quelle erqsome...

30/30 the canadian grilled cheese

What makes a grilled cheese sandwich 'Canadian', for me, is two things:

1. The sandwich must be closed during the grilling process. Over here a grilled cheese is often open, with the cheese melted onto the bread from a heat coming from above. In the Canadian grilled cheese, the cheese melts between the bread as it toasts. Usually the bread is compressed during the toasting process, to accelerate the melting process.

2. The outsides of the bread is buttered, which makes it a little crispy and a lot tasty.

The only way to do this without a grilling machine is in a frying pan or skillet, pressing down with a spatula. It's pretty calorie intensive, so this is really a very occasional treat, but man is it delicious!

ingredients:

2 pieces bread, about 1/2 thick or more
strong cheddar, enough to cover one of those pieces, sliced

method:

Make sure your ingredients are prepped before you begin, as this is pretty quick once you get rolling.

In a wide-ish skillet, melt the butter at medium heat. Tip to spread it around, the way you would when making pancakes. Lay both pieces of bread down. You don't want them burning or sticking, so keep them moving by gently shaking the pan.

Once they have absorbed a bit of the butter (1 minute), turn down the heat and on one of the pieces arrange the cheese. Make sure it does not hang over the side! Overlapping is fine. Place the second piece, toasted-side up, over the cheese. Take care not to jar any of the cheese.

Let sit for about 1 minute, to begin the melting process. Then, take your spatula and press firmly. If the corners of the crust are resistant, concentrate on them before flipping. After about 15 seconds, flip and press again. Continue pressing and flipping until the cheese is melted (under 2 minutes total) then remove from the pan. There might be some overspill, so take care not to leave a stringy cheesy melted trail, which is a pain to clean up.

Best served with home-made tomato soup or chocolate milk.

29/30 100

Mason Lodge Socks have hit 100 projects, according to Ravelry. I'm speechless.

In other awesome news: my downstairs neighbours, have literally just brought home their baby! We have yet to meet, but I'm very excited -- congratulations, Carol and Sunny!!!

28/30 seven busy days

It's been more than just Woebie reporting in the World of Emmms. This week I returned to my Ramona Quimby roots:

ate an amazingly authentically Canadian grilled cheese sandwich with home-made tomato soup:

discovered tiny sunflower shoots growing in my onions:

and finished a pair of perfectly red socks for my sister:

I've also sewn up 14 WIP buttoned bucket bags of various sizes, a billion lavender sachets and spent more time debating the merits of contrasting threads than I ever thought possible.

26/30 wondrous woebies

If the first night of The Woe Betides' 'Natwest Towers' tour is anything to go by, this is going to be the awesomest tour to end all tours. It was one of those nights were everything came together: the sound rocked, the crowd rocked out, the Woebies were rocking. It was awesome. I didn't even end up taking any pictures because I was too busy gazing up at them in wonder and delighting at the crush of groupies (groupies!!) at the end.

Today I am a bit delicate, but almost certainly better off than Matthew et al, who dropped me back home around 2.30 this morning, stopped in for a quick cheese on toast and were back on the road heading up to Oxford by 3. (Did you know that Wonder Woman is on at 3 in the morning? I always find it difficult to sleep when Matthew's gone, and this was my compensation.)

I might buy myself some gnocchi. Nothing is nicer than gnocchi when one is feeling slightly worse for wear. Gnocchi and some sweet, sweet alliteration.

25/30 these utterances are scattered

You would be forgiven for thinking I am not slogging my way through the marketing textbook to end all bigoted tirades of out-dated bullshit, but instead playing on the internet. You would be forgiven AND you would be entirely right. I was all set to package that hellbeast up when I discovered I've still got three more sections to get through. It's the giant piece of crap that keeps on giving.

Instead of finishing it up as quickly as possible and shipping it off for the poor in-house saps to drag it through the rest of the publishing process, I have temporarily quit.

In the last hour, I've read twelve days' worth of Go Fug Yourself, drooled over Old Maiden Aunt and Fyberspates and wondered whether or not I should help Matthew pack for his upcoming tour (which begins tonight!).

I've also flipped through the new issue of Interweave Knits on Ravelry and decided I really don't like one of their new models. I think it's her posture; she has terrible posture. You can't slouch in carefully tailored knitwear, at least not if you want it to look like the back isn't so narrow that squishing your shoulders together is the only way to get it to fit. Pretty face + lousy posture = someone who reads the magazine, not someone who's in the magazine. She's been in the last few issues and everything she's modelled is bleugh, pfft and meh -- which is a shame, because she really is a pretty woman and the garments she's modelled have proven lovely on other people. Am I being fugsidually crankipants or is this justified? If you can guess which I'm talking about, let me know.

In any case, The Woe Betides are embarking on their Natwest Towers tour today, kicking things off with a shindig at the Monarch in Camden. If you can come, come! If you can make one of the other gigs, go! It would be sublime and delightful if you did. Ooooh, and then told them after the show that you heard about the tour here, that would be awesome!

20/30 an evening of mathematics and absurdity

Last night Matthew and I attended a self-proclaimed 'magnificent evening of silent film, music and French chanson', hosted by the talented partner of a good friend of mine, and oh how it delivered. If I had enough money, I would spend it on throwing regular afternoon parties in a private cinema watching Buster Keaton as the band played. Everyone would be welcome and we'd have small sandwiches and champagne and wear fantastic hats. Wouldn't it be marvellous?

Watching silent films accompanied by a live band is the only way to do it. For all their explosions and surround sound and enormous production budgets, these days talkies kind of fail in comparison.

18/30 pattern stalker

Does anyone else eagerly flip through the Recently Added Patterns pages on Ravelry every morning? I love seeing what other people have created, trying to guess which will go viral and which will suddenly be on everyone's lips. My favourites of the ones that appeared overnight:

The Bergen Street Mitts -- simple detailing but awesome overall effect.

The Top Down Shrug Cardigan -- so short it doesn't cover the boobs but between that collar, that button details and those gorgeous little sleeves... Need it, want it, must have it.

The Cedar Leaf Shawlette -- the epitome of simplicity but so very effective.

The shawlette is a pattern by Never Not Knitting's Alana -- as soon as I realised that I was all, I know her! (I don't, not in real life. But I do listen to her podcast, and even though the theme song makes me wonder why women's domestic servitude is still considered so normalised that having a hobby can become a hilarious form of protest, her content is such that I consume it eagerly every time she uploads a new one.)

Pictures all from their respective Ravelry Pattern pages.

17/30 twist

How crap have I been with this blogging every day thing? Very. Not for a lack of things to relay, but for a lack of camera cable to upload pictures and for a lack of initiative to dig through the enormous windswept mess that has become my office. This is the result of the removal of my desk.

Our living room has turned into a sweatshop of one -- my desk, sewing machine, half a dozen half-sewn projects and a great pile of fabric migrated there three days ago and are largely ignoring demands (Matthew's) to return from whence they came. Though it means I have in turn been forced to take refuge at our dining table if I'm to get any work done, it does mean that I've been largely able to keep up with my sewing schedule -- and that's no mean feat. I finished off four more WIP bags last night and have several small stacks, in various stages of completion, to run through by the end of the week. I really do need to step it up a bit, though, as we've got a stall at a craft fair in a couple of weeks and Made by Loumms has experienced SEVEN sales across our Folksy and Etsy shops in the last three weeks. That may seem insignificant to some, but it's HUGE to us. SEVEN! An added bonus to SEVEN is that I got to meet up with three people to deliver in person (of which I have pictures. I really do need to find that cable...), and that really does make it all so much more fun.

In any case, Twist! The new Twist Collective came out just the other day and there are a couple of patterns that are making me reconsider my knitting schedule for the next few months. Cathy Carron's deliciously impractical (for the winter at least) Bright Star cardigan appears to make use of the Ringwood pattern -- one of my favourite textured stitch patterns, which I discovered through Nancy Bush and used in my Norfolk Ramblers sock pattern. The shawl collar and simple shaping, paired up with that lovely full-skirted dress, make me long for a time machine so I could journey through time and space to the 1950s, buy up a load of tailored dresses and return quickly to the sanctity of relative gender equality and the freedom of choice and movement. Come to think of it, Tanit's Jacket, by Gudrun Johnston, does much the same. I simply adore the piping detail and the way the neckline skims the collarbone. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I have indeed completely fallen for the storylines both cardigans tell and would be immersed in wistful dreams of fishing villages and tucking in to steaming bowls of soup while the washing is drying on the line just outside the window if not for two decidedly more decadent narratives, I mean patterns.

Sivia Harding's Dryad may have been photographed by the sea, but it belongs wrapped around the shoulders of arms wearing Ysolda Teague's Farinelli opera gloves. Nothing could be finer than settling in to an evening of tiny binoculars and soaring tenors than that glorious shawl, with its dainty beaded detail, and those divinely long gloves.

I will confess that I did get a tiny sneak preview of the Farinellis on Friday, when I had the good fortune to combine an afternoon coffee and a Made by Loumms delivery. And though either pair were only wee at the time (but a cuff and a short length of arm), they were entirely delightful and I've not been able to stop thinking about yarn possibilities ever since. In fact, I seem to recall I have a skein of Malabrigo in that velvet grape colourway all caked up and ready to go...

12/30 hmph

I think I may have just convinced myself that the chapter (my second) I've been working on for the last five months might be largely unnecessary and, if I can whittle it down to just a 1,000 or so words, that would be more than sufficient, as then it can be slotted into my first chapter.

If I were to do that, I would have more space to look at other things, other more interesting things. But, it would also mean that I would have pretty well wasted five months.

I may have also convinced myself of the benefits of combining what could be three chapters into one largish chapter. This would mean that I would have more space to look at other things, other more interesting things. But it would also mean that I've got a lot more writing to do.

I think, should someone attempt it, I could be convinced at this point that I have a peculiar penchant for making things difficult for myself.

Hmph.

11/30 good things

Today, though not wildly productive, has been a very good day. I've done lots of little things, though I still have several that need doing. But overall, it's been a very good day.

I awoke early and walked over to the hospital in East Dulwich to have some blood taken (nothing serious, all part of my yearly check-up).

I reread another chapter of Dark Wanton -- I am loving it second time around. The way Cheyney layers his characters, and sets them on their paths, is genius. He has a knack for doubling meaning, so now everything every character says is fraught with possibility.

I went to Wandsworth and bought some frankly delicious fabrics, including some gorgeous nursery fabric to make a set of towels and bum wipes for my downstairs neighbour. I must take pictures of them when the sun is still up and I'm not relying on poor-quality lamplight. While in Wandsworth I discovered an amazing second-hand shop and may (just may) have found an integral part of Matthew's stocking.

I've printed out my next chapter and have begun the long slog. I have HEAPS of work to do, but I'm really rather excited about where it's heading. I've started formulating abstracts for the next 4 chapters as well, so I'm feeling pretty well like I'm nearly on top of things. I still haven't heard back from my supervisor, but fingers crossed it's because he's been struck dumb by my brilliance and NOT (as I fear) rendered incredulous by my vacuity.

I currently have two cats vying for attention and cuddles, eager to tell me about their exciting adventures outside, where there is RAIN, well SORT OF, it's really just DRIZZLE, but it still made them WET and actually, now they're kind of HUNGRY, so they're going to go EAT, but not before they tramp UP AND DOWN THE SOFA with DAMP, MUDDIED PAWS. I'm sure they never used to be this vocal.

Matthew has made his famous chilli tonight and it smells so good! I'm very excited about this one, as I convinced Matthew to add a pinch of cocoa powder, an intriguing suggestion from La. It smells fantastic.

Also, you know those two bags I posted about yesterday? They were both snapped up overnight! How awesome is that? Lou and I nearly fell over when we saw!!