Life's a Stitch

The blanket is finished, the covid is not

When I started knitting this pandemic blanket in June the race was on. What would finish first, the blanket or the Covid? I should have known the answer to that, considering the amount of time I could dedicate to knitting over a mile of Noro Silk Garden. Yes, the blanket won. 

Pattern: Generic Mitered Square Blanket Click on it, it's free and very clearly written.

Yarn: Noro Silk Garden Lite, Colourway 2031, Lot C, 16 skeins

Needles: US size 7 (4.5mm)

Size: 45”x46”

Modifications: Started with 61 stitches per square and ended with a log cabin edge, 1.75" wide

Started around June 1, 2020 and finished January 26, 2021

Walking Through the Seasons

On the Camino de Santiago the walk was kept interesting by moving forward and noticing the changes in geography and the sights as we crossed the north of Spain. Never the same thing twice. Covid walking in the same general area, over and over, has me noticing more subtle differences, the smells of breakfast, the change in seasons.

Is started last spring when I walked through the cherry blossoms. 

Summer brought bunnies and blossoms:

Then there was fall. The morning birds fell silent and the trees performed their last show of the year in preparation the grey and wet of winter. 

Pacific Northwest winter - descriptions from recent weather reports, all referring to rain: a beast of a storm, an atmospheric river, a pineapple express. Most days, no matter how bad, have periods of dryness, enough for a walk. If not, I have my stationary bike, circa early 2000's. I'm glad I kept it.

Truthfully, it’s not all gloom, there are sunny winter days here:

And today, the harbinger of spring - snowbells blooming. I had to come home and paint them.

 

Variations On a Theme (food)

We talked to friends last night and their covid in retirement routine matched ours exactly: taking online art classes, doing puzzles, playing games, cooking, puttering, painting, knitting, reading, watching Netflix, walking, and participating in the spectator sport that is the US news. We are fortunate to be in this stage of life during the pandemic, but still, every day seems like the next with subtle variations. This post will be about food.

We stepped up the cooking a notch, the first was pressed pork with a sour cherry jus. We had similar recipes with lamb in Spain and New Zealand and it's taken me two years to finally find the recipe, thanks to the excellent search skills of daughter, M. I tried every adjective I could imagine to describe this dish to no avail and it was simply pressed meat. For New Year's Day we had the lamb variety.

Here's my version of the recipe. You have to think ahead, but it really isn't complicated thanks to the Instant Pot's ability to circumvent the need for 12 hours of slow roasting, but you can do that if you wish. It seems we have nothing but time these days.

Pressed Pork (Six servings)

Olive oil

2+ lbs pork tenderloin (Can also be done with lamb)

2 cloves pressed garlic

Herbs

Allspice

S&P

1.5 C chicken broth

12 dried cherries (optional)

 

Reduction:

Juices from cooking pork

1/2 C port

In the morning or night before: Rub pork with garlic and spices. Sear in olive oil. Place in Instant Pot with broth (and cherries) and cook at high pressure for 50 minutes, natural release. Shred the pork and press into cups of muffin tin until full. Place another muffin tin on top of first pan, so cups of the top one are pressing into the filled cups of the bottom one. Place in refrigerator and put heavy items on top to weigh down the pan, the heavier the better, to press the pork. Keep in fridge minimum of six hours, can wait until the next evening.

30 minutes before serving. Preheat oven to 375.

Put the pork juices in a pan and add the port (and 12 more cherries if desired). Boil rapidly to reduce.

Carefully remove the pressed pork from the muffin tin. It should all come out in one piece, like a pork muffin. Heat oil in pan and fry the pressed pork until one side is browned. This will be the top of the served pork. Arrange the pork on a pan and heat for ten minutes in oven. Top with reduction sauce and serve.

And we had a celebratory homemade fettuccine dinner when I reached my diet goal. Seems counter intuitive to reward yourself with food when the point of the occasion was successfully limiting food intake. But it was a one off treat, Prawn Fra Diavolo. 

I’m looking forward to a loosening of the rules, when we are allowed to share meals like this with those who are not part of our every day household. 

Pet Portraits - the painting process

Now that Christmas has come and gone I can unveil a couple of commissions purchased for Christmas gifts. I didn’t want to ruin any surprises. The request was for two pet portraits, a dog and a cat, that included the pet's names. I thought it would be fun to show the before, during and after photos.

Leroy, who likes to sit in boxes:

And handsome Kiko:

Don’t his schnauzer brows look like exotic lashes?

A very Covid Christmastime

The plans were made well in advance, and like many pandemic plans, they were cancelled. The two Alberta daughters, with partners and kids were scheduled to visit for the first Christmas together in our new house, but days ahead, health orders were issued. Nobody allowed in your home unless they lived there, no more walking outside with more than one other person, restaurant groups must all be from the same household... Our province's numbers weren't that bad, but modelling showed even the slight increases would grow into something unacceptable. And fines were implemented for offenders. 

We had to remind ourselves of the true meaning of Christmas to get past the resentment of observing people in our area flouting the rules to be with family or politicians defying health orders to go on vacation. We are grateful to remain virusfree.

We successfully molded our holiday season into something different, yet satisfying including:

• a delicious take out dinner for two (see my last post for the menu)
• four Zoom sessions, two included B and S, still in Bali. We did Christmas Eve family Bingo, Christmas Day gift opening, where we opened the gifts intended for others and their's for us, and our traditional Boxing Day Julefrokost, the traditional Danish cold table meal. Each group had plates of the customary foods (fish, cheese, and meat) accompanied by shots of Akvavit. New Years Day we tried an online murder mystery, which I highly recommend (mysterytowns.com).
• My gift to C was an online Christmas concert of his favourite Vancouver men's choir, ChorLeoni, accompanied by homemade sugarfree eggnog.

It was liberating to be freed of Christmas cooking and shopping (everything was either ordered online or handmade). C took responsibility for the two children who have settled in permanent locations, with a promise to B for one in the future. He spent endless hours in his garage workshop making river tables for the girls:

In this unusual time we were even gifted with a rare snowfall. Although the palm trees at a condos across the street looked as if they were shivering in the cold:

Snow here is rare and sticks around for only a short period of time. It's one of the main reasons I love British Columbia. It made for a wintery white Christmas sort of feeling:

Different Days

One day blends into the next so I look at my pictures to remind me of what makes one day different from the rest.

Last week was a zoom watercolour class with the amazing David Smith. Most of his sessions are full days and originate from Minnesota meaning they start at 7:00am in our time zone. This one was half days and sponsored by an art guild in California, 9:00 being a reasonable start time. Painting number one is finished.

The art show is going well. I’ve sold two paintings so far, one large and one small, both florals. 

How does this menu sound for Christmas dinner?

Brined Turkey Roll

Pumpkin Seed & Cranberry Stuffing

(White Bread, Sage, Mirepoix, Craisins & Pumpkin Seeds)

Sumac and Saffron Spiced Turkey Gravy

Roasted Harissa Cauliflower

(Harissa Marinated, Avocado Chimichurri)

Brussel Sprout Aglio e Olio

Carrot and Turnip Mash

Quinoa and Butternut Squash Salad

(Pomegranate Pistachio Vinaigrette, Red Quinoa, Butternut Squash,Tuscan Kale, Craisins)

I like to cook, probably more so in the before times.  Current British Columbian health orders restrict holiday gatherings to those who normally reside in the same home. With only two of us, given the unusual circumstances, we decided on the unconventional, for us anyway. We ordered the Christmas-to-go menu from a local restaurant. I’m looking forward to it. Not the fact that we’ll be far from family, but a no pots nor pans, no effort special meal. That’ll be different.

252 days and a sad ending

252 days, that’s the official amount of time we've been in some form of isolation or quarantine since we returned home from Bali. Even the salmon are taking precautions.

A sad ending: two posts ago I wrote about our friends, a couple, where the husband died suddenly of a heart attack. I am so sad to report that his wife followed him 16 days later, the burden of grief being too much. Such tragedy for their family.

She never saw the painting where I had subtly "carved" their initials into the trunk of the Arbutus tree. I was honoured the family asked permission to pass the painting on to one of their children, but sad about the devastating circumstances. 

I don't know what to write after that. A recent sunset seems appropriate.

Something to look forward to

You know how it is. Sometimes the days feel repetitive. I have a basic routine that includes my daily walk with the addition of a geocache now and then. Cooking or planning take away meals. Fitting in something creative: painting, knitting, debriefing with C about his woodworking frustrations and successes. Texting with the kids. Reading, paying the bills. Not too exciting, not much in the way of travel planning. Way too much time spent on online news. Grocery shopping every two weeks with occasional quick visits to the produce or local food stores. 

Next week, however, is the covid version of our art society's annual Christmas show. In the before times it was a huge weekend event, located in a rec centre with many people milling about. This year it will be in a storefront for the first three weeks of December. It'll be a bit smaller with a limit of five masked and socially distanced customers at a time.

I’ll have three framed paintings, a basket of smaller originals and a basket of cards made from prints. I finally finished my elephants, just in time:

this misty fall Pacific Northwest scene:

and another cardinal:

Definitely something to look forward to. It'll be interesting to see how the new format works out. 

The ties that bind

I have a small cutco knife that fits perfectly in my tiny sized hand, as it did in my mother’s. When I cook it links me to her in a special way.

Four weeks ago we lost a dear friend suddenly. They moved to their retirement house last year, but while it was being built, spent the winter in a small vacation cottage with a big view. I painted that view for his wife, hopefully connecting her to happy memories.

When we were new to BC, (35 years ago!) I answered a classified ad in the local newspaper and joined a group of PC Jr computer owners. We used our amber or green monitors and noisy keyboards to input basic DOS commands and add memory and storage space to our boxy CPUs.

It was there I met my friend, Hugh, a Scottish dad figure for me for many years. After he passed away, and years later, when his wife moved from their house, we helped pack up his workshop and were allowed to help ourselves to items we might use. We had a lot in common: Silver smithing, wood working and stained glass... there’s not a day that goes by that C doesn’t use one of Hugh’s tools. He’s built a memory wall in his workshop, sort of a shrine to Shubie (H’s childhood nickname).

The knife, the tools, not just household stuff, but items that bring us comfort and bind us to important people from our past.

Discoveries in the time of covid

Covid has extended my daily walks. Add in my passion for Geocaching and there have been some interesting discoveries.

The backstory:

Fourteen years (!) ago guests arrived for my daughter’s wedding. On the flight in, in the airline magazine, my BIL read about geocaching, where you use a GPS to find hidden caches, and trade items or leave a signature, proof of your discovery. I don’t know why, but he told me he thought I’d enjoy it. We went to Walmart and bought a GPS and the rest, 676 geocaches later, is history. Note: you no longer need a GPS, there’s now an app for that.

Back to the present:

I’ve recently combined geocaching with my walks, which have resulted in some interesting discoveries. Walking through one neighbourhood I saw a “help yourself” sign on a table with the runts of their garlic crop free for the offing. Delicious.

Another house had a free box of Japanese Iris bulbs, the same as I regretted leaving behind in the yard at the house in the rain forest. They’re now planted here.

Walking by the park on the US border, heading for a geocache, I heard someone playing songs from the Little Mermaid, on the trumpet. Another free gift.

And while geocaching I stumbled upon the discarded evidence of a crime scene, much appreciated by the police. It may be a potentially boring life during the times of pandemic, but as my mother always said, never a dull moment.

On another note, the custom in this rainy climate, is to remove your shoes when entering a house. When leaving we usually sit on the stairs to tie said footwear. In the “before times” a guest commented that we needed an additional place to sit to accomplish the task. So, C, in his Covid coping woodworking workshop (say that three times fast), made this: