Weekend Adventures

This weekend was the best of times, and it was the worst of times.

Actually, it was mostly pretty good, except for some scones that I ruined this morning because I was being sloppy and not paying 100% attention to what I was doing. And by "ruined", I mean "not perfect", not "inedible". I was on the phone while I was mixing my dough, and I misread the recipe and put too much milk in. That made my dough too wet, and when the scones baked they spread out instead of staying in a mounded up muffin shape:



They taste fine, but they're more like a scone cookie than a scone.

I decided to make scones because I had leftover whole milk from one of the things that went well this weekend: I made cheese, in my kitchen. Following a recipe in Food Network Magazine, I made ricotta cheese in three easy steps.

1) I brought milk, cream, and salt to a simmer in a nonreactive pot.



2) When it was simmering, I added lemon juice and vinegar, and stirred until it appeared fully curdled.



I thought I did that part wrong, because when I started stirring all I could smell was vinegar. All of a sudden, though, the curds got bigger and it smelled creamy, like cottage cheese. Excited by sudden success, I...

3) Poured it into a strainer lined with paper towels and let it drain.



I poured it in too fast, so the paper towels got pulled down into the strainer a little more than they should have. A long, slow pour would have kept them in place, but it wasn't really any trouble. The recipe said to let it drain for five to thirty minutes, depending on how firm you wanted it, so I went for thirty:



Homemade whole milk ricotta, with no additives or preservatives. My mom asked how much it cost, but the ingredients only came to a dollar or so more than buying a similar sized tub of ricotta at the store would have been, and this way I get to say that I am a cheesemaker. I used most of it to make a calzone today, and it was damn good.

Today I also used my new camera, a Lomography fisheye camera that I saw on a clearance table yesterday while Kristin was looking at sunglasses. I'd looked at the camera before, when we were in that store last spring, but sixty dollars seemed like a lot for a trick camera. Clearance prices, on the other hand, suddenly seemed tolerable, so I bought it and then today I walked around town with it.

There were some hits:













and some misses:





The misses aren't terrible photos, but they just don't really make the most of the format and the fisheye effect. I bet if I was closer to Ayres (the second picture) or the saloon they would look more dramatic, but as it is this just makes the space in front of them look huge and the building look far away and unimpressive.

On the other hand, the same effect made the closed lawn at World's Fair Park look enormous:



so it can be a good effect in the right circumstances.

Obviously, I need more practice, but I think it's off to a good start.

More Pinhole Camera!

I continue to experiment with the pinhole camera that I built last weekend, although some of it turned out to be a bust. I tried some nighttime pictures with a four minute exposure, but all I got was blurry smudges. Either the pinhole is not good at full dark photos, something that the book of other people's photographs that came with it suggests is not true, or I need to leave the shutter open for much, much longer.

For the rest of the photos, I took the pinhole camera to familiar places, as I have the idea that I will learn how to manage it better if I practice on things that I already know and am used to photographing. Since I was already on campus for Open House, I figured I might as well start there.



I've mentioned before that I think that sculpture is pretty ugly, but it's softened and almost non-offensive here.



McClung Tower came out in surprisingly sharp focus, but "Europa and the Bull" in front of it is pretty indistinct:



(Side note: My class seemed rather surprised when I told them the myth behind that statue early in the semester, and that Europa was riding the bull and, later, riding the bull in a whole other sense. Yay for learning!)

I stuck the camera on a random tree branch, too, and got this shot, which I think is really pretty:



Completely unexpected, but that's part of the fun, I guess.

Before I left campus, I drove up the hill to Ayres Hall, which is recognizable even in this format:



Here's a photo I took another time with my regular camera, just for comparison:



It looks almost like an older photo, the kind you'd find in your parents's photo albums, and I was definitely right last week about things being clearer if I open the shutter for just a second or two longer.

I walked around campus a little more, taking some ugly photos with bad exposures that I didn't like and don't want to share, and then headed downtown to World's Fair Park. I was supposed to take pictures there last week, but ran out of film just as I got there, so this week I made up for it by studying the bridge:







and the Sunsphere:



And I accidentally took a picture of myself:



I guess I need to learn to lean a little further over, to get out of the frame, but there's always time for that next time.

Gray Day in Knoxville

This morning it was cloudy and overcast. The weather kept seeming like it was going to rain, but then it would sprinkle for a second and nothing else would happen. I really wanted to get out of the house and take some pictures, though, so I decided to try to capture a little bit of the quiet, gray mood.

It helped that there were almost no people in sight at World's Fair Park, and the flat light left even familiar things looking washed out and tired.

No children at the playgrounds:





Nobody at the patio tables or sitting on the benches:





The Butcher Shop patio was empty because it's gone out of business:



The Veterans Memorial was also deserted:





And for the most part I just walked around the park alone:









Eventually the clouds broke and the sun came out, but by then I was already gone.

In Praise of Sunsphere

Sometimes I get excited about dumb things. Case in point:



I love the Sunsphere.

I know, I know, what's not to love? It's tall, it's shiny, it's shaped like a penis, it's been on "The Simpsons"... how could you not love it? I'm being a little sarcastic, but I really do have a little tiny bit of civic pride toward the Sunsphere. When I think about what I like about living here, and things in the city I love and think people should visit when they come here, I think of the Sunsphere. Also, in a more practical sense, it helps me not to get lost downtown. If I get turned around or confused about directions, I'm fine once I figure out which way the Sunsphere is.



As a visual driver with a poor sense of direction, you have no idea how important this is to me.

Since I love the Sunsphere, I have a lot of pictures of it, and that's where I kind of ran into a problem: visually, it's not that interesting, and there are only so many ways you can work with it.

You can get some distance:



or get really close:



You can even get inside:



You can put stuff alongside it, like flags:



or protestors:



There's also the option of different times of day. For example, Sunsphere at sunset:



Sunsphere in the dark:



and Sunsphere with weird night filter settings on your camera:



In the end, though, the Sunsphere is still the Sunsphere, and all of your pictures of it eventually start to look the same. That's why I was so excited yesterday to suddenly discover a new angle that I hadn't previously considered:



It's a picture of the Sunsphere that the Sunsphere isn't actually in. Suddenly everything old is new again, and it's like the very first time I saw the Sunsphere in all of its tall, shiny glory.

I love you, Sunsphere, and I'm glad you live in my city.

Independence Through Conformity

Like millions of other Americans, yesterday I celebrated our independence from colonial rule by gathering en masse to watch fireworks and eat overpriced food. Winging a plan, I met Bryan downtown for early dinner, and then we met up with Jess at the World's Fair Park.



A good time was had by all, and, of course, there were explosions:







Yay for America!