The Golden Iris

Today is already officially a Day of Epic Proportions and I haven't even made it through much of the afternoon yet. First, I have this giant 150g ball of yarn (glasses for scale). This could be the yarn that ate my week! Yikes! As you guessed, I have another knitting commission to work on. I've also been doing some gardening, as it was a lovely day out. I was puttering around, ripping out my broccoli raab that bolted, trimming some things back, and planting some herbs, when I chanced to look up and see this: I was watching my bamboo happily re-leaf itself from the winter, but I did not expect to see a giant 8-foot shoot coming out of nowhere. Where did it come from? How quickly did it grow (we got 6" of rain or more over the last week)? And finally, why the hell didn't I notice it sooner?! It is really 8 feet tall, and flexible, as I discovered when I reached up to grab it. Looking around all my bamboo is doing it. I guess it's some kind of crazy bamboo mons...

As a displaced Chicago native, one of the things I miss is Chicago-style food. This means hot dogs loaded with toppings, Italian beef sandwiches, and, yes, deep-dish pizza. Transporting a frozen stuffed spinach pizza in my luggage has become a fixture of flying home. But now, with some of the research that resulted in the development of an improved Neapolitan-style pizza, we've begun to develop a proper Chicago-style pie. It's a very different animal indeed. While my favorite was my hometown hangout, Leonardo's (sadly no longer in business), the other household favorite was a Chicago classic, Lou Malnati's . This pizza was intended to replicate a Lou's pizza. We started with a heavy, oily, very elastic dough. Unlike the looser, wetter Neapolitan dough, this could be rolled out with a rolling pin. We built the pizza directly into a 9" cake pan. Next time I think we should put some foil strips into the pan to help lift it out. And if you've never had a ...

My new copy of the Summer Interweave Knits arrived today. However, I have to knit up all this yarn in about a week's time. Knit, or read? I think you'll know which one I'll be doing. (By the way... anybody local got a ball winder?)