Sunday, July 27, 2008

I bake, therefore I butter

I started the baking extravaganza with getting the little peasant bread dough out so it could rise.  5 hours later, it still refuses to rise.





I pounded the crap out of it, and set it again.  It may just get baked and be a very dense little bread.

I moved on to the most awesome-est oatmeal chocolate chip cookies evah..





Oh, so good. You really need to stop after two cookies or you will turn into a wad of buttery goodness yourself.

THEN, not to be stopped, I decided I would make a cherry pie. I had this can of pie filling that had been rattling around in the back of my cupboard from a time I was going to make cheesecake many moons ago. And I was very into dough today, so I wanted to make my own crust for the first time.

My grandma gave me this pie plate with the cherry pie recipe on it. Note to self: Make notes of what the rest of the instructions are before you put the crust and filling into the plate. Anyway, more butter, more sugar.. pastry dough is sooooo nice to play with.





I turned to the pie directions on the can of pie filling, which don't seem to be the same as the ones actually hidden now beneath the pie, but I kind of compromised. 425 for 15 minutes, then down to 350 until it started to turn brown.

Voila...





This is going to be soooo good with a la mode later. I just know it.  Yeah, I have no idea what it means when they say to flute the edges... at least I think that's what it said, it's under the pie.  Soon as the apples around the area come into abundance, I'm going to be canning applesauce, and making apple pie.

In Knitting Words... I'm working on my Summer of Socks 2008 socks in Twisted, Playful yarn base, in the Tulip colorway.  Two socks at a time on two circulars, Magic Judy's cast on, toe up  Gorgeous.





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Saturday, July 26, 2008

Some things are just stupid

Windows:  Okay, so we have a non-industry standard house.  It's old.  There were no industry standards when it was built, or if there were, the guy who put this house together was not into standards.  As a result, no window or door in this place is of any particular standard size.  The hole was built to fit whatever window they managed to get their hands on.

So, we pull off our siding, and we pull out the old windows, and we measure what size we are going to need. We go on down to the building supply store to order our new windows, and we tell them, SPECIFICALLY what size opening we have, and what size window we need.  Two windows size 30 INCHES x 60 INCHES, and one window 30 INCHES X 48 INCHES.

So, they call, tell my husband that the windows are in.  They close every day at 5 o'clock which is of course, when my husband gets off work every day so he is planning to wait until Saturday to pick them up.  On Friday, I get this weird desire to be helpful, so I offered to go over there and pick up the windows so he can have them here and ready to go Saturday morning and he can just get them put on the house. 

This will teach me to try to be helpful.

I go over there, they load the windows into my car.  I'm no expert as I don't work in this *industry* so as far as I can tell, the receipt says 30 x 60, and the little thing they printed out says 3060.  I figure, must be right.  Right?  Wrong. 

Apparently INDUSTRY STANDARD, is to order these things by writing them 3060, which means 3 feet x 6 feet.  Which is not 30 inches x 60 inches.  Some dilrod entered the data as 3060 rather than the actual size we ordered, so we wound up with windows, WAY too huge.

Am I just daft?  Does it make no sense whatsoever to write up an order in inches when you know that they don't order them that way?  Didn't it cross somebody's tiny little brain somewhere that if you write down 30 x 60 inches, somebody is going to enter that into the ordering computer as 3060 and get the wrong flippin' windows?   Hello?  If you must adhere to the stupid standard of entering things as feet and inches, perhaps (and this is just a bleeping suggestion) when you write up the order, try converting it to the units you are going to be ordering by?

I'd be willing to guess that at the window making factory, they probably convert it back to inches for more specific measuring anyway. 

Add this to the general frustration that we don't actually matter in the grand scheme of customer-dom, because we are just a little guy, replacing 3 windows at a time, not some grand and big spending contractor guy working on a housing development, and we get shuffled to the bottom of the pile anyway. 

So, we've been waiting for a month for these f***ing windows anyway, they ordered the wrong ones, so now we have to wait ANOTHER month for them to order the right ones?

Add to that, we had some plans to have one little camping trip the third week in August, and now we probably won't be able to go because we can't leave town with the house secured merely by plywood over giant holes.

Yeah, I'm miffed. Plus, it ruined my whole evening last night because it ruined my husband's evening last night, which leaves him in a foul mood which washes over me.  But we had pizza, and watched a little Tour last night, which unwound things slightly. 

And I ran to the store and bought me a copy of the Fall 2008 Knitscene (drool, drool, must make everything..), and worked on my Panama Hat until it was past time for bed. 

Hubby is on his way now to return the stupid windows and rant and rave at these people.  I sincerely doubt we'll be ordering more windows from them next year when we get round to the other side of the house.  There just has to be a better place to go.
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Thursday, July 24, 2008

Something Awesome this Way Comes

And Tina
Why do I have this urge to turn tonight's dinner experment over to a llama named Tina?





Anyway, in other fabulous news... My Three Irish Girls Yarn shipment arrived. Two skeins of Lady Slipper and one of Chocolate Orchid. I was thinking a skirt, but I just don't know. It's so lovely, I think it will just be fondled lovingly for a while as I decide.





And my Rockin Sock Club shipment also arrived. Lovely, lovely, and I've posted some pictures in my stash on Ravelry under cover of spoiler button, you can check it out there, or on my Flickr account here:

It's been a long and weary day, and I'm off now for a little catch up time on the Tour de Fleece/France..
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Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Maybe I need to get out more?

Oh Fun I've been to the purple ones.

Where Chelle's Roamed
Make yours @ BigHugeLabs.com
Make yours @ BigHugeLabs.com


Of course, this next one looks way more impressive than it is.

Where Chelle's Roamed
Make yours @ BigHugeLabs.com
Make yours @ BigHugeLabs.com

Okay, not that impressive. Geez.
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Friday, July 18, 2008

Sewing Machine Shopping

I have this embroidery/sewing combo machine, and I rarely do any sewing.  Like most combo devices, it's not really stellar at either of the things it does. 

My current machine
Sent from BlueOrganizer


At the time, I really was fascinated with the whole machine embroidery thing.  I downloaded lots of free designs, and tinkered with the thing, but like with most of my hobbies, I get more fun out of collecting stuff than actually doing anything with it.

More recently, I've been more interested in sewing some basic things, kids clothes, curtains, maybe a sundress, and it hasn't really been that great for sewing either.  I bought a serger, which I LURVE, but it has resulted in a small pile of started projects waiting to be finished on a sewing machine.

So, I'm going to take my Iris and trade it in for a new sewing machine that may serve me a little better as a basic sewing machine.  I started just shopping about on-line today, and found this one.



It seems pretty good, found a really good review of it that says it's easy to use for kids, which means I should be able to figure it out too.  :)

Price-wise, it's quite a bit less expensive than my Iris was.  I also have my eye on one of those sewing cabinets that folds down all small and clean looking when not in use and hides all your stuff.  Probably have to pay a little extra, but I'll actually be able to sew and have a working sort of work space.

I like this one

Arrow 400 Series Cabinet - L-shaped sewing cabinet in oak finish with brass accents is perfect for small spaces, and tucks nicely in the corner and out of the way. A custom insert is included with this cabinet.
Sent from BlueOrganizer




But you know, a little out of the price range.

Anyway... back to spinning and knitting...
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Tuesday, July 15, 2008

`Cuckoo's Nest' hospital to be torn down

I just found this so interesting..

Cuckoo
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Sunday, July 13, 2008

Thorla Family Fun

This is what we Thorlas do on the weekends for entertainment



Nick is such a good sport. :)
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Tour De Fleece 08 - Stage 5, 6, whatever...

I've moved into my Twisted stash.  Wooo.  It's so so nice

It's Teacake colorway, in Dynamic which is  70% merino, 30% yearling mohair. 

My best singles yet.  If I do say so...

July 2008 044.jpg

I've only just got started last night, hope to do a bit more tonight..
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Saturday, July 12, 2008

says DH feels a little avoided, but I'm making some progress today dang it all

Tangled Nightmare and Coconut Dreams

Well, I stepped out of my comfort zone of navajo plying last night. 

At first it went okay.  My singles plied.  I'm kinda happy, though maybe it could have used more twist.  I'll be setting that today.

July 2008 021

But I ended up with a bunch left over on one bobbin.  So, I thought I'd get tricky and try to 2-ply it onto itself, and in the process of trying to figure out how to do that, it turned into this..

July 2008 023

I managed to salvage some of it onto my swift, but it's still all twisted on itself, and ugh.  Some of it, I just haven't the life in me to try to untangle.  And the rest I'm not sure what to do with. 

July 2008 026

I find myself wondering, why, oh why, does anybody ply this way?  What do people do when they end up with a bunch of hard work still left as a single on a bobbin and a bobbin full of 2-ply?  It's not enough left to make anything major, but it's still a bunch of hard spun single.  When I navajo ply, all my single gets plied into 3-ply.  

I'm lurking about hoping to score some more Twisted in the next update, which could happen anytime between yesterday and next Wednesday.  Yeah, I'm not obsessed and hovering and refreshing the page incessantly, but I'm hoping to catch it serendipitously. 

In other craziness, I found this package of coconut in the cupboard, probably from some well-intentioned plan of making one of the bazillion things I baked over the holidays that just didn't make it into the queue.  So, yesterday, I made a coconut cream pie.  I licked the pan.  It was tasty.  I'm just going to need some whipped cream to serve the whole pie.  The pie took 5 egg yolks.  So, I had these egg whites sitting here, and still 3/4 bag of coconut  I look at the bag, and there's a recipe for macaroons (which I LURVE) and lo and behold, they require 4 egg whites.   I used some of the egg white to paint on the pie crust before I baked it, so there was likely around 4 egg whites left in there.  So, of course, I HAD to make the macaroons last night.  I mean, I couldn't throw out those glorious egg whites, and I had to use up the coconut before the ants could find it.  So, I was being frugal.  Yeah.  that's it.  Macaroon Frugal, that's me.

July 2008 006 July 2008 004 July 2008 002
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Friday, July 11, 2008

Tour De Fleece - Stage 5

After the first five stages of cycling, I have pedaled my way through this Dicentra roving


February 126


And have these two singles..

July 2008 018

Stage 6 - Plying

I think I'm going to go for regular ole 2-plying this time.  I've always navajo plied, so this will be a little bit of a change for me.
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Thursday, July 10, 2008

My inner joiner Farmgirl?

So, we're tearing apart our house.  I'm guessing this is a good idea?

July 2008 018.jpg

To try not to think about it, I burn up some time on my computer..

And as further proof that i am working my way up to being a first class *joiner*, I've joined a whole slew of things in the last week.  The usual things, like Twitter.  Then Plaxo, which I can see will be useful in tracking and syncing  all of my little electronics with my schedule, task lists and contacts.  I also found a couple of spots to join that were created purely to streamline your microblogging, status updating experiences.  first I found Hellotxt.com, which is pretty basic, it works, but it doesn't feel fun.

But then things got fun.

First off there's Plurk

This is like a chat room, only modern and snazzy, and way better organized.  You earn karma which opens up new worlds of dancing bananas and name changes.  There is this crazy-ass group of knitting people on Plurk and they all just Plurk 24/7.  What they're eating, what they're knitting, what they're thinking, and just that they're done' plurking and going to bed.  Here, in the midst of all this random yet fascinating chatter, somebody dropped something about Plurkette Hencircle


So, of course, I thought, hey, what's that. Went browsing about and before you know it, yep, I've joined.  then I went on to find out what it was that I'd joined.  Which is the mark of a true joiner.  Other people are doing it, I want in, then figure out what it is that I'm in.  Turns out, it's way cool, so I'm staying joined. It's a virtual community of plurkers who are into this Farmgirl thing.  and the Farmgirl thing is just like, modern day women's club of ladies into sustainable and organic living. 

And they're also totally into aprons.  Which at first I privately scoffed, then started looking at aprons, now I'm thinking I should get me a new sewing machine and make me an apron. 
And I want to earn Farmgirl badges too.

I'm just totally into this whole thing.  I checked out her book from the library, and just skimmed through it a bit, now I probably have to buy that too.  But first, I'll be officially joining the Farmgirl Sisterhood, because being a Plurkette is great, but I want to join it all.  :)


Oh, and I also joined Ping.fm so now I can efficiently post updates and fanciful things directly to all the things that I joined.  And I've hardly thought about my house with no siding on one side all day.
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Wednesday, July 9, 2008

postin' thru the Ping

Sunday, July 6, 2008

Tour - Stage I

I did some spinning last night while watching the late night repeat of the first stage. My pictures didn't turn out so good, lighting is bad-bad-bad today... But I'm quite pleased with my rather even singles here. This roving I purchased last year at Oregon Flock and Fiber. It's by Dicentra Designs Hand Painted Fiber - 4.3 oz of 80% Merino/20% Tussah Silk Colorway: Orudruin

July 2008 003


July 2008 001

I'm about halfway, (about 2.25 oz left), so I think I'll switch bobbins tonight in the hopes of getting a somewhat equal amount to do a 2-ply with. I've never done anything but Navajo ply (with my whole two batches I've spun before) so plying "regular" is new to me.

Well, off to work..


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