Archive for April, 2009

Piddy fowwers, Part I

April 30, 2009 at 8:26 am · Filed under Photography ·Tagged , , , , , , , ,

In yesterday’s post I mentioned Grandma’s redbud trees, but what I *didn’t* mention was just how many she has, and how gorgeous they are.


That one is one of my favorites.  Well, I guess it’s my favorite, now.  A few years ago she lost my old favorite – the one we built “treehouses” in (treehouse = scraps of 2×4 haphazardly nailed to tree).  This new favorite is my grape-eating tree.  I’d pick grapes from her arbor and toss them in a 5-gallon bucket then sit on that big limb of the tree and eat them and spit the seeds back toward the arbor.   Mmmmm warm sunshiney grapes…..

Speaking of the arbor – it’ll be a few weeks ’till the vines come back to life, and a few months ’till they’ve got any fruit, but I still think it’s beautiful as it hibernates:

In the late summer we’ll be going back to pick, assuming there’s a good crop – they all went to waste last year because Grandma was still recovering from her fall.

All the redbuds are in bloom (again, see yesterday), including this little one outside Grandma’s bedroom window:

And the only thing more fun than looking at redbud trees, is taking pictures of them.


It was actually *really* windy on Saturday, and I had a heckuva time getting clear photos – I took about 400 over the course of the day.


But when the wind DOES die down, I maintain that *any* idiot can take a good picture of a flower.

Here, I just experimented – I wanted to see what would happen if I looked down a forked branch with the Autofocus on:

Oh.  That.  Interesting…  (too much emphasis on the branches, though, and not enough on the buds)

It was also pretty overcast out, and aside from the obvious light-diffusion benefit, I think the grey sky makes for a lovely bokeh-d backdrop:

And my favorite of the bunch:

Yup, I do love Grandma’s redbud trees.

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The Old Shed

April 29, 2009 at 8:22 am · Filed under Photography

I spent a lot of time outside when we were at Grandma’s house on Saturday.  It was the first time I’ve been there in the springtime since I’ve gotten my Nikon, and I really enjoyed the chance to photograph all her beautiful trees and flowers.

But that’s not what I’m posting about today – that’ll happen soon.

Today I want to talk about Grandma’s sheds:

(Can I call her Grandma “Two Sheds” Jackson?)

That area in the forefront of the pictures – between the two redbuds – was the site of many a childhood fantasy on my part.  Grandma used to have a LOT more flowers there – tiger lilies, maybe?  And bushes.  And I would catch ladybugs in peanut butter jars and sit there and feel like I was in The Secret Garden.  But as she’s gotten older she’s really cut down on her gardening, and now all that remains is the redbuds and some daffodils and whatever that bush is at the left.  That makes me kind of sad.

But anyway – the sheds.


That one’s my favorite, because it looks like a tiny little house.  Mom can probably come along and fill in the blanks for me on a lot of this stuff, but all I know about the sheds anymore is that:

1)They used to be (and probably still are) filled with lots of cool old furniture
2)They’re crawling with snakes and “good God Katie don’t you dare step FOOT in there!”

Yes, Mom.


I know it’s trite, but I love this sort of stuff – the old rundown buildings, the cloudy sky, the vibrant spring greens…


I’ve long wanted to load up in the car and just DRIVE, stopping to take pictures at all the abandoned houses and barns I see along the way.  There are about a million of them on Highway 6 between Kirksville and Kansas City.

I’m sorry that I never did.

But I’m not dead yet; I guess there’s nothing to stop me from going back, is there?

There’s just so much feeling in the old buildings  There’s history and visual interest and mystery and I just love them.  Even regular ol’ sheds, like Grandma’s.

This is the first of about 400 entries that I can make about our trip to Grandma’s – look for more tomorrow!

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We are not amused.

April 27, 2009 at 8:35 am · Filed under Dogs, Family

Maxie wants you to know that she is not amused.

In fact, she is rather chagrined:

And bewildered:

No, she doesn’t like it at all.

The intruder, that is.

…and the attention the intruder’s getting from HER daddy.


“My name is Maxie and I do NOT approve of this event.”

And while she’s at it, she doesn’t like this other thing either:

It’s enough to make a girl go inside and pout:

If only someone will open the dang door!

…because really, would YOU want to be outside with this?

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2 for 2

April 24, 2009 at 9:03 am · Filed under Baking, Cooking ·Tagged , , , , , , , ,

(I’m *not* just posting because Kathy asked me too, but it was part of the motivation to get up off my ass and DO IT)

I always do this to myself.  Always.

Maybe it’s because my foremothers are from Kentucky – that would explain my penchant for cowboy boots, at least.  It’s in my genetics – my blood.

It must be that – whatever dominant Johnson-gene (not to be confused with my uncle, Gene Johnson) caused me to wear my bright pink Lucchesse’s today, has also rendered me *completely* incapable of going to a social gathering without bringing at least one baked item.

Tomorrow morning we’re getting up ass-early to go to KC, meet up with my parents, and then immediately hop back in the car and go 100 miles east-northeast to Grandma’s house in Sumner.

And since we’re going to the symphony tonight I won’t have time to bake anything, so I took care of it last night.

First I made this:

That’s a strawberry-rhubarb cake.  But it’s not my usual recipe.  Wanna know why?  BECAUSE I CAN’T FIND IT.  I know.  It’s awful.  I NEVER lose recipes – I keep them neatly on handwritten cards in a box on my kitchen windowsill.  But it had been (at least) six or seven years since I’ve made this cake, and somehow the recipe disappeared.  So I combined a couple different listings from cooks.com and tweaked it on my own, and I *think* I’ve come up with a reasonable approximation of the old version.  I hope.  I’ll let ya know how it goes.  I’m worried it’ll be a bit dry.  This doesn’t make me happy.

Still, it’s pretty, ’cause it kinda looks like lava.

And ’cause it has crispy burned-y bits at the edges, and I’m gonna eat them ALL.

And ’cause if you catch it at just the right angle it looks huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge.

Like the strawberry rhubarb cake that ate Manhattan.  And then I’ll eat it.  Which I think makes me bigger than Manhattan but SEE IF I CARE.

Ahem.

So then I made this:

Yup, that’s the inimitable Pioneer Woman’s recipe.

Because I’m taking it to share, I went all out – I used regular (full-fat) cheese, plain macaroni (not whole wheat), and 2% milk (recipe calls for whole milk but even I can’t be *that* bad).

I’ve given it an ample taste-test, of course, and am SO pleased with the result – smooth and creamy and RICH.  The powdered mustard gives it a nice kick.

Nummy.

If I were just making it for Jeff and me, though, I’d change a few things – reduced fat cheese and skim or 1% milk, mainly.  And I’d probably kick the seasonings up another notch or ten, too.  And use whole-wheat pasta.

But still, I’m not complaining – and I don’t think my parents and grandma will, either!

Yup, it was a productive evening.

It doesn’t get more “comfort food” than mac & cheese and strawberry rhubarb cake!

Now, because I apparently get off on indecent exposure…

Who wants to help clean up?

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I never met a yarn I didn’t like…

April 17, 2009 at 8:37 am · Filed under Knitting, internet


(from the (in)famous Garfield Minus Garfield, of course).

Happy Friday, everyone!

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innnnnnnnnhale…..eXhhhhhhhhhhhale

April 16, 2009 at 8:29 am · Filed under Miscellany, life

Quick bulleted post while I warm up to being at work…

~I’m having a bad hair day. Used to be, on these days I could pull it up in a ponytail and forget about it.  Now I have to wrestle with it.  Hair: 1, Kate: 0.  I’m just going to say that my style is “lank and greasy” and it was deliberate.

~There’s a group of about 5 Indian men who ride my train in the mornings.  They’re always unfailingly polite, offering their seats to older people and saying “ladies first” whenever we get off the train.  Their mamas raised them well.

~I finally got around to switching out the music on my mp3 player (soooo not hard!) this morning.  Of course, yesterday the darn thing started acting up – you can see my whole though progress on Twitter if you’re so inclined Summary is, my baby Sansa might not be long for this world.  And that would be unfortunate, because I’m pretty sure I need that thing to survive.  Or *A* thing, anyway.  Maybe a 16gB iPod Nano?  They’re so purrrdy.  And it would be nice to have more space….but my current mp3 player has served me well, ’till it started crapping out on me, anyway

~Roxie was a brat last night.  Then she was good and adorable.  JUST when we’re ready to take her back to the pound, she’ll lick our ears or do something equally adorable and then dammit she’s won her safety for another day.

~I’m in DIRE need of a mental health day here at work.  I think I’ll take a personal day some day next week…I just need to be able to recoup, y’know?

~We’re going down to Sumner in a couple weeks, tentatively.  It’ll be our first trip there in close to two years – I can’t believe it’s been so long!  It’ll be good to be back at Grandma’s house.  I love Grandma’s house

~Mom told me the other day that she’s been making some *really* exciting new items for the Etsy shop.  I haven’t seen any of them myself, yet, but I’m sure it’s good! Will let you know w/ more teaser pics

OK time to work.  Yay for Thursday!  Tonight it’ll be falafels and spanikopita for dinner and leftover berry crisp for dessert.  Mmmmm.

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And ANOTHER thing

April 15, 2009 at 10:21 am · Filed under Knitting

My usual routine for life is to clean like mad (and knit a bit) on the weekends (see?) then during the week I let it all ride – I’ll knit in the evenings and of course I’ll cook, and maybe the odd load of laundry or two when the situation absolutely demands it – but generally, I use my weekday evenings for fun stuff (read: knitting and cooking, as well as snuggling, playing Guitar Hero, and eating half-priced Easter candy.  Sometimes all of the above at the same time.).  Then I’ll knit some more to round things out.  Plus my train knitting.  But that doesn’t count. :-P

As it would happen, I’ve also been ’suffering’ from another fit of startitis lately – I’ve got numerous items OTN right now.

So let’s go on a little tour of my knitting bag, shall we?

First up:  Pioneer.

That picture (taken Sunday) is SO no longer current, it’s not even funny.  I’m absolutely loving the LLSS in “Tahoe”; it’s so sturdy and beautiful!  The colors are breathtaking.  I’ve now separated the arms and am advancing well down the body – I think maybe 3″ down from the V or so?  I’ve been having some pooling issues, even though I’m alternating skeins, and have cut and re-joined a few different times in an attempt to offset that.  But overall  I’m really pleased with it I love it ridiculously more than one should love an inanimate lump of looped yarn.

Here’s another outdated photo:
Those are my Diamondy socks; I just finished them last night, so what I really need to do is a quick FO shoot.  They’re on my feet as we speak, actually – and I’m so pleased with how they turned out!

It’s been about a week since I worked on my Wool Peddler’s Shawl:

(Ravlink) I’m still on the endless brown garter stitch section, and I do think I’ll probably end up doing more than the 231 (?) stitches called for before I switch to the heathered teal yarn for the lace portion.  I’m REALLY glad I bought Folk Shawls, by the way.  There are several other patterns from the book that I’m just dying to make!

Next up is Ophelia:

That’s not really the right color – this is.  And I’m pretty sure I’m going to have to frog anyway; I think the yarn is a bit too dark and mottled to show the lace pattern to its fullest benefit.  The adorable pattern deserves a more perfect yarn than this. :-)   But I have big plans for the yarn anyway – it’ll be a Tweedy Vest (Ravlink), maybe with an unexpected pop of CC?

For a really, really, really mindless knit, I’ve got this:

That’ll be a garter stitch cheater’s moebius.  And yes, it’s out of LB Homespun.  There’s only one person in the entire world who I love enough to suffer through a large rectangle of garter-stitch Homespun, and that’s my mumsie dearest.  She better appreciate it! :-D

We’ll end our arm-of-the-bright-red-couch tour with this:

Which is a little piece of “fly by the seat of my pants” mesh lace scarf in SWTC Bamboo.  I’m really loving how the mesh lace works with this yarn.  I also really like how I worked the end to increase along one side from a point.  Now I’m working it even ’till it’s time to decrease, and then my eventual plan is to add a fringe along the increase and decrease edges of the points – I think it’ll be a pretty cool look – if anybody thinks it’s worthwhile, maybe I’ll write it up when I’m done.

Close-up of the really awesome mesh, because it rocks my world:

It’s soooooo much fun to scrunch around!  I can tell already I’ll love this FO.

~~~~
Well, that’s all the WIP’s I’ve got for now!

Still feeling the urge to CO, though.

My Rav queue is 17 pages long, but I’ve mentally set aside a few patterns for my immediate- or almost-immediate next tasks:

Swallowtail Shawl for Mom – I’ve had the yarn (Fearless Fibers alpaca laceweight in a LOVELY buttery yellow) for about a year, and it’s been a while since I’ve done any “real” lace.
Whisper Cardigan from the new IK – for once, I want to get on the “It” pattern bandwagon before it’s (hehehe) fully passed!
Jamaica Pouch – just because I’ve got the urge to make a silly little bag, for no particular reason.  Will probably stick it in my luggage when done.
Hedera – I actually (re)started these on the train this morning, first after a yearlong hiatus and then after an ill-fated center-finding incident on the factory-wound skein.  I’m using a light pink Fortissima Socka that I’ve had stashed and dedicated to this pattern for about a year and a half or so; it’s one of those projects where the relief of actually doing it far outweighs the desire for the FO itself.
Rogue – I’ve resigned myself to the fact that SOMETIME along this yearlong sweater-making journey I’m going to have to make one (or two or three) sweaters completely inappropriate for the season, and this is the first of that.  I’ve got some gorgeous amthyst-colored Wool of the Andes in my stash and heck – with this weather, I may be able to wear it sooner rather than later!)
Tweedy Vest – as mentioned above.  I’m really eager to use up that Takhi Tweed that’s been in my stash for so long!

And of course, I’m sure I’ll stumble and trip and fall into a few more pairs of socks along the way, too ;-)

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“So what did you do all day?”

April 12, 2009 at 8:56 pm · Filed under Baking, Cooking, Home ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

Jeff walked in the door tonight, looked at the clean laundry on the office floor and said, “You didn’t take care of the laundry?!”  (Perhaps, PERHAPS it had been sitting on the floor in various states of folded-ness for upwards of a week)

No, I didn’t put away laundry.

I DID start the morning relaxing in bed with a book:

(Real page-turner, by the way.  Highly recommended!)

I DID bake chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting (from scratch, natch):

(The cupcake recipe is my classic one, and the frosting is a simple combo of semisweet chocolate, butter, vanilla, coffee, milk and powdered sugar.  And yes, I ran out of icing with 5 1/2 cupcakes to go.  More tomorrow!)

And I DID bake bread, too:

And I DID use half of one loaf…

…to make paninis for dinner:

(still cooking, there. They were homemade bread + mayo + pesto + chicken + turkey bacon + onions + provel and mozzarella.  I cooked the chicken on the stove, with dried onion, mustard powder, garlic, lemon, olive oil, salt and pepper.  Que delicioso!)

And I DID hard-boil some eggs, while I was at it:

(And I also fried up and froze 1/2 a pound of turkey bacon for salads and such, to use it before it goes bad next week)

I DID spend an undue amount of time supervising this piece of work:

I DID scrub the entire bathroom, top to bottom:

(oops.  My homemade cleaner is still in that picture.)

I DID wash four more loads of laundry, and start work on folding it:

I DID NOT touch my knitting all day:

(Well, almost.  Only for an hour or two. :-D )

……

So no, Jeff, I DID NOT put the laundry away.  But I did a whole hell of a lot of other stuff.

I gotta be honest, though.  I DID NOT get dressed all day.

And I DID tuck my lenscap into the waistband of my pyjama pants to take these pictures, here at 9:30pm:

(Heh.  Flour on my shirt.  Susie-Homemaker-cred?)

And now I’m going to lay down and go to sleep.  What a productive day “off”!

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Of the Utmost Importance

April 8, 2009 at 3:47 pm · Filed under Finds (all things consumeristic)

Shoes.

Need I say more?

OK so my beloved Ariats must continue to linger in the “someday” column (thinking about making them a birthday present for myself this year) for now.  I can’t really afford them, and I can’t really justify buying boots in April (except if they were on sale, but they’re not so it’s a moot point)

But that’s alright, since it’ll be summer soon and I really *need* (no, srsly – need.  Not want. Need.) some new work shoes.

Right now I’m on the 4-pair system (1 black pair for pants, 1 black pair for skirts, 1 brown pair for pants, ….) but with only 3 pairs.

Yeah, I need something to wear with my brown skirts and other “brown-ish” outfits.

They don’t necessarily have to be brown, they just need to work with brown-ish skirt things.

I didn’t see a whole lot that I liked in the Born s/s09 collection, but I *am* really feeling the Keen love right now.  My question to you all is – are Keens too casual for my “casual-business-casual” workplace?  Jeans are pretty common attire here, (I don’t wear them all that often, but there’s no rule against it) and my standard uniform usually follows the solid colored shirt + casual (non-jean) pants or skirt + knitted scarf or shawl formula.

But still – even the dressier Keens are really…sporty…aren’t they?

I absolutely *adore* these:

(Keen Calistoga).  But would they look dumb with a knee-length skirt?  (They also come in “Port Royal”, a deep red that’s OMGyummy!)

OK what about these?

(Keen Sienna ballerina). I dunno about the suede for summer, and I think from the side they look kinda weird.  And the reviews aren’t any good.  And they don’t really have that Keen “look”, yanno?

I lurvelurve these ones:

(Keen Sydney II). But they’re probably right out, aren’t they?  Too casual, right?

I mean, would these shoes make my feet look big and clunky, worn with skirts?

So then I was looking at the Borns on Zappos and found these:

(Born Pinot) and yeah they’re really cute and I like them, but they’re sooooo close to my black Born flats, and I don’t want to be one of those people, IYKWIM.

And these:

(Born Simi) They’re cute, no?  But are they too boring or something?  I dunno.

Maybe I’ll just persuade Jeff to hit up TJMaxx with me on the way home.

Opinions?

Pwease?

PS>Why am I sticking to Keens and Borns?  Because I <3 them and they meet all 3 of my shoe requirements:  1)Quality
2)Arch support
3)Cuteness
If you’ve not yet been instructed in the way of Keen or Born, hie thee to Zappos!

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I can hardly believe it

April 6, 2009 at 8:49 am · Filed under Knitting

I did it on Saturday, and I still can’t believe what I did.

I didn’t believe it as I was doing it.

I didn’t believe it when I’d done it.

I didn’t believe it after I’d done it, when I was looking at it.

I didn’t believe it the next day when I took pictures of it.

I finished Maude.

Well, she’d been “finished” for about 2 months.

“Finished” except for the seaming, then “finished” except for the buttonbands, then “finished” except for the collar, then “finished” except for weaving in the ends, and finally “finished” except for the buttons.

And on Saturday I couldn’t put it off any longer, and I wouldn’t let myself do anything else until the buttons were sewn on, and it was every bit as painful as I’d known it would be.

And now it’s really, truly, FINISHED.

There’s absolutely nothing left to do.

I know this for sure, because I’m here at work today, wearing it.  It’s not draped over my shoulders, it’s not held shut at the waist with my hand.  I’m not standing in front of the mirror half-wearing it, envisioning how it’ll look with the collar done and buttons on.

Finally, because I gotta be me…
I hump-a de KAR!

(I look-a like de Parees Heelton, no?)

PS>Technical details and my (extensive) list of mods are on Rav.

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