Taking it Outside

As in cooking.  Somewhere recently, it may have been Farm School, I read about engaging children in food prep by taking it outside, where they can make messes to their heart’s content.  Saturday was a gorgeous September day, warm, sunny, but not too warm.  Mr. Guy and I went to the farmer’s market and I bought veggies to add to what I had in the garden so I could make a big batch of ratatouille to freeze.  I also got a big basket of tomatoes for blanching and freezing.  I set up camp outside with the grill and the hotplate we use for cooking when we don’t want to heat up the house — a sort of summer kitchen of the north.

Being outside was great and I got to toss peels and things right in the compost, brush seeds on the ground, and just make messes to my heart’s content.  I thought I would try grilling all the vegetables before mixing them for the ratatouille.  It seemed to me that it would give that nice grilled/roasted veggie flavor, and be less oily.   Conceptually sound, but on a charcoal grill, it isn’t really very efficient.  I also think I should have sliced the egg plant thicker, and not let it cook as long.  It tastes fine, however, and the lack of efficiency allowed me to work on a second sock that has been haunting me for several years.  I made the first one as a shop model, and when I got it back I stuffed it in a baket with the rest of the MegaBoots Stretch.

If I manage to make them the same size –I couldn’t even remember what size needle I used — they may make a Christmas present.  I no longer make one sock at a time, even for shop models.  The only way for me to avoid second sock syndrome is to work sequentially.  First make one cuff, then the second cuff, right on down to the toe.  I don’t enjoy the two socks on two circs technique, it’s too difficult for the spatially challenged.  I never know where I am.  I prefer to use my good old bamboo DPNs and work on one at a time.  I now have several sock special orders from a certain yarn winding kid, so when I finish these, I’ll have some smaller ones to work on.

MLE

Back to Winding My Own Yarn

Well my sister is tired, but getting better and better and I took them to the airport yesterday. My human ball winder got worried after breakfast yesterday. Did he have time to wind a few more balls before they left for the airport? He did.

The dark green koigu was especially entertaining to wind with the ball winder because it was already in a non center pull ball, so it bounced all over the room. Man, is that funny. Why don’t I do all my yarn that way? The mind of the 8 year old at work is a true delight. The night before they left, my sister and b-in-l had crashed, and we built a fire in the fire pit and sat and discussed important matters. What if we built a boat that responded to the frequency of the northern lights and would automatically follow them around on lakes and rivers? Can you have a bonfire if you take horses camping? Then the big idea was to get the laptop and the Lord of the Rings DVD and watch his favorite parts ‘by the flickering firelight’ — how could I refuse?

When I recover from the past three weeks, I do have some actual knitting content.

MLE

Good News

Thanks to everyone who commented and emailed regarding my sister. The surgery went off without a hitch. It was a long day of waiting, though. Then I spent most of the day after sitting in the Cardiac Intensive Care with her. Thank the stars for knitting, it really is a lifesaver for me in these situations. I put the Claudia my nephew wound to good use and made the middle size of the Overlap Baby Sweater. It is just the kind of knitting for these situations, pretty simple, no real counting except for the short rows at the neck edge and the sleeve decreases.

One reason I wanted to do this sweater again was that Gale, who did a test knit for it, found what to her was a little glitch in how the short rows were set up, but it didn’t pop up for me. I did have it tech edited, but you know how it is with knitting instructions. It seems that we all read things in a certain way. She is an excellent knitter, so I value her comments. I’ll be interested to hear if others have the same point of view as Gale.

I haven’t put buttons on this one, but might if I find the right ones. Another idea I had was to put a little contrast stripe right on the edge with crochet slip stitch. Here it is, bad photo and unblocked but finished. What do you think?

While my nephew stayed with us, we went to the barn and did a little riding and a little frog hunting. Did you know that a frog will, in fact, ride in the saddle for a few strides?

I’m waiting for them to arrive back up here for a few days before heading to Texas, post-Ike. Hope all you Texans are doing ok.

MLE

Visitors

I could pretend I’ve been on vacation, but I haven’t. I have a few lame garden photos to show: I finally got some eggplant.

Encouraged by Miss T., I made a blueberry pie, using the Vodka Crust recipe. It had a very short delicious life.

I have been doing some knitting and a have couple of new patterns, which I will be showing soon. Mostly, I’ve been planning for two big arrivals here in St. Paul. The first is my sister, who arrived with her family to spend the long weekend before heading to the Mayo Clinic, where she will be having many tests and major heart surgery on Friday. The other — the Republicans.

My 8 year-old nephew wound several skeins of yarn in the first day he was here. The tasteful child prefers merino, especially Koigu and Claudia, because they are ‘less sticky.’ He’ll be back with us during the first few days after surgery, so he is hoping I can dig out more stash for him to wind. Anyone who wants their skeins wound, come on down! And send your healing thoughts and energy my sister’s way, please.

The Republicans are another story. I work a block away from the Xcel center, and live across the river. I feel as though I live in a police state. There are helicopters buzzing around all the time, the Coast Guard are patrolling the Mississippi, and cops in riot gear are all over town. I don’t even want to go into all that. I’ll just leave you with a quote from that wild-eyed liberal Harry S. Truman:

Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.