What a Life!

Happy birthday to me!

Here is a picture of me with my grandpa who thought I was his little Miss America (or something like that – my mom reads my blog and she’ll correct me if I’m wrong – hi mom!).

I’m not telling anyone my age, but here is another picture of me with my grandma (both grandparents in these pictures are my mom’s parents).

Finally, if you still are trying to guess how old I may be…here is a picture of me with my parents when I was a little older.

Well, it seems I do have a version of Steve’s cold. I’ve been hearing other people talk about it too. It starts out like bad allergies and then you end up bedridden. I can’t say I’m exactly bedridden…but you know it’s bad when I almost don’t want to knit.

I got groceries today – we were out of three staples: applesauce, yogurt and peanut butter. Ben cannot live without any of those three. He cried at breakfast when he asked for yogurt and I told him we were out. Since I’m not feeling well, we won’t be going to playgroup tomorrow, which is usually followed by our weekly grocery shopping. I decided we’d just go today and be done with it.

Then our vacuum cleaner has been on the fritz. It is an old Electrolux – the Silverado – and the power wand has a short in it that makes it go on and off while you’re using it. Not my idea of a picnic. I took it to Omaha to this place that sets up a booth at the state fair every year. I talked to the service guy over the phone, and though he said he wouldn’t be there when I was able to bring it to them, he did give me an idea of what it sounded like the problem was. And since I couldn’t wait while they repaired it, someone from their store is going to Lincoln tomorrow so they’ll be delivering the repaired vacuum to me then. Talk about quick service and going the extra mile!

They showed me what a new brush looks like (for the power wand), of course. I told them I don’t have deep shag rugs or anything, and ours does look pretty good. The hose is getting old. I mean, it’s a vacuum from the 1980’s that I inherited from my grandparents, for goodness sake! When the service guy called me this evening, he said the psi was 70 – with a new hose it’s 90…when it gets down to about 40 is when they strongly recommend a new hose. A new hose costs around $100. They thought the motor on it sounded really good, which is good to know.

I was worried the whole thing would be kaput and I’d need to buy a new one. The repair guy said they replaced the wires on the power wand, and he took the hose end off another vacuum they had in the shop and used it to replace mine since the connection there was getting loose as well. The total came to a mere $42.78. Like I said, not having to wait for it for a week and then making another trip to Omaha isn’t all bad either! I can handle that.

Of course, no trip to Omaha is complete without a visit to the yarn store. I stopped by Personal Threads and bought some size 1 dpns to replace the set I have of five which is now four and at the moment cannot be located. Those socks I’m knitting have occasional cables. I always use smaller dpns as cable needles so I was using my darning needle as a cable needle which wasn’t working very well. I also bought a couple skeins of yarn to complement yarn I already have for a sweater for Joey which he has already outgrown if I made the size I have enough yarn for.

I had an interesting conversation with the yarn store owner about their new store and whether they’ll be holding sit ‘n knits or inviting high profile guest speakers like the Yarn Harlot or Annie Modesitt to events at their store. His answer was rather interesting. Basically he said they’re a store – not a clubhouse. Those types of events just aren’t their thing. I can respect that. He said they do have people on staff that can help you with a project you’re stuck on (unlike some yarn stores), and I think they do have a good inventory of nice yarn. Really, business owners have to figure out what they do best and do it – if being a “clubhouse” isn’t their style, it isn’t their style. Of the yarn stores in our area, it’s my favorite…so they must be doing something right.

So tomorrow we shall be staying at home and watching my little seedlings sprout. I noticed the first ones yesterday evening – and I took pictures – but I haven’t had the energy to download them for posting on my blog. They all look the same at this point so I really have no clue what is up and what isn’t. I did write down where I put things – and once theyr’e grown enough to move to the garden, I will be able to tell tomatoes from cabbage. Until then, though, I can only guess at what I see because I did not mark which side is “north” on my seed tray. La la la!

Oh, and the house is a mess! I don’t know if it is annoying me because I’m sick and annoyed at everything or if I simply haven’t had the energy to keep up with it like I usually do. I have a feeling it’s the latter, but self-doubt seems to spring forth in times like these. My desk still looks nice, though.

Now if I could just feel better…

It’s time for a knitting update, complete with eye candy.

Yes, I have been knitting lately. I don’t think a day goes by without at least a few moments of knitting. I got really clever the other day, set the camera on top of the tv, set the timer, and took a picture of myself knitting. I needed to try out the timer feature on my camera, okay?

Yes, that’s me on the couch, I-cord jacket on the back of the seat on my left, knitting bag below it, sweater I’m designing in my lap, and planner with a piece of paper where I’m recording my pattern notes on my right.

[If Steve saw this picture, he would so laugh at me. He saw my before-and-after desk pictures on the computer the other day (I was going through my pictures) and thought it was the funniest thing he had ever seen! He laughed out loud! Oh my! …No, he doesn’t read my blog. It would be perfectly fine with me if he did, but I haven’t encouraged it because he would find some serious fodder for teasing me. Just saying is all.]

Moving on here…

I finished the sleeves of the I-cord jacket I’m making for myself. The i-cord around the edge, though, is progressing rather slowly. That cotton yarn doesn’t give like wool yarn does, and it’s doing a number on my hands. So I only work on this in small spurts. I started on one side, have gone across the back and am now working on the bottom front (where you see the dpn in the picture).

I keep thinking I’m going to come up with a better idea for doing the i-cord that won’t hurt my hands, but it hasn’t happened yet. So I’m probably going to have to keep plugging away at it. Hopefully I’ll get it finished by the end of the month – that is my goal.

Next on the needles would be the little sweater I’m designing for my cousin’s baby, Jack.

I borrowed the stitch pattern from one of the little sweater patterns in the current issue of Vogue Knitting(Spring/Summer ’07). I must say, usually I like stitch patterns because they make it more interesting, but this one only happens every sixth row so you have to count every time you do it (instead of just looking at your work) so it’s a major pain. It looks nice, though.

I am knitting it flat, up to where the sleeves join the body, and then I will join everything together into one piece and work raglan decreases while I continue to work flat because I am dividing for the neck at the same point. Usually, garments in this style are knit in the round or piece by piece and then seamed at the end. The only seams I’ll be doing are under the sleeve and the side seams. I’ve decided I prefer knitting flat to knitting in the round – my hands don’t get so tired when they have the variety that both knitting and purling offer when knitting flat. But I don’t think seams at the raglan decreases are necessary for structure either, so I’m not doing them. Thus my interesting way of assembling this sweater.

Here it is waiting to be joined into one piece.

I would have joined it and perhaps even finished it last night, but I got to the point where everything gets joined togeter just as the sun went down, and I wanted to get a good picture of it at that stage. So it got set aside until this morning.

But I still wanted to knit, of course. So I finally cast on those Bells & Whistles socks I mentioned a couple weeks ago. I was wondering how that Reynolds Whiskey was going to knit up since it looks so woolly and fluffy. It feels rather nice though, and it works quiet well at sock yarn gauge. Though I haven’t tried the sock on yet, I’m quite please with it so far.

I am so loving the color of that yarn! I’ve knit so much blue for my boys that I can hardly stand to knit blue anymore. Blue used to be my favorite color. Though I’m not quite ready to admit it yet, I’m thinking some version of pink is now my favorite color. Pink is just so…pretty!

Steve’s had a miserable cold for about a week now. It started with a sore throat and moved on from there. This morning I woke up with a sore throat and that feeling you get when you’re coming down with something. I mention this in my knitting post because if this cold makes me as tired as Steve’s looked like he’s been, I’m not going to have much energy in the next few days. I’ll be couch-bound with my fatigue. And you know what that means…lots and lots of knitting!

I must confess, I’m in a rut.

But actually, it’s okay. Dr. Oz (on Oprah) said that it’s a good idea to automate two of your meals every day so you eat well without having to think about it. So same thing for breakfast, same thing for lunch, something different for supper. You get the picture…

At our house, most mornings (as in, those in which I am not ambitious), we have cereal. For lunch, I send Steve a lunchmeat sandwich complete with a slice of cheese on it, and then something else – like fruit or yogurt or something. Steve likes sandwiches. He says they were his default meal when he was a bachelor.

But for me? I don’t like sandwiches. If I never ate another sandwich, I really don’t think I would miss them. Especially lunch meat sandwiches like Steve has.

So what do I have for lunch every day? [Get ready to groan…]

Cottage Cheese Loaf.

Yes indeed. I make it every week. I love Cottage Cheese Loaf.

Now, if you’re not Adventist or haven’t been around Adventists much, you probably don’t know what Cottage Cheese Loaf is. It’s also called Special K Loaf, but Mom never bought Special K so that’s why perhaps I know it as Cottage Cheese Loaf. When I was a kid, we had a rotating list of entrees that we made on Friday to have for dinner after church on Sabbath. Cottage Cheese Loaf was one of them.

I don’t know when I started making it all the time. Steve doesn’t mind it, but he isn’t as fond of it as I am, so that’s why I started making it and eating it during the day while he’s at work, I think. He didn’t like the nuts in it – he said you had this soft loaf and with these hard things mixed in, and that didn’t sit well with him. So I started making it without the nuts called for in the commonly-known version of the recipe.

I’ve made a couple of other changes as well. Like the onions – I cook them with the melted butter in the microwave before putting them in the mix. I don’t like chomping into raw onions when I eat my Cottage Cheese Loaf. I put them in a dish with the butter for two minutes in my microwave – melts the butter and cooks the onion all in one handy swoop.

The secret ingredients?

Special K – we used either rice krispies or corn flakes when I was a kid since Mom didn’t buy Special K (I think it was something about being too expensive). For me, corn flakes definitely don’t taste right – they ruin it, in fact. Rice krispies are an okay substitute. But you haven’t really lived until you’ve had Cottage Cheese Loaf with Special K. I’m telling you, Special K is so worth the price!

George Washington Broth – I think I didn’t make Cottage Cheese Loaf very often in my former life because the only place I could find this stuff was at the Adventist Book Center (the Adventist book and vegetarian food store). But, in Lincoln, the Hyvee on 70th and Pioneers carries this stuff. It’s in the soup and cracker aisle, next to the chicken broth, right up at eye level at the very end of the aisle. They probably carry it because that’s the Hyvee closest to Union College and all the Adventists were asking for it. Maybe. We used to substitute dry chicken broth granules for the George Washington Broth when I was a kid, but it just isn’t quite as good.

Here is a picture of the Cottage Cheese Loaf I made yesterday, complete with a box of George Washington Broth [so you know what the box looks like…]

And here, my friends, is the recipe.

Cottage Cheese Loaf – Tana’s version

1/2 onion, chopped
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter
2 lb. cottage cheese (I like Roberts small curd, in the navy blue containers)
3 envelopes George Washington Broth
5 eggs
5 cups Special K cereal

Melt the butter and cook the onions in the microwave. Combine all ingredients and place in casserole dish. (I think the skin that forms on the top is really good so I use a wide, shallow dish rather than a tall, deep one). Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour. Eat and enjoy!

Today is the first day of spring – finally! This year I have been waiting on the edge of my seat for spring to come. It was a long winter cooped up with two boys in the house. Now Joey is big enough to ride in the stroller, and it’s warm enough for me to take them both, so we’ve been very much enjoying the warmer weather.

Here is a picture of the boys in my new stroller on a cold day (in the 40s).

In addition to being able to go for walks again, spring also means garden time. Last Friday I planted my seedlings. None of them have come up yet, of course, but you can see the dirt and the tray I used to plant all of them. Note the “helper” in the background.

…and a close-up.

I planted broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower – all to be transplanted in April – as well as tomatoes, green peppers, jalapeno peppers (for Steve), eggplant, and various herbs as well as flowers (marigolds for bug control and pansies for looks) – all to be planted in May.

Here is my garden plot, all brown and empty.

And no, that’s not our house in the background (though I wish it was).

Here is a close-up of the remnants of one of my pepper plants from last year.

I think it’s a cool picture with the stem in focus and everything else blurred. Eye candy.

One more bit of eye candy – the water faucet out by my garden. I love it because it’s old-fashioned (kinda-sorta).

Welcome Spring!

My Dad asked me yesterday if Joey is sitting yet. I gave him the short answer [No, he isn’t] over the phone. Here is the long answer:

Sit Joey down on the couch. Prop him up nicely so he can look around.

Doesn’t he look comfortable?

Joey starts squirming…

…and squrms some more. It’s called “stiff as a board.”

Ugh! This is so uncomfortable!

Passing the time away.

You can even listen to what he sounds like by watching this video.

In case you don’t understand the words, it’s…

Oh, I’m so uncomfortable.
Nobody loves me.
They just leave me alone here all by myself.
I’m so ignored.
My life is horrible!

Repeat ad nauseum.

Would you like some cheese with that whine, Joey?

Hey, look! Mommy’s paying attention to me! I think she’s going to pick me up! I’m going to pay really good with a smile!

What a look of triumph!

And that, folks, is the story of Joey sitting.