Decorating and Knitting

I had a manicure/pedicure today in the city and had lunch with my parents and went antiquing. I found two prints (which my mom has because she is going to spray them with archival solution) and this awesome chair:

It is very comfortable and is in good condition and goes perfectly with my E.M. Forster collection:
I think it will go especially well with the curtains that are currently in our bedroom our new (well, new-to-us) sofa, and these Fragonard prints that I want to have printed on canvas from allposters.com:

Young Girl Reading, 1776

The Study, or the Song, circa 1769
I'm spending my free time reading about interior design so I'll be ready to attack our apartment when we move to Wichita. Colefax & Fowler and Edith Wharton's The Decoration of Houses are required reading.

On to knitting--
Thankfully, my first gauge swatch matched the gauge given for the gloves I'm currently knitting. Woohoo!
Above: Rows knit while watching three episodes of Miami Vice (I also knit while watching Magnum P.I. and Dallas.)
Below: Close-up of beginnings of lace panel
I took the photos of my knitting yesterday morning. I have a little more now because Erika came over yesterday afternoon and made chocolate chip cookies with me which we ate while watching the '95 BBC Pride and Prejudice and while knitting. Erika also brought me this lovely matted print of Berthe Morisot's Woman at Her Toilette from the Art Institute of Chicago. Thanks Erika!

Finally Back to Knitting

Above: my next project, Some Like it Hot from Annie Modesitt's Romantic Hand Knits
I bought a short-sleeved black cloth coat early last fall and had intended to buy long black leather gloves to wear with it, but I couldn't find any for less than $300. Knitting to the rescue! I bought this yarn back in December:
It's Rowan Calmer (in Plum), which I've never used before. It isn't the recommended yarn for the project, but I wanted a pop of color with my black coat and couldn't find a shade of the recommended yarn that I liked. I'm currently working on a gauge swatch and Calmer is absolutely the sproingiest (yes, I made that one up) yarn I've ever used, so I'm not quite sure what to do with it. I have my fingers crossed that my gauge will be the same as the pattern.
I saw a preview for the film of Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day on TV this morning. I first heard of the book from this post on Yarnstorm but I couldn't justify the cost of a Persephone book. Thankfully, a new paperback has just come out and is only $10 from Amazon, so I ordered it along with the last book I need for my nationalism seminar.

I really love when different things I'm doing overlap. I'm currently reading A Room with a View and have gotten past the part where Eleanor Lavish deprives Miss Honeychurch of her Baedeker guide. Coincidentally, the reading for seminar this week includes a chapter about the importance of Baedeker's guide to Germany in relation to German unification and nationalism. I felt so special because I knew what a Baedeker guide was and how ubiquitous they must have been. Thank you E.M. Forster!

Amish Sugar Cookies and a New Knitting Goodie

This recipe for Amish Sugar Cookies is from a dear family friend and I will reproduce it here:

Amish Sugar Cookies


1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup powdered sugar (Sifted, especially if it's been in the cabinet a while.)
1 cup butter (2 sticks)
1 cup vegetable oil
2 eggs
4 1/2 cups flour (I use unbleached all purpose)
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract (this is one of those recipes where I don't use bean paste)
1 teaspoon baking soda

1. Preheat oven to 375º F.
2. Cream butter, sugars, and oil. (Use a low speed. You don't want powdered sugar all over your kitchen!)
3. Mix in eggs.
4. Mix in flour, cream of tartar, vanilla and soda. (All that flour requires a medium-high speed or you'll never get through it. Afterward, stir with a spatula to make sure all the ingredients are combined.)
5. Using a 1 1/2" ice cream scoop (one with the neat little release thingy), place the cookies directly on a baking sheet. Twelve cookies should fit on each sheet.
6. Cross-hatch and slightly flatten the cookies with the tines of a fork à la Peanut Butter Cookies.
7. Sprinkle each cookie with sanding sugar and bake for 10-12 minutes or until beginning to brown at the edges.

Yields approximately 3 dozen cookies

The dough is very thick and springy:

Oooh they're so yummy. These cookies taste like shortbread but have a soft, light, and sandy texture. I made them for Jane Austen-a-thon a few weeks back and I think they're a perfect accompaniment to Masterpiece Theatre, which is now just "Masterpiece" and they chucked their old theme song the idiots, but I will continue to call it by its proper name and pretend that they still use the right music.

When I was little, the Monsterpiece Theater segment on Sesame Street was my favorite. Here's a clip of The Taming of the Shoe:


Moving on...
This is my new knitting goodie, a Namaste clutch (my mom got it for me from Sealed with a Kiss in OKC). Isn't it just the classiest knitting accessory ever? I love it. Check out the knitting needle holder:
This is a photo of one of the inside compartments:
The other inside compartment:


In other news, since I finished The Pillars of the Earth, I am now reading E.M. Forster's A Room with a View because a) I've been wanting to read it and b) Masterpiece Theatre is showing a new version in April and I think I can finish by then. I like reading a book before watching the movie.

Double Chocolate Chip Cookies

These cookies are for tonight's watch party for Masterpiece Theatre's adaptation of Mansfield Park. The recipe is here. I made a couple changes. Instead of using a blender, I just use a spatula. Since the butter is melted and there is only 1 cup of flour, it's not very difficult to mix by hand. Also, I find cutting chocolate to be extremely messy, so I use Guittard milk chocolate chips (2/3 c = 4 oz.). One more thing: the recipe says to use a 1.5" ice cream scoop to scoop out the cookies, but to get 3 dozen, you have to use a tablespoon because the ice cream scoop makes enormous cookies (16 per batch). If you scoop with a tablespoon, the cookies only need to cook 10 minutes instead of 15.

Whisking the cocoa and flour:
Chocolate and butter ready to be melted:
Melted chocolate/butter creamed with sugar, salt and baking soda to which we add eggs and vanilla:
After folding in chocolate chips:

Here's the finished product. They were a big hit! (I think it's because they're a successful combination of cookie and brownie with a yummy chewy center.)

Round-up of the Past Few Weeks

It's been forever since I posted. Graduate school seems to take a lot out of me. I'll really be glad to be done with it! The most exciting thing to happen since school started is that my friends (in alphabetical order) Allison, Ariana, Erika, Kristyn, Rebecca, and Nicole have been coming over to watch Masterpiece Theatre's adaptations of Jane Austen's novels. So far we've seen Persuasion and Northanger Abbey. Tonight we'll watch Mansfield Park, which is not my favorite Austen, so I'm hoping Masterpiece Theatre will make it as good as possible.

Here's a photo of a cupcake I made for the week we watched Persuasion:


Don't worry--those specks are vanilla beans! The cake is a genoise with rum glaze and a whipped cream frosting, adapted from this recipe.

Lastly, here are two recipes I've made that turned out really well. The first is Chicken au Champagne from French Women Don't Get Fat with a side of Frozen Peas from Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I love this recipe because it's easy and the chicken stays super moist even after it's been reheated.


The second meal is Spice-Rubbed Turkey Breast with Sweet Potatoes and Sauteed Escarole. The escarole wasn't really that impressive, maybe because I had to substitute turnip greens, but everything else was really tasty. I love sweet potatoes anyway and the turkey was actually juicy.
To finish up, here's a look at the books for the French seminar I'm attending. I told you I like uniformity!

North by Northwest and Wichita

Since I needed a movie to watch while I waited for my nails to dry (why does that always seem to take so long and why are quick-dry nail polishes so sub-par?), I chose North by Northwest from my collection, which I hadn't seen in a really long time. I had actually forgotten most of the plot. In fact, all I could remember was: Oak Bar at Plaza, drunk driving, mother, U.N. murder, train, and Mount Rushmore. That probably would be all there is to the movie if it weren't directed by Alfred Hitchcock. I absolutely adore him. I also absolutely adore train travel (not like I've ever traveled any farther than between Washington, D.C. and Williamsburg, VA, but I do like the idea of it). Everything seems so glamorous: observation cars, white tablecloths, watching the scenery pass by while feasting on brook trout (that's what Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint eat on the 20th Century Limited). I like almost any movie where there is a lengthy train sequence. Murder on the Orient Express and From Russia with Love both come to mind. You know, I just realized Sean Connery is in both of those films. There's probably a film major essay in there somewhere.

I remember reading about The Royal Scotsman in Victoria magazine years ago and have been wanting to take its tour of the Highlands ever since. It costs £3190 per person, so I had better start saving up! Check out the cabin. Forget 4 nights, I could live on this train forever!
(Photo from Royal Scotsman website: http://www.royalscotsman.com/web/rs/rs_life_on_board_cabins.jsp)

In November, Paul accepted a job with Hawker Beechcraft and he'll start in June, so we spent Saturday and Sunday driving around Wichita looking for a place for us to live. We'll have to go back over Spring Break and keep checking the listings online, because we didn't really find anything. I did, however, become attached to the Hillcrest Apartments in the College Hill area. They were built probably in the 1920s and are a high-rise Tudor-style apartment building. Absolutely charming. I definitely want to see inside.

Paul and I narrowed our "areas in which we prefer to live" list down to College Hill and Riverside, both historic neighborhoods located in the northern central part of town and both close to the downtown area. Growing up in a house built in 1909, I feel more comfortable in historic areas. I also feel they have more character (and more trees!).

I have already made Paul promise to take me to movies at the Orpheum downtown. According to 360Wichita.com, the theatre opened in 1922 and was the "first atmospheric theatre in the United States." It has a Spanish gardens theme that has been maintained since its opening. There is a virtual tour and slideshow here. I can't wait for the All About Eve/Jezebel double feature! It reminds me of reading the scenes in the American Girl books when Molly goes to the movie theatre with her friends. I loved those books; they were required reading in my group of friends in 1st grade since we acted all of them out at recess.

To finish up, two great places to eat in Wichita: Caffe Moderne and Il Vicino. Caffe Moderne is in Old Town and has art deco furnishings (including a beautiful bar) and serves, honest-to-God, the best paninis and quiche Paul and I have had in a restaurant. I had the Garbo sandwich, which had chicken, artichoke, arugula, and lemon mayonnaise. Awesome! We also had gelato for dessert. It was homemade and so very very tasty. The prices were reasonable, too. My sandwich (side salad included) was $7.50 and the gelato was $3.50.

Il Vicino is on Douglas Street near Oliver (Paul and I had a whole lot of fun saying "let's take Oliver north" oh we're such dweebs). Great wood oven pizza! I had a small (the small size isn't on the menu, but just ask for it, perfect personal size) Rustica which has artichoke, kalamata olives, and capers. Il Vicino, like Caffe Moderne, is classy and not very expensive.