The Hinterland Pullover is off the needles.
I finished the knitting on Thursday, then washed and blocked it the next day. It took more than 24 hours to dry, because we've been having rainy weather.
Now I’m able to wear it. Having that off the needles, I was able to cast on for the Rose City Yarn Crawl Mystery Knit-along.
I can show the photo, because it hasn’t gotten interesting yet. (I don’t usually post photos of the mystery projects, because I don’t want post a spoiler, in case someone wants to be surprised.)
You may remember the lovely wineglass I received for my birthday inscribed with what was supposed to be my "vintage," except it was off one year. A new one arrived this week with the correct "vintage."
It even came in a lovely, sturdy box. I think I can store my double-pointed needles in it, but I’ll have to check to see if it's tall enough.
My laptop has again begun to have trouble with the space bar. It was getting where I had to really whack it hard to be sure it would respond with a space. It didn’t always fail, but often enough that it was a real nuisance. If I didn’t notice it’s failure to make a space, Autocorrect would guess a word that had some of the right letters but without the space. 🙄
I really need my laptop to process the photos for my blog posts. I’m doing it now on my iPad. Altering the size of the photo is a challenge with Blogger on the iPad, and I haven’t found an app for Blogger that’s easy to use. It’s like pulling teeth to add photos and get them the size I want.
You may remember that I had a similar issue last March. I took it to SimplyMac, according to Apple's instructions, and it was repaired in just a few days. Now I find out that SimplyMac has gone out of business. Best Buy's Geek Squad is now taking in Apple computers that need repair. Off I went with the laptop to Best Buy. It’s a much longer drive and the wait to get taken care of was much longer. They tell me it could be a month before I get my computer back.
But wait! There’s more! Friday morning I received an email from a law firm claiming that there has been a class-action settlement with Apple over something called a "butterfly keyboard," and I was on the list as someone who might have had an issue with one, so might qualify for a share of the settlement. My first thought was it was another scam, and I almost deleted it, but I did have a problem with my keyboard (now twice), so maybe it was legit. I saw that they addressed me by name, even with my middle initial. The email address looked reasonable. Finally I Googled the name of the law firm, and they do exist. I called the number of one of the lawyers listed in the email and got a switchboard for the law firm. When I finally talked with the lawyer, I found out that my situation was the kind of thing that had caused the lawsuit. Now, to be clear, this defect has never cost me any money because the laptop was still under warranty, and the maximum settlement is very small. Last time, the inconvenience to me was slight. However, it will be out of warranty in June, so what if it happens again?
Stay tuned.
Something long out of warranty is our Thompson Chest. This chest of drawers belonged to my parents. They bought it somewhere and stripped it. (It had multiple layers of paint.) Then, before they could finish it, they bought a little apartment house near the beach near San Diego. They needed furniture for it, so this chest of drawers went into one of the apartments. The drawers were damaged, and someone had left a candle or something on the top, so it was badly stained with wax. When we were getting ready to move, I thought about getting rid of it, but my parents had made a big deal about that it was valuable, so I researched it. I found out that an antique store in California had a similar one, refurbished, for $5K. We decided to keep it, and it has been in our guest room, neither very pretty nor useful.
We asked our carpenter/handyman, Josh, who worked on our bathroom closet and our front porch, to see if he could fix it so the drawers worked and it looked nice, since he mentioned that he repairs furniture during the winter months, when he can’t work outside comfortably. Saturday he brought it back. It’s now back in the guest room, with the drawers working nicely and looking quite nice, I think.
He was able to get all the stains off the top. (I should have taken before photos.) The drawers open and close properly now. I plan to put some shelf paper or something down in the drawers.
Josh thinks it’s actually older than the one in the photos I showed him (see last week's blog post for one of the photos of it), because the drawers are put together with wooden pegs instead of dovetailed. The chest in the photos also appeared to have a new top attached over the old one, which I hadn’t noticed. Josh did all the work for $300, which we thought was reasonable.
Josh is coming back today to put up my pot rack. We hadn’t put it up before because there are so many electrical wires for all the lights in the kitchen. You don’t want to put the hooks into one of those! He has a device he can use to go through the place where the pot light is over the sink, look around and see where the wires are. We'll see how that goes.
Charlie brought home a jar of artichoke Pasta Sauce from Trader Joe’s, so I decided to give it a try Saturday night. I found several recipes for pasta dishes that used mushrooms and kale, which I wanted to use. I picked out one that I thought was the closest to what I wanted to do, but instead of finishing it with the sauce in the recipe (sort of a roux), I used the artichoke pasta sauce. I also made some other changes, like more garlic, olive oil instead of butter and added garbanzo beans for extra protein. I think we have a new favorite recipe.
Here's the recipe:
We might try this also with one of the other pasta sauces Trader Joe’s has in the same-size jar.
If you have a few minutes and are willing, please go to Amazon and B&N and search for "Classic Tales Retold: Stories from The Doll's Storybook by Peggy Stuart" in Children's. Every click on the page for the book makes it more likely they will keep a good supply in their warehouse and stores. If you are outside the US, you may have a separate website for these retailers. If you have a copy of our other books, Emil and Mariah, please leave an honest review on the websites, especially if you bought from them.
Where's my blog: If you want to follow my blog, go here and sign up to follow.
What's on my needles: The Mystery KAL for the Rose City Yarn Crawl (still on the first clue) and the EmPower People Kerchief (hibernating).
What's in The Doll's Storybook: Find out a little about journalism and how #TheDollsStorybook got started, as the dolls discuss Mariah's article in the school paper in "The Interview—In Print"
What's on my iPad/iPhone: Now listening to Das Vermächtnis der Drachenreiter (Eragon 1) by Christopher Paolini. Our honorary grandson, Leo, had the English version on his wish list for Christmas, and I thought it sounded interesting, so I gave him the audiobook from Audible. I’m listening to it in German, because the German version was very cheap, and the narrator is clear and easy to understand. It’s turning out to be an interesting story. I think the author may have been influenced by Anne McCaffrey's Pern novels as well as The Lord of the Rings.
What's in my wine glass: A white: Alize’s Cellars Chenin Blanc 2020. (At least 2020 was good for something!)
What's my tip of the week: As you know, I usually keep some sprouts growing in a jar or two on my kitchen counter or in the windowsill.
It was a nuisance to have to gently dig the roots out of the screen each time I watered them. They would grow through the holes, trying to reach the source of the water and root themselves where they thought the soil would be. I have figured out a way to keep them from doing that.
When I water the sprouts, I fill up the jar with water, and instead of turning it immediately upside-down, I tip it just enough for the water to start to run out.
After a few minutes I lay the jar on its side. When all the water has run out, I put it back in the tray that keeps it tilted.
Where are my books: The stories in each book first appeared in the blog and they are reproduced with a few changes.
Classic Tales Retold: Stories from The Doll's Storybook is available from BookBabyBookshop and other booksellers worldwide. The stories are Little Green Greatcoat, The Boy Doll Who Cried Wolf and Lost in the Woods.
Emil: Stories from The Doll's Storybook and Mariah: Stories from The Doll's Storybook are also still available from booksellers world wide. The link for Book Baby is here. The three stories in Emil are Best Buds, Getting What You Want, and The Boys Cook Dinner.
If you don't get free shipping from Amazon or B&N, buy from the BookBabyBookshop, because 50% of the price goes to St. Jude. Other booksellers pay much less.
Note: This blog post was produced on the iPad and the MacBook, using the iPhone for some photos and some photo processing. No other computer was used in any stage of composition or posting, and no Windows were opened, waited for, cleaned or broken. No animals or dolls were harmed during the production of this blog post.
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