50 Is A Very Good Age

Do you know what today is?

Do you know what happened on this day 50 years ago?

This fellow was born.

Yes, you guessed it. Today is Pilot Man’s 50th birthday.

The big Five-Oh

Half a century.

Happy Birthday to my little (and only) brother. Welcome to the 50 and over club. You are the best brother a girl could have.

Despite the whole letting the frog pee in my sailor hat incident.

And then there was the vacuum cleaner attached to the timer prank that woke us up in the middle of the night.

And maybe also……..

Well, I had better stop now.

Nooooooooo! Don’t make me get in the water. She said something about being an only child!

Hehehehe. Come here little brother. Let me help you. Hehehehehehehe

7 Quick Takes (Vol 129)

The days just fly and here am I with Friday arrived and the weekend ahead. You know the routine. After immersing yourself in my blither blather below you need to click on the picture above to be whisked, at the speed of my rapidly increasing pantry full of canned things, over to Conversion Diary to see what everyone else has been doing.

Blither, blither, blather, blather.

1.
Lunch today will be….

Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato sandwich.

Tomato from the garden.

Lettuce from the garden.

Bread made by my own two hands.

If I was able to produce the bacon as well you know I would.

One of these days I will.

2.
Cartoon Girl feels that the picture of her that I posted yesterday was, in her words, heinous. And that she is much better looking now.

She may have a point. Therefore I will submit this photo, taken recently, to wipe the other one from peoples minds.

We were all smiling because we had just consumed deep fried bacon.

Let me say that again.

Deep. Fried. Bacon.

I will never be the same.

3.
Various pictures from the garden. I didn’t take the “big girl” camera this week so you will just have to content yourselves with pictures from “Dahling” my ipod.

Unfortunately the bottom picture is a cuke that hid under leaves until it was too big to be used for anything. This picture doesn’t begin to convey it’s size. Think “blimp”. So onto the compost pile it went where it will now give it’s remaining nutrients so that next year we can have more excellent crops.

4.
This week I made one of these….

A French Silk Pie. Oh how we love these, raw eggs, butter and all.

Made it on Wednesday as that was Shoe Queen’s last meal with us.

And it was all gone by last night when HHBL ate the last piece while watching the Indians beat the White Sox.

Oh it was SO bad for us and yet SO good.

5.
We have again had hail. Oh joy.

We woke up about 4a this morning to the most amazing thunder and lightening.

I mean REALLY amazing in a scary, shaking the house, trees being split by lightening kind of way. HHBL actually looked at the Weather Channel app on his iphone and just as he said the word “hail” down it came. It didn’t last a long time but I could still hear it falling and adding further shred to the already raggedy hostas.

And then to add insult to weather injury, something scared a skunk somewhere around the house so we had to close the windows.

And now the sun is out, the cicadas are singing and there is not a breath of wind blowing, even at the tops of the trees.

I might just term this year 2011: The Year of Adventures in Weather.

6.
I have been “listening through” all the Thursday Next books and I am hooked.

What would I do without podcasts and audio books? I listen to them when I am cleaning.

Although that doesn’t happen all that often.

I listen to them when I am knitting.

And we KNOW that happens a lot.

Next up, after The Well of Lost Plots is the second audio book in Steig Larssons “Millennium” series, The Girl Who Played With Fire. A VASTLY different kind of book than anything written by Jasper Fforde. Gripping certainly but also with a certain amount of “creepy” factor that sometimes makes them hard to listen to. You can’t just skip over the parts that gross you out like you might be able to do with a book.

Then after that who knows. I love the fact that I can download audio books from the library right onto my ipod. Thank you Twinsburg Public Library for so many great listening hours.

7.
LookLeap mentioned that she was going to make some Peach Salsa. And now she has got me thinking about Peach Salsa and canning same and now I am obsessed with finding just the right recipe.

Obsessed I tell you!

I will let you know how it all turns out.

That Time Of The Year Again

It is that time of the year.

Shoe Queen has gone back to college. And the house feels very quiet right now.

I am sure by next week we will be back in our normal routine. HHBL and I are definitely routine oriented in some things.

Funny how, when the progeny were little, I couldn’t wait for them to go back to school.  Oh that first day was a day of rejoicing for me. The house stayed clean for more that 5 minutes. There weren’t people who needed my help RIGHT NOW even though I was IN THE BATHROOM FOR THE LOVE OF PETE! I am willing to be honest about this.

But eventually I came to love summer vacation. The stress and schedule free nature of it. The fact that the progeny were all home and it seemed like we laughed a lot.

Then Cartoon Girl went off to college. We moved her in the day that Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans.

Look we both have short hair!

Cartoon Girl came back for vacations of course but once they go off to college they really are gone for good. On their way to becoming adults.

Or at least you hope they are.

Then TMO went off to college.

She came home for vacations too but then there was that Tall Pakistani boy that came along

Yup, he definitely looks like he grew up in Pakistan.

And finally it was Shoe Queen’s turn

She comes home for vacations and such. This stretch was 8 weeks long. But really, there will never again be a time when she is here for long stretches of time.

And now there is Slim Jim

Sigh. I think I need some ice cream to soothe.

Fine. No ice cream in the house so I had to content myself with cleaning out her room and bathroom and then….

A piece of French Silk Pie.

I feel slightly better now.

But it is still really quiet around here.

I Am SO Going To Do This

So, I have spent WAY too much time this afternoon searching for something on the internet.

Something I saw a while ago in the New York Times Home and Garden section.

I read that section and I read the Obituaries. I am not sure what that says about me and I don’t think that I am going to spend a boat load of time analyzing it thankyouverymuch.

So some time ago I read a story about a Brooklyn residence. That much I did remember. But of course this was before Pinterest so I had no way to actually mark the article and more specifically a picture that was in the article. A picture that just spoke to me.

It said:

You must do this. You must make these. You know you want to.

And that was as far as it got. I didn’t have the picture. I didn’t remember what the name of the article was. And besides, it was long enough ago that if I wanted to see the article now NYTimes would make me PAY to see it.

Not gonna do it.

But thanks to the internet I have found the picture that I wanted to remember. I knew that someone else would have mentioned it some where some time and I was right. I just had to go to about a million other websites and blogs to find it.

And I have now pinned it so I won’t forget to do it.

However, I must wait until winter.

I am so going to start picking up stray mittens that have been lost. For whatever reason these framed mittens speak to me.

Must. Do. This.

I so love Pinterest.

Grape Vines and Prickers and Ivy. Oh My!

Summer is a never ending battle between me and nature.

There are these things

Whah? Did you call me? Did someone ring the dinner bell?

Then there are the usual weeds and bees and bugs and stuff.

And then there is…….

The wild grape vines.

Oh sure everyone thinks that these are things are “picturesque” and lovely and all, “Don’t they make wreaths from that stuff?”

Let me tell you, in the south they have kudzu. Here in the Frozen Northeast Ohio we have wild grape vines.

They sneak along in the woods and one day you look up and they are covering the tress and hanging down onto the driveway and waving at you as you go by.

Something must be done! And so that was my task on Saturday morning, despite still hacking and coughing and snorting from the lingering effects from the cold that Slim Jim so sweetly gave me. But I was up to the task! No stinkin’, slinkin’ grape vine was going to get the better of me. I was having trouble getting to the compost bin and I was afraid that one morning I might go out the back door and find that the grape vines had enveloped the car of our house guest.

But it isn’t as easy as you might think. You can’t just pull the little, long suckers down. No you have to tug, tug, tug and then cut, cut, cut. And then do it all over again until you have something that looks like this.

The picture doesn’t really give you a good sense of the size of the pile. And also the fact that even after two hours work I really hadn’t made that big of a dent. I had cleared away what had to be done in order not to have LM’s car swallowed up. But there are just so many vines that go all over the place in the tops of the trees that I can’t clean it all out.

And there wasn’t just vines to contend with. Oh no.

There was a big bunch of this little bush with the wicked sharp thorns.

Ouch! Shoot! Ouch! Dang it! Where are my clippers? Dang it! OUCH!

And then there are the renegade spirea

Does anyone need some lovely Princess Spirea that blooms a beautiful and very prolific pink? The landscaper failed to mention (or more likely didn’t know, she was a dim bulb) that the spirea will self seed…..every year, all the time, all over. I spend a great deal of time in the spring pulling up little spirea shoots.

This particular bush sits on the other side of the house, 75 feet away from the original bushes. Lovely to be sure but not really where I had thought to put a bush. But too happy to rip out.

And so, I was busy happily causing mayhem in the woods, ripping and digging and pulling and cleaning out and then….

I saw it.

And I realized that I had been working in and around it all the time. In my short sleeve shirt. And my shorts.

Drat.

Poison Ivy. And we have had a great abundance of it this year for some reason.

And so I got out my deathly “kill anything green even the stuff that you don’t want to kill” spray and went to town.

And then I went and got my camera to take pictures.

And as I was backing up to frame the shot just right….

I stepped on the hoe.

Thankfully nothing broke….except perhaps my pride and self-esteem. Which took a severe beating.

And you can bet your bottom dollar that I looked all around to make sure that no one saw my close encounter with the garden equipment.

Yard work isn’t for wimps.

Or people who are slightly uncoordinated.

7 Quick Takes (Vol 128)

It’s FRIDAY! It’s FRIDAY! And that means I get to bore you anew with more blathering vignettes. Just remember to click on the picture to go over to Conversion Diary. But don’t click til you have been bored silly here.

And now, with the speed of the rapidly filling Republican Presidential contender field, here are my Quick Takes.

1.
This has been a week where I remind myself that if I would not go off “half cocked” and would take my time with things then I might save myself some pain.

Monday doing laundry. First heavy day of “the cold” and working on a short fuse. Taking things out of the dryer and dumping them on top. In the process I launch one of HHBL’s biking gloves into the air, end over end in slow motion.

NOOOOOOOOOOO

And I watch helplessly as it zooms behind the dryer where all the lint elephants reside.

Crud! (SURE that is what I said. Why do you have that look of doubt on your face?)

So, I have to pull the dryer out a bit to get the glove.

But because of the dryer vent that is attached to the wall by the long hose I can’t pull it out all the way so I have to sort of hoist myself up onto the dryer and reach in.

Reaching….can’t quite get it….stretch….Not gonna happen. I just didn’t have the arm length. And as I heaved myself back over the dryer my right index finger slid along some sharp metal surface on the back of the dryer and……..slice! Not a deep cut but one that ran right across the pad of my index finger.

And there in lies the problem. Because I often use my right index finger when knitting. I cannot tell you how many times this week I have managed to stick a very pointy nickel plated needle right into that cut.

2.
I have changed my mind about The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson.

Several months ago I gave the book a try. Everyone was raving about it so I thought what the heck, I haven’t read any fiction for a while.

I didn’t make it past the first chapter. It. Was. So. Slow. And. Boring.

So I returned the book to the library and went on with life and other books.

But this week….this week I listened to it in audio book form from the library.

And I couldn’t stop listening to it until I was finished.

Now I will say that there was some stiff stuff in there and when you are listening to the book you can’t just “skip” over the parts that are icky. But other than that I loved it.

I have downloaded the second book and will start listening to that once I can get a handle on my ever expanding podcast load.

3.
Today will be a busy day. Fun but busy.

I will be having breakfast on the deck (not my deck) with some dear friends. We see each other all the time and during the “school year” we meet once a month for breakfast and prayer requests but we haven’t been all together for a bit so this will be fun.

And then I am returning home and making dill pickles.

I have 14 pounds of cukes sitting on the counter just crying to be bathed in a brine and then canned.

My mouth is watering already.

And then it is also Pizza Friday so I will be firing up the oven to “ surface of the sun” temps for our weekly “pie”.

4.
I made Cinnamon Swirl Raisin bread on Tuesday, two loaves of it.

They are both gone now.

In fact, we went through the first loaf in just under 24 hours.

I need to make more.

We do love our homemade bread (all that we have around here) and this stuff makes the most killer morning toast.

5.
Shoe Queen goes back to the place of higher learning next week. So we have been having some “old family favorites” for meals before she goes back.

Do you have foods or food combos that you ate growing up that make no sense really when looked at but that you love?

One of our favorites is something that involves these two things.

When I was growing up this was one of my favorite things to eat with dinner.

A dollop of cottage cheese nestled in canned pears. This just tastes SO good to me. And I really am not all that fond of cottage cheese by itself. But in combo with canned pears, which I am also not particularly fond of when eaten plain, DELICIOUS.

Next week we are going to have to have Hot Chicken Salad. With potato chips on top.

The mouth waters.

6.
We are over run with hummingbirds. And hummingbird wars happen regularly.

They will converge on one of the feeders and circle it an each other, buzzing and throwing out hummingbird trash talk.

Can’t you beat your wings any faster? You are as slow as a crow!

Yeah? Well your mom was a Robin!

You take that back!

Make me!

And then they are zooming around trying to chase each other off the feeder. And that is when hummingbird #3, who has just been hanging back, zooms in an feeds to his or her hearts content.

I have three feeders out so there is plenty to go around. And they are managing to drain all three feeders before the week is out.

7.
I continue to cough. I don’t have anything else to write other than that. It is getting better slowly but it is still there.

Why is it that summer colds seem worse when they are really not. Maybe because it is just that, summer, and you don’t want to feel sick. You expect colds in the winter time. It gives you an excuse to stay inside in your old sweat pants, have endless cups of tea and watch all the episodes of The Real Housewives of New Jersey and Hoarders: Buried Alive that you have on the DVR.

Not that I would know anything about that mind you.

Summer colds just seem so unfair.

See you next week when I will hopefully be snot free.

Is It Christmas Yet?

Several years ago, when TSiL entered the family, I let you guys in on the Christmas Stocking tradition we have going on here at Chez Knit. And since it is still summer around here I thought we should talk about Christmas.

That is how my mind works. Never satisfied with the weather that we have at the moment.

But knitters start thinking about Christmas right about this time because we need to start thinking about and contemplating what, if anything, we are going to knit for people. It is a dilemma hotly contested in the knitting world, whether to knit for others. And if you knit for others whether they should be deemed “deserving” of a hand knit item. If you are going to put a boat load of time and effort into something that you knit as a gift you want the person who is getting the gift to appreciate it and like it.

That must be why I belong to the Selfish Knitters group on Ravelry.

But I digress.

It is the time of year when I start thinking about whether I need to make a Christmas Stocking for any new member of the family. Now that I can decently make one of the darn things.

This year……

I am making four of them.

And I hang my head in utter and abject shame when I say that three of them really should have been done LAST year but weren’t. And my Cousin Jon’s wife Kathy was very gracious about letting me off the hook on that.

But I am making progress.

Asher’s stocking is DONE!

And it only took me……6 months to complete.

OK, FINE. I did start it in March and then lost my stocking mojo in April. It sat there, on my sewing desk mocking me. And there were other things to knit, like SOCKS! But finally early this week I put on my big girl panties and got to knittin’ and it went swiftly.

But I am not done.

I cast on Hannah’s stocking yesterday. I worked until I couldn’t work no more and made a rather egregious mistake that I had to slowly “tink” back (knit spelled backwards, get it). And so I put it down and went to bed.

And when Hannah’s is done then there are stockings to make for……

Thomas and Levi.

Have I forgotten anyone else?

I really need to actually write this pattern up in a formal way rather than relying on my mismatched notes.

But that is for another day.