A Little This, A Little That

Our phone rang a little after noon on Friday and it was Bruder Bear saying he was in Riggins just coming off a fishing trip with some friends and wondered if he could come up for a visit for a day or so.  Yay!!  So Dan and I hopped to and got a little house work done (left undone for too long due to my cold and Dan's knee) and we were mostly ready when he arrived about three-thirty.  We ate out that night (ref. clean house instead of cook...) but I came up with some plans for Saturday night.  I'm always okay with breakfast and lunch, but dinner often stymies me when I have company, even someone as easy at Bruder Bear.  

My plan?  One Hour Swedish Limpa Bread from Foodie with Family and Chicken Wild Rice Soup from Pressure Cooking Today.  The boys kept busy with discussions of hunting and reloading and then, thanks to BB's scouting skills, left to buy some rims for winter tires for the new SUV we purchased last summer.  I have tried to do some preliminary work for my cooking these days, so I gathered ingredients and chopped away on onions, celery, and carrots (which I have learned is called mirepoix in the fancy cooking world) and chicken. Having all these things plus the other ingredients at the ready is called mise en place.  All these French terms!!  But I am becoming a true believer in mise en place, it keeps me from leaving something out and I'm much more relaxed when it comes to actually doing the cooking.

The bread recipe truly is quick although an hour and fifteen minutes is probably closer to the truth for me.  AND it makes two lovely sized loaves!  Win, win!  We decided when I first made it earlier this year that we weren't fans of the fennel seeds, but otherwise I follow the recipe exactly.  And oh! the smell of the orange peel.  Mmmm!  We had leftovers from the first loaf toasted with breakfast this morning and it was delicious with a little butter and peach jam.  Dan said it was as good as dessert. 

Our beautiful days seem to be coming to an end with light rain and clouds in the forecast for the next week or so.  Fine with me!  Makes it all the more cozy.  We've had the fireplace burning merrily many nights.

The front porch is very festive for the season.  We've gathered in a few more pumpkins this year thanks to some friends who had leftovers after a Fall Festival at their Christmas tree farm.  We usually have one, but I'm loving the look of more!

I realized as I looked at this picture I just took that I need to take down the birdhouse and put up the Indian corn!  So I'm off to do that before I forget.  ♥ 

A Little Sock Tale

It seems that every year when the seasons change in the fall, I fall prey to a cold.  And that's what's happened again.  Arghhh!!!  So, I decided to make the best of it and rest and knit. I had started those oyster tweed socks and so I knit, napped, and knit. I usually don't have much problem with socks because I've knit so many of them at this point (about a dozen pair over the years which equals twenty four individual socks), but this sock was soon to become my nemesis.  

Saturday night I thought I'd reached the spot to begin decreasing for the toe, so I began the process.  I stayed home from church yesterday because I didn't want to infect anyone, and besides, I had no voice.  As I continued my decreasing, I suddenly realized the sock looked a little short.  What?!?  I grabbed a previously knit sock to compare and sure enough, I'd started an inch too soon.  Nothing for it but to pull out all four needles and unravel, hoping I could catch all my stitches back up onto the needles.  It took some doing, and I can tell (but hopefully no one else will be able to), but I was finally able to get back to knitting round and round, for that extra inch.

Last night, Dan was gone for a while and I was back to decreasing, and almost to the end, when a stitch slipped off the needle and defied my attempt to get it back on, instead running down a row or two, taking some decreases with it.  Nothing to do but rip back a few rows again.  And in the process of picking up my needles to put the stitches back on, one fell through the crack between cushions on the sofa.  Oh no!!  

You see, our sofa and loveseat are both Lazy Boys and that means they are recliners.  I'm guessing the sofa weighs several hundred pounds, and it sits right down on the ground, no legs.  In front of it sits our big coffee table, which has drawers in it full of books and CDs (I know, why?  We haven't played them in years, but...).  All this to say that the coffee table is very hard to move.  I managed to get the end by the lost needle shoved a little way from the sofa, activated the recliner, and with a flashlight in hand, got down on the floor to start looking.  And I could see nothing but a lot of mechanical pieces.  I attempted to crawl back out of my little space and for a brief moment thought I was stuck, but I made it.  I left the flashlight on and tried peering down between the cushions from above and finally saw what I thought was the needle.  The crack was far too tight for my hand to reach through.  

I had an idea though.  Dan has a magnet on the end of a swivel handle for jobs such as this so I headed down to his workshop to fetch it where I could not find it.  Forced to admit defeat, I went back to the sock and was able to thread all the stitches back onto the four needles I had left, and then waited for Dan to get home. I couldn't actually knit because I needed that fifth needle.  (I do admit to some, um, frustration over this whole little fiasco.)

Well, needless to say, my hero arrived home, found the magnet thingy, moved the coffee table further out, and was able to retrieve the needle.  I carefully finished up the knitting and decided to leave the last, harrowing (at least for me) grafting of the ends using the Kitchener stitch until this morning.  

Such an innocent looking sock, and its friend, the crack.

I'm blaming the whole episode on my cold and my fuzzy head. (Cue Meg Ryan saying to Tom Hanks in You've Got Mail, that she has a cold and, "My head's all fuzzy.")  That's my story and I'm sticking to it. I have started the mate.  Apparently I'm a glutton for punishment.  Cough.  Cough, cough.

Knitting Ponderings

It's starting to look like a sock!

Knitting is very conducive to pondering.  At least the type of knitting I do, which leads to a pondering in itself. Take my sock knitting.  I have several patterns for socks which have some pretty stitch patterns knit into them.  Every time I start a new pair of socks, I get out all the patterns, look them over, and then decide to use the one I always do.  They're just plain and simple socks. That's what I like to wear--plain and simple socks, plain and simple clothes. So why do I have those other patterns?? Because I think I should make them because other knitters are making them.  A case for pondering.  And I think I've finally come to the conclusion that it's okay to just knit plain socks.  I am who I am! (She said with determination.) 

So, as I knit my plain Jane socks in all kinds of yarns, I can let my mind wander because I'm simply knitting in rounds, knit, knit, knit.  Not even any purl stitches until I get to the heel flap.  I'm free to ponder life, plan new projects, and even decide what to have for dinner.  It's my kind of multi-tasking.  As I said, I'm a simple person.  

I can actually relate sock knitting to life.  There are those times when all is well, which equates to those rows of just knitting round and round.  Then there are those times when more attention is needed to keep things going well, in life and in socks.  When casting on, the stitches are to be transferred to four needles and kept from twisting.  Care must be taken then, and so it goes when life throws in something new.  

As I knit along, every now and then I need to measure.  Am I getting close to where I need to be for the next step?  The same goes for life--a little stop and check now and then can keep us moving where we need to go.  

And then there's the heel--adding the heel flap, turning the heel, and then picking up the stitches for the gusset and working them down.  Adding and subtracting to make things come out right in the end.  We have to do it all the time as we move through life.  

And at last, we come to the toe of the sock.  We subtract stitches and then we have to do some intricate work to join the last stitches together so our toes don't stick out.  I find I have to talk out loud to myself, repeating the steps until all is done, sometimes loudly to block out whatever is going on in the background.  And don't we have to do that, too, when we come up against especially tricky times in life?  I think it's called prayer.  

A Fun Project

I subscribe to BH&G's American Patchwork and Quilting Magazine, so somewhere along the line, I also liked them on Facebook.  Some interesting projects show up from time to time and I'm faithful to download them and stash them in a folder on my computer and promptly forget about them.  But a few weeks ago a cute and simple project appeared, and after downloading, I actually printed out the instructions and took them to my sewing room.  

There was a wedding shower coming up at church, so I decided on a themed gift featuring the project and sunflowers.  I already had an extra sunflower hot pad and I had recently finished a sunflower yellow dishcloth. Enter the project, a tea towel, and I would have a good start on a present.  I machine embroidered an appliqued sunflower on a white flour sack type dishtowel and added the trim from the project, bought a Pyrex baking dish and voilà, I was a happy gift giver!  And no, I didn't take a picture.  

But! When Dan had his knee surgery, our friend Tina came to visit bearing a huge basket of goodies for him--oranges, ingredients for chicken soup, a bag of coffee, and a baguette.  We've kind of adopted Tina since her husband Steve's death two and half years ago, and she wanted to bring her "Dad" some love.  I realized later that I had kept her basket and decided that it needed to be returned with some goodies in it.  So I made another towel and dishcloth.  Here's the towel:

And here's a link to the instructions.  The instructions call for cutting 4 1/2" squares to make the prairie points, which I did for the first one, but I thought they were a little big, so I cut 3 1/2" squares for this one and I like them better.  

When I first found the project, I went looking for flour sack type towels here in town and was dismayed to find they were rather expensive.  Three towels for $15.99 seemed to be a little over the top.  I searched on Amazon and finally found these.  I paid $16.99 for a dozen, but now that I check, I see that they are $21.99! Amazon's prices vary so much from day to day!  But even at that, they are much cheaper than the five plus dollars each they sell for locally.  

It's a fun project, and both the bride-to-be and Tina loved their gifts.  I'm excited to make more.  I can see Christmas themed ones, Americana ones, etc.  The prairie points are a great way to use up small scraps. Let the stitching continue!!  ♥

Saturday

I know that we're retired and all, but there's still something about Saturdays that makes them special.  I made a coffee cake this morning that I haven't made in quite some time.  Isn't it strange how some things just disappear off the mental menu list?  The recipe is from the quite substantial cookbook that came with my very first microwave, back about 1981.  It was a GE and of course it was huge.  Anyway, this recipe has stood the test of time and I'll share it with you.

Microwave Coffee Cake

1 1/2 c. Bisquick

1/4 c. sugar

1/2 c. milk

1 egg

2 T. oil

Topping:

1/3 c. Bisquick

1/3 c. brown sugar

2 T. butter

1 tsp. cinnamon

Mix Bisquick and sugar.  Beat milk, oil, and egg together and add.  Mix well, by hand.  Pour into greased 8" round dish.  Blend topping ingredients until crumbly; sprinkle over coffee cake.  Microwave 5-7 minutes (although in my newest one, 4 1/2 does it).  

Couldn't be easier, or quicker, and it's just perfect.  It's often made at Ann's house, too.

I finished my socks and they're on my feet today.  And that cute little knit pumpkin?  A present from Ann last Thanksgiving.  

And I've started another pair.  I think I'm in sock addiction right now!  I'm loving this Oyster tweed from Knit Picks.  

We had frost yesterday morning, and while the sun makes its appearance almost every day, it's cool, cool weather.  The trees continue to respond!

Dan invited me out to lunch today and we went to Subway.  We haven't eaten there in a long time and we discovered their rotisserie chicken.  We ate it on their flat bread and enjoyed every last bite.  What a fun thing to do on the spur of the moment!  

And now I'm taking my half-finished hot chocolate and heading for the sofa and my knitting needles.  Happy weekend!!  ♥

Just Stuff

It's a cold, damp day here at the resort.  The kind of day that makes me want to read for about five minutes and then curl up under my blanket and take a nap!  Which I did.  We have leftover Summer Squash Skillet for dinner made with the last of the zucchini and crookneck from the garden.  It wasn't a very good year for our plantings but we did get some squash.  

Meanwhile, the poplars in the backyard are in full fall color.  So beautiful!!

Carpet of gold!

The boxelder tree outside our bedroom has also burst into color.  It amazes me each year.

Inside, Dan has been continuing his exercises.  A visit to the orthopedist this morning left him with a big smile when he was told he was six weeks ahead of schedule!  Here's a photo I snapped the other morning of him working at getting the last degrees of straightness in that knee.  His right leg, the one with the new knee, is 3/8" longer than his left, always has been, and because of that and his knee problem, has probably not been straight in fifty years!  But Dan is determined to get those last few degrees (less than 5) beat!

He hangs his legs over the edge of the bed and then uses his left foot to push down on his right foot for ten minutes three times a day.  (He says it's very boring!)

We went to Keaton's soccer games on Thursday and Saturday.  They won both games and we spectators froze!!  There we all sat, huddled in our chairs under blankets, with heavy coats, mittens, scarves and hats. And it's only early October!  I felt bad for the boys out there in their shorts and jerseys. Keat did have on Under Armour leggings and long sleeved shirt under his uniform.  But still!!!  (Cam says it's kind of strange to just be an observer after all his years of playing.)

I'm just setting the heel in my second sock.  With all our cold weather, I've been wearing ones I've previously knit every day and they are keeping me nice and toasty warm.  

It's fall, y'all!  

Update on the Grandsons

Since I missed over a year in my blogging, I want to catch my readers up on my grandsons who are featured here now and then.  They are growing up!

Grandson Ryan, the oldest of our four, son of Matt and Amy, graduated from high school in May of 2017, and is currently a sophomore at Notre Dame.  Here's a photo of him giving his valedictory speech:

That same spring, our youngest, Daniel, son of Ann and Eric, graduated from kindergarten.  Here he is in his little graduation gown (be still my heart!):

And this year, Cameron, Ann and Eric's oldest, graduated.  He also was valedictorian of his class.  We have some bright grandsons!  Cameron has adopted an excellent British tradition and is taking a gap year and working while he ponders his college major.  

And lest we forget Keaton, Ann and Eric's second, here he is receiving an award at the Awards Ceremony last spring as he finished his sophomore year of high school:

And it hardly needs to be said that each of these boys (with the exception of Daniel--for now!) tower over their Grammy.  Waaay over!  I sure am blessed by each of these wonderful young men.