As promised to Jo. If you’re not interested, come back tomorrow to help me celebrate the first anniversary of my first post.

I’ve given date and time from the timestamp of the photo, so it’s accurate. Note that our kitchen is relatively cold, so your bread may rise much faster than mine: yeast works faster in warmth, which is one reason that ‘bread likes to be big’ as my baking instructor used to say. Large batches rise faster because of the warmth they generate.

Another note: Flour. I use a mix of flours for my breads. Roughly 50% is biodynamic stoneground *English* breadflour, which is low in protein by comparison with North American flours. This has many implications. Relatively low protein flours tend to develop richer, more complex flavours, something I like. But… they take up less water than high protein flours (the same weight of flour and water produces a sloppier dough), which makes them a little harder to work if you don’t have a mixer. Protein content is directly related to gluten formation, so the dough can’t hold gas as strongly: it doesn’t rise as high as a high protein flour. See the trade-off? The remaining 50% is the best quality commercial bread flour I can buy, ‘Gladiator’ from Rank Hovis (32kg bags from a local wholesaler), to compensate a bit for the lack of protein. You can adjust your mix to yield the bread you like best. Be wary of wholemeal, though: the husks and other coarse bits act like pins, popping the gas bubbles in the dough. This is one reason so many wholemeal loaves are so… healthily… heavy. I’d use something like Dove’s Farm ‘Wessex’ wholemeal flour, which has been milled much finer than the average — or accept a loaf that doesn’t rise so high. The flavour will be good, regardless of the height.

The total weight of the finished dough will be c. 2kg, to yield 3 largish loaves.
You’ll need: 300g sourdough starter, ideally at 100% hydration; a total of 1040g (1.04kg) of bread flour; 670g bottled/spring water; 1-2tsp salt.

Day One (evening): 300g starter, 500g organic flour, 410g bottled water. Remember your starter is 50% flour, 50% water: if you’ve only got 250g starter, you only need add 25g more flour, 25g more water, and you’ve got the right total weight and the right proportion of flour to water in the dough. I’m aiming here for a hydration of 68% (bakers percentage). Briefly, the more water in the dough, the more weight has to be held by fewer gluten strands. Weaker strands give way, yielding bigger gas bubbles… up to a point. Beyond it, the gluten can’t sustain the strain and you’ll get a dough that doesn’t rise at all well in most domestic ovens. Less water (the tendency of new bakers is to add flour to make a dough easy to handle) produces the opposite: a dense loaf. Ah, the bricks of my baking youth…

Day One, 1830. All the ingredients neatly laid out with my bread notebook, full of scribbled calculations for different weights of doughs of differing hydrations (some so wet they slithered off the oven shelf). The completed sponge (starter plus flour and water) is on the right, to show the texture.

You decide.
The box was smaller than I’d expected for such a momentous purchase, and not at all heavy. Shipped on the day of my order by P & M Woolcraft. If I’d had a car I might have spent a morning collecting it in person, but the amount I might have spent on additional stuff while I was there doesn’t bear thinking about.

A copy of the assembly instructions is the first thing to be seen. Seems sensible.

A handle, it’s got a handle!!

A pocket, it’s got a zip-up pocket!!
Clearly the suspense is affecting my mental processes. How about you?

Dyson waits for 500g of blue-faced leicester roving to make a move.
Some additional fibre seemed a good idea, given the speed with which a wheel eats the stuff. There were several hand-spun, hand-knitted BFL sweaters at the spinners’ meeting; it’s a great favourite despite pilling quite badly. Can’t be helped, that’s what soft yarns do.

Disappointed by the roving’s unwillingness to play, he settles for licking some plastic. I wish he wouldn’t do that. Look at the wheel! It’s so compact, so neatly packed…

Another copy of the instructions was folded carefully under the wheel. They’re scarcely needed, though. It’s completely straightfoward. If you’re interested, look carefully and you’ll see that the bottom/side of the bag is hardboard. The rubber feet of the wheel fit neatly into holes in the board, to ensure the wheel is held securely as you tighten the straps that hold it against the board. The wheel also seems to be a model of elegant simplicity. Dyson is sulking because I’ve stopped him executing a riff on the drive band to demonstrate that the wheel is also a musical instrument.

Dyson is now in the box attacking something only he can see. How fortunate we are, to have such a noble, alert beast defending us from hazard. I must reward him with gooshy food…

But first I must get back to work. Bother!

a happy cyclist* by the insects on its teeth, how do you identify a happy knitter?

FO: Eunny’s Endpaper Mitts. In Jamieson & Smith Shetland 2-ply. Despite buying Montse Stanley I couldn’t get the tubular cast-on to work for me, so I used my favourite long-tail cast-on instead. I was running low on gold (as one does), so skipped the set-up rows for the tubular cast-off and used the decrease cast-off immediately. End result? I really do like these, in fact I’m wearing them now. They’re my first stranded-knitting ever, and I am happy with the two-yarns-in-left-hand method; I’d recommend anyone (especially continental knitters) give it a fair try. I tensioned the gold as usual on my little finger, but didn’t run it under the second finger, just straight across and down over my index finger. The purple was tensioned on my ring finger and went under the second to run over my index finger. The gold tended to stay on the first joint (nearest my hand), the purple on the second.
When I make these again (that’s a promise), I will modify the pattern to begin the thumb gusset later, with steeper increases — the pattern as written starts the increases as my wrist shrinks to its narrowest I have very narrow wrists, so there’s a mildly offensive loose bit just there. The rest fits perfectly, is warm and looks gloriously rich in colour. I just wish my stubby fingers and short fingernails lived up to the elegance of the mitts.

I think you can identify this happy knitter by its renewed determination to finish the hated Alligator Socks so he can wear them as a token of affection during his three weeks away. Three weeks! I can array the stash in all its glory across the floor and gloat for hours. I can watch DVDs he dislikes (must book some), eat scrambled eggs or baked beans on toast for dinner, have a long hot bath listening to the radio with a glass of wine and a book, sleep anywhere I like in the bed, ok, anywhere the cats allow me space. Yes, I will miss him. I really will.

p.s. The wheel should arrive tomorrow.

* ‘Happy’ may not be quite the right word. I haven’t cycled happily for ages, not since my then cycling shoes (old trainers) got trapped in my toeclips when I came to an emergency stop. I stopped perfectly, after which my bike with me on it just fell sideways like some cartoon character. Thud. Nothing was damaged except my pride: this was a very public fall. So why have I just switched to cleats? Because I’m like that, that’s why. Mad :-) Besides, I want the power!

That’s the short story.

Slightly longer:
Imagine a hall that could hold perhaps 120-150 people. Thirty-odd (I didn’t think to count, but it was at least 30) chairs are arranged in a huge ovoid around the walls. There’s a fibre person in every chair. Most are in their late 40s or older, but there are several who are perhaps in their 20s. There are knitters, there’s a rug-hooker, there’s a display of table-top weaving from tablets through inkle to rigid heddle (that’s today’s demonstration). But most are spinning on a wide variety of wheels; there are Lendrums, there are Louets, everywhere you look there’s at least one Ashford ‘Joy’, there are traditional wheels with plain or ornately turned twiddles in every shade from gold to brown so dark it appears black. There’s a club wheel and wool sitting ready for a learner. There’s a steady buzz of conversation as chairs and people move together to form groups which over time disperse to become new groups. There is a beautiful alpaca roving in every natural shade being spun into a soft heathered yarn, lots of blue-faced leicester becoming yarn of almost every thickness. There is merino becoming laceweight on a wheel spinning so fast it seems to be flying and indeed that spinner had to wedge her previous wheel against a wall to stop it running away. There is alpaca fleece in the grease becoming almost laceweight next to fat brown rolags of something incredibly sheepy becoming a fat and characterful brown homespun. Every face has a look of pleasant concentration breaking frequently into beaming smiles as someone brings a tray of tea and biscuits through to a group of chairs.

Because I asked for an opinion of my yarn and had specific technical questions about spinning and knitting singles I was sent to Jean, who has been spinning for 35 years. My alpaca/silk singles were officially graded ‘good and even'(!) and we discussed the knitting of singles. I was able to produce my sample of fabric knitted from energized singles to show someone who’d never thought of it how the twist sculpts the fabric, and describe how I’ve treated the yarn I’m working on to set the twist to reduce or prevent this movement. Somewhat nervously I pulled out my Bosworth and began spinning, aware that I was being watched, albeit kindly and with approval. And then… I was asked if I’d thought of acquiring a wheel. And I said I had, because while I was learning to love the ritual of the hand-spindle, I had been intrigued by my brief experience with a wheel and the notion of producing larger quantities of yarn more quickly, not to mention more accurate plying. Had I any particular wheels in mind? I tentatively advanced my arguments in favour of either a Louet or Lendrum, and said I had heard good things about the S95 ‘Victoria’ but would wait until I’d had a chance to try one. “Would you like to try mine?” said someone who’d overheard me. So I did. I had trouble co-ordinating two feet and the wheel went too fast, so I used just one. The wheel was happy. It started rotating with a single push of the treadle, no need to rotate the wheel by hand. I was happy. Within a couple of minutes I was relaxed, sitting back in my chair and watching with absolute delight as my handful of wool became a lovely, even singles only slightly over-twisted for plying. Jean was pleased with me. I was pleased with me. I was pleased with the wheel. I’ve ordered one. I’m pleased with the entire universe, even if he’s got my car today and I have to sort out the repairs to his because he’s in meetings all day, and I’ll be on my bike for the next week. It’ll do me good.

There’s a spinning group meets every Tuesday evening about 10 minutes from here. I never knew. I begin to wonder if there are spinners everywhere, meeting quietly in village halls or private houses to forget their cares and become pleased with the world. Even if it’s only for an hour or two. Count them all, add the knitting groups, the weavers in back rooms or sunlit studios… all working to bring order out of chaos. From wool to yarn to garments. It’s magic, real magic.

It must be time for a landscape. Remember the photo of the barrows on a snow-covered hill? This is the view from the top of one of those barrows. Click for bigger. We’re standing on the Middle Chalk at about 95m OD (Ordnance Datum, which is mean sea level at a location I can’t recall), looking across a vale averaging c. 30m OD of clays (Lower Chalk, and Gault) to a ridge you can just see in the distance. It might not look much like the English landscape of your imagination, but then this is what Oliver Rackham calls ‘planned countryside’. People probably began farming here about 5,000 years ago and has been cultivated more or less intensively ever since. I was going to apologise for not erasing the by-pass and its railway bridge (I’ve already removed 2 cars and a van that offended me. Be afraid, be very afraid) but in fact it’s a useful landmark being so… obvious.

That thin dark line running almost horizontally across the field just ‘above’ the bridge is the hedge marking a parish boundary roughly following the line of fields laid out in the Iron Age, c. 2,500 years ago (this is known from cropmarks showing the ladder-like outlines of the fields). The remains of what may have been the village in which the farmers lived survive as cropmarks near a spring about 1km west of the pale blur above the green field above the bridge, the pale blur being the modern village in which I live. This village probably took its present form in Saxon times (after the Romans left in 410AD); it’s even been suggested that a single powerful individual planned the layout of the roads and farms within the village. There are other ways in which our modern landscape is defined by history and geology. Can you see the pattern of alignment of fields? One set of boundaries is the line of that hedge, running away from the main road (a northwest-southeast alignment), while the others parallel the road in the foreground running (very roughly) northeast-southwest. This last is the line of the Chalk itself, which has been a landmark and a high, dry route for travellers since people first arrived here after the last Ice Age, 10,000 or more years ago. The road in the foreground and other tracks paralleling it in the distance were used in summer by people travelling from spring to spring, perhaps driving livestock to market. The roads and tracks out of sight behind us, high on the Chalk, were winter routes used when the clays on lower ground became intractable mud.

Now it’s Saturday. He came home last night in his car with rubber from a truck tire welded to the passenger-side door after being sideswiped on the motorway (aka highway) by a Spanish truck driver. Fortunately the vehicles were travelling at the same speed. No one hurt, but it could have been so much worse.

If you look closely you might be able to distinguish shades of green in the fields, as well as bare soil. The ploughed fields are waiting for summer crops such as sugar beet and field beans. The brown/tan/green are fields left fallow possibly until the autumn, or they may be ploughed soon for a spring crop. The darker green is oilseed rape (‘canola’ in NAmerica; the derivation of the European name is given in the link). The chlorotic green is autumn-sown ‘winter’ wheat desperate for a nitrogen fix, not surprising after a couple of thousand years of intensive farming! Until quite recently the nitrogen shortage wouldn’t have been so obvious, as the farmers applied nitram (ammonium nitrate fertiliser) during the winter so it was ‘ready’ for spring growth. This is no longer allowed, because this area is a Nitrate-Vulnerable Zone. Aquifers in the Chalk provide our drinking water. Any winter rain flushed the nitrate through the soil into the water table, polluting the aquifers. A few years ago the nitrate content approached the EU permitted maximum and our local water company actually had to pump out the aquifer(!), pumping water from local boreholes out of the Chalk into tankers to be discharged into a local river (probably even higher in nitrates due to agricultural run-off) and hope that rain would recharge the aquifer in time for summer demand. I was… gobsmacked might be an appropriate phrase. Most of the settlements in this area take their water from the Chalk; as a result, most village wells dried and were filled in during the 1960s and 70s, and the springs that supplied the Iron Age villagers flow only in the wettest years. There are a few large springs that still flow today, but they must have been much more impressive before water abstraction began.

There are more trees in that landscape than have grown for perhaps the last thousand years or more. Before the 19th-century Enclosure of the parish, there were few trees or hedges in the open fields. Firewood to heat houses or cook meals was a valuable commodity; the laws determining who is allowed to collect dead wood where still stand on the statute books. As the open fields were enclosed* thousands of miles of hedging were planted to mark the new boundaries. Today mixed farming is almost unknown in this area; tractors don’t need hedges to stop them wandering, so the hedges are often mismanaged or left to grow up into lines of small trees, while shelter belts and other trees have been planted to improve the view or the prospects of the hunt. The dark line on the top of that distant ridge marks the only ‘real’ woodlands in this area, trees that may originally have survived because the heavy glacial clay soil on the ridge was unploughable until tractors appeared. But, as the woodland elsewhere was cleared to become arable fields, these remaining woods became incredibly valuable sources of wood and timber. One of those dark blurs is an ancient wood, perhaps a remnant of the forest that once covered much (but not all) of lowland England.

As I write this, I am reminded that every landscape has a story to tell. It’s just a matter of learning the languages – geology, history, natural history – in which the story is written. England has been settled for so long by curious people with leisure to learn that it’s easy to find books telling the story. I particularly enjoyed Fortey’s The Hidden Landscape and the book by Rackham I mentioned earlier. I’m not familiar with similar books for anywhere else, but John McPhee’s Annals of the Former World, a mammoth introduction to the geology of the US, is one of my favourite books. Together with a set of US maps it lives in our bathroom within arm’s reach of the loo. My favourite bathroom reading.

And now it’s time for fibre. There’s a spinning group meeting today about 30 minutes from here; I’ve been invited to drop by and see what 30-odd spinners look like. ‘Terrifying’ is perhaps too strong a word, but I am after all accustomed to doing all my fibre-things sitting in solitary splendour. I do want to investigate wheels, though… he didn’t flinch noticeably when I mentioned this last week :-)

* a few, now famous, still survive. Soham in Cambridgeshire, for example.

Just a little bit mad, about 30° askew from reality. It’s all your fault, the praise for my sweater (I will wear it to Pilates tonight) was the last straw. As evidence I offer:

Eunny’s Endpaper Mitts in Jamieson and Smith 2-ply shetland. Not the best colour choice to show the patterning, but the combination of heathered gold and purple is rich and warm, like some baroque brocade. Now that winter is just about over (it’s positively warm in the sun out there today), why not knit mitts? Now, I could claim that I’m being sensible, that this means I’ll be prepared for next winter, but I think this
calls my judgement into question. In case it’s not obvious, that’s both colours knitted from the same hand, with both mitts at the same time on a magic loop. Furthermore, that’s my left hand on the left and my right hand on the right, and I took the photo all by myself. Teeth were involved.

And if that weren’t enough, this morning I joined the Grammar Police. Officially. On security camera. I had to stop in Tesco for milk. I don’t normally shop there, I abhor the way the company treats both its suppliers and lower-echelon staff. As I walked down one of the frozen foods aisles, milk in hand, my eye was caught by three matching professionally-printed posters. Neatly arrayed side by side on three cabinet doors, they read

‘Looking for
Yorkshire
Pud’z?
There behind
you!’

The security camera will show me frozen (ha) for several seconds before those words. I hope it catches the look of disbelieving horror that must have passed over my face. I then turn and walk away, more and more slowly, until I stop. I look back, I start to walk back. I stop, I walk away again, slowing, until I stop and dig frantically in my bag for a pen, any pen. I walk briskly back, correct the errors, and walk away again, at peace with myself. It felt good, it really did. I will do it again. I must carry an indelible felt pen in future.

Perhaps it’s because I’m still knitting the Alligator Socks. Is there a rule that says ‘The more you dislike a yarn, the longer any project using it will last?’

That’s Sundara‘s aran silky merino in a non-repeatable colour, black over blue used to make Wendy’s ‘Something Red‘. I had 5 skeins, 1000 yds of the yarn and used about 3 1/2. I have plans for the rest… this stuff is so soft I want to wear it next to my skin. Oh, and the colour scarcely ran at all when I washed it which, in my limited experience, is extremely unusual for something this dark. There are many very good reasons for Sundara’s yarn selling out within minutes of its appearance.
The pattern calls for a single large button placed just below the bust. I wasted ages (procrastinated happily) searching for the right button online and in every haberdashery/antique shop I passed, without success. Then I thought of a brooch I’m fond of that’s too large for everyday wear. I think it works, although it’s a shame it hides the buttonhole. I’m very proud of that buttonhole, researched the best technique and everything. I prefer the photo above, even if I don’t understand why it looks as though there’s a line across the sleeve and I do like the brooch. I comfort myself with the thought that In Real Life relatively few people will ever be looking straight at me as I crumple with laughter at his efforts to use my little-ass camera. Shortly after this he stalked off saying “If I WANTED to use a camera I’d get an SLR.” Many more people are likely to appreciate the side view as I walk elegantly through any available crowd. ON LEGS. These photos are definitive proof that legs are slimming.

On to other news. Apparently it’s not ‘just string’. He said. Want to see what made him understand this?

Nacy Finn’s ‘Chasing Rainbows’ fibre from Teyani at Crown Mountain Farms. This is 50/50 merino/silk in ‘Hydrangea’, a light DK weight after plying (it looks larger in this close-up). The intensity of colour in this fibre is simply amazing: the photos absolutely do not do it justice at all. Its ability to stun may be judged by the fact it changed his mind about fibre!
That’s to record the colour repeat: there are about 2 7/8ths repeats in the roving I’m working on. The skein above is one colour repeat spun from lengths of roving so that the colours match at beginning and end (think blue-green green-blue blue-green), then ‘Andean’ plied on itself. It’s incredibly pretty. Next colour repeat will be spun to make two lengths of matching repeats to ply so that the colours match. Last one will be whichever I like best of the two. But what on earth do I do with this? I’ve got 4oz which, with luck and a following wind (that’s ‘wind’ as in ‘Blow the wind southerly, southerly, southerly’) will yield roughly 300m of yarn. Socks too beautiful and fragile to wear? I could carry them around for others to admire… I don’t really do scarves, and at this point I can’t bear to contemplate parting from it. I’m thinking instead of spinning what I’ve got and, over time, spinning more in similar colourways. I’m thinking about a loose cardigan/kimono,* perhaps knitted vertically to stripe in interesting ways. I’m slightly intimidated by the way that the possibilities inherent in a stash of yarn are multiplied in a stash of fibre that can be spun to be almost any weight the spinner desires.

Speaking of spinning, I’m re-reading Jonathan Raban’s ‘Bad Land‘, an exploration of the homesteading of Montana. Books and many other tangible fragments of lives still lie in the farmsteads abandoned as a result of drought and the Depression. I have many of his books; even more than McPhee he inspires my thoughts to explore beyond the boundaries of his writing. I’ve read online of spinners falling in love with wheels in antique stores; some paint pictures of previous owners sitting peacefully at the wheel, spinning to relax as they themselves do today. As I read Raban, I find myself considering the accuracy of those pictures, seeing instead a woman determined to produce the yardage promised for a sweater, socks, anything to earn hard coin. I’m sure both have been — and still are — true. It’s just that I am incredibly lucky to be spinning for love rather than money.

* to be worn over a fitted top with a v-neck, OK?

As in ‘concrete example of knitwear design’. This is a sweater chosen for me by the consultant at Liberty, after she’d assessed my character and body shape. Note (if you can from the bad photo) that it’s marginally too big for me: I’m only 5’4″, but my 38″ bust means off-the-rack clothing that fits my height will be far too tight across the, er, chest. One reason I drifted into wearing over-size sweatshirts. But I digress. Points brought to my attention by M and the consultant: 1. It has a v-neck, albeit small and off-centre.* V-necks break up an expanse of chest, making it less obvious to everyone bar the wearer. This one isn’t really deep enough. 2. Patterning also breaks up what I perceive as a ski slope south of my neck. Here the horizontal ribbing is broken by that incredibly strong vertical, so it doesn’t make me look wider than I am. Which works with 3, slight waist shaping, to make clear that I do have a waist. 4. The emphatic horizontal hemline that would draw attention to my hips is replaced by movement sweeping away from the strong vertical – and it’s even got vertical detailing to make that panel look narrow. With a pocket that I gather really should be sewn almost shut. Mind you, it’s too small to be useful. I couldn’t even put my pocket knife in that. (Yes, I tried) 5. Long sleeves bell at the end to make my arms seem longer and thinner (why is that a good thing?).

The consultant got it absolutely right. I love this sweater, and will continue to love it until it falls to pieces, at which point I will be very sad indeed. I know I look good in it, which means I carry myself properly upright and therefore look even better. The detailing is delightful. It’s like a building designed by a really good architect. Look:
The designer used the curl of plain stockinette to perfect advantage: the vertical is just a strip of knit fabric allowed to curl. (All the garment edges are simply bound off and left to curl, too. Here‘s another top that uses that to good effect.) The perfectly placed triple increases make one small rib widen until entire groups of small ribs are perceived as ribbing across the garment front. Isn’t that clever?

This is the shoulder. The ribbing for the arm grows organically away from the seam. Even the increases for the bust are beautifully placed.

There’s more I won’t show you, because I don’t think it’s fair to put all the design details online for reference. But the waist shaping is due in part to a repeat of the ribbing&triple increase down the back, and this also gives the sleeves their shape. A single strong, elegant idea used everywhere to advantage. I wish I could afford more stuff like this. As it is, I’ll have to apply the principles to garments I knit for myself. Or divorce him and marry someone really wealthy… no, there are some things in life more important than architectural clothing. Just barely.

* Seen the Spring 2007 IK? ‘Slanted Neck Pullover’? I think it’s not slanted anything like enough: on the model it looks as though a knitter got a normal v-neck wrong and hoped it might pass for art.

How to build a sourdough starter.

First, a bit of knitting for those who aren’t interested in bread…
The Alligator (pronounced ‘amalgamator’ in this household. Don’t ask.) Socks in his chosen yarn, Lorna’s Laces in ‘Forest’. The instep is a twisted rib, basically four rounds k2xp2 rib, then k2t, slip that back onto the left needle, knit the left-most of the original k2 stitches, then put the slipped stitch on the right needle with its new partner. And so forth. Chosen because the twist should tighten the rib a bit (he said the first pair were too loose).

And I’d like some advice. I posted a lot of words about design yesterday. I have some photos of a purchased sweater to illustrate some of the points I made (or rather, was shown at the time I bought it). Is it reasonable to post detailed images of design features in a commercial sweater? It’s not a hand-knit, but it is a designer-ish item.

Back to the bread. This isn’t the only way to build a starter, it’s the way I do it. I distrust those whose instructions require organic grapes or yoghurt or potato water and similar. A sourdough starter is a community of bacteria and yeast that feed on the sugars and starches found in wheat and other grains and produce CO2, more sugars and the vast array of other organic molecules that give sourdough bread its distinctive flavour. If you want a community that lives on grain, why add organisms that live on fruit or potatoes? The appropriate yeast and bacteria are in the flour. Speed isn’t important here. If you want fast bread, use commercial instant yeast, which has been bred (ha) to work fast and reliably. Don’t ever add commercial yeast to your starter, it’s not the yeast you’re looking for. If you want speed and reliability in a particular batch of bread, you can (like many commercial sourdough bakers) add it to the dough, or you can use it to make a biga or sponge 24 hours or so before baking. The additional time adds flavour to the dough.

Day One. Everything you need is shown in the photo. Organic rye flour (that’s 1.5kg, the smallest available bag), organic bread flour (from a 25kg bag on the floor), bottled spring water. That’s crucially important: tap water is treated to remove organisms such as yeasts and bacteria, and contains chlorine (amongst other things) to discourage their growth. Put your chosen container on the scale, zero it (I love digital) and add a mix of flours. I used 75g white (you could use brown) and 50g rye (125g total flour). The actual proportion of white/rye don’t really matter, but for some reason bread yeasts love rye, so adding it makes this process easier and faster. I don’t like a strong rye bread so I’ll gradually decrease the amount of rye in the starter as I proceed. The amount of water you add does matter, because that determines the hydration of the starter. Weighing ingredients is more accurate and precise than using cups; if you do use cups, keep a record of everything you do because you must know the proportion of flour to water in the starter when you use it for bread. I make my starters at 100% hydration (this is something called bakers’ percentage*) because it’s easy to work with: equal weights of flour and water. So add 125g of water, stir in well, sniff the result and try to remember what it smells like,

then put the lid on, and leave the container somewhere at cool room temperature. Our kitchen is about 60F, at a guess. A little warmer might speed the process, a little cooler will slow it. Changing temperature might also influence the strains of bacteria and yeast that thrive, but it’s your kitchen they must thrive in.

Day Two: the next day (time doesn’t matter), check the smell of the batter? dough? stuff, then put roughly half the volume on the compost heap or flush it. Add more flour and water in the same proportion. I usually add about 100g flour (total) and 100g bottled water. There’s the advantage of the 100% hydration: no matter what the weight of the starter, I can always work out the weight of flour and the weight of water in it: just divide the weight of the starter by 2.
I use plastic or wooden spatulas because eventually the starter will be sufficiently acid that, over time, it might etch vulnerable metal. I don’t want metal in my bread!

Day Three: Peer closely at the stuff through the side of the box. Can you see any bubbles? Look carefully at the surface and sniff again. Any sign of bubbles? Does it smell different? If the smell has altered and you can see bubbles, you’ve got a starter. But the process is the same: discard half, add some more food and water.

Day Four: the bubbles are large enough to photograph through the side of the container, and you can clearly see them on the surface. The starter definitely smells… ‘different’ is the kindest word. It’s not appetising, at least not to me, but it’s very young. Discard half, add more flour and bottled water (always, always bottled water) and put back in its place. Just for reference, here’s the surface of my own starter, which is several months old now, at the same stage after feeding:

It smells almost fruity, a rich, complex scent full of aldehydes and ketones. There’s a hint of acidity, but this is not and never will be the vinegar-scented ‘San Francisco’ sourdough. Many people have wasted a lot of money trying to duplicate the conditions for that. What you will get will be your own local bread. A. brought me a loaf of SF sourdough from his last trip to the city: the bag smelt so ridiculously strongly of acetic acid I thought at first he’d brought me salt-and-vinegar crisps/chips. But the bread didn’t taste of it and (frankly) I thought mine was just as good. Down, ego, down!

Today is Day Six. There are more bubbles visible, and the smell is slightly more attractive. I’ve just done the discard/feed and I will continue to repeat the process for the next few days with a view to using this for a batch of bread on the weekend.

I took a bread-making weekend course a couple of years ago, primarily for the chance to fire and bake in a wood-fired oven. It was fascinating. But I also saw how a commercial baker maintains his/her starter. Starters. A litre or more of each in different stages of development, some full rye, others a mix of flours. We discussed the financial cost of this for home bakers, something he hadn’t considered. For most of us, the discarded flour and bottled water (he had spring water on tap!) adds up to considerable expense over time. There are two solutions. One is to build a new starter whenever I want to bake sourdough. Plan a week or more in advance? No chance. The other, which he didn’t like but agreed was feasible, is to keep your starter in the fridge for most of its life. Once you’ve got a healthy starter you can feed and water it, allow it to work for a couple of hours, then put it in the refridgerator. This slows the action of the bacteria and yeasts so you can feed and water it less often. Mine lives in there for four or five days at a time: two days before I want to use it, I take it out, discard half, feed and water it and leave it at room temperature to become fully active. Before going to bed I’ll feed and water it again (no discard), and I’ll do that again the next morning to build the volume I need for baking. After I’ve taken what I need, I feed and water the remainder, let it work a couple of hours, then put it back in the refridgerator. This undoubtedly changes the species composition of the starter, but as long as it works, I don’t mind.

For bread-making you’ll need a plastic or ceramic container holding at least 5-6 litres don’t tell anyone, but I used a (clean) washing-up bowl when I started. Not a new one, I wanted to be certain that any peculiar volatiles in hte plastic had leached into the washing-up water. Your life will be made much, much easier if you also have a dough scraper. Mine looks like the Nisbets one, but it’s mild steel rather than plastic. I have no idea whether that King Arthur one works on bread dough! Sheets of non-stick baking parchment are also really, really useful. For the best possible bread, you’ll need a baking stone or something similar in the oven to provide bottom heat. I have a slab of kiln shelf c. 15mm cut to fit my oven shelf (allow a gap all round for air circulation). Other people lay (clean!) ceramic floor tiles to almost fill an oven shelf. If you use baking parchment the bread won’t be in contact with the tiles. I know of one person who used an entire concrete paving slab. I think there’s something about this in the RFS FAQ, too.

* that link takes you to the rec.food.sourdough FAQ. rfs is a Usenet group, which you can read using a dedicated newsreader or via Google groups, and it’s a fabulous resource for people who want to bake really, really good sourdough breads. Or any other stuff, for that matter. Just check the FAQ for answers to any question you might have before posting to the group: they put an incredible amount of time and effort into compiling that resource.

“Yes. Why do you ask?”
“Because there’s this frequent sound of dropping something.”
“IT’S NOT FREQUENT.”*

He was sitting downstairs on the sofa and I was sitting in my chair in front of the monitor listening to back issues of Quirky Nomads and, yes, spinning. By which you may take it that I met that work deadline. I even considered skipping a blood doning session in order to meet that deadline, instead I made up the time by stoking up with dark chocolate and working flat out Friday, and therefore had a splitting headache when, on Friday afternoon, I sent the last file through for approval… that didn’t arrive. And didn’t arrive. I did not have a good night Saturday night, thank you. Saturday morning I received an email message saying the client had moved the deadline back to the middle of next week. Life, eh?

Incidentally, he said he wound the yarn-ball like that because he thought it more likely to result in a completely circular ball, which must be the point of winding a ‘ball’. I said I’d been told mine looked tidy by comparison. He gave me That Look, and I said “You think ‘tidy’ means ‘anally retentive’ in this context, right?” He just smiled.

Now it’s Monday, I’ve received and dealt with the amendments and posted the CDs, the hardcopy and the invoice (huzzah for the invoice!) to the client. I can stop and think a bit. Or read. There is fiction waiting downstairs by my chair, but sitting on the desk bed beside me are two knitting books. I am struggling to learn how to make knitwear that fits, as in is shaped to my body, and also suits my body shape. The struggle is due to ignorance (I’ve never really been deeply interested in clothing, so have to learn how and what someone my shape should wear), and mindset. Researchers have apparently found that people have to eat recognisable (taste-able?) quantities of a disliked food at least 40 times to overcome the distaste. That suggests I’ll have to wear figure-hugging clothing at least 40 times to begin to become comfortable in it. Gah. Anyway. Neither of these books is intended for a new knitter: the authors assume you know how to knit. The first is probably the more generally useful of the two, but the second is a good introduction to a way of thinking about designing sweaters that are more than things to keep you warm.

Sweater Design in Plain English is just that, a guide to designing sweaters that fit. Properly. Maggie Righetti starts by comparing the design of clothes to be sewn from fabric with the design of knitted clothing, discussing how and why the techniques used for woven fabric may not (probably will not) work for knits. I didn’t need this, but others may find it useful. What I wanted most was an explanation of how different clothing shapes and styles suit different figures. And I got one, hurrah! There are a lot of very useful sketches, showing how pattern and line can distract the eye from what one might regard as figure ‘flaws’. She makes the point that the ‘standard’ sweater, basically a square front, a square back and sleeves that continue the straight line across the shoulder, is easy to design but actually suits very few people. There’s a section discussing how to choose a flattering colour, which is probably a good idea. Me, I just stick with sludge. Fitted and colourful? On me? Pull the other one, it has bells on. Armed with the necessary information to (in theory) choose a flattering pattern or even design one, she leads her readers to attack gauge with very detailed instructions on how to use that crucial information to calculate size and yarn requirements. Math-haters will be terrified by those pages, there are actual formulae. But it’s essential. That’s a little over half the volume. The rest is filled with patterns for ’14 classic sweaters’ where (as usual) ‘classic’ means ‘at best slightly frumpy’. But the patterns have unusually lengthy, patient instructions which, if followed, will produce garments that really will fit the knittee. I haven’t knitted any of them, and I can’t imagine doing so as written, but I am certain that the first half of the book will enable me to use any one of them as the basis for something I do like. And which not only fits, but suits me.

The second book is Designing Knitwear by Deborah Newton. This, too, does exactly what it says on the tin. There is no detailed discussion of what suits who and why; she states firmly “Over the years I’ve designed knits to fit the typical fashion model, whose measurements are far from average … The worst fitting problem she presents, since I never actually meet her, is that I never know her real arm length!”. But we real humans are not completely ignored: she stresses the importance of working from accurate measurements of well-loved garments as well as the body in question, asking about the fit and style the knittee prefers. There’s also a brief section on ‘quick fixes’, possible ways to avoid ripping and re-knitting entire sections of a garment that doesn’t quite fit, and a good summary of the basic shapes for sleeves, necklines, etc. But this is primarily a book about how to choose yarns, how to create particular fabrics using those yarns, and how to work out what those fabrics are best used for. Lots of photos of swatches and garments, of textures and colours, and discussions of what inspired them. I prefer Newton’s patterns to those of Righetti, and might even knit that kimono one day. ‘Dressmaker Details and Finishing Techniques’ is more ‘details’ (pleats and pockets and collars and ruffles) than actual finishing techniques, alas. I realised today that garments knitted flat are far more easily blocked than those knitted in the round. Duh. But you know what that means? I’ve finished a sweater. It’s drying flattish even as we speak. When it’s no more than damp I will try to work out how to block it. And then I will take pictures! Even if I look ridiculous :-) It’s February, everyone needs a laugh in February.

Jo? are you there? Barring accidents I’ll post instructions for making a sourdough starter tomorrow. To do it properly you’ll need reasonably accurate kitchen scales (I do metric, but you don’t have to), 1-2lb of organic wheat bread (‘strong’ as they call in the UK) flour, 1lb organic rye flour, fresh or bottled spring water (NOT tapwater or any other treated water!), a plastic or wooden spoon and (ideally) a transparent-ish plastic container with a lid (a largish sandwich box or similar). Glass is not a good idea in the long term: it breaks. Later this week or early next, what to do with your new friends!

*Non-spinners need to know that the simple manual tool used to spin fibre into yarn is generally known as a drop spindle. It’s not meant to drop, like, free-fall onto the floor, though. Spinners should stop sniggering, it’s not polite.