i win! see, here's my gold metal for completing my knitting olympics project before the flame went out.

the going got kind of rough around thursday night, when i spent maybe 3 hours making and ripping out and repairing mistakes, gaining no actual ground, till suddenly it was 2am, the only thing left on tv was infomercials, and my arms were cramped from wrist to elbow. the next morning i woke up with some sort of knitter's-elbow tendonitis/carpal tunnel thing that made typing (and knitting) unbearable.

but i persevered. 88 inches of lace, knit on teeny-tiny size three needles.

the knitting olympics also sort of skewed my approach to knitting - it's supposed to be a hobby, but with an imposing deadline it became another thing on my daily to-do list. also, i've decided that knitting lace is a hateful, hateful activity. i do like the results, and they are going to make lovely pillowcases (pictures to follow), but give me a fair isle project on size 10 needles any day.

success!

our previous attemps to make vegetarian chili have ended in tomato-bean-soup pots of disappointment, but tonight we found success at last with the classic red chili recipe in our new favorite cookbook: Passionate Vegetarian, by (i'm not making this up) Crescent Dragonwagon. it has about 1000 receipes, all veggie and most with vegan options.

even our meat-eating friends, who expressed great anxiety about the use of ground tofu in place of beef concluded that it was excellent. beany, but with good fake meat texture, nice and thick, and most importantly, spiced correctly. this first round required a $25 investment in new spices, but in the future it can be made for the cost of a couple of cans of beans and tomatoes and a few fresh veggies. topped with cheese, onions, cilatro, and sour cream and served with cornbread, it was an excellent way to hide indoors from the record-breaking cold (eight below! my car wouldn't start this morning!)

The Best Veggie Chili

(adapted from Neo-Classic Red Chili in The Passionate Vegetarian, by Crescent Dragonwagon)

3 cans beans (I like to get a variety, like 1 each of black, pinto and kidney)
1 16-oz can chopped tomatoes in juice (i think i used a larger-than-16 oz can last time, and it was nice and tomato-y, but had to cook down longer)
1/4 cup tomato paste
2-3 quarts veggie stock
2 large onions, chopped
2-3 green bell peppers, seeded and chopped
1 ancho chili
1 jalapeno chili
1 10-oz package fake ground meat (I usually get Smart Ground)

1-4 TBS olive oil
cooking spray
fresh ground black pepper
2 bay leaves
1 TBS cumin seeds
1 TBS hot chili powder
2 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp ground coriander
2 tsp sweet Hungarian paprika
1/2 tsp dried oregano
cayenne pepper to taste
3 cloves garlic, minced
1-2 tablespoons Pickapeppa sauce (it's sort of like spicy A-1)
1.5 tsp soy sauce
salt to taste

Toppers:
Grated cheddar and jack cheese
Diced green onion
Sour cream
Chopped cilantro
Tabasco sauce
Corn chips or cornbread

Directions:
Measure out and combine the following spices: cumin seeds, chili powder, ground cumin, coriander, paprika, oregano, and cayenne.

Place beans, bay leaves, ancho, jalapeno, and lots of black pepper into a large stew pot. Add enough veggie stock to cover the beans by 1.5 inches. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer for a few minutes.

In a large skillet, heat olive oil. Add onions and saute 3-4 minutes. Stir in bell peppers and saute another 2 minutes. Add the spice mixture you made earlier, cook for 2 more minutes, stirring to coat evenly. Add the minced garlic and cook for 30 seconds more. Remove from heat and scrape into the simmering beans. Deglaze the pan with a bit of the cooking liquid and scrape it back into the stewpot.

Add the tomatos, tomato paste, pickapeppa, soy sauce, and salt (it will need quite a bit). Simmer at least 30 minutes.

Just before serving pick out the bay leaves. Mash a few ladles-full of beans against the side of the pot to help thicken.

Labels: recipes

by about day three i'd mastered the yarn-splitting problem, and my hands stopped cramping up holding the narrow-gauge needles.

day five i started to figure out how to find and repair mistakes without having to unknit rows and rows at a time.

by day six or seven the mechanics of the pattern started to finally make sense.

according to my calculations i need 84" of lace to finish the project. each iteration of the pattern measures just under 3", which means that i need to complete two repetitions of the pattern per day to complete the project by the time the olympic flame goes out next sunday. (since i'm working two strands of lace side-by-side it really means i only have to do the pattern once, but i knit each row twice. it's faster and less tedious this way).

working on a deadline like this is making me a little obsessive. i'm starting to find myself plotting when i can grab an extra few minutes to knit throughout the day. i knit in the booth during the show every night, making mistakes in the dim light and having to rip it out later, i knit feverishly in front of late night sitcoms when i get home from work until each day's quota has been met. all other projects and most chores have been put off until the beginning of march.

fact checking is fun. i end up having a web browser full of bookmarked links like the names of animal congregations. have you ever noticed how the name of the congregation is a little (or a lot) bit descriptive of the animal itself?

An Ostentation of Peacocks
An Intrusion of Cockroaches
A Parliament of Owls
A Streak of Tigers
A Shrewdness of Apes
An Intrigue of Kittens
A Tower of Giraffes
A Crash of Rhinoceroses
An Unkindness of Ravens
A Business of Ferrets

if i were cool like the spamusment.com guy, i would sketch a little picture of each congregation. the ferrets would be busy with ferrety (wedding) business, the cockroaches would be pushing some guy out of his arm chair and hogging the remote, the tiger cartoon would just be a big orange and black blurry stripe. wait, this sounds like a good idea for a children's book. someone's probably already done it. if not -- you saw it first here.

-- reveals that this project is much more challenging than i thought it was going to be. the needles are tiny, the yarn even thinner, and, being cotton, is prone to splitting. also, the lace pattern makes it virtually impossible to recover after a dropped stitch. after four hours invested, i have almost 2" of lace. on the other hand, it was snowing out and my first saturday off in ages, and spending the afternoon curled up with a cup of coffee, knitting and half watching the olympics wasn't so bad.

so i didn't find out about the knitting olympics until after the registration deadline, but i put in a submission anyway, and my name turned up on the website this afternoon (along with more than 4000 others), so now i'm committed. the gimmick is that one has to complete an entire project in the 16 days that the olympics take place. (watching figure skating has always been a guilty pleasure of mine; what better excuse than this?) no casting on before the flame has been lit, and the project has to be complete before the flame goes out. well, i'm already behind, because the flame was lit about five hours ago and i can't get to the knitting shop to get the yarn i need until at least tomorrrow. i'm also deeply mired in my fair isle sweater project, so it might be hard to stay committed to the olympic task.

and speaking of olympics, what's up with the pack of pyrotechnic ninja turtles?