We had Easter dinner with two sets of neighbors and my job was to bring a light appetizer. I thought I’d try something totally new to me, so I reached for my copy of Chocolate & Zucchini by Clotilde Dusoulier to look for something quick, light, and vegetarian. Mmmm, cheese puffs with cumin. Sold. After my handsome husband had procured whole cumin seeds and gruyere from the grocery store, I had all the necessities at the ready:

(not pictured: four eggs)

I love it when recipes have so few ingredients. Flour, cheese, butter, eggs, salt, pepper, cumin. I followed Clotilde’s advice and prepped them all in advance so I could go lickety-split through the assembly. The part that frightened me was that after you’ve simmered the butter and salt in a cup of  water, you dump in the flour all at once and stir it until it forms a smooth ball that pulls away from the side. I feared lumpy flour, you see. I am spectacularly bad at whisking up things like bechamel and always manage to produce warty batters full of flour clods. But I did just as Clotilde said and in no time I had a smooth and intriguingly rubbery dough ball that pulled away from the sides of the saucepan. You let this cool for a few minutes and then start stirring in the eggs, one at a time. Again my skepticism rose. Egg the first could not be persuaded to integrate into my lovely dough ball and simply coated the pan with its slime. Egg the second didn’t behave any better, and by egg the third I had chunks of dough floating in slippery goo. But when I added egg the fourth it all magically came together. Hooray! I stirred in cumin and pepper, folded in my grated cheese, and realized that fitting in a dog walk and a few other afternoon chores really had derailed my schedule and I didn’t have half an hour to chill the mixture. So I took my husband’s advice to toss the saucepan into the chest freezer in the basement and hoped for the best for 15 minutes. Then I plopped spoonfuls onto a parchment-lined cookie sheet, slipped it into the oven, and sent my husband over to the neighbors’ to open a bottle of wine and represent for the family while I monitored the baking. Fortunately Clotilde mentions that in France it’s polite to show up for dinner parties at least 15 minutes late, in order to allow one’s hosts time to finish their own behind-schedule preparations. Such a sensible policy. I grabbed my knitting and peered anxiously through the oven glass to see if the puffs were rising despite their inadequate chilling.

They were. I ever so patiently left them in the oven with the heat off and the door cracked open for the recommended five minutes so as not to deflate them by a sudden temperature change, then I tucked them into a tea towel and dashed through the rain and between the garages to Frank and Becky’s house. I was 25 minutes late, but the gougeres were worth the delay: golden and crispy on the outside, just faintly gooey with warm cheese in the middle and a perfectly addictive prick of spice from the cumin.

In other news, my pregnancy journal tells me the Minnow is now about 7.5 inches long and weighs 100 grams. It’s a skein of sock yarn! (Oddly, the journal’s author didn’t think this would be a useful comparison for most readers.)

I’ve been struggling to assemble as many cohesive thoughts as a blog post requires, and I’m still failing. So I’m serving Blog Scramble today instead.

Weekend redux: Quilting/knitting night with friends in Vancouver. Started a Hill Country hat for Betsy since she’s in Maine and it’s been so cold there. Didn’t do any quilting because fifteen minutes of flailing about the house searching for my red embroidery thread didn’t turn it up. Saturday I helped out a friend of a friend whose little girl has a disability that prevents her from walking, but not from wishing to ice skate. I happily agreed to help hoist/propel/carry five-year-old Nuha around the rink in Beaverton. She wasn’t sure about the pinchy tight laces and ended up satisfied with a couple of laps, so it wasn’t a lengthy outing, but the grin on her face was more than ample reward for the effort. Afterward went to Katrin’s house for knitting; finished Betsy’s hat while watching Whip It, which kind of made me want to roller skate, despite having trying it before and being disappointed that it’s not as much like ice skating as you’d think. Found the red embroidery thread when I got home, in plain view right on top of a work basket full of quilting stuff. Sunday morning I packed the dog and all the quilting stuff in the car, went to sing at the cathedral, then spent the afternoon sewing with Mr. G’s mom. Got a lot of work done on a new quilt for a special baby whose mom isn’t ready to announce to the world yet, but who will arrive at the end of the summer. I’ll have pictures soon. It’s another making-it-up-as-I-go sort of quilt, although this time I’ve got inspiration from here. I’m making stylized trees instead of Alexandra’s leaves, and alas I have no beautiful Liberty scraps to employ, but on the whole it’s shaping up to look like something my grandmother would approve of, which never fails to make me feel proud. Mr. G’s mom taught me about paper piecing and sent me home with a roll of freezer paper. Stayed up too late watching the second installment of Emma on Masterpiece. This is my favorite film interpretation of the book to date, as I think Romola Garai is perfect for the role and Michael Gambon’s portrayal of her father makes it far more apparent than in previous adaptations why Emma is who she is.

Wednesday news: Daffodils are up. Trees are budding. Apparently we might have thunder and lightning today, though. I have just finished introducing a class of seventh-graders to Chiradza for the African marimba. Lunch is a kale salad like this one, except that I had manchego in the ice box, not pecorino. And my bread is a light rye, which also gives a different flavor. It’s good, though. I’ve added half an avocado that wanted eating.

Inspiration: I want to drop everything and knit Lene Alve’s new little swing coat, Minni. Go on, have a look. I dare you to resist the adorableness. Somebody please have a girl baby, okay? Or multiple girl babies? Because I love Lene’s Lilliput, too.

… And trepidation: Madrona is really soon. And in an effort to stretch my abilities and learn Big New Things, which I always like to do at Madrona, I’ve signed on for a drop spindling class with Amelia Garripoli. I haven’t touched my spindle in months. I definitely need to do some warm-up sessions before I’m ready to expose my limited skills in public.

Knitting: a bulky version of Elizabeth Zimmermann’s curled-tip, thumbless Jogger’s Mittens, to go with the hat for Betsy. Also, my stripey baby sweater is about two-sleeve-inches shy of seaming party time. (It will be a brief party, as there are only two seams.)

My friend Leigh pointed out the other day that I’ve got an awful lot of knitting projects going. She’s right, of course. (And I don’t think she even knows about the quilting projects.) Some are very close to completion, lacking only buttons or other finishing details. Some have lost their luster, at least for the moment. I firmly believe that knitting—given that for most of us it’s a luxury hobby and not a means of economy or livelihood—ought to be pleasurable, so I’ve set them aside until the urge for reunion with that particular yarn or design should strike.

I do think there’s virtue in finishing what you start, but there’s also so much joy in the fever of new ideas and the experimenting to see whether what you’ve envisioned can take shape in your hands. Sometimes once I know how something is going to turn out I lose interest in actually completing it. I thrive on the problem-solving aspect of knitting, frankly. There’s always satisfaction in finishing something beautiful, of course, but it’s different from the triumph of hatching a real dragon’s egg of an idea.

All this is by way of saying that I’ve started some more knitting.

I had credit at Twisted and could no longer resist their stock of A Verb for Keeping Warm and Indigo Moon yarns. That’s AVFKW Annapurna in “Burnt Ember” and Indigo Moon Fingering in “Moss Green.” These colors together sing to me like a Bollywood musical. And I’m thinking a baby could best pull them off, so together they will be a wee stripey sweater. Maybe even two wee stripey sweaters. There’s a fair old batch of babies brewing for 2010.

Another reason for new projects to leap onto the needles is pure necessity. I have a husband with an enormous (though handsome) head, and he insists on wearing ugly hats because they happen to fit. There’s a particular little white, orange, and blue lycra number I’d really like never to see unless he is going out for a run. However, you can’t just tell a man not to wear an ugly hat; you have to put a better one in his hand. So I cast on a Windschief in an attractive brown. I’m not convinced that even the largest size will be large enough, but I had to try. I also lengthened the band of twisted rib at the edge in the hope of covering his ears; this hat looks a bit short in some of the modeled pictures, which would make it the next thing to a yarmulke on Mr. G.

At least if it’s too small for him it will fit me. And if it’s too small for me it’ll fit my dad. A hat always fits somebody. And I love this Cascade Rustic wool/linen mix.

It has begun. It won’t be finished in time for Christmas, but the argyle madness is officially underway.

I have made one mistake since these photos were taken, but I think I can make it difficult to spot, and luckily it’s at the side where my brother’s arm is likely to hide it. Other than that, the intarsia-in-the-round is going better than I had hoped. And Berroco’s Ultra Alpaca Light really is a lovely yarn. This project is slow going, though. I sure hope I execute the math perfectly so it fits exactly the way my brother wants it, as I’m pretty sure I only want to knit one of these.