Up Island Eggs
Stilton and Steeks
posted Saturday, 18 February 2006
I'm making stilton this morning - actually, this is one of those 3 day cheeses. I picked up the milk and pasteurized it Thursday. Cultured it yesterday and it goes in the mold today. Notice that I finished the baby alpaca Fair Isle vest (with 3 steeks) and buttons make of old nickels.
Hard to get a close up of the buttons, but they are lovely. This was my first button hole band - next one will be better, but this one works OK.
And here is vest front. It is supposed to get bitterly cold tonight - maybe as low as 10F and even lower perhaps Sunday night. We are supposed to curl on Monday on a special team made up of islanders while the local TV station films and interviews us. But if it is 10F (and we could have 0F) when we get up on Monday, I can't let the chickens out because their combs will freeze - and they don't have the sense to stay inside where it is warm. But that means hauling food and water in to them until it warms up. If that is the case I'll stay with the birds and send Tom curling. One of the other islanders coming will bring her son along, who curls, since Monday is a holiday.
Hard to get a close up of the buttons, but they are lovely. This was my first button hole band - next one will be better, but this one works OK.
And here is vest front. It is supposed to get bitterly cold tonight - maybe as low as 10F and even lower perhaps Sunday night. We are supposed to curl on Monday on a special team made up of islanders while the local TV station films and interviews us. But if it is 10F (and we could have 0F) when we get up on Monday, I can't let the chickens out because their combs will freeze - and they don't have the sense to stay inside where it is warm. But that means hauling food and water in to them until it warms up. If that is the case I'll stay with the birds and send Tom curling. One of the other islanders coming will bring her son along, who curls, since Monday is a holiday.
comments (2)
1. Janet left...
Tuesday, 21 February 2006 9:50 am
Kat, hate to be obtuse but what is a steek, please? MW online only has it
as a verb, synonym to stick.
2. Katherine Long left...
Tuesday, 21 February 2006 10:21 am
To steek means to cut your knitting in order to make a hole for sleeves, or
an opening down the front of a cardigan, or for shaping a neckline. The
reason to steek is that it is much easier to knit certain styles in the
round rather than flat - Fair Isle is one of those styles. So you knit a
tube and then need to cut into the knitting to shape to fit the body.
There are various ways to stabilize the knit fabric so it doesn't unravel
when you steek. ONe of the best explanations of all this is the See Eunny
Knit! blog at
http://www.eunnyjang.com/knit/2006/01/steeking_chronicles_the_should.html