KarenJoSeattle

Let It Snow

We will not be leaving tomorrow morning to head back to Seattle.

Our place here lies due east of San Fransisco, but 2,500 feet up into the foothills of the Sierras. Between here and Seattle we need to cross several passes ranging from 2,000 to 4,500 feet and farther north.

Tonight those passes are reportedly mostly impassable. Also possibly the next day and the next.

So we'll miss a New Year's party and lack the few days I plan in to reacclimate and unpack on our return.

I did find a way to spend some of that extra time - curl up under some handwork (so it's crochet - got a problem with that?), 'enjoy' the cold I got for Christmas, and work on the still unfinished hat.

Maybe now I'll actually get it done before we leave and won't have to mail it back.

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

 

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to Everyone.

And have a very Happy New Year.

The Behinder I Get

During our two day trip from Seattle down here to northern California I got a bit behind on my blog reading. Since then I hadn't seemed to be able to get below 100 unread posts.

Then we took our short jaunt back up to Seattle. For a couple of days after our return I hovered between 300 and 350, never seeming to make much progress.

After two days of taking frequent breaks to read posts, not trying to watch TV while reading since nothing's on this week, and not even doing much knitting while I caught up with some people I found I hadn't 'seen' for two or three weeks, I got back down below 100 last night.

This evening I was back to one-thirty-something. I'll quit for the night with 120 now. Between my family here for the next two days and then driving to see the Spousal Unit's family Monday through Wednesday, I don't have much hope of reducing that to my usual all-read state any time soon.

The next few days I just count on being too busy for most of my extended family of knit bloggers to post. We're all counting on that, right?

Then I have only a day to wrap up here before we head back to Seattle on Friday to arrive Sunday - assuming the weather and mountain passes cooperate. I'll be even more behind by the time we get there.

But, you know what? I don't feel anxious or weighted down by the unread posts. I feel like I'm missing out on being a part of things I've grown used to being a part of. I feel sad that I haven't had a chance to really get to 'know' a couple bloggers I added recently. And I realize I need to start making some choices rather than to continue slowly adding to my rolls.

If I don't, I'll never manage to make time to post my friggin' photos or catalog my well-into-SABLE-range stash over on Ravelry. I could even reach a point where blog reading impacts my knitting time, since multitasking them slows both down.

And then what would I blog about?

By the way, have you seen that Stephanie managed to impact popular culture and change the English language? 'To Kinnear' made the New York Times article on new words for the year. They even found it notable that she first used the term in August. I found it notable.

Do you realize how many knitbloggers there must be to manage that kind of spread so quickly? How interconnected they must be?

I'm doomed. I'll never catch up.

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

I did not plan to knit any Christmas gifts this year. Actually, I have never knit Christmas gifts. I spent ten Christmases in retail management of various types. I no longer let myself make my holidays frantic.

I did have one gift planned. My college-age nephew has a rod in one leg he gets removed over the break. I planned to knit him a beanie in his school colors.

Yesterday afternoon I realized his surgery would happened today. I rewound my two balls of sock yarn into one for double-stranding (with only that little wad of non-alignment left over from when I first wound into two balls based on weight.) I cast on top-down so I get the maximum length from my one skein.

It only took me two tries to get a decent gauge. I'm really winging it on the pattern. I haven't done many hats and none top-down. I hope the shaping works out.

I've been very productive besides the knitting the last couple of days. Yesterday I planted some more bulbs - specie tulip Tulipa tarda and Allium Karataviense as there were no more irises. I also replaced our little solar path lights that no longer worked even with new batteries. In the evening we got the new fake tree out of the box and upright, ready to decorate. And the homemade erythritol powdered sugar worked so I finished the fruit balls.

Today I did not get Lemon Olive Oil Cookies baked. But we did decorate the tree and wrapped all of our gifts.

For a few years we didn't have our own Christmas tree. For more than ten years we've come down to California, where most of both of our families live, for the entire holiday season. A few years ago when I needed to be here for a while for family stuff we got our own place.

But the current cats had not lived in a place with a Christmas tree, so I sorted out the unbreakable ornaments and used only those.

Before our tree hiatus I'd collected a bunch of star and sun and moon ornaments over the years, many of which didn't make the cut. I also had lots of glass balls and other shapes in gold, silver and pearl, including some from one of my mother's downsizings that are older than I am.

This year we decided the cats coexisted with the past trees well enough to break out the glass ornaments. It feels like a long tradition and something new at the same time to have these ornaments back out.

Happy holidays, everyone. I plan to do some posting over the next few days, but I'll have guests from tomorrow afternoon until Monday when we then head out to other family sites for a couple of days. I no longer let myself make my holidays frantic.

More Food Stuff

The second sleeve of the Jaeger cardigan still slogs along a few rows at a time. Nothing new and exciting to see on that front.

I got behind my predicted schedule today due to lunch out with my mom and then retelling each other old family stories for a couple of hours afterward, so the fruit balls aren't done. They're chilling in the refrigerator, waiting to see if I successfully made fake powdered sugar from erythritol - as soon as the white cloud in the blender settles enough to open it again without inhaling another lungful.

I don't have a food processor here, so I also used the blender to make the 'dough.' I had a blender with a food processor attachment, but I plundered it for the house on Bainbridge Island.

The blender worked fine. I processed in small batches, each ingredient separately. Then I cut them together with a spatula and a knife. I used the spatula to smush in the orange juice until I had a well-blended base studded with small chunks of fruit. Based on the photos with the recipe and the amount of processing called for, I think I got a very similar result to that intended, though it was more work.

I keep finding things, ingredients, I don't have. While I experimented with a non-dairy Vegan Macaroni and Not-cheese recipe and Spousal Unit worked on the Hashed Brussel Sprouts, I realized we had neither paprika nor poppy seeds.

Now, we're not in this place much, but most of our time here comes over the holidays and we cook and bake a lot. How come I still lack some basic ingredients and tools after several years?

Anyway, I used nutmeg as well as stone ground prepared mustard and lots of garlic in the pasta. I'll need to experiment with this more as the bland but dominant nutritional yeast and the whole wheat and flaxseed pasta we like need way more seasoning. For the sprouts we used fennel seed, which went quite well with the lemon juice and vegetable. I may prefer fennel seed to the recipe's poppy seed.

A couple days ago I cooked broccoflower with a bit of lemon juice. Based on these two experiences, cruciferous vegetables really brighten up and taste fresh and crisp, not over done even when soft, with the added lemon.

As soon as the pasta came out of the oven I put in a dish of butternut squash and yellow potatoes coated in garlic olive oil and rosemary. We'll have the roasted vegetables tomorrow.

I did find some tapioca flour today. Yipee. The small health food store here now carries a large part of the line of flours from Bob's Red Mill. So tomorrow we'll also have Lemon Olive Oil Cookies, or some attempt at them.

You know, it's really a lot of fun to photograph food. You get to play with arranging things that have interesting shapes and colors. And things look good from several angles. No model needed.

Still, I'd like to spend tomorrow making some progress on the knitting - while filling up on tea and cookies. The weather prediction is suitably wet for that plan.

It's Raining, It's Pouring

Today we've had some long and heavy downpours. When I went to the grocery store earlier, the puddle filling the curb cut in front of the doors grew from a short hop to larger than I could jump over while I shopped. The drive both ways required lots of attention and some evasion, including two swerves to miss little frogs crossing the road. A major drain just above us clogged and the water made a white-capped cascade down our street to the next working drain.

Nothing seems to be in imminent danger and the noise of rainfall has now slowed. Fortunately, I got my Dutch Irises planted yesterday - about the only productive thing I got done.

I've wanted just white ones, with the yellow flare on the falls, for a while, but only found all blue or mixed colors. They had a pile of these still at the smaller hardware store. These grow easily in the heavy, dry soil in this area and seem deer-proof in neighbors' yards. I may go back for more.

I really hope everyone's Okay with mostly things other than knitting filling this post. During the return flight on Sunday I managed five rows on my sleeve. Since then I've knit just two more.

Part of the lack of knitting action relates to my feeling ill for the first couple of days after our trip. Food and I can have a love/hate relationship. And we basically ate no food prepared by us for four days. Wait, I did have one breakfast that pretty much matched what I usually eat. But something(s) disagreed with my system in several ways.

Much of what we ate had more salt in it than we usually use. We do have occasional sushi dinners or other high-salt meals, but our normal intake is fairly low. We both grew up with fathers on low-salt diets so no salt got added in our childhood cooking. Neither of us got in the habit of salting our food. Though my blood pressure runs just fine, a meal involving soy sauce can raise my weight a couple of pounds for a couple of days and make me noticeably puffy.

And I have a respiratory allergy to milk - it gives me asthma-like symptoms if I eat much of it or often. I know I had a couple of treats that were a real spurge for me at the function on Friday night. If I'm good otherwise, I can do that occasionally with minimal effect.

But it can be very hard to eat out with a food allergy. Ingredients don't get mentioned on the menu or the dish gets changed a bit without an update. Servers don't always know the actual ingredients. The good ones find out.

On top of that, I'm pretty sure there are other things I react to that I haven't identified yet. I've been feeling unwell off and on recently, and not in a flu-ish or getting-a-cold kind of way.

So I came home tired, with an unsettled stomach and difficulty keeping focused on anything that required much attention.

I also came home with several gourmet cooking magazines bought at the airport. They now sit in the stack next to my chair with the vegan cookbooks I bought in the last couple of weeks. I go through phases of wanting to read about little other than food or cooking. Often those phases correspond to times I'm felling unaccountably unwell. Perhaps my brain makes the connection between what I eat and how I feel and tries to find a fix.

Part of the impetus for the grocery shopping outing in the horrid weather tonight came from a search for a holiday cookie recipe that would make something suitable both to my dairy-less need and to my MIL's combination of diabetes and celiac disease (no gluten). Fortunately, I found a recipe for Holiday Fruit and Nut Balls that uses ground almonds rather than flour, plus dried fruit and orange juice. I have some decent almonds bought in a stop at Whole Foods on the way back from the airport. Here I found unsweetened dried apricots, figs, and plums for the fruit. I'll try producing powdered sugarsubstitute by whirring erythritol in the blender.

Unfortunately, I hadn't researched recipes before our little trip. Three other recipes I found all call for tapioca flour, which my local store doesn't have. They do have both brown and white rice flour, and both potato and cornstarch from Bob's Red Mill, as well as a premixed gluten-free baking blend - a big increase from recent years. But I really wanted to make the Lemon Olive Oil Cookies. Of course, I'm now a thousand miles from the source for the lemon oil, too, but you can bet I'll look for as soon as I get back to Seattle.

I did find a couple of good looking, smallish butternut squashes. I'll roast those in olive oil tomorrow along with a half dozen little yellow potatoes I have. Or maybe I'll try the Hashed Brussels Sprouts with Lemon and Poppy Seeds and save the squash for Thursday.

I'll make the fruit balls in time to have late-afternoon tea and cookies while I watch the deer graze in fading sunlight on the bird and squirrel seed I toss out back as a source of Kitty TV. That'll make decent compensation for the lack of things I'm used to having easily available.

Blog Bog Down

So much happening and so little to blog about. It seems to be the nature of this time of year.

I've knit 4 rows of the sweater sleeve since we left for this little trip back to Seattle. We've been to a Christmas party with our great group of neighbors and too much really good food. And today we saw the Nutcracker, then took the professional division ballet student we sponsor out to dinner between her two performances. She danced both snowflake and flower parts today.

I'm behind on my knitting blog reading, too. We need to make some tweaks in our already complicated diets to minimize the chance of another round of kidney stone in the Spousal Unit. Yesterday an interesting link somewhere sent me off into food-blog land. What a huge and meandering world that is.

I do have some yarn to show off. My plan for this is an EZ-based saddle-shoulder V-neck as a simple test run before I jump into adding cables and zippers and collars. That might make for dull posts but a very useful sweater.

The color really has much more Olive, as is the name of the colorway, but I liked the gold-lit effect. You'll see more of it for the true colors over the next couple of months, maybe longer. It's a fingering weight from Fleece Artist so may take me eons to knit into an entire sweater.

The Best Laid Plans

I've started the post on knitting back backwards, but I've run out of time. Now I won't have access to my Elizabeth Zimmerman books for a few days while I'm traveling.

I ran into an unexpected time sink this morning. I couldn't connect to my e-mail. Spousal Unit couldn't connect either. We have our own little network, so it was something in our system causing the problem. The fixes SU tried from here - 1,000 miles from our server unit and other equipment - didn't work.

I'm behind on e-mails - some actually important. Part of the problem is that I kept thinking this trip was next week. In the meantime, next week showed up. Last night I realized we leave today and I hadn't confirmed with the cat sitter which day we'd actually be gone. By the time she gets off work tonight we'll be out the door. Sorry, Sis. I'll call from the road.

Anyway, I had other things I needed to respond to before we left but now couldn't do so by e-mail. So, I start to look up phone numbers.

Almost all of my numbers are just on my computer. I got a new phone recently due solely to the fact that my old phone would stop working once the change in the cell system in the US is complete. My old phone is old enough not to have one of the handy, transferable chips.

But I can't get to my address book while my e-mail server is down. SU says we can put that stuff in a local file so I can always get to it, but not until we can get to it.

What needs to happen is a reboot by pushing a button on the box that's 1,000 miles away. We could call the concierge to push the button, as we have a few times in the past. But his number is on the box that's not working. I'm caught in some vicious practical joke of the universe.

Wait, SU found the number in his files while I type  . He's called and the button will get pushed. But I've run out of time and we need to go, so no e-mails will get done until tomorrow.

I hope I can talk him into driving first so I can knit until my heart slows down a bit.

I'm On the Road Again

Tomorrow we drive about two and a half hours to visit over night with Spousal Unit's parents before flying back up to Seattle for a couple of days. We'll fly back down here on Sunday. So, once again, I need to decide what to take with me in the way of knitting projects on a short trip.

I've finished less than half of the second sleeve for my Jaeger Biscuit cardigan , so that goes. Maybe when I get back I'll be ready to block the pieces and knit on button bands.

Though the flights will only last a couple of hours, we also have airport waits, shuttle rides, and some free time around the events we're going back for. I optimistically expect to get the sleeve done before the return flight.

I have two more small things to take along. First, I'll wind the red and taupe hand-dyed skein skein into two balls to double strand a beanie for a college-aged nephew about to have surgery to remove a rod from his leg. (Note - I still need to ask his mother how big his head is.)

The blue Jamieson Shetland will make a swatch for a heavy shawl. I knit one of these in a chunky weight several years ago as about my third project when I restarted knitting. The stitch pattern, basket weave with a seed stitch infill, came from Barbara Walker's Learn to Knit Afghan book. I used the reverse side of a bell ruffle so the increases and decreases wouldn't show.

I want to develop versions in two lighter weights and a scarf. When I start swatching I'll post some photos of the original shawl.

I guess I'd better pack a large SASE, too, since I won't have any checked luggage. Knitting needle don't usually cause any problems nowdays, but better to have a back-up plan.

I'll post on knitting back backwards tomorrow before I leave. I have the photos ready - just need to find a reference or two in EZ.

It's About Time - An FO

                               

Yarn: Mountain Colors 4/8s in Silverbow (no longer on their site), knit at 5.65 (wrong project - more like 5.25) stitches per inch on US5/3.75mm and US4/3.5mm for hems and bands.
Pattern: Karen Alfke's top-down Unpattern done as a cardigan with a slightly scooped crew neck
Started August 16th
Last button sewn on  December 10th.

The pattern gives you a framework for designing your own sweater in any yarn in stockinette stitch. You can make a pullover or cardigan with almost any neckline or collar and edging. It does require stockinette for the proportions to work.

I enjoy working with the Mountain Colors. If a yarn splits at all, I'll have a problem with splits due to something in my technique that crops up as soon as I build up any speed. I had very little problem with splitting even on long rows of stockinette stitch.

Even though this sweater took four months to complete and got toted around on buses and ferries quite a bit, the yarn shows no sign of pilling or wear. I had a couple of places I had to do a fair bit of manipulation of the yarn to fix errors or other issues and it stood up to that very well.

The color runs are so short they give zero chance of pooling or flashing but are long enough to get a sense of all the colors used. The colors in this colorway all have a blue-gray tone and really work well together. I'm sorry they no longer produce this one and so were several people who saw the sweater in progress.

I did picot hems on the bottom, sleeves, button and neck bands. To coordinate I used Yarn Overs for the increases along the raglan sleeve line. The only thing I'd do differently would be to make the cuffs a bit narrower. I allowed a bit of room for the double layer of fabric but when wet blocked the hems actually held the fabric out wider. On the body this gave a nice bit of shaping but the cuffs turned out just a hair wide.

Because my purling tension varies quite a bit from my knitting tension, my gauge knitting flat and in the round can be very different. I pick (continental style) and so purl loosely, plus purling feels less comfortable on a long row. Instead of purling I knit back backwards on the flat knitting of the body. (I still haven't written a post on that, have I?) This put my gauge flat very close to that of my in-the-round sleeves, maybe even a little bit tighter.

This link contains photos and a video (scroll to the bottom) of what the author refers to as purling back backwards but which matches what I learned as knitting back and what Elizabeth Zimmerman calls knitting back backwards in her books and videos. This is a useful technique also for those times when you don't want to turn your work, such as on an edging, entrelac, or in crowded conditions like a plane or bus. I've used purling back very little but it comes in handy to avoid having to flop thing over for, say, the few stitches of a garter stitch edge.

The delay in sewing on the buttons happened when I decided the plan to use split off plies of the yarn for thread as I had for blanket stitching the button holes actually wasn't a good one. Also, The too-large needles I had frustrated me and damaged the sewing-up yarn.

Because I'm currently in a small town in California where we spend about two months of the year, I don't have all my normal supplies. I also don't have access to the kind of shopping I'm used to, which resulted in my arriving at the local quilting supply store five minutes after they closed and a trip to WalMart on a weekend before Christmas.

Obviously, I felt desperate.

It was worth it.

Diversionary Post - Split Peas With Brown Rice and Carrots

Tonight I used a technique I learned soon after I graduated from college the first time around, in a recipe from a long-gone vegetarian cookbook. The author made a carrot and onion soup by processing the vegetables in a blender to chop them finely.

That recipe basically just used carrots, onions and herbs - mostly thyme - sauteed in oil before adding water. The soup was quick and easy to make for a first course or soup and sandwich dinner. Without the blender I couldn't have finely diced enough onion without crying for hours from the irritation or grated enough carrots without crying for hours from  the boredom.

I decided to use this idea as a basis for a split pea soup that would have a less overwhelming peaness than usual. Split peas cook quickly enough that I don't use a slow cooker, especially as I like mine not cooked to complete mush.

My recipe:

Start by chopping half a large onion and about a cup of baby carrots left over from your sister's birthday party in two batches in the blender. Get them pretty finely chopped without actually pureeing them, though some larger bit should remain.

This goes in a pot with a few tablespoons of olive oil, some of which is garlic flavored, along with a generous sprinkle of thyme - maybe a couple teaspoons worth - and a half cup of uncooked brown rice. After this combination sautes for long enough to just start to stick a bit around the edges, pour on some white wine - more than half a cup but less than a full cup. Never cook with a wine you wouldn't drink.

Let this simmer together for a while while you tell the spousal unit about a piece read in Cook's Illustrated while at the grocery store the day before. They had read that alcohol, i.e. wine, added to a hot liquid forms compounds called something vaguely like azetoles that prevent the alcohol from evaporating. After some testing they decided that, indeed, when wine was added to a hot sauce or stock it retained its 'boozy' taste no matter how much it was reduced or how long it then cooked. When simmered on it's own before another liquid was added, it lost that boozy flavor and mellowed as expected.

Once the wine reduces a bit, add a pound of split peas (2 to 2 1/4 cups) and a quart of water. Bring back to a simmer/light boil. Let it cook for an hour, stirring occasionally and adding another three cups of water one at a time while you also finally sew the frigging buttons on your sweater now that you have acquired appropriate needles and thread. Vow next time to believe the package on how much liquid the peas will need, though when you're in your normal urban environment with its greater selection of food products you buy your peas in the bulk organic section, of course.

Toss together a green salad with some socially and physique-ally responsible dressing.

Serve a meal that would make Frances Moore Lappe proud, mostly. What ever happened to the first paperback edition of that book I bought brand new and kept for years?

You're right, I didn't add salt or pepper. I don't think it needs either. Feel free to disagree.

P.S. The recipe makes two large bowls plus that much again in leftovers that will need some water added during reheating after they solidify to a solid mass in the frig.

This and That

While I sew the buttons on my finally-dry cardigan I'll follow up on a couple of things from yesterday's post. (Yes, I do find that my habit of multitasking while I knit slows down my progress a bit. Why do you ask?) Photos tomorrow.

It seems, if you can't find Erika now you should try looking for her in the land of perfume blogs. Sorry about that/you're welcome, Erika.

The sample source I linked yesterday, The Perfumed Court, specializes in niche and hard to find scents. Those are the kind I tend to go for and I can handle, enjoy even, the wait/search for one I like. Very much like I enjoy the hunt for an illusive yarn.

Another source with samples of more easily bought perfumes is discounter Perfume Bay. I haven't bought from them but have read only positive things. I have bought perfumes from Imagination Perfumery. They don't carry samples, but have a 10% off and free shipping over $50 deal on right now and that's off already discounted prices.

So, back to knitting related issues - though having a nice scent on your wrist while you manipulate needles is a good thing.

Robin and I had a little conversation about methods to keep yourself moving forward on projects. She says she tricks herself by stopping at a good starting place rather than at a good stopping place. She tries to always cast on for the next piece before she puts the knitting down or to start a seam as soon as she casts off the last piece. Does it surprise anyone that her job involves process efficiency?

She suggested I try stopping mid-row when I put a piece down. Unfortunately, I've done that one before and didn't pick the sweater back up for a year. Apparently I have a headstrong and hard to trick subconscious.

We do both lay out tools and supplies for a task ahead of time. I may not be able to soak and pin out a piece of lace in the time I have, but if I can I lay out the foam blocks I use to block on as well as my pins, wires, and tape measures. Then in the time I do have to block I can just block rather than taking up some of it with prep.

I assume Robin also has no little kids to get into things and places she can lay out tools without having them in the way.

Any other ideas? How do you keep yourself from procrastinating? How do you get yourself over a difficult spot in the knitting?

It's Wet

The weather today consisted of rain interspersed with showers. The outdoor humidity registered 95% when I checked, though indoors with our central heat it measured 33%.

Despite the dryness inside the house, twenty-four hours later the cardigan still feels damp. It's heavy enough that I don't want to pick it up until it's really dry.

The prediction has the rain tapering off tomorrow morning, but the temperatures won't warm up much.

I can show you the buttons I'll sew on once it dries. These are a gray-colored pearl with a metal shank held by a small knob on the front. They pick up the gray tones in the yarn nicely.

Back to My Knitting

Sorry, I kind of disappeared into a different on-line world the last couple of days. I got lost in a couple of perfume blogs, plus this site for sample decants. When I receive my order I'll let you know if I find anything new I like. The last time I tested out scents, most of the ones I ended up using came from Guerlain, but they've discontinued many of their EDPs (Eau de Parfums) and already they don't show up often at retailers.

I finally did my workout video today while the Mountain Colors cardigan soaked. The cardigan now dries on the mats after shaping to the right dimensions. The stitches did relax into submission for the most part. I'm pleased with the results. Tomorrow I'll sew on the buttons and have a finished sweater - my first in about two and a half years.

And I started the second sleeve of my Jaeger Biscuit cardigan. If I don't get sidetracked again, I could have another finished sweater in a week. That is, I could unless the last bits of finishing take me as long on this one as on the last.

Based on my blog reading, it appears prompt progress on the finishing work accounts for many fast knitters' speed in completing projects. I, on the other hand, tend to put off anything resembling sewing or other not-knitting tasks.

My slow finishing can also count as part of my periodic version of reverse startitis. Sometimes I have trouble getting myself to start the next step of a project - casting on the next piece, picking up for bands, even adding in another ball of yarn if I put the project down first.

As far as I can figure out, occasionally my brain needs a break from whichever interest I've immersed myself in. Knitting takes priority most of the time, but plenty of things pop up to provide a diversion without even looking very hard.

Not a lot, but some progress has been made and life could be much worse

This evening I headed out to my newly reorganized hardware store here to look for the foam insulation sheets Robin suggested in the comments for the a previous post to use as a blocking board for my Mountain colors top-down cardigan. Apparently they haven't completely restocked yet and no foam boards could be had.

They did, however, have packages of a smaller size of the foam puzzle mats I use in Seattle, complete with cute edging pieces. These should easily store here and give me a familiar surface for pinning and drying my sweater.

I like these because they break down to a storable size, the pins stick in easily without going through to the floor, the knitted pieces don't slip, and the foam doesn't soak up the moisture so things dry a bit faster on them.

Plus, in a few minutes I am going to go up and do a little workout and nice stretch on that cushy surface since it's too late to want to soak and pin my cardigan tonight.

I did get the sleeves hemmed after I got home from the hardware store. I'm ready to soak and block first thing tomorrow, given that for me first thing starts somewhere around noon.

Today even at noon I'd barely started at all. I just couldn't wake up. My sister's party was over by 9:30, as Sunday counts as a work night for most of the guests, and we had things well enough picked up by ten. I lay down for a moment and woke up enough to go to bed at 12:30.

Then I just couldn't wake up today. I got the decorations down, but I haven't mopped the kitchen. Didn't I just do that yesterday? And I didn't get out to the stores until after 6PM.

Besides the too much food and wine and champagne last night, I think I suffered from having in the house today too little of the good stuff I normally eat. The cupcakes turned out really yummy, and looked fine with the glaze on them. But cupcakes, even vegan gingerbread with cranberry fig relish spread on one, don't have the same effect as my usual heavy on the fruits and vegetables diet. And alcohol gives me hot flashes, though much milder than the ones I got a few months ago.

When I got home from shopping, I had an e-mail from my Seattle house sitter/Garden Guy. If you missed it, Seattle had a day of snow Saturday; unusual at all and a bit more fell than normal in the usual rare snowfall. Then they had a rainstorm that came second in all time since records have been kept - about 130 years, I think. Six billion gallons of rain, according to this report. And it hasn't stopped.

We had a leaky window in our 19th floor unit. According to the response from our concierge, windows leaked all over the building.

Last year I missed the record wind and power outages; this year the record rain. Here in California we had sixty degrees worth of sunshine today. I think I'll go do that workout and contemplate my good fortune.

I Love My Sister

So today I did no knitting and instead prepared for her birthday party tomorrow. House is clean other than a last-minute wipe down and moping mopping of the kitchen. Decorations are up.

So are enough tables and chairs to seat 24 while leaving the living room empty for people to congregate before dinner. We'll see how well the layout works once people actually sit down.

Guess how old she'll be.

I'm not really sure about my cupcakes, though. The tester came out clean.

These are the first recipe I've tried from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. They do smell good. They'll get drizzled with a thin icing and are just for those of us who can't or won't eat the carrot cake with cream cheese frosting that will be the main birthday cake.