I mention two additional podcasts, so after you listen to mine, go check Amanda and her CraftLife podcast out, along with Sister Diane’s Craftypod podcast (more about Craftypod below).

Falling to Pieces, the Zombie Romantic Comedy filmed for the Project21 Film Festival Summer 2010 will have it’s New Jersey Premiere at the Garden State Film Festival in March.  I’ll update this blog post when I know the date and location of the showing, but the entire Festival is located in Asbury Park, NJ. Bipolar Girl by No Wine for Kittens features prominently in the film – it’s the song played in it’s entirety at the end of this episode.

Loop in Philadelphia is my new fiber resource.  If you’re ever in the Center City area of Philly, definitely check them out.  Here’s a pic I took of their button selection:

On the needles, I currently have the Thick & Quick Slouchy Beret, the Toadstool Slouch from Knitscene Spring 2012, Cocoknits Everyday Wrap and of course the Sky Scarf.  If you’d like to knit a sky scarf along with me, please join the Blog Like It’s the End of the World group on Ravelry!

I also mentioned Roman Hills yarn when flipping through Knitscene. They’re located in Brooklyn, and I can’t wait to order some of the Downton Abbey yarn once my “yarn fast” is over!

Proceeds from the vegan ebook I hope to write and publish (tentatively titled “The Supermarket Vegan”) will benefit the JBJ Soul Kitchen in Red Bank, NJ.  I’m working through Sister Diane’s Write, Publish, and Sell Your Crafty eBook. Once I finish, I’ll start putting together the cookbook from recipes published on this blog along with a few new ones including the final version of vegan lulu paste!

Music provided by Music Alley:

Blog Like It’s the End of the World by Tom Smith

Prisoner by Smoke Ring Days

Mistreating Yarn Blues by Jacob Haller

Fridge Full of Food by the Nancy Drews

Stupid Valentine by Tom Smith

Finally, here’s the picture from the Dallas Morning News of my father and sister recreating Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run album cover:

I’m using 5 colors, all from Peace Fleece: Negotiation Grey, Father’s Grey, Galooby Blue, Antartica White and the most beautiful turquoise blue ever, Blue Jay.  It’s hard to differentiate the Blue Jay from the Galooby blue in this picture so I labeled it.  I have yet to select a color for birthdays but since the next family birthday isn’t until April, I’m good for now.

I’ve knit for almost a month and am enjoying it immensely. Wonderful to let nature write your pattern for you.

On the menu? Mushroom Walnut Pate from Veganomicon by Post Punk Kitchen, Orecchiette with Basil-Mint Aioli from Veganize This! by Jenn Shagrin, some almost vegan “chicken” (listen to discover how that turned out) with my very own vegan francaise sauce, and vegan red velvet cake from  The Vegan Table by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau.  Of course, no meal is complete without wine, and I give some pointers on how to choose vegan, ecofriendly wine… in a box!

I’ve already reviewed Veganomicon and The Vegan Table, and will review Veganize This! in my next podcast!  The author includes a recipe for vegan twinkies.  Not sure if I’m up to that challenge, so tune in next week to find out how that goes!

Don’t worry, it’s not the end of the world to cook someone you love a vegan feast. So head on over to Episode 22 of APlayFulDay to listen to all good things knitting, some snow in London, and my dinner menu.  As you listen, keep in mind that I am Debi Mazar to GreenTriangleGirl’s Kiera Knightly!

I found my true love at Stitchuary and purchased some lovely wool at Green Mountain Spinnery.  YarnPop‘s project bags are on my list of items to order once my bank account recovers, and Long Island Livestock Company‘s alpaca covered soap may be an inspiration for a collaborative effort between myself and Michele at Funkychunks.

Knittingpodcast.blogspot.com kindly linked to my podcast, and you can find an extensive list of both audio and video podcasts on that site.  Also a shout out to Green Triangle Girl over at the aplayfulday podcast – if you don’t listen to her, you should!

While in New York, I stayed at the Amsterdam Court Hotel and dined at Natsumi, a sushi bar & restaurant I highly recommend.

The vegan tomato soup crockpot recipe I mention can be found here.

Music from music alley by:

rachel kann If I Could Be Your

Jacom Haller Kitten Knitting Blues

… and if you are brave, after listening to the podcast, go check out pinterest.

We might as well get the shopping out of the way first.  What did I buy? I’m one of those shoppers that has to see everything before they make a purchase.  Take me to the mall, and I will walk the entire thing before I figure out what I will buy then I retrace my steps and buy everything I want in 10 minutes … unless it’s the Mall of America.  That approach doesn’t work there, but that’s another story.  After walking both floors of the marketplace in less than 3 hours, I texted four images to my daughter from Green Mountain Spinnery‘s booth because I knew she would love their yarn and quite frankly, their colors, textures and display kept drawing my eyes and my fingers to their booth.  She chose a green wool worsted yarn called “Dragon Well” which I loved because I’ve had a thing for dragons since I was a kid. That girl asked for a hat to keep her head warm at Lehigh in February, and what knitting Mom could say no?  So, yea, this will be the first thing I knit post-VKL; here’s a photo of the yarn she chose in a lovely mossy green:

Lest you think I only purchased goodies for the girl, fear not!  From Stitchuary, I found the perfect yarn for a Cocoknits pattern called “Everyday Wrap” that @RobinUlrich sent to me a month or two ago when I was pining after ponchos.  The pattern can be found here, and this is the most scrumptious and delicious yarn I have ever owned:

It’s called Painted Lady – draw your own conclusions about that name – and I intend to spend the month of February wallowing in the awesomeness that is this mohair yarn.  The colors appear softer than my iPhone makes them out to be but this gives a sense of the colorway.  Greens and oranges and pinks and purples – my absolute favorite!

The instructor for my Sunday morning spinning class, Donna Panner, was not only extremely knowledgeable but a skilled teacher (and that from another teacher).  It’s not her fault my first attempt is such a mess…

… but I will thank the @knitmoregirls for my choice of drop spindle.  When asked which brand I wanted, the only one I recognized was Schacht from thair podcast so I took that one!  The fiber provided came from Frisky Lamb Farm and was a joy to touch.  Another student had one of Loop Fiber Studio’s Bullseye Bumps, gorgeous and soft, so I visited their booth after class, but I think I need to hone my spinning skills quite a bit before I attempt to spin something so amazing, vibrant, and soft.

I promise an (almost) all knitting podcast this weekend with a lot more of my adventures in New York in subzero weather – thank goodness there’s a Starbucks on every block – along with how technology made paying for all this fiber goodness so easy, some advice on how to dine out at the shore and in Manhattan when you are vegan, and how Maria from the Subway Knits podcast is now my knitting unicorn. Stay Tuned!

I wish I could say I taught him any of the skills he uses in this piece – he did learn a lot at our school – but I can say that I was his “daytime mom” for almost 4 years.  I’m so proud of him, and want to share what Ian produced with my readers.

Music by Neema Ntalel provided by Music Alley.  Her EP was financed by AfricaUnsigned, a Kickstarter type site for musicians.  I played Let’s Talk About Love and Into the Dawn.  I also played Ichiro NAKAGAWA’s In Kamakkura as an interlude along with a few Star Trek sound effects because they just seemed appropriate!

Sadly, no lulu paste recipe yet but stay tuned! I’ll be testing this recipe in a vegan version again before the end of the month.

Leah Redmond’s conceptual knitting sky scarf idea can be found here.

Peace Fleece can be found here – remember, I bought 5 of their mini skeins for my own sky scarf.

Below is a picture of the hybrid mittens I made for Sarah from Christmas – this pair was made with gray Caron Simply Soft and Rowan Aura Rasberry:

Here’s a version I made for myself, this one complete with buttons made in Patons Classic Wool:

Please comment on this post or contact me if you are going to be at Vogue Knitting Live next weekend.  I’d love to meet up with podcast listeners and blog readers while I’m there.  I am learning to spin so I can create some (hopefully) wonderful yarn from the fleece of the sheep belonging to my my friend and former stepfatherinlaw (he really does look like Captain Picard).

Also, if you get confused during this podcast, I started recording on Tuesday, January 3rd (my birthday) when it was all of 24 degrees F, then completed on Saturday, January 7th when it was in the 60s at the Jersey Shore.  Bring on global warming!!

I did.

Ok, A Chef’s Christmas is probably cheating because it’s really an extended short story and the audio version is all of an hour.  However, not only is this my list, but I spent the ENTIRE SUMMER reading those G. R. R. Martin books – including Feast for Crows which was just like slogging through The Silmarillion and made about as much sense – so if I want to include a lightweight like Bourdain’s raunchy holiday tale or the newest Stephanie Plum novel to reach 50 books for 2011, I can!

None of the other books on the list completely sucked.  The newest by Neal Stephenson was a huge disappointment though.  The story starts out like an awesome Hollywood sci-fi blockbuster complete with a massive multiplayer online game, Chinese hackers, gun nuts and crazy Russian mobsters. Unfortunately, it becomes more “ensemble” film like New Year’s Day where the producers figured they’d hire as many actors as they could then come up with small parts for all of them and then string it all together as a movie.  I wonder if Stephenson had all these characters rattling around in his head with nothing much to do so he “hired” them all to fill the pages of Reamde.

I’m a huge fan of cyberpunk, and Cryptonomicon is one of my favorite books ever – it might even be my favorite but I’ve read so many books, that’s a tough call – and Stephenson’s been my favorite author for years. Haruki Murakami, Roberto Bolano, and oddly enough Elizabeth George are also contenders for all time favorite author … and if I had to choose based on their Twitter feed, John Birmingham would rise quickly to the top of the list!  I hate to hold a less than stellar effort against an author, but Mr. Stephenson’s hold on the top spot on my all time list is now pretty precarious.  What with John Birmingham’s Angel of Vengeance arriving in March, I think Neal Stephenson’s reign at the top may be coming to an end.

So what was good in 2011?  I started the year with The Emperor’s Children by Claire Messud and ended the year with The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides, two books about Brown students and their inability to achieve what they expected upon graduation.  The former takes place at the start of the current century and ends on 9/11; the latter takes place in 1982.  The New York Times refers to Messud’s characters as “the chattering class”, and both books contain a lot of chattering, navel gazing, and love triangles.  That said, as someone who was in college in 1982, Eugenides’ book was almost eerie in its accuracy of what college students did, said, and aspired to back then.  Messud’s characters are beyond my experience, but who doesn’t love eavesdropping on a bunch of 20-something New Yorkers expressing their angst over their existence (which, less face it, is better than 99% of the rest of the country) and then watching them react to the devastation of 9/11.  I’ve met more than a few New Yorkers like these characters and as someone who was affected firsthand by that event in 2001, I have to include Messud’s book in my top 5 reads of 2011.

When I’m not reading about Ivy League grads bemoaning their fate, I enjoy a good disaster epic. If said epic involves technology gone bad, all the better.  Every so often I wonder why this is my favorite fictional storyline – growing up during the Cold War, too many Irwin Allen movies in the 70s, or a real fear that my MacBook Pro may morph into HAL – whatever the reason, I’m a cyberpunk / techno-thriller junkie.  This means entries number 3 and 4 on the top 5 for 2011 are Directive 51 and Daybreak Zero by John Barnes.

Directive 51 is real.  Enacted by that George W. Bush in 2007, this directive replaced similar continuity-of-government plans of the past. What made this one unique is the Bush Administration’s willingness to make its contents public.  In the event of a significant loss of United States leadership, Directive 51 creates the office of National Constitutional Continuity Advisor (NCCA) which at this point in time would be filled by the current Chief of Staff of the Department of Homeland Security. What’s really significant here is that the NCCA can do anything necessary to help the country recover, without the checks and balances put in place by the founding fathers, and with the ability to abolish our Republic if he or she believes it necessary based on the current situation.

In Barnes world, people are fed up with technology and all that it entails. From unibomber types to disaffected teenagers, people go online to express their frustration with the “Big System” and get caught up in the Daybreak phenomenon.  Working as one large force, this group destroys all modern technology – all that’s left is at best 19th century editions, and America’s thrust back in the early industrial age.  It’s like we decide to take down Cyberdyne only to discover we really liked the world of advanced technology but, oops, it’s gone now, and who the heck is going to run the country when all our leaders are dead and gone?

Kind of makes you want to find out who our current Chief of Staff of the Department of Homeland Security is right?

… and if that doesn’t make you wonder if the Mayans were on to something come 2012, there’s the fifth entry on my best of 2011 list: Feed by Mira Grant.  Thirty years after the zombie apocalypse caused by the combination of the discovery of the cure for the common cold and cancer – we don’t get sick but when we die, we rise again because the virus created by these two miracle cures goes to work to bring us back – 3 bloggers sign on to cover the presidential campaign of a liberal Republican. I listened to the audiobook and almost turned it off based on the initial “young adult” feel, but am so glad I stuck with it.  Bloggers, zombies, back room politics, and journalists divided into “newsies”, “fictionals”, “stewarts” who write opinion informed by fact, and “irwins”, the Hunter S. Thompsons of this new world order (or maybe the Irwin Allens?) populate the near future where no one goes outside for fear of zombie attack, and every mammal over 40 pounds is suspect.

Did I mention in this post-rising world, we can’t get cancer? The advertisement below should give you a taste of the fun and excitement (and a little horror) to be found in Mira Grant’s world:

Feed is book one in the Newsflesh trilogy, and someone went to a lot of trouble to build an amazing website to go along with the book.  If you like a good futuristic novel don’t let the zombies put you off – this one is well worth a read or listen!

To recap, my top five reads for 2011 are:

1.  The Emperor’s Children  by Claire Messud

2.  The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides

3.  Directive 51 by John Barnes

4.  Daybreak Zero by John Barnes

5.  Feed by Mira Grant

The last book in the Daybreak series comes out in April 2012 and the last in the Newsflesh series comes out in May.  What with John Birmingham’s Angel of Vengeance appearing stateside in March, I can only say that my reading list for 2012 will be apocalyptic so stay tuned!

One final note: If you want to read and review 26 or 52 books this year (biweekly or weekly or your own schedule I suppose), check out Cannonball Read IV hosted this year by my good friend @mswas.

My daughter gave me 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami for Christmas.  His book The Windup Bird Chronicles is definitely on my top 10 list of best books read ever. Murakami’s books are like Roberto Bolano’s books in that while I’m reading them I have no clue what’s going on, can’t really describe the story to anyone who asks, and when I’m finished with the book I’m still not sure I understood everything that occurred within it pages but love the book all the more for that.

In one of the early chapters of 1Q84, a character describes a great book:

“There also has to be that ‘special something’, an indefinable quality, something I can’t quite put my finger on.  That’s the part of fiction I value more highly than anything else.  Stuff I understand perfectly doesn’t interest me.”

When I read that, I knew for me at least Murakami’s character refers to his own creator’s work.  I seem to love books all the more when I don’t understand them ‘perfectly’.  I often wondered if that was just my own pretension as someone who reads constantly, but now I suspect that, in collusion with me the reader, these authors I mentioned really want to leave us asking, “what the hell was that?” then telling ourselves the mystery’s what makes their book great.

I tend to need a break from books like these so that I can digest what I’ve read and store up some mental energy to dive back in.  That’s where knitting comes in!  Right now, I’m working on what I call my “Monmouth scarf”.  I’m a very “matchy matchy” person which is probably not a good thing but nonetheless, I wanted a scarf to match the Monmouth hat I recently completed.  I tried a bunch of patterns I found on ravelry but ripped them out after about an hour.  Frustrated, I decided to sleep on my design choice and, as often happens with me, I woke up knowing exactly what I would do.

I wanted to imitate the brim of the hat and keep the stockinette stitch but I hate how stockinette curls. Somehow during the night my subconcious reminded me of the wash rags my grandmother used to knit out of leftover yarn.  She’d surround either stockinette or garter stitch with seed stitch for flat little squares that were nearly indestructable.  So when I woke up, I grabbed a cup of coffee and cast on what I’m calling my Monmouth scarf.

Here’s a photo of what I’m reading and knitting:

If you too love both kinds of yarn, please share what your reading and knitting in the comments!  A link to a photo on your blog or Flickr is always appreciated.

In this podcast, I do a taste test with two of my students, Emily and Caiti.  Caiti is the phenomenal photographer whose work appears on my blog and lot of other places on the internet – you can find her photos at caitiborruso.com.  Emily is one of her many subjects, a vegetarian, and another one of my students. The recipe we test is 10 Minute Brownes from Students Go Vegan Cookbook by Carole Raymond.  Here’s the recipe:

1/4 cup canola oil
1 cup semisweet vegan chocolate chips
1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
3/4 cup sugar or natural sweetener
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 cup finely chopped walnuts

 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly oil a 6 x 9-inch baking pan and set aside. (I used an 11 x 7-inch pan which worked out fine.)

 

In a small saucepan over low heat, combine the oil and chocolate chips, stirring occasionally, until melted. Remove from heat and set aside.

 

In a large bowl, add the applesauce, sugar, and vanilla. Blend well. Stir in the chocolate mixture. Whip and blend well. Add the flour, baking powder, and walnuts, and mix just to combine. Spoon the batter into the baking pan.

 

Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until the top springs back when lightly touched. Be careful not to overbake the brownies or they will be dry. Let cool completely before cutting into squares. Store in a covered, airtight container in the refrigerator. They’ll last for about a week.

I also review Feed  by Mira Grant which I’m listening to in the audio version but recommend to anyone who likes stories about zombies, bloggers, or just futuristic adventures.

Other music on this podcast courtesy of MusicAlley include:

Christmas with the Zombies by Jesse Smith

A Fist Full of We Three Kings by the High Balls

Lambchop Mustache Dream by Vinyl Wine

Call of Duty Christmas by The Energy Commission

… and of course, congrats to Tessa, the winner of my first podcast giveaway from funkychunks!  @soylady’s fantastic soy candles can be found at Things That Make Scents in Manasquan, NJ.