Random Thursday

I've been working on something at work which is threatening to eat my brain, so while I have been working on some fun rants (and maybe a rave or two) I just can't summon the brain power to write much. So abbreviated versions will have to do.

1. On my way to work yesterday I was thinking about a "Things I Love" sort of post. I could only think of one item to put on it before my job started swallowing me: Eddie Izzard. I do love him so, in all of his 5'7", stubby, cross-dressing, ambiguous sexuality, massive jawlined glory. Then, lo and behold, The A.V. Club interviewed him a couple of days ago. The interview is fine, but the comments are a total scream. Highly recommended reading. (There is also a very good interview with the always delightful Alan Alda).

2. I made another batch of salsa last night. That brings us to. Five. Gallons. You read that right. Five gallons of salsa. I am so not making anymore!

3. The rabbits ate all of my pickling cucumbers. On the one hand, I'm glad not to have to deal with them, on the other hand those pickles picked up some passionate fans last year. So I went to the Farmer's Market and bought some cucumbers.

I'll pickle them this weekend. You're welcome.

4. I haven't been knitting much since I last posted about it (I guess it wasn't that long ago. While waiting for the bright purple, I've knitted this much:

A top down raglan cardigan using Barbara Walker's system. The yarn is Butterfly Super 10 Mercerized Cotton in a lovely dusty purple. I have apparently entered a purple period.

5. I've been working on a rant about Locavores, but all I can really say is that if I had to live my life without Parmigiano Reggiano, what would be the point?

6. And last, but not least, I heard a terrible rumor the other day, which I can only hope is completely unfounded. It seems that Ann Arbor's venerated Village Corner, employer of misfits, purveyor of fine wine, frozen tv dinners, extension cords and index cards is to be torn down and replaced with a high rise. I'm starting to hate this place.

Now that I'm good and depressed, back to getting my brain sucked out through a straw. Wahoo.

Dad's New Toy

My dad bought a 1963 Morgan a couple of weeks ago. So cute! It was pretty funny watching Len fold his six foot tall, 200 pound body into the little roadster. I am very fond of the belt (it buckles on the other side) which keeps the "bonnet" from blowing open at high speed. I also really like that the frame of the car is made out of wood and that even stubby armed me can put my hand out and touch the ground.

Why Swatch?

I rarely make a gauge swatch for a baby sweater. Babies change so much and so quickly, getting a correct size is a pretty dicey proposition. Especially is the baby in question hasn't been born yet. I figure if I have suitable yarn and needles, and I'm somewhere in the gauge ballpark, the sweater will fit the kid someday (but hopefully not in the dead of summer!)

Some friends of ours are having a baby in December and I want to knit something interesting for them (I'm pretty the baby won't care much). I've been wanting to knit a Dale of Norway sweater, so this seems as good an excuse as any. I settled on the cover sweater in Baby 175, and bought yarn -- light green (9013), lavender (5303) and blue (5726), to be specific. I knew I wanted the green for the background, but wasn't sure otherwise. So, a swatch:

As it turns out, I don't like either of the options. The colors are fine together, but the lavender doesn't pop as much as I'd like. So, I've ordered the bright purple (5135) and will do this again. I think I will use the lavender for the trim -- I want to make the little pants and won't have enough yarn unless I use the lavender.

So there you are. That's why swatch.

And is it just me, or does this strike anyone else as "1974 Vega Tennis Ball Green"? I can't seem to get away from it.

Obnoxious Flower Sweater

I haven't gotten much knitting done in the last few weeks, but I did finish the Obnoxious Flower Sweater.

Sigh. Too big and floppy. And the sleeves are clearly for someone much longer limbed than I.

Nice pajama pants though!

Buttons helped the floppiness a little. But the sleeves? I took drastic measures. I did something that strikes fear into the hearts of even non-knitters.

I took a pair of scissors to them.

It's true. And I didn't think twice about it either. I took out the seam all the way to the armpit, cut the cuff off the first sleeve and started to unravel. Or at least I tried to -- it turns out, if you knit from the top down, unraveling from the bottom doesn't work very well (it works even less well if you are babysitting year old twins. Maybe that's just me.) Since I am not hurting for yarn, I cut the next sleeve much closer to where I wanted to start knitting down. I wanted to reknit most of the sleeves, rather than just chop it off and redo the cuff, because I needed to end up with the same number of stitches as originally planned.

I suppose I should have been more pissed off about having to reknit most of the sleeves, but I was much too tired. I might have been more freaked out about the cutting, but having plenty of yarn cushioned that blow.

Ugh. What an awful picture! But the sleeves are much better.

Len would like you to know that this sweater is, "1974 Chevy Vega Tennis Ball Green. Maybe a little brighter." He thinks someone will know what he is talking about, and despite my appreciation of lovely old cars, I don't. Besides there isn't anything lovely about a 1974 Vega (I believe the color he refers to is the third car).

Inventory

In the last 10 days, I have:

* Cleaned three bathrooms (2 of which had hardly been touched in three, the third had been occupied by a 28 year old slacker with hair halfway down his back. We won't discuss the bathtub drain).

* Cleaned one very large kitchen. While I managed to miss out on cleaning the two refrigerators (some other very lucky person was stuck with that job), I did empty them of rotting food. And scrubbed the very difficult floor, it's very unevenly layed brick tiles. Dumbest floor ever.

* Cleaned our two small pieces of carpet.

* Washed all of our wood floors. Apparently, I was inspired by all of the cleaning product fumes.

* Made and canned 20 pints of salsa, 4 half-pints of tomato sauce and 4 quarts of tomatoes.

I need a day off. Or three.

Diva

I'm not disappearing

I'm taking this week off to help Len with rental change over.

I managed to avoid cleaning any bathrooms last year (although I think kitchens are just as disgusting). This year I've cleaned two, neither of which seem to have been cleaned in three years. Nasty.

Random Mix Wednesday

Back in January, I did a random shuffle thing with my ipod. I don't know how you felt about it, but I enjoyed it, so I think it's time to do it again. I don't think I'll follow the rules as closely, I won't skip embarrassing songs (not that I listen to anything embarrassing!) but I'll probably skip songs I don't know well or that I don't like.

1. Flowers -- Brian Lillie -- Rowboats
He's a local (to Ann Arbor) singer-songwriter. Or he was, I think he still lives here, but he hasn't released an album in about 7 years. His music has meant a lot to me over the years, and this song is a good representation of his stuff: big, boisterous, kinda messy, and cheerfully wise. "You and me/we're flowers baby/let's go dancing in the park...love is so much bigger than needin'/it makes you choose, choose, choose". I don't think this (or any of his CD's) is very available, which is very unfortunate, because they are very worth having.

2. Out of Business -- Duke Levine -- Passion Fish (Soundtrack)
This is a little 30 second filler. When this movie/soundtrack came out I was working at Zingerman's, this CD was on the changer. I think there were only about 5 albums in there, the others seemed to get switched out pretty frequently, but this one stayed in for months. By the time it came out, there were only two people in the place who could stand it, me and one of the owners (don't follow the link if you don't want to see him). I still love the album, and the movie is wonderful (I could go on and on about John Sayles, but I won't).

3. Another Town -- Steve Earle -- Transcendental Blues
It's not like I'm going to put anything on this list I don't love, so why even say how much I adore Steve Earle? This album is from well after he got sober, but before he got politics (he also happened to have just fallen in love, but that's not saying much, since he's been married about 8 times). This particular song is very country-swing, and very fun. Say it, Keith, you know you want to!

4. Coming Back to You -- Trisha Yearwood -- Tower of Song (Tribute to Leonard Cohen)
First of all this version of this song caused me to buy a Trisha Yearwood album, which was a mistake, it wasn't nearly as good as this powerhouse of a song. A few posts back, I referred to a time in my life that was very painful. This song was the soundtrack and it really got to the root of how sad I was (the worst part is that I was always driving when I heard it, it's a wonder I didn't get into an accident). "Maybe I'm still hurting/I can't turn the other cheek/But you know that I still love you/It's just that I can't speak/I looked for you in everyone/and they called me on that too/I lived alone but I was only/Coming back to you". Martin Gore (of Depeche Mode) has another version on the CD which is very different, and just as devastating.

5. Downtown -- Petula Clark
Ok. This was part of some ad campaign, I don't know for what, but I was reminded of how much I like the song. Good mood change from the previous one, don't you think? This, to me, is what makes iTunes such a great thing: I can just download one fun song and not have to pay for other stuff I don't care about. Of course, it used to be that you could buy the 45, and yes, I am old enough to remember those days.

6. Too Many Memories -- Patty Loveless -- Long Stretch of Lonesome
Now she's country! Such a sad, sweet song. If you have any regrets, if your heart has ever been broken, do not, under any circumstances, listen to "When Fallen Angels Cry", "The Trouble With the Truth" and "Long Stretch of Lonesome" all in a row. It will take you a month to recover. Certainly, if you like country, you should own them, just don't over do it.

7. Be Thou My Vision -- Ginny Owens -- Without Condition
This is an ancient hymn, and it's gorgeous and very powerful (no matter who sings it). Personally, I think the song edges out "Amazing Grace", maybe because it isn't such a cliche, it seems like a more naked declaration of faith. Owens' version is all breath, atmosphere and mystery, I just wish she'd done the whole song, rather than just a couple of them.

8. Night Fever -- Bee Gees -- Saturday Night Fever
I suppose I should be embarrassed by this, but I'm not. The Bee Gees made great pop music, and this song is one of the better examples. I've only seen snippets of the movie.

9. Inhabiting the Ball -- Jim Roll -- Inhabiting the Ball
Another local singer-songwriter. This one's much more available, since he had something of a national audience. The schtick of this album is that Roll got authors Denis Johnson and Rick Moody to contribute lyrics for many of the songs, which could have come off gimmicky, but the album is both lyrically and musically strong. This is the first song, it has an arty collage thing happening in the background, and while nothing else on the album sounds like it, it sets up the album nicely.

10. Waltz Across Texas Tonight -- Emmylou Harris -- Wrecking Ball
The strongest voice on this album isn't Emmylou Harris, it's Daniel Lanois (who I'm pretty sure I'd leave Len for, just sayin'), circa "For the Beauty of Wynona" (an album that totally changed my life). Are you getting the feeling I rather talk about Daniel Lanois? Ok, I'll stick to the singer and song at hand. It's a beautiful song, and Emmylou's voice is just lovely. In her earlier career her voice was as clear as a bell, on this album it's taken on a raspy texture that deepens her delivery. I can picture how a video for this might look: black and white, fuzzy-watery kind of filter, couples waltzing at some kind of outdoors evening dance.

It Burns!

This is how I spent my weekend:

Honey Pickled Jalapenos. Or Pickled Honeyed Jalapenos. Or something. I did a few tiny jars of these last years and they are heavenly, especially in grilled cheese sandwiches. These jars represent 3 or 4 pounds of peppers, hours of slicing and every single empty half pint and quarter pint jar I had.

They are also a perfect example of how I am a complete moron (the first such example from this summer involved a very nasty sunburn). Hot peppers = HOT. That heat is due to an insidious oil, which, if you don't wear the recommended protective gear, HURTS. A lot. For hours. Luckily, I wasn't stupid enough to rub my eyes -- I once had a boyfriend who, while canning Hungarian hot peppers rubbed his contact lensed eyes. He managed to get the lenses out, washed them, then put them back in a couple of days later. Idiot.

And I'm drowning in tomatoes. At last count, I'm at 11 or 12 pounds of Sweet 100s. Yikes!

I also have Amish Paste tomatoes making a big showing and the Beefsteak are starting to ripen.

When I start really melting down, remind me to re-read this quote from my grandmother's (unpublished) memoir of homesteading in Northern Idaho ("Dee" is her mother): "From the produce of the garden and the woods, Dee canned seven or eight hundred quarts of fruit and vegetables each year, besides jams, jellies, and pickles. Even venison and elk went into the Mason jars. She preferred the neck of an elk for her incomparable mincemeat." I could argue that I have a full time job and longish commute, but Grandma continues with everything else her mother has to do: cooking, baking, cleaning, educating her two eldest children, and substitute teaching in town. For a variety of reasons, her husband was rarely home, thus maintenance of the household fell to Dee. Times were certainly different, I think it is very useful to remind myself that everything I do, every jar I drop into boiling water, is a choice. Dee did it out of necessity.

Several people (Stef, Valerie, and my sister-in-law) have recommended the Barbara Kingsolver book. I will get to it, I promise, but the metaphorical stack on my night table is threatening to topple over and kill me in the night.

Home #6

I took these yesterday morning. Photoshop is a wonderful thing.

I had to work at getting the colors back into this one (taking a picture into even a hazed over sun will do that). I put a grainy filter on, which tones down the harshness of the light.

This is a small portion of a much bigger picture. I used a Photoshop filter to smooth out the pixeliness, I love that it also enhances the haziness of the morning.

Knitting At Last!

I know, y'all missed it so. I know I do.

I didn't take pictures of the sleeves, but you will just have to trust me when I say they are done. I finished the back and one front a long time ago, before I understood the magic of using short rows to shape shoulders (and collars, for that matter). I think (I hope) this is the last holdover, 'cos those shoulders were a pain to sew together.

The color is fairly accurate. I think the flower turned out reasonably well, especially considering how much I despise knitting intarsia. I can't wait to get this finished, not because knitting been so painful -- I mean, let's face it, if it had been that bad, I'd have totally ditched the project by now -- but I'm really interested to see how it turned out. I draped it over myself last night, it looks like a crazy, flappy vest. Finishing should take care of that.

Edging for the lace handkerchief. I have 12 repeats so far, I need 27 before I can go onto the next step. This is knitted on #0000 needles with cobweb wool. This ball was given to me without a label, but I suspect it's from Lacis (search for "shetland cobweb wool"). I should have used something for size comparison, but I guess you could use the cat hair ({sigh} I hate our couch).

This is the first Interweave Knits I bought, in the Summer of 1998 (I learned to knit a year before). I've wanted to make this ever since. I bought the yarn -- Dale of Norway's long since discontinued Kolibri, in a pretty sage green -- years ago, while visiting my friend Cindy in Portland, Oregon. I totally remember the shop (though not it's name) because they kept their clearance yarn in a bathtub. It seems like I read recently that is was Joan McGowan-Micheal's first Interweave design, but she only claims a design from Winter 1998 on her website (this is definitely her's). Maybe she doesn't want people to remember it because the construction is sadistic -- it's knit in strips and everything is sewn together. I figure I'll finish this in 10 years or so. Hope I don't run out of yarn.

Surfacing..

I'm coming up for air to report that my head did not explode. Saturday night was pretty shaky, I can't say there weren't a few exhausted tears. There was, perhaps, a threat (or three) on the boyfriend's well being. But we made it through and fun was had by most.

The babies turned a year old. They are as pretty as ever and awfully happy (which is a good thing, since they spent the first 6 months of their lives awfully unhappy, in a colicky sort of way).

My parents, grandparents and aunt came to our very clean home for lunch on Sunday. I was much less stressed out by the time they got there, so I was able to relax and enjoy their company. It turns out, my dad has bought a 1963 Morgan and is very excited about it; he and Len bonded over cars.

I'm sad to say, the only way we were able to get the house clean and food made on time was to skip Keith's debut with the honky tonk band. I didn't get to see him in his fetching, yet silly, borrowed boots. Or is it silly, yet fetching? Word is, they didn't get home until 2:00 in the morning. *Cough* Probably for the best that we didn't go.

In knitting news (but no pictures), I've finished the knitting for the Obnoxious Flower Sweater, but haven't started sewing it up yet. I've also started the Lace Handkerchief from Knitting Around the World. Yes, in cobweb with 0000 needles. Clearly, the stress and the heat and humidity have affected me in very bad ways. I'll try for pictures tonight, but I have to get five pounds of beans in the freezer before they go bad.

Overwhelmed

My parents, grandparents and an aunt* are coming to our house on Sunday for lunch. So grown up. So freaked out. I would be less stressed out if the grandparents and aunt had been there before, but they haven't, so I really want to show the house at it's very best. Unfortunately, this has been the summer of no vacuuming.

I should have all day Saturday to prepare. I should have Len to help. However, Len is working on the outside of the house and working six days a week. And Saturday:

These two (Len's nephew, Max and niece, Madelyn) are having their first birthday party in the afternoon. And who could resist those faces?

Spending a couple of hours in Saline wouldn't be so stressful, except our friend, K. is playing in a honky tonk band that night in Ypsilanti. We find the prospect of K (in borrowed boots, no less) playing in honky tonk band pretty irresistible. Plus. Vietnamese food across the street.

All of which means I have to get the house ready during the week, while at the same time dealing with an explosion of garden produce. I've been picking a pound and a half of beans every other day, and that's only because the green beans haven't been coming in as quickly as the purple beans. Yet. And despite how disappointed K and my sister will be, I am not very sorry that the damned rabbits are eating all of the pickling cucumbers.

As though that isn't enough, I've been having a minor emotional meltdown. Nothing serious, someone from my past contacted me and I was unexpectedly reminded of a very painful time in my life. While I'm not entirely surprised, I am a little rattled.

I've been knitting, but not much and not anything interesting enough to take pictures of. So a pretty picture of a poppy will have to do. I put poppy seeds in last fall and early this spring. They started blooming after everyone else's were done and they aren't finished yet -- there were six new blooms this morning.

If you don't hear from me for a few days, it's because my head exploded. Don't worry, though. Len will clean it up.

*These relationships are more complicated, but my family takes hours to explain and I am already overwhelmed.

Len at Work

Hahahaha!! What? You weren't a child of the '80s?

Home Improvements

I've been tinkering a bit with the blog. I took the picture in the banner in January, the light fixtures looked like UFOs against the sunset, which I found particularly amusing since this is my old high school's parking lot. UFO landing. Couldn't happen to a better place. I'm still working on getting the title and description to stand out a little better, but Blogger isn't behaving.

I also added a new blog category, Pursuing Creativity (Insanity) in my (way too long) list of blogs. This is especially in honor of my dear friend Stef, who finally started a blog. While she is certainly a weaver and knitter, no mere Knitting/Weaving category can contain her. I can't decide if I am in awe of her range, jealous, or a bit frightened. I put angry chicken and DPS in that category as well, because I appear to be going a bit insane.

Valerie: my e-mail address is in my profile. If you are coming to Ann Arbor during the week, let me know. I would be happy to pass on some of those lovely ball of red joy. I agree completely, those grape tomatoes have no flavor whatsoever!

Harvest

Thanks, everyone, for your kind thoughts about Dave. Len is actually doing pretty well with this. Rather than beating himself up for any imagined lost opportunities, he's remembering the good, raucous times he had when Dave was around. That's unusual enough.

In the meantime, the garden has been ripening! We've been doing this garden thing for three years now, and it never fails to amaze me that from a few seeds and small plants we get pounds and pounds of tomatoes, beans, and peppers.

This is my first major harvest. The Supersweet 100s started ripening last week and the purple beans started coming in this weekend. I've turned this basket of tomatoes into dried tomatoes (and re-filled the basket):

Not Sun Dried -- it's much too humid for that -- we have a food drier which works perfect for this endeavor. I think this year I will cover these in olive oil.

And watermelon are coming, too. We went from this early this month, to this:

Bigger than before, but still quite small. It seems we planted "personal" watermelons. For comparison:

On the left is a normal sized small watermelon*, on the right, the one from our garden (I checked the tag, this really is the right size).

* Yes, Stef, this is the same melon your husband brought over several weeks ago. No, we haven't eaten it. We're planning a shoot-out. With pictures. Don't ask, it's Len's idea.

I'm keeping track of how much we pick and what we do with the produce. It sounds really nerdy, but I think it will help us not to over or under plant. For the record, so far we have four pounds of the Sweet 100 tomatoes and 1 pound of purple beans. I am going to be very busy this fall!

Update

Dave died on Thursday.

Len's been telling me funny Dave stories: Len's group of friends had an annual tradition of a winter camping trip (this was before my time, not that I would have joined them). They drank. A lot. One year Dave was the only one left standing and he went off to a neighboring campsite. This site was comprised of a group of people in training for what Len described as "one of those trips you pay to get taken to" (camping on an iceberg, maybe?) Dave out drank them as well. I'd like to think he destroyed a year or so of training, just because it fits his personality so well!

Lightening up a bit

From a short conversation Monday night:

Me: You know, what I have to knit right now just isn't doing it for me. I think I need to start some more lace.

Len: Yeah, because Sunday was so much fun for everyone.

I hate it when he's right. Not that it will stop me, or anything!

Heartbroken

Len and I met several years ago when he was working for his friend Dave's delivery company (he made regular deliveries to my building). He didn't like the job much, but he saved enough of the money he made for a down payment on our house (and he got me, so he made out alright in the end), and he was helping out a good friend.

Dave is one of those people with an outsized personality. He is loud, obnoxious, drunk most of the time, has political views I never agreed with (a conservative libertarian, which has always seemed like a contradiction to me), but he has a huge heart, loves his wife and kids and is very, very funny. He also loved food -- he loved to cook it, drop it in a deep-fat fryer and feed all of his friends (of which he has many). The last time Len and I were at his house he was obsessed with hard-boiled eggs, encased in sausage, rolled in bread crumbs and dropped in the fryer. He wasn't exactly a healthy eater.

He lost his appetite a few months ago. Last Monday he went in for a colonoscopy. Yesterday his wife was told that the cancer he'd been harboring for who-knows-how-long had spread throughout his body and he doesn't have long to live. Len went to the hospital and Dave has quite wasted away.

What else is there to say? We are floored. And heartbroken. And I really hate the idea of going to another funeral of someone much too young to die.

The End of the White Blob

Ok, I have to be honest. I don't know when I started Daffodil, but I'm sure it was before I started the blog. Summer of 2005, maybe? But it is done.

I finished the knitting a week or so ago, but didn't have time to block it until yesterday. Even in its unblocked, blobby state, you can see how pretty it is (or least I can, but I'm biased).

This would be more dramatic on a dark background. Blocking is always a challenge for me, and this was no exception. Part of the problem is that I didn't really know how big it would be, but once I figured out that it wanted to be 37" in diameter, things went much more smoothly (I drew a 37" circle on the sheet and marked off 1" intervals).

{blech} That's a bad picture! Blocking went more smoothly, obviously not perfectly.

I'm at a bit of a loss now. I have plenty to knit, but nothing is really doing it for me. I suspect I will start another lace piece very soon. 'Cos, you know, I can't seem to help myself!

For the Love of Art Fair

As a birth certificate carrying Ann Arbor native, I am required to hate the Ann Arbor Art Fair. It's crowded. It's hot. People are rude and not from Ann Arbor. You can't drive anywhere, you can barely walk anywhere. And the art? Well that's a term best used loosely. Or so says the doctrine.

But I am a traitor. I love the Art Fair. To a greater or lesser extent, all of the above is true. Hundreds of thousands of people crowd into Ann Arbor's downtown for this event -- which really consists of 4 art fairs, sidewalk sales, food courts, and performance stages. It's almost always too hot to breath for at least a couple of days, usually it rains one day, and one day the weather will be perfect. But why bother complaining about it, it's mid-July. In SE Michigan. And yes, people can be very rude, but you'll have that when you shove a few hundred thousand people into a few blocks. But they dress funny, so you can laugh at them and that makes up for the rudeness.

The art. Some of it is very bad, some of it very good. I had a housemate many years ago who is a potter. She made almost the entirety of her year's wages at art fair. When I was living with her, she was making these very intricate little sculptures, but what she sold at the fair were mugs, bowls, and practical stuff which bore little resemblance to what she did for most of the year. When I see what people bring to the fair, I try to remember that artists have to make a living, and they do it by bringing what people want to buy and what they can afford. Thus, you get art-on-a-stick. And you know what? More power to 'em. I couldn't do it, I couldn't knit what people want to buy, and most people couldn't afford to buy what I want to knit.

But what I love about Art Fair is the festival atmosphere it brings to Ann Arbor. It's fun, colorful and cheerful. You can get elephant ears, funnel cake and gyros. And to top it off, sunburn and heat stroke. Four days of inconvenience and chaos. What's not to love?

Besides, there's nothing funnier than a pissed off Ann Arborite.

Queen Anne's Lace

Aprons

I had a sudden desire to make aprons. Why? Sheer insanity, why else.

Several months ago I found an adorable apron in a local antique store:

Operating under the principle of Use-Your-Stuff, I wear this fairly often when cooking or baking and find it very useful. And adorable. Unfortunately, I had only one and it was usually dirty.

For reasons I won't go into (mainly because it's a very long story, having nothing whatsoever to do with today's story), we came into a very large stack of dishtowels at Christmas this year. More than we could ever need. And lately I've been reading the Angry Chicken, which has inspired a bizarre desire to sew something, and served to remind me that a dishtowel doesn't have to be just a dishtowel.

Friday I bought a spool of grosgrain ribbon and last night made three aprons. Very exciting, if that sort of thing excites you.

This endeavor was not without problems. But I am not one to be put off by, oh, you know, lack of Know-How. After I did a lot of swearing, squinting at the manual, squinting at the machine, trying to get the two to match up, more swearing, and a bit of banging my head on the table, I finally figured out how to draw the bottom thread up. And all went smoothly after that (except that I can't sew a straight line).

I decided, for whatever reason, these would be more stable if I sewed the ribbon all the way across the towel rather than one piece of ribbon on either side. I also thought it would look nicer. In retrospect, given my lack of ability with a sewing machine, that might have been a little silly.

Despite it all, they don't look so bad. They will stay on and the straps won't fall off. Works for me!

More Garden

Can you stand another garden update? There will be more knitting soon, I promise: I have only two more rounds on the white blob before the always exciting crochet cast-off (which alone could take years). I have beads to show you, but I've been too lazy to take pictures. I'm also looking for clasp ideas for the wire beaded weaving. My first trip to the House of Sin didn't go well (it didn't seem like there were very many options), so I am going to continue looking.

So, instead? Wee watermelon:

I hope everyone likes watermelon because we have 6 plants. I can't help but think we'll be sneaking the things onto our neighbors porches and running.

Little peppers:

Sorry for the crummy picture. This should turn red someday, the plants are already doing better than the ones from last year, so I have high hopes.

The tomatoes I raised from seeds are doing very well (the top photo is Amish Paste, the bottom is Beefsteak).

The green bean plants are recovering.

But the cucumber plants were attacked. I saw last night that this plant has flowers, but the last thing a plant needs in mid-July is to be concentrating on new growth when it should be putting its energy into vegetable production.

Oh look! There goes a culprit now. Little shit isn't even afraid of us!

Please send rain.

Best Movie Reviews

I love movie reviews, at least as much as previews (for which I have an unnatural addiction). We don't actually go out to the movies, or rent them. And no, we don't do Netflix either (and quit asking!), if a movie shows up on HBO, IFC, Sundance, or any other cable network, chances are pretty good that we'll see it. Or buy the DVD (of which we have many we have not yet seen). I can't explain why.

I am maybe late to this bandwagon, but recently I started reading a review website called Pajiba: Scathing Review for Bitchy People. Here are two reviews which illustrate what I love about the site: Brokeback Mountain and the new "torture porn" movie Captivity (I suppose I should warn you about language, but you're all adults). This is some seriously good writing.

Fourth of July Parade!

"On the stairs I smoke a cigarette alone
Mexican kids are shootin' fireworks below
Hey baby, it's the Fourth of July
Hey baby, Baby take a walk outside"
-- X

What's the Fourth of July without a little John Doe (whose voice makes me melt) and X? A little late, but still.

My mom and I went to Grass Lake's Fourth of July Parade. I'm such a sucker for antique tractors and old cars: about halfway through the parade, I filled up my memory card and kept having to frantically delete old John Deere and Farmall tractors. I'm such a dork.

Kid gets candy

I haven't been to a parade in a very long time. Apparently the big thing is to throw candy to the kids who have brought bags for the event. They don't actually watch the parade, they watch for flying candy (then again, antique tractors and old cars are maybe not the most exciting subject matter for the little buggers).

But what's not to love? This one looks like a cartoon character.

Isn't this gorgeous? So curvy and graceful. I like that these farm machines combined great style with practicality: just because something is used every day to work a field, why shouldn't it look good?

Design over function

Ok. No more being a crank. For me anyway:

This kid was not pleased by the role she had in the parade. She was scowling at the crowd as she buzzed by. Since she had no candy to throw, I don't think she got much sympathy.

One more:

Does this help or hurt librarians' cause not be seen as total nerds?