I may go blind.

I've got two different pairs of socks as my current active WIPs. They are both black. The worsted-weight one is ribbed. The fingering-weight one is cables and lace. I am insane. That is all.

And now, for something completely different...

... adventures in onigiri-making! I have a secret addiction to reading blogs about bento, and I pack a lunch most days. Plus I already have a bento thermos that my mother brought over from Singapore (it was supposed to be for Spouse, but he doesn't do packed lunches in fiddly bits). And I love Japanese food (and Thai, and Chinese, and Korean...)

So I've done odd things with lunches in the past, but decided to take advantage of the sunshine and my cooking mood to try something new. Onigiri, which are balls of cooked rice, often packed around a filling and/or sprinkled with flavourful stuff and/or wrapped in nori, seemed like a pretty easy starting point.

First up - cook the rice. Normally this would be plain short-grain white rice, which sticks together nicely. I only have basmati at the moment, so I made coconut rice instead since I know it's suitably sticky! I make coconut rice in my rice cooker. Twice as much coconut milk as rice by volume and a slosh of good soy sauce. Set the cooker to "cook", then ignore it til it clicks over to "warm". At this point I usually give it a good stir with a rice paddle. The bottom gets delightfully crusted and brown during cooking. If you leave it, it gets quite thick and can be peeled off and eaten separately. If you stir it when it clicks over, it breaks up and mixes in with the sticky rice and gives it a nicer flavour. Plus it's not done cooking yet, so there will be more of it. Put the lid back on and leave it set to "warm" until all the liquid's absorbed and you can see the grains of rice again.

Now to assemble your stuff! The plain, slightly sweet rice needs to be offset by something quite strong. Traditionally this would be something salty/sour, like umeboshi plums. I don't have any, but I do have a jar of lime pickle. This stuff is incredibly powerful, but it works perfectly with the rice! And I also have a jar of black sesame seeds that will do nicely for sprinkling. No nori, because Spouse is not sure how he feels about dried seaweed and I'm intending these to be for both of us to eat.

Here's my assembly set-up:

The toaster and spice rack are not part of the onigiri assembly .  :)

You can shape onigiri by hand, but I'm trying to manage portion sizes so wanted them to be all the same. We conveniently have a small stash of glass ramekins that came with Gu puddings in them! They are perfectly portion-sized, actually - the resulting onigiri is just comfortably hand-sized.

Line the ramekin with plastic wrap. This is by far the fiddliest part of the whole procedure.

Once it's lined, sprinkle sesame seeds into the ramekin. You could put them in last (and I did with the one that I forgot to sprinkle!), but the side that's in the bottom will be nice and smooth and you'll be able to see the black seeds. The other side is where the plastic wrap bunches up, so it won't look good.

Spoon in hot rice, packing it in, until the ramekin is half full. Please note that I'm only using the metal spoons for packing - they do NOT scrape the inside of my rice cooker!

Once the ramekin is half-full, place a scant quarter-teaspoon of lime pickle right in the middle of the rice. Like I said, this stuff is strong, and a little goes a long way.

Pack more rice in around and over the lime pickle. Pack it tightly until the rice is level with the top of the ramekin. (The brown stuff visible is some of the rice crust.)

Using the plastic wrap, pull the onigiri out of the ramekin. This takes a little bit of wiggling with mine, since the circumference of the lip is slightly smaller than the circumference of the bottom. Fold the plastic wrap over to seal it, reshaping the onigiri into a nice cylinder if necessary. Bonus points if you kept all the pickle in a nice dollop in the middle - it's not supposed to leak out the sides.

Turn it over and admire your beautiful sesame-sprinkled onigiri!

I cooked one-and-a-half cups of rice (uncooked volume) in three tins of coconut milk, which gave me exactly enough rice for nine onigiri. Only eight here because I fed one to Spouse for testing purposes. He reckons that two should be enough for a filling meal when served with vegetables and protein of some sort. Tomorrow will tell.

The imp of the perverse

Why is it that whenever one has time to work on projects, one never ends up doing what was planned?

Two recent examples for you. On Thursday we had workmen round to inspect our roof (on-going squirrel infestation), so I took the day off work to let them in. They'd gone by 9:45, so I'd planned to crack on with this month's spinning project. What I actually did was cast on 2 new knitting projects! One is a Mara shawl from the Rowan Felted Tweed I've had forever. The other is the second incarnation of my Blessed Thistle Tsocks from the 2009 club. I still haven't finished Vintage, but they were making me crazy and I wanted something that didn't require two simultaneous charts and a technique booklet to knit. Both projects are going well.

Yesterday my other half was out at his university library studying for his upcoming MSc exams, so I had the flat to myself. I'd planned to haul out and photograph all my fiber stash in preparation for the Tour de Fleece, which starts next month. Instead I spent the entire day cross-stitching.

I know, I'm in shock too. I literally cannot remember the last time I did any cross-stitch. But I did, and if you'll excuse me, I'm off to go do some more.

Finished projects!

First up, the crocheted scarf! It's done! I've worn it every day since I finished it last week, which is why it looks like I haven't blocked it. I'm dead chuffed with it. Perfect for spring.

Also a small spinning project - silk embroidery thread, because I am a crazy lady. It's approximately 12 yards, which is about the length of a commercial hank of embroidery floss. It weighs less than half a gram. Spindle-spun from silk hankies which had been dyed with cochineal.

State of the WIPs, April edition

I'm home sick instead of out at a steampunk event. What better way to console myself than by taking photos of all my knitting projects? I've got updates of everything, even the things I haven't been working on much.

Oldest first, then. Here's my granny square bedspread. I took half-a-dozen balls on an overnight trip at the beginning of the month and ended up with 25 new squares! Still pretty small, though. I've commited to a wee knitalong on one of my Ravelry forums next month, so I'll be spending the first two weeks of May on square duty.

Next up is the everlasting Vintage Tsocks. You'll notice if you look closely that one of those Tsocks has a heel! And I'm 99% sure it fits! I won't be absolutely certain until I've got more of the cuff knitted. I'm leaving it for the moment because frankly, I'm bored of them.

These are my Suitable Socks. Believe it or not, there's cables and lace on that cuff. Pretty easy, I stick them in my handbag when I don't have anything more pressing on the go.









Crazy knee socks that have never appeared on the blog before. Toe-up, stranded colourwork all the way up. Three colours. Those of you with very good memories may recall that I bought this yarn, along with three other colourways, to knit myself a stranded vest. Never happened. Decided to use the yarn up on two pairs of knee socks instead. I can get sweater yarn someday when I actually have time to knit big projects.

A Haruni shawl, using the very first yarn I ever bought at Loop. The mohair is incredibly irritating to knit with, although I love the results. I've done the first chart and have 4 lace repeats and the edging left to go. It'll be a while, though!

A Posh project next - a Holden shawl in Daisy, colourway 76 Trombones. It's a plain stockinette centre and a lace edging. I keep it for tv knitting.

And another Posh shawl - this one is called Radiance. The yarn is Miranda Cobweb, colourway Shining Hour. I love it so very much. It's a half-circle shawl, and when it's done it'll look like a sunrise.

Finally, my newest and current favouite project - a crocheted lace scarf! It's the Zauberball I won in the raffle at Knit Nation 2010. I'd planned to knit another shawl with it, but the pattern wasn't pushing my buttons. Instead I'm working this up. It's a ripple pattern called Delicate Lace (imaginative, no?), and I'm using a 5mm hook. It's giving me just the right amount of airy drape.

It's also inspired me to rethink my plans for the two balls of Noro Kureyon Sock I've got stashed away. I'd been thinking shawls, but maybe crocheted scarves would be better. They'd certainly be faster...

Addendum to last

I love the feeling of freedom that comes from recognizing that some yarn is just crap and deciding to throw it away. That's many hours of my life I've just liberated for some future project that I'll enjoy.

The yarn was fraying from the friction of the heddle. It had already snapped in one place and worn through in several others by the time I'd done the first 6 inches of weaving. A pity, because the colours were working even more nicely than I'd hoped, but I have plenty of other awesome yarns to work with.

Totally warped

On Wednesday, which was the last day of my Easter vacation, I decided to warp the loom. I had two skeins of sock yarn that I'd bought years ago, back before I knew what sort of socks I enjoy knitting. The colours coordinate quite well, so I decided to use one ball for the warp and one for the weft.

I love warping the loom. I love the curve of the yarn as it twists away from the heddle and toward the warping peg.

I love watching the way the colours line up - no pooling, this isn't a sock!

I love the fiddly pulling through of alternate threads.

I love tensioning the knots that hold the warp in place on the cloth bar.

And I love the look of a fat, loaded shuttle, ready for weaving.