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Time Consuming

Hedgehog mittens

Recently I’ve gotten back in to knitting and after making a number of baby blankets I decided it was time to break out of my knitting rut and try something new. I discovered the Morehouse Farm knitting yarn website and flipped for the cuteness of their “critter kits.” It took all my restraint not to buy one of everything.

I decided to start with two kits and see how it went. My first project was the hedgehog mittens, which I stupidly thought would be a quick project to knock off over the holidays, in time for JD’s fifth birthday. Did I not notice the cute little quills and wonder how they were made? The pattern is relatively simple but each quill is the equivalent of nine stitches in one. Can you say time-consuming-pain-in-the-***?

Added to that, is the fun of knitting with tiny double-pointed needles (my least favorite type of needle to use.) You also have to really pay attention to the pattern. I kept screwing up, so there was a fair amount of ripping and swearing involved, mostly because of the tight little stitches involved. But it was a good learning experience and I was very happy with the end result. Not bad for my first pair of mittens.

In comparison, this dinosaur hat was a breeze and took no time at all. In fact, it seemed to take longer to sew the points on.

Dinosaur capIt was a huge hit with the four-year-old recipient and I think she’s been wearing it non-stop since I gave it to her a week ago.

Next up, a scarf for myself.

Jim Fergus  (1998)

Told as a series of journal entries, this work of fiction takes the premise that in 1875, when Cheyenne Chief Little Wolf proposed assimilating his culture with the whites by having a thousand white women “marry” into the tribe, President Grant agreed. The narrator, May Dodd, joins a trainload of women from the fringe of society (convicts, the mentally ill, spinsters, and prostitutes) traveling west to meet their fate. Fergus spins a good story, impressively conjuring up a vivid time and place as well as the mind-set of a woman thrown into a forbidding situation. An interesting “you are there” perspective on a sad chapter in this country’s Native American history.

Farm Box Dinner 1/20/12

It was an evening of new recipes across the board. First up, white bean soup with crispy prosciutto. Perfect for a snowy winter night.

White bean soup with crispy prosciutto

In our never-ending quest to find tasty ways to eat Brussels sprouts, we tried another salad recipe, this one includes carmelized red onion and mozzarella cheese.

Shaved Brussels sprouts and mozzarella salad

And for dessert, a cake that uses one of our new favorite ingredients, pomegranate molasses butter cake. I took this photo the next day, when I had a slice for breakfast with homemade chai tea, a winning combination.

Chai tea and pomegranate butter cake

Keeper recipes all.

Feet First | 141Kate Atkinson (2010)

This most recent entry in the Jackson Brodie series is one of my favorites. Jackson’s life continues to be a fractured mess as he tracks down the biological parents of an Australian client, all the while grappling with the ambivalence about his own second-go at fatherhood. PI Brodie shares center stage with a new character, Tracy Waterhouse, a retired cop working mall security. One day on the job, Tracy makes a rash decision involving a crack addict’s five-year-old daughter, setting in motion the book’s most compelling story arc. As events play out, Jackson and Tracy are each confronted with a haunting murder in their respective pasts, told in flashback. All these threads, including an aging actress on the verge of dementia who’s closing out her career on a soap opera, are deftly woven into a page-turner concerned with motherless children and latent parental love. One of my favorite reads of 2011.

Happy New Year!

Tapping the first growler of 2012
Well, hello there stranger! Remember me?

Yeah, long time no post. My new year’s resolution is to update the blog once every two months. (Joke.) Sad to say, that would be an improvement as of late. Can you believe that at one point, not that long ago, I was able to post to this blog ONCE A DAY FOR A YEAR?!

The new year seems as good a time as any to turn the trend and take up the blog again. Lord knows I’ve got a lot of catching up to do; book reviews to post and my photos and travel journal from France for starters.

I was in Kentucky over Christmas (more on that later as well) and stopped at one of my favorite places for beer, The Beer Trappe in Lexington. Resisted the urge to buy one of everything and instead limited myself to a mixed six-pack and a growler of Unibraue Trois Pistoles. We cracked open the growler today in honor of 2012 and I’m enjoying it with friends. It’s a dark, peppery, malty brew and I really like it. I would definitely get it again. There you go, my first recommendation of the new year.

Well, happy new year to all who (used to) regularly visit here. I wish you and yours a happy and healthy year filled with simple pleasures and great adventures.

Cheers!

Fading Fall

Peak fall color is rolling through my backyard in stages. The serviceberry began turning a few weeks ago and has now nearly lost all its leaves. Those that are left are a final flash of  peachy red.

Following our recent cold snap, the witchhazel suddenly transformed into a wall of bright yellow.

It's the end of October and my roses are far out-performing the mums

In my backyard, the blooms of summer are out-performing the flowers of fall.

Gotta Fly

Ladybug Girl is in the house.

A bientot.

 

Quick Review: Red (2010)

There’s plenty of exploding things and gunfire to keep you awake and it’s fun to see the cast of veteran actors (I won’t call them senior citizens) as leads in this all-out action spy romp. Bruce Willis is at his bad-ass best as a retired CIA operative who proves he hasn’t lost his touch when team-after-team of geared-up government hit squads are dispatched to take him out. He gets the band back together (Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich, and Helen Mirren) and they take it on the road, trading bullets with bad guys while they rush to discover who’s trying to eliminate them and why.

Willis is perfect in this role (which, at this point, he could do in sleep) and Malkovich has the most to do as a character dealing with the lasting effects of years of mind control experiments. While it was fun to see Mirren drop her Martha Stewart retirement veneer to pick up an automatic weapon, I thought her part a bit weak. And thankfully, Mary-Louise Parker, as the love interest unwittingly dragged on the adventure, wasn’t nearly as annoying as I often find her to be.

Saturday 3 pm: Contemporary
My Saturday Three P-M photo series sure took a hit while I was busy shooting my feet every day. I’m fairly certain that I have a number of Saturday photos sitting in limbo but I don’t have the time or inclination to dig them up now. Maybe snowy winter day when I have nothing else to do. Ha!

I took this shot of the Trump Tower from the el platform, heading home after taking another downtown architecture tour; this one focused on modern skyscrapers. Obviously, the tour had changed quite a bit since I last took it, what, maybe ten years ago. It was a very comprehensive and interesting tour and I now finally understand the difference between modern and post-modern architecture.

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