Home Again, Again!

The Front Range Socks, which I've named "Free Range Socks," are coming along.

I didn't get much knitting done during our visit in Wisconsin, because I often needed to jump up to help with things, always in the middle of a round, which was OK, because I wasn't there to vacation. The trip home on Tuesday was long, though, and I got some knitting in during our layover in the Salt Lake City airport and on the plane. We arrived home late Tuesday night.

I had forgotten how messy teenage boys can be when they eat. I was going to have Zachary come back and clean this up, when his mother came through with a paper towel and cleaned it up. This photo was taken on Tuesday morning, before Zachary left for school.

He may be messy, but he's sweet. Before we left, I wanted to sign his copy of the new book; I had given it to him, unsigned, when we arrived. I went to his room and asked him get it for me. He had it in his bed. He had been reading it! 

He gave me a goodbye hug when he was on his way out the door to go to school the day we left to return home.

We didn’t get to spend too much time with the kids on this trip, though, because we were needed to help care for their father. That’s why we were there.

Remember that maple syrup our Wisconsin Madroña friend brought us when we got together last week? We knew we couldn't take it in our carry-on, because it was more liquid than was allowed, and we worried that it might break or leak in our checked bag, but Charlie padded it with plastic wrap and then sealed it with duct tape.

It made it home safely, although the jar needed some cleaning, because the duct tape was old and left some sticky goo on it and on the lid. Our new favorite dishwashing detergent, Dawn Powerwash, got the goo off nicely.

I made waffles on Saturday, so we could try out the maple syrup. We had only just bought the bananas, and they weren't very ripe, so instead of my banana-oat waffle recipe, I made whole wheat waffles. As always, I used our old GE waffle maker, a wedding gift 60 years ago. The syrup was delicious!

We were glad to hear from our daughter on Thursday that the workmen had come to fix the water pipe leading to the house. While we were still there, someone located and marked all the places where there were utility wires leading to the house, so they wouldn't be dug up by accident. All went well, and water supply has been restored. We're grateful to the next-door neighbors who allowed the plumber to hook up to their water supply with a temporary hose.

The family has a caregiver who comes in Mondays and Wednesdays to care for David while Karen teaches her classes at the university. It’s only for a few hours each time, but it’s a big help, because she really needs to work. They’ve been trying to find someone else for at least one more day a week. On Friday, a new caregiver came. She was experienced in the kind of care David needs, and it seems she will work out well, which will free up Karen to do other things and have a break. This is a relief to everyone.She’s running out of relatives who can come and help!

We got home after midnight on Tuesday, so we picked up the dogs on Wednesday. I expected Lamb Chop to be completely disemboweled, having restored stuffing and sewn her up repeatedly, but she was intact. Maybe Sandy knew no one was going to sew her up again for him until they returned home. I’m glad he had his little friend to snuggle with during the pups's stay at the kennel.

The dogs did well, and I think the experience may have trained Sandy to leave Dusty's food alone (unless we walk away and leave it down for a long time). We haven't been able to leave food down for some time for Dusty, because Sandy would just eat it. Then we we would have to give Dusty more. Dusty would just eat a little and then walk off. We took a crate to the kennel so they could feed Dusty in it and let him out when he was done. I think that proved to be a demonstration to both dogs that they can only have their own food and they have to eat it all or as much as they can at once.

A fan messaged me on Facebook this week with this photo of one of her "Kidz" reading my latest book.

I had sent a copy of Our Favorite Verses to a Madroña friend in California for her granddaughter. She said it was one of the girl's favorite books. The granddaughter wants to be a writer, too, and wants to interview me via FaceTime or Zoom. I'm looking forward to it.

Peter's birthday is this week. His family was celebrating early with an outing to a board-game store where you can have lunch and play a game. Then they went on to a football game with University of Montana (Peter's alma mater) facing Portland State.

The store is called the Mox Boarding House. For board games. Get it?

We haven't walked much during the week. Charlie caught a cold during the trip home, and I'm suffering from jet lag. The dogs and I did walk on Saturday, though. I hope to get back to regular walks again this week, although now I have the cold!

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, BlueSky or Spoutible if you need information.

If you have a few minutes and are willing, please go to Amazon or B&N and search for Billy: Stories 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, More Classic Tales Retold or Billy: Stories from The Doll's Storybook, 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: Front Range Socks. 

What's on my iPhone: Listening to Nobody's Girl by Virginia Roberts Giuffre on the AudiobooksNow app.

What's on my sewing machine: Put away.

What's in The Doll's Storybook: How did Jolena become a skier? Hint: A misdirected package and some imagination were involved.

How did The Doll's Storybook get started? Hint: A spider was a key figure.

Find out more in this week's story from The Doll's Storybook, An Interview with Jolena.

What's my tip of the week: I have an iPhone, and I know that it isn't good for the phone to leave it charging past 100%. I've been setting the timer on my stove at 10 minute intervals when I plug it in in the morning. I've notice that in 10 minutes my phone usually gains about 10% of the total charge. So now, if I notice the phone has charged to, say, 83%, I can leave it plugged in for another 10 minutes, and it will probably be about 93%, enough to get me through the day.

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

The stories in Billy: Stories from The Doll's Storybook are Talking About Boys, Changes, Shhhhh!, Staying After and Money in a Jar.

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: Stories from The Doll's Storybook 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, only 8%, because the vendor gets a cut. My author's page at Book Baby is here. Scroll down and click on any of the books that interest you. Find my books at Barbara's Bookstore as well, or ask your local library to order the books.

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 class="blsdk-follow" href="https://www.bloglovin.com/blogs/highfiber-7365001" target="_blank" data-blsdk-type="button" data-blsdk-counter="false">Follow</a><script>(function(d, s, id) {var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if (d.getElementById(id)) return;js = d.createElement(s);js.id = id;js.src = "https://www.bloglovin.com/widget/js/loader.js?v=1";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);}(document, "script", "bloglovin-sdk"))</script>

<a href="https://www.bloglovin.com/blog/7365001/?claim=kkvctsdtf4n">Follow my blog with Bloglovin</a>   

Play and Work

Life is exciting, when you're a puppy or when you live with a puppy. There are lots of puzzles to work out. We wondered, for instance, why Sandy was letting a bunch of dog toys sleep on the dog bed and then sleeping on the floor instead of on the bed.

All of those toys had been out in the yard. He takes things out there, then often brings them back. Sometimes something from the yard comes in with him, like that stick on the floor, or a pine or fir cone. (Those items get dismantled, which makes a mess, but he doesn't swallow them.)

I found this arrangement a few nights ago. Art? Message? The interesting thing is, these are meant for dogs to chew, and we've had dogs who liked them. However, Sandy won't chew them. I've decided that he found them in the toy bin and thought they didn't belong. When I ignored them lying randomly on the floor, he made this arrangement, so I would notice.

We've had bad air a good part of the week, which makes me grateful for our air conditioning. Our last summer before we had it put in was the first year since we moved here that the smoke was bad in August. Now it's every year. We have occasional breaks of a few hours or a day when the wind carries the smoke from our annual wildfires away from Bend. When that happens, we get outside with the dogs, unless it's too hot. We visited the dog park twice this week and managed several walks on the trail. Sometimes there were other dogs at the dog park. If not, our pups still enjoy the smells of other dogs, and they always enjoy the walk from our house to the park and back.

The RPod is going to see some more use soon. I hopewe can get a break in the smoke. We've been getting Our Pad ready to go. We signed up all the warranties that required a registration, and we've been looking at the instruction manuals and YouTube videos to learn how our various pieces of equipment work. For instance, we learned that we can leave the solar connected to the battery when we aren't using the trailer, and the solar will keep the battery charged. When the battery is full, the solar will stop charging until the battery runs down a bit. 

Based on our first trip in Our Pad, we decided we needed a few things we didn't already have, so we did some shopping. 

The items are (clockwise from 3:00) wheel covers, level indicators, a baking sheet, pizza pan and cork puller, over-the-door hooks, an unbreakable mirror (in which you can see our dining-room ceiling) and a toilet paper holder.

The wheel covers came in a set of four, but our trailer only has two wheels in use, so we have spares.

The one on the bottom is for the spare, which we bought separately. It's the same as the one we had on our old fifth wheel.

The level indicators will help us level the trailer in a campsite. One is right to left (or port to starboard) and the other one is front to back (bow to stern). We had these on our old fifth wheel, too. They were very useful, but they went with the old rig when it left us.

Now for the pans. We had to wait until we actually had our new trailer to find out how big the oven was and what would fit. The oven is a High Pointe convection/microwave designed for small trailers. The small cookie sheet I used in the old fifth wheel doesn't fit. Our pizza pans don't fit, either, although in that case, the pans are too big for the size pizza I usually make anyway. This one should be perfect. We will only be able to bake the pizza on convection mode because we want it to bake, not just heat up, and the metal pizza pan should work fine. 

The cork puller is similar to one we usually take with us but sometimes forget to bring, and then we have to use one that doesn't work as well, so since we were shopping, we added it.

We needed the over-the-door hooks because the only hooks for anything are on the outside of the bathroom door. Towels take up a lot of space, and we need them on the inside anyway. 

We also needed to replace the mirror you can see hanging on one of the existing hooks. I bought it at Freddy's in Florence, so we would have it to use while we were camping. It has to be stowed away carefully, because it could break, and it could damage the door anyway, hanging on a chain. It was a temporary fix, but now we will have an unbreakable mirror designed for camping, that comes with its own stick-on hook. We hadn't thought about a mirror until we were actually living in the new trailer. Our old rig had mirrors in three of the upper cabinet doors in the main room, a big one on the wall, one in the door of the bathroom cabinet and another one on the back of the TV shelf in the bedroom. We don't need that many. I guess they thought it made the main room look bigger and brought in more light.

Now for the toilet paper holder. I don't think it will work well as a dispenser until some of the toilet paper has been used and the roll is smaller, because it's tight, and only one sheet pulls off, leaving the end of the paper completely inside the holder. We think it will work, though. What we needed was something that could stay in the bathroom all the time except when someone is taking a shower. This will hang on one of those over-the-door hooks until the shower is needed, and if the person taking the shower forgets to move it, the case will protect it. That's the plan.

In case you're wondering why the toilet paper needs to be moved when someone takes a shower...this is what's called a "wet bath."

We're hoping to go camping next week for a few days. It will give us a chance to figure out what else we need.

My brother-in-law, Jim, installed his piece of the Berlin Wall in his front garden. We have pieces, too, but very small ones. He and his wife were living in Berlin when the Wall came down on November 9, 1989. They were there and managed to come away this this nice souvenir. He has placed it in the front yard of his home in Florence.

I managed to get a few rounds of the Kultainen käki knitted this week. The cuckoo's legs are starting to show up, although you can't really tell unless you know what you're looking at. The pattern repeats are between the stitch markers. The two cuckoos are on each side of the center, facing each other. The tails and feet started a round before the legs. (That section of vertical stripes is where the steek will go.)

Here's what the finished sweater will look like, except that I'm making a cardigan, and I've moved the motifs to each side, so the design doesn't get broken up. (Photo from the book, Knitted Kalevala, where you can find the pattern.)

I also finished sewing together the inside part of the quilt top. Here's what it looks like. 

The inner border, 3" wide black faux batik, is cut out. All I have to do is sew it on, then on to the outer border. I'm hoping to be done with the top before we go camping next week.

There will be an all-new story out on Friday. I'm hoping to keep to a once-a-month schedule for new stories, and reposting the old stories, one at a time, in between. It gives me a chance to edit them with the perspective of time, although I find I'm only making slight changes.

The proof copy of the latest book should come this week, probably tomorrow. When it does, I'll reveal the cover and what it's about. I'm hoping we don't need to make any changes, but there is still time to get them done, if needed, and still have the book out in time for holiday shopping.

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).

What's on my loom: I didn't make any progress on the placemats.

What's on my sewing machine: Still quilts. Veronika has been helping. Here she's pinning two rows of blocks together. 

What's in The Doll's Storybook: What Are Dolls For, Anyway? The five girls discuss what their purpose in life is. They talk about kindness, looking after others and what children learn from having and playing with dolls.

What's on my iPad/iPhone: Still listening to Die Unendliche Geschichte by Michael Ende. Still enjoying it.

What's in my wine glass: Giardino Pinot Grigio delle Venezie 2022. OK, but not my favorite. Maybe it was the food pairing that didn't work. We had it with Thai stir-fry vegetables and tuna.

What's my tip of the week: Olive oil is good for a lot of things. One of the things I use it for is making salad dressing or sautéing vegetables, but when I use my pressure cooker I have another use for it as well. I dab a little olive oil on my finger and apply a thin layer of oil on the gasket of the pressure cooker. This keeps the water from leaking out during cooking, and maybe has extended the life of the gasket. (Other kinds of cooking oil will also work.) I don't know if this will work on an instant pot, as I don't have one.

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.

<a class="blsdk-follow" href="https://www.bloglovin.com/blogs/highfiber-7365001" target="_blank" data-blsdk-type="button" data-blsdk-counter="false">Follow</a><script>(function(d, s, id) {var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if (d.getElementById(id)) return;js = d.createElement(s);js.id = id;js.src = "https://www.bloglovin.com/widget/js/loader.js?v=1";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);}(document, "script", "bloglovin-sdk"))</script>

<a href="https://www.bloglovin.com/blog/7365001/?claim=kkvctsdtf4n">Follow my blog with Bloglovin</a>