Saturday 16 June 2007

Food blindness and hissing cockroaches.




I was reading an article in the Guardian this week - http://environment.guardian.co.uk/waste/story/0,,2100074,00.html and the phrase food blindness struck me as a good description of one ailment I'm never going to suffer from. According to researchers, food blindness is the inability to look at what you have in the fridge or in your cupboards and to see how they could be turned into a meal. I'm the complete opposite. Most of my tastiest food offerings have been as a result of ram raiding the fridge and cooking the occupants. I live with someone who is very good at following recipes and buying exactly what it says in the book. This means I'm great at day to day cooking but Archie wins at posh entertaining every time. His Christmas curries are the stuff of legend whereas most of my meals get eaten in front of the telly. However, we get a veg box from a local farmer every fortnight and who knows what will appear in it - my obsessive reading of cookery books and absorbing the contents thereof comes in very handy when the box contains three fennell bulbs each the size of a baby's fist.

I certainly don't suffer from knitting blindness. As I finished the windmill cardigan, seen above in all it's newly dyed glory, I realised that I have never knitted a pattern using the right yarn. Most of this is down to economy, I buy second hand yarn most times and kind people give me even more. It is trickier with knitting, keeping an eye on gauge and drape but I've decided that what I learn from the attempts more than makes up for the time spent knitting and ripping the ones that don't make it to a garden photoshoot. Anyway if all else fails, there is always room for more blanket squares in the world.

Cockroaches? We went to visit some friends this week and one of the children has Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches.They are gorgeous and if I didn't think Magnus would eat them or ping them all over the room, I would want some for myself.

Weird thing just happened - I was downloading pics for this post and instead of getting a cockroach, I got a kitten. Hmmm. Cats do work in mysterious ways.

4 comments:

Orinda5 said...

Ooooh! Your cardigan looks fabulous! I love the drapey collar.
What was your pattern source?

mary jane said...

A bit relieved to find the cooking bit wasn't about cooking cockroaches.Although I did eat big black crickets that looked like this in Burma, they tasted like shrimp shells....not so bad really...and sparrows...poor dears...
What a kitty picture! looks like he just ate a sparrow!
Your sweater is lovely, the perfect weight for summer evenings. All see-throughy goodness.

magnusmog said...

Laura, he pattern is from Noro Unlimited by Jane Ellison and it's called Tithe. It is designed to be knitted in Cash Iroha or Kureyon Silk which would probably give more of a drape on the collar. It was very very easy to do.

Mary Jane - the kitten thing is odd. I must have downloaded it by mistake when someone gave me one of those emails with lots of cute animal photos in it. I have no knowlege of the cute ginger fellow :)

Cindy G said...

there is a pretty good basic sock pattern at http://www.knittingonthenet.com/patterns/socksbasic.htm
It strikes me that her instructions are quite clear.
It's written for a sport/DK weight, though. If you knit to that gauge in fingering (which many sock yarns are)the stiches will be too loose for a good wearing sock.