The final zigzag

Since this is a knitting blog, I will show you my zig-zaggedy knitting. I've been working on this since July 2021, but I was going back and forth to Toronto, and it was staying here in Vancouver. I figure I have about.... 40,000 stitches to go! I can hardly believe that, but it seems to be so, if my rows are almost 400 stitches wide and I need to do a hundred of them. But, I mean to finish 'er off soon!

Brown and green zigzags: 

Green and other green zigzags: 

Blue and brown zigzags: 

It's supposed to reflect the colours of the park: greens, blues, brown and the occasional pink of the cherry blossoms. I think it is a bit more zingy than the park on an average day, but it works. We were faced with buying furniture in the pandemic and everything available seemed to be grey, so we wanted something lively. 

I made my last recipe of the month from Moosewood Restaurant Favorites yesterday. So easy, so good. Take your feta cheese and cut it into bits. The picture in the book has nice even rectangles, but mine crumbled and broke. Zest and juice a lemon. Mix the juice with a bit of olive oil and drizzle that on the cheese, sprinkle the zest over, grind some pepper. The end! It is lovely on crackers, they say you can add it to a salad, or just pop it in your mouth and eat it! Yummy. 

I took a walk around Lost Lagoon this afternoon and saw this heron looking all majestic. A day with a heron is always a good day. 

A day with a duck is also a pretty fine day! This one was walking on the slushy ice, which was probably about half an inch thick. 

And now I must get back to my knitting! Forty thousand stitches to go!

Mapo tofu and more libraries

Yesterday a friend and I ticked two more libraries off the list. 

We started at a SkyTrain station in East Vancouver, found a dim sum restaurant and had a great lunch, and then walked to the Collingwood Branch. It's a small branch, in a purpose-built building from 1951 -- they had some pictures in the foyer of it being opened. My friend actually remembered going there as a child! 

There was a Chinese language section, a decent-sized children's collection, and enough books and magazines, including a good shelf of "things to do around Vancouver" books. 

I was seduced by the Vogue Knitting magazines and picked up two; there was a display for Veganuary so I got a cookbook to look at; and I even found a book about trails in Stanley Park, so I was well loaded-down when we left. 

We discovered that another branch was not too far away, and getting there involved walking by a ravine, so we tried that out. 

It's great to see the mountains to the north of the city from a different angle. 

The Renfrew branch is in a community centre complex, and we first went in the building with the swimming pool and some 8-year-old's birthday party, but a friendly dad sent us in the right direction.

 

My selfie skills need some work

A new building, with a large, airy main room for the library, really quite nice! We looked at more and more books, but didn't burden ourselves with any more to carry. We also didn't look around for a coffee shop or anywhere to have a muffin, but just walked back to the station and headed out. 

It was a good walk and a good lunch and I found a ravine, so a successful day!

Since it's the end of the month I should update you on the cookbook situation. We had a great success with Moosewood's Mushroom Mapo Tofu. You marinate cubed tofu in chili-garlic sauce with vinegar, soy sauce, ginger, tomato paste, sesame oil, water and sherry, except we didn't have any sherry. Then you cook up onions and a ton of mushrooms, add the tofu and cook it all together for a while. Serve it on rice with broccoli, voilà. Throw some green onions on for pretty, and they suggest walnuts as well. Oh, yes: this is vegetarian, but if you happen to have some ground lamb around and you wonder what to do with that, it goes in this very nicely! 

I've also made coconut rice, which is rice cooked in coconut milk: not very thrilling really. I made their ratatouille as well, which is a bit crazy for January, since we used canned tomatoes. It was eggplanty spaghetti sauce, which I like, but Stephen said was "not very exciting." And there was hummus: a very basic recipe in which you throw chick peas and tahini and lemon and garlic in a blender with a bit of spice and whoosh it up. 

There are other recipes I love in this book but I wanted to try new things. The mapo tofu will certainly be a recipe we go back to. We have to eat today and tomorrow, so who knows if we will get another recipe in? For February, we get to look at Jamie at Home, a good Jamie Oliver book. It's quite familiar, but I am sure we can find some new treats. 

Zigzag month is also coming to an end. We have some human-made zigzags, like a staircase and a pattern in bricks. 

We also have a couple of natural zigzags: a leaf and a crack in some bark. 

I like these things that are not too clear-cut. What exactly is a zigzag? 

I have one more zigzag to show you tomorrow. 

Some zigzags and another library

I was out the other day looking for zigzags. 

There's one way across the water, but my poor wee camera phone couldn't zoom quite enough. 

Coming around Stanley Park, we see the zigzags of the boat houses at the yacht club. 

That's about as close as I am likely to get to the yacht club. There is a rowing club nearby which apparently has a nice bar and a dock to sit on in the summertime and watch the boats go by, so we are thinking of joining that. As my friend says, I am good at sitting and watching, perhaps with a drink in hand. 

More boats, more zigzags. These clearly installed to keep the riffraff out of a dock, without wrecking the view too, too much. 

 

Does the line of trees over there count as a fine-toothed zigzag? Or perhaps it's just an excuse to show a wild sunset picture!

As well as zigzags, I have been thinking of libraries. This one was once again tacked on to another errand. I had some scarves and things to donate to the Downtown Eastside Women's Centre and the Carnegie Centre is right there, so I looked in. 

The area is terribly rundown; there are tents all along Hastings Street and of course it is quite stinky. The women's centre was bustling and full of people. They offered me lunch, even though I like to think I don't look destitute... But when I showed them my bag, I was sent in the right direction and I gave it to someone who thanked me. It made me think I should knit plain, warm caps and mitts for next winter, though I bet someone will be happy with my extra shawls and scarves. 

A block up the street is the Carnegie Centre, the old main library of the city. If you click that link up above, you will get the history of the place. It was closed for a while and then reopened as a community centre, with a small branch of the library. There were security guards on the main doors, and on the main floor and in the library were a few tables with people who were likely homeless reading the paper or a magazine. I didn't linger or take pictures of the library, but one can see that the building was once rather magnificent. 

Up this curved staircase is a window with Milton, Shakespeare and Spenser in stained glass. 

Shakespeare!

John Milton!

I am sure the library staff would have helped me if I'd had a question about the special collections, but I felt like a fish out of water in that company and wanted to flee back to the land of people who have access to running water on a regular basis. The problems of homelessness and poverty and addiction and public policy and all that are just overwhelming, and I'm afraid a bunch of knitted hats might not solve them all. 

As I waited for a bus a block from the library, there were no tents on that street. We were no longer in the Downtown Eastside, but in Chinatown. Restaurants and shops were open, though you could see they could lock up behind gates at night. I don't think this new city government will be great on this issue, but they are going to try to revitalize Chinatown (again). 

Back to my privileged life of looking at trees in the park. 

Is a bunch of triangles a zigzag?

I'm going to call the edges of these buildings "zigzags." 

This is perhaps more of a sawtooth edge, but one could easily draw a zigzag along that edge. 

And that's all for today. I did make another trek to a library, so I'll write that up shortly. I've even done some cooking, and some knitting. Oh, my. I'll get right on all that!

Some zigzags

The photo theme of the month is Zigzags, and I found the best zigzags right off the bat!

These are the steps at the Vancouver courthouse, designed by Arthur Erickson in 1973, and I remember these long, elegant, useful ramps being pretty exciting in those days. Ramps! 

As with arches last year, there might be some issues in defining the term. Do a bunch of triangles form a zigzag? 

Not sure. More research is needed. 

First tick on a ticky-list for 2023

What is a ticky-list, you might ask. Jolly good question, answered best here, by Diamond Geezer. (He makes one word of it, but I'm sticking with my hyphen.) It's a special to-do list, an amusement, a spot of order in one's random world, and my ticky-list is a way of exploring parts of town I might not otherwise get to. 

This year I am going to visit, in no particular order (drum roll, please) every branch of the Vancouver Public Library. There are 21 branches, including the one at the end of the block, the one I went to as a wee child and the different ones I frequented as a teen or student. Of course, there are several I've never been to at all. I figure the library is in a neighbourhood, easily accessible, surrounded by other stuff like shops and schools and parks. So I can get there on transit, walk around, find a coffee shop and see what is in Mount Pleasant or Marpole. I might even walk from one to another, after a gander at the map. With 21 little goals, I will start out aiming for 2 a month, and we'll see what happens. 

For Christmas, I was given a gift certificate at Michael's, the giant crafting store. So today I found a library within walking distance of a Michael's and off I went. 

I chose the Firehall branch, which is on 10th Avenue near Granville Street. I had not even known there was a library near here, though I have been in the shops around there often, and even recently. 

I crossed the street. I don't recall seeing this hand on the "push here to get a walk signal" buttons before. Kinda freaky, I say. 

Just half a block in, there is the firehall, and the Firehall branch of the library. 

The library is upstairs, and the front door is not especially welcoming. 

But there were books and movies and magazines and all the good things, once I got inside. I took two books out, both local history. Luckily I can return them to any branch! 

One down, twenty to go! 

My route then took me eastwards. I could have gone along Broadway, the main street around there, but I walked along 10th Avenue instead, looking at the variety of apartment buildings, none very tall, mostly from the 1940s to 1960s, by my amateur estimation. 

The big, sturdy, somewhat elegant Shaughnessy Lodge. 

The little, striped, postwar building right across the street. I have lived in a couple of these in my day. They are everywhere. 

This one had some great ivy, obviously, and wooden frames on the windows. I wonder what it was like inside. 

I stopped for a coffee in a shop that sold flowers and tea (and the occasional coffee) but I didn't take any pictures and they don't seem to have a webpage. It was cute, though! 

Finally, I made it to Michael's. That place is overwhelming. 

Billions of beads. So shiny! 

Pretty coloured storage solutions! Or are they just more things I would have to find space for? 

I ended up with some cotton yarn. Dishcloths for all! 

I walked almost 9000 steps, found a new library and a new coffee shop and got a stash of yarn. Off to a good start, I'd say. 

Photo Themes, 2023

Once again I have picked twelve ideas from this list of photo themes to explore each month on the blog. This year I have told a few people about these themes and there might be some, y'know, community action about it. Who can say?

January: zigzag

February: yellow 

March: weather 

April: vegetables

May: urban 

June: tools

July: stacks

August: reflection 

September: people 

October: old everything 

November: nonsense 

December: money

And here are some zigzags to get us started.

Maybe better if I crop right down?

More zigzags to come!

Okay, so it's 2023

Written some time ago, maybe even in October: Things certainly fell apart with the cookbook business late this year. I believe that all these books are in a box, on their way to Vancouver. I know I gave away the Michael Smith one that was September's choice. 

• October: Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 1
• November: The Essential NYT Cookbook
• December: Jamie's Italy

I hope that by January 1, I will have another dozen books lined up to be eaten from all year, 2023! I will get to these first, I think, but I could just throw them in the randomizer and see what happens. 

Things might have fallen apart earlier than I remember. Here is the list for 2022. 

• January: Moosewood Cooks at Home
• February: New Basics
• March: Parties for all Seasons (this one didn't survive)
• April: Whole Foods for the Whole Family
• May: Small Plates Perfect Wines
• June: Nantucket Open House Cookbook
• July: Happy Hour at Home
• August: Plenty
• September: Chef Michael Smith's Kitchen (this one didn't survive)
• October: Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 1
• November: The Essential NYT Cookbook
• December: Jamie's Italy

Okay, so time passes. Now it is 2023!

I got twelve books together and randomized them all and here is the list for 2023, cookbook-wise. 

• January Moosewood Restaurant Favorites
• February Jamie at Home
• March Plenty More
• April The Essential New York Times Cookbook
• May Breads
• June Joy of Cooking, 1975 edition
• July Various magazines and stray recipes
• August Gourmet Club recipes from the UBC Faculty Women's Club, 1967
• September Jamie's Italy
• October Lighthearted Everyday Cooking
• November Plenty
• December Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 1

Yes, there are two Jamie Oliver books and two Ottolenghi books and two months that are a bit weird: the Gourmet Club recipes my mom used in the 60s and 70s and a collection of various recipes and magazines. I'm looking forward to it!

Here's a quote from a speech about the history of the UBC Faculty Women's Club: 

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention some at least, of the many, many interest groups that have given life and shape to the FWC: foremost among these is the now defunct “Gourmet Club”, founded in 1964 – a Club that still stuns us by its former members’ ability to produce amazing meals seemingly effortlessly, and by the stories that pour out of these women when they reminisce about it. That was followed by “Dining Out”. Founded in 2001, by Joan Bentley, a group of around 20 members try out restaurants all over the City…though I doubt if the quality of the food is as consistently brilliant!

My mom took part in the Gourmet Club for years. We'll see how amazing I can be, but first up is a recent fave, a collection of Moosewood Restaurant hits. 

I will also have another batch of photo themes. I'll get to those shortly!