Inexorable Week

Note to self; stop and smell the flowers this weekend. My daffodils have been blooming for over a week, and they're just beautiful. I started out with around three or four bulbs, and they've continued to multiply every year. I don't think daffodils actually smell, but I do plan to enjoy some hours in the garden enjoying all of my flowers that are starting to bloom.

I knew that this week was going to wear me out. I started out the week with freshmen orientation, which lasted most of Monday evening. Tuesday I had a field trip up to the mountains to re-enact the trial and beheading of Louis XVI with forty-five high school kids, then that evening, I had to teach my college class, which means that I basically put in a fourteen hour day. Wednesday was a little more relaxed, other than we had an hour and a half meeting with the leader of Paige's Europe trip that she'll be going on this summer.

  

Thursday night was our first swim meet of the season. Fun, but also freezing cold (OK, it wasn't really freezing, but it was COLD!) I did get a little knitting done last night at the swim meet though. I've discovered that if you volunteer to time in the end lanes that you'll ooccasionally have some free time since some events won't have enough kids for every lane. So, here it is Friday night. I still have lots of papers to grade since all of my grading time was eaten up by the list I've must mentioned. I'm thinking that a little trip to one of our little town's ten Mexican restaurants is a good idea, and then I'll take care of those papers, and then....I'll really enjoy this weekend.

 Finally, I finished my little pink Fancy socks. I have that wonderful forty minutes between getting home from running in the morning and getting ready for work that I drink my coffee and knit. It's amazing how much I get knit during that time. I've decided to give them to my cousin's little girl. I gave her a bunny last year, and she wrote me a darling little thank you note. I'd say that's a kid who deserves another little gift.

A Little Bit of Christmas

 

The problem with setting a goal to write in your blog one time more each month than the year before is that sometimes you have absolutely nothing to say. Fortunately, I haven't set a particularly high bar in that area, so I won't worry that my post today is unexceptional. I bought a little Christmas ornament kit at a quilt shop in Bakersfield called Strawberry Patches a while back. There were six patterns for little appliqued felt ornaments in the kit, but the mittens were the ones that really hooked me. As is often my habit, I never touched any of them during Christmas and was about ready to forget about them until next Christmas when I discovered some more felt kits at Prairie Point Junction Quilt Shop's website. I loved the Easter-themed mats and ornaments, but realistically thought I shouldn't consider buying one if I didn't actually like doing the applique. So, last night I tried making one of the Christmas ornaments and was pretty successful. My work isn't perfect, but it's not supposed to look like a machine did it anyway. Mmmmm, which Easter pattern do I buy now.

It's kind of funny that I stumbled upon Prairie Point Junction Quilt Shop because it's located Cozad, Nebraska, which is in Western Nebraska,  pretty much the middle of nowhere. When we used to drive to see Russ's family during the summers, we'd drive through Cozad and would feel so relieved that it was "only" four more hours to Lincoln. I have a sad reason to remember Cozad too, a reason that I re-visit every year when I teach the play Our Town to my students. In the first act of the play, there's a brief scene with Joe Crowell, the paperboy. The Stage Manager, who  knows the future of every character, interjects, (Yes, I have these lines memorized.)

Let me tell you something about Joe Crowell there. 

Joe was awful bright—graduated from high school here,
head of his class. So he got a scholarshipto Massachusetts Tech.
Graduated head of his class there, too.
It was all wrote up in the Boston paper at the time. Goin’ to be
a great engineer, Joe was. But the war broke out and he died
in France. All that education for nothing.

I went to college with a girl named Julie from Cozad twenty-five years ago. I didn't know her really well, but she came in the library where I worked a lot and was always so cheerful and was an incredible student and go-getter.  I'm pretty sure that she was the valedictorian of the class behind me. The first year that I started teaching in California, I heard that she had been killed on one of her first days of teaching in Oklahoma. She was behind a tractor trailer rig on the way to work, and the trailer came unhitched.  I couldn't stop thinking about her that year, and when I read those lines later in the year in Our Town, I told my students about Julie, making the Joe Crowell connection.  All of these years later, I still think of her when I teach Our Town,  and of her family in that little town of Cozad, and how Thornton Wilder was an incredible writer, except for that weird part at the end where the people who have died are just sitting there in chairs. Sooo, I already buy Wilder's whole idea about the universality of human experiences, but it really hit me that I had just finished teaching Our Town this week, and had recently told my students about how, unfortunately, there are lot of "Joe Crowell stories" around the world; and then I randomly come across a cute, little website from Julie's hometown. The world really isn't that big in a lot of ways, and we are all tied together more than we realize. I'd be willing to bet there's someone who works at Prairie Point Junction who is still sad every once in a while because something reminds them of Julie, just like I am.

Just Showing Off

 

I've so enjoyed the Winter Olympics this week. It's the perfect excuse to sit and knit. I don't want to have to concentrate though, so I've been knitting some fancy socks. Actually, I also knit another Thorpe Hat for one of my daughter's friends earlier in the week, but my daughter delivered it before I could snap a pic. I've had this pattern bookmarked forever. I found it in on A Bluestocking Knits, and thought it was so pretty. I started to knit a pair a couple of times, but I just couldn't get the lace right. This time I really thought about it as I knit and realized that there's a small error in the pattern. (At least, I think so.) My daughter is past pink, lacey socks, so I'm not sure who I'm giving them to.

 

I also have to show off what I've been able to do in my backyard this month. I've been "harvesting" lettuce. I'm bragging because this is one of the few times of the year that I'm pretty sure I have it better than almost everyone else I know weather-wise. I'll be miserable in July, but right now, there's nothing like Central California in February!

Still Needing to Learn My Manners

OK, so before I brag about finished my second Icewine Mitten I have to tell an embarrassing story from my past. When my husband and I were first married, we spent a lot of time with a single friend of ours just going to movies, concerts, and whatever. We'd run into this guy from work and his wife every once in a while. The guy was really nice, and his wife seemed nice enough, but every time we'd see them, the guy would ask us if we'd met his wife, and she'd act like we'd never met me before.  She already knew my friend for some reason, but she never remembered who I was. I don't know exactly why it bugged me, but it did. It was such a dismissal, and besides she kind of seemed to think she was all that. Here's where I reveal my true petty nature. So....one night, we went to this concert--in a church--, and there they were. Same dismissal again. We were sitting right behind them. I took out my program and wrote a note to my friend, something to the effect that the"wife" was a snit. I probably didn't write what I really thought because I was in church, after all. Well, no sooner than I had finished writing my nasty, little note, then the "wife" turns around and asks if she can look at my program because they didn't get one! I hurriedly scratched out what I had written. It was awkward to say the least, at least for me. She had to have wondered what I was doing hesitating to give her that program, busily scribbling away.


I thought that that experience had cured me of being petty in public; however, I guess it didn't.. Wednesday, I wrote a snarky post mentioning Heather Ordover from Craftlit , and she read it, the part where I so caddily complained of her raspy voice when she was battling pneumonia. I never thought she'd read my blog. She was really cute about it, but I'm still a little embarrassed. I mean, she provided me a wonderful service for free, and I'm constantly on her site, browsing through the book choices or reading her knitting posts, then I go and complain that she was sick and that her illness had interfered with my listening pleasure. How Rude. Maybe this time I'll learn to think before I write.

Now, on to a little knitting. I had a small group of knitters from work over to my house yesterday for a couple of hours of knitting, and I finished my mittens. They're for my friend, Julie. She and I had a Christmas swap this year, and among the innumerable gifts she gave me was a box of icewine tea. I'd never heard of it  before, but it's delicious. I ran into the pattern for these icewine mittens and just had to knit them for her. I'm not too worried that I'm ruining any surprise because I happen to know that Julie's working on a big paper this week. And, if she does read this, well she'll have something to look forward to.

I had a little bit of yarn left, so I knit one more heart with it. I think I'll throw it in with the mittens when I send them to Julie.

I Love Hearts

Well, I'm not doing so well with my post writing goals for this month. For some crazy reason, I had five posts last February. I better get writing if I'm going to beat that this year. I don't have a mitten to show off just yet, but I'm within minutes of being finished with my second one again. I received so many encouraging comments about not giving up on it that I just couldn't call it quits!

Everything has gone well with my second try on my Icewine Mitten, except that I had to reknit the thumb twice. They took quite a lot of concentration, so I knit a couple of mindless projects this week while I was listening to Frankenstein  for the college class I'm teaching. I'm kind of proud of these hearts. I'm not all into Valentine's Day, but I do love hearts. I kind of made up the pattern. Most heart patterns I've seen seem to be knit in the round. I knit those little hearts in my middle picture in the round last year. I adjusted a  couple of patterns I stumbled upon for garter stitch hearts on Diary of a Novice Knitter's blog and  Katydid and Kid. Both patterns were cute, but I wanted my hearts to be three-dimentional with a crochet edge. I ended up basically following Katydid's pattern, but instead of using garter stitch, I used stockinette. I knit two of them and then used a picot crochet edging to sew both sides together.

They were the perfect project to work on while listening to a book. I think I've mentioned before that I've enjoyed using Craftlit to listen to books while I knit. I love the concept since it allows me to "read" books while doing my most favorite thing--knitting. I haven't taught Frankenstein before, so I wanted to be really familiar with it. Heather Ordover, Craftlit's creator, had discussed Frankenstein two years ago. She begins by discussing some knitting issues, and then discusses whatever book she's focusing on for the month or longer. She uses Librivox for the actual reading of the books. I enjoyed her discussion a lot of the time although I have to admit that she was beginning to annoy me a bit....OK, a lot!  She was sick for a good deal of her discussion of Frankenstein and although I admire her tenacity, I really didn't enjoy hearing her sputter and swallow into the microphone. I'm sorry, Heather, I hope you don't read this because I know you're well meaning, but it was starting to exasperate me. On the other hand, on good days, I  realy like her perkiness and love of knitting and books. She's a part-time English professor, so her discussions are particularly applicable for me.

Frogged!

OK, That feels better. I'm not ready to start over just yet, but I will.....I think.

Awwwww!

A friend at work and I have had this ongoing conversation about success. We've noticed with our students that almost invariably it's tenacity that makes them successful, not intellectual superiority. I've had many really bright kids who were quitters, and quite a few kids with seemingly average IQs with so much drive and willingness to work through failures that they became excellent. Success is messy, but tenacious people work through it. My friend and I have both been married to our spouses a long time, he for over thirty and me for twenty-five, and we've also talked about how difficult some stages of ostensibly good marriages can be. I think that many of  the problems in solid, long-time marriages are often not that different from the problems in failed ones, except that the people in successful marriages choose to stick with it during and after the trying stages. They keep with it despite how messy (within reason)  the past might have been.

So, here's my knitting connection. I will often chuck bad knitting even if I have a lot of time invested in it. I'm not happy just patching it up and making do. I'm pretty good about not harping about past, perceived injustices or failures in my marriage. I much prefer to harp on current issues, like "What home improvement Russ "needs"  to be working on today." But, I just can't do that with knitting. I want a clean slate. I just can't overlook  even small imperfections and focus on the overall product. I've made several major mistakes with my current mittens, mistakes that are, of course, near the beginning of my second mitten. More discouraging still, I think that the second mitten is actually the correct one. I forced myself to knit a little on it last night, thinking that maybe I could force myself to finish it, and just accept it as imperfect. I'm unhappy with them. They were intended as a gift. I love the yarn, but I just want to quit. How sad!

Lofty Goal?

I don't mind working: I just don't like working ALL of the time. It's so disheartening to have more to do than you can possibly accomplish well. If you're giving everything you've got just to keep your head above water, eventually it seems pointless to try so hard. I periodically find myself overwhelmed by work, which is my fault since I choose to do the extra college classes. Case in point, last semester I had almost 60 students in two college classes I was teaching online. I sometimes felt like I couldn't breath let alone keep up and be creative at home in any way. This semester I have just over 30 students total in both classes. It's so wonderful not to feel guilty just because I'm not working on school stuff every single minute, but I have no intention of filling that void by setting too many goals in some other area of my life.

 I do, however,  have a small resolution concerning my blog. I'm going to try to write at least one more entry per month than I did last year. That's it. As of this post, I've achieved my goal for January. Considering that I had three posts last year, it was fairly easy to achieve. I love low expectations.

I've finished my Wool Peddler' Shawl  from Cheryl Oberle's Folk Shawls this week. I really enjoyed knitting it even though I did have to do a little unraveling several times, which amounted to a lot of stitches once I got to the lace section. It's been an extra special project since my friend Julie at Jewel Tomes gave me the pattern and yarn as part of a Christmas swap. I'm sitting on my couch this minute with it wrapped around me watching An Affair to Remember with Paige. What a perfect Thursday night!

Cooking Sometimes Trumps Knitting

Since my family lives in California, Mexican food is a big part of our culinary lives. Few of the recipes we prepare are very "authentic," but the individual ingredients often are: jalapeno, chipotle, and ancho chiles, queso fresco, and avocados, to name a few. I don't know if langostino are authentically Mexican, but if  Rubio's Fresh Mexican Grill puts langostino in their burritos and calls them lobster, that's good enough for me. Here's my recipe. The picture doesn't look that appetizing, but the consensus was that they were good!

Lobster Enchiladas

1 pkg langostino (about a pound)
3 Tbsp. lime juice
2 cups prepared brown rice (I use Trader Joe's Frozen brown rice that can be microwaved in 3 min.)
1/2 red onion, chopped
1 small can sliced olives
1 small can chopped mild green chiles
1/4 cup chopped chilantro
1 cup  shredded Queso Fresco (I actually used Hanford Jalapeno Jack, which is a locally made Monterey Jack)
1 large can green enchilada sauce.
 salt/pepper
1 pkg whole wheat burrito-size tortillas

After running langostino under cool water to thaw, place in medium-size bowl and add lime juice. Saute red onion until just translucent. Add to langostino mixture, along with olives, green chiles, cilantro, and 3/4 cup cheese.

Pour about 1/4 cup of enchiladas sauce in the bottom of a 9 by 13 inch pan. Tear 3 of the tortillas into 3 strips, and line bottom of the pan with them. Add 1/2 of the langostino mixture. Add another layer of tortillas, using 3 more tortillas. Add another layer of langostino mixture, and top with tortillas again. Pour the rest of the enchilada sauce over tortillas, and top with the rest of the cheese.

Bake for about 15 minutes in a 400 degree oven.


If Albertson's had had decent looking avocados, we'd have slices a couple of them to put on top when the enchiladas were done, but they didn't, so we had to persevere without avocados.

How to Enjoy a Weekend

I woke up early this morning, which probably had something to do with taking a two hour nap after work yesterday,  I'd guess. I started the day by doing a little knitting on a pair of mittens I've been working on. I can't say much about them because they're a gift, and the recipient reads my blog pretty regularly, but I will say that they're been fun to work on, even though I've had to pay careful attention to the chart most of the time. I'm using Andean silk from Knit Picks, which is very reasonably priced and wonderfully luxurious feeling.

It's so fun having a full uncomplicated day stretched out in front of you. I did a little baking, and then I went out to our orange tree and picked about twenty oranges Our oranges aren't great this year, kind of mealy, but the juice itself it good. I squeezed a nice pitcher of orange juice, which took way longer than I remembered it taking in the past.

 It was well worth it though. (I'm not talking hand squeezed; I used an attachment on my old food processor.) I was so happy with it that I hand delivered some to Paige, who was tanning out in the backyard...yes, tanning. It may start raining tomorrow, but today was the most perfect day I could imagine. Nothing like Central California in January!

Happy New Year!

Without a doubt this has been the most relaxing Christmas vacation my family has had, but we needed it. 2009 was  a good year in many ways, but it wasn't an easy one. We're all ready for a great and a little less stressful 2010. Starting tomorrow, however, the only one napping around here for a while will be kitty, but that's OK, we're ready!

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Whenever we have a vacation of any length, I feel some pressure to go, go, go. It is fun to travel and have some adventures, but I can honestly say that I enjoyed this vacation because we didn't do much traveling at all. It gave all of us time to just hang out together, and it gave me time to do my two favorite things--cook and knit. I finished my nephew's Debbie Bliss Cable Yoke sweater without too much trouble inserting the zipper, and for the past week I've been working on my Wool Peddler's Shawl from Folk Shawls. I have loved working on this shawl. I received the pattern and the wool for it in a Christmas Swap with my friend Julie. The swap was Julie's creative idea. We were supposed to use a favorite Christmas scene from a book as our inspiration. Julie used A Christmas Carol, and literally left me speechless with all of the wonderful presents she sent. Besides, candy, a candle, a cup, and Icewine tea, she sent me this pattern, some pretty wool, and a set of gorgeous stitch markers. I didn't need the stitch markers for the first part of the shawl, but I wanted to use them, just to admire them!



I didn't cook as much as I had planned during the past two weeks, but I did have a couple of successful cooking experiences. My brother and sister-in-law sent us a fun book, Ebelskivers. I haven't tried any of the recipes from it yet, but I did make some æbleskivers. I had meant to bake some kringle too, but never got around to it. I did bake some weinerbrød though, which was almost as good.
I used an old copy of From Danish Kitchens which had been my aunt's It's a great book, which is still in print, but my torn-up copy is extra special because it has lots of writing and recipes in the margins.

Wienerbrød

6 cups flour
1/2 cup sugar
2 cups lukewarm milk
3 yeast cakes
1 tsp. salt
1 cup butter (I used 3/4, but I'll go back to the whole cup next time)
1 tsp. cardamon
1 egg
1/4 cup almonds

Dissolve yeast in milk and let stand for 5 - 10 minutes. Mix flour, sugar, salt with yeast/milk mixture. Roll dough out on a floured surface. Add butter in dots and spread with a knife if butter is room temperature. Sprinkle with cardamon. Fold and refold - let rest for 30 min. Roll, refold three or four times using a light quick stroke. Place aside in a cool place. Roll to a one-fourth inch thickness. Cut into one inch strips. Twist and form into pretzels. Place on buttered sheets, brush with slightly beaten egg, sprinkle with chopped blanched almonds. Let rise over boiling water (I don't really understand what this means, but I tried it by putting a cookie sheet over a pan of boiling water.) When double in bulk, sprinkle with sugar and bake in 400 degree oven.

Happy Holidays

I knit these little bunnies last year, but they're so cheerful on our mantel that I thought they deserved another chance to wish everyone Merry Christmas.
I don't have much knitting to show off since I've been cooking since last Wednesday, although I did knit my friend Julie a little mitten as part of a swap we did, but I forgot to take a pic of it before I sent it. I also knit a little sweater ornament for a non-knitting friend, using a pattern From the Wool Room. It's knit from the top down, and I think it may be my favorite "tiny sweater" pattern. I've tried a lot of them.


Russ and went to Solvang last Monday to buy some medisterpølse (Danish sausage) at Nielsen's Market for our Christmas Eve dinner. We also made a little stop at Olsen's Danish Bakery for some Kringle. Russ isn't too enthused about going to the touristy shops, but I did get a chance to buy a few little Danish paper ornaments.


I can understand why Ronald Reagan and Michael Jackson would have wanted to live around Solvang. The view from the mission is so beautiful. We always take the backroads home just to enjoy the beautiful landscape.

Catastrophic Crab Dip

I have quite a few Christmas cookbooks, but my favorite is the Mystic Seaport Christmas Memories Cookbook. Last night I decided to make a crab dip recipe from it for a potluck at school. This doesn't sound like it should have been a dangerous endeavor. It was, however, the indirect reason that I ended up in the emergency room in Bakersfield forty miles away. As I was reaching for the crab in our refrigerator, I somehow snagged my wrist on the lid of an olive can and trying to catch the can, I ended up with a deep, two-inch gash on my wrist. It didn't bleed or hurt that badly, but it was scary looking. I remember looking up at the clock as I realized that I was going to need stitches; it was nine o'clock, the time that our small town's urgent care center closes. So, Russ, who had already gone to bed, and I headed to Bakersfield where we sat endlessly in the waiting room. I think my big mistake was telling the triage nurse that my pain level was a three on a ten-point scale. I should have said "eleven!" Finally, after five hours of waiting, and having answered "no" to four different nurses and/or doctors who questioned whether my slit wrist was self-inflicted, we headed home through the foggy night. When we got home at 2:30 a.m., there was the crab dip in the fridge. Paige had gone ahead and made it for me. She had gone to bed, but Kai was sleeping on the couch waiting for us to get home. What a nice ending to an unpleasant evening.

Crab Dip

3 8 oz. pkg. cream cheese, softened
1 cup mayonnaise
2 cups cheddar cheese
1 tbsp. lemon juice
1 -2 tablespoons Worcestershire Sauce
4 hardcooked eggs, finely chopped
12 - 16 oz shredded crabmeat

1. Process cream cheese, mayonnaise, cheddar cheese, lemon juice, and Worcestershire Sauce in food processor until smooth.

2. Fold in crabmeat and chopped egg. Pour in oven-proof casserole and refrigerate until ready to serve.

I served my cold, but you may also heat in a 350 degree oven until hot and bubbly. You may serve with sourdough bread or crackers.

Hopefully, you will have an injury-free experience preparing this wonderful dip.

I had plans for spending my evening knitting yesterday. Typically, because I have had so much work to do, I feel like knitting all the more. I'm almost finished with the "cableyoke jacket" sweater from Debbie Bliss's Simply Baby. I just need to buy a zipper. I really like this pattern. It was really easy, but the cables kept it from being boring. I'm proud to brag that I used stashed yarn to knit it. It's wool, but that's about all I know. I've had it forever. I think I bought it to knit a Christmas sweater from McCall's Knitting Magazine back when it was one of the only knitting magazines around.
This is turning into kind of a random posting, but I had to show off my mailbox cover. I think it's the perfect design for someone who loves knitting. I'm hooked on the mailbox covers from House to Home Ideas. Russ asked me today if I was part of a club with them where I get a new one every month...mmmmm. that sounds like a great idea.

Knit Cupcakes

I love Vegan Yum Yum's Knit Cupcakes. I've tried to make them a couple of times, and I've been only moderately successful; they're not easy. One thing I've learned is that Albertson's must not sell marizpan too often because both times I've bought it, it was hard as a rock. World Market, on the other hand, has nice, soft marzipan. I "knit" my cupcakes for a little knitting get-together with some people from work. I'm pretty happy with them, but I think I still need more practice. Luckily, I bought several packages of marzipan!

Loving Thanksgiving

I noticed that many people were on the ball and wished their fellow bloggers a Happy Thanksgiving on the actual day, but I was too busy cooking and then eating to think about that. Our family usually celebrates a small (people-wise) Thanksgiving since traveling during Thanksgiving seems pretty much like torture. The fact that we don't spend Thanksgiving with our extended family used to bother me a little when the kids were young because I wanted them to experience the excitement that my husband and I had when we were young, with lots of relatives and the perfunctory "kids'" table where we were free to eat black olives from all ten fingers. Both of my kids love our Thanksgivings though and the traditions we've developed for ourselves. As I said, we don't let the fact that there are only four of us interfere with going all out on everything. I can hardly bear to think about all of the calories we've consumed in the past few days. Paige insists, with little argument from me, that I prepare Nantucket Cranberry Pie each year, which is easy but wonderful. I don't remember where I got the recipe, but it was probably Bon Appetit. Kai had a slice for breakfast yesterday morning and that was the end of it.

Nantucket Cranberry Pie
2 cups cranberries
1/2 cup walnuts
1/2 cup sugar

2 eggs
3/4 cup butter, melted and cooled
1 cup sugar
1 cup flour
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. almond extract

Place cranberries, walnuts, and 1/2 cup sugar in food processor and process until roughly chopped. Put in 10-inch pie plate or springform pan.

Mix eggs, butter, 1 cup sugar, flour, salt, and almond extract until smooth and pour over cranberry mixture.

Bake 40 min. at 350 degrees.


Another dessert tradition that my kids insist upon is what we call "Carolyn" Dessert" because our friend Carolyn gave it to me. Actually, I think it's often called "Better than Sex Pie," but I didn't think that was such a good name when the kids were little or more so now that they're teenagers. (ha, ha) It's kind of a funny dessert for us to love because we think of ourselves as foodies, and Cool Whip doesn't usually fit with sophisticated culinary experiences. But, Thanksgiving isn't about sophistication, and good is good.

Carolyn Dessert

1 cup pecans
1 cup flour
1/2 cup butter
Mix together and press in bottom of a 9 by 9 inch pan. Bake 20 min.

8 oz. pkg. cream cheese.
1 cup sugar
3/4 of a 13 oz. tub of cool whip
Mix together and put layer on top of crust

1 small pkg. chocolate instant pudding
1 small pkg. vanilla instant pudding
Prepare pudding and mix together and use for next layer

Finish with remaining cool whip. Shred Hershey bar on top.




The nice thing about being stuffed is that you can still knit. We've had beautiful weather, but I've still spent a lot of time on the couch since Thursday just knitting. I finished another Thorpe hat from Through the Loops. This one is for my three-year old niece. I love this pattern although I was relieved once I got out of the complex pattern part. I really had to concentrate, which isn't something I like to do for very long when I'm knitting. I never stress myself about knitting gifts. I just enjoy finishing what I can finish. one year, I sent my sister's family their gifts in February. I'm feeling a little pressure this year though because Paige recently informed me that she' like some gloves. My kids have no interest in knitting other to make fun of me about it where appropriate, so I get so excited if either of them shows any interest at it. I want to hurry and get started with those gloves before Paige goes to Hollister and buys some polyester ones!

The Lambs are Back

Every year, around Thanksgiving time sheep start showing up in the fields near where we live near Bakersfield. These aren't beautiful Shetland sheep, but I still love having them around, especially when they start having lambs. Russ pulled off the highway yesterday, so I could get a closer look at a flock. There were tons of lambs, not newborns, but still very young and cute. It seemed like there were a lot of twins, and the shepherd had tied their legs together. It didn't seem to bother them, but I wonder what the deal was.

Our mission yesterday wasn't just to enjoy lambs. We also had a visit to the library on our exciting agenda. I love browsing, looking for a book that attracts me simply because I like the cover. I hit the jackpot with mostly "foody" books:A Cook's Tour by Anthony Bourdain, Passion on the Vine by Sergio Espinoza (a book about wine and food in Italy; and An Irish Country Doctor by Patrick Taylor. Of course, I still have The Wee Mad Road, which Madame Purl had mentioned on her blog, on my nightstand and am enjoying it. It's not about food or knitting, but it's set in Scotland, which is almost as good! Oh! and this week's New Yorker is their food edition, so I'm set. I just wish I could read and knit at the same time, but I can't. I've tried.