Quick Knit

I have lunch every Friday at work with a couple of friends. Lunch for a high school teacher means thirty-five minutes to wolf down eat a quick bite, usually in front of a computer, grading. I'd rather do that and leave earlier after school. So, it's nice that one day a week, I have a social lunch. When we first started having lunch together, we'd all bring food, but this year, my friend Nancy is the only one of us to bring anything usually, often the entire lunch. Nancy's son and his wife are expecting a baby any day now, so I thought I'd use some left over skeins of Debbie Bliss Cathay that I bought from Little Knits, one of my favorite online discount shops, a while back, to knit a quick little Autumn Leaves sweater for her to give them, to show my appreciation for her. I'm contemplating knitting a little pair of "Baby Janes" before I give it to her, but I have to hurry, considering that school's out next week, and we probably won't see each other during the summer, as she'll spend the summer in Reno.

That's Better!

I lied. I did care that the toes didn't match with my Nemesis socks. I kind of knew as I wrote it that I didn't really believe that I was happy just to be finished. Since these socks were the first knitted gift I've ever given my friend Sara, who knows that I've been knitting since high school, I couldn't stand the thought that she might conclude that I'm just a mediocre knitter after all of these years! So, even though I enjoyed reading Caffeine Girl's post about seeing Sally Melville and how she said, "Don't let the process get in the way of progress," I unraveled about two inches on my socks and re-knit the toe and am now completely satisfied and truly ready to gift them.

Kai spent most of yesterday--I'm talking until eight o'clock last night--at the Valley Swim Meet at Cal State Bakersfield, which is about thirty-five minutes away from us. He lost his goggles in the Fly, so he didn't qualify for the finals individually, but both of his relays made it. Since the meet didn't begin until eleven, Russ and I decided to take the opportunity to go for a ride on the Kern River Bike Trail .  Russ has been telling me about all of the baby ducks he had seen earlier in the week, so I was excited to go. It was a beautiful ride, and we did see quite a few little ducklings, but they disappeared into the brush when we got too close. Smart babies since we also saw several hawks.

I had a great conversation a week or so with a friend at work about how many parents "live" through their kids. There can be a fine line sometimes, I think, between interest in your kids' activities and  becoming too wrapped up in them. I have lots of other interests besides my kids, but I have to admit that I can't stay away if they're competing in anything, especially swimming. One of the reasons that I always liked swimming was that there seemed to be fewer "Little League" parents involved, not that there aren't always some loud jerks over-zealous parents in the stands. Kai's team took seventh today, which may not sound impressive, but it was enough to medal, and if you saw their competition, you'd understand why that was exciting. It was a little bittersweet too because Kai is the only junior on his relay. His team mates will graduate next week, and that will be an end of a era. Oh, and, I also enjoyed today because....I got to sit in the stands and KNIT!

Finished

They're not perfect. The patterning at the end of the toes doesn't quite match....and I don't care!

Gratuitous Rowdy Beagle picture. I was going to take a nap this afternoon, but he had my spot! And, yes, he is lying on my 40 dollar L.L Bean Starfish pillow.

Waylaid

Well, my well-intended idea of posting food on Fridays seems to have taken the back burner for the past two weeks. Since I was sick, I didn't get much exciting cooking done. This morning, however, I woke up to a nice, tidy kitchen, which is always a sign to me that Russ has gone on a long bike ride. He seems to think I won't complain about him not accomplishing household tasks if he leaves the kitchen spotless before he leaves (He's right!)  Clean kitchen always inspired me to cook.

Paige made deviled eggs, using chipotle chiles in Adobo Sauce for Easter from a recipe my sister-in-law sent me. They were so good, and I couldn't stop thinking about how good those flavors would be in potato salad. So, this morning, I gave it a try. It's just me and the dogs at home right now, so I haven't had any reviews yet, but I thought it was pretty good.


Chile-Cheddar Potato Salad

3 lbs  boiled Yukon Gold potatoes, cubed
3 eggs, hardboiled and cut into quarters
1/3 cup mayonnaise
1/2 cup sour cream
1/3 cup cheddar cheese, shredded
2 Tbsp. canned chiles in Adobo Sauce, chopped
1/2 tsp. smoked paprika
1 tsp. salt (I used Murray River Salt because I'm a salt snob.)
2 Tbsp. chives, chopped
1/2 cup red or orange bell peppers, chopped
1 jalapeno, finely chopped (seeds and rind removed! I might only use 1/2 a jalapeno next time. The salad seemed to heat up throughout the day)

Combine mayonnaise, sour cream, cheddar cheese, chiles,  and paprika. Add to chopped potatoes and blend. Add chives, bell peppers, and jalapenos, and season with salt to taste. Chill.

I told Kai that this picture looks like he's about to do one of those "learning to dive" drops into the water. he thought that was pretty funny.

I "legally" ditched school yesterday afternoon so that I could go to Kai's league swim meet, which was about thirty minutes away from us. I was a little disappointed to be going alone because Russ had to work and couldn't go, but I was boosted by the fact that I had several bottled waters and my Nemesis socks in my bag, along with my book club latest book selection My Jane Austin Summer. I was happily sitting in the stands, talking to Kai and one of his friends before the meet started when their coach approached. I knew what that meant...."Can you time?" Awwww! So much for knitting! Oh well, I got a front seat to the action. Kai had a pretty good day individually, and his relay took first, which they had anticipated but not so dramatically. Kai had the anchor leg, and you can see his feet are off the blocks with a good margin before the kid next to him. They're hoping to win the 200 IM relay in the valley meet  which is in two weeks, if they all have a great day, but that's a big "if."

I did get to knit a little once I got home, and I'm feeling like this may be the 'try" that actually results in a finished socks. It was so nice getting comments from commiserating knitters. I really do wonder about myself sometimes, but it was good to hear that most knitters have the same experience of ending up with rows of "mindless" mistakes that have to be unraveled.

Ugh!

So...I thought I'd be posting my finished Nemesis socks this evening. For quite a while, I had been holding my breath, worried that I was going to run out of yarn since Nemesis does use a lot of yarn. I even went to the Loopy Ewe website, considering buying another skein of Gertrude Eberle 2 yarn, but reconsidered when I remembered that it was a little on the pricey side. Happily, as I neared completion, it looked like I was going to make it, by the skin of my teeth. Then, just as I was ready to start decreasing for the toe of my second sock, I realized something that I had been suspecting for some time. My second sock was nearly an inch longer than the first. Awwww! I hate when I do things like that. I've held them up next to each other, stretched them both to fit, but there's no way around it. They're totally different sizes. I have to unravel my second sock. I'm not positive where I went wrong, but I think it's in the pattern a good two inches above the heel. This is nothing new for me. I had to re-knit part of the first sock because I re-knit a part of the pattern twice. It's amazing that I complete anything. I get distracted easily and am constantly having to start over.

Great! I've had a bad cold since Friday and even stayed home from work today, and I feel just plain lugubrious. I do love the word "lugubrious," but I don't like actually feeling it. On top of that, I feel fat and matronly...and like a bad daughter because I was going to call my parents last night, but instead chose to watch TV all evening, hearing over and over again that Osama bin Ladin was dead, which is a good thing...but not a productive thing for me to spend three hours being "re-informed" about....even if I did watch Anderson Cooper most of the time, which I never consider a waste, ha, ha.

So, I'll unravel tonight, and get going again as soon as I get caught up with the grading I've gotten behind on being sick for three days. How's that for an uplifting post??

Hot Cross Buns

I always intend to bake hot cross buns on Good Friday, but I don't think I ever have followed through. I not only followed through today; I was even a little adventurous. I baked hot cross buns with my sourdough starter. I often use my starter as a yeast replacement with rolls or pizza dough, which usually results in finished products that are good but not identifiable as sourdough, so I thought why not try using my starter with a hot cross bun recipe. After looking around,  I discovered  a good-sounding recipe at The Fresh Loaf  and set to work improvising. My family didn't go crazy over my "wild yeast" Hot Cross Buns, but everyone agreed that they were very good. I used a full teaspoon of cinnamon, but next time, I think I'll only use a half since they aren't supposed to be cinnamon buns, after all.

Wild Yeast Hot Cross Buns


Makes 1 dozen buns
1 cup recently-fed sourdough
11/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
11/2 bread flour
1/8 cup sugar
1 cup warm (90-100 degrees) milk
2 tablespoons melted butter
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup raisins, currants, or dried fruit
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon ground ginger

Glaze: 1/2 cup powdered sugar 1 tablespoon lemon juice

In a large mixing bowl, mix together sourdough starter, flour, yeast, sugar, salt, and spices. Add the warm milk and butter and mix until all ingredients are combined. I had to add a little more flour to get the flour to the right consistency, where it was soft but not sticky  I used my Kitchen Aid with my dough hook for about ten minutes and then added in 1/2 cup of raisins, kneading by hand. Place dough to a greased bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and allow to rise for 1 to 1 1/2 hours until the dough has doubled in size. When it has risen, pour the dough out onto a cutting board and divide into 12 pieces. Roll the pieces into balls and place on a greased baking surface (I used a 9 x 13 pan). Cover the pan and allow to rise until they double in size again, typically 45 minutes to 1 hour.

While the buns are rising, preheat the oven to 425 degrees. When the buns are ready to bake, beat the egg in a bowl and brush some over the top of the buns. Then put the buns in the oven and bake at 425 for 20 minutes. Remove and allow to cool for 5 or 10 minutes.  While the buns are cooling, make the glaze by combining the lemon juice with the powdered sugar (you can also use orange juice, milk, or water if you don't have lemon juice around). I used a pastry bag,  to paint the crosses on top of the buns.

Nemesis Sock Knitting

I've been on a yarn diet for most of this year, but awhile back, I gave in to the urge to browse through The Loopy Ewe's yarn and made a couple of purchases. One of them was some yarn from the Schaeffer Yarn Company called Gertrude Eberle. Being an ex-swimmer, I knew exactly who Gertrude Eberle was, an Olympic champion, who was the first woman to swim the English Channel. I also knew who I wanted to knit a pair of socks for with that yarn, one of my best friends from high school, who was a great swimmers as a teen. She's continued to swim for fitness and competitively since then...like for the last thirty years. Among other accomplishments, she's swum from Alcatraz to Pier 39 in San Francisco, which makes her the deserved recipient of Gertrude Eberle socks in my book.

I decided to use the  Nemesis socks pattern from Knitty. We were meeting my cousin and her family at Cambria yesterday, so I was excited to have several hours in the car to knit on the way over. I printed the pattern, making sure that I also printed the chart. There was an option for a "large" or "small" chart, so, of course, I printed the large chart because I wanted to be able to see the pattern well! I didn't need the it for the first twelve rounds, which were just ribbing rows, but just as I was about to need the chart, I realized what I had done. I'd printed the "large size" chart. I don't know what I was thinking! I had a big car trip ahead of me and no pattern! I messed around for awhile trying to figure out the smaller pattern on my own, but I finally gave up. What a mini tragedy!

I downloaded the right chart this morning, and worked on it between working in the yard and baking bread. I enjoyed  today almost as much as the day at the beach yesterday. We had a great time, catching up and mostly just relaxing. My cousin's husband is from Nebraska like Russ is, and we made fun of the fact that they were dressed almost identically.

 We stopped by the Hearst Castle Visitor's Center, but didn't give ourselves enough time for one of the tours.

 It's hard to think of stuff to do with three teenagers and four adults, but everyone agreed that lunch at Main Street Grill in the West Village and ice cream at Rainbow Bean Coffee and Ice Cream shop in the East Village were super choices, and so was the walk on San Simeon Beach.

 

 I love walking through the gardens at Heart's Ease, and the kids didn't seem to mind it too much. Paige took a little rest under one of the arbors. Too bad, she couldn't find some decent jeans to wear, ha, ha.

Food On Friday #2

I bragged last week that we like trying ethnic food, but my biggest cooking success this week wasn't that exotic. Still, it was a little different and really good. Russ has bought Trader Joe's Cajun Salmon a couple times, and Kai had raved about it. I thought I'd see if I could measure up. Russ found me a recipe for blackened salmon at All Recipes. I improvised quite a bit, and we all agree that it was even better than Trader Joe's.

"Kinda" Blackened Cajun Salmon

• 2 tablespoons ground paprika (I used smoked Spanish paprika from My Spice Sage)
• 1 tablespoon ground cayenne pepper
• 1 tablespoon garlic powder
•   1teaspoons salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon dried thyme (I actually used fresh because we had some in the garden.)
• 1/4 teaspoon dried basil
• 1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
• 4 salmon fillets, skin and bones removed
• 1/4 cup olive oil with one Tbsp. melted butter added

Directions

• In a small bowl, mix paprika, cayenne pepper, garlic powder, salt, black pepper, thyme, basil and oregano.

• Brush salmon fillets on both sides with olive oil/butter mixture, and sprinkle evenly with the cayenne pepper mixture. Drizzle one side of each fillet with some of the remaining olive oil. 
• In a large, heavy skillet over high heat, cook salmon, until blackened, 2 to 5 minutes. Turn fillets, drizzle with remaining olive oil, and continue cooking until blackened and fish is easily flaked with a fork. 

I didn't blacken the salmon as much as I've seen in some recipes, which was fine with everyone. I was pretty proud of the rest of meal too; salad using lettuce from our garden and broiled potatoes with olive oil, rosemary, garlic from my dad's garden, and fresh thyme.

In other news, I have successfully defeated "Second Sock Syndrome," at least with this pair of socks with my beautiful yarn from Anne. I frogged  the insidious sock that I was nearly finished knitting. I just wasn't happy with the pooling around the ankles, so I went back to one of my favorite patterns, Calendula. I had Paige model them for me. She seems awfully interested in them. Unfortunately, wool sock weather seems to be a thing of the past. I just heard that a warming trend is on the way. I hope that means 80 degree, not 90!

Egg..cellent Gift

 I love reading novels that use food motifs to illustrate larger issues, but in the whole scheme of things, it seems to me that one of the most common uses of food (besides that whole needing nutrients thing) is to show someone that you like them. Unfortunately for my weight, I seem to have a lot of people who like me, ha, ha. We're not just talking kids offering to give me their cookie on "cookie day" once a week. Last week one of my students who is Indian-American gave me a little, colorful bag of Indian treats. She'd been to a traditional wedding in Los Angeles and had brought one of the bags home for me because she knew I'm interested in ethnic food. Paige and I had so much fun tasting everything.

Last week, another one of my students brought me a dozen or so farm-fresh eggs. I think I might have mentioned to her that I pay a little more for "free-range" chicken eggs at Trader Joe's, even though I'm not so sure those chickens are that much better off.  Several of the eggs of were larger than the others, and she told me that they were duck eggs. I told her that I at least wanted to pay her mom to cover the feed, and she said that her mom wouldn't take any money, so...I knit her a little duck egg cozy.

Friday! Friday!

Kai has a big swim meet tomorrow in Fresno, which is about a three-hour drive from us. At the beginning of the week, we'd planned to drive up today after school, so that we wouldn't have to get up on a Saturday at 4:30 for Kai to go on the bus with the rest of the team. By yesterday, we'd decided that we'd just tough it out and have Kai go on the bus, and we'd leave a little later ourselves...at six or so. That means that we're really enjoying our Friday, sitting in the living room with a fire in the fireplace, watching the rain come down outside, savoring the chilly weather. Last week, it hit ninety degrees one day...which pretty much sums up Central California in the spring. Here's hoping that it's not raining tomorrow.

I like how some bloggers do the "Wordless Wednesday" thing, and a while back Tracy either sponsored or encouraged "Pink on Saturday," or something like that. I've been thinking that I'd start having a "Food on Friday" theme. Russ and I both like to cook and love adventurous eating, not weird stuff (to us), but mostly exploring ethnic and fresh foods, so I kind of like the idea of recording some of our food "successes." It'd be fun if some of my blogging friends followed suit, so I could steal your recipes and pass them off as my own to my unsuspecting friends and family!

Today I'm going to share a food success that I had a couple of weeks ago. I'm in a small book club which meet every six weeks for so. We've had some truly memorable food experiences together, usually inspired from the book we're currently reading. Our last book was Mr. Pip, which I enjoyed, if you can say you've enjoyed a book with so much tragedy. The content of the book didn't lend itself to a food theme for our meeting, so we all agreed to have high tea, basically...with wine instead of tea, ha, ha.

I brought pimiento cheese tea sandwiches from my Teatime at the Inn cookbook. I love that cookbook;  the sandwiches remind me of a wonderful tea, which included pimiento cheese tea sandwiches, that Paige and I shared with my sister-in-law, Ann at the Haymarket District in Lincoln, Nebraska years ago.

Pimiento Cheese Tea Sandwiches

3 oz. cream cheese, at room temperature
3 Tbsp. mayonnaise
1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
3 cloves garlic
8 drops Tabasco
1 6-oz. jar pimientos, liquid drained and set aside
1 Tbsp. chopped parsley, chopped
12 oz. grated sharp cheddar cheese
1/2 cup coarsely chopped pecans
 5 thin slices fresh tomato
alfalfa sprouts
10 thin slices whole-wheat bread, crusts removed

Combine cream cheese, mayonnaise, Worcestershire sauce, garlic, Tabasco and pimiento liquid in a food processor and pulse several times; add parsley and pulse several more times. Turn mixture into a large mixing bowl. Stir in pimientos, cheddar cheese, and pecans. Chill for 6 hours. To assemble, place tomato and a handful of sprouts on 5 slices of bread. Spread pimiento cheese mixture on remaining half. Put tops and bottoms together. Cut each sandwich into 4 triangles.



I skipped the tomatoes this time since they're not in season, but they were delicious without them, and certainly very healthy, considering they had sprouts in them, ha,ha.

Perfect!

So, I'm adding my niece to my list of people who know how to use positive reinforcement with me. She sent me a nice little thank you message on Facebook the day that she received the little sweater for her daughter, and the next day, she posted this picture. I think she looks darling! The sleeves are a little short, it looks like, but I'll just say I'd planned on 3/4 length. And I definitely will have to knit her another sweater in the future!

Finally, my little Tulip sweater is ready to be sent to Kentucky to my little grandniece. I had been waiting for over a week for the buttons to arrive and was starting to get a little irritated because it seemed to be taking sooo long. When they arrived, I found out why. They had to come all the way from Lithuania, which I would have noticed had I looked at the Etsy page more carefully. The shipping was so cheap that it hadn't crossed my mind that they were being shipped internationally.

I'm very happy with this purchase. First of all, they're very pretty and sturdy, made from apple wood. Second of all, she included more buttons than I had ordered, even adding a couple of larger buttons, which would be perfect for a felted purse.

A couple of days ago, I was getting ready to pack my bunny and sweater, and  I couldn't find the bunny. I asked Russ if he had seen it, and he said, "yes," that he'd taken it to school. I thought he must have been kidding, but he wasn't. He was teaching third graders their spelling words, and one of the words was "knit." He'd told them that his wife knit things like socks, scarves, and bunnies. The kids were very interested and wanted to see one of the bunnies, so he took my bunny back to work when he came home for lunch. Later, I saw this little picture on the kitchen table. Sure enough! There's "Mr. S." with a bunny!

There is absolutely no reason to include another picture of this sweater and matching bunny, other than to show off, but that's what I'm doing. Now to get back to sock knitting.

Aran Bunny

I'm nearly finished with my grandniece's sweater, except that I'm waiting for some buttons that I ordered for it. What to do while waiting? Knit a bunny, of course. I'm especially happy with his little sweater. I used some left over Lornas Laces sock yarn that was close to the same color as the sweater.

Sheep Again

These are not "exotic" sheep like the ones I see on some of the "sheepy blogs" I like to frequent, but they're still cute. Last Sunday afternoon, I  dropped Russ and Kai off at the head of the Kern River Parkview, planning to meet them an hour or so later after I'd done some grocery shopping. Instead of going in a straight line to my destination though, I thought I'd see if there any lambs out in the country. I hit the jackpot.

What's Cooking

My family does most of their grocery shopping at Trader Joe's. Although we appreciate the wonderful candy and wine selections, our main purpose in shopping there is the variety of healthy food. We have our staples that we buy every week but almost always try at least one new item every time we shop. A month or so ago, Paige saw their peanut flour and was interested in it, so I bought some, thinking that I'd be able to find lots of recipes on the internet to use it with, especially bread recipes. I never found anything that really interested me though, so yesterday I decided to experiment a little myself. I was in the mood for pretzels, and, of course, also wanted to use my precious sourdough starter. I found a recipe for  sourdough pretzels at Miss Organics Kitchen. It sounded good as it was, but I wanted to use that peanut flour, so I added 1/2 cup of it. Then, I remembered that the peanut four was non-gluten, so I added another 1/2 cup of high-gluten flour. I also added about a cup of bread flour instead only using whole wheat flour as her recipe suggested. In other words, when I was finished, it wasn't the original recipe at all, but I sure did appreciate her initial guidance. I've only made pretzels a couple of times before, but these are the best. They're not really peanut-y, but there's a definite hint of peanuts. We'd better enjoy this recipe while we can because I've been reading online that T.J.s had discontinued it. Boo hoo!

I'm reading Our Town with my students for the gazillionth time, and I still enjoy it. I understand that some people think it's slow, uneventful, and overly nostalgic, but I think that everyone can agree with its message that a lot of what makes people happy are the little, seemingly unimportant things...you know, like having good soup for lunch. Every since I had Brown Butter Sea Salt Cookies, I've been excited about salt. 

 Monica Bhide was writing about paprika on her blog this week, and she mentioned that she loved the Spanish paprika from My Spice Sage. Obligingly, I got on line, ordered some Spanish paprika, some Murray River salt, some fleur del sel, and some applewood smoked sea salt. I could have a separate post to wax about the applewood smoked sea salt. It's intoxicating. My family used to spend time at a friend's cabin in the San Bernardino Mountains when I was a kid. There were innumerable reasons that I have pleasant memories of those weekends at "Uncle Fenton's" cabin in Idyllwild, but one of the memories I had forgotten until now was the smell. This salt smells like "weekends at the cabin"! I was walking around sniffing my glass jar of salt, when I realized that I needed to make soup, and I needed to season it with applewood smoked sea salt...so I did!

 I made lentil soup with red lentils, just kind of improvising, starting with several chopped cloves of garlic sauteed in ghee. Then I added carrots, sauteed them a little longer before adding Trader Joe's Hearty Vegetable Broth. I cooked the soup until the lentils were tender, about twenty minutes, and then I added a little cumin, applewood smoked sea salt, and a big handful of chopped parsley from my garden. I wish I had several nice, lunch-size portions, waiting for me to take for lunch this week in my fridge, but I would have had to been much quicker on the draw. It was gone in mere minutes.

Cake, Anyone?

Looking back at some of my earlier posts, I realize that the main reason I used to have more posts was that I wasn't at all afraid of randomness, posting about cooking, hiking, reading, etc. I'm still pretty random at times, but I was trying to stick with knitting for a while, but what's the point of that? If I have a big project going, it may take weeks for anything interesting to materialize when I have so many other "exciting" things happening along the way.

For instance, I had another field trip this Friday with a different group of kids from my trip a couple of weeks ago, mostly consisting of our sophomore honors students, who stage a re-enactment of the trial of Louis XVI every year up in the mountains near our town. They all dress up and have various activities before the trial. They play games that people would have played during the French Revolution although I'm not sure that the French Jacobeans had pinatas, ha, ha.

A group of students fix a French dinner. We've had some incredible meals, thanks to some very helpful parents, (We're talking Chicken Cordon Bleu and Coq au Vin )  but this year's group didn't have a reputation for being planners or hard workers, so the other teachers and I weren't anticipating anything fantastic, culinary-wise, at least. They proved us wrong!

 The food was good overall, and one of the girls brought a cake that her "caker-decorator" sister had designed especially for us. It was a cake that only teenagers would fully appreciate. They did have a couple of arguments about who would get to eat the head though.

 

The students read A Tale of Two Cities before "Rev Fest," and every year I bring my knitting along, thinking that I'll be like Madame Defarge, sitting with my insidious knitting. Usually, though, I'm way too busy, and this year was no exception. But, I  have evidence of my good intentions, both to get a little grading done and to knit.

Although it is less than an hour drive for us to get to the recreation center in the little mountain town, where we have our re-enactment, my teacher friends and I all agree that we're always exhausted by the end of the day, so no knitting last night, but this morning, I not only knit, I nearly finished my tulip sweater. Knit Picks came through for me with my swish yarn, which was exactly the same color as my original skeins, that I had bought last year or even the year before.

I crocheted an edging around one of the sleeves, but I'm thinking about a picot edging. I like how that looks, even though I always have to look up how to do it, and I mess up a lot every time I try it. It's almost time to get out a crochet hook, I guess.