Days of the Walking Dead

Well, we had a nice visit with family during the week, except the unwanted visitors who stowed away on board two of the visitors. See if you can guess which two people in this photo had just come down with a serious respiratory virus (not Covid). Hint: Dusty doesn't count.

We postponed our Thanksgiving dinner until Friday. On Wednesday, Charlie came down with what I suspect is a respiratory flu, unless it is the Head Cold from Hell, the virus brought to us by loving family members. I started feeling sick on Thanksgiving Day. We had had our flu shots, but this probably wasn’t included in the cocktail. We’re still recovering. We both tested negative for Covid. I even tested myself twice, because someone at the bazaar on Saturday a week ago had later tested positive. We got lucky again, if you can call what we got "lucky." Our dinner was easy to fix, because we already had everything cooked for the day before. (One person in this photo was not feeling as well as he looks.)

The cucumber salad was delightful, as usual.

The cranberry sauce was also quite tasty.

The sweet potatoes were similar to the roasted ones I've made recently, except with more herbs, and was a delicious recipe. We had the usual stuffing, rutabaga casserole and turkey (faux chicken, in my case). Dessert was pumpkin pie. We have stuff left over.

Dusty really enjoyed the early morning walks/runs with Louis and one or both of Louis' "parents."

Soren and I did a lot of reading. He always wants me to read him several of my stories. Johan helped me take the photos for the week's story. One of his dolls participated. His Lily is the one in the green shirt. She needs help on the stairs, because her knees don't bend.

I managed to work in a little knitting. I CO my Talvinen sweater. Alexa and I are both making it. I decided to make mine a cardigan. That meant I had to switch the BOR from the center back to the center front and place a marker at the "pretend" BOR in the center back, so I would have it to refer to when following the pattern.

Since I was unable to go to the LYS on Saturday for Shop Small, I ordered from them online for the Rose City Yarn Crawl Mystery KAL. This was what I picked for the MC….

and for the CC….

Then, on Sunday, just because we weren't completely out of energy and hadn't died, "we" decided the tarp needed to go over the trailer, because it was supposed to snow. There was a lot of bad language and gnashing of teeth involved. It's never easy, but this time it seemed impossible. The tarp is longer than wide, and the longer side has to go the length of the trailer, or it won't do any good, and of course, it was the wrong way first. Trying to rotate it after you open it is never easy. It's heavy, and it catches on the protrusions on the roof. It was cold and starting to rain (not snow) by the time we got it on, about two hours later, and Charlie was ready to attach the shock cord. 

Now I should go lie down again. Everyone stay well.

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: Still the Hinterland Pullover (some more progress made) and the EmPower People Kerchief (hibernating), Pauly's Wonderland Turtle and the Talvinen.

What's on my loom, sewing machine, hoop: Same as last week, although the sewing machine got some use fixing one of Son Peter's pants pockets.

What's in The Doll's Storybook: A Dolls' Thanksgiving. The dolls got to experience Thanksgiving dinner with us, although at different times, because of the plague. Jolena had taken photos of everything we were eating, so she showed them to the other dolls, so they could pretend to eat them.

What's on my iPad/iPhone: Still listening to Plan for the Worst by Jodi Taylor

What's in my wine glass: Cough medicine. I didn't check the label for vintage.

What's my tip of the week: Any head cabbage will last a long time in the fridge if you carefully remove leaves and chop them up, rather than cutting into it. The cut edges get brown and will eventually get moldy. You can cut off that part, but by just harvesting the outer leaves, you can avoid having too many broken/cut edges. Of course, this wouldn't work if you were going to stuff the leaves.

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.

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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Done With Sundance, Back to Fiber Fun!

The official Sundance Film Festival is over for this year.

DH and I still have one volunteer shift to do tonight. After the festival is over, Sundance puts on two free screenings of one or two of the best films. We're working that. Then it's all over for another year. While watching the lobby during a film or guarding the door to the Green Room, I managed to get some knitting done. The first sleeve (second version) is finished, and I have several inches done on the second sleeve.

The one thing I didn't do much of last week was sleep.

Vintage Stitchers met on schedule. Janet brought several items for show-and-tell, like this cute machine appliqué. 

Janet also worked on this appliqué project, using a machine buttonhole stitch. 

While not working on it, she pieced this B&W and purple quilt top...

...and this modern quilt top. 

She says she's entered a new "modern" stage. She has been using modern fabrics and traditional patterns, but has recently become drawn to more modern patterns. It will be interesting to see what she does.

Ellen came back Tuesday night. I picked her and Brenda up at Ellen's daughter's house so we could drive to the meeting together. She had this hand appliqué to show off. 

I worked on appliquéing some leaves on the last panel of my Delectable Pathways quilt. 

After the meeting, we stopped at Barnes & Noble so Brenda could pick up a book she had ordered. I had bought a 2-qt. slow cooker and had been looking for a vegetarian cookbook for it. The one I was considering was Vegan Slow Cooking for Two or Just for You by Kathy Hester. They had it at B&N, so I was able to look at it. It looked pretty good, so I bought it.

From there, we went to Elaine's Quilt Block, so Ellen could pick up some light, neutral fabric for background for blocks for her "Home Sweet Home" quilt. It's the book I used for the quilt over my mantle. Remember this?

I had given my book to Ellen, along with the templates I had made. Now she's making the full-size quilt with all nine blocks. 

While Ellen and Brenda were looking, I thought I would see if they had any fabric that would be good for the I-spy quilts I'm working on. In the sale room, I found this great fabric:

I'm cutting the squares at 4 1/2", and they will be 4" finished. If I cut a 4 1/2 square from these, the cut includes all of the light blue border around each image. This makes alternate images unusable at this size, but I was able to get enough to finish what I needed. Here are all my I-spy squares cut out. 

The piles on the right are for Zachary, and the ones on the left are for Soren. Many are the same fabrics, but where I only had one of a kind, I tried to pick what would be most relevant to each boy.

I went stash-diving and came up with some fabric for sashing and cornerstones for Zachary's quilt. I hope to start piecing it this week.

On a different note, DH bought us participation in the National Geographic Genographic Project.

My results have come back, and we're still waiting for his, although we mailed them at the same time. 

It turns out I'm 43% Northern European, 37% Mediterranean and 17% Southwest Asian (today's India, Tajikistan, Iran, etc.; most Europeans have this). The populations I'm most like are British Isles and German. No surprise there, but I have quite a bit more Mediterranean than typical for British and slightly more than typical for German populations. My percentage of Southwest Asian is typical for both groups. The real surprise came when it was broken down into haplogroups. My first branch (about 30,000 yrs. ago) is U5, which is almost exclusively Scandinavian, primarily Finnish. (!) This is especially interesting because DH is half Finnish. It means that our kids carry more Finnish-type genes than we thought. Somewhere between 22,000 and 4,000 yrs. ago, people from this group migrated either to Europe or South Asia. The next branch is U5A. The largest population with this lineage is Slovenia, although it is found in Bulgaria, Luxembourg, Lebanon and India. I'm specifically U5a1b. All of this is on my mother's side. Women don't get results from the paternal side, because it's carried on the Y chromosome. However, it means I'm more German than I thought. The only German ancestors I knew about already were on my father's side. I'm providing the project with information that might help them with continuing studies. I read some of the comments made by people in the U5a1b group, and they are mostly from the British Isles and Germany, but some of them mentioned coming from the US's deep south, as my parents did. I was a little disappointed that I didn't seem to have any race other than Caucasian in me. That would have been even more interesting.

Maybe you skipped over my little dissertation, and that's OK. To reward you for tuning in, though, here's some cuteness: Soren was riding the monorail during a recent trip to Seattle. Clearly he prefers his book to really drinking in the experience. Maybe he's going to be a proofreader when he grows up!

What's on my needles: "Green Tea" socks for me, second sock. Dogwood Blossoms still holding, and Christmas Waffle sweater moving along, with the second sleeve (second version) underway.

What's on my loom: Belated Christmas present scarves, holding. I hope to make some progress this week. 

What's on my iPad/iPhone: Listing to Phantoms by Dean Koontz, from Audible. Still reading Pemberly to Waterloo by Anna Elliot in iBooks, bought through Book Bub. Also listening to the Fiber Hooligan podcast and the Knit Picks podcast, as usual.

What's my app of the week: It has to be the Messages app. I've found I'm using it more all the time, as I get used to a phone service that doesn't charge for texting. It really came in handy during the film festival.

What's in my wine glass: Bogle Vineyards Petite Sirah, 2011. Very nice. (My wine steward doesn't buy bad wine.)

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 were harmed during the production of this blog post.

Rolling Over and Over in My Gravy.

What a week! Soren and his entourage came for Thanksgiving, since we won't be able to be together for Christmas this year. 

I spent most of the week cooking and cleaning. The kids arrived Wednesday night, and we had Thanksgiving dinner early in the evening on Thanksgiving. The dinner was...interesting.

Since I don't eat meat, and I wanted something as close to what the rest of the family was having, I tried to find a Quorn Turk'y Roast at the local Whole Foods. No luck! Usually Smith's carries it, but they were out of it, too. I had to make a trip to Salt Lake City early in the week to visit a thrift store to get some things for Soren to play with, to JoAnn to get some webbing to finish the chair pads and buttons for Daphne's sweater, and to Toys R Us to pick up Soren's Christmas presents, so I added the Whole Foods, Salt Lake City, to my list of stops. They had the Turk'y Roast, and it was on sale, so I picked up two. I had bought a regular turkey breast for the others. We were also having Finnish Rutabaga casserole, maple sweet potatoes, asparagus, salad, stuffing, gravy and a cranberry relish recipe that DDIL2 learned about on Facebook. The gravy tried very hard to finish me off.

DDIL2 made the salad, while Soren played in the living room under supervision of the guys.

Everything takes longer to cook at high elevation, but this turkey breast took longer than I expected. I started heating up the gravy too soon, got distracted, and it boiled over on my stove. Fortunately, I had plenty of the vegetarian mushroom gravy, so I put it into another pan and stuck it in the oven with the turkey breast. It boiled over again, all over the bottom of the oven. (I should point out that everything boils at a lower temperature at high elevation, too, and I should have known better.) I was really distracted. 

When I finally got dinner on the table, we took the photo above, and started passing stuff around. I reached over the sweet potatoes to get the gravy, which promptly slid in its dish and tipped over, spilling gravy all over the tablecloth in front of my very patient BIL. We cleaned up what we could, covered up the spot with paper towels and had a wonderful time eating and drinking. Soren preferred the Turk'y Roast to the real turkey. Smart boy! (Of course, the fact that he doesn't have too many teeth yet might factor in. It's easier to chew.) We finished our dinner with a pumpkin cheesecake from Trader Joe's. Yum!

On Black Friday we went for a hike instead of shopping.

(The hat was part of Soren's Halloween costume, a character from "How To Train Your Dragon.")

The pups needed a run, and everyone needed to be outside in the fresh air on such a pretty day. Most of our route was a paved bike path (chosen to avoid the mud), so we took the umbrella stroller. We stopped at the local bagel shop for hot chocolate on our way back to the car. 

We had decided that we wanted to "shop small" on Saturday, so we started out at No Worries, a locally owned restaurant in our neighborhood, for breakfast. Soren was well-behaved, in spite of having to wait some time for a table, and we had a great time.

From there, we went on to Great Harvest, a locally owned bakery franchise, where we picked up some nice bread and some treats to feed some friends who were coming for tea. Then we went to the local toy store to get some special presents for the grandkids, and finally to the local quilt shop, Davidene's, where I discovered I had lost my credit card. I had used it at Great Harvest, but a phone call to them revealed that they didn't have it. I had to cancel it. (That's going to take the fun out of Cyber Monday!)

Football: We had watched my Patriots win their game Sunday night, and then DDIL2 and DS2's favorite team Oregon Ducks win theirs on Friday, and finally The Ohio State's (where DS2 did his graduate work) game, which had to be recorded and watched after we got home from shopping on Saturday. They won, too. It made up for the gravy fiasco.

We also Skyped with Daphne and Zachary and their parents, and then with DS1 and DDIL1. We will see them all around Christmas time during our planned trip east. 

We had a bunch of board books checked out from the library. Soren loves board books, and we read each one several times. He also discovered my iPad. I have some great games on it for kids. He really liked Pocket Pond, one of my favorites. DS2 showed Soren how to play Angry Birds, one of his.

All good things come to an end, and our visit had to as well. Sunday morning we had to drive Soren and his entourage back to the airport, where he said goodbye to Grandpa...(Soren kisses with his mouth open and his eyes closed)

And to me.

Soren made friends at the airport before the flight home. He never met a stranger.

During the week I managed to get some work done on Daphne's "Green Pastures" cardigan. I had to rip out several rows of the sheep pattern that I knitted during the nail-biter Patriots game. Guess I was tense, because it was too tight. However, the redo worked fine, and I'm ready to sew on the buttons, sew up the underarms and block it. 

I feel ready to be put out to pasture now. It was an exhausting weekend, but lots of fun!

What's on my needles: "Green Pastures" cardigan for Daphne, just the buttons to sew on, underarms to sew closed and the blocking to do. Dogwood Blossoms and Christmas Waffle sweater still on hold, and Green Tea socks with the heel almost done. Ready to CO for second, smaller Green Pastures cardigan for Soren. 

What's on my loom: Making more progress on the Christmas present scarves.

What's on my wheel: Full Circle Roving in "Wolf". First bobbin finished. No progress this week.

What's on my Sewing needles, Featherweight: Delectable Pathways, piecing the Delectable Mountain block panels. Appliqué panel #3, No progress this week.

What's on my iPad/iPhone: I'm still listening to Bath Tangle by Georgette Heyer. Still reading The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley on the Nook App, purchased through BookBub. Another intriguing story. Listening to the Fiber Hooligan podcast and the Knit Picks podcast.

What's my app of the week: Pocket Pond...again! This app is always a winner with the small set! Soren got a kick out of "splashing" in the water without getting wet. He also tried to dump our the water, and had a look at the other side of the iPad, trying to find the depth to the pond. 

What's in my wine glass: Liberty Creek Pinot Noir, another big bottle. We need it! It's time to rest up, but I will really miss the 5:30 AM wake-up call!

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 were harmed during the production of this blog post.

High Fiber--Taking the Group to Spring...

The visit to Gardner Village was the big event of the week. Since spring wouldn't come to Park City...



...we took the group to where spring had arrived. Seven members of Common Threads packed into two cars and drove down the mountain to the restored village, mill and farm in West Jordan, UT, which is now the location of dozens of cute shops.
The shops include the quilt shop Pine Needles and yarn shop Kamille's, which you can see on the other side of the stream in the photo above. The inside of Kamille's wasn't too good for photography, but I bought some sock yarn and left some fliers with them to hand out. I had a chance to explain Mitts of Steal and get them to agree to help recruit knitters/crocheters for us. They did have some nice yarn, especially novelty yarn.

Pine Needles is a little more photogenic, but how can you compete with bolts of lovely, bright fabric?



That's Karan on the left. Pine Needles had lots of patterns:



Georgette found some interesting projects to look at:




They had lots of quilts for inspiration, like this:



And this:




I left with some fat quarters and a desire to come back!

I received photos this week of the first distribution for Mitts of Steal. This photo shows Angelkarhu, our founder, CEO, CFO (easy job, since we don't handle money), Executive Director and Grand Muckety Muck on the left, and a dialysis patient and Mitt recipient on the right.




Dialysis patients often suffer pain and cold hands from a condition called Steal Syndrome, which is caused by circulating the blood outside the body to clean it. The Mitts alleviate the condition, while still allowing the patient to read, knit, text, or eat during treatment.
The project is growing. This week Angelkarhu, who is herself a dialysis patient and avid knitter, received an offer from Unwind, a yarn shop located in Claremore, OK, to make 100 pairs of Mitts. Sixty pairs will go to their local Davita dialysis clinic in Claremore, and 40 will go to Angelkarhu for clinics in Oregon. Davita is a national clinic, like Fresenius (where the first Mitts have been distributed), so we're expecting this to take off. That means we need more Mitts! This is a quick and easy project. You can get a pair of mitts out of a 50 gm ball of yarn, including men's sizes. (Click on the link above for further information.) Angelkarhu recently received recognition from MIKE (Multicultural Kidney Education Program) for her work in mentoring new dialysis patients and for organizing Mitts of Steal.

Friday the knitting group met after a long hiatus. We carpooled to Oakley, UT, to meet at Barbara's house. Karan brought her finished shawl.



This is like a similar one she made, only she replaced the nupps with beads, which you can see in this closeup:



Saturday night we got another 3" of snow, which restrict the pups to the front deck, so as not to be squashed flat by snow falling from the roof. Here's what the deck looked like early in the evening:



Will spring ever arrive in Park City? Tune in next week (or the week after that, or the week after that...) to find out.

What's on my needles: DBIL's cardi and a felted bag for my MacBook, and I'm working on my applique project again for a special quilt.
What's on my wheel: The Louet Olive Green Corriedale, bobbin #2
What's in my hoop: The languishing hand-pieced quilt. I'm itching to finish it!
What's on my iPad: Now listening to the audiobook Three Weeks To Say Goodbye by C. J. Box. Next I plan to listen to Audible's Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. We watched the movie on Netflix the other evening, and I enjoyed it, so now I'm reading the audiobook.
What's on my iPod: Various podcasts, including The Sweater Quest by Adrienne Martini, read by the author. She's putting the chapters out one at a time as podcasts. Interesting!
What's my app of the week: The Weather Channel app. DD was traveling through Tornado Alley to get to her in-laws' home in Texas late last week on a day when tornadoes had been sighted. They made it OK, though!
What's in my wine glass: Salmon Creek Merlot 2009.

Note: This blog post was produced partly on the iPad. My MacBook was used for the rest, but no Windows were opened, waited for or cleaned.