Going Fourth II

The big event of the week was Independence Day, July 4th. Our nation is 248 years old now. We had just had the flag out for Memorial Day, so I knew right where it was.

Thursday, July 4th, in the afternoon, the Cascade Horizon Band and Festival Choir (of which I was a part) performed with the band at Caldera High School in Bend. This was our program:

I was able to get a photo of other members of the chorus as the band was warming up.

With 35 minutes still to go before the performance, the house seats were already starting to fill up. 

Charlie and I stayed after the performance to help put the chairs and risers away. The audio links to the performance are here.

That evening we watched the movie version of 1776, the musical. We had seen it in person in 1976, four years after it debuted on Broadway. We saw our local community thespians perform the show in Ponca City, Oklahoma, when we lived there, shortly before Peter was born. We have a recording of the movie, which we watch often on July 4th or shortly before or after.

There was more happening this week than the Independence Day celebrations, however. Admidst the rehearsals Monday and Wednesday, we had a Madroña pop-up meeting (wine-drinking party). I've been trying to fix something special each time. For this one, I fixed a Quorn faux turkey roast with stuffing, gravy and roasted vegetables. We also had a fresh salad. We're still eating the leftovers.

It's always good seeing everyone and getting caught up with what they're doing. Paul Bush, who owns Madroña Vineyards with his family, always entertains us for a few minutes with stories of what they go through to produce fine wines, from planting to marketing, but not all of that each time. (Ask me about filtration.) We get different parts of the story, depending on what stage the vineyard is working on. I hope we can get down to Madroña this year with our trailer. It has been a number of years since we were there physically. (Photo from a previous pop-up.)

On Tuesday my T-shirt from DemCast came. I wore it on Wednesday. It's a little long, so I may alter it, but it was the smallest size, so it would have to do.

I also have a mug. I'm helping with DemCast in the effort to combat mis- and disinformation in the news, as well as encouraging voters to show up to vote.

Remember the r·pod shelves? We finished installing the one over the bed. The process left the bed somewhat mussed, with all the climbing around, but the sheets stayed clean.

There wasn't as much difference in height between the windows on each side as there was over the table, but we had the additional restriction of not being able to take up as much space, because we have to get in and out of the bed, so we put the shelf closer to the back (aft) wall and ceiling. The shelf should still be useful for holding things like jammies, jackets, a box with toothbrushes and toiletries and maybe a shallow box with the dog toys.

Charlie wants to get a mattress topper to put underneath the mattress, instead of on top. I don't have any trouble with the mattress, but he weighs maybe 20 lbs. more than I do, and it's enough that he feels the plywood platform the mattress is on.

Summer has finally arrived, and with it the heat. I'm finding I have to go out earlier if I want to get a good walk in before it gets too hot. The dogs and I left at 7:10 AM for this walk. We got back just before 8:00 AM, but it was already getting warm. We went south to the recreation center first, then turned around and went the whole length of the Larkspur trail as far as Bear Creek Road, where the route continues on sidewalks next to the street, so not as pleasant. If you continue on, you can go to Pilot Butte and up the trail to the top, but Bear Creek is a good place to turn around. On Sunday the dogs and I walked the same route, only we did the northern section first, because I realized the southern version had more trees and so was shadier. That gave us shade when it was starting to get warm.

I'm really liking the new two-dog leash. I think we should be able to do real hikes with this arrangement when dogs have to be on a leash. Sandy is always in a hurry to get to the turnaround spot and then to get home. Dusty would prefer to stop and sniff every two feet. Together, they settle into a reasonable pace. Sandy keeps Dusty moving and Dusty slows Sandy down. Another early morning walker pointed out that one of my dogs was the explorer, and the other was the chronicler. That about sizes it up! They move fast enough, though, I think, that it increases my speed and lessens my effort. Watching out for the cheatgrass is the only challenge. I carry a dog comb in my pouch, just in case. It's best to get the foxtails out right away, if you get into them. This is the worst time of year for this menace.

You can tell it's early morning from the shadows in this photo. There's a patch of cheatgrass off to the right.

I need to carry water for Sandy, because he seems to feel the heat more than Dusty and gets thirsty. The dish I use has a lid, so I don't have to throw away the water the dogs don't drink, and I can stick it into my pouch, but I need a way to attach the water bottle to my belt, so decided to make a tote for it. I was off to a a good start on it. (The cotton yarn I was using was left over from the placemats I made awhile back, which I still need to finish up and block.)

On our walk this morning I realized that I had a closed handle on my water bottle and an empty D-ring on my leash belt. All I needed was a carabiner clip, and voilà! I can even more the D-ring to a suitable location on the belt, so it won't be in the way.

I'm frogging the bottle tote now. Back to the Autumn version of the Oregon Cardigan, which is inching along. I decided to switch from magic loop, which I find unwieldy, now that the sleeve is narrowing, to two circular needles. I have no doubt I will still be working on this project when we leave for our trip the end of this month.

With the "Sound Forth" event over, I will start planning meals and fixing things to take with us on our trip.

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 "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 or 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 working on the Oregon Cardigan.

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

What's on my sewing machine: It's cover.

What's in The Doll's Storybook: Mandy comes home with a surprise for everyone. Emil has a surprise of his own the the dolls in Some Marmalade, this week's story in The Doll's Storybook.

What's on my iPad/iPhone: Still listening to On Call: A Doctor's Journey in Public Service by Anthony Fauci, a fascinating listen. I've gotten to the part where he's involved in the AIDS epidemic, and he tells of how various medical scientists made discoveries to put together a treatment and cure for the once-fatal disease. Also still reading Elfen Königin by Holly Black, translated from English. Didn't get very far with that one this week. I plan to take the book with me on the trip. We will be away from power and hookups a good part of the time.

What's in my wine glass: A nice Italian wine, Montepulciano D'Abruzzo La Piuma 2022, excellent. We had it with a Thai stir-fry.

What's my tip of the week: We often buy shredded cheese from Costco in big packages. It can be frozen and keeps well that way, but it's hard to use just some of it without thawing the whole package, so I put 1-cup quantities into plastic zipper bags and freeze it that way. It's really important for shredded mozzarella to thaw it before using, because it melds together into a big lump. That makes it almost impossible to separate to get out a small amount. Other kinds of cheese, such as cheddar, can be measured while still frozen, but it takes some digging. Most of my recipes call for 1-cup amounts, and if I need a smaller amount, I can usually figure out what to do with the thawed remainder long before it gets moldy.

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

Our Favorite Verses: Poems from The Doll's Storybook is available from the BookBabyBookshop and other booksellers worldwide. 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.

Emil: Stories from The Doll's Storybook and Mariah: Stories from The Doll's Storybook are also still available from booksellers. The link for Book Baby is here. The three stories in Emil are Best Buds, Getting What You Want, and The Boys Cook Dinner.

The three 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. 

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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Dog Days

A busy weekend with the grandkids ended at the beginning of the week, with (among other things) a trip to Lava Lands Visitor Center just south of Bend, where we did a couple of short hikes. Short, because it was very hot, and our granddog, Louis, was having trouble with his feet on the hot pavement and sand trails. 

I think poodles must have tough feet, because our dogs didn't seem bothered by it, but they were happy to drink a lot more water than usual. We had some beautiful views, and it was fun just being together.

The boys both wanted to hold Sandy's leash. I remembered the trick I learned with Therapy Animals of Utah of adding a second leash to the collar (or harness, in this case) so one of the boys could hold one leash and I could hold the others. They had to take turns.

After the visit, Louis decided he had had enough of being in the car, so he shredded his car bed.

On July 4th, the kids left to go home. I was singing in the Festival Chorus for the Fourteenth Annual Sound Fourth! Fourth of July Concert. It was a lot of fun, and the imperfect but charming performance by the Cascade Horizon Band brought back memories of celebrations from my childhood, where a small band performed on a bandstand set up on the shore of Jamaica Pond, where we lived then, just outside Boston. This was my view of the audience and our director, the only downside.

That night, I took Sandy out to our front yard to watch the fireworks, hoping the experience would inoculate him against fear of the loud bangs we're subjected to every July 4th. I held him up to see, and every time a rocket when up, I pointed to it and raved about how beautiful it was, and weren't we having fun. He seemed very interested and not at all frightened. (Photo from The Source Weekly.)

Later in the week, we took the dogs to the off-leash dog park at Pine Nursery. The meet-up group was supposed to have an event there during which dogs of participants could socialize with each other, followed by beer and eats at 10 Barrel Brewing's East Side location. When we got to the park a few minutes late, we couldn't find anyone, but the dogs got to have some off-leash time. While we were looking around, another person came, a lady with a silver miniature poodle a little smaller than Dusty. She was also looking for the group. We talked and decided it was late enough they must have cancelled. The three of us decided to go to the brewery and meet there.

We had a nice visit with Maggie and Asta. The dogs exchanged sniffs and we exchanged phone numbers. After we got home Maggie sent a text saying she received notification that the meeting at the dog park had been cancelled due to excessive heat. We had tried to sign up at the last minute but couldn't, so maybe it had already been cancelled then.

Sandy had another puppy training class on Sunday. Among other things, we got some tips on loose-leash walking. Sandy amused the class with his nonchalance when the trainer gave each dog a chew stick. Sandy played with it like a cat with a toy, then took it in his mouth and rolled around on the floor, stopping on his back as if he were just going to take a nap. One of the other dogs is pretty high-strung, and two others are a little nervous, so he got a lot of attention for being laid-back.

After the kids left on Tuesday, I got back to the quilts. I have finished all of the pieced blocks now. I'm using a pattern called "Disappearing Hourglass." You take an hourglass block, cut it up, move things around and put it back together to form a new design. This is an hourglass block, one I made for Johan's quilt to go with green.

You measure the block, divide the size by three and then cut it into thirds vertically and horizontally. After you rotate the nine resulting pieces and sew them together you can end up with this (but there are other variations):

Here's what the block looked like after cutting:

This is how the pieces were rotated before sewing them back together in their new orientations:

There's a YouTube video demonstrating the technique.

I had decided to put the blocks on point with setting squares. First I had to figure out how to arrange the blocks, because they are all different from each other. I gave up my design wall when we moved, but I decided I could do it on my computer just as well, so I took a photo of each block. Then I put them into a word-processing document and arranged them in rows, moving them around until I was satisfied that the individual fabrics and other characteristics of the blocks were dispersed. Here's a screen shot of what I ended up with. (They aren't very evenly spaced, because I didn't think that was important.) There is one block where I forgot to turn the center square. Can you find it? I think it make the quilt interesting, as do the blocks where the pattern just about disappears.

Now all I have to do is sew them together in diagonal rows, with the blocks in each row of my screenshot in the same locations, only on point. I hope to get that done this week.

While the kids were here, Johan found a beetle that had a body about one inch long and striped. He said it hissed at him. When we went to look, the beetle had run off. However, a few days later, I found this fellow in the dog water dish. I "rescued" him and left him on the rail. He was there long enough for me to get a photo. Peter looked him up and learned he was a Ten-lined (hissing) June Beetle. Perhaps I shouldn't have saved his life, because the larvae feed on roots of grass, bushes and trees, but I did, and he left after he dried out.

In other dog-related news, we found another one of Sandy's teeth, this time on the mat the dog dish rests on. We now have two souvenirs of his early puppyhood.

I've continued to experiment with using the pressure cooker to heat food that normally would go in the gas oven, since our new trailer won't have one of those, just the microwave/convection oven that needs electricity (shown below, with the sticker on the door).

We will have the gas cooktop, so if we are camping where we don't have electricity, we should be able to heat things up in the pressure cooker on that.

Here's what I have to work with, shown here on the stove in my house kitchen.

This is a Presto 6-quart pressure cooker with several choices of racks. I found a silicone "sling" online that can be used to put around a dish or bowl in the pressure cooker for reheating. I'm also getting a springform pan I can use. As I've done with the plastic food storage containers, I can line it with heavy-duty foil and freeze a casserole. The springform pan will be easy to remove from the frozen meal and then replaced for cooking, so I can use the same pan over and over. The square containers will not go into the pressure cooker, obviously, so I will need to put the food on a metal rack.

I have bought new sheets and a new duvet cover to replace the old ones, which are worn out. 

Now I'm knitting a new dishcloth with some of the yarn I used for warp for the rugs I made for our fifth wheel. 

I decided that grey, aqua and teal will be the mail colors in the new trailer. The woodwork is grey, and the upholstery is an exciting beige. The rugs have grey and beige in them, but also some aqua. I can probably only use two of the rugs at a time in the new trailer, but it will be good to have a spare in case one gets muddy.

We hope to be able to pick up our new camping trailer next week.

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 "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 any of our books, including 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: Still the Kultainen käki cardigan and the EmPower People Kerchief (hibernating), but also the dishcloth.

What's on my loom: I only made a few picks on the placemats.

What's on my sewing machine: Still the quilt, but ready to put the blocks together.

What's in The Doll's Storybook: In Reading Things, Mandy reads her knitting, but also other things.

What's on my iPad/iPhone: Still listening to Die Unendliche Geschichte by Michael Ende. I'm really enjoying listening to it in German at .7 speed (70% of normal). 

What's in my wine glass: Bodegas De Olmo Garnacha 2019, from Spain. Very...Spanish.

What's my tip of the week: I should have worked back from a finished size for a block that was an even number, such as 10" or 11" instead of 10.5", which is what I got starting out with an arbitrary 7" square to make my original half-square triangles. When you divide a finished block size by 3, it's nice if it's something you can measure accurately with a ruler divided into eighths and sixteenths instead of decimals.

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. The link for Book Baby is here. The three stories in Emil are Best Buds, Getting What You Want, and The Boys Cook Dinner.

The three 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. 

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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