Verbose

I am old enough to have done my first knitting patterns and my books in traditional print publishing. The transition from print to digital was awful. Making the PDFs was the easy part. It was all the stuff associated with delivering those PDFs that was a huge headache—setting up a website with shopping cart software (much of which had to be customized with hand coding back then), credit card processing, etc. I often think that the indie knitting designers who came after me, when most of the kinks had been worked out of digital publishing, had a much easier time starting their businesses.

(Get off my lawn.)

I love digital publishing, though, if only for the fact that that I am not limited to a certain number of pages. And that’s a good thing, because the pattern for this Noon and Night quilt is turning into a small novel.

[To be honest, that is probably why I started Twists and Turns, because I couldn’t just write a knitting pattern. I had to write about the history and the technical aspects and the design philosophy behind the pattern, too, and for that, I needed a newsletter.]

The pattern will be as long as it needs to be for me to communicate the process effectively. Another benefit of digital is that you only have to print the pages you need.

As the pattern stands, I have illustrations but no photos. I think there is a tendency by some pattern writers—not all, but some—to use photos as a crutch for poor instructions. Photos also use up a lot of ink. I do have a lightbox and a really nice camera, though, so I could incorporate some photos if needed.

Does anyone have opinions on photos versus illustrations? Or about overly-chatty pattern writing?

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I went out yesterday afternoon to get one last crop of lettuce. Cutting some of it back did not help and it bolted anyway, so I will let it go to seed now. If the weather cools off some, I plan to start another tray of lettuce in the greenhouse to transplant toward the end of August. I’ve done that in the past, and with a hoop over it, we may be able to keep it going until Thanksgiving. The temps have to go down a bit, though, because even with all the vents and doors open, the greenhouse is an oven in the middle of the day and any lettuce seedlings I start now will just bake to death.

I happened to look at the corn while I was out there and thought that I should probably check an ear to see how it was coming along. I really thought it needed another week. Nope. In fact, I am probably about three or four days late getting to it.

This is always what happens with corn—one of us happens to look at it, realizes it is ready, and then it’s a mad scramble to get it picked, shucked, blanched, and frozen. Corn doesn’t wait. So that’s what I did yesterday afternoon and now the winter supply of corn is in the freezer for use in soups and stews.

You may remember that this was the year of experimentation with the old Native American corn varieties. I planted four of them: Montana Cudu, Montana Lavender Clay, Painted Mountain, and Painted Hill. We’ve done Painted Mountain in the past. Painted Hill is a cross of Painted Mountain and Luther Hill.

I am tickled with them. I took the picture after I blanched them, because the kernels swelled and the colors really deepened:

These will stay in the rotation for next year. The Montana Cudu—the blue one on the left—produced much better than I expected. I thought it was going to be a diva. The Lavender Clay has an interesting flavor. It’s sweet, but an earthy sweet. I had a hard time not eating all of that one. I think it would be really good dried and ground into flour. The Painted Mountain/Painted Hill (they are very similar) did well, too. We’ve grown Painted Mountain before.

Part of the fun of heirloom varieties is the fact that they produce some really odd-looking fruits and vegetables. These ears were not as big as commercially-grown corn, nor as consistent in length, but they taste good and that’s what matters. I need to make a note to myself about the length of the growing season, though. Those seedlings were 10” tall when I planted them in the garden in May, and if I do that again, I need to start watching for ears around the middle of July.

Peas are done. Corn is done. Raspberries are just about done. Lettuce is done. Zucchini and cucumbers continue to produce. Tomatoes will be ripening soon—I found a ripe one the other day but I ate it before I remembered to take a picture. The beans that did come up are doing well.

My plans to sew yesterday were upended by the corn, but that happens. I have eight Noon and Night blocks done so far and I love the way it is coming together. With all the cutting done, it only takes me about 30 minutes to make one block.