The Boyfriend Socks, part 2
BF: That doesn't look like a sock.
MJ: No, it's a swatch. I'm knitting up little squares with different sized needles to see what makes the best texture. Here, take a look at this one. (hands BF a swatch made with US0 needles)
BF: Wow, that looks machine-made. (grins) That's cool.
MJ: Yeah, it'll only take me a month to crank out a sock at that gauge. I'm doing a few more.
(later)
BF: (playing around with swatches made with US1, US2, and US3 needles) This (US1 swatch) is really nice. It's very firm, though. I want soft socks. This (US3 swatch) is too open. Look. (stretches the swatch) You can see right through it. I think I like this (US2 swatch) best. The fabric is not too firm, and the weave's not too open. The stitches aren't too small that you can't go blind knitting them, right? Did I tell you I like the colors?
MJ: Yeah, it's got every color in your closet, which means it'll match everything. There was a blue ball, but you're more of a green person. I like the subtle color shifts, too. I think that swatch is perfect. Let me calculate the gauge now. (whips out measuring tape and pins) Okay. Okay, I can work with this. (writes numbers down in the notebook) Okay, here's the gauge: 29 stitches and 38 rows to 4 inches.
BF: What's that mean?
MJ: That means for every 4 inches of your big feet, I'll be knitting 29 stitches--that's widthwise--and 38 rows--that's lengthwise. That's a lot of knitting time I'm taking away from my fluffy green sweater. I'm calculating either a week or two weeks. And I'll need you to try the first one on from time to time.
BF: Sounds like a lot of work.
MJ: Not really. I'm just slow like that. I know this one knitter, she cranks out socks in 2 or 3 days! And this other knitter, she's got, like, 10 million colors of sock yarn!
BF: You knitters are crazy.
MJ: I like to think we're goal-oriented, that's all.
P.S.: I've been baking. I made peanut butter cookies using this recipe. BF's craving for pb cookies came out of nowhere a few days ago, so I looked around, found this recipe, read the comments, and decided to try it. Great, chewy cookies, although I baked mine for 17 minutes and placed the rack in the middle of the oven.
Now the last time I made pb cookies it was 5 years ago. BF and I had been dating 4 months and Christmas was coming up. He already knew I wasn't a great cook, so I wanted to surprise him with homemade peanut butter cookies, his favorite kind.
I found a recipe (Betty Crocker, I think). I bought ingredients. I set aside the evening of December 23rd to do my baking. Disaster. So the recipe was butter-based, which would have involved chilling the dough a bit to harden it up, so that forming the cookies would be easier. I must have missed that line in the recipe while copying it, because I had added the stated amount of flour and found the dough still sticky. I added more. And more. Come 1 am, I was a mess. The dough was frickin' rock hard and would break into pieces when I tried to flatten them. The baked cookies were bland and just plain awful. I was about to hurl the dough at the backyard fountain.
In walks my angel: my older brother, the natural cook (give him 3 ingredients and he'll make you a feast), half-drunk (dropping by the house to see what was in the fridge, on his way to another party) and more than likely, on something. He saw me crying. He saw the flour all over the table. He saw all the dirty pots and pans. He laughed hard. After listening to me detail the process, he said, "Too much flour. Dude, butter gets soft, so it needs to harden up again. You need to follow the recipe. Baking is not like cooking. You can't add more flour here and there, baking is precise. Let's give it another try."
So the Brother helped me stir up a new batch, using the book this time and not my sloppy notes, and then I panicked because the recipe called for wrapping the dough in plastic wrap. We didn't have plastic wrap. Brother rolled his eyes and dumped the dough into one of my mom's Pyrex dishes, covered it, and told me to go to bed. We'd finish it in the morning.
I wake up in the morning to the smell of baking cookies. I ran into the kitchen to see my Mom, Brother and 2 of his friends sampling cookies (he'd made another batch after I passed out). Apparently, the 3 boys had the munchies (don't ask) and the pb cookies were the perfect cure. I happily rolled out more dough balls, flattened them with the tines of the fork, and baked them, under my brother's watchful gaze. They turned out great.
When BF opened his present Christmas morning and found peanut butter cookies, he was in heaven. They were perfectly brown, peanut-buttery, and chewy. When he turned to me and asked, "Did you make these for me by yourself?", my brother answered for me. "Yes she did." To this day I look at that incident as one of my favorite moments with my brother.
