Liz Denys

I wanted curtain tiebacks that were functional for my curtains hung inside window frames, but unfortuantely, the current trends are designed around curtains mounted outside window frames with large, bulky metal tiebacks - not so great for my craftsman framed windows in tiny NYC rooms!

Knitting curtain tiebacks ended up being the perfect solution:

Here's what they look like lying flat instead of holding the curtain back:

Pattern

I used a worsted yarn that's on the thinner side of worsted and US 2 - 2.75 mm needles, but this project is flexible and can be made with a variety of yarns with a needle that makes a stitch size you like. I usually recommend swatching for projects, but it's not necessary in this one since you're just knitting until you reach your desired length and the width is flexible.

Make a provisional cast on of 8 stitches with scrap yarn. I prefer to create this provisional cast on by casting on 8 stitches on a straight or circular needle and then working them in double knit i-cord (directions in the next step) for a few rows.

The bulk of the curtain ties are made up of double knit i-cord worked over 8 stitches:

1. K1, slip purl wise wyif, to end of row, repeat
2. Repeat step 1 until you reach your desired length.

Finish each end as follows:

1. Pull yarn through the stitches twice.
2. Make a small loop from current end to other side and pull back to start of loop through half the stitches.
3. Repeat, but twist the yarn through the previous loop to make a single 2-ply loop and pull back through the other half of the stitches.
4. Pull yarn through last row of stitches again.
5. Knot off and weave in the end.

I screwed in a very small cup hook inside the window frame to loop the curtain tie to when it was wrapped around the curtain.

Additional project notes

• Needle: US 2 - 2.75 mm
• Gauge: While I usually make gauge swatches, I didn't bother making one for this project.
• Yarn used: 0.2 skeins (~32 yards) of Purl Soho Lantern in Platinum Gray, a worsted white cotton wrapped in a thin silvery grey linen

I've also documented these modifications and my other project notes for these curtain ties on Ravelry, but I'm attempting to document projects in a location where viewers don't need to create an account to see them and on a platform I have full control over, too, in case Ravelry ever disappears. Plus, as always, I'm just not very good at keeping external sites updated and am always trying to blog more.

I became vegetarian in February. It was a really, really long time coming, and becoming vegetarian before the start of a pandemic was really convenient. Few things beat having a bunch of dried beans, lentils, and veggies plus a bunch of rice on in my pantry while you're figuring out grocery delivery in NYC that doesn't exploit gig labor.

In March, April, and May, I made a lot of granola and ate it primarily with homemade almond milk. I have never been more grateful to have a powerful Vitamix blender than when we were making almond milk at least twice a week, and I can't believe I waited months before buying a nut milk bag to strain it instead of using a fine mesh sieve. I really cannot overstate how much time using a nut milk bag saves. Mexican Horchata also entered our regular drink rotation.

Toast slathered in butter that's topped with thinly sliced radishes and finished sea salt has become my favorite savory breakfast/afternoon snack. Toast slathered in one of Ayako & Family's many varieties of plum jam has become my favorite sweet breakfast/afternoon snack.

Soy eggs are a regular snack when we realize we have accumulated too many eggs through our weekly farm share delivery. I use a regular sodium soy sauce and leave them overnight, and despite the warning in the ingredient list, they have never been excessively salty.

When I'm feeling uninspired regarding a veggie in my farm share, I decide whether it would rather be roasted or salad and just do that. Roasted veggies are always a welcome side or addition to a dish in my home. Salad tossed in any quickly homemade dressing is still an incredible and simple to prepare treat, and yes, I admit I will forever be a stock photo cliché.

Laura Wright's ginger, sweet potato, and coconut milk stew with lentils and kale is forever going to be in our regular meal rotation. We add about triple the chilli stated in the recipe. Also, her creamy corn and lemon pasta with thyme is a favorite summer treat.

It's decorative gourd season, so I made a vegan squash soup. Cooking red lentils in the spices I would usually add to a soup and adding those to the blender helped make this a full meal, alongside some crusty bread, of course.

I've been craving mapo tofu for months. (I'm not aware of a good vegetarian version available in my part of the city.) My friends Alex and Erin sent me this very detailed recipe from Chinese Cooking Demystified, which made me feel confident I could make it if I gathered the right ingredients - though I wanted to have a minced protein instead of just omitting it to make it vegetarian. I use food processor minced fresh mushrooms instead of beef, which take longer to cook down and require more oil as mushrooms absorb it instead of releasing fat, and I replace the broth with shiitake dashi. (If you don't have another plan for the rehydrated shiitake mushrooms, they can be minced and added to the fresh ones to replace the beef.)

Tali sauce is still a fun way to transform a simple bowl of rice and beans, and it freezes beautifully. That said, a humble bowl of rice and beans is always a pleasure on its own.

Speaking of beans, I never throw out bean cooking liquid. If I don't want it as part of the beans, I save it to reheat and mix with miso paste, as a treat.

Soy curls are a delightful shelf-stable protein. I often use them in Japanese or Thai curries.

Eggplant parmigiana is a lot more delicious to me when the eggplant is roasted instead of fried. I use parm instead of the romano listed and my own tomato sauce recipe, which also has onions and uses Diaspora Co.'s incredible ground chilli instead of crushed red pepper. (Diaspora Co.'s chillies are brimming with flavor. I can't be anyone's barometer for spiciness because I don't notice it until it hits my digestive system, but I hear they're somewhat milder in heat than expected. P.S. All their other spices are incredible, too.)

Lekka Burger's vegan chocolate chip cookie is made entirely of shelf-stable pantry staples and is absolutely incredible. I highly recommend microwaving any cookies you don't eat the first day for 15 seconds before eating.

When I saw the Library Blanket Joelle Hoverson designed for Purl Soho, I immediately fell in love. The marled combinations of oranges, pinks, blues, and purples were calling to me, so I ordered a kit right away. Other knitters commented that while they loved the pattern, the colors used weren't quite right for them.

As the varied blocks in the blanket are made by holding different pairs of yarns together, it can be difficult to imagine how a different yarn palette would knit up. To make it easier to visualize, I created a JavaScript and Canvas tool to render a digital mockup of the Library Blanket pattern in custom color palettes:

The tool will also generate the color combo list for the yarn names given, so you know which two yarns are held together in each block.

I've included a few preconstructed color palettes, including the one stated in the pattern, other combinations Purl Soho provided in the comments, and a few options I discovered while testing this tool. You can also create your own palettes either by selecting Purl Soho Line Weight or Linen Quill yarns from the dropdowns or by entering custom yarns in the text and color input fields. For each of the Purl Soho yarns in the dropdowns, I selected a hex color I felt corresponded well to the photo of that colorway. (Of course, a single color doesn't fully capture the subtleties in these yarns, and you may think a different hex color better matches a colorway than the one I chose! If you'd rather use a different hex color for a yarn, you can input it like you would for a custom yarn.) To preview this pattern with different yarns than the two Purl Soho specified in the pattern, you can enter your own yarn names and hex colors.

When you update any of the fields in the tool, the Library Blanket rendering and color combo list automatically update below.

P.S. I updated the colorways for Purl's Linen Quill and Line Weight yarns on September 16, 2021!

Library Blanket rendering:

Color combo list:

Tracy Jenkins's For Like Ever poster is an iconic piece of "the millenial aesthetic." I've made a new poster inspired by For Like Ever and the current need for social distance:

The texture in the clouds below the text is made up of no symbols and small x's:

I've made an A4 paper, 300 DPI version of the Cancel Like Everything poster available for printing. The Cancel Like Everything poster is licensed under the Creative Commons - Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license, so you can print, adapt, and share it for any non-commercial purposes. By the way, I consider non-commercial purposes to include selling prints either at cost or with 100% of the profits going to COVID-19 relief.

I've never been to Sqirl, but ever since I ordered their puffed millet 'nola on a whim, I've been obsessed. All I want for breakfast these days is a bowl of this granola with some plain yogurt. UPDATE: I no longer order from Sqirl after hearing about their jam mold and the deeper problems #moldgate revealed about Koslow and Sqirl - especially the generally unsafe working conditions and flippant attitude towards the community and places that made up the Virgil Village neighborhood of LA before Sqirl moved in.

As it turns out, it's the second version of their turmeric-spiced puffed millet 'nola, and Sqirl's Jessica Koslow posted the recipe for their first version, which contains nuts and uses different sweeteners, on Instagram a few years ago. The humble but mighty millet 'nola has since made its way around the internet. I've never had the previous version, but between looking at the current ingredient lists alongside the recipe for the previous version, I figured I could come up with something close to the new version. UPDATE: There was no attribution on this recipe in Koslow's post, which implies that she created it, but given everything that came out after #moldgate, I can't be sure who created this recipe.

Instead of using a base of just puffed millet, I also use puffed quinoa because quinoa is a complete protein. I include pumpkin seeds along with sunflower seeds because I love them both. Instead of adding glucose to my pantry, I chose to make the liquid part like one does for Eleven Madison Park's granola recipe, another granola I adore. The ratio of liquid to dry ingredients is a tad lower here than in EMP's granola as there are 4 teaspoons fewer dry ingredients, but the puffed grains don't seem to want as much syrup as denser oats do.

Puffed millet and qui'nola

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup dark brown sugar
• 1/3 cup maple syrup, preferably dark color
• 1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 1 1/2 teaspoons turmeric powder (I used Diaspora Co's excellent turmeric powder.)
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom
• 1 1/2 teaspoons Diamond Crystal kosher salt (You can use other brands, but know that Diamond Crystal is less dense than other kosher salts.)
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda, optional (if you want to caramelize the brown sugar)
• 2 cups puffed millet
• 2 cups puffed quinoa
• 1/3 cup raw sunflower seeds
• 1/3 cup raw pumpkin seeds
• 1/4 cup white sesame seeds
• 2 tablespoons brown flax seeds
• 1 cup freeze-dried fruit of your choice (I used a mix of strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries because that's what I found most easily, but I'm excited to use some blackberries and cranberries the next time I make this!)

Preparation

1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit. Line a half-sheet jelly roll pan or two quarter-sheet jelly roll pans with tin foil.
2. In a large stockpot (doesn't need to be huge, I used a 5 1/2-quart pot) set over low heat, stir and warm the brown sugar, maple syrup, and olive oil until the sugar dissolves.
3. Add turmeric, cardamom, and kosher salt. Stir until combined and bubbles. If you want to make a deeper caramel coating, let bubble a bit, add baking soda, and stir until combined. Remove from heat.
4. Add puffed millet, puffed quinoa, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, and flax seeds to the stockpot. Stir until everything is well coated.
5. Spread granola onto the jelly roll pan(s). Bake for 15 minutes, stirring once halfway through. Remove granola from the oven and let it cool completely (about 30 minutes).
6. Add freeze-dried fruit to granola (or just top granola with freeze-dried fruit when you eat it). Transfer to an airtight storage container.

Yields about 6 cups of granola. Total preparation time is about 55 minutes: 25 minutes of active preparation time plus 30 minutes for the granola to cool.