Mystery Meal

I think I need to put the name of the contents on the bags of food that I freeze. This might be stew; it might be chili; it might be rhubarb sauce. I don't know but I am thawing it and one of us will eat it.

Surprise!!!



UPDATE:  I was wrong.  It turned out to be PW's delicious spaghetti sauce!

Puny

I am at home fighting a sinus infection. I'm feeling puny and I thought I would share.

These are photos taken from billions of miles away from earth by Voyager 1.

Feeling puny now?

I just hope that gravity keeps working.

Did She Die?

That is what my older daughter asked me once when I was about to tell her a story about someone I knew, or someone a friend knew, or someone who was someone’s hairdresser who knew the cousin of….

I don’t remember.

But I do know that my daughters accuse me of stockpiling sad, unpleasant tales of Woe.   And Suffering.  And, yes, Death.

I admit that I think I might be guilty of being Debbie Downer on occasion, but I blame my age.  And my friends’ ages.  We are all in the same boat, and I think of the way life works as this:

We are all hoping we are dodging bullets we don't even know are coming our way.

Cases in point:

A friend told me about a friend’s friend who was knocked over by a wave in the ocean and ended up paralyzed from the neck down and who would have to remain on life supports.  No hope for recovery.  His mind, however, was just fine and he made the informed decision to be taken off life supports.

I read or heard someplace that a woman died from inhaling some kind of harmful bacteria when she was turning her compost pile.

And right after we moved here and were still living in Hotel Hell, I was caught in a terrible traffic tie up and was very late to pick up younger daughter from a nature center where she was working as a counsellor.  I later found out that the traffic was stopped because of an accident:  a woman had been killed when a port-o-john fell off of the truck in front of her and crashed through her windshield.  

Think of all the worrying some of us do.  I bet that no matter how many things that woman might have worried about in her life, she never, ever considered the possibility of being killed by a port-o-john.  

And that is my point exactly.  The port-o-john was the bullet she never saw coming.

At last Thursday’s knit night, Sallyknit related what she considered, and we all agreed, to be the most bizarre news story from the week.  A man in Brazil was killed, in his bed, while he was asleep, by a cow that fell through his roof.  

(We might have giggled a little, but then said STOP THAT!  It’s only a little bit funny. No! It’s not funny at all.  It’s tragic.  But it IS a little …..when you say it out loud….No! Stop!)

But again, no matter what this poor man’s worries were, I’ll bet they didn’t include a cow crashing through his roof and crushing him. 

I promise my daughters and whoever  else has the apparent misfortune to talk with me that I will keep the woe, suffering and deaths to a minimum.

In the meantime, Serpentine, Shelly.  Serpentine!

(A big prize to the person who knows that reference.  Immediate family prohibited from entering.)

This Might Be Me....

It's Embarrassin' Bein' from Georgia

says Honey Boo Boo?

$1,000 REWARD!!!!!!

Not really.

But my Chacos, the shoes that I have worn since surgery on my left foot, the shoes that have prevented surgery on my right foot, that have just the perfect sponginess to support my foot, and that along with my Birkenstocks (stylish----c'est moi) have kept me comfortably shod all these years, they have

GONE MISSING !!!!!

Please, please come back...

Now logic is my middle name (not really---it's Louise), and logic tells me that shoes can't possibly disappear in one's own home. But I have looked everywhere (except where they are, obviously), and they are just flat-out missing. I grilled my recent houseguests: two daughters, four grandchildren, and I do mean GRILLED, until they almost r u n n  o f t, and they all denied having any involvement with the disappearance of my shoes.

Yes, I have other shoes.  Yes, I even have other Chacos, but these were my most recent purchase, and my favorite.

I may have to give up and go to the store for another pair, and then, I am sure, the missing shoes will show up.


***************

In other news, we all had a great time, in spite of the nearly constant rain.  It rained, sometimes ALL day, each and every day that they were all here. (It's raining now.) On Monday though, the rain held off  until later in the day, and my husband, daughters and grandchildren had a great time at Six Flags.  I, martyr that I am, stayed out of the heat and sun and off of the scary rides and made the aforementioned Ile Flottante. My husband is out of town every other week, so I rarely have guinea pigs diners I can experiment on cook for.  But in spite of being left behind, I had fun making dessert.

However, I need my grandchildren to answer for this affront:

WHY, oh WHY, are there goldfish left in this container? WHY didn't you eat them all?  Grandpa doesn't like them, so now it's left to me to finish them off.

Martyr, thy name is Knittergran.


UPDATE:  Chacos found!  Yay!

And Yesterday

I made Ile Flottante!

I had always thought that it would be difficult to make but it's not.  It's just three easy things combined into one for serving.

Delicious, if I do say so myself.

My First Clafoutis

Yummmmm

And Ah Hay-ulped

Yes, I did.

Today I finished my Janus shawl (from Araucania Lontue linen/cotton yarn), which was supposed to be easy, easy, easy.

The knitting part was.

The crocheted lace?  No so much.

Knitter/crocheter/master-crafter friend Lucille volunteered to crochet the 74" of lace after she tried to teach me how to do it.  It just didn't take and this shawl would never, ever be finished if she hadn't taken on the most difficult part of the project.  74 inches!!!  Of this:

I tried.  And even though it only uses two (maybe three) different crochet stitches, I just couldn't get my brain/hand coordination to work.  And this lace border MAKES the shawl.  So that's why I say I "helped." Lucille did the most work on it.

I did do this part though and it was relatively easy:

Just a bit of picot along the opposite edge.

I love this scarf/shawl and I owe you big time, Lucille!!!

A couple of years ago I bought two colors of laceweight Miss Babs yarn to make a particular pattern.  However, I think they sold me the wrong weight by mistake because the resulting scarf would have been the proper size for an American Girl Doll.  So I ripped it out and saved the yarn for future use.  Then I learned how to do an advanced search on Ravelry and looked for a two-color project requiring 400 yards of each color of laceweight yarn.  And there it was, the Pink Silk Mimosa, designed by Jennette Cross at Hill Country Weavers in Austin, Texas.

And here it is!!!  All finished and blocked.  I love it!

I ran out of turquoise yarn and could have taken out two rows in order to do the bind-off row, but I decided to use the brown and keep the extra length on the lace. This is the closest I have ever come to running out of yarn!

I had about 12 inches of turquoise left (and Baxter tried to eat it) and about six yards of brown.

Phew!

WARNING!

If you decide to make The Barefoot Contessa's boeuf bourguignon, and you read the part that tells you to stand back when you light the half cup of cognac you have poured into the contents of the dutch oven, she does really mean STAND BACK!!!

However, she forgot to say "Be sure that the flames that will be two feet high will not touch anything above them, say, like the bottom of the microwave." Because that will happen.  You know how I know this.  Right?

I will admit that I briefly considered running to get my camera so that I could take a picture because it was a pretty impressive scene, but then my better judgement kicked in and I put on mitts and pulled the pan out as far as I could on the stovetop so that I wouldn't melt the microwave.  This would not have been the first time I accidentally set something unintended on fire, but I sure didn't want it to be the first time I intentionally let something burst into flames.

What More Could I Ask For?

My kitchen is finished!

My hydrangeas are blooming!

Do You Suppose

that the Pioneer Woman swears when the new flour container she probably has that is probably just like mine (because she is such a copy-cat) dumps flour on the counter and floor when she is making her blueberry muffins?

I bet she does.

And if I were the swearing sort, which of course I am not, I would too.  It was just the crowning end to a day of annoyances, and yes, that is a paint can barely visible in the background because this kitchen project will.never.end.  I swear on all that is holy or holy-ish.

Three cabinet doors had chips in them, so the painter picked them up last Saturday to re-paint them.  I wanted them back today---she said "No problem," and we went to get them.  However, she had only just painted them this morning so they were still wet.  And still needed the spray coat of polyurethane.  Oh, joy. They are in our garage, still drying.

Maybe tomorrow they can go back on the cabinets, but in the meantime, we have been painting the white woodwork that has black splotches on it because I painted the pantry door black and my aim isn't always too precise. Although I do blame the brush.  And we have been touching up the yellow suede paint where other things have gone wrong, but then I have to put more white paint on the woodwork where the yellow paint got by mistake and then paint the yellow where the white, and maybe some black too, but who's looking, made its way from the door to the woodwork to the wall to the......

Oh well.  Someday the kitchen will be finished.

But in the meantime, I'm eating as many mini-blueberry muffins as I want. They're small.

I Got Nothin'

but the universe gives us this on Sunday night:

Perigee

What to Wear....What to Wear

It's a constant problem.  What am I supposed to LOOK like at my slightly advanced age?  I can't use my mother as a role model.  She didn't believe in hair color (it will give you brain cancer) and I do; didn't use makeup (I don't know why) and I do; and was entirely too friendly with Polly and Esther, despite living in Florida.  To my mind, Polly and Esther are entirely intolerable in Florida, and probably pretty much anywhere else.

So off I go to buy clothes.  And every time it is the same.  The staff at J Crew lock the doors when they see me coming.

And Talbots?  My former last resort when I didn't know what to wear?  I don't know what is going on there, but their offerings have been awful for years. Even though their clothes might have been a bit....conservative, boring...they at least were in style, sort of, and I could count on finding something appropriate for whatever occasion I was shopping for.  But now?  I never find anything there.

So there they are:  Chicos and J Jill, home of clothing for senior citizens.  On my most recent shopping trip, I didn't find anything at Chicos. I did at J Jill, but the problem there is that sometimes what they have reminds me of Garanimals---remember the children's clothing all designed to be very obviously matchy/matchy so that children could put together their own outfits? Even the tags were color-coded to give clueless kids a clue. That's what J. Jill clothing sometimes looks like to me.  Too obviously matchy/matchy, just without the color-coded tags.

Last week, I decided that I was not a clueless kid!  NO!  Not ME!  (Not I?) I was a brave, grown-up shopper. I was a REBEL.  I bought this shirt:

Cute, right?

and instead of pairing it with the cropped pants that the saleslady told me were, ahem, supposed to go with it, I bought these:

Pretty clever! Pretty stylish!  Positively BRAVE!!!  Right?

And I picked them out all by myself.

When I asked my husband what he thought, he said that the shirt was ok, but that the jeans didn't go with it.  I told him, and I am pretty sure I am right about this, that jeans go with everything.

But maybe not, maybe he was right, since these aren't your normal jeans. Nope. They are called "boyfriend" jeans. Perhaps that is a clue that they are meant for younger women, the kind with boyfriends, not husbands of 40+ years. And oh, dear, now that I think about it, perhaps the shirt could possibly double as a maternity top.

Hmmmm......

Oh, well.

Out I go, every day, still apparently clueless, hoping that no one makes fun of me, or that if they do, I don't notice.  But if anyone thinks that I am perhaps the world's oldest expectant mother, or that I have a boyfriend in spite of the wedding ring I wear, I might be wrong about all of my choices.

Polly and Esther.  Watch out.  I might have to join you.

And On and On It Goes....

The refrigerator door arrived, unannounced, yesterday when FedEx left a box as tall as I am on the front doorstep.  It was supposed to arrive today (Well, yesterday, originally, but that was re-scheduled.  No one told FedEx I guess.)  Now the repairman is here, and surprise, surprise, the electronics in the current door are not the same as the electronics in the new door, so he is disassembling both doors to switch out the guts.  He called his dispatcher to say that he would be here for "several hours."  Oh, joy.

GE.  We Bring Good Things to Life.  Eventually.

And Ah Hay-elpd

says Baxter.

I am blocking the Color Affection Shawl and as always, Baxter finds the whole process fascinating.  First he dipped a paw in the sudsy water where the shawl was soaking to test the water temperature

and then he checked out my shaping.

 But then he started pulling out the pins to let me know I was doing it wrong.  Since I can read the tape measure and he can't, I told him to stop. He jumped up on his perch (the ironing board) to supervise.

In the end, he approved, so now it is drying.  The yarn is Miss Babs Yummy Superwash Sock and Baby ---wonderful soft yarn and I love her colors.

The shawl seemed to be drying as I pinned it out, so I think I will be able to fondle try it on later today.

Common Sense is Not So Common

so said Voltaire and he is correct.

The new refrigerator arrived Thursday.  My husband and I finished painting the kitchen and breakfast room yesterday.  We cleaned up.  The job is finished!!!

Not so fast.

Do you see the black plastic covers over the edges of the top door and bottom drawer?

Well, look what is missing here:

Yes, there is a piece missing.  Probably a 2- or 3-cent part.

My husband called GE, e-mailed the photos, and yesterday we had a reply. There is no way to order just that little plastic piece.

The GE rep has ordered us an entire new door.  Crazy!!!

Later this week, the kitchen project will be finally finished when the new door arrives. We can't blame China, or the factory in China, or a worker in China. The refrigerator was made in Kentucky.  But I suppose we can't blame Kentucky, or the factory in Kentucky, or the worker in Kentucky either.

Let's blame the designer/engineer!!!  Or the billing department?

(Or me.  You would think I would have noticed this when the refrigerator was delivered.  Nope.)

************************************

My poor cats.  Look at Molly.  She was exhausted yesterday after helping Baxter supervise the kitchen-painting.

Sound asleep.  UNDER a rocking chair.  Never a good idea.

Calling Paul Harvey....

There is a story, which some sources say is apocryphal, about a bet Ernest Hemingway made that he could write an entire story in under ten words:

For Sale
Baby Shoes
Never Worn

There is a world of possibilities in those six words.


I suspect that there is in these six words as well:

Random photo from the interwebs

Wouldn't you love to know the rest of the story?

Finished!

and I love the cabinets!  They look like new furniture, so yes, it was all worth it. Of course, I no longer want to cook in my kitchen; it would be awful to risk damaging the finishes, don't you think?

 Yep, Baxter has to check it out.

 

I still have cleanup and re-organizing to do, but at least the most difficult work (which was done by Juliet Jones Studio) is finished.  Juliet is great and can do everything from finishing out new construction to remodeling to faux painting to trompe l'oeil.

Best of all, from Baxter and Molly's perspectives, they have been released from imprisonment in the basement and can snoop to their hearts' content.  And walk on the counters.  And climb on top of the refrigerator.  And open the cabinets.

In other words, back to normal.  

A Pause for the Philosophical

All of the events of life can be seen as learning experiences if we just stop to think about what we have learned from the bad as well as from the good.

What I have learned from the kitchen cupboard project:

1.  Home improvement projects are not fun.  This one has been a nuisance and an inconvenience.  Everything people do on HGTV looks like so much FUN!!! so I don't understand what is going on here.  hmmmmm... Possibly the police visit and the gas fumes might have something to do with it...

2.  Mission creep is a real phenomenon.  The cabinets get painted; the walls need re-painting.  The cabinet doors need to be re-hung; many of the old hinges are broken-buy new hinges.  For no reason whatsoever, the door on the refrigerator breaks; buy new refrigerator.

3.  Baxter can get on top of the refrigerator.  No problem, says he.  And so there he is, time after time, just lying there.  After some thought, I've realized that he does this for one of two reasons:

     a.  Because he can.
           or
     b.  To taunt me.

I'm going with b.

The doors and drawer front panels go on tomorrow, God willin' and the creek don't rise.

It's been pouring for hours.

As Roseanne Rosannadanna Always Said

We are still in the process of having the kitchen cabinets re-painted.  Yesterday and today's work consisted of spraying the cabinet boxes and front frames with a top coat to protect the finishes.  The painter has used all green products up to now so there have been no fumes at all.  It's been a nice way to get the painting done.

However, the oil-based product used for the topcoat reeks of chemicals and the painter uses a gas mask, the kind you might see in a The World is Being Destroyed by ....  kind of movie.  I don't have such a mask, so I put the cats in the basement where my husband works in his office and ensconce myself upstairs in my knitting/computer/tv room with the window open and the door closed.

Today after the painter left, I opened the front door and the back door so that the fumes could go out and ruin what's left of the atmosphere and I hid in my lair.  After awhile I heard male voices, very LOUD male voices, yelling: Hello? Is anyone here? What is going on?  Things like that.  I peeked over the stair railing to see two armed, uniformed police officers in the front hall.

A neighbor, who was still in our driveway, had called the police after seeing the front door open and not getting a response when she called our names from outside of the house.

We explained everything, the neighbor identified us as the residents who do live in this house, we all laughed and now it's over.

Sweet Baby Cheeses!  Scared me to death!

It will all end on Monday.

And then my heart will go back to its normal rhythm.  I hope.

*******************************************************

Aaannnd.... It's an hour later and I wondered why the house smelled like gas.  Turns out it WAS gas. The painter must have knocked a knob when she was cleaning up and so the stove has been spewing gas for....oh, three hours or so.

I hope we live to see Monday.

Barbie and I

have something in common!

We both knit!

She is obviously more ambitious than I am though.

It looks as if she knits entire outfits; I mostly knit small
projects.


The Color Affection scarf is coming along just fine.  It's all in garter stitch, so it's easy, but it does require carrying three strands of yarn along the third section.

Bummer.

Why I Cannot Cook

My kitchen:

However, we can't live without coffee.

Ye Newe Coffee Shoppe (aka laundry room):

MOLLY!!!

My kitchen is a mess today because I am having the cabinets painted.  The doors and drawer fronts are all off; half of the contents of the cupboards have been removed so that the painter can paint the frames and lips of the cabinets. Stuff is stacked all over the countertops and on the dining room table.

I just went into the kitchen and found that Molly must have decided to contribute to the mess.

Gee, Molly.  Thanks.

I Need to Tell Everyone

that my younger daughter has NEVER been arrested.

She told me that she was on Google and, yes, she is:

HOWEVER,

she might have warned me that she posted her fake mug shot from a fund-raiser at the LA county jail.

I'm just so proud.

  

First of All,

I must pat myself on the back because I made----ta! da!----a gauge swatch.  I normally don't make them because:

A.  I don't want to.

B.  The Yarn Harlot says that swatches lie.

So why bother? says I.

However, the sweater that I might make (still intimidated by the pattern) looks so complicated that I don't want to do all that work and have the sweater not come out the right size.  So I made a gauge swatch, washed it and dried it, and it had better not lie!!!  Or I will never, ever make another one.  That will show it.

And while I am struggling to understand the sweater directions, I am also trying to learn how to read a crochet chart. Knitter/crocheter extraordinaire Lucille color coded the chart for me, and I still don't get it and that really frustrates me. There are only three easy stitches in this chart, but I just can't get the hang of it. The yarn is fine and I can't see the holes I am supposed to link (or whatever it's called) to and counting? OMYGAH!  I can't count the things.

I have practiced with worsted weight yarn and a larger hook and still no success.

I have, in the past, sworn that I don't swear, but I swear, I soon might start!

Now, That Is Just Not Nice...

I bought this little Fit Bit Zip to record my steps taken and exercise done daily.  It came pre-set for 10,000 steps a day, and I wondered how many I actually walk on any normal day.

Well, it's nowhere near 10,000 steps, and I think I would have to be a serious walker or runner to get that many steps.

But I don't think it's very nice that the little zip sticks its tongue out at me when I don't measure up.

Someone Stop Me

before I need drugs for OCD.

It all started with entering my stash into my Ravelry library.

And then continued with learning about the spreadsheet that automatically puts my yarn into a huge spreadsheet with all sorts of information on it.

Including the yardage of all my yarn:

I think I need to knit now before I use the spreadsheet to analyze the yarn in even more ways.

BTW.  This isn't much yarn compared with other Ravelers' stashes.  I had thought that a Raveler's 30,000 yard stash was a lot until I read about another Raveler's 700,000 yard stash.  Yikes!  That's not a stash; that's a store!