Every Season....

On Monday of last week, you may remember from the last blog post, we left LaPine State Park Campground and headed to the dump station and trash/recycling center to leave behind everything we didn't want to take home.

After unloading everything we needed to remove immediately (fridge contents, laundry, dishes we hadn't washed yet) and things we needed to use in the house, we backed our little pod into the driveway. Charlie later backed her through the gate and into the backyard, where we expect her to stay all winter.

We still have cleaning and winterizing to do. For the cleaning, I want to have power, so I can run the nice little internal vacuum. We still have things to remove, too, such as anything that might freeze during the winter or attract rodents, like food or paper products. We've been getting some badly needed rain, though, so we've put that off for a bit.

It has been good weather for cooking and baking. I made the usual whole wheat sourdough bread.

I've had some tomatoes in the freezer taking up space, so during the rainy weather was a good time to make some Favorite Spicy Tomato Jam.

This is the recipe I like to use.

You can use fresh ginger and this recipe can be canned in a water-bath process for long-term storage, but I don't expect it to be around that long.

The pups went to the groomer on Thursday. Sandy is starting to look like a full-grown dog now. His color looks a little lighter each time he gets a haircut. He still doesn't weigh as much as Dusty, but I think he has a leaner build, more like Rocky, so maybe he won't weigh that much. 

We've been trying to get our walks in between showers. After grooming, we decided to avoid the mud on the trail and walked around the neighborhood on the sidewalks.

Saturday afternoon the weather cleared a bit, so we decided to go out in the car and hike Good Dog Off Leash Trail, which we haven't done in a long time. We got in 2.46 miles. There are a lot more trails we didn't even explore. Next time!

The pups had a great time running back and forth along the trail ahead of us and occasionally off-trail. Sandy was always the first to return, which was good to see. You never know how they're going to be. Rocky used to run off, especially when he knew we were getting close to the end of the hike. Dusty has been a good example for Sandy, though, during the few off-leash opportunities we've had since Sandy joined our family.

Can you tell how many paws are touching the trail?

They met a lot of other dogs, too, which is good, although Sandy is more drawn to the people he meets than other dogs. On Sunday the pups and I walked on the Larkspur Trail, because it was starting to dry out. We got in 2 1/4 miles. 

I'm enjoying the new phone. The photos I take seem clearer than with the old phone. I got this photo of the moon the other night when it was almost clear for a while. Next time, I should turn off the porch light.

The stories are still reedited reruns most weeks. It's fun to go back and look at the stories from the first year. In the meantime, I have a new one in the works.

Some knitting happened, partly during the camping trip. The body of the Kultainen käki is finished up to the sleeve divide, and I've started the sleeves, which are knit separately and then added to the body for finishing the yoke.

In some cuteness for this week, Soren competed in the Special Olympics on Saturday. He's a good runner, and he enjoyed it.

Johan went along and had a good time, too.

Sunday morning, I looked out and discovered that the dog pool was frozen. Frost will visit us frequently during the nights to come before winter returns.

Charlie has emptied the water in the tanks in the pod. It wasn't cold for long enough overnight to cause them to freeze.

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 the Kultainen käki cardigan and the EmPower People Kerchief (still hibernating).

What's on my loom: I didn't make any progress on the placemats, but I've figured out how many pics I'll need for each placemat, based on what I have finished so far..

What's on my sewing machine: Back to the quilt. Time to sew on the outer border.

What's in The Doll's Storybook: Jolena and Mariah are a bit confused about what kind of bulbs to plant, but they know their comparatives and superlatives in Planting Bulbs.

What's on my iPad/iPhone: Still listening to Die Unendliche Geschichte by Michael Ende. I hope to finish it this week.

What's in my wine glass: My favorite Apothic Red!

What's my tip of the week: Cream cheese can be frozen and will still be quite useable thawed. It will have a curdled appearance, but that doesn't affect the spreading ability or the taste.

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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Masked Ball

A family friend picked up 82 masks from me on Tuesday. This is what she picked up.

She's a surgeon who works at the local hospital, so she could take them to work. I already had these cut out.

I've been continuing to make masks, which will get picked up when I have a sizable amount, enough to make it worth picking up. I'm using the pattern they provided. They provide the filter and the nose piece or wire. Here is the tutorial I wrote to go with their mask. A link to the original pattern is included in the tutorial, as well as a link to rotary-cutting instructions. One of the preferred fabrics is quilting fabric, of which I have a plentiful supply. I'm up to 115 total for the hospital.

Meanwhile, our total cases for the county is up to 70, as of Friday night when the last reporting period ended. Two more cases had to be hospitalized.

We've been enjoying our sprouts.

We're growing them from sprouting seeds I bought through iHerb.

I have been unable to get more whole wheat flour, which is what I use to make my bread. I'm now down to my last 5-lb. bag, so I have been experimenting with adding wheat bran and wheat germ (toasted) to unbleached white flour to make bread. This one was made with 1 cup of whole wheat to two cups of white flour with my additions. It turned out OK.

I used 3 lbs. of frozen tomatoes to make spiced tomato jam. The recipe made two pints.

The pups are getting shaggy. Rocky needed to go to the vet to get a shot, so I gave him a good brushing. Dusty was really dirty from chasing the ball on the trail, so I brushed him and then gave him a bath. I was regretting having given our old dog clippers to our groomer in Park City before we moved here. I hadn't used them since we lived in Indonesia in the '90s, so why keep them? Little did I know.

Social distancing at the vet's was easier than I expected. We called from the parking lot. The vet tech opened the door. We let go of the leash and Rocky trotted across the parking lot to the door. After being weighed, vaccinated and checked, Rocky was brought back to the door and released into the parking lot. He came right to the car and was ready to get back in. We never got within 12' of another human being, although Rocky did.

I was getting the dolls ready for the photo shoot for Friday's story, dressing, fixing hair and then standing the doll on my cutting surface as I went on to the next. After finishing the fifth doll, I turned around and saw this.

Of course, I had to look to see what they were all looking at. It was the bicycles on the top of my fabric cabinet. The dolls come to life in my stories. Sometimes they really seem like real little people to me.

I haven't done much knitting since starting on the masks, but I have a little progress on Charlie's Kep. (See below.)

In other news, spring has finally come to our place.

Actually, tulips are blooming elsewhere in the neighborhood, but our front yard doesn't get as much sun, due to a beautiful huge fir tree in our front yard. (We need to replace the bushes. They cover the windows in the spring and summer and can't be pruned back anymore.)

What's on my needles: Still Charlie's Kep.

What's on my sewing machine: More masks

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

What's in The Doll's Storybook: Beliefs and Facts. The dolls discuss how to tell the difference between a belief and a fact.

What's on my iPad/iPhone: Finished Right Behind You by Rachel Abbott, then The Man on the Mountaintop by Susan Trott and Smouldering Fire, another novel by D. E. Stevenson and then The Golden Orchard by Flora Ann. Now I'm listening to An Argumentation of Historians by Jodi Taylor, another of The Chronicles of St. Mary's series.

What's in my wine glass: Montevina Skyland Ridge Zinfandel 2016. Excellent!

What's my tip of the week: We're being encouraged to wear face masks these days, but experts have been saying it's more for the protection of those around you than for the wearer. This week NPR reported on a innovation that new research indicates may make home-sewn face masks "match or exceed the filtering capability of medical-grade surgical masks."

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.