Merry Birthmaskah

What a busy week! The pups went to the groomer on Monday. They came back looking lovely, and I had them pose in front of the Christmas tree for a photo.

They look huge, but it's because we have a small tree this year. While they were out of the house, enjoying their spa day, I finally cooked the vegetarian version of "Coq au Riesling," which we had been assigned for our last Madroña Pop Up meeting the week before but hadn't been able to have because Charlie was doing the prep for his medical procedure two days later. So we had it Monday evening for dinner. With the Riesling we had used in the recipe.

It was a lot of work, but I saved some time by using a pre-made vegetable stock instead of making my own from the leftover ingredients. I still have them and plan to make some stock with them and some other bits and pieces, now that the furor of Christmas week is over.

Here's the recipe for the vegetarian  Coq au Riesling. The Recipe Box app is great, but when you have a lot of ingredients and instructions, it's hard to share the recipe as a single screen shot, although the app makes it easy to email the recipe. I got all the ingredients in one image, but I barely got all of the directions in two screen shots. (Ingredients are duplicated.) Cut off was "serve garnished with more parsley."

We had the leftovers for actual Christmas Eve supper. It was nice not to have to put together a big dinner and then go off to church, although I would have had family members to help. We had our 8:00 PM service in Trinity, which is the old church building. (Since the pandemic started, we have been using another building that belongs to the church, St. Helen's, which is set up for worship services and equipped to broadcast to the public, but more modern.) The music went well, although I had some difficulty with my ears.

My birthday is the day after Christmas, although, according to my parents, it was still Christmas in the other time zones. It was always a nuisance as I was growing up, because I didn't get any extra presents; all my Christmas presents said, "Merry Christmas and Happy Birthday" on them. To make matters worse, my father was a minister, and after two Christmas Eve services and three services on Christmas Day (or maybe it was the other way around) all he wanted to do on the 26th was sleep. However, having a Christmastime birthday as an adult is wonderful. I'm much more likely to have family around me on my birthday, and we almost always go out for breakfast, although we didn't during the pandemic. I still complain about it on social media with other people who have birthdays during Christmas week. One fellow put it this way: "Baby Jesus stole my thunder." One clever person recognized that Baby Jesus had the same problem, with this meme, so I'm honored to have good company sharing my plight:

Jim, my brother-in-law was supposed to join us for Christmas, but he tripped in the dark the week before and banged his head on the windowsill. He's OK, but he had to have some stitches out on the 27th and wanted his doctor to check him out as well before he drove over the pass from the coast by himself. We waited to celebrate Christmas until he arrived later on Friday. I opened the presents I had for my birthday on my actual birthday, however, after we got back from a late breakfast. From our younger son and daughter-in-law I received a cute pair of poodle socks and a pattern for a lovely shawl and the yarn to make it.

I also received a lovely woven shawl from Charlie with a Celtic knot pattern worked into the fabric, and after Jim arrived on Friday, another present to open: A beautiful mug he picked up in Norway produced by WildBird Foods Ltd., sporting an image of a Northern Lapwing painted by the Dutch biologist and nature artist Elwin van der Kolk. His purchase of the mug benefited several conservation organizations.

Jim helped our poor little tree look a little more festive with a few more presents, which we opened on Saturday. (My birthday gift from him is the one in the middle, front, with a birthday card attached.)

There were some common themes in the Christmas presents, as we discovered when we opened them. Jim gave us a package of Fazer chocolate candy and chocolate-covered mints from Finland. We gave him a package of candy from Italy in a tall can shaped like a nutcracker.

Our daughter gave me a combination cutting board and cheese board the shape of Wisconsin with all the sights to see painted on one side. (You cut and serve on the other side.) It can hang on the wall as art. What better to remind us of our time in Wisconsin last summer, and what better way to represent Wisconsin than with a cheese board!

In turn, we gave our daughter and son-in-law a cutting board and cheese board in the shape of Oregon, where they have visited us and where cheese is also made. This is the one they got, and it also can be displayed on the wall. We also included some colorful salad utensils made from bamboo (I think).

We all had a good laugh over how we copied each other without realizing it. It reminded us of the Christmas while we were living in Indonesia, when everyone got everyone else a calendar!

The pups didn't get left out, either. Charlie helped unwrap their package, and they were delighted with their new toys. We've been letting them play with two of them, and when those get ragged, we'll take out two more. They play all kinds of games with them, alone or together. 

Sandy has a birthday coming up on January 11, when he turns two. It's far enough away in dog time, though, so it will probably seem like Christmas all over again.

We had Lohipiirakka (Finnish salmon pie), roasted Brussels spouts and salad for "Christmas Eve" dinner on Friday night, with some fruitcake Jim brought along for dessert. Our "Christmas" dinner was more elaborate, and we had it in the mid-afternoon. We had turkey (faux, for me, and real for the men), stuffing, mushroom gravy, lanttulaatikko (Finnish mashed rutabaga casserole), roasted sweet potatoes, steamed zucchini, homemade honey cranberry relish and an apple-cranberry pie made by someone at our church, which we bought back when we had a bazaar to raise money. (It was frozen, but I still had to bake it.) Everything was wonderful, although the sweet potatoes could have stayed in the oven a little longer. It was a challenge, even now that I have two ovens. I tried to restart the convection oven before it was done cooling down after cooking the Quorn faux turkey, and it wouldn't work. I had forgotten that you have to let it stop cooling itself before you can use it again. Then I forgot to take the rutabaga out of the fridge when I needed to, so it would warm up before heating in the oven, because it was in a glass cake pan. After letting it warm a bit, I took it to the old microwave, which is upstairs in our laundry room now, for making tea, if we're working up there and don't want to come down. I heated it up most of the way in that, and let it finish in the big oven, after the real turkey and stuffing were done. That worked. We had the nicest Madroña Vineyards Riesling with it.

Jim left Sunday morning to drive to Winnemucca, on his way down to Arizona. I went to church, even though the choir doesn't sing. I wanted to get my birthday blessing, which I couldn't do last week, because it was Lessons and Carols, a service without time for birthday and anniversary blessings. There were four birthday people. The gentleman in the brown sweater just turned 90. The scarf around my neck was my birthday present from Charlie.

There have been years when I missed my birthday blessing because of when Christmas fell that year. 

Our daughter's family celebrates both Christmas and Hanukkah. They drove to Texas to spend the holiday with the grandmother (our son-in-law's mother) who celebrates Hanukkah, which started Christmas Day at sundown.

They can make it from Wisconsin in two days, stopping overnight in Wichita, KS. They visited family in Temple, TX, and we had FaceTime with them on my birthday. On Saturday they left to drive back to Wisconsin after a Hanukkah party in Dallas, held early enough that they were able to leave by 2:30 PM. They got home last night, after the expected stop in Witchita.

Somehow during the week I was able to get my yarn for the Rose City Yarn Crawl Mystery KAL  wound up and ready to go.

I also finished the first sleeve on Pauly's Aran Pullover. Just the other sleeve to go and the finishing up. I'm hoping to be able to finish it up soon enough to be able to finish the Oregon Autumn Cardigan before the Mystery KAL starts.

I hope everyone has a wonderful rest of Christmas, Hanukkah or Kwanzaa, if you celebrate those, and happy birthday, if you’re having one right now. Merry Birthmaskah! Next up: a very happy New Year!

I have a lot of difficulty responding to comments to my blog posts because of technical issues beyond my control (my lack of understanding of how things work). Message me on Facebook, Ravelry or Spoutible if you need information.

If you have a few minutes and are willing, please go to Amazon and B&N and search for More Classic Tales Retold or Our Favorite Verses: Poems from The Doll's Storybook by Peggy Stuart". 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 any of our books, including Emil, Mariah, Classic Tales Retold, Our Favorite Verses or More Classic Tales Retold, 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: Still need to finish up the Oregon Cardigan. Finishing up the Aran sweater for Pauly. Ready to CO for the Rose City Yarn Crawl Mystery KAL in a couple of weeks.

What's on my loom: Still in its corner under the windows.

What's on my sewing machine: Still its dust cover.

What's in The Doll's Storybook: This week's story from #TheDollsStorybook is 
Emil Takes the Lead to Celebrate Hanukkah. It is, of course, the story of how Emil ha his first turn at leading the ceremony of the lighting of the candles for Hanukkah, and it includes a little math problem.

What's on my iPad/iPhone: Still listening to These High Green Hills by Jan Karon and reading In the Shelter of Each Other by Milree Latimer, but I still didn't get much listening/reading done during the week, because it was very, very busy.

What's in my wine glass: Madroña's Riesling, which is my favorite, because it isn't too sweet.

What's my tip of the week: Olive oil can often be substituted for butter, to the benefit of the health of those who eat what you cook. If you're cooking with the oil, much of the flavor goes away, so even in cookies and cakes it works well. Equal amounts of olive oil and melted butter, mixed thoroughly and kept refrigerated, makes a nice spread in place of butter.

Where are my books: The stories in each book first appeared in the blog and they are reproduced with a few changes. 

The stories in More Classic Tales Retold: Stories from The Doll's Storybook are Welcoming a Stranger, The Rescue, Unmasked, Fuzzy Town––A Play and Sky Blue.

Our Favorite Verses: Poems from The Doll's Storybook. Poems included are Valentine's Day, Keeping Pets, Back to School, Victor the Vulture, The Week Before Christmas, Insomnia and Veronika's Vocabulary Verses.

The stories in Classic Tales Retold: Stories from The Doll's Storybook are Little Green Greatcoat, The Boy Doll Who Cried Wolf and Lost in the Woods.

The stories in Emil: Stories from The Doll's Storybook are Best Buds, Getting What You Want, and The Boys Cook Dinner.

The stories in Mariah are Being Little, Besties, and Distraction.

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, because the publisher gets a cut. 

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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Off in All Directions

This has been a week of adventures, so first the progress on the Maine Memories Cardigan. 

Just a few inches to go before the bottom ribbing. Then on to the sleeves! For more information, see "What's on My Needles," below. 

Remember the fabric from last week? The Victorian outfit for Jolena is finished.

I used the pattern "Carrots" by Luminaria. It was made for an American Girl doll, which is shorter and much more...um...full-figured. I printed the pattern a little smaller, but otherwise made it as-is. It was still really big in the waist, so for the dress, I sewed the Velcro on the back so it overlapped more at the waist. If I make this again, I will adjust the dress bodice back pattern piece to fit better, maybe for the pinafore, too. I closed the pinafore with a heart-shaped button over a snap.

Also, the sleeve cuff was a bit small for Jolena's left hand (they are different, right and left) for her long, graceful fingers to get through easily, so I would make the cuffs open and close with a snap at the seam. I can get her hand through the cuff, but it's more of a challenge than I like in my doll wardrobe. I didn't do any of the topstitching, preferring to sew the lining at the waist and cuffs by hand, but made two horizontal tucks in the skirt to add a little more pizzazz to an otherwise very plain dress and pinafore. I had planned for this ahead of time and added 1" to each skirt. I also didn't have a large enough piece of the pinafore fabric to have one long strip, so had to piece the pinafore skirt. To avoid having a seam right in the front, I cut the front in one piece and the back in two slightly larger pieces, to allow for the back opening hem. The dress skirt is still all one piece.
Jolena was very patient throughout. She's a doll, after all, and dolls know how to be patient.

Another issue was the fact that the dress fabric was a very obvious directional print. To refresh your memory, here are both fabrics, as posted last week:

They could be flower buds or perhaps artichokes, but they are all lined up and facing the same direction. I was very careful when cutting out the pattern that the artichokes lined up on the skirt and cuff, and all of them throughout the costume were right-side-up. I was glad I noticed the directional print before I cut!

Speaking of artichokes, we went back to our Meet-up friend Tom's place for another Italian dinner made by him. Artichokes were the first course.

The next course was a bean dish in sort of a bruschetta sauce on lightly steamed kale. (He usually uses arugula, but all the stores were out (snow storms have kept the delivery trucks at bay). This was delicious, too.

Next we had an ice cream dish. It was made from whipping cream, lemon juice and sugar, and it was very tasty. (I forgot to take a photo of it.)
Then we had a fish dish. It was cod, cooked in the Italian way. (I didn't get a photo of it, either, but it was pretty and tasty as well.)

Then came the big adventure of the evening. The pasta course came out of the kitchen...

...and slipped out of Tom's hands directly on top of my wine glass. Bits of glass and wine went everywhere. He had us all get up and move to the living room, while he and his sous chef cleaned everything up. We, regretfully, didn't eat the pasta, because we couldn't be sure there wasn't any glass in it. I will have to use some soda or white wine on my favorite yellow turtleneck, but we ended up laughing about it.

We were getting a bit full, anyway, and Tom still had dessert for us. We dug in before I could get a photo. (You'll notice the tablecloth is gone!)

Here's what it looked like on the outside. The crust is pound cake soaked in rum. Then there were various layers of whipped cream with toasted almonds and almond extract. It was yummy, and I'm glad we had room for it.

We ended the meal with a "dose" of Tom's homemade limoncello. Tom passed out dark chocolate to eat first, which really brings out the flavors of the limoncello.

We had to move out of our house for a few days, because we're having our cabinets painted. We moved in with my DBIL, Jim, who lives just three blocks away. We took him out Saturday night to Olive Garden for dinner to thank him for putting up with us. It was great. I have enjoyed restaurants in this chain before, but had forgotten that Olive Garden had such wonderful food and attentive wait staff.

I stopped by Sunday after church to check on my kitchen. It looks sort of like an alien species from a science fiction movie has taken up residence and spun its cocoons everywhere.

Here's another shot. They are also doing the bathrooms. When they are done, we have to put all our stuff back, and I'll take another set of photos.

We've had some snow, including Friday morning, when I had to walk over to the house to let the painters in at 7:00 AM. I took the dogs, so they could at least get a walk in if we couldn't go later in the day. We have managed to walk the dogs each day. They have stayed with their "Uncle Jim" before without us, and he visits often, so the pups were comfortable at his house and actually quite happy to have their "pack" all together for walks, especially when it's a sunny day.

The Wisconsin grands have been having snow, too, and much colder temps than we have had. Here's Miss Daphne with our DSIL.

Sunday the Annie Award nominees were announced. "Missing Link" received 8, tying with "Frozen Two," we were very excited, especially since our son Peter and his team were nominated again for FX (effects). Here's a screen shot with the nominees in that category,
"Best FX for Feature." You can see his name listed under "Missing Link." 

The awards are January 25 at 7:00 PM. I don't think they are televised, but you can watch live online...and we will!

You may remember that he already received an Annie for Christmas in 2014, a joke present from me. She stands on a shelf in the family room in their house even today. (The Annie Award doesn't really look anything like this.)

We're hoping his team wins this time.

Happy MLK Day, those of you in the US.

What's on my needles: The Maine Memories Cardigan, from Midcoast by Jennifer Steingass. It's a pullover, but I find cardigans more useful, so I've added a steek in the front middle. Ready to CO for the MKAL for the Rose City Yarn Crawl. First clue is due out today.

What's on my sewing machine: Another Victorian outfit, this time for Billy.

What's in my hoop: Still the Whole Cloth Quilt. Another week with no progress.

What's in The Doll's Storybook: Storytime. Finding themselves with time alone, the dolls get busy cleaning the house again.

What's on my iPad/iPhone: Finished The Tower by Gregg Hurwitz. It was an interesting psychological action story, and worth a read/listen. Back to Blowout by Rachel Maddow.

What's in my wine glass: Casa Santos Lima's Red Blend Portugal 2017. Always nice.

What's my tip of the week: Out of dog treats? Cheerios (or any version of them) work just as well. The dogs love them, and they are inexpensive and low-cal (if you have a dog with a weight problem).

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.