Apparently…

…blogs do not write themselves.  Who knew?

Let’s just pretend this huge gap between posts never happened, shall we? Right then, carry on.

New fiber alert!  I went into the yarn shop yesterday.  I was just getting over a migraine and felt like getting out and treating myself.  I mulled over the yarn but I have so many WIPs right now and so much yarn just sitting there I felt no need to add to the stash.  I picked up a new pair of scissors to replace my little ones I keep in my toolkit (but gave away forever in a swap) and yet another needle gauge (like this one) but I wanted something else.  Something pretty.

Then I saw this:

Then I touched it and it was all over.  Like petting a kitten belly.  So silky and squishy, I knew it had to be mine.  50/50 Merino Bamboo, dyed by Shelley at the Yarn Underground.  She checked me out so I gushed over it while I was paying.  The lady in line behind me had to touch/squish it.  Of course, I had to pick up a laceweight spindle because my Cascade is too heavy for something so delicate (not really, but you know.  I needed a laceweight spindle anyway).  The total cost of this shopping spree was $51.38.  Only, it didn’t cost me anything because I had over $100 in store credit from selling project bags!  WIN!  I still have fifty bucks in there but I’m saving it for a sweater’s worth of something this fall.  I’ve got another type of knitting bag in the works so I’m hoping to add to the credit.

I couldn’t wait to spin this stuff up and it spins as sweet as it looks.  Here’s a little of what I did with it:

The photo doesn’t do it justice.  It’s like Dianthus flowers and pink grapefruit and carnations and just a hint of plum.  It’s so summery and sweet.

In other news, today has been designated Yardwork Day at our house.  It’s finally stopped raining (well, it’s slowed down at least) and things are dried out enough that we can clean up the yard without mud being too much of an issue.  I think we’ll be planting a few things, too.  Of course, it’s northern Idaho and it’s April, so we’re probably in for at least one more good snow storm.  We’ll take our chances, I guess.

Val is the gardener in the family, except he hates it.   We have a sort of unspoken agreement that he will put in the initial effort to get things started: the digging, moving soil, hauling manure, most of the planting, etc. and then it’s mostly up to me to maintain it.  Which is where things go wrong.  I’m not much of a vegetable gardener.  And by that I mean, I suck at it.  Hard.  I get very excited and enthusiastic. about planning a garden and  I know what I want and I have specific ideas about how it should look but really, I know very little about making it happen.  At least to the degree of having a productive, bountiful kitchen garden.  I tend to throw seeds at the ground and hope something happens.  Also?  I’m too lazy to actually do things like weeding and thinning and watering and our little garden has died of neglect.  (This has happened more than once, actually.) So today we begin anew.  I’m hoping to get the kids interested this year, or at least Riley: Travis is only interested in something if it’s crawling and has 6 or more legs.  I think I’ll make watering and weeding part of their summer chores.  (This is why we have children, right?  Because having little child slaves is illegal but it’s totally okay if your have your own little minions do the dirty work?  Because that’s where I’m going with this.)

Flowers I can grow.

Sanity Seekers Quilt Retreat

It was beautiful and snowy at the Palouse Divide Lodge.  I swear, I take the same picture every year.  Out of the same window.  Anyway, here it is for posterity’s sake:

It was smallish and mellow this year, compared with other times when we have 18-20 women and we get kind of wild.  Only 8-10 of us this time and we were kind of quiet.

I got my quilt top for Ray and Jill put together.  It still needs a couple of borders but it’s looking good:

I also made a new sock project bag for me out of this fabric I’ve been saving for about 4 years or so.  I love it:

Our group project this year was a hot iron tote.

Here’s mine:

They fold up around the iron and then you can open it up and it becomes an ironing pad.  It was so much fun to make.

I happened to have these vintage buttons with me that matched my fabric perfectly!

As usual, Shirley had some wonderful antiques and things in the shop.  I found these and could not leave without them.  I got them for next to nothing–score!  The larger of the two actually spins.  So cool.  I can’t stop looking at them.  The larger one is about 7″ x 10″ and the smaller one is about 6″ x 5″.  I love them!

Overall, a really fun retreat.  I always feel so relaxed there: no cooking, no cleaning, no kids arguing.  But come Sunday morning, I’m anxious to get back home to the craziness.

 

I had promised to make a handknitted item for the MCS Fall Carnival silent auction.  I made a Travelling Woman shawl.  The yarn is Sanguine Gryphon Bugga! in Bog Fritillary.  I have had it for a couple of years, but never appreciated the depth of color.  It was a pleasure to knit with.  And the color: I kept thinking of pumpkin pie and curry while I was knitting.  Yummy.  I made it smaller than I would have liked because I ran out of time and I bound off too tightly so it didn’t block out quite the way I wanted it to, but I’m pretty pleased overall.  I hope someone buys it for at least more than I paid for the yarn.  Otherwise, I will feel like I should have just donated the cost of the yarn to the school and used the hours of time I spent making it doing something else.  I guess this is the risk you take.

On the needles →

Projects in the works:

Guernsay Wrap.  I love Jared Flood.  This yarn and pattern were birthday gifts.  The yarn is Madeline Tosh Toshmerino DK in the Fig colorway.  So gorgeous.  It’s a fast knit.

A peek at the yarn:

Also on the needles, some lacy socks.  These are further along–stalled out for some reason.  I want to finish them before Christmas.  (Dayflower Socks, yarn: Dream in Color Smooshy, Wisterious colorway)

Some cozy wool socks for Val.  (Toe-up in BMFA Socks that Rock medium weight, Arctic colorway.)  I’m quite a bit further than this photo indicates.  I turned the heel the other night and am a couple of inches up the leg.  Truthfully? I started them for me but they’re turning out huge so I had Val try them on last night and it fit him, a little snugly but I think it’ll work.  Cinderella socks.  Or I guess that should be “Cinderfella socks”.

Not pictured is the Travelling Woman shawl I’m making for the charter school auction.  It’s coming along nicely but I haven’t photographed it yet.

Fun with cats

It occurred to me the other morning that I may not have a bad back after all.  What I might have is a fat-assed cat who uses me for furniture all night long, throwing my spine out of alignment and cutting off my circulation so that my legs go numb.  Because my cat has to sleep on me.  If I’m on my left side, he’s on my right hip, and vice-versa.  If I’m on my back, he’s curled up on my stomach.  Usually directly on my bladder.  This is the only explanation for why my back doesn’t hurt when I sleep someplace other than home.

My other cat has taken to peeing on the laundry room floor, ten feet from the litter box.  She is really pissed off that the warm summer weather and sunshine has been replaced with rain and cold temperatures and, apparently, I am to blame and must be punished.

NaBloPoMo

For those who don’t know, that stands for “National Blog Post Month, which is a challenge to write on your blog every day for a month.  It’s a kick in the ass to jumpstart your blog, which is just what I need.

Yes, I’m aware that today is the second day of November so I’m already behind but I just found out about it today so that has to count for something.  I’m also aware that only about 2 people ever look at my blog so I figure I’m safe if I screw this up–no one will know.  Shhhhh.

 

 

Pumpkin Bread

 

I love fall.  I love watching the leaves change and the smell of woodsmoke.  I love warm socks and cozy sweaters and having a cold nose when I go out for a walk.  I love the way my kids smell when they come inside after being outside in the fall air.

And I love baking.  Two loaves: that means there might be enough left to put into lunchboxes tomorrow morning.

But not necessarily.

You can chase right up and touch the sky

Finally, summer.  Finally.  It sauntered in around the last week of July or so, after a long, cold, rainy spell.  Now it’s the first week of August; school starts in a few weeks and it feels like we’re getting cheated.  Summers are short up here, but this is ridiculous.

The kids and I went to the Tukey Orchard yesterday to pick pie cherries.  There were no cherries to be had last summer because the freak frost the fall before killed everything so we went pieless for a whole year.  Now, I’m not a huge pie fan.  I would rather have cake any day.  Most pie is just not appealing to me at all because, cooked fruit?  Wrong.  Just wrong.  But sour cherry pie?  That’s a whoooole different story.  I  have a major love for sour cherry pie.  Well, cherries in general, but pie.  Let’s get something straight here: I’m not talking about that sticky, gooey, gelatinous goo from a can like mom used to make.  (My mom, anyway.  She was an awesome cook but she had this one completely wrong.)  No.  I’m talking about glowing red, tart cherries fresh from the tree.  Like these:

Here they are in a colander.  The colors are so pretty I almost didn’t want to ruin them by putting them through the pitter.

We picked 18 lbs of those yesterday.  I brought them home and put them in a cooler.  Travis kept saying, “Mom, you’re gonna make cherry cobbler, too.  Right?  Don’t forget about cherry cobbler!”  (He doesn’t have the pie love, poor kid.)  Today, Val and the kids are off to the bike races all day and I am having a rare day of me-time.  I put in a movie and pitted cherries.  Then I put them into freezer bags and stashed them in the freezer for future pie (and cobbler!).  There’s nothing quite like cherry pie in the middle of winter.   After I got done with the cherries, I made syrup with the drained-off juice and made cherry lemonade.  The rest of the syrup goes into the fridge and I’ll use it in seltzer and drizzle it over vanilla ice cream.

My newest passion is making fresh squeezed lemonade.  I’ve been making it all summer and it’s not as hard as you might think: juice enough lemons to make a cup and a half of juice (about 6 large, 8-9 small).  Pour a cup and a half of sugar into a cup and a half of water in a saucepan, heat until sugar dissolves and pour into a pitcher.  Add lemon juice, ice and 2-3 cups of water or until it tastes right to you.  (I use the juicer attachment for my food processor and can juice 6 lemons in about 3 minutes or less.)  The taste is amazing; so much better than that frozen, canned stuff.  And by the way?  You can freeze your own concentrate: just pour the juice and the sugar/water mixture into a plastic food container and pop it in the freezer.  When you’re ready, take it out and dump it in a pitcher and add water.  So good.

The rest of my day is going to go something like this: bread, cheese and olives for dinner.  Maybe a margarita?  Knitting and another movie.  Shhhhh.  Do you hear that?  It’s the sound of no one fighting.

We’ll laugh every day

Feeling nostalgic for the days of good comics in the paper.  Reading the newspaper was something to look forward to because, at the end of all the depressing crap that was happening in the world, there was a reward: the comics page.  I didn’t read everything, of course.  Old Peanuts and Dennis the Menace and all that other junk?  Family Circus can die in a fire.  No.  The ones worth reading were Doonesbury, Bloom County, Doonesbury and, the mother of them all (as far as I’m concerned): The Far Side.

This particular one was a favorite with my roommates and me when we were living in a house during college.  We had cats and a dog.  A dog who was constantly trying to eat the cats.  To this day, my shopping list includes “Cat Fud”.  And everyone gets it because everyone remembers it.  I gave Travis by Far Side books a couple of years ago.  Many of the cartoons were over my (then) 9 year old’s head but now, at twelve, my budding science-nerd son gets most of them.  He also tells me when we’re almost out of “cat fud”. His favorite ones, of course, are the insect ones.  I have a soft spot for the cows.

I don’t know how many Bloom County comics I had pasted on the outside of my dorm room door, but it had to be in the dozens.  Opus was my personal hero.

I read the paper this morning and the comics page was so depressingly bland.  Die, Garfield! Die!!!

Amid the chaos

The past two months have been awful.  Really, really awful.  Like, death and destruction awful.  I am still having a hard time processing all of it, but it began with my sister becoming critically ill and ended with my big brother dying, with a couple of big bumps in between.  I won’t write about it here: I’ve blogged too much about grief and dying already and I need to keep this blog a light, happy place for myself.  I am dealing with everything okay, just not here. Here are some good things that have happened: I finally got my bike!  I love it.  It’s a cross between a beach cruiser and a commuter bike.  Sleek and fun, not too “old-lady” and not clunky.  I don’t feel ridiculous riding it and it’s light and easy to ride.  I am so, so, soooo out of shape and it’s been a really long time since I’ve even been on a bike.  In fact, the last time I was on a bike (cough18 years agocough), I wrecked and broke my wrist.  I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to ride anymore but, you know that old saying, “Like riding a bike”?  Turns out it’s true.  I have been on several rides with my family already and it feels good.

And, no.  Before you ask, I haven’t taken it off any sweet jumps yet.

Good thing #2: It’s almost officially summer!  The kids are out of school in three days.  Many moms will tell you they dread summer vacation.  I am telling you I love it.  Yes, my beloved offspring will be under my feet, fighting, arguing, bored, whiny and not doing the things they are supposed to be doing, but I don’t mind.  You know why?  Because I love quiet mornings.  Summer means that we won’t have any bedtime drama (“But it’s still light out!  Why do I have to go to bed when it’s still light out? Can’t I stay up a little longer pleeeeeze?”).  Later bedtime means they get up later in the morning which in turn means that I can have an hour or two of quiet solitude in which to drink my coffee and gather my thoughts.  No school also means I don’t have to make lunches.  I hate making school lunches.  Because no one in my house actually eats them.  At least no one under the age of 40.  There will be no complaining about bread choices, fruit choices, the lack of Nutella in the sandwiches, etc.  No lunches to pack for three whole months.  I love that.

More good things: Val and the kids are racing BMX and after I got over my fear of one of them breaking their necks, I started liking it.  Going to the races, I mean.  Good family time and a chance to get out of town.  Also, I’ve been getting a lot of knitting done on the road trip and have finished up some socks and started a shawl.

So for now, I am looking forward to a quiet, peaceful, drama-free (please?) summer of relaxing and spending time with my family.  Throw in a few gin and tonics and lots of summer bbqs in there and I’m happy.  (Just don’t ask me to pack you a lunch.)

Getting my poop in a group

Okay, so we won’t talk about the huge lapse between posts, agreed?  Agreed.

It’s spring!  Well, sort of.  At least I’ve heard that some parts of the world are enjoying spring.  We had snow yesterday but it didn’t stick so it shouldn’t count.  Anyway, the calendar says April 20 and that’s technically spring and I’ve been getting the spring cleaning itch.  Mind you, it’s just a little tickle at this point and I’m doing my best to ignore it, but I’ve been scratching ever so lightly.   Mostly I’ve been trying to tame the clutter.  My personal bane has always been organization.  I just can’t seem to get the hang of it.  I really like the idea of being organized and I am a total whore for organizational tools: I have baskets, cases, bags, drawer units and all manner of other fancy doo-dads coming out my ears.  Most of them are empty.  Others are piled to overflowing with a random assortment of mostly unrelated crap stuff.  Val has promised to kill me if I bring another basket into the house.  (Me: But they’re so preeeeeeettty!  Him: NOOOOOOOO!)

That’s all about to end.

I have two–count ’em TWO–of these:

Oh yeah.  Be jealous.

I ran into a friend at the grocery store and she asked me if I wanted two library card catalogs.  Someone was giving her three and she only had need for one.  Of course I said yes.  (She also asked if we could use their awesome grill, since they’re getting a new one AND I came out of the store with 5 boxes of Girl Scout cookies and a $10 grocery store gift card for subscribing to the paper.  Most lucrative trip to the store EVER!)  Talking Val into it was a little bit tricky but he came around once I convinced him that getting these would allow us to reduce some of the unused organizational tools and virtually eliminate all clutter.  (Well, there may also have been an epic bout of pouting.)  We moved them last weekend.  When I say “we”, what I really mean is “he”.  I opened doors and herded cats, mostly, though I still managed to hurt my back.  Those suckers are heavy.  About 300 lbs each.  Without the drawers.  One man.  One handcart.  One hernia.

The master plan (mine) was to put one in the living room and the other upstairs in our room for craft stuff.  The reality was that, without at least four strong, burly men to move them, they were both staying downstairs.  So much for master plans.  It totally works, though, because I do most of my quilting, knitting, beading etc. downstairs anyway so it makes sense to keep all that stuff where it’s most accessible.

The one in the living room (actually, it’s on the cusp of the living room/kitchen dining area) holds assorted household effluvia.  Behold:

The Tape Drawer--Sadly, this isnt even all of the tape...

Sporks! Yes, we DO need an entire drawer just for sporks. Why do you ask?

What? Like you dont have a flask drawer? Tchuh! DONT JUDGE ME!!!

I don’t have labels made yet but I also have drawers for electronics, iPods & accessories, office supplies, first aid, hair stuff, glasses stuff, tools and batteries, among other things.  Ideally, these would be put into alphabetical order and for the most part they will be, but drawers containing dangerous/sharp things will have to go on the top row to keep little fingers safe.

I haven’t even started filling the craft drawers yet.  I think this will be a little trickier, since I do need to keep certain things in certain places.  A huge portion of my stuff won’t fit in these drawers of course, but they will be perfect for stray knitting needles, circulars, needle gauges (I have several), scissors (of which I have MANY), thread, quilting notions, small rulers, fusible web–the possibilities are endless.  Someday, when we live in an actual house with an actual whole crafting area just for me, I will have one of these in there and have pretty displays of knitting needles and a basket of yarn on top.  For now, it’s by the stairs, holding my mother’s silver tea service and a couple of plants.