Creampuff Revolution

Creampuff Stitches and Bitches

My birthday fortnight began yesterday with the cutest knitting accoutrements ever!! STITCH MARKERS THAT LOOK LIKE COOKIES from One Elf:

Katr is a saintly wife who not only tolerates my knitting obsession, but actively encourages me by purchasing beautiful yarn and a library of knitting books. Anything to keep me off the pole, I guess.

It occurred to me that it's been quite a while since I've bored you all with photos of my knitting and since it's my birthday fortnight, it seems like now is a good time to whip the yarn out and brag. HA ha! 

Last year, my favourite purveyor of hand-dyed yarn, Sundara Yarn, put out three new colours for spring that were perfect for baby knits - Cherry Blossom, Branches on Winter Sky and New Leaves of Spring. Katr bought me all three!

Good thing she did. I can barely keep up with the fecundity around me. Here are just a few samples:

Little hats.

Little hoodie (I did one in in the blue as well)

As you knitters already know, every time someone sends you a photo of themselves or their baby wearing the thing you knit them, an angel gets their wings (or gets a handjob. Angel's choice). There is no greater gift to the knitter than a picture of your child in their amateurish knitting. So THANK YOU to the three lovely moms who sent me these:

Juku's son Joku:

I like the troubled, thoughtful look on Joku's face, his hand raised as if to say "Mother, honestly. Do you expect me to be SEEN in this?"

Cosm's daughter Olsm:

Hahahaha! Olsm is READY FOR ACTION.

And Elho's son, Edho (all the way in Norway!!!!):

I love how he looks like a jawa spoiling for a fight. "Put 'em up, put 'em up!"

In non-baby knitting, there were a few developments that I neglected to report on at the time. So get ready.

1. I stealth knit Katr Luciana's fingerless mitts this fall for her birthday. She's wearing them right now! Cozy. 

2. I knit Jeba a hat during the Olympics last year! It fits perfectly.

3. It's rare that I show any "work in progress" shots, because I mostly knit for other people, but this bit of awesome is mine! All mine!

It's really really hard to get a good picture of this colour - it's Sundara Yarn Aran Silky Merino in Green Tea and it just glows with good health and antioxidants. I'm embarrassed to tell the expert knitters among you that it takes me about 3 hours to do one of these leaves. Counting - so challenging, especially when you're watching Selling New York. How many hundred square feet? Wait...what row am I on? Shitballs!

I've really been on the knitting train since the holidays and, while I'm still a very slow knitter, my stash is steadily dwindling, in accordance with my New Year's stash reduction resolution. Very exciting! I have several other projects on the go.

But as always, before I start a new project for someone, I make sure to run it by Katr to make sure that the person in question isn't on her knitting shit list.

I primarily knit for others - I enjoy the process of knitting and don't feel the need to hang on to many of my creations. And 99% of the time when I send my crappy knitting out into the world, I get a really lovely thank you from the recipient (and, if I'm super lucky, a picture!). But sometimes...sometimes that doesn't work out. Sometimes the knitting goes unacknowledged or unappreciated. And when that happens, Katr, who watches me knit something for hours and hours, and dries my tears when things go horribly wrong, quietly adds that person to a list of people I'm no longer allowed to knit for.

That's love.

 

Calling All Lesbian Sleuths! Help Me Solve This Sexy Mystery!

So the awesome news is that my short play Anne and Diana Were TOTALLY DOING IT is being published this fall in the Loud n' Queer 20th Anniversary anthology! Wooo! I am SO honoured to be included, you have no idea. 

As those of you who've been privileged to witness a live performance of this oeuvre may remember, there is a slide show! And one of the images I use in the slideshow is below.

I have two questions:

1. How sexy is this painting? Doesn't it totally make you think of Anne and Diana and how they were totally doing it?

 2. Where is this from? 

I honestly have NO IDEA where I found this image - it was years ago - and I don't even have the original image file anymore - I got this off the PowerPoint slide. I'm FAIRLY certain I stole it off some other lesbian's blog.

It turns out that when you google "sexy lesbian painting", this is not the first thing that comes up.

The reason I ask is that Darrin, the fabulous editor of the anthology asked me if this image was public domain - if not, of course, we can't include it in the book with my piece. I LOVE it and would love to include it but my days of doing things that are illegal are...well, several weeks behind me.

So please - let me know if you know what the hell this is!! And if you don't, please pass it on to your friends and ask them! The worst thing that happens is that more people see that sexy redhead's nip. And how can that be wrong?

UPDATE: Thank you so much to everyone who's been sifting through Victorian porn to help me find out where this painting is from! As you can see from the comments, we've had several exciting leads but so far, we still don't know who the artist is (and if I can rip off their work with a clear copyright conscience). If you know who painting this - or have ideas about where to look - please leave it in the comments!

Shhh...

 

Can't blog. Reading The Hunger Games.

Gluten-free Creampuff

First of all, apologies to anyone who came here thinking they'd find a recipe for gluten-free creampuffs. Please carry on with your Google search. You'll find no such recipes here. Move along.

So it's been several months since I gave up the gluten (among other things). It's actually been a less painful process than I imagined, mainly because now I only eat ice cream.

HAHAHAAA! Just kidding. I'm down to one ice cream meal per day.

I've made adjustments - switched to gluten free cereal, making my tuna melts in a bowl instead of on toast, crying more. I really only find it problematic when I'm out and need a quick snack. On a recent trip, I had a rice krispie treat for breakfast, because that's the only gluten-free thing they had (and I was happy to have it).

But the biggest adjustment I've had to make is letting go of hope that I would be able to fill the donut gap with reasonable facsimiles of same.

I like to bake. I was on the protein diet for years and have stomached many a pseudo-carb meal. But after six months of barfingly disappointing gluten-free home baking, I've come to understand that unless certain items are in the hands of master bakers (i.e. NOT ME) they will not taste good. 

Simply put, when you replace wheat flour with gluten free flour, there is...A TASTE. I do not like The Taste. And it's made worse because I have real problems managing my expectations about what things will taste like.

For example, if I make pancakes out of eggs, milk and almond meal (a protein-diet staple), I expect them to taste like almond-meal pancakes. If I make pancakes from a gluten-free pancake mix, I expect them to taste like regular pancakes, even though I know the mix is gluten-free. And then, when the pancakes taste like 10 kinds of ass with syrup on top, it's like getting kicked in the mouth AND the nuts. 

So I'm officially giving up trying to bake with gluten substitutes. That way lies heartache. Instead, I'm going to focus my baking efforts on items that don't call for flour in the first place. Like cheesecake. Sweet, sweet cheesecake.

But there are some gluten-free products that I actually enjoy and I thought I'd compile a list for the afflicted among you - or if you have gluten-free friends and you don't know how to feed them breakfast or dessert. You're welcome.

Mi-del gingersnaps: They actually taste pretty great - we used to get them before the gluten curtain fell - and they're not too bad as cheesecake crust, particularly when you mix them with almond or some other nut meal (but not hazelnuts for me, because apparently I can't have those).

Nature's Path gluten-free cereals. They're crunchy, corn/rice/amaranth-based goodness. And the Crunchy Maple Sunrise in particular is delightful.

Nature's Path wildberry gluten-free waffles. We actually used to get these before the gluten got me. They are very light but don't taste weird. But DON'T GET THE MESA SUNRISE WAFFLES. Or the Flax ones. Those ones taste like warm cardboard.

KinnickKinnick personal pizza crust. These are supposed to be "thin and crispy". I find they're actually little doughy for my taste but overall I enjoy them, because they mean I get to eat pizza.

KinnickKinnick graham cracker crumbs. These are effing great as cheesecake crust. Great texture, very firm and unless you eat a big mouthful of crust without cheesecake attached, you wouldn't be able to tell it's gluten-free. High praise indeed.

Red Mill cornbread mix. ONLY OKAY IF YOU ADD EXTRA CORN AND YOU TOAST IT WELL BEFORE EATING and slather it with margarine and dip it in your chili. Otherwise, you get "the taste".

Red Mill shortbread cookie mix. These taste only a little weird. But they are also very buttery. Consume with restraint if you don't want to end up in the ladies' shitter all ding dong night.

I have a Red Mill cinnamon raisin bread mix and brownie mix in my cupboard right now but am afraid to try them because I made some gluten-free Mercer lemon and ginger cookies last week with Red Mill gluten free flour and OH MY GOD THE TASTE! THE TASTE! Blarg.

In completely unrelated news, Katr and I were in the Vancouver Sun today - and not because we got arrested at a Justin Bieber concert. It's a serious news story about the big telcom companies in Canada trying to screw us over internet bandwith caps. Which is why we look so serious. Sign the petition! Fight the man!