The Hook and I

Search results for: “sitto”

  • A Warm Welcome – Sitto’s Blanket

    Sitto–my Syrian grandmother–taught me to crochet when I was eight years old. Sitto was the daughter of immigrants, the first in her family to be born in the US in 1912. Her brothers and her parents all emigrated from Syria and settled in La Crosse, WI, where my mother was born.

     

    Sitto's high school graduation photo

    Being Syrian has always been about welcome–about having something delicious to eat when someone arrived, about making room for friends, family, strangers, visitors. Sitto would joke, “If I knew you were coming I’d have baked a cake,” as she was pulling out homemade Syrian bread, tabouli, meat pies, along with midwestern corn on the cob, sliced tomatoes, watermelon, cookies. Sitto didn’t speak a lot of Arabic around me and my brother, but “ahlan wa sahlan,” was definitely something we heard growing up. It means “welcome.”

    Here’s how the website “Arabic Without Walls” at UC Davis translates the expression:

    “Ahlan wasahlan comes from an old saying that shows Arab hospitality to strangers. Ahlan means ‘family’ as in you’ve come to stay with family, and sahlan here means a flat land or place where grass/food is abundant to be shared with visitors.”

    The urge to welcome is deep in my DNA, and the reaction I have when welcome is revoked–when people are turned away–is visceral. I was so glad to hear that Jayna Zweiman, the amazing mind behind The Pussyhat Project has come up with another act of craftivism–this time a response to the idea of building a border wall. The new project, called The Welcome Blanket Project, proposes to create welcoming warm wooly blankets–enough of them to measure the length of the proposed wall. This is what crochet and knitting are for. For creating warmth, sharing love, welcoming. The finished blankets will be displayed at a museum in Chicago, and then distributed to refugees and immigrants along with letters from the makers.

    Designer Kat Coyle from The Little Knittery designed a simple square with two contrasting right triangles. It can be used to create lots of great patterns. I offered to “translate” the pattern into crochet, and now my version of Kat’s square is up on welcomeblanket.org. You can also find it on Ravelry.

    I also wanted to create my own square, in honor of Sitto, who crocheted so many blankets, mostly from scrap yarn in her 93 years. It incorporates a granny square, and it features green–a color of abundance, of “sahlan,” and blue–color of the oceans on which those freeing persecution must often travel. Creating those rounds in blue, I imagined easy, smooth passage. Creating the green corners, I envisioned safe harbor, welcome.

    I’m still working on my Welcome Blanket, and I’ll post again about the fun with tessellations–arranging the square into a blanket pattern. Meanwhile you can download the pattern and get started. Please join the Welcome Blanket Project too.

    Download Sitto’s Welcome from Ravelry

     

  • Sitto’s Button


    Sitto’s Button
    Originally uploaded by plainsight

    In my grandmother’s button collection, I found this fabric covered button–the perfect match for the jacket I’m delivering to O Wool at TNNA this weekend. I’d like to know what the previous life of this button was… I’m guessing the garment must have been pretty nice. I can imagine why it ended up in the button bag. Sitto was only 4′ 10″ tall, and had to alter many of the clothes she bought. I’m guessing, this was from a coat circa 1960 or so, and she lopped off the bottom removing one of the buttons.

    Here are some pictures of the finished jacket.

  • Alaskatarian: Dancing for Our Supper

    The Ant and the Grasshopper


    First published in The Cordova Times, 9/28/2012

     

    We have a tough job here in the North during summer. It’s like we have to play both sides of Aesop’s fable of the grasshopper and the ant: we must play while the sun shines AND save enough food for winter. With a summer like the one we just had, it seems like the harvesting has been plentiful, but the play was lacking—the ant won. It’s a good thing we find ways to keep the grasshopper playing in the winter too.

    Here in Juneau, there’s not an annual moose hunt the way there is in Cordova, and I’ve been watching the results of this year’s hunt in Cordova with interest. It’s great so see so many successful women hunters and their helpful teams of men and women putting up the meat that will feed many families for the winter. Last year, I was on the periphery of a moose butchering team when James helped harvest a moose that had been donated to a local food bank. I helped by keeping James and his buddies supplied with butcher paper, coffee, and snacks. It was amazing to watch that huge volume of food get processed in record time. Back in Cordova, I hear that moose fat can be rendered and used as a delicious replacement for shortening. Erica Thompson says it smells awful while it’s rendering, but tastes just great in baking once it’s done. (On hearing of Erica’s experiments, Becca Dodge mentioned that she and Mark once rendered bear fat that was a lovely shade of blue due to the bear’s generous blueberry diet.)

    When you have delicious fresh roasts, back strap, and other choice cuts of moose, there’s really nothing fancy that you need to do to prepare it, is there? I just hope for leftovers so I can make one of my favorite childhood dishes: Imfarakat, which might just be Arabic for “let’s use whatever we have left to make something new.” I can’t find it in a dictionary, but it is fun to say. It sounded like “mmmfudakey” when Sitto, my grandmother, said it. Essentially, it’s moose hash. I sauté an onion, and add enough thinly sliced potatoes for whoever’s eating, frying until the potatoes are crispy and cooked through. Then I add chopped up leftover moose steak or roast and some steamed green beans. When everything is hot, I add one beaten egg per person and fry until the egg is cooked through. Salt and pepper are the only seasonings you’ll need, and it’s great for breakfast or dinner served with buttered toast and hot coffee.

    Since I stopped eating meat in my early twenties, and didn’t come back to it until we had plentiful wild game and fish here in Alaska, I often look to my childhood, and my Syrian grandmother’s recipes for inspiration. When I was little, one of Sitto’s family meals wouldn’t be complete without kibbee—spiced ground meat mixed with cracked wheat, then served raw, baked, or fried.  I love my grandmother’s baked kibbee with it’s creamy, nutty filling. It tastes delicious made with ground moose.

    To begin the kibbee, I rinse some fine cracked (bulgar) wheat, then let it soak in clear water for about ten minutes. Drain the water with a sieve, and squeeze out any excess liquid. Add two pounds of ground meat (minus a half cup set aside for the filling), a large onion diced fine, a teaspoon of salt, and some freshly ground black pepper. I divide the meat mixture in half, and press the first half into the bottom of a greased 9×13 glass baking dish. To make the filling, I brown the reserved meat and add a half cup of pine nuts (my grandmother disliked pine nuts and always used chopped pecans. I like it both ways). To the browned meat, I add a package of cream cheese or a cup of yogurt cheese (yogurt that’s been strained overnight through cheese cloth). I season the filling with dried mint, salt and pepper to taste. Spread the filling over the first layer of meat, then press the other half of the meat mixture gently on top of the filling layer. This is hands-on work, and I find that dipping your hands in water makes it easier to smooth the meat mixture without having it stick to your hands. I use a sharp knife to make diagonal cuts in perpendicular lines across the dish creating diamond shaped pieces of kibbee. Pour a half cup of melted butter over the top of the kibbee, then bake at 350F for about 15 minutes or until the meat is cooked through, and kibbee is browned. Kibbee is delicious hot from the oven, and makes a great cold lunch the next day.

    This weekend, I was the grasshopper. I danced with friends at the fall’s first square dance and found on Sunday afternoon I had to scramble to pull something together for supper. While we had our quickly made dinner of bean and rice burritos we planned for next Sunday’s meal to be something warm and inviting. We’ll be ants this week, planning and foraging, and I’m guessing moose will be on the menu.

     

    Baked Moose Kibbee Ingredients

    2lbs ground moose meat (less 1/2 cup reserved for filling)
    1 1/2 cups fine cracked (bulgar) wheat
    1 large onion, diced fine
    1 teaspoon salt
    Pepper
    1/2 cup melted butter

     

    Filling:

    1/2 cup ground meat
    1 package cream cheese or 1 cup yogurt cheese
    1/2 teaspoon dried mint
    1/2 cup pine nuts or chopped pecans
    Salt and pepper to taste

  • My Grandmothers, pioneers of creative re-use

    Daisy Apron

    Sitto, (my mom’s mother) was a big fan of smock-style aprons. I like them too–they have pockets, and cover the whole front of you. I have a small collection of my Sitto’s aprons, and my mom does too. I find simply wearing them can sometimes help me channel some of Sitto’s domestic ability. Some of the aprons Sitto made herself, and some she brought back from Okinawa when she went there in the 1960’s to visit my Uncle Jack and Aunt Carole who were stationed there with the Air Force.

    Yesterday, I got another one in the mail from my Grandmother Jean. I recognized the fabric immediately even though I may not have seen the apron before. Grandma sent a note with the apron:

    “I thought maybe [this apron] would fit Selma and she would enjoy wearing it, knowing where it came from. It really came from some kitchen curtains I had made out of two old bed sheets. Sitto also made me a casserole carrier from the same curtains and I made a zillion napkins of all sizes so the material has been in the family for a long time and served us well. It needs some buttons replaced and I’ve included the buttons in one of the pockets.”

    So this is the third incarnation of those particular bed sheets.  It kind of makes you regret ever throwing anything out, doesn’t it? I think I’ll go sew on those buttons and see what else I can mend.

  • My Funny Valentine


    mona the camel
    Originally uploaded by plainsight

    On Valentine’s Day, I was heading back to Seattle from Friday Harbor and we finally got to see Mona, the local island camel (apparently a rescue from Ebay). Mona was an especially friendly camel–I normally wouldn’t get so close to any old camel as they are wont to spit or bite.

    I have a special fondness for camels–as a kid I collected camels of all types–figurines, stuffed animals, jewelry. My Syrian grandmother, “Sitto” started my collection, and over the years I received camels as gifts and occasionally found some myself.

    When I was accepted to Connecticut College, I found out that their mascot was also the camel, so I brought some of my collection with me to school.

    Of course, these days I have more contact with camel cousins–bumping into llamas and alpacas at sheep and wool festivals and using their fibers in my crochet and knitting. Still, it was nice to have some “face time” with Mona. You can find more pictures of her on flickr.

  • I’v been editing…

    my livingroom. When I was a web designer, I loved white space–it just makes things on the page look pretty–if a page is too cluttered, with things filling every nook and cranny, it’s harder to see what you’re looking for. It’s harder to get the point of what you’re looking at.

    Yesterday, I decided my house needed major editing. I’ve started with the living room because its most satisfying to have the public spaces look nice, but the real work lies in closets and cupboards, and of course, the basement. Feng Shui practitioners say that if your closets are messy your qi can get blocked even if your public spaces look nice. I believe it. You know we all like to look inside a hand-knit garment and see how much care was taken in putting it together, I think it’s kind of the same thing.

    I finished the living room last night, and it looks much better. It’s like the furniture can finally breathe. I seem to have yarn creep. When I’m swatching, I may leave my single ball with a hook stuck in it, in a bowl or basket in the living room. One such little ball may be innocuous, but when every possible vessel in the house is filled with yarn, it’s not cute anymore, it’s just another thing to collect dust.

    We have a neighborhood garage sale coming up on Saturday, perhaps that will be good inspiration to continue with this project. Oh, that and the fact that my parents are coming to visit. My Sitto–my maternal grandmother–used to say “a place for everything, and everything in its place.” She believed it. But it’s from Sitto that I also inherited my hoarding instinct, “siege mentality,” my mom calls it. The other day, Selma asked me, “mom, is there really a place for everything?” “Yes,” I answered decidedly, more likely to reassure myself than anything else. Of course, sometimes that place should be the Craigslist, The Goodwill, or Freecycle.

  • It’s Out!

    Buried among the dusty boxes of fabric scarps, patterns, and notions, I found a box bursting with Sitto’s hand-crocheted afghans, the era of their creation captured forever in the color selection–the earthy brown hues of the 1970s or the bright, neon colors of a blanket made in the 1980s–all warm, familiar, and comforting. Because she grew up during the Depression, not a yard of yarn was wasted. Any scraps from garments she made were turned into what Sitto liked to make best–afghans. Sitto’s children and grandchildren all have afghans that she made–zigzagged or shell patterned, with her signature stripe.

    My own Sitto afghan, with its random stripes of bright color, is hanging over the back of the couch in our playroom. We were unpacking from a move recently when I pulled the blanket out of a box of linens. My five-year-old daughter said, “Mmm–this rainbow-lightning blanket is comfy. Can I sleep with it tonight?” I told her it was at the end of my bed the whole time I was growing up. I took it tot college, and it has followed me everywhere. “Sitto made this.” She’s heard that refrain before. The house is sprinkled with keepsakes made by my Grandmother Helen, my mother’s mother, Sitto. In Arabic, “Sitee” means grandmother, but in our famil (we emigrated from Syria in the beginning of the last century) we’ve always said “Sitto.”

    This is an excerpt from my contribution to Hooked: A Crocheter’s Stash of Wit and Wisdom edited by Kari Cornell. My story is called “No Bed of Roses,” and it’s about my Grandmother and her influence on my crochet. I got my copies of the book last week, but they didn’t go on sale until yesterday, so I was waiting to crow about it. There are some really great stories in here. Jennifer Hansen has a cool one called “Thrift Store Crochet;” there are stories from Marti Miller, Lily Chin, and Gwen Blakely Kinsler, and lots more.

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  • Channeling My Grandmother

    My “Sitto” (Arabic for grandmother) taught me to crochet when I was eight years old. She passed away last fall, and I inherited a lot of her crochet things–hooks, old pattern books, and a box of granny squares which I wrote an essay about for an upcoming book, Hooked: A Crocheter’s Stash of Wit and Wisdom. I was excited to see that Amazon already has this book listed even though it will be five months before anyone can actually get their hands on it.

    At any rate, lately, I think I’ve been “channeling” Sitto–her inner yarn shopper. For some reason I’ve been stocking up on as much discount worsted weight acrylic as I can get my hands on. I don’t know why! I have no real projects planned, I’ve just become enamored with the stuff–the way the afghans she made me 30 years ago still look just like they did in the seventies–I have a feeling this yarn was created to survive nuclear disaster.

    Sitto grew up in the depression, raised kids during WWII, and had what my mom calls a “siege mentality.” When things were on sale, she’d stock up. When we went through her apartment, we found pounds and pounds of flour even though she hadn’t baked in years.

    Somehow, she’s telling me–“buy more acrylic.” (and for some reason, I’m especially fond of Red Heart’s camouflage color–a friend was wearing a ribbed scarf made with it at SSK–the Silver Spring Knitter’s group last night, and it looked awesome–very urban chic, in a Red Heart sort of way.)

    Well, I keep telling myself, I can use the yarn for teaching my kids’ classes… but that excuse can’t hold out forever. I had been very good about not buying any yarn for such a long time, I find it curious, that when I caved, it wasn’t for a skein of this, the most expensive yarn I’ve ever worked with, but possibly also the most gratifying–it’s like crocheting with clouds.

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