Mister DeMille, I'm Ready for my Close Up

Hi everyone - I just put a new cap design up in the pattern shop. It's called Gloria since it's inspired by the turban look of uber-vampy silent movie actress Gloria Swanson.


Thanks again to my mom for modeling this one! (That's my mum in front of the mums). You're on the home-page!

Ten Days in Doily Heaven

I'm just back from a family vacation - my extended family (including my best friend and her family) took a nine-day bus tour through Austria, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland. We spent a day meeting some distant Slovakian relatives in the wee town of Trstene Pri Hornade - distant? Well, from my generation we all have the same great, great grandma.

Here's the bunch of us tromping through the cemetery outside the church where my grandpa was baptised to see the tombstones of our wayback kinfolk. There's a jillion Yuhases on the tombstones (well, Juhases), but none of them are related to us - Yuhas is a Slovak word for shepherd (or apparently, the shepherd's helper), and there's lots of them. Mostly I picked this photo for the blog 'cause it's gorgeous - it was in the 90s but really bright and clear. The mountains in the background are the border with Hungary.

And here's my dad with his arm around his third cousin Ladislav - family resemblance? At least in the belly. And the eyebrows, too!

Pillbugs for the Popcorn School

Hey folks - if you've been itching to get your hands on a MoltingYeti original and you live anywhere near Flatbush, Brooklyn, here's your chance! I'm donating one of my sample Doodlebugs (aka pillbug, roly-poly, woodlouse, armadillidiidae or the only known terrestrial crustacean) to the silent auction at my godson Silas's pre-school.

The party promises to be tons of fun too - There will be yummy food and dancing, lots of dessert, and auction items galore, all for one of the coolest pre-schools ever.

Next Saturday, January 31 @ 7:00
The basement of the Dutch Reformed Church
Kenmore Terrace and East 21st Street
(near the intersection of Flatbush and Church)
Brooklyn, NY
$15 cover includes dinner & dancing - all proceeds go to the Popcorn School.
It's a benefit for kids, but this party is for grown-ups.

Hope to see some of you there!

Rocks, Grandma, Gas Giants, and Especially Girl Giants...

Here are some things that might not seem to go together at first, but they do.


I hade a wonderful cookie party yesterday - I channelled all kinds of Grandma energy and drank instant Cafe Vienna (like Grandma used to) and poached some pears and made Rocks and Gaufrettes. My house filled up with wonderful friends.

I blogged Gaufrettes last Christmas. Here's Rocks:

1/2 pound butter
2 C light brown sugar
3 beaten eggs
1 pound raisins
1 pound dates, cut in small pieces
1 pound walnuts
tsp cinnamon
tsp cloves
3 C flour
tsp baking soda

Mix it all up and drop onto a greased cookie sheet. Bake 10 minutes or so at 375.

These are called Rocks 'cause they get really hard after a couple days. An apple wedge or a slice of bread in the cookie jar will soften them up. Many thanks to Mom's big brother Bick for bringing the recipe home from his paper route decades ago.

Here's a picture of my mom and me in my Grandparents' living room:

This is right before or after another posed photo where we're both looking at the camera and mom isn't blurry, but I like this one best. Lots of people saw it yesterday 'cause it's been on my bulletin board ever since I got it from my Aunt Marty last spring. There's a lot going on here - I'm maybe three, which would make mom 26. The table and chairs I'm sitting at had just been made by my Grandpa. The paintings above the couch were made by my Grandma's parents. I live with some of these paintings - the yellow one with the poppies by Mom's head is in my bedroom. I'm not sure who made the green afghan on the couch. This is the same room where Mom disproved the sweater curse by unraveling Dad. Clearly I come from a long line of people who are really driven to make stuff.

Here's a drawing my planet-obsessed god-son Silas made at the party:Translation: A LONG TIME FROM NOW THE MOON WILL TURN INTO A RING.

The source of this knowledge: Uncle Steph. Silas has been planet-obsessed for a while now. He's been watching youtube videos comparing the size of the Earth to VY Canis Majoris. He knows that someday the sun will explode. Unlike me, who totally freaked out when I figured out that the universe was infinite, this seems to be ok with him. A while ago he was having conversations with his Dad Dan that went something like: "I love you, Silas." "I love you too. How about 40 kermillion years from now when the sun explodes and swallows the earth, will you still love me then?" "Um, yes."

This morning I wandered out of my bedroom to find that my apartment still smelled spicy and holiday and awesome. I did the umpteen dishes the party left behind singing along to Kimya Dawson, and especially this song:



It all goes together.

Mom, Dad, and the Sweater Curse

Here's a Christmas knitting story. You know about the sweater curse, right? As in, if you knit your sweetie a sweater before you tie the knot, you're done for? I've got proof that it's bogus, or at least not 100% - in fact, I'm living proof.

My mom learned to knit as a sophomore in college. Her sister Sarah taught her, and Mom's first real project was a sweater for her boyfriend. It was a green scratchy pullover, probably acrylic - it was 1971, so acrylic was scratchy back then. The shade of green she chose is somewhere between Army Green (there was a draft on - I still have trouble wrapping my head around that) and the Avocado Green that would soon dominate every stylish 1970s kitchen.
Mom learned in November and knit like crazy so her beau would have a sweater by Christmas. I've seen my mom's knitting - to this day she knits slowly and really tight. Christmas was a big deal that year - her fella was going to stay with her family in Pennsylvania over the holidays, instead of going home to his own folks in Illinois. He'd transferred colleges that year to be closer to her, and his mother was convinced my mom was promptly going to ditch him, leaving him broken-hearted and stranded at Penn State.

So the big moment came on Christmas morning. Mom presented the sweater to her man. He held it up - it looked like it would fit perfectly - well, maybe a bit snug... He put it on ... wriggle, wriggle, wriggle - pop! His head came out of the top. The torso and sleeves fit great, but the collar was a little ... tight. Actually, a lot tight. He tried to take it off, but he couldn't get the collar back over his chin. A struggle ensued. I envision all seven of my mom's siblings, plus Grandma and Grandpa, each getting a piece of the action and trying to tug the brand new sweater over the poor benighted fellow's head. Nothing worked.

Finally they got out the scissors. Mom snipped the cast-off edge and unraveled her creation until her boyfriend could breathe easily and the sweater would fit back off over his head.

Over the coming weeks she scoured the yarn shops to find a matching ball of the same dye lot. She re-knit the collar and cast off as loosely as she possibly could.

I'm sure you already know the punchline to this story. Three years later, they graduated college and got hitched. The fella is my dad. The sweater lived on in our family - it was the perfect raking-leaves-in-the-fall sweater. Scratchy and super warm. I wore it sometimes in high school after dad got a little paunchy in his thirties and outgrew it. I wonder where it is now...

Hey, family: If I missed any cool details in this story, let me know and I'll fill them in!

Wheee!

My sis just sent me a bunch of photos of my niece posing with the baby blanket I made her. Wheee!


Thanks, Abbie! SO happy!

The big baby blanket post is here, and the pattern is available here.

Up With Grubs!

Here's the gigantic knitted yellow grub I made for Silas this Christmas. I got tons of funny looks knitting this one on the subway, let me tell you! Silas kinda loves it, and so does his grandma, which makes me really happy.

Godparenting stories that go with it:

Silas, like his whole neighborhood of shorties, is ridiculously obsessed with Thomas the Tank Engine. But the Thomas stories are kinda depressing lessons in you-are-a-cog-in-the-wheel - Sir Topham Hat is the boss of all the trains, and they cross rickety bridges, broken tracks and gigantical hills to bring him his payload on time. Then he says "You have been very useful." Before he could read them himself, I told the stories to Si so that the trains go on strike. "Down with Topham Hat! Up with Trains!" On Saturday he tossed the grub into the air shouting "Up with Grubs! Up with Grubs!"

The other grub story:

What's a baby cat? a kitten.
What's a baby kangaroo? a joey.
What's a baby human? a baby.
What's a baby bug? a grub!

Whee!

Gaufrettes

Tonight Caro came over and we played Scrabble and made gaufrettes. It's a family recipe that came down from my mom's mom's Belgian side. It's a frenchy sounding name for a cookie, but we pronounce it goo-fritz.

You make them on a special iron - the "proper" iron is square and heated over the stovetop, but I use a plug-in pizzelle iron.

Today my sister asked me, "do you have just one iron?" My family's figured out what heirlooms to offer me, and taken advantage of my gemini nature to give me multiples of everything - Two china cabinets, and every Virgin Mary statue they've got. Do you want Grandma Margie's fry pot? Um, no, I've already got Grandma W's.

Anyway, here's gaufrettes. They're simple and delicious - try them hot off the iron and slathered in butter. There's some butter scarcity gaufrette story I seem to remember - if any aunts and uncles are tuning in and want the world to know it, tell me and I'll add it on. Here's what you do:

1/2 # Butter
3 C Sugar
5 Eggs
2 Tbl Vanilla
5 C Flour
1 tsp Salt

Cream the butter and sugar, add the eggs and vanilla, stir in the flour and salt. Heat up the iron and grease it by "cooking" 2 pieces of buttered/margerined bread. Drop by teaspoons or with a cookie scoop and close the lid. Cook a couple minutes - just until they stop steaming. If you let them get a little on the brown side they develop a compelling caramelized-sugar taste. If you use too much dough, some will ooze out of the sides - a delicious mess. My mom makes them on the small side and pretty thin. I like to make them on the thick side by letting the weight of the
iron flatten them slowly.

We poke holes in them and hang them on the tree, too - a week later they're subtly pine-tree flavored sugar cookies. My "tree" this year is a little old rosemary bush, so I wonder how that's going to turn out...

CHA!

Last night I played this game with my god-son Silas. He and his folks and I were walking home from dinner out and he said "I want to bump into you" and I said "if you bump into me I will say CHA! at you!" So he chased me and Dan and Shana up and down the sidewalk and around the grocery store, and bumped into us when he caught us, and we said "CHA!" at him every time he did. I didn't think of it at the time, but it was kind of like rollerderby - at least in the sense that spectators got bumped into. Plus if booty-checking somebody into the third row had a sound effect, it would probably be CHA!

My favorite is when he uses CHA! as a verb, though. One afternoon walking home from the tot lot we said CHA! at everything we passed - a car - CHA! - a trash can - CHA! - a dog - CHA!. Did you see me CHA! that tree, Daniel? Yes, I did.