Fuel For Sick Crafters (And The People Who Love Them)

Oh, it's good to be home.  To see The Wizard sleeping in the sunny windowsill.  To be surrounded by all my stuff.  It's real nice.  Especially when I'm sick.  I don't know if you've ever had the pleasure, but being sick when you're away from home, away from your stuff and your creature comforts is no bueno.

And on my first day back in my little part of the world, I'm making the thing that I always want when I'm sick - pho (Note:  It's not pronounced "foe," but rather the same way you pronounce The Mother Of All Bad Words but then stop just short of bringing it on home).  If you're not familiar with it, pho is a Vietnamese noodle soup.  It's got a rich, flavorful broth and noodles and vegetables and fragrant herbs.  It's comforting and satisfying, and it takes care of you like a warm blanket when you're sick.  It's an alternate version of chicken noodle soup.

Traditionally, pho is made with beef stock, and you can get it in Vietnamese restaurants all around.  But me and my boo are vegetarians, so that doesn't quite work for us.

So right now, I'm going to break with crafting blogging for a minute to share with you the recipe that my sweet man found for vegetarian pho.  I'd link it back to the source, but I don't know where he got it.  All I know is anytime either of us is sick, the other person's job is to make this soup for them.

Here it is, straight out of the well-worn page of our homemade cookbook of favorite recipes.

Pho

Broth ingredients:

1 small unpeeled onion, quartered
2 unpeeled shallots, halved
8 unpeeled garlic cloves, halved
1 one inch piece of ginger root, unpeeled, coarsely chopped
2 three inch cinnamon sticks
2 pods star anise
4 cloves
8 cups  vegetable stock
3 tablespoons soy sauce or tamari

Soup ingredients:

1 lb. rice noodles
8 oz. extra firm tofu, diced into small cubes
6 scallions, thinly sliced
a good handful of each of the following fresh chopped herbs:  mint, basil and cilantro
1 lime, cut into wedges
1 cup each of the following fresh vegetables:  broccoli (cut into small florets), snow peas, carrots (sliced into rounds), cauliflower (cut into small florets)
jalapeno, sliced thin - optional and amount adjusted to your heat preference
Sriracha chili paste - optional (but recommended) Asian spicy condiment

To make the broth, heat a large pot of medium-high heat.  Add onion, shallots, garlic, ginger, cinnamon sticks, star anise and cloves.  Dry roast in the pot, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables begin to char.  Add the vegetable stock and soy sauce or tamari and bring to a boil over high heat.  Turn the heat down to medium-low and cover.  Simmer for 25 minutes, then strain the broth back into pot and discard the solid vegetables.  Keep broth warm over low heat.

While the broth simmers, preheat oven to 350.  Bake tofu cubes on a greased or sprayed baking sheet, checking and turning tofu every 10 or 15 minutes until cubes are golden and slightly crispy.   Set aside.

Prepare rice noodles according to package directions - usually by pouring boiling water in a bowl over noodles and allowing to soften for 10 minutes.

Steam broccoli, snow peas, carrots and cauliflower for approx. 2 minutes, so that they are slightly tender but still have some firmness.

When you are ready to assemble your soup, put a pile of rice noodles in the bottom of each bowl, add your steamed vegetables, tofu, herbs, scallions and jalapeno, and then ladle hot both over the top.  Serve with sriracha chili paste and lime wedges.

Repeat as necessary until you feel better.

Knitting For A Rock Star

Hello lovers.  I'm back.

I took a little vacation and saw some amazing friends, and met some amazing tiny people that have been made since last I saw my friends, and got really really sick, and tried to push through it and have a good time, and now I am exhausted and convalescing back in my tiny Harlem apartment.

Ooh, boy.  A lot has happened since I last blogged a blog for you blog readers.  Mama's worn out, you guys.  But since I'm holed up plying myself with fluids, it seems like a good time to go through my archives for some more of my favorite knits.

On that note, a few of my favorite things are food and hats.  Knitted or otherwise.  Not necessarily in that order, and not necessarily in combination.  However, I was delighted - delighted! - when my friend Jane Wiedlin (yes, that Jane Wiedlin) asked me to make her a sushi hat and a bacon and eggs hat.

Here's how that turned out.

And just for kicks, and to solve the problem of what to do with the sushi brooch I'd previously made, I threw in an extra sushi hat for good measure.

 

Beep-Boop-Bop. Robots.

A couple of years ago, I got really interested in the idea of knitted robots.  I scoured the intertubes for robot patterns, but none that I found met my satisfaction.  I had a very specific idea of what I wanted:  something like this or this.  

Since I couldn't find something that met my specifications, I started noodling around with making my own patterns.  My first attempt was a felted (of course) robot.  

I'll be honest.  I think it came out okay, but this might be the first time in the history of my knitting life that I think that the felting did more damage than good.  Don't get me wrong, he's a nice robot-man, but the felting added personality that wasn't in my plan.  For example, his rectangle mouth box was transformed into a smile.  His ear antennae shrunk unevenly.  But overall, for a prototype, he's not too shabby.  These days he's keeping my friend the Shocktopus company.

My second attempt at a red robot man turned out better, I think.  Clean, sharp boxy lines.  Nice and robotty.  I had this idea that his "hands" would be claws - something like those metal claws in the stuffed animal vending machine games.  But, they turned out looking more like thumbs up fists.  So, I dubbed this guy Positive Reinforcement Robot.  No matter what's going on, he's all like, "Good job, buddy!  Keep trying your best!"

He lives with a handsome little dude in Portland named Dashiell.

Elephant in the room

Holy moly.  I've been a busy lady lately.

Between completing (and surpassing) a 30 day Bikram yoga challenge (yay, go me!),  prepping for a buncha auditions, and finally (!!!) finishing a rough draft of a play, I've barely had time to knit.  Let alone blog about it.

 However.  I have been able to squeeze in time for a few commissions in the last month.  Here is one of my favorites.                            

I mean.....I want to tear this little elephant apart with my teeth, it's so cute.  It's based on this pattern.  The happy accident was that I ran out of the light green yarn, when I still had the ears, tail and bottoms of the feet to finish.  Oh, the God of Knitting had a greater vision for this project than what I had envisioned, and I thank Her for guiding my needles as I finished this little mothertrucker.

Plants need knits, too.

I love growing stuff.  When I was a kid, growing up in a small town, my mom had a vegetable garden behind our house.  When I moved away, and as I've moved to bigger and bigger cities, my need to cultivate greenery and produce has gotten stronger and stronger.

Last summer I had a fire escape garden.  But I got busted by the fire marshall, so it looks like my dream of being an urban farmer has stalled for a while.  So, I've been compensating by growing all kinds of plants indoors.

In fact, they were beginning to cover all the (very limited amount of) free space in my apartment.  So, I began thinking like a real New Yorker when it comes to organizing my space:  UP.

Enter hanging plant holders.

But I'm a knitter, so you know I'm not gonna just go buy one.  What's the fun in that?  Behold, my beautiful new felted plant holder.

I based it off of this one, but I made some modifications in the size of the various holders, and I did knitted I-cords instead of crocheted cords.

It's rare that I knit things for my own use, but I'm so glad I did this.  I'm in love with it.  I imagine in a few weeks, I might be living in a jungle if I don't find another project to occupy me.

Snowmans!

Above is a commission of 12 snowmans (.....What's that?  You say snowmen?  Well, you're wrong.  It's a little known rule that the plural form of snowman is snowmans.  I know, it's counter-intuitive, but what can you do?) that I did for a nice lady in California.  I dubbed them "The 12 Frosty Misters," in keeping with the running theme of misogyny in my knitted work.

Below is a photo of me and the nice lady.  I'm the one who's knitting.  She's the one who's stunning.

Sometimes I Knit Dirty (Potentially NSFW)

Sometimes first impressions can be quite wrong.  Case in point:  My wonderful friend Jonathan.  I've known who Jonathan is for years, long before we were actually friends.  He was part of a company of actors/writers/teachers who work with school children in creative writing workshops.  (Incidentally, the company is called Barrel of Monkeys, and they stand for everything good.)

I had this idea based partially on his boyish looks and the fact that he spent so much time working with children that Jonathan was a mild-mannered and sweet man.  Which is sort of true.  But what I didn't realize until we became friends is that Jonathan is the dirtiest of birds with one of the filthiest mouths that has ever opened.

So, what does a knitter make for an adorably filthy d-bag for his birthday?  A knitted penis, natch.

Speaking of making judgements about people based on their appearance, I really really hate having big boobs.  I mean it's been something that I have hated about my body since puberty.  In my dreams, I'm a beautifully flat-chested pixie sprite.  I even cashed out my 401K and bought myself a breast reduction 10 years ago that didn't take, but that's a story for another time.  The long and short of it is that I'm stuck with these suckers, and I'm trying to make my peace with them.  By the way, their nicknames are Big Boy and Tip Top.  I believe that the first step to acceptance is to give nicknames.

But what I still really REALLY effing hate is all the stigma that comes along with having a big rack.  Like I'm not smart, or I'm a nympho or whatever nonsense.

And as an actor, it feels sometimes like the only women we want to see in the center of a story are women with a small rack.  What the hell?  Are small titted ladies less threatening?  More interesting?  More talented?  Do we, as an audience, find fully-stacked women lacking in emotional sincerity?  I call shenanigans on this monopoly that waif-like ladies have on the ingenue market.  

Once I was in dress rehearsal for a show that I really adored.  That particular night, we had a Tony-award winning director watching - and also woman, by the way - and after the run-through, this was the only thing she had to say about me to the director, "You need to find a way to cover those suckers up."

Fuck you, lady.

Here's my 32F rack in a lightning bolt bikini top I knitted for myself.  Deal with it.