Author: sajbat

Hi Tech/Low Tech

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I was late to the iPhone. I have coveted one ever since they first came out, but held off on getting one because I didn’t want to be one of THOSE people who was constantly checking their phone in all situations.

Then I got a non-iphone smartphone, and it sucked. It froze constantly.  This meant that I was one of those people who was always staring at my phone but just watching it do NOTHING.  I was able to get out of my contract (without a penalty, ask me how if you need advice) and switch to the new iPhone, which I love.

As much as I love technology, I obviously love the handmade as well, so when I saw a diy cross-stitch phone case I knew I needed to have it. The next question was what to put on it? Well, I like birds, dammit. I don’t care if they’re cliche in the design world by now. And I have a son who’s name will forever be attached to a finch, so birds it was. (If a single one of you links to the Portlandia sketch, you will be immediately defriended.)

For the girl, I picked a little bluebird, which is a very, very loose association based on her nickname.  If we were going for a bird related to her personality, it would be…I don’t know. Perhaps a mockingbird? Loud, full of personality, bright, devoted to their own families yet unconcerned with other people? Hmmm… that would be keeping within a theme, bookwise.

I finished the birds first but it looked so plain and white and, well, there was no orange, but I was able to fix that with this cool variegated embroidery floss that I found at Fancy Tiger, and voilà!

I’m not entirely sure that it’s exactly what I was hoping for, but it’ll do for now and I’ll see about changing it in the future. The girl has already insisted that the beak of her bird be changed to purple, naturally.

A quick roundup of another high tech/low tech mix–my Kindle.  Again, I like the idea of the faux wood instead of the plastic that it actually is, and it also makes it easier to read in my opinion. I also don’t like the hard cases–I find them heavy, so to protect it I knitted a little sock out of scrap yarn, which does a serviceable job of keeping it unscratched. I tried a few fancy knitting motifs before I realized that I was spending far too much time and just went for some simple stripes.

The wood also serves as a form of camouflage, and can make the Kindle a bit tough to find sometimes.

As far as  next projects, it’s time for me to get started on a sweater that I promised to a friend about, oh, a year ago.  Will have updates on that soon!

Log Cabin Blanket

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See how, at the top of this page, it says that this is partly a knitting blog? I mean, that’s even what the title refers to.  Not that you’d know it since I haven’t had a knitting post for, oh, MONTHS.

Here’s why:

Way back in January, I thought, oh, I’ll knit a blanket for my friend Irene for her wedding.  She’s getting married in July.  That’ll give me PLENTY of time to finish.

*snort*

I’ve learned that it takes a long time to knit a blanket out of worsted weight wool. A looong time. I suppose if I was one of those people that was able to devote 2-3 hours daily to knitting then I could finish one in less time than it takes for Congress to accomplish anything. (What, you say that still hasn’t happened? Nice to know that I’m finishing something faster than someone out there. )

I first started this blanket with these colors because Irene mentioned that the walls in her family room had recently been painted a copper color. I wasn’t sure if it looked that pretty, so I took a picture and sent it to my sister, who promptly replied that it looked like a 70s bathmat. I think that was her way of trying to be diplomatic instead of just screaming in horror. Sadly, she was right and I had to start over, this time substituting ivory for the dark brown and rearranging the colors.

The technique is adapted from quilting, and is the log cabin technique and specifically the courthouse steps or bricklayer. Many of the famous Gee’s Bend Quilts use this technique.  A few years ago the exhibition came to the Denver Art Museum–if you ever have a chance to see them in person, they are so beautiful as is the history around the quilts.

You start by knitting a center block, then picking up and adding on a strip to each side, then picking up along the newly created long sides, and so on and so forth until you have a big cushy blanket, just perfect for wrapping up in. I finished with a two rows of single crochet around the entire blanket, which gives it a more finished look.

The blanket is gifted and onto a new home–all the happiness to the newlyweds, and many warm and cozy nights.

Garden Apathy

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I don’t know what it is about September, but I lose all motivation for the garden.  I stop watering, I stop picking, I really don’t pay it any attention. It’s terrible, I know, especially since things really only start growing at the end of July. I just get unmotivated because, with the exception of the grape tomatoes and the butternut squash, I feel like I’m the only one that really tries to eat everything that grows. I even told Eric the other day that I wasn’t sure if I’d do the garden next year. His response, “Yeah…maybe just do flowers and some basil.” Way to be encouraging.

Garden at the end of August

Of course, I know that next year I’ll get all excited again and plant far more than is good for me.

Scorecard:

Winners: Butternut squash, chard, most tomatoes, eggplants, radishes, spinach, all herbs, chard, and holy god the tomatillos! We had near a gazillion tomatillos.  I didn’t think we’d get any since I only planted one plant and you’re supposed to need two, but there must be one near by that bees cross pollinated. This must be especially true since I planted a purple tomatillo plant, but got only green ones.

Tomatillo plant--grew twice this big by the end

Runners up: Corn. We didn’t get hardly any yield, but what we did was very tasty and it was just fun to watch it grow, and have a little living screen on our porch.  

There was also something that nibbled at the corn.  I suspect the squirrels, but can’t entirely exclude the birds.

Peppers–now, I didn’t get very many, but what I got were delicious and it’s the first year I got any at all, so it just makes me want to try harder next year. Lemongrass–grew well, made a few nice cocktails, but, really, I didn’t use it that much. (Note: If you want some free lemongrass, come and harvest it before it dies.) Beets–the few that grew were great, I need to start them a bit later and water more. Roma tomatoes–you know, I just didn’t get enough from one plant to bother. Maybe if I plant a few next year I’ll get enough to make sauces and freeze.

Losers: This year the cucumbers and beans were pathetic. Just pathetic. They grew late, yielded little, and the cucumbers were bitter to boot. Not sure what happened since they were both amazing last year. One of the problems was I tried to plant scarlet runner beans with the purple beans, and I think they only succeeded in making sure that neither grew well.  The watermelons were a joke. Once we harvested them they were gross and mealy.  Grass–not marijuana, people. The grass ring around the center has finally died. Next year I’ll just plop some flagstone over or something.

Second-to-last harvest

 

Despite my current apathy, I’ll miss the garden, as I do every winter. The last harvest portents the first snows, the perpetual cold, and the winter gloom. As a Californian transplant, I’ve never loved winter even though Colorado tries to tempt me with the mountains. I’ll wait for the joy in the kids faces as they tumble through the waist high snow and stay out far too long until they can come in pink-cheeked and ready for hot chocolate, which I’ll have been happily stirring over a warm stove.

Patches

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My parents hate torn jeans.  When I was in high school, it was the heyday of grunge fashion and torn jeans were cool. You could, with torn jeans, pretend like you didn’t live in one of the more affluent neighborhoods of Fremont.  More likely, you paid good money for jeans that were already pre-torn in delicately artful ways.

My parents just thought torn jeans looked like you were poor. Of course, my parents’ disapproval only made me desperately wanted to wear them.  I never quite made it out of the house with torn jeans, and they ended up just getting tossed.

Now of course, I have a 6 year old boy, and 6 year old boys cannot seemingly live in the same universe with an intact pair of jeans. I swear, as soon as we get a pair of jeans it seems that they have holes. I have to say, I don’t particularly care if my kid wears torn jeans, but winters here are cold and it just doesn’t work to have jeans with holes. We also get a bunch of hand me down jeans that were previously worn by a 6 year old boy and thus suffer from the same problem. The thought of forking over $12-15 (at a minimum) each for 8 pairs of jeans was more than I could bear.

So I figured I’d patch them, but add a little flair, too. Mind you, this takes some dedication. I HATE sewing. Mostly because I’m incredibly bad at it, and I don’t like to be bad at things. I got some of those iron-on patches, thread in a few colors, and a few fabric scraps.  Incidentally, it’s not that easy finding masculine fabrics–there’s lots of pink and ladybugs and purple chickens and tulips but not too may boy-friendly fabrics.

They turned out pretty nice!

The felt patch on the right hand one is already a bit frayed–I’m sure there’s some smart way to deal with that fabric that I’m unaware of. My favorite, though is the green car fabric that I found:

I wonder how long it will take for him to wear his way through these. I’m hoping it’s more than a week or two.

Young Love

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On the way home from school a few weeks ago:

Me: How was school today?

Boy: Good. Elliott has a girlfriend. (Elliott is 6, fyi.)

Me: Oh…what’s her name?

Boy: Lucy.

Me: Huh. Does anyone else have a girlfriend?

Boy: Aaron. His girlfriend is Ruby.

At this point, a big Price-is-Right-like wheel of possible responses is turning in my head.  The pointer finally stops on:

Me: So, what does it mean to have a girlfriend?

Boy: Well, it means you really really really like a girl and want to marry her when you grow up.

Me: Oh, okay. <beat> Do you have a girlfriend?

Boy (in an exasperated, eye-rolling, i-can’t-believe-you’re-so-dumb voice): Mo-om! Amalia???

Really, I thought I’d be spared that tone of voice for a few years yet. Sigh.

Grand Lake vacation

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Since this seems to be blog catch up day, I’m going to post about our summer vacation about a month later.

In August, we all found ourselves with a long weekend off and thought, let’s get out of here! Now, others might just take off and find a campground.  I prefer to come home to a stove and a hot shower and something between me and the bears besides a sheet of nylon. All the cabins I looked for were booked, but I was able to find a VRBO condo in Grand Lake that looked nice.

We had such a great time.  The first day we drove up leisurely, stopping on the way in Granby, maybe? I can’t remember–one of those tiny mountain towns. There was a great road side stop with a playground and a kids’ fishing lake. We stopped for a break and a little fishing. Did we catch anything? Uh, no.

The condo was nice and backed up to a nice open space where the kids could run around and be free. We went to check out Grand Lake and later that evening we walked across the road where there was a lake and tried again for fish, and again didn’t catch anything.

The next day we went back to Grand Lake and  rented a family kayak from these guys: http://mountainpaddlers.com/.  I was a little worried about how the girl would do with this, but it was fantastic! We were one of the first few people out on the lake, before all the annoying motorboats, so we had a peaceful kayak around the lake.  The highlight was seeing an osprey nest up close, and then seeing one fish and grab one out of the water!

After that we just hung out on the “beach” for a while, which was just fine with the girl.

Later that day we went for a short hike and more fishing.  It was so, so beautiful at this little lake.  I never tired of seeing the osprey flying overhead and skimming the water, hunting for fish.

I even tried my hand at fishing.

Again, we didn’t catch anything, but had a great time all the same.

Our last day, we took the long way back home and drove through Rocky Mountain National Park. We happened upon a ranger guided hike for kids! We had to wade through some tall tall grass, and at the end he had the kids draw pictures of animals that had adapted to their environment.

Then it was time to head home, but not before one last stop for fishing.

And…HE CAUGHT SOMETHING. A FISH. A real live floppy fish was on the end of the line.  We were so surprised we didn’t really know what to do with ourselves! While reeling the little guy in (it was maybe 6 or 8 inches long when we saw it) it wriggled its way off the hook and swam away. It was so exciting! I sort of get the whole fishing thing now, even if you do have to deal with a dead animal at the end of it all if you’re successful.

We loved it and will definitely head back.  It’s not that far away and one of the nice things is that all the out of state tourists go to one of the big mountain towns, so it’s largely Colorado families out there and it’s a nice low-key environment. Without any bears.

Arr Mateys!

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The boy had another birthday, bringing the total to 6.  I suppose if you want to be technical he’s had 7 if you count his birth day, but that’s not how it’s done, I’m told.

This year, we went for pirates, fitting since he is born on International Talk Like a Pirate Day.

I even found a pirate to come celebrate with us.

There was swashbucklin’

and treasure huntin’

and cupcake eatin’

and…well..picture takin’, another common pirate activity.

A splendid time was had by all, including the pirate. Happy Birthday, little guy!

(The girl now tells me she wants a T-rex party, with a real T-rex. If you know where I can find one, let me know.)

Literary Houses

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Where I grew up, we have a fantastic public library. I spent many, many happy hours there. When I was in high school, I became addicted to Perry Mason mysteries. (Yes, that’s embarrassing, and yes, I’m a complete NERD, but you already knew that.)  My father checked out of the library with me one night, saw the stack of ten Perry Mason novels and said, “That’s it! For every mystery novel you read, you must read one book off of the classics shelf.” I am eternally grateful that he made me do this. (Of course, compared to what adolescents read nowadays, Perry Mason mysteries are practically classic literature.)

This was how I first read Jane Eyre, and fell in love with the book as many girls do at some point.  The independent soul, awful authority figures, romance, desperation…what’s not to love? I started looking up other books that had to do with Jane Eyre, and happened upon a book that had illustrated drawings of Thornfield Hall, including floor plans.  It also had drawings of other classic books’ houses. It was fantastic to see the world of the book brought to life–I hadn’t known that there were movie versions, and even then there was no Netflix and I don’t think that my friends would have wanted to check out “Jane Eyre” from Blockbuster over watching “Better Off Dead” for the zillionth time.

A few years ago, I tried to find this book. Using the magical power of Google, surely it would be mere seconds before I was in possession of this book. I even hit the “I’m feeling lucky” button. Alas, my search string led me nowhere. I tried every way I could think of to search, to no avail. I even emailed the author of the “Strange Maps” blog to see if he’d heard of it, to no avail.

And then today, for some reason, I read something that referenced Miss Havisham. Miss Havisham, I thought, was in a house, was she not? I wondered if that house was also in the book.  I added “Satis House” to my search, and there it was–available through Amazon from used booksellers, out of print. Even better, the author did a similar book for famous children’s books locales. I feel somewhat ridiculous that it took me years to find a book about literary houses that’s titled, “Literary Houses.”

A few clicks later, it’ll be here in a few days. I can’t wait to leaf through it again, though I’m trying to temper my excitement. Maybe I’ll even share it with you.

What the Hell do I do with all this Chard?

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If you planted chard, chances are pretty good that you’re asking yourself this question.  There is only so much chard risotto and sauteed chard one can possibly stomach, and that tends to be the end of my repertoire of chard recipes, until this summer when I saw my friend Rebecca make some crispy kale chips that we gobbled up before dinner was even done.  Since kale and chard are often interchangeable, I thought, why not try it with chard?

First of all, gather chard.  I’m getting about this much chard twice a WEEK.

Next, wash and dry the leaves thoroughly. A helper makes this job much easier.

Next, remove the thick center ribs and then slice into one inch strips. I find that folding the leaves in half makes this much easier. You can save and sautee the stems for later, though I’m so sick of chard stems that I just put them into the compost.

Next, mix with olive oil, salt, and fresh pepper. Go easy on the olive oil. Place in a single layer on a baking sheet and roast at 425 for 7-10 minutes. If they’re too thickly layered, you end up with steamed chard. When done, you want some of the edges to be dark brown and almost slightly burnt.

All of that chard? Roasted nicely down into a more manageable bowl of crispy tastiness. It’s like potato chips, but healthier.

Then gobble away!