Tour de France KAL update

Brewgal is in danger of being dropped off the back of the Peloton. The race has reached the Alps, and I have reached row 57 of the Baby Surprise Jacket only to discover that instead of the 114 stitches in the pattern, I have 116 stitches in the center section of my jacket. At some point I picked up 2 stitches. Do I rip back and start over? Abandon? No way. I've just got to figure out how to distribute my 10 stitches over 116 rather than 114.

Need more coffee.

I also made an equipment change after stage one. I'm now working on circular needles. The straights I picked out were sticking to the yarn.

Look! A sleeve!

It's also brewday in the Brewgal household. Here we see Brewguy heating water for the wirt boil (technically called the "hot liquor"). It is heated to a temperature in the 160 degree farenheit range. The water is used first for the mash, and then later for the sparge. See what Brewguy is doing in the background? He is about to spring the fruit fly trap.

We have an abundance of fruit flies. I think they came home with us from West Virginia. We first tried the paper over the glass trick, a trap suggested to us by a former neighbor who was a professor of biology. He was conducting experiments on special species of fruit flies in his lab and used this method to trap wild fruit flies. You place a small amount of sugar water (or beer) in a jar or glass, cover the top with a piece of paper secured by a rubber band and poke a small hole in the top with a pencil. The fruit flies can go through the hole into the glass but can't find their way back out. When the trap was full he microwaved the jar.

We've used the same method, sans the microwaving. With our luck we'd only create a species of microwave-proof fruit flies.

The paper trick didn't work last night. Brewguy got up early to brew and discovered that instead of being inside the glass, all the fruit flies had clustered on top of the paper, like they were waiting for the club to open. So he trapped them by placing a flower vase on top and released them into the wild.

It's the Hav-a-Hart of fruit fly traps.

I have found my Pennsylvania yarn Nirvana.


No, not this:



It is this.



I've found The Mannings. I see The Mannings at Maryland Sheep and Wool every year. I've heard many people sing its praises. My reaction has been... eh. In the 9 years I lived in Gettysburg, I never made it out to The Mannings. I was convinced I had already been there and it was just a store.


I was mistaken. It turns out the shop in East Berlin, PA I had previously visited was Woolgatherings. I bought my copy of Knitting in the Old Way there.


The Mannings is situated on a lovely spot of land right next to Conewago Creek. It was the creek that caused us to miss it on first pass. Oo, look at the creek! And the cute bridge! Is that a house? Why are they building a house right on the banks of the creek? I see flooding in their future. You can juuuust see the white retaining wall of the new house under the bridge.


Vroom, right past Mannings. Such is the discussion in Brewgal's car.


Anyway, we completely bypassed the Mannings on first try. Made it all the way out to the main road where we saw a sign pointing back the way we came. We quickly deduced, in our Scooby-Doo sort of way, that we had missed the store. That, and the TomTom feebly saying (in its oh-so-cultured English accent, "You have reached your destination. Turn around.")


Thank goodness for the signs. Hello, Mannings? Love the signs! THANK YOU FOR THE SIGNS.


The Mannings is a barn-sized weaving/spinning/yarn store. There I met Ruth, a wonderful person who loved the store so much she got a job there on weekends. When she found out I had never been before, she gave me a tour. Gotta love a store that inspires people to work there in their spare time.


When I walked in I though, Ok, some books and some yarn. Cool. No no no. This was just the first room. The front room has the books, tools and sock yarn. The next room has the laceweight yarn and cashmere. Then there's a room of DK weight and chunky yarn. And a room of spinning wheels. At the back of that room, behind the table of knitters, there is a wall of fleece, helpfully labeled with the type and name of the sheep it came from. With a photo of the sheep. She encouraged the LB's to stick their hands in the fleece to feel it's "hand."


But wait, there's more! There was an entire room of weaving looms. They give weaving classes. This is in addition to the practice looms where you could try out a loom to see if you like it. Then I discovered the wall of discontinued discount yarn.


Holy crap. Discounted Noro.


I was dazed by the time I made it out of the store. I spent an hour there and I know I didn't see everything. I ran into a woman who used to drive out from Ohio just to shop at Mannings. And another who drove up from DC weekly for classes.


I see more trips to The Mannings in my future.


For lunch, we went to Appalachian Brewing Company. I had the Barley Wine and Brewguy had the Porter. Actually he had two. The first ended up all over me.

A toast!
Clink!
Slurp.
Sploosh. A full pint of porter all over Brewgal. Soaking my jeans. Dribbling into my purse. Across my shirt. We've all had a beer or two spilled on us in the past, I'm sure. However, the experience of having a full pint of high gravity porter draped across my Levis in January, when the prospect of changing is nil because I've subscribed to the mantra of pack light and that means no backup pants, and baby it's COLD outside, tends to sour the outlook slightly.

Then I remembered Gettysburg now has outlet shopping. Hello, Old Navy!

Kudos to our server, Ben, who quickly helped up wipe up the porter-y mess and brought Brewguy a new glass gratis.


Here we see pint #2. Note that Brewguy is carefully keeping his wayward arms AWAY from this one.

RIP Michael Jackson

No, not *that* Michael Jackson.

The other one. The beer-huntin' guru of brew.

Obit from CNN.com
LONDON, England (AP) -- Michael Jackson, a leading world beer critic who praised the brews of Belgium and acknowledged he would never be as famous as "that Michael Jackson," has died. He was 65.

Jackson, known as "the beer hunter," died Thursday of a heart attack at his home in west London. His body was found by his house cleaner, Paddy Gunningham, his long-term partner, said Friday.

She said he had kept writing and traveling, despite suffering from Parkinson's disease, and that he planned to write a book about the ailment.

"He was simply the best beer writer we've ever known," said Tim Hampson, chairman of the British Guild of Beer Writers.

"He told wonderful stories about beer, breweries and far away places. He told the story of beer through people, and he was humorous and erudite at the same time," Hampson told The Associated Press.

Jackson especially loved Belgian brews. His books "The Great Beers of Belgium" and "World Guide to Beer" introduced them to many export markets, including the United States.

By identifying beers by their flavors and styles, and by pairing them with particular foods and dishes, Jackson helped give birth to a renaissance of interest in beer and breweries worldwide that began in the 1970s, including the North American microbrewery movement.

Craft beer lovers everywhere shall mourn.

The weather’s been chilly lately. Brewgal knew it was cold when she came home to find this on Mr. Brewguy’s dresser:


Yes, that’s yeast in the bedroom. Apparently it was so cold in the basement for the yeasties they weren’t growing properly.

Love those little yeasties, love them in my beer

In addition, the fermenter showed up in the powder room.



Yes, it’s been cold at Lincoln Street. But you know what Pedro says…
Chili today,
Hot tamale

South of the Border
My mother grew up in Florida. OLD Florida circa 1942. She ended up in DC working for NIH, married my father and settled in Maryland. But every year we’d make the pilgrimage back to Gainesville to visit my grandparents.

These experiences are seared into my mind, mostly because of the heat. There’s nothing like driving a gazillion miles in an un-air-conditioned Plymouth Valiant during the month of August. My father knew this. He would bundle the four of us into the car well before sunrise so as to “beat the traffic” on the Beltway. The goal was to make it as far as South Carolina before having to stop for the night.

My brother and I would be piled in the back, stretched out on pillows (seat belt laws were more lax back then). I used to lay back and watch the stars move through the back window. I’d get that funny floaty feeling in the pit of my stomach, the way you feel when you’re at the top of the arc on a swing, ready to head back down with gravity.

It was awesome.

My mother made these trips with a large thermos of sweetened iced tea sitting on the floorboard of the car, sandwiched between her legs. I don’t know how she did it. Brewgal gets all freaky when there’s anything on the floor near her feet, much less impeding her legroom. Mom would hand out little cups of tea and lifesavers to make the trip more interesting.

Are we there yet?
Going south on 95 the mile markers count down so it was easy to know how far one had to go in each state. Every state had its own character. Virginia went on forever. The pine trees started in North Carolina. Georgia had that enormous peach. Orange juice at the Florida State Line and the stench of the paper mills near Jacksonville. The best part were the South of the Border billboards: Burma Shave of the 1970’s. They were tackiness incarnate; bad puns (see quote above), stereotypical depictions (giant sombrero-wearing Latinos), animal abuse (that poor donkey!) No amount of begging on our part could convince my parents to stop there on our journey southward.

Pleeeeeeeze????
Like many things subject to denial, the place began to take on mythical proportions. The billboards were placed closer and closer together as you approached the South Carolina border. Some had moving parts! Every car seemed to have a South of the Border bumper sticker.

Except us. We never stopped.

I hear the old place is still there, still tempting the weary and the unwary with Pedro's promises.

Someday, when we make the journey southward with the little Brewers we may stop. Maybe.

Or maybe it's a place best left to my imagination.