Edging into July--Cookies and Knitting and Such

Summertime means catching up on all those appointments I don't have time for during the school year--doctors, dentists, eye exam, etc.  So each week there seem to be some of these for me or my family.

I've also started going to a tai chi class once or twice a week, whatever I can fit in, and going to the Studio Ghibli movies (these are Japanese--you may know Spirited Away or Totoro) that are running here on the weekends.

In between these obligations and sweet pleasures, I've had time to make almond and anisette cantucci (known more commonly here as biscotti).  When I lived in Italy, I did not live in a region that had these kind of cookies--though I love them.  I am going to make another batch of them with pine nuts and rosemary.  I love them dipped in my morning coffee, though traditionally they are dipped in sweet wine.

Cut from the log shape, cookies are ready to go in the oven for 6 more minutes to get crispy.

 I have also been knitting--learning cables!  I made this hat (which was a happy, quick-make relief after my oh-so-brown mega-sweater project: hat pattern here), and thrilled with cables and patterns from tincanknits I am now working on some cabled boot toppers (also a quick-make project: boot topper pattern).  I also delved into a kit I bought back in December.  The written pattern was just not clear enough for my overcrowded mind at the time, but I've figured it out now and it is zinging along surprisingly fast.

Lovely wool, but a little too grape colored in the end. 

Look at that thready ball of glittery something and alpaca.  Lordy, what a big o' ball!

And yesterday was the 4th, so we got together with family and friends and grilled up a bunch of vegetables and weenies and etc. and talked about snakes and Prague and dogs and the fall of the Berlin Wall and men who sit beside unaccompanied young girls in movies and many other things until it was time for the youngsters to ramble on to their pyro-technic plans and the older ones to go home and guard their trees and roofs from pyro-technic plans gone awry.

Flurry of Baking and more

Last year, I bought this book and decided to try each recipe in turn until I had baked them all.
Well, so much for my intentions.  By years end I had only tried one recipe. It wasn't that it was difficult, I just don't have a lot of time for all the things I love to do.

So, here in December again, I went into another characteristic flurry.  I intended to go for three recipes all together, but with the coconut cake added in, it wasn't really possible in one day.

Ciambelle with anise seeds

These are crunchy, meant to be enjoyed with sparkling wine, but I like them with coffee too.

Pine nut cookies.  These went too fast to photo the finished product!

I loved cracking the coconut (with help of the hand model!) and grating it and working up icing in a double boiler.  I also loved filtering the wine out of the anise seeds and rolling the cookie dough into delicate little snakes for the ciambelle.  These are time consuming, but I so love the process, the tactile surprise of the way these raw components come together.
Crochet work is like this too, or writing--though then it's in the imaginative, or perhaps metaphysical world.  But all of these are essentially creative spheres where the mind is dually occupied--on one side by recipes or patterns or the concrete rules of punctuation and grammar--but then also on the larger, deeper, more abstract side which is fulfilling in the way that you can find yourself moving on autopilot, so that the "rules" are part of you so much so that the moment you are living in is art itself.
I think it was George Balanchine who said "Discipline makes you free," which I used to puzzle over as a younger person.  Though once I had experienced it, practiced to the point at which I was dancing without thinking steps but was within the music, I knew what it was to soar, to be free, to be experiencing art.
Once I had a student who said if he had three wishes one would be not to need to sleep.  I would wish this too.  Think of the things one could accomplish!  Not all the have to's of life, but the want to's!  So many things I'd like to try, to perfect, to have time to find the sweet spot, to lose myself in that other realm.