I'm in a Blogger's Dilemma today.

Let us assume that this blog has non-knitting readers as well as knitting readers (I think that's still the case, if I haven't chased off the non-knitters by now). Let me state for the non-knitters that there is a well-known online knitting magazine, that also happens to be free of charge (which is named, ever so fittingly, Knitty). In said online knitting magazine there are regular issues and, in between these dates, "surprises" - extra patterns coming up.

Now, Knitty is a good, professional magazine that pays their pattern-makers money (not too much, but they do pay a honorarium) and generates traffic for their sites (quite a lot). They also have a newsletter that will inform subscribers about the new issues and the surprises. They are, in addition, so well known and liked that forums like Ravelry will, of course, have threads mentioning their patterns - both regular issue and surprise patterns. So you can probably assume that most knitters who are active online have at least heard of Knitty.

Now for the dilemma. If, say, there is an absolutely delightfully weird and skewed sock pattern in a surprise issue of Knitty, should a blogger with an audience of both knitters and non-knitters mention the totally delightful weirdness of that sock pattern? The breathtaking hotness of the heels? The wonderfully biased stripings of the variegated yarn? The fun fact of a sock toe starting at the big toe instead of somewhere in the middle of the foot where there's actually no toe sticking forth to fill the very tip of the sock? Even devote a whole blog post to that single sock?

Will the knitters be bored because they, of course, have already looked at the pattern and admired the shrewd cleverness of the pattern designer? Will they turn away and say "uh, another lame blog entry about things long known"? There are at this moment already 40 projects of this sock on Ravelry, after all (rav links only accessible to members, sorry).
Meanwhile, will the non-knitters cringe with boredom, or will they rather scratch their heads and say "uh, she's gone completely over the brink now, let's go look for another blog to read regularly instead - one with no weird and/or boring knitting content", because they might not understand how a sock construction can be totally exciting?

Please tell me. I'm all curious.

First of all, thanks for your kind wishes to yesterday's post!

I am already much better - if I get a cold or a flu-like thing, it usually hits me hard, totally flattens me into bed for a day or two, but gets rapidly better from there. However, every time I had a cold and am able to think again, I am fascinated by all of the different cold-battling techniques that different people adopt. I had never heard of oranges with honey, for example - but it is certainly a good idea, plus it leaves the honey unheated.

So here are two tried-and-true cold medicines from my family.
My Dad absolutely swears by something he calls "beekeeper's tea" - it's just honey dissolved in warm to hot water. As always with honey conconctions, it is best if you get the water to a temperature that will feel like a hot drink when you consume it, but is not too hot - honey loses some of its beneficial ingredients if it is heated to more than 40° C.
It's only recently that I really tried beekeeper's tea against a cold, and it did ease things a lot. I don't know why I never tried it before - maybe the urge of youth to seek one's own solutions? One very big plus of beekeeper's tea is that if you have a mug, a spoon, a glass of honey and some warm or hot water, it is very quick and easy to make - no need to wait for tea to steep or similar things. I like to spice mine up with ground or fresh ginger - I feel that this improves it once more.

When I was younger, I found out by chance that a winter juice concoction would also work very well to ease cold or 'flu  symptoms - hot apple juice with spices and honey.
Take a litre of apple juice (pure juice, of course) and put it into a pot; add about one and a half to two teaspoons of cinnamon, a good teaspoon of cloves, and fresh or ground ginger, and heat; do not let the juice come to a boil, just heat it until it is hot enough to pass as a hot drink when put into cups or mugs. Stir occasionally. Once it's hot, take out the cloves and sweeten to taste with honey. This tastes nice (I think), is suitable for children and, after drinking more than one mug of it, has the side-effect of making you quite tired (I don't really know why, but it does) and ready for some health-promoting sleep. When I was properly stricken, I would drink almost the full litre all by myself and then keel over and sleep.
It also makes for a nice depth-of-winter drink, a kind of alcohol-free substitute for mulled wine.

And for food... nothing cries "comfort food" more to me than noodle soup when I'm unwell.

Somehow, the last of the pre-written posts got used up a while ago, and I never made some more. You know, those posts that can be slapped onto the blog when things happen and the last thing you want to do is blog?

Today would have been a prime example for such a day - the cold I've caught somewhere back last week really hit me yesterday, and I spent the day mostly in bed. It is much, much better now, but I'll still be taking today off for recuperation. (Also, the ol' brain is not yet fit for proper thinking again.)

The spirally hat pattern is now live and can actually be bought - for example by clicking this little button:




which will bring you to a Ravelry shopping cart with Paypal paying option.

I have thought about pattern pricing quite some time, and have finally priced the hat at 5.00 Euros - I believe that with the quite uncommon hem construction of the hat, that is still a fair price. The pattern is done in a "chatty" style, because I myself like to be told what will be going on in a pattern section - that helps me to understand what I am knitting and why, and also helps me to avoid or at least correct mistakes more easily.

Apart from that, I seem to have caught a bit of a cold, so it's honeyed tea and reduced thinking abilities for today...

I'm blogging late because I have been busy proofreading and correcting the knitting pattern for the spirally slouchy hat! There are totally amazing people on Ravelry who have test-knit the hat for me, provided wonderful feedback and been very, very patient with my maths glitches (oops!).

So if nobody reports a last-second problem, the pattern will go live tonight or tomorrow morning - and it will be available for purchase from here, from my website and from the Ravelry store. And I am totally excited about this!

Here is a preview of the hat, graciously modeled by Christiane from www.aecht-fraenkisch.de:

Almost one year ago, I wrote a blog post about our then fairly new grocery box subscription. Now it is winter again, we still have the grocery box, and we are still totally happy with it. The box has changed our grocery shopping habits, changed our eating habits and our cooking habits.
It also makes me think of Friday as the Day of Plenty, because that is when the new box arrives, filled with fresh organic fruits (from all over the world) and vegetables (from our region only) - food that will see us over the next week. I hand the empty box from the last delivery back and get a full one; I carry that into the kitchen and place everything on the counter, and then I take a moment to step back, look at all the food and feel very rich and very, very lucky.

And because we get only regional vegetables, I feel as if I now have a better connection to the area I live in. There is a lot of farming going on right outside the urban sprawls here, and a grocery box subscription means support for the organic farms in the area, less grocery shopping and dragging bags home for us, less carbon-dioxide and fresher produce due to very short transport, and jobs for the totally wonderful, nice and enthusiastic people who run the subscription service - it's a winners-only situation. (By the way, this winter, there's less cabbage and beetroot, but more black salsify and red kuri squash. I had never cooked either of those before this winter.)

There was a coconut in last week's box, too. It had been ages since I last had eaten a fresh one - when I was a child, I remember that my parents had sometimes bought one, gotten it open, and then there was a little coconut water in there that everyone could try with a small sip. I remember that, when buying the nut, the aim was to find the one nut with the most water in - and despite our careful selection, there was never more liquid in it than perhaps a very small glass about half-full.
Last week's coconut from the box? It was almost half full with the water. Lots. And it was sweet, delicious water - just like the nut itself was sweet and delicious.

Need I say that we have been eating very well this last year?

Yesterday evening, after the Most Patient Man On Earth was back home from work, he casually told me that he had ordered a new hardcover book from our mutual favourite author.

I tried not to flinch - we had been ordering our English books from Amazon, like I wrote yesterday. And a new book from C.J. Cherryh - the first volume of the next trilogy she writes - that is something to rejoice about, after all!
I asked him what publishing house the book is from... and he says "oh, I don't know - I think it's Daw (it is, by the way, and Daw belongs to the penguin.com group)... and I didn't order it from Amazon."

The Most Patient Man had not only read my blog, he had also clicked on some links, and then read some more, and clicked some more, and (via a comment from a lady in France) found an on-line bookseller based in the UK, with free shipping wherever they ship, worldwide. So the link above? Will not lead you to the Amazon site, but to www.bookdepository.co.uk. For me, that means getting used to a new online bookshop structure. They may not be as large as The River Shop (yet), and they might not have as huge a selection as The River Shop, but they will be seeing my (our) money for English-language books now. And my links, with the little traffic that might bring (since while I am utterly happy about the two new followers this blog got during the last few days... realistically thinking, this is a teeny-tiny blog with really not so many readers). And thus hopefully you (as you follow my links) and maybe your money, too...