OK. For Those in LA Concerned About the Alleged Dearth of Mentions of Younger Daughter by Name:

Sarah
Sarah
Sarah
Sarah, Sarah, Sarah!!!!!

And I love BOTH daughters to the moon and back!

Now hush.

It's Texas, y'all!

My daughter is at the beach in Texas. I warned her about sharks, but didn't really think there would be cows at the beach.

But hey! It's Texas, and what would be more "normal" than practicing roping cows with a plastic one, at the beach:

Yee-haw!

Cows ARE deadlier than sharks are!

And here's the link.

And they don't so much fall on people as they do attack people.

Maybe that's fair, since we do eat a lot of them. Vegetarianism might be a better idea than we knew.

(Thanks, C, for finding this article!)

Bonus Far Side cartoon:

SHARK!!!

My older daughter, Heather, told me this morning that she and her husband are going this weekend to the beach in Corpus Christi, Texas. When she mentioned the trip to a friend, the friend protested, "There are sharks in the Gulf!"

Well, yes there are; it's where they live. Heather told her friend that being at a salt water beach is where she is happiest, and I agree, although in my case, the beach is tied with a Har-Tru tennis court. I don't have access to either one since I moved from Florida.  sigh.

Heather said that she had read that more people are killed each year by being fallen on by a cow than by being attacked by a shark. We laughed. I said I didn't know anyone fallen on by a cow, so a shark attack was even less likely.

Ooops.  I realized after the conversation that I DID know someone who was attacked by a shark and who had a really mangled wrist to prove it. I was at the hair salon, having my hair returned to its God-intended color (strawberry blonde in case you wondered), when the woman who sat down next to me had her wrist all bandaged up. The shampoo girl asked what had happened.

The woman explained that she had been on Cumberland Island, and after she and her daughter had run the circumference of the island, they lay down in very shallow water, held themselves up by putting their hands down on the sand, and kicked just to cool off after the run. Suddenly the woman's hand was in a shark's mouth.

A fast boat ride to the mainland later, the woman met her husband at the hospital. She showed us photos of her wrist and arm. When I told her that I was surprised that she had thought to take photos, she told me that she hadn't, that she was in shock at that point, and that her husband had taken them. 

Of course he had. What is wrong with men? When I broke my wrist, was covered in mud from the swamp I fell in, and was wrapped in a sheet to protect the furniture in the ER, my husband took a photo. I deleted it when I discovered it. Ugh.

Anyway, the woman's wrist and arm were put back together, and I'm sure she is fine by now. But the shampoo girl asked, "Are you sure it wasn't a whale?"

In two feet of water???  C'mon.


Anyway, Heather, here is a chart to keep in mind:

Shark's view from below the surface

Just don't go surfing, ok?

And I guess don't stand next to any cattle?


(I suppose she read the cow/shark statistic on the internet, so it must be true, right? Seems unlikely though.)

I Made Jam

Blueberry Jam!

All by myself, with help from the internets of course. So only sort of by myself.

Anyway, the recipe linked to above does not require pectin, so it's really easy. Perfect! I didn't have to go to the grocery store to make this. I hate going to the grocery store and usually buy myself some chocolate milk as a reward for grocery shopping, but it's hot out, my "outfit" would be turned down by any charity, and so even chocolate milk couldn't get me outside.

I made half of the recipe: six cups of blueberries, 2 1/2 cups of sugar and the juice and zest of one half lemon. I did not know that all of this:

 would become only a small jar and a half of jam.

It's not the best blueberry jam I've ever had, but it's not bad. It will last for two months in the refrigerator, but it probably won't last that long. (wink, wink, nudge, nudge)(who says that?)  

ALERT!!!

This is a warning to parents of adult children.

If you notice your visiting adult children, smart phones in hand, going through old photo albums, do not be fooled. They are not fondly reminiscing about times gone by. 

They are taking photos of photos! Yes! They are!

And why?

Because they are going to post them on social media for all the world to see, WITHOUT YOUR PERMISSION, because they are evil like that. Forewarned is forearmed, y'all.  


So, now a warning to those adult children.

To the daughter who knits. You face being disinherited of all of my knitting supplies:

Double pointed needles.

Circular needles, lots and lots of circular needles. Some are even Signature needles, the Rolls Royces of needles.

And my (possibly too many) knitting bags.  

So think carefully about what you do when you next visit.


And to my daughter who doesn't knit:

I'm watching you.

Almost Forgot

The Finished Blanket

it now belongs to a sweet little one-year old girl named Serena.  

Knitting---really!

I have actually been knitting. I have two or three WIPs (works in progress):

Another Lost Banner Hat by Susan Anderson

Seychelles by Susanna IC which will eventually look like this

because I bought exactly the same yarn and beads used in the sample. And because I'm such a master knitter! 

No. I'm not. I bought the pattern and supplies four years ago and then chickened out. It just looked way too complicated. Recently I studied the finished Seychelles on Ravelry, read notes left by the knitters, and decided that I could conquer this. It might take a while but SHE PERSISTS!

And thanks to Sweet Mother of Purl, I do have one finished project!  Yay me!

It is this Anarktis:

It is off the needles and currently blocking. I played yarn chicken and won even though I was using Jeny's Surprisingly Stretchy Cast Off. I had only this tiny bit of yarn to finish with, but I made it.  

I recently took an internet test to see if I am OCD and according to the test, I am 100% OCD! There are people in my family who would probably say: We told you so!

HOWEVER, I beg to differ even though the test was an official Internet Test. I store my circular needles in their original packaging and when the pattern called for a size six, I pulled out my size six. See? It says size 6 in two places!

When I finished the scarf, I noticed that it was really a good bit smaller than it should have been, and some aggressive blocking has not expanded it to the measurements the pattern indicated it would be.

I checked the needle in my gauge before I put it away, which I SHOULD have done BEFORE I started knitting. It's a size four. That explains the size but I cannot explain how I put the needle in the wrong case...and where is the size six that belongs in here? So how can I be OCD? I'm clearly not.

I bet the size six needle is in the size four package. If I'm even moderately OCD, that's where it should be, right?

Ganache Gone Wrong

I get credit for trying, right?

It consists of one part heavy cream, heated to almost boiling, and one part chocolate chips.

Pour the cream over the chips, stir till melted, pour over the cooled cake.

That's what I did.

And this is what I got:

It (the ganache, haven't eaten the cake yet) tastes great.  How could it not?

But it looks wrong.

I will not be a contestant on the Great American Baking Show should anyone here decide to make an American version of the British Show. 

I Bought Two Books!

and you might think, Big deal, Knittergran. Everyone buys books!

Hah. Yes they do, and so do I; I have bought many, many iBooks and I read them on my iPad, which allows me to change font size and background color so I can read at night without lights on. However, this time, I wanted actual hard copy books so that I could share them with a couple of people I know who will be interested in them. I have yet to master the "sharing" method Amazon offers on only some books. 

I went to an actual brick-and-mortar bookstore (Barnes and Noble, the only one left around here) and bought these two books:

One is about the Donner Party and the other is about um...probably stuff I don't understand but I can try, and I am a big fan of Neil De Grasse Tyson because he let my granddaughter interview him over Skype a few years ago. Also, I like him because he does try to make things understandable to amateurs, like me. However, he did write and narrate a series on the next big extinction, which is going on now, and that was kind of scary, really, but we are bringing it on ourselves. We need to STOP doing this.

The Donner Pass book is of course about the infamous Donner party and their attempt to reach the west during the Manifest Destiny era in the United States. I listened to an interview with the author on NPR's Fresh Air and according to the author, there are all sorts of rumors and false impressions about the trip. They did have to resort to cannibalism, unfortunately, but there is a lot more to the story.

So, hard copy books still exist and now if I can find my glasses, since I can't make the font larger, I will read two of them.  grumble grumble grumble  where are my glasses?!