Costumes in a box

My mom is moving sometime soon. To that end, she is doing a lot of housecleaning, and in an effort to ease that process I’m saying yes to pretty much everything she mentions maybe wanting to send me.

So I got two boxes of costumes along with handmade apparel from my childhood and teenage years. Some of the dresses I made, and some my mom made. There are a few shirts my mom made for herself, although I can’t honestly recall seeing her wear those particular shirts. There are many child-sized costumes.

I normally am careful not to hoard stuff. I believe myself to be a person who throws things away heartlessly, and puts them into a scrapbook or something right away if not. But that is not true, really. I can’t get rid of any of the handmade items in those boxes. I have too many back issues of Piecework on my shelves (hoarding them?) to be able to toss aside handwork.

Poor Brad, having to live with increasing amounts of handwork. At least I have been able to discipline myself  at thrift stores and not buy sadly tossed-aside, beautiful handmade textiles. Mostly.

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Further change of heart

In addition to thinking that parents who dreaded the coming of school were crazy, I have in the past believed that people who spin from the fold are wusses, big-time. Especially people who are spinning cotton or silk from the fold. The staple is too short! The fiber is too slippery. Wah, wah, wah.

Well, it’s best to spin “Milk Silk” from Greenwood Fiberworks from the fold. Honestly. Because it’s slippery and short (both at the same time! I still maintain that spinning silk, with it’s mile-long staple, and cotton, with its adequate grip, from the fold is wussy.)

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Bears. [Some stuff in between.] Then tortillas.

Bears:  seem to have moved on, finally, and stopped hanging around.  I saw the big one that was bothering the neighborhood for a couple of weeks early one morning.  Very big bear.  I made blueberry jam one night, and then stayed up until 2 am fretting that he would come tear my front door off to get it.  As you may imagine, he didn’t.  He did try the week before.  He didn’t try very hard, though.  Just enough to break the door and leave some mud.

Little cat: growing larger, as expected.  I think he’s a rugged one — but can he hold his own against coyotes?

Old cat (soon to be not the bigger cat):  Has been rejuvenated by having another cat around to bitterly hate.  She still won’t go outside.  That’s just as well; she probably can’t hold her own against coyotes.

Family trips:  two.  One to the Northwest for my brother’s wedding,

I will toddle into Snake River, so help me.

*hic*

H is looking sort of grown up, yes?

Grand Coulee Dam is impressive. And they don't keep a close eye on their traffic cones. Yessssss.

and one to Pennsylvania for Brad’s family’s gathering.  You know, I just had to get away from it all and just go camp in the mountain forest.  In northern PA.  So much more restful than northern NY.  But still pretty.

First watermelon ever.

Kickball:  The Wanakena league is in swing.  We don’t count the fouls for kids, and we don’t throw them out (unless another kid tags them, then they’re out.)  But the adults all get clobbered.  Frankly, I’m about as good at kickball as I ever was (guess how good that is?), so the whole clobbering thing is making me nervous.  In fact, I’d rather not be responsible for catching any kind of pop fly of any type of ball.  Ever.  Yet I still show up for games.

Farming:  Doing it.  I guess I’m a drive-in hired hand.  I know how to dig potatoes now, and I’m gaining an appreciation for the best situations for different hand tools.  My first job (ever in my life) was picking blueberries;  I was pretty awful at it.  I could not, for the life of me, keep up with the real ag workers.  I gave up (and also got a terrible, terrible sunburn).  I believed blueberry picking was not my future.  I was wrong.  I’m still not fast, but now I believe blueberry picking might be the easiest job in ag.  So easy.  No thorns, no ladders, not much bending over.  Shade.  Way better than digging potatoes.  That’s kind of hard.

Kids:

New habit. Unhelpful as far as actually cleaning dishes, but fun nonetheless.

Fingerpaints.

This arrangement was supposed to be conducive to napping, but it isn't.

Knitting, etc:  I won a gift certificate from Spinderella’s.  I love Spinderella’s.  Look how you can tell from the lack of snow and all the bug bites that these mittens are not being modeled in winter!

Tortillas:  I finally made them tonight, the tortillas I’ve been waiting for my whole life.  Mein Gott.

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As it comes

When gift-giving occasions loomed, my father was a difficult man.  The problem was that he just didn’t seem to want anything.  He was content with what he had.  Normally, that’s a totally awesome quality, but at Christmastime it was just frustrating.  I think I gave him a fair number of perplexing gifts over the years, including ties (because my father was also not a fashionable man, but he would have been considerably less fashionable had my mother not mostly taken all clothing purchases in hand for him — she could coach me at Christmas time on what he needed).  I also remember giving him a camp toaster (has anyone ever used one of these?  Because really, they seem like such a stupid item I can barely believe I’ve heard of them, much less purchased one), replacement jigsaw blades (yay! fun!), and an electric edger (although it was my assigned chore to edge the lawn, ahem).  He would open the presents, say “Oh!” and admire it and thank the giver for it appropriately.  But I knew I never really hit the mark with any of that stuff.  The only things he really liked to receive were hand-made.

TA-DA!  In the past few years, I’ve become a knitter.  A frequent knitter.  That doesn’t mean I’m exactly hunting for recipients for my hand-knit items (I could just knit for myself and be happy.  Memememememe.), but it did mean that I had a skill that could translate into gifts for my dad that would be really well received.  The only problem was that my parents live in Texas, where a woolly scarf is not exactly a priority.  But when my dad got sick five years ago, he was suddenly cold all the time, even in the middle of the hot, hot summer.  This was not good news in general, but it was good news in the restricted sense of making my father now an ideal knitwear recipient.

So I knit him a pair of socks, first, I think.  My mother said she had to bug him to take them off so she could wash them.  Success!  I knit him another pair, and then a hat.  Then I didn’t knit him anything for a bit.  Last February, when I visited for his 75th birthday, I promised him another pair of socks.   I was slow, very slow, in getting them underway and slower still in making progress.  I took them to Texas with me, but couldn’t knit in the ICU because we had to wear rubber gloves while in the room.  Then my father died. Among other things I didn’t know, I didn’t know what to do with the unfinished socks.

These socks are emblematic of several things to me now — our unfulfilled plans, my lack of attention to the relationship at times, the consequences of my procrastination, the way he appreciated my handwork, simply my love of my father (it’s hard on the eyeballs to knit with black yarn!).

And something else they’ve been emblematic of these past handful of weeks — my uncertainty about what to do next, from moment to moment:  Act casual?  Cry?  Write something on the blog?  Bake?

I’ve made one little decision — I’ve decided to finish the socks.  I will just knit, them, every stitch, just like I will just live every day.  At the end of the stitches, there will be a pair of socks finished.  At the end of each day, that will be another day of my life lived.  I don’t know yet what I will do with the socks when they are done, but I will just not worry about that right now, like I will not worry about whether I should cry or bake or act casual or whether it’s okay to go back to chattiness and talking about regular life, like the fact that I’m learning to ice skate along with my son. The fact that it’s really fun, and I feel a little guilty about having a lot of fun like that, and also that it makes me sad because I would totally be telling my dad all about it if he were still alive and I wonder if he skated at some point in his life.  And I would also like to tell him about the porcupine I saw last week (they really aren’t hurrying animals — the books are right — and they are really large), and the five fat wild turkeys I saw today.  And the beautiful drive between here and Canton that he would have loved to see too.  And now I’ve told y’all that stuff.

I will decide that kind of thing each day.  Just like knitting each stitch.

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This and that

(1) No crochet edging for the Danish tie shawl, after consideration. Sorry, Anne. I do still like the idea, though, truly, and I will look for another project for which a fussy edge like that would be suitable. I think it would be better on a solid-colored item, since I’d prefer to do the edge in two colors. A baby blanket comes to mind and oh! I have a niece on the way this winter! And I’ve been thinking of a round baby blanket, just because they’re cool.

(2) Brad’s traveling to NY in a couple of weeks for a face-to-face interview. Sounds good to me, like we might be a-movin’. But I probably shouldn’t pack yet.

(3) Despite the uncertainty in #2, I dropped my Wetlands class, fearing I would not be able to finish it along with a move. The class requires a project regarding an actual local (to me) restored wetland — dudes, for what I know, all the water will be frozen in NY by the time I get there if I do get there at all. There’s a lake within walking distance that qualifies to my mind (and to various definitions) as a big honkin’ wetland, but I don’t know what, if any, restoration has ever been done on it. Also, it may well be frozen over, not sure if I mentioned that. Must I learn to ice skate right off?

(4) A friend of mine recently came through serious surgery with flying colors.   Hooray!  Her positive story has restored my faith (a little) in the medical community. That faith was about destroyed by my father’s experience with very serious illness a few years back. It contributed substantially to my choosing to have Baby C at home with a midwife last year (which was a great choice. Granted, it’s not entirely the same thing as, say, serious pneumonia or heart trouble, but still. It’s all hospitals. It’s related.)

(5) The fambly went to the State Fair for a song on Sunday. A good time was had and I discovered there is actually a local tatting organization. And also that when you are buying fresh-made ice cream, it’s just stupid to get the size called “Iddy Biddy Baby” instead of the size called “Double Scoop.” Stupid. Learn from my mistake, friends.

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That got sort of large

Here’s my Danish tie shawl.  Is it finished?  I don’t know – it’s blocking.  The crocheted edge in the pattern is rad.  But I can’t decide about it.  Decide for me, please, people.  It’ s a two-color, deliciously fiddly edging, what with chaining one color, dropping it (off the hook!  completely!), chaining the other one over top, fastening to the shawl edge, then going back to the first color and doing it again.  It looks like a bicolor rope around the edge.  But still.  I’m just not so sure.

It is large, large enough to tie around my waist without added cords.  Once it is dry, I will try that again and ponder.  It messes up the corners, obviously. Every inch of yarn in it is handspun.  The maroon is 100% mohair and it’s worming a lot, but I’ve decided to love the texture it adds.

Here’s another finished object, too, which could not be unveiled here until it had been received by its intended owner, my mother.  This was a fun one — I like lace on a garter ground quite a bit.  My mom seems to like it.  My mom’s pretty discriminating about handmade items, so I am glad this one was a hit.  The yarn was delightful, as it turned out (it’s a 2/28 silk from Colourmart, not available anymore.)

Details on both projects can be found at my Ravelry page,which you know, you can’t see if you’re not a Raveler.  I figure if you’re not a member you’re probably not that interested in the details anyway.

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The knits go off the rails

Warning: this post is almost unbelievably boring to anyone who is not fascinated by my textile pursuits.

There are two new knitting projects underway, and one new tatting project.  Both knits are eyeball bending — one navy blue laceweight silk on size 0 needles, one jet black wool blend on size 1′s.   Anyway, as you might guess, they are best worked in indirect sunlight.  Further, my brain and the pattern for the black are not getting along.  I am liking the result, liking it a lot so far, but I hope I can stop unknitting as much as I knit.  Soon?

As I need to unpick a couple rounds of the black and I am avoiding it, I worked on the navy.  Tonight I saw that — horrors! — I had dropped a stitch in the silk.  No!  Two stitches!  No!  Three!  I think.  How many rows had they slipped?  I don’t know — maybe 15 to 20?  They have been put on a safety pin and the whole piece is in time out for a day or so.  That one had been swimming along so well.  I actually put a couple of lifelines in, but then it seemed good, so I stopped doing that.  And pulled them out last night, as a matter of fact.  So I am just paying the lifeline deities now, I guess.  I will make my sacrifice and get on with things.  I am still liking both projects (no bad juju for the recipients) but rrr.

While I cool off about the knitting, I think I will tat.  I’d like a mat to line the inside of a little wooden box my grandmother gave me years ago.  And I’d like mimic an Islamic tesselation for it.  Sort of.  The size 10 thread looks all substantial and  awesome but the mat just isn’t going to the be right size.  I am enamoured enough of the pattern at this point that I don’t want to change it, so I’m moving to size 30 thread and I’ll see how that goes.

In related news:  this past weekend a knitting needle was bent in the service of tatting.

In unrelated news:  The baby has teeth, two of ‘em.  He’s had them for almost two weeks now.

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Cherries

About all the cherries fit to can. For a person who despises cherry pie, anyway.

Clockwise from bottom left: Maraschino cherries, Cherry marmalade, Drunken cherries (still working), Cherry syrup

Think I’ll dry some tart cherries and see how they are.  And dip some dried sweet cherries in chocolate (thanks, Suz!).

ETA: Um, this is a sample of each type of thing I canned.  I didn’t do just four jars.  That would be sad.

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It’s a shawlette

Hey, look, I finished something!

It’s a tiny little shawl! It’s the most unnecessary piece of knitting this side of the Mississippi! But I sort of like it and will wear it as a cool-weather scarf (we will ignore the fact that my climate does not sport a lot of “cool” weather — more hot or cold. But there are a few precious days that are “cool,” you know?)

The tatted bookmarks are reproducing, but there seem to be some problems during meiosis or subsequent mitosis — the original template is good, but the outcome is a little messed up. I’m sure it could have nothing to do with the supreme creator-ess’s lack of attention, could it?

Here they are, attempting to understand Wetlands, which is a worthy goal.  I should probably learn to take better pictures of the tatting, all the pictures I’ve done have been dreadful.

There’s another tatted pride snowflake floating around here somewhere too…

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Recipe: Heart attack bars

These cookie bars will probably hasten your death. Everyone at the July 4th party I attended has lost days from their lifespan now, at least.

Source: My gramma. She clipped it from a magazine but I don’t know what or when. Among Gramma and Brad and me, we’ve changed it up anyway. She served them when we swung by to visit her and my aunt on the way back from our trip.  And they were appreciated.

Notes: Gramma says she does this with dried fruit instead of chocolate chips, usually. I don’t think I’d like that as much, but maybe really good dried mandarin oranges would be good.  The procedure is pretty standard.

Batter ingredients:
1 cup butter, softened
2 cups brown sugar (scant)
2 eggs
2 1/2 cups flour (very scant if using WW)
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
3 cups quick oats
1 tsp vanilla (more if not using superdeeduper vanilla)

Filling ingredients:
1 12-oz bag semi-sweet chocolate chips (not crappy ones, okay?)
1 14-oz can sweetened condensed milk*
2 Tb butter
1/2 tsp salt

(1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
(2) You’ll do the batter first. Here we go. Cream butter and sugar
(3) Add eggs & vanilla
(4) Stir in flour, salt, soda
(5) Stir in oats
(6) Press 2/3 of this mixture into pan.
(7) Sprinkle most of the chocolate chips on. Save the rest of the bag to eat late at night while working or blogging.
(8) Time for the filling. Just combine all the ingredients willy-nilly and mix ‘em up.
(9) Pour filling over batter.
(10) Crumble remaining batter over filling.
(11) Bake 25-30 minutes. It’ll look really gooey when you take it out. As it cools, it gets a little less gooey, but doesn’t lose the property altogether. They’re very good chilled but also good at room temp.

*If you’ve got no cans of condensed milk but do have some instant powdered milk, you can approximate it pretty well. It makes the finished product here less gooey and allows you to decrease the sweetness a tad. I also leave out the extra butter in the filling if making my own milk. Here’s the link for how I’ve made my own “condensed” milk.

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