Goin’ to Kansas City …

We’re going to visit our daughters and their families for a couple of days - I do wish the forecast were a little cooler, but guess that’s too much to hope for in July in Missouri! One drawback to going on such short notice is that we usually board the critters at our vet’s, but they’re full and a bit more, so Toby is coming along, and a friend is coming to check on and feed the girls every day. Not sure how that’s going to work out - we may have 1 very chubby cat and 1 somewhat thinner cat

I recently got a ball of Lana Grossa Meilenweit Cotton sock yarn in a yummy shade of red – that’s some seriously nice yarn! I contracted a bad case of startitis, did some swatching and started a new sock. I ended up on size 0 (2mm) needles, but could only find a set of metal ones, and the yarn dragged very annoyingly on them. I’m not sure what made me think of it, but we used to rub the kids’ sled runners with a piece of waxed paper to make them slicker, and it worked on the needles too. I’d still rather be using my experienced bamboos, but it was sure an improvement.

There are still a few things blooming around the yard now. I was especially glad to see this daylily. Some years ago, my folks used to grow and hybridize daylilies, and Clear Day is one of Mom’s. I have 2 clumps of it, and both are in bloom.

The other yellow flower is one that comes up along the fence, but so far I haven’t identified it. I just recognize the plant, and avoid mowing it - also I think the birds enjoy the seeds later.

Daylily Clear Day

Yellow flower, as yet unidentified

Flower with bee

Pretty quiet evening …

Not very much happening right now. Toby vanished as soon as he heard the whirr of the camera switching on, and my other 2 editorial assistants are both napping. Maggie’s pretty mellow most of the time, but Amber’s frequently anything but mellow. Notice the light switch at the right edge of the right hand picture? Every so often, when she thinks I should be paying attention to her instead of the computer, she’ll turn the light off. There’s a small bookcase below it, and I’m sure the first time was an accident - she was stretching up the wall and hit the switch, but I don’t think the times since then have been accidental! She’s a very busy girl.

We’ve had some beautiful evening skies lately - here’s another one from a couple of days ago.

Yummy things …

So I did another batch of the Swiss chard (without the camnesia) and found that I could indeed do it again. The main difference was that the first bunch of chard had mixed color stems, and this batch was all red, but very tasty!

Swiss Chard with Onions & Balsamic Vinegar

1 bunch chard, approx 1/2 large sweet onion, slivered, several cloves garlic, sliced.

Separate stems from leaves, cut stems into 1″ sections, cut leaves into 1″ wide strips.

1. In a little olive oil, sauté onion, garlic and stems until they start to soften.

2. Add leaves and a small amount of water or chicken broth. Cover and steam to desired doneness. Smaller/younger leaves will cook much more quickly. If there’s too much liquid in the bottom of the pan, push greens to one side and reduce liquid.

3. Sprinkle with a nice balsamic vinegar to taste, and enjoy! Thought for next time: This might be good sprinkled with a few toasted pine nuts!

Since getting the Border Leicester off the spinning wheel, I’ve managed to spin at least 10 minutes a day, and the garnet merino/silk is really nice. Abby Franquemont has been doing a series of Summer Q&A, and her article about spinning from the fold came at just the right time for this project, as it’s the perfect technique. She has links to a couple of tutorials if you haven’t tried it before.

A Quickie …

I’m behind on another deadline, plus I’m about to interface with the keyboard (zzz …)

The Cables & Ribs socks are finished, but I haven’t gotten a decent picture of them yet. Meanwhile I’ve started another pair with some Maizy [added: color is Earth; 82% corn fiber/18% elastic nylon; from Crystal Palace] I got recently - while it’s a bit inclined to split, it’s really plush feeling, and I like it! I’m working on the heel flap of the first sock now, but here’s what it looked like yesterday.

The spinning has suffered with the deadline stuff, but I’ve plied off most of the grey Border Leicester. The larger skein is about 345 yds, I haven’t counted turns on the smaller one, but it’s less [approx 240 yds]. One bobbin is empty and I think I’ll just wind what’s left on the other one into a ball. I want to play with the garnet merino/silk blend!

I forgot there was a larger, more established clump of butterfly weed, but it’s been putting on a real show - it practically glows, it’s so orange!

Oh Hail!

Did we ever get pounded yesterday afternoon! It got darker and darker, and the wind kept rising, and then it hailed like I’ve never experienced before, and I’d just as soon pass on a repeat performance, thank.you.veddy.much. Most of the hail storms have been of the hit-and-run variety - nasty while they last, but over quickly. This one went on nonstop for at least 5 solid minutes, and seemed much longer than that.

The gutter on the front of the house overflowed, I think because of the sheer volume, as Himself had recently cleaned it. There are leaves all over the place, but fortunately no broken branches, etc. In spite of the quantity, the hail wasn’t huge, but probably in the dime-size range. All in all, there’s been so much worse weather around this year, so we got off pretty well, considering.

It sure didn’t do the plants any good. Remember how nice Guacamole looked? The after picture isn’t pretty – it got shredded, along with several other plants, and my mint and basil all look bruised. I suspect they’ll recover, but it may take a while.

Then right afterwards, the sun came out and the sky to the north cleared off completely, like nothing had happened, but the view to the south was another story.

Hosta Guacamole: after

Lots of Hail

Right after the storm

Looking south after the hail

This ‘n that …

With Ten Minutes a Day, I’m definitely making progress on the spinning, though I rarely stop at just 10 - more like 30, as I often spin through at least 1 news program. This bobbin is nearly full, so I need to go back and fill the other one to about the same level and do some plying. This is from a Border Leicester fleece I got a couple of years ago - very nice fleece!

I’ve been playing with beads again - here’s a pair of markers I did the other evening. They’re about 1 1/4″ long. Sometimes it takes some fiddling to get just the right combination

I fixed a batch of Swiss chard for lunch today–unfortunately I didn’t get a photo before it all disappeared. I cut 1/2 of a large red onion into strips and sautéd them with some thinly sliced garlic, added the chard stems and cooked a little longer, then added the leaves and a little liquid, steamed it all briefly, then sprinkled some balsamic vinegar over it. It turned out really tasty, so much so, there weren’t any leftovers!

For supper, I did another riff on Nora’s “Nameless Asian Noodle Dish”, using her sauce ingredients with green onions, some shiitake mushrooms, slivered sweet peppers, and cooked chicken (stirred in towards the end). I used some spaghetti-like rice noodles, which were OK, but I prefer the flat ones. This is a very versatile recipe which we really like!

Murphy & Me …

Murphy is definitely alive and well in SE Missouri!

Example 1: This morning, I set my tall mug down to get some ice out of the freezer [bottom mount drawer-type freezer with the ice maker in the upper drawer - no one told me that it would throw ice cubes on the floor practically every time I open it!], then bumped the mug coming back with the ice cubes. The plus side is that the floor got an unscheduled cleaning.

Example 2: The self-propelled sickle bar mower is still out in the shop for repairs. Himself went to town for bolts yesterday, but the farm store didn’t have what he needed, so he had to order them - they’re due on the UPS truck tomorrow. Meanwhile the grass continues to grow - it’s mostly fescue and orchard grass, literally hay or pasture grasses, but it’s what grows here. Now if only he doesn’t get too swamped with other folks’ repair jobs - remember the story about the shoemaker’s children going barefoot (Wednesday: It’s fixed - hooray!)

Thanks to Carole for coming up with Ten Minutes a Day! It may be just the nudge I need to get back to spinning - it’s been neglected for much too long. I’ve set my S-10 up, and am working on filling a 2nd bobbin with grey Border Leicester to be plied with more that’s already on the other bobbin. As an incentive, I found 16 oz of really nice 80% merino/20% tussah silk in garnet that’s been in the stash a while . It looks like it might want to be lace in some form or other. A whole pound is probably a tad much for a shawl – maybe a cardigan?

Here’s the last fleece I got - I really didn’t expect this much help getting it ready to ship to the processor.

80% merino/20% tussah silk

Daylily - aka "ditch lily"

Yucca - it's about 6 ft tall!

Sun dog Monday evening

Whew!

One deadline down, and the next one is a week later than I thought it was. A very pleasant surprise, as long as I don’t relax too much, which frequently gets me into trouble. I goofed off a little too much with the last one, which put me into the stratospheric realm of next day shipping

Having gotten the most urgent project out of the way, I’ve been trying to make progress on the yard, at least as much as I can between rains. We haven’t had nearly as much as some other areas, but it has been enough to make the grass grow like mad, and stay too wet to cut most of the time. An added issue is that Himself currently has our elderly sickle bar mower out in the shop for repairs, so we’re down to a 20″ rotary mower (a bit souped up, but not self-propelled) – I’m hoping it won’t take too much longer to fix the other one. At least I’ve gotten enough cut that we’re no longer in danger of losing Toby out there – the grass was getting that tall.

I’ve been working on the cabled socks and only have about another 2″ to go before starting the toe shaping. Naturally I don’t want to run out of sock yarn so while we were up in St. Louis today, I picked up a ball of Tofutsies (blues>greens) and some Maizy (earth) to try. I’m still thinking about doing another lace project, since I had so much fun with Moth Wings.

Outside everything seems overwhelmingly green, but there are spots of color if you look around – here are a few of them, plus the Friday evening sky, which had some clouds and gorgeous colors.

Minature rose

Clematis Jackmani

Daylily Stella d'Oro

Butterfly weed

Hosta Guacamole

Hosta Candy Hearts

Friday night sky 1

Friday night sky 2