Remember the Mystery KAL from the Rose City Yarn Crawl? Clue #4 was a bear! The rows are getting long, and the pattern was complicated and long. It was a lot of work, and the pattern doesn't show up much because of my choice of contrast yarn. (It's the strip at the bottom and left in the photo.)
Clue #5––the final clue––came out on Wednesday. I think I'll be able to finish this week. It's not as many rows of pattern, but then there's a fancy bind-off I want to try to do.
While I've been knitting, we've been watching the Olympics. It brought back memories of the 2002 Salt Lake Olympics, when we worked as volunteers. Charlie was at the Utah Olympic Park, helping members of the public. My sister-in-law Eileen, a surgical nurse, was on the medical team, while her other half, Jim, helped groom the slopes for the various downhill events. Because I speak German, I was assigned to be a National Olympic Committee Assistant for Germany and then went on to work in the same position for Austria in the Paralympics. I don't have a lot of photos from those times (I was busy, and we weren't allowed to bring cameras into the Olympic village), but someone snapped this photo of me leading the German team to the rehearsal for the Opening Ceremonies. Fun times!
I tried out some new recipes this week. Charlie found this recipe for Italian Penicillin Soup in a magazine called Ruralife. It calls for acini de pepe, a tiny pasta I've never used before. It was easy to fix. I used soy curls instead of chicken. We thought it was good.
Here's the recipe. I adapted it to use the slow cooker (for convenience) and ingredients I had, although I did have to buy the pasta.
We had a Madroña Vineyards pop-up meeting, so I tried to fix something fancy. This recipe was delicious. It was also pretty easy, except for preparing the tofu, which had several steps. It's called Sheet Pan Cajun Tofu and Vegetables. The original came from budgetbytes.com. The recipes are tasty and easy on the wallet.
And here's the recipe for this one:
Since you can't scroll down in an actual photo, and the direction are a bit long, I had to scroll down in the Recipe Box app and take another screenshot.
Charlie must have liked it, because when he went to Costco, he picked up a box containing four packages of Tofu.
We managed to get in a walk almost every day, including going through the woods, where the pups get some off-leash time.
On Thursday, we encountered some fellow creatures, who were also off-leash. There were six or seven deer (see red arrow). One young lady came out to make sure we were going to leave them alone...or maybe to say hello.
On Friday we came across a different kind of oddity. The landing strip near us often has planes taking off or landing, but this time we came across a plane actually parked on the strip. We had to go over to the chain-link gate and have a closer look.
We didn't walk on Saturday because I had bought us tickets to the high tea, an event held at Trinity Episcopal Church for Valentine's Day. The tickets were made available for a limited number of people at the fundraiser for the church's Condega ministry. The program provides support for the school for the deaf there, a dance training program and things the town of Condega, Nicaragua, might need, like a new water tower. A group of people from Trinity travel to Condega each year to work. We had a good time at the tea. The food was good, especially the scones, and both regular and decaffeinated tea was available.
On Sunday we had a saxophone and a string bass join us for the piece we were singing, "High Upon a Mountain" by Lloyd Larson and Trilby Jordan. The service was recorded on YouTube here. The anthem is found at about 57.00 in the video.
My vision is getting itself sorted out. I was told it would fluctuate for several weeks. The left eye adjusted quickly. My right eye has taken longer, perhaps because it's my distance eye, and it really only got some exercise when we were out for walks. I'm able now to make out the berries in the juniper trees and the needles on the pines, and I've adjusted to having one nearsighted eye and one farsighted eye. The adjustment process is supposed to take about two weeks, and it all seemed to click on Friday, which was the 14th day after surgery. Vision can fluctuate for several weeks, so my appointment to get a prescription for driving glasses isn't until the 27th. For now, I can drive with my old driving glasses with the right lens removed.
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What's in The Doll's Storybook: Happy Valentine's Day! Billy and Emil can't find Valentines to buy, so they decide to make some. That leads to a beginning exploration into poetry.
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