Sorry, Jell-O

I was invited to DS's for St. Patrick's Day supper and was asked to bring dessert so I unearthed Mom's green Depression Glass pudding cups, made a batch and a half of real homemade chocolate pudding, bought a can of Reddi Wip, and a box of Andes candies.  (I'm not a mint fan but the rest of the family likes it so I tucked a mint into the little swirl of whipped cream on top of the pudding.  It was well-received.)






The pudding recipe is from a booklet that was shrink-wrapped to a Hershey's Cocoa can in the late 1970s and is the simplest and most delicious chocolate pudding ever.  No, really.  It only takes about 15 minutes to make, is rich and creamy, and never disappoints.  When I'd filled all of the pudding cups there was a small amount left in the pan so I made the supreme sacrifice and ate it to make sure that the pudding quality was high enough for my beloved family to eat.  I am happy to say that it was.







This morning I noticed that the garden has really emerged from the snow over the last couple days.  Pretty soon I'll be able to gather up last year's bales into circles of wire to use to grow this year's potatoes.  I saw on Instagram this last week that a straw bale gardener in Virginia had built some wire circles about bushel basket size, filled them with last year's well-composted bales, and will grow potatoes in them.  I can do that.  Also, depending on the weather, next month I can get fresh bales and get them lined up for conditioning and ready for planting in early May.  I just have to figure out what I want to plant.

On my way home from the Y today I stopped at Office Depot to pick up the knitting books I dropped of last Friday to have coil bound.  It costs just over $3 per book to have the spine cut off and coil binding added and it makes them so much easier to use.  However.  I flipped through the smallest of them and noticed that the pages were upside down.  Thinking that they'd just mixed up the covers I turned it around to check.  Nope, the first 12 pages were right side up and the rest are upside down.  I noticed it in the store and told the clerk that I could deal with it.  Which I easily can but when I got home I figured out the problem.  From page 13 on they punched the holes in the wrong side of the pages.  I don't know how that happened unless they put in about that many pages to punch at a time, the clerk got interrupted, and when she came back to the job flipped the pages.  It's kind of funny and doesn't hurt the usefulness book.  

Speaking of old knitting info I heard of a new (to me) way to do Fair Isle knitting which is two-color knitting, like those yoke sweaters from Sweden, etc.  The link sent me to a YouTube video and then to a seemingly defunct Canadian yarn company.  On the company website there was an instructional DVD that I tried to click on but nothing happened so I kept searching and finally found a single used copy of it on Amazon.  I ordered it.  (of course I did)  And it came yesterday.  I watched the very beginning of it just to make sure that it played and it's a festival of wildly colorful and oversize sweaters from the early 2000s.  I can't wait to watch the how-to part and give it a try.







This morning I finished March Preemie Hat #3 then made and attached the pompoms.  After supper I worked on the Painted Sky Brioche hat.  The gray solid yarn ran out quickly so now the solid is white.  I like them both and hope the blue variegated runs out before the very tippy-top of the hat so it looks striped rather than like I ran out.  Hmm, maybe I'll knit a couple inches in the blue and then a couple inches in the brick... that might work.






17 March--Tropical Obsession. 

The little black bird with the bright yellow breast stood on the glass-topped patio table, its delicate feet spread, its bright eye seeming to judge how far Nola could be trusted. It turned its head from side to side, long tongue flicking in and out of its curved narrow beak, working up the courage to scoop up the grains of sugar Nola had spilled when sweetening her tea. “Come on, little bird,” she said, “I won’t hurt you.” She picked up her cup, which caused the bird to fly to the safety of a nearby palm, sitting on a frond chattering its displeasure. But fear didn’t keep the small Bananaquit from getting what it wanted for long. She made up her mind to be more like it from then on.

There's nothing on my calendar tomorrow or Tuesday so I don't HAVE to do anything... except go to the Y on Tuesday... and it feels like the height of luxury, even though I'm retired and can clear my calendar any day I want to really.  I've decided that that's the real luxury of being this age.
--Barbara