Home Again...Again

First, progress on the Main Memories Cardigan.

I'm getting close to starting the ribbing.

I also received my first clue for the Rose City Yarn Crawl and finished it, after frogging (ripping out) and starting over with a smaller needle. The beginning of the project makes a great gauge swatch! The next clue comes out today. I can't show you my work, because it would be a spoiler for anyone reading my blog who is participating in the KAL and not wanting to see what it's supposed to look like. If you really want to see what I've done, you can look here and go to comment #306. I'll show it when it's done and no one is left to be disappointed to find out what it looks like.

As for most of the rest of my time this past week, it has been taken up with jobs associated with the painting of the cabinets in our kitchen and bathrooms. Just to refresh your memory, this was how the cabinets looked when we moved in. Not bad in a photo.

However, when you looked closely (as in from 10 feed or closer), you could see the wood was faded, worn, scratched and dirty. I don't mind outdated. (Jane Austen could be viewed as outdated, and she's one of my favorite authors.) However, faded, worn, scratched and especially, dirty, isn't very appealing. That's why we decided to have the cabinets painted. It would have been a lot more expensive to replace them or even just to replace the doors. All of the cabinets in the kitchen, the kitchen eating area and all three bathrooms were in a similar condition. The laundry room has cabinets with formica, which were probably what all the original cabinets in the house were like. They are dated, but in excellent condition. Here's a reminder photo of the work in progress, which I think looks like something out of a horror or science fiction movie:

You may remember we had to move out of the house, so we went to stay with my DBIL, three blocks away. However, he had a guest coming to stay on Wednesday, so we needed to vacate his guest room on that day. Fortunately, the fumes in our house weren't too bad by then, and we were able to sleep in our own guest room, which is at the opposite end of the upstairs from the two upstairs bathrooms. We kept the door closed and the window open. It was pleasant.
Thursday they were still finishing the doors, having finished the cabinet bodies and drawer fronts. They did the painting in the garage, however, so the smell wasn't too bad. All they had left on Friday was to remove the masking tape and plastic all over the house, including the plastic and paper they had put down on the floors. By Friday night we had most of our kitchen things put back where they belonged. I took these photos. (The color isn't white, although it looks almost white in the photos. It's a pale grey.) The updated look is a plus.

We still need to install hardware, which we have picked out. We think handles and knobs will keep dirty or wet fingers away from the lovely cabinet doors and drawers.

The grey color shows up more in the eating area buffet.

Remember Mr. and Mrs. Jellyfingers? All traces of them are gone from the cabinets. We are by no means finished working on the house! The work on the cabinets was done by the same company that did our exterior in August.

Somehow I managed to get the photos taken for Friday's story. (Details and a link are below.) This is Jolena, trying to distract a friend from some bullies in the school yard.

DS2 and his lovely wife were in Los Angeles for the Annie Awards Saturday night.

Here he is with the others on his team. The the team was nominated for special effects in an animated feature film, Missing Link.

They didn't win, but it's their second nomination, which is an honor. We watched the awards ceremony live through online streaming. It was very interesting, and we learned a lot about the industry. It was when I got most of my knitting done on the cardigan. Because of the steek, I'm working always on the right side, and I don't need to look at what I'm doing.

What's on my needles: Still the Maine Memories Cardigan, and the Rose City Yarn Crawl Mystery KAL project.

What's on my sewing machine: Outfit for Billy for the Victorian Valentine Tea JAL on Ravelry.

What's in my hoop: Still the Whole Cloth Quilt. Another week with no progress. One of my New Year's Resolutions, though, was to finish it this year.

What's in The Doll's Storybook: A Different Challenge. Emil wonders about a classmate with Tourette Syndrome and some bullies picking on the boy.

What's on my iPad/iPhone: Still Blowout by Rachel Madow. Not much progress...busy week.

What's in my wine glass: Skyland Ridge Montevina Barbera from Amador County, 2016. One of the nicer ones.

What's my tip of the week: Have dough (bread dough or pie crust) or some other food stuck to your countertop or work surface? A dough scraper will clean that stuff right off, but if you don't have one, you can use a clean credit card or other plastic card to get all the food up. It's a good use for an old credit card or membership card that you don't need anymore, washed first, of course.

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.

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.

New and Continuing Projects

First the new. I picked out these fabrics from my stash to make a victorian doll costume.

I hope to get it made this week, because I need it for Valentine's Day, and January 20th, we get the first clue in the Rose City Yarn Crawl Mystery Knit Along (KAL), so I'm running out of time. It will be a challenge to get it done, as this will be a busy week.

I've made some progress on the Maine Memories Cardigan. The project is past the sleeve division. You can see the steek stitches in the center front. The pattern is for a pullover, but I'm always throwing off my sweater and putting it on again, so it made sense to make this as a cardigan. Now it's just knit straight until the bottom ribbing, then pick up the stitches that are on waste yarn to make each sleeve, which have a colorwork pattern at the wrist.

It was another challenge, because the pattern started in the center back, with short rows in the back, and moving the beginning of round to the middle front meant rewriting the directions.

I managed to use some of the tomatoes I have in the freezer to make jam. I used this recipe. It made about three cups. It isn't anything like the recipe I used to use, but it's tasty and nice on toast or in sandwiches. It's very basic. Next I'm going to try something with honey instead of sugar, with chilis and spices in it. It was easy to get the peels off the frozen tomatoes. The recipe says to squeeze out the juice and seeds, but I left them in, because the tomatoes were still pretty frozen. I just cooked the jam longer to get it thick enough.

Our Kalanchoe plant is starting to bloom. When it's done, I'll prune it, as it's getting a bit leggy, but it's a cheery addition to the house in the dead of winter.

Tuesday we went to another town hall, this one for Jamie McCleod-Skinner, who is running for Oregon Secretary of State. She's the tall lady in the middle of this group photo. She's wearing a mauve shirt under a blazer. The strawberry blonde lady next to her is also running for public office. Her name is Eileen Kiely. She is a candidate for Oregon State Senate. I'm to her right (you may recognize the cardigan) and DH is to my right and slightly behind me. There was another candidate there, Carina Miller, who is Native American and running for another State Senate seat. All three ladies were very impressive in their grasp of facts and ability to handle questions. I hope they all get elected. The room was packed, but we were the only ones brave enough to come up to get a group photo. (Photo by Eric Lint.)

We have a new addition to our family: A Eufy RoboVac35C. We've named her Beatrice, or Bea for short. She's our new cleaning lady. Dusty was a bit dubious at first, but now he just ignores her. Rocky seemed much more curious. He followed her around and let her bump into him. We picked up all the stuff on the floor (rugs, dog toys, etc.) and watched her work. I found she did a better job if I moved the chairs out of the room until she's done. She works until her battery gets low, and then she goes looking for her nest, which is in the kitchen. She docks herself there to sleep until her battery is charged again.

We got some snow on Saturday and Sunday.

During a break in the storm, we took the pups to the wilderness for a run. In this photo, Dusty looks as if he's using his ears as wings to take off from the ground.

It's hard to tell here, but Rocky was running. It was good to see him happily running, because he woke up Friday morning with a stiff neck, and I had to take him to the vet to get checked out. This is the third time in his life he has had this problem, always after some physical activity. It has been several years since the last time. We came home with some Vetprofen, which is an anti-inflammatory medication. Clearly, it worked. The pups and I went out again on Sunday, but it was snowing, so I didn't take any photos.

In other news, our younger son, Peter, who works for Laika, sent us this photo of himself with the Golden Globe Award Laika won for Best Animated Feature for Missing Link. I take it that each person who worked on the film was allowed to have his/her photo taken with the Award. (He is standing in front of one of the sets for the film. It's one we saw when we visited the studio.)

Our DDIL2 snapped this photo of their niece, Elsie, who is my honorary granddaughter. She's growing up fast.

This will be a busy week for us, because we're having our cabinets painted. They will paint all the cabinets in the kitchen and all three bathrooms, so we will need to empty all the cabinets and countertops. They expect them to start on Wednesday. The color below on the left is pretty close to our wall color throughout most of the house. The grey color on the right is the color we plan to use on the cabinets. Our grant countertops have this grey in them, along with the wall color, and black and white.

We'll move out for about three days while the painting is done. Apparently it's a very smelly process.

What's on my needles: The Maine Memories Cardigan (see above).

What's on my sewing machine: A Victorian costume for Jolena.

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

What's in The Doll's Storybook: "Writing Differently." Emil finds Mariah and Charlotte learning to write Arabic and Hebrew. They explain to him how the languages are written from right to left, and the letters are completely different.

What's on my iPad/iPhone: Still Blowout by Rachel Maddow. Not much progress this week.

What's in my wine glass: Apothic Red Winemaker's Blend, 2017, one of my favorites. 

What's my tip of the week: Keep a 1-cup or larger jar with a lid handy for when you need to peel a boiled egg. Fill it half full with water, drop the egg in and close the lid. Shake the jar up and down and back and forth until you can see that the shell is nicely cracked. Take the egg out of the water and peel. It will be easy! (Don't try this with a raw egg.)

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.

A Week of Raking in Goodies

This week I'm showing off a lot of things that got raked in over the last couple of weeks. First Christmas:

My daughter and my younger granddaughter picked out the yummy set of fat quarters for me for Christmas, and Santa put this wonderful Mitten book in my stocking. I've already picked out the mittens I hope to make from the selection in the book, and I have several things in mind for the fabric.

This week we celebrated New Year's Eve by staying up until midnight and drinking an entire bottle (for two of us) of very expensive sparkling wine from Costco.

I already had the black-eyed peas soaking for our Hoppin' John recipe, traditional for New Year's Day.

On New Year's Day, we watched the Rose Bowl Game, which was very exciting, because we could cheer for both teams: the Oregon Ducks and the Wisconsin Badgers. It was a great game, because the lead kept changing hands. We discovered that our younger dog, Dusty, is a Ducks fan. Every time we said "The Ducks are gonna score!" he ran around in circles and grabbed a toy to shake senseless. The Ducks raked in the win, which made Dusty very happy. We're gratified that Wisconsin did so well, too, though.

The Wisconsin grandkids raked in bicycles for their dolls after they got back from Texas. Here's Daphne's Hannah riding hers. Zachary's bicycle is in the background. This is a well-made bicycle sold at Target. I was able to order it online with free delivery to their local store. (Looks like Hannah has been doing gymnastics.)

Saturday we went to a town hall held by one of our senators, Jeff Merkley. He took time for a photo op with me. (He's bigger in person!)

I found his answers to questions very thoughtful and easy to understand. I hear he has done more than 400 of these, so I guess he has it worked out. I'm glad he's one of my senators.

Sunday was the twelfth day of Christmas. We had our Christmas pageant. In this case it was the Christ Child who raked in the goodies: gold, frankincense and myrrh. Maybe not every child's dream present, but I doubt He was surprised by it. The applause for the children was enthusiastic.

Members of the choir wore halos while we sang as the angel chorus. I took this selfie with one of my fellow sopranos and was amazed that the halos seemed so real in the photo.

That's probably the closest I'll ever get to raking in a real halo.

Sunday evening we went to a benefit concert put on at my church for The Family Kitchen, a soup kitchen that provides meals for anyone who walks in the door, no questions asked. My church subsidizes the running of this organization by providing volunteers and the physical space, along with some money for running it, but needs help from outside to meet the needs. Two Oregon singing groups, True North Band and Down Range, generously donated their talents to raise money for feeding the hungry.

Down Range warmed up the crowd. I could have listened to them all evening. (These guys are about my age and survived the "Great Folk Music Scare" by learning to play...folk music.)

After a few numbers, True North Band came on. They perform blue-grass, folk and country numbers in their own style.

The lyrics were wonderful. They made us laugh; they made us cry. The music was lovely and beautifully performed. We bought CDs from both groups, which also went to Family Kitchen.

When we got home, the Golden Globe Awards were on, so we watched. We were so, so, so excited to learn that Laika's Missing Link (to which our son contributed and what helps support his family) won the Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film. This is the first Golden Globe Award raked in by Laika! (If you're a regular reader of my blog, you may know of my connection to this winner.)

Mr. Link was shocked to learn that he had won. He wasn't even at the awards ceremony.
"What? I won?"

There were three Disney films nominated, and Pixar usually wins, so it must be a good film, not just because I think so. I suggest you get a copy or find a way to watch it. (Your purchase helps my family!) Here's the proof:

Then I received this in the mail from our interim choir director:

Lucky me! Clearly, she wants to be sure everyone comes to practice on Wednesday. What prize do you think I'll rake in? (I'm hoping for the chocolate chip cookie.) My life is already full.

What's on my needles: Maine Memories still. Making progress. I'm almost done with the two-color section of the pattern. It will continue in plain purple from there.

What's on my sewing machine: Getting ready to sew Victorian costumes for two lucky dolls for Valentine's Day.

What's in my hoop: Still the Whole Cloth Quilt. Another week with no progress. One of my New Year's resolutions, though, is to finish it THIS YEAR.

What's in The Doll's Storybook: Together. Emil wants to know what the other dolls did together before he arrived. This story is a review of some of the activities the dolls participated in during the past year. They enjoyed the fireplace app on my iPad while they reminisced.

What's on my iPad/iPhone: Still Blowout by Rachel Maddow. It's a great story with lots of detail, but it has been a busy few weeks. I have used up most of the Audible credits I had accumulated by giving audiobooks as Christmas presents. Johan is listening to Ramona Quimby by Beverly Cleary and Tracy Dockray. (It was on his wish list, and much cheaper as a download.) The Wisconsin grands are listening with their parents to the Harry Potter books, although they have both read the first book as a physical book. They also have Into the Wild by Erin Hunter for the kids and Harry Potter and the History of Magic by Ben Davies for their parents, two literature professors. Our older son has a 3-month subscription to Audible, so he can pick out his own book and buy more if he wants. He commutes a long way to work, so audiobooks are a good way to pass the time.

What's in my wine glass: Terra d'ora Zinfandel 2016. Always nice.

What's my tip of the week: I'm getting a Roomba knockoff (a Christmas present). I will let you know how it works out.

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.