A Perfect Day for Looking at the Bay

Today I drove up to Door County to spend the day with my friend, KS.  We met at Bargains Unlimited, the thrift shop in Sister Bay where I scored 2 turtlenecks and a handful of packets of bias tape for binding necklines and armholes of the clothes I've been sewing.  Then we carpooled over to The Creamery where she ordered lamb gyros and I ordered a flatbread BLT then we swapped half of our sandwiches.  There are no photos of the food.  It didn't stay on the plates long enough to pose.

Once we'd renewed our memberships in the Mickey Mouse Clean Plate Club (I think I might have been a charter member) we drove to the hidden marina behind the Pioneer Store in Ellison Bay where we plonked our chairs in a patch of sunshine and knitted and chatted the afternoon away.  Ahhh.  One cool thing that just tickles my dorky self is that as we sat down I noticed a freighter sailing down the bay and when I drove up onto the tallest bridge in Green Bay, 80-some miles south, about 5 hours later there was the freighter just sailing into the mouth of the bay.  I don't know why that made me happy but it did.  Like I said, I'm a dork.  *shrugs*



Yesterday I got out my clips and attached the parts of the Montparnasse Eco cardi together.  I suspect that the top of the sweater back is a bit wide but I think I can do a little skootching it in when I pick up collar stitches once the parts are all sewn together.  I have plenty of the red yarn left so the collar will be in red to tie it all together.  I'm going to like this, I can tell.





I finished the toe of the Reds Brown Sheep Slipper Sock today.  When I tried it on I realized that I added an extra row at the toe so it looks a lot like there's a nipple at the end of the foot.  Good thing I haven't woven in the tail so I can pick it out, frog back that one row, and close it up again.





Then I cast on another Brown Sheep Slipper Sock, this one in Orange & Lemon and using some red/orange/yellow/black variegated for the stripes.  It'll have the same design as the Reds sock but will be different colors.  What?  It'll be a pair, except for the colors.  Trust me.




September 9--Luis Edigio Melendez, Still Life with Melon and Pears.  The fly buzzing drove him mad.  The heat was bad enough but that sound coming at him from every direction was unbearable.  He looked around the room at the others.  None of them showed any sign that they heard the fly.  Was it only him?  Surely someone else heard the incessant sound that rasped his nerves like the coarsest sandpaper.  His hand trembled and his brush left a streak of ultramarine across his painting.  Not a terrible thing if he worked in oils but this was watercolor and it was a catastrophe.

There's a Packer game tonight.  There was a flyover.  I missed it.  Drat.  I also think I sunburned my lips a bit today.  They feel like it but I don't remember the sun hitting my face... Oh well, more lip balm.  Yesterday I went downstairs and started the laundry. The first load of sheets washed just fine but when I went down to fold the sheets out of the dryer and put the next load in, the washer was full of water and the timer dial was ticking along slowly and nothing was happening.  Really???  I need this now????  So tomorrow I call Clyde the appliance fixit guy and hope he can fix it or I guess I'll be buying a new washer this week.  Sheesh.  Good thing I have a lot of clean undies.
--Barbara

Weed Free

At least for the moment.  I need to get me some Roundup and scald the plants that I couldn't uproot.  Hmm, scald... maybe I should just pour boiling water on them instead of chemical poison.  I'll have to think on it.  This morning I was outside starting to stuff the weeds into the corner of the back yard in my informal compost area when LJ from next door called out asking if I wanted to load all my weeds into the back of his pickup to take to the yard waste.  Yes!  The next thing I knew he asked from behind me if his truck was in the right place.  He had stopped staining his deck and drove over, then backed his truck alongside the garden so I could drag the piles of weeds over on a tarp and load them up.  Then he went back to staining saying, "Call me when you're ready."  I got it all loaded then drove his truck back to his place when he said that he needed to go get more stain so he'd just drop the stuff off.  Nice man.  Look at what I uncovered.  This is a sedum, I think, and it's got pale pink and white flowers on it.  It was totally hidden by the weeds.  I think Dad planted this.

I got the latest batch of forms filled out and sent in, these were so I keep getting Durwood's Gillette pension which comes from Proctor & Gamble now since they bought Gillette a few years back.  Honestly these people are form crazy, first there's the Pension Dept. sending forms twice (different forms each time), then the life insurance people, and finally the health insurance lady.  I called her yesterday trying to make heads or tails out of a paragraph in the letter I got from them last Friday saying "if your spouse was A, then B" in about 5 different ways with 5 different possible configurations of insurance coverage.  Turns out nothing will change for 12 months then shortly before the end I'll get a letter telling me which "if, then" category I fall into.  Reassuring... not.  I also found out today that I can't change the house deed on my own, that I need an attorney to get and process the form.  All I need to do is show up with the property tax receipt from last year and a copy of the death certificate--and my checkbook, of course.  Good thing I got 10 copies of the death certificate, they're a hot commodity, everybody wants one.

I sent the back of the Montparnasse Eco cardi through the spin cycle this morning, then patted it into shape to dry.  As soon as it's dry I'll check online as to how best to sew the welt seams (that just means they stick up on the outside), get the pieces arranged, and start turning pieces of flat knitting into a sweater.


 
Tonight at Friday Night Knitting I added the heel flap, heel turn, and gusset to the Reds Brown Sheep Slipper Sock.  I'm going to really like this one, so much that I might have to make a second one, not exactly the same but with similar yarn so there'll be a pair-like twosome of them.  I know I have other colors of this yarn in my stash...

September 7--Ernest Walbourn, The Bluebell Glade.  Down in the hollow where the stream meanders between clumps of river beech Dale sat staring at his knees.  There were grass and dirt stains on them and there was a tear in the left one right below his kneecap.  He felt stinging there too so he'd probably scraped it when he fell.

Man, I'm tired.  Of course I did drag all those weeds across the yard and into a pickup truck which was hot and sweaty work--again.  Then I took Durwood's guns to a dealer and sold them and all the other gun stuff he had.  I'm relieved to have it all out of the house.  I still feel numb about the whole thing.  I'm sure grief is coming but for now I'm just tired.
--Barbara

A Quiet Day After All

I got an early morning text saying that I needed to be on Meemaw duty today so my day narrowed appreciably but I did have a little warm (extra-warm) body to snuggle with.  Lots of stories got read, lots of birds and chipmunks were fed and giggled over, and we were lucky enough to be sitting quietly on the patio when a hummingbird came to the nectar feeder.  We were amazed by it.

This evening I had the last, the very last, Mediterranean Chickpea Salad topped with a couple ounces of grilled chicken.  As much as I like that salad, it'll be a while before I make it again.  I think I've made a double batch twice in the last month.  'Snuff.



After supper I knitted the next red onto the slipper sock.  Next comes a charcoal stripe and the third red.  I'm just winging it.  Hope it doesn't look like the dog's dinner when I'm done.


September 6--Antonio Pollaiolo, Profile Portrait of a Woman.  She hated her nose.  When she bound up her hair her forehead was too high and her nose had a bump like it had been broken.  She pleaded to have a nose job but Papa said she had the family nose and changing it would be a slap in the face to everyone who had ever been born.  On the entire planet.  She had to admit that when the whole family got together that there were a lot of examples of her nose but that didn't make her like it.  She wondered if she really broke it if the doc would straighten it out.

Since I was unavoidably detained today first thing tomorrow I'll deal with the weeds I pulled yesterday and I want to crank out a little pre-meeting knitting guild newsletter just to remind people that there's a meeting next Thursday.  That should keep me occupied.
--Barbara

Oh, Man, I'm Tired

You know, this lot doesn't look very wide when you're just looking at it, but when you're sidestepping down it yanking out weeds like you're in the Olympics, it's wide.  The mature part of me thought I would weed a section or two every day for a week and get it done without exhausting myself.  The stronger part of me, the stubborn part, figured that since I was already hot and sweaty and filthy I might as well keep going until I finished, then tomorrow I can gather up all of the branches (I trimmed the tree too because it kept trying to poke me in the face when I mowed the other day) and weeds and either stuff them into my compost corner or borrow LJ and his truck for a quick trip to the yard waste place.

 


Oh, and these ants bite you when you yank weeds out of their house.  See them on the orange handles?




 

Last week OJ found an empty suet feeder that I left lying on the patio and he wanted to put some bird food in it so we dug out some small cobs of corn and unhooked a little wind chime so he could hang it.  It took a couple days but I noticed yesterday that one of the chipmunks found it.






 
I paged through my WW recipe binder this morning and found a few recipes to make.  I did some grocery shopping after my haircut and picked up a rotisserie chicken so I could make Cauliflower Puree with BBQ Rotisserie Chicken for supper.  It's so good and so easy.  You rice 12 oz. of raw cauliflower in the food processor in two batches, dump it into a saucepan with 1/2 cup of cornmeal, and 1 1/3 cups of chicken broth.  


You bring it to a boil, stirring constantly, then simmer it for 10 minutes until it's thickened and the cauliflower's cooked.  Take it off the heat and stir in 3/4 c. of shredded cheddar cheese, salt and pepper.


 


Keep that warm while you stir up some BBQ sauce with tomato sauce, yellow mustard, catsup, chili powder, onion and garlic powders.  Cook that for a few minutes to thicken a bit, then stir in 12 oz. of cut up rotisserie chicken and heat through.  3/4 cup of the puree into a bowl, 3/4 cup of the chicken mixture, top with sliced scallions.  Devour.  (3 WW Freestyle points/serving)



 

Since I finished the cardi back and it's still drying (actually it's still soaking) I needed something to knit so I cast on another one of those big yarn/big needles slipper socks.  This one I'll make look less scrappy and more like I planned it, which I kind of did.  I'll knit an inch of the charcoal between color changes.  It'll look nice.  Plus it goes fast.  And it won't match the first one.



When I poked the camera out the patio doors to take "before" pictures of the weeds a hummingbird zoomed up to investigate the honeysuckle and I managed to take its picture.  I got a very short video too, very short.  I feel like I should get a prize.  I wish I could print it and show Durwood.



September 5--Frederic Remington, The Smoke Signal.  Two men knelt by the small smoky fire while the third sat on his horse holding the reins of their horses.  News needed to be sent.  From their position atop the hill the smoke rose high enough to be seen by the bands of people on the plains below them.  It was a hot day with hardly any wind so the smoke wasn't snatched and spread out too soon.  The men by the fire were careful not burn the blanket they used to control the smoke.  They had all heard of battles lost because of burned blankets.  None of them wanted to become the name in a cautionary tale, snickered over around a storytelling fire.

I was sure today wouldn't be a weeding day.  Look at how hard it rained this morning but it cleared off so I had plenty of time to inch and sweat my way from one end of the retaining wall to the other wielding my snips and lopping shears when weeds didn't cooperate.  I'm relentless like that.  I plan to take it easy tomorrow.  (and if you believe that, I've got a bridge I can let you have cheap...)
--Barbara

Waiting for a Call Back

I made three important getting-things-done phone calls this morning and had to leave a message for a call back at each one.  So I spent until 3 o'clock hanging around, not doing much, poking around on the internet, waiting for calls.  When none had come by then I got into some yardwork clothes and went out to weed the maple seedlings out of the rock retaining wall on the side of the house.  I hadn't been out for five minutes when it started to sprinkle, then before I could decide to stay out or go in, it started to rain so hard I was soaked before I straightened up.  I backed against the house under the eaves thinking it'd stop as quickly as it started.  Nope.  It kept raining and I was trapped there so I went back to weeding.  I worked for about 20 minutes in the rain and as I finished up the rain petered out and stopped.  *sigh*  My glasses were wet, my clothes were wet, my hair was soaked, and I was glad I had on Crocs instead of leather shoes.  Naturally I didn't take before and after pictures because I didn't want to get my phone wet.  Trust me, it looks better not having foot-tall volunteer maple trees growing out of it at intervals.  Oh, and one of the volunteer trees' leaves had turned red so even though it was in the high 80s and humid as all get-out today, evidently autumn is on the way.  *double sigh*  BTW, only one unsatisfactory call back by 5 PM.  Sheesh.

I did a lot of pile-sorting-through today too.  I cleared off the table a couple times last week and things I remembered seeing had disappeared.  I found expired ads and junk mail, cooking magazines and Joann Fabrics coupons, things I have no idea why I kept and the things I was looking for.  Plus pictures of LC and OJ with Durwood that I told them I'd frame for them to hang in their rooms.  Gotta do that tomorrow.

This evening I finished knitting the last 10 rows of the Montparnasse Eco Cardi back. Tomorrow it goes downstairs for a soak in wool wash, gets the water pressed out of it, then re-pinned to these foam tiles to dry before I sew the fronts, sleeves, and the back together.  After that stitches get picked up all around the opening and a collar band gets knitted on and it's done.  Like I said, it missed being finished by the end of August for Summer of Basics but it'll be done before winter comes.

September 4--Early Byzantine, St. George Slaying a Dragon.  He rode in on a white horse, his gold-trimmed burgundy cape spread behind him like wings.  A small man rode behind him.  George boasted for years about that day.  "No one had ever seen a dragon like that.  It was so bad-tempered that even other dragons were afraid of it."

Okay, maybe inspiration didn't strike last night either but I'm not giving up.  One of these nights the words will flow and I'll be awake to capture them for you.  Constant vigilance.  My cold is better but I always seem to get a cough that interrupts my sleep.  It has arrived.  Robitussin to the rescue!  I hope.
--Barbara

Belated

This evening DS, DIL1, LC, and OJ had a belated birthday party for me.  It was small, just

them, J&HZ, and me but there were brats on the grill, Sunny Hill Farms corn, baked beans, cucumber salad, and chocolate ice cream with homemade cherry sauce on it.  No food remains to have its picture taken but I have my array of gifts to show off.  LC made me a card with a rainbow on it.  J&HZ gave me a jar of refrigerator pickles and 2 jars of homemade jam.  (Did I mention how much I love homemade gifts?)  DS & family gave me a lovely cod card with a Joann Fabrics gift cod inside.  Yay, more fabric!  It was drizzly but we ate out on their patio in the screen room so the kids had playing space and it was lovely.  Thanks, guys, you made this sickly old broad feel very loved. 

I watched the weather report this morning and realized if I wanted to finish mowing the lawn I had to do it today.  The weather guesser said it will rain tonight and tomorrow night so as soon as the grass seemed passably dry I got into my lawn mowing togs, tied a bandana around my head, and spent an hour cutting grass.  I can't tell you what a difference it makes to have the self-propeller working.  On Friday I realized that the front wheels are the ones that the self-propeller engages so when that doesn't work the wheels don't turn freely, there's resistance so it's extra hard to shove the thing around.  Thank you, thank you, thank you, LJ, for fixing it on Saturday.  There are no mowed lawn photos.  It looks the same as before, only shorter.

The usual hummingbird came to the nectar this morning but zoomed off before I snapped her picture.  I managed to keep her in sight and take this photo when she landed in the top of the apple tree.  You can even see her long bill.  (click to embiggen)






 
This is a Hairy Woodpecker... never mind... it's a Downy Woodpecker.  As I typed that first part I thought I should look at the picture again just to make sure and it's a good thing I did because I would have been wrong.  See, the Hairy's bill is twice as long as the Downy's and this one has a short bill.  Whew, that would have been embarrassing.


September 3--Winslow Homer, Eagle Head, Manchester, Massachusetts.  It was scandalous.  Olivia came out of the ocean wearing her day dress and without a bathing cap.  Her clothing clung everywhere it touched.  She flung her hair forward and used her skirt to dry it.  Lifting her skirt exposed her legs all the way above her knees.  Felicity and Mae wore caps that contained their hair and robes that concealed them from neck to feet the way propriety demanded.  Olivia had spent her childhood on an island in the Caribbean.  Obviously things were looser there.

I don't even know what that means.  I'm pleading dullness caused by an excess of snot.  I think I'll go knit.  Last night I got the stitches on the Montparnasse Eco Cardi back decreased to my target number so now all I have to do is knit even for 14 more rows, soak it and block it into shape, and then it'll be time to sew all the pieces together and knit the neck edging.  It won't be done for the Summer of Basics but it'll be done before the snow flies.  Score!
--Barbara

Well, H-E-Double Hockey Sticks

September 1--I went to bed last night with a sore throat and woke up this morning feeling even worse, my sinuses full and aching.  I managed to get myself to Aurora hospital cafe for the last brunch with Durwood's 2000 Census friends.  By the time I got home just before noon I felt wretched...

That's where I ran out of steam last night at about 8:00, ceded defeat, and went to bed.  My friend, Lala, drove up from Milwaukee to spend the night but by the time she got here I was a wreck so we didn't drive to Two Rivers for the kite festival either.  We got Mexican takeout but I only ate two bites before I stopped and she packed up, turned around, and went back home.  I feel bad that I didn't think to waylay her before she drove up but I guess I hoped that a miracle would occur and I'd feel better, not worse.  Sorry, Lala, I'll make it up to you somehow.
 

When I got home from brunch yesterday I had a message on my phone from my knitting friend, HH, telling me to look outside my patio door.  She'd bought me a birthday bouquet at the farmer's market and left it for me with a few ripe plums.  Very nice!

I bought myself a birthday present.  These are Palomino Blackwing pencils and a sharpener.  I've read about them, read that they're the Cadillac or maybe even the Rolls Royce of pencils so I ordered a dozen from Amazon.  They write dark and smooth, I think I'll like them.



 
DD sent me an abacus for a present!  I've wanted one for years and she sent me one.  Now I just have to learn how to use it.  Thanks, DD, I love it.

Last night I thought about making chicken soup today but didn't have the energy to go fetch the ingredients at the grocery but this morning I realized that I had homemade broth, chopped up chicken, a bag of frozen mixed veggies, and some fresh spinach.  In short, everything needed to make a cauldron of soup.  There was only half the meat needed so I thawed, browned, and cut up a package of gizzards that's been hanging around for a while.  Yum.

 September 2--William Stanley Haseltine, Natural Arch at Capri.  The arch made a window out to sea.  The confines of it focused the eye and gave the illusion that what you saw was magnified.  Gabriel stood looking out beyond the island, beyond the horizon.  The wind pushed at his back, the gusts threatening to send him stumbling toward the edge.  Gulls wheeled and cried, diving down to squabble over something washed up on the rocky beach far below.

It isn't fair for a person to be so sick on her birthday.  Not fair.  Not fair.  Not fair. I confess that I did kind of expect a cold to arrive shortly after Durwood died because I've been so focused on not getting one for the last few years so I didn't pass it on to him but now the deck is cleared.  Either that or my germy grandchildren shared.  I know I shouldn't smooch on them but I confess that I just can't resist.  I'll feel better soon.  I've been drinking the traditional Malcolm cold and sore throat remedy (half OJ, half Sprite) since yesterday so I'm bound to get better fast, right?  Durwood always said I would.
--Barbara