the house, were robbing her. As the sons and daughter waded through the detritus, they found a few dead rats and tons of rat feces. The documentary was exceptionally well done, portraying the anatomy of illness in a very real way, and it has a happy ending.

All I want to do today is bail out the house. I have wanted to do this for a long, long time. We’re not packrats in a clinical sense, but we’re collectors, each one of us in my little family. We have more clothes than we can fit in our dresser drawers. We have more books than fit on the bookshelves. We have more magazines and comic books than we can reasonably read each month before the next batch comes in.

Every closet and cabinet in our home is full. Our house is just shy of 3,000 square feet so we have lots of space to fill—and yes, we can see the floor!—but we don’t have a lot of traditional storage space, lacking an attic and basement. Yes! We don't have a basement (our home is built into a hill), and we don't have an attic.

John and I were properly frightened by the documentary, and although we’re in no danger of living in a trash house, I am determined to improve this situation. I want to give everything from clothes and shoes to books and bike gear a proper home. I want to encourage the boys to save fewer special items, especially art work and papers from school, as well as to make sure they pick up their rooms regularly. It’s time to face our modern home’s limitations and make adjustments, whether built-in or freestanding storage—we need it.

I'm not quite sure where to start, which is always a problem. And I envy those people I know, who, when determined to clean out the basement, unsentimentally chuck everything and have something to show for it at the end of the day. I tend to sort piles into smaller piles to be dealt with, but before I can get to the smaller piles, I have to push everything back into a bigger pile.

So, I'll ask around: Do you have clutter? How do you deal with it? Should I hire an expert?

spring break: days two and three, the double issue

Unwittingly, spring break 2009 has evolved a theme: eat ice cream every day. I’m not sure how that happened but I do believe it’s a tradition I could repeat.

Yesterday, the boys had friends over to play. These sisters typically bring their electronics, but came empty-handed. Now I know my boys are creative and capable of role-playing without props, but I hadn’t realized what a crutch the DS and the Wii had become when “entertaining” their friends. Fortunately, I had already planned to do a cooking activity with the kids when their play devolved into tearing the house apart, but I didn’t expect, given how things were going, that I would have to interrupt a rousing game of Mouse Guards and fort building to get the kids interested in making ice cream.

The sisters were the most excited to cook so washed their hands and rolled up their sleeves. I had them measure and stir, and we talked a bit about the process. You prepare your flavorings—fruit, chocolate, coffee, and so on—so they’re reading when the custard is done. Then you heat milk or cream and sugar, temper egg yolks with the heated cream, and re-heat the mixture until it thickens and you have custard. Then you strain the custard into the flavorings and chill in the fridge or over an ice bath. Later you freeze the custard in an ice-cream maker, according to manufacturer’s instructions, and voila!


Dinosaur Egg ice cream was inspired by one of our favorite flavors at Izzy’s. For the recipe, we used David Lebovitz’s amazing cookbook, Perfect Scoop, as a jumping off point. I’m including the recipe here because it’s easy and fun to do with kids, but the malted milk ice cream base is amazing so even if you didn’t add malted milk balls, you’d still be plenty happy.


Today we had lunch with another set of friends at Snuffy’s Malt Shop, where we had malts with our burgers, naturally. (I know, yoga body scupting be damned!) Winston and I split a vanilla malt, for comparison to our malted milk ice cream. The malt was sweet and delicious with the perfect amount of maltiness. I would add more malt powder to the ice cream base next time round.

Dinosaur Egg Ice Cream
inspired by Izzy’s and David Lebovitz’s Perfect Scoop

1 cup half-and-half
3/4 cup sugar
pinch of salt
2 cups heavy cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2/3 cup malt powder (I might try 3/4 cup next time)
4 large egg yolks
1 cup malted milk balls, coarsely chopped (in the spirit of the season, we used Brach’s malted milk eggs)
food coloring (we used 3 drops of green gel paste food coloring; blue or violet would be awesome)

In a medium saucepan, over medium heat, warm the half-and-half, sugar, and salt, until sugar is dissolved. Take off heat. In a large bowl, whisk together the heavy cream, vanilla, and malt powder. Set a mesh strainer on top.

In another bowl, whisk together the egg yolks. Slowly pour the warm half-and-half mixture into the egg yolks, whisking constantly. Scrape this mixture back into the saucepan.

Stir the mixture constantly over medium heat. Scrape the bottom as you stir. The mixture should thicken and coat your spoon or spatula (if you drag your finger through—be careful! mixture is hot—you’ll have a line in the custard). Pour the custard through the strainer into the malted milk mixture. Whisk. Place the mixture in the refrigerator or nestle it into a larger, ice-filled bowl.

When the mixture is completely chilled, add food coloring and whisk well to distribute. We were going for a pale tint. Pour into ice cream maker and freeze, following the manufacturer’s instructions. When the ice cream is frozen, fold in the chopped malted milk balls.