my email is back up and running on a new server so no outages will occur when the net cuts out of the old apartment in a few days. also, if you haven’t already, please update my gpg key in your mail program as it was changed on the 3rd of october. if you don’t use encryption yet, don’t be intimidated, start to read about gpg here.
even though tux isn’t actually running around inside most of the machines at home, he is still a cuddly mascot (i haven’t counted lately but i think over half have a beastie inside). moving, ah yes the sweetly glorious grass-is-greener-3-floors-up routine. my personal email is also being migrated so if you get some stuff that bounces in the next week or so, that’s why. ok back to painting and email server configs.
in the morning nothing is tastier than a bowl of oatmeal and a hot cup of peach flavored white tea. that is all.
[disclaimer: i love goopymart‘s artwork but cafepress‘ quality sucks big time (update: quality is fine 🙂 in the newer cafepress mugs). the mugs stain impenetrably with tea or coffee and the tshirt print quality is crap for the price. goopymart however has his/her stuff under a creative commons license so contact the artist then print your own.]
so keeping with my semi-reverse chronology, before a’dam, before the rock concert in paris, there was camp. but after camp there was post-camp. at our place we hosted dan and dave and eliot and bre (eliot and bre shown above waiting for the u-bahn).
we did some power touristing and managed to fulfill greg’s dream and shoot a video podcast in the same afternoon. well, bre shot the podcast and then edited it brilliantly as he is wont to do. i just talked. dave was dubious about the powers of the kitteh:
but in the end all anyone wanted was a good german beer and a hot shower after a week of camping with hackers. some of us were too enthusiastic with our shouts of Prost! and there was a bit of a glass mishap (pictured below). come back soon guys, i had a blast.
when i was in amsterdam a few weeks ago (for work, consulting and to deliver some birthday socks), i received some gifts including the mint condition newton pictured above. it’s gorgeous, and i want to thank j-m for it profusely. i also received two classic macs with a ton of accessories to finally hook up my quicktake 100. j-m also brought a working ibm 5100 “portable computer” as show and tell. i sincerely appreciate this astounding vintage gadget generosity!
while in amsterdam i managed to stop by a knitting get together (pictured below and here). i met some lovely knitters including the adorably snarky andy and klozknitz (she was knitting pomatomii).
the first afternoon i arrived (i traveled by train and i wasn’t alone on the return trip to berlin, otherwise i would not have been able to lug back two complete mac classics with accessories), it was sunny and i got to shoot a bit with my dslr. sunny a’dam rocks.
my mother snipped a recipe last winter for a leek and potato soup, aka “soupe aux poireax”. i don’t remember where the recipe was from but i do remember it made a lovely fragrant soup. my variation that i made for dinner this evening is here below:
>> soupe aux poireaux <<
ingredients:
one large leek
a half dozen small potatoes
one large onion
3 TBSP olive oil
a half cup dry white wine
one vegetable bouillon cube
salt and pepper to taste
chop the leek (for those of you unfamiliar with leeks, you should not eat the leaves, chop them off and put them in your compost bin), potatoes and onion and add to a large heated saucepan with the olive oil. when slightly browned add a half cup to a cup of dry white wine.
add vegetable bouillon mixed with a few cups of boiling water to the pot. add salt and pepper to taste. pour yourself a glass of the wine and let the soup simmer for 20 to 30 minutes.
when potatoes are tender, use a hand blender to process the soup, but leave some parts chunky. serve with toasted Krustenbrot (aka crusty wheat bread for those of you outside Deutschland) or croutons. bon app! (bon app is the french diminutive of Bon Appétit, aka good appetite aka enjoy your meal).
the postman woke me at 9 am yesterday to deliver me ms. broket‘s the gentle art of domesticity. despite the surprise at being awoken after only a few hours of sleep, i went back to my warm bed then last night grabbed some lemons from my corner store. today i pulled on some hand-knit socks and baked up the “Natural Lemon Cake” from page 248. i modded the cake with silken tofu + vanilla soy milk instead of cream, some sunflower oil instead of melted butter and i added the juice of two lemons instead of one.
while the cake was baking i pored over the gorgeous pages of her book, marveling at the colors and textures and ideas. my favorite snippet so far is from page 116: “Embedded in the gentle arts is a slyly subversive streak that encourages free thought, individuality, creative self-expression, imaginative thought processes and not a little self-determinism. All this, and a great deal of pleasure, too.”
i stuck my amaryllis out the window to chill while perusing the pages of tulips and dahlias and lilac blooms. the cake finished, and though it didn’t rise as nicely as i had liked (i have no idea what self-rising flour is in german, i should have added more baking powder), it was delicious. for a modern and fresh take on the domestic arts from knitting to baking and back again, be sure to pick up this enchanting tome.
[my in-progress print o’ the wave couldn’t help but model with pages 154 and 155]
another day, another f.o. (finished object for those of you non-knitting-blog peeps). pictured above: firestarters in posh yarn rainbow colorway finished last night (info here). it seems that last month i finished three pairs of socks (pictured below), and this month has one pair done so far. this month was supposed to be all about socks, but it seems i was a month too early.
i also realized that the last six pairs of socks i have finished were not for me (nine if you count the three pairs of baby socks), so the next pair will be mine. and what will that pair be? i’m swatching for thelonious in louet gems pewter.
the only thing worse than painting a room with double vaulted ceilings a shade of blue verging on black is painting it back white when you move out. happily it only took one coat and a few touch ups because i splurged for the pricey paint. this past weekend also included a lively poker night, replete with red wine and white russians, to make up for the three days of painting. yes this means i’m back to documenting the near past, but this summer’s festivities aren’t done being cataloged, so the next post will jump back in time again.
the same weekend that i went for the rock en seine festival, gab and i went to the vogue exhibit at the bnf and then did a photo shoot on the esplanade of the building with bubbles. why bubbles? just because she had them. my favorite of the shoot is above, but there are plenty more.
while in paris i went by the anny blatt yarn shop in the marais (40 rue des francs-bourgeois) but it had closed a few weeks earlier. apparently the landlord did something tricky and awful and after 25 years, the woman who runs that shop will be running it out of her apartment instead. check her website for more info, i was just bummed i missed it by a few weeks. usually i go to la droguerie for a yarn fix, but i had already passed through earlier this year and have plenty of mohair and bamboo.
gab cheered me up when we realized neither the yarn shops nor the fiber optic cable shops were open. we had some pastries, i knit in public, and we ordered my favorite parisian over-priced cafe drink, the menthe a l’eau. we sipped our expensive minty freshness while gazing at the tour st. jacques, the longest restoration project i have ever known. whenever i drink menthe a l’eau i can’t help but thinking of the french band java when they sing:
java c’est pas de la menthe a l’eau
java c’est du rock’n roll
java c’est le vrai son parigo
la devise? sex accordeon et alcool
fabienne.us 