7 Quick Takes (Vol 133)

As usual the week has just flown by. And here we are back again for another round of useless and inane ramblings that are my usual 7 Quick Takes. Sort of my own version of brain barf. You know the routine. When you are done slowly and carefully reading my “takes” then click on the pic above to be whisked, at the speed of approaching Fall, over to Conversion Diary to see what the other Quick Takers are doing.

Now on with the show.

1.
Borders Books and Music is gone. Gone, gone, gone. And I am sad.

I have always been a lover of bookstores. It seems to go hand in hand with loving books. Funny how that works. I have fond memories of spending allowance money in bookstores, usually Walden Books because that was what was in the mall near home. Even from an early age I had A LOT of books.

For almost 10 years we have had a Borders a 15 minute drive from Chez Knit. It was a comfort to know that if there was a book that I might want to purchase there was a Borders near by. And I will admit that I would go in there and look at the new releases and note which ones…..that I wanted to check out from the library.

Sorry about that Borders. Massive numbers of hardback books just aren’t in the budget.

Unless they are knitting books of course.

But now, it is no more. Thursday was it’s last day.

I can hear the funeral dirge playing.

2.
I am sorry, it was a HIGH of 55F yesterday. That is just not right! I couldn’t get my fingers to warm up all day. And the skies wept rain for the entire morning, the sun coming out weakly in the late afternoon. It prevented LookLeap and I from going to the garden as we had planned.

However, a day like yesterday also meant that I could break out a pair of hand knit socks. Oh my tootsies were warm and toasty in “I Lean To The Right”. Should I consider these my political statement socks?

Maybe not.

Aren’t they purty (sorry, I was watching The Unsinkable Molly Brown yesterday).

Thank goodness for hand knit wool socks.

3.
The hummingbirds are gone for the season.

It happens every year. There will be several weeks where they feed like crazy. A veritable frenzy of hummers circling the feeders with abandon.

And then, slowly, it will dawn on my that I haven’t seen any hummingbirds for a day or two. And then it will be four or five days. And finally it sinks in that they have all left for the winter.

Does someone send out a mass email that tells them that Monday is the day that everyone packs up their little hummer suitcases and heads South? They were all gone in one day.

I miss them already.

4.
I made doughnuts yesterday for the very first time.

Why I have never made doughnuts before I do not know. Oh I made “Pillsbury Biscuit Doughnuts” when I was growing up. You know, pop open the tube, roll them out a bit, cut a hole in the center and fry them. They are good but they are REAL doughnuts.

I used Joy the Baker’s recipe for Old Fashioned Doughnuts with Chocolate Glaze. Found it through that dang Pinterest. Oh Pinterest you are so hard on my waistline.

But I digress.

The doughnuts turned out…..

OK. Not great but OK. That is no knock against the recipe which I think is good. I just think I need to work on my technique some more. Another batch or two will have to be made in the near future just to see if I can make them look like the picture on her site.

Perhaps this will be one of my goals for the winter months, to perfect my doughnut making abilities.

It is a tough job but someone has to do the deep fat frying and it might as well be me.

5.
There has been very little gardening going on around here this week. LookLeap and I met up at the garden on Monday for a bit. We picked green beans and tomatoes. We discussed what we might want to plant next year. Potatoes! We planned on being back in the garden yesterday to clean some of the beds out and do some weeding maintenance.

But it didn’t happen. Rain, cold temps and bad backs all conspired in an evil plot to prevent us from fulfilling our gardenly duty. Even if it hadn’t been raining all morning it just isn’t fun to pull weeds in 55F weather. My fingers never would have warmed up.

The zinnias and sunflowers missed us.

6.
Are you on Google+ 

Do you WANT to be on Google+

Because if you do I have 150 Google+ invitations that I would love to give away. They are waiting and waiting.

So if you want one then shoot me an email and I will send one to you. But then you have to go and find me and friend me. That is the deal.

And then maybe I can find some time to actually play around on Google+ and see what all the fuss is about. Actually I have liked the ease of picture download but that is about all I can say at the moment.

7.
I have set myself the winter task of getting the basement thoroughly cleaned out and organized.

Yes I know it is already sort of organized, I couldn’t live with it if it wasn’t. But when we tried to sell the house last year and packed up bunches of things and put them in boxes in the basement I didn’t do as thorough a job at weeding through and discarding as I would have liked.

I haven’t really tackled much of it since then, some but not all. And it just seems like a winter project since, well, it will be winter and cold outside.

I am still determined that when we do actually, finally, sell Chez Knit that I am not moving a darn thing that I don’t use on a regular basis. Yes there are family things that don’t fall into that category but you know what I mean.

It is me or the junk.

And it is going to be me.

Winning!