Sunday, August 16, 2015

Doing the Continental....


Gentle knitters, I'm kinda sorta having a needlecraft crisis.  A repetitive motion disorder (aka traumatic chronic tenosynovitis) is afflicting my dominant (right) hand and I've been ordered to back way off. Ergo I decided to learn Continental style knitting (see mangled mess in above photograph), hoping it will allow me to stay on the road to Knitsville. Continental style is more ergonomic (fewer gestures necessary to make a stitch) and the work happens more in the left hand than the right. Perhaps this will be my salvation.

Continental knitting videos are available gratis on Youtube and knittinghelp.com.  I found the latter more concise than those on Youtube, many of which are Kommandant-style by disciplinarians with a sketchy command of English. (Although they're often unintentionally amusing, especially after a couple of drinks.) I also purchased a Knitting Daily download, Continental Knitting with Biggan Ryd-Dups, which seems, likely, the best of the bunch. Report to follow, sometime....

Perhaps because my own hand is misbehaving, I decided on the best use for the Buddha's Hand fruit that has been growing on my little Buddha's Hand tree, purchased a couple of years ago from Logee's Greenhouses in Danielson, CT.  It was very, very ripe.


Buddha's hand has no pulp; it's all rind. A type of citron, its culinary value is in the rind, which has a bright lemon-orange scent. I couldn't bear to mutilate this extraordinary fruit by skinning it, so the natural and best use seemed to be as the principal and only flavoring in a vodka infusion.


It takes a few days for the magic to work. Could this be the cure...?

https://youtu.be/uh5u5dmeABI