Unraveled Wednesday

Joining Kat and friends for Unraveled Wednesday, with some knitting on a Hitchhiker or two.

I thought I had finished the knitting on the Nervous Breakdown Hitchhiker and sat down to bind it off last night. But then I made the mistake of watching Frontline. It was a story of two Washingtons - Washington state and their prepared and ready response to the first case of covid-19 in the US, and Donald Trump in Washington, DC, thwarting the states' efforts at every turn with his dismissals, inaction, and lies. I got so angry that I just kept knitting, so I'll assess where I am today and knit some more, or maybe not and actually bind off.

I've also been knitting on the No Regrets Hitchhiker. That's the name of this colorway and I have no regrets about purchasing it. It's a lovely Julie Spins MCN blend that seems to calm me down every time I pick it up. My hands are dry and scratchy from washing them so much, but handling this lovely yarn reminds me to use hand cream so I don't snag it.

And there has been some excellent reading! I finished This Is Chance!, a five-star book about the catastrophic 9.4-magnitude earthquake in Anchorage, Alaska in 1964, and Afterlife by Julia Alvarez. I also read The End of the Day by Bill Clegg, and that book occupied my thoughts for several days after I finished it. It's a domestic drama of friendships and family told in a way that I really enjoyed and became immersed in - several characters and storylines intersecting, while the reader wonders how they will all come together. I originally gave it four stars, but couldn't stop thinking about the story and the characters, so I had to revise my review to give it the five stars it deserves. I was lucky enough to get a pre-publication copy as it won't be published until June 2, but I think it's worth waiting for. I can also highly recommend Clegg's first book, Did You Ever Have a Family (longlisted for the National Book Award and Man Booker Prize in 2015). He's not an author that you hear about very often, but with these two books, he has become one of my favorite writers..

What are you making, reading, and/or doing to get through this week?

Read With Us: I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter

I'm not sure that I can add very much to Kym's excellent introduction of our current Read With Us book, but I will try. Kym explained how and why we chose I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter and the value of keeping an open mind while you read because it is young adult fiction. 

When I worked in an elementary school library, the librarian and I spent a lot of time discussing ya fiction. She had a theory that authors of ya fiction often wrote better books than authors of adult fiction because they had to write things better, more succinctly, and more clearly without dumbing those ideas down to their intended audience. I'll let you be the judge of whether Erika L. Sánchez accomplished that or not as she tells the story of Julia, a confused, miserable, and angry daughter of Mexican immigrants. She's also grieving because her perfect older sister has been killed in an accident, and this leads her to feel her parents' disappointment in her even more intensely. In an interview, the author says, "Sometimes she says unkind things because she is in so much pain. Julia is the kind of girl who will say exactly what she feels, and I hope that readers become intrigued by that, particularly young women of color. We’re rarely allowed to be flawed in literature, and I’m so tired of that."

In the same interview, the following question was asked, and I thought Erika L. Sánchez's response was an interesting one:

"Julia is a wonderfully complex and interesting character who is a big reader and who wants to become a writer. Aside from the fact that you’re a writer, why did you put a budding author at the center of your debut novel?

People often wonder if I'm Julia, but the truth is that she is smarter and funnier than I ever was as a teenager. There are definitely many parts of myself in her, but I didn't want to be limited by my own experiences. However, I decided to write about a budding writer because young girls of color don't often see themselves portrayed as storytellers. I want them to know that they can have a voice, that it's okay to dream big. Also, the world needs to know that brown girls can be intellectual, that they can have complex inner lives. We're not a homogenous group of people like the media would lead you to believe."

One more thing; Erika L. Sánchez is also a poet. Her poems are not light and pretty; the Washington Post called her "fierce and assertive". Since it is National Poetry Month:

All of Us 
Erika L. Sánchez

Every day I am born like this—
No chingues. Nothing happens
for the first time. Not the neon
sign that says vacant, not the men
nor the jackals who resemble them.
I take my bones inscribed by those
who came before, and learn
to court myself under a violence
of stars. I prefer to become demon,
what their eyes cannot. Half of me
is beautiful, half of me is a promise
filled with the quietest places.
Every day I pray like a dog
in the mirror and relish the crux
of my hurt. We know Lilith ate
the bones of her enemies. We know
a bitch learns to love her own ghost.

Copyright © 2018 by Erika L. Sánchez. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on April 27, 2018, by the Academy of American Poets.

We're reading I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter this month. Local libraries are closed, but you can find the book on Amazon ($7.39 for the dead-tree version and $10.99 for the Kindle version), and both audio and digital versions may be available to borrow on Overdrive. Next month, we're changing up the discussion format a little bit to something that we hope will be new and exciting. On May 12 you'll find a book discussion question on each of our blogs and on May 19 we're going to host a real-time, Zoom book discussion get-together. (Details to follow.) As a white 62-year-old woman living in central NJ, I know very little about the things that Erika L. Sánchez writes about. I look forward to reading and learning.

I hope you can obtain a copy of the book . . . and Read With Us! 

Flowers ...

... are magical, on Monday and every day.

This past weekend I was blessed with lots of flowers blooming indoors.

 One amaryllis,

a second amaryllis,

a completely unexpected bonus Christmas cactus blossom,

and some hot pink Easter cactus blooms. 

I said a little thank you each time I passed them for my fulsomeness of flowers! I hope you also enjoyed something a little bit magical in your weekend. 

Pamplona, Madrona, Dalgona

It seems like you can't look at a recipe site on the internet without finding someone writing about Dalgona coffee. I have had a problem remembering what this concoction is really named, explaining to John that the brown goo in the bowl is Pamplona coffee, no wait, it's Madrona, no it's called Dalgona coffee for real. (Imagine him looking both puzzled and uninterested.) I usually drink tea but I was both curious and disbelieving, so I had to try it for myself. 

2 Tablespoons instant coffee, 2 Tablespoons sugar, and 2 Tablespoons hot water,

whisk for ~ 2 minutes,

and voilà; it does work! The mixture changes color and then gets thicker, just as it is supposed to. I probably could have whisked for another couple minutes, but I was anxious to taste it. (My immersion blender is in MD, but I think it would be the perfect tool to use.) I poured half of it into a glass of warm milk (cold would work just as well), mixed it up, and enjoyed. 

A warm, creamy glass of coffee made a comforting thing to hold onto and drink while the furnace guy was here to repair our broken furnace. We talked to each other from about 10 feet apart, but I was a little bit nervous when he coughed a few times. It could have been the caustic chemicals he was using to clean the boiler coil, but I was glad for a warm drink to hold and sip. 

If you'd like to enjoy your own bit of coffee magic, whisk up some Pamplona/Madrona/Dalgona of your very own!

Three on Thursday

I'm joining Carole and friends for Three on Thursday, today with three things I've found out about sourdough bread.

It didn't rise as high as I might have expected or hoped. I should have made just one loaf and baked it in my Dutch oven. 

I need a sharp(er) knife to slash my loaves before baking. Even my serrated bread knife wasn't sharp enough so I ended up tearing and deflating the dough.

I didn't get that desired San Fransisco sour taste.

That was my whole reason for starting my starter. Years ago, John had an office in Richmond, CA that he had to visit monthly. He used to bring me a loaf of sourdough bread every time he went there, and it was one of the best things I ever ate. My own starter didn't produce anything resembling that delightful tang.

Ryan often judges foods using a ratio of work/deliciousness. First, he looks at the amount of work involved in the cooking process. Is this simply mixing in water, like making Jello? Are there multiple complicated steps involved, or are you required to make something before you could proceed further to make the final product? And then there is that all-important deliciousness factor. How good does it taste? Ryan often prepares things with a relatively low work/deliciousness ratio. Pancakes are good, but the work involved is minimal, even from scratch. French toast is even better - really delicious, but there's nothing difficult about soaking bread in an egg mixture and frying.

Pasta sauce has a few more ingredients, but the work involved is just a bit more chopping, and it's made in the same pan. Pad thai gets a lot more complicated with procuring out of the ordinary ingredients, a lot more prep, and good timing during preparation. Yes, it's delicious, but the work/deliciousness approaches 8/9, and it's really easy to order from a good Thai restaurant (at least in Fort Collins). So with a high work/deliciousness ratio, I'm not sure I'll be making sourdough bread again with my starter. The hoped-for deliciousness was too disappointing. 

Be sure to visit Carole for more Three on Thursday thoughts.

Unraveled Wednesday

Joining Kat and friends for Unraveled Wednesday, with an interesting observation. It's amazing how you can make visible progress when you actually knit on projects every day!

I've completed blue, purple, pink, and orange stripes. I like the first three but I'm unsure about the orange. I'm going to get an expert opinion from my color consultant (Ryan) about whether to keep the orange, and I also need to ask his opinion about another possible color. 

Some days I knit for a few hours, and other days it's only a couple rows, but I'm really enjoying #the100dayproject  and #100daysof hitchhikers. Knitting these stripes has been something I could actually control, and it's also calming, meditative, and good for my soul. 

There will be a few ends to weave in when I'm done, but I'm going to make sure I'm keeping the stripes before I start weaving any ends. The end of this one is in sight, and then on to the next Hitchhiker! 

I started reading Afterlife by Julia Alvarez, but haven't progressed beyond the first couple of chapters. It's me and my lack of reading focus, not the book, but I'm sure I'll read more at some point. (Maybe when I'm done with Hitchhikers!)

What are you making, reading, and/or doing to get through this week?

Better Times

Kym's link yesterday to virtual strolls through Longwood Gardens prompted me to reminisce about some of my own visits to Longwood Gardens. Reliving some of the lovely memories of seeing all the beautiful things growing there cheered me up on a day with driving wind and rain (we also had a leak, the side door fell off the hinges, there was a tornado watch but no tornadoes in my area thank goodness, and my chicken leaked all over the kitchen floor which meant I had to mop, but I digress). Some photos:

Longwood Gardens was my Mom's favorite place at Christmas time and we got her a membership for many years. It's stunning at Christmas, in spring, indoors, and out. 

You know what else cheered me up? Based on the comments on Kym's post, the possibility that I could maybe meet up with quite a few knitters at Longwood Gardens when all of this is over. It's a dream I'm holding on to!