Busy Monday

MJ has family who are dedicated U of O graduates and are expecting a baby, so we made a baby quilt with U of O colors and their mascot, the duck.  MJ plotted out the piecing of the ducks and I am so impressed with her skill and precision!  This turned out to be a really nice quilt, and, due to her superb planning, a lot easier to sew than I expected.  Yay MJ!

I get a chance to rap

MJ and RW bought half a pig and got Camas (yes, that's really her name) to come out to their house and teach them how to cut it up.  Kyle has dressed out and cut up deer and one old cow, So his strength and expertise was requested. And I always like to be involved, so we had a big, busy day.  I got lots of photos, but then realized I probably should edit out most of them.  I mean, as interesting as I found it, you probably don't want to see how we took off the pig face, or how RW smacked the cleaver with the hammer to get through the joint, or how MJ powered through the spine with the meat saw. (That girl has MUSCLES!)  But some of the photos are less exciting.  This is Camas and RW sectioning out the chops.

It takes a lot of forearm and wrist strength to cut up meat.  Camas probably arm-wrestles bikers for funsies.

And here is Tim skinning the shoulder before cutting it up for stew meat.





 I did the wrapping.  "My name is Roxie and I rap real good.  I'm the best damn rapper in the whole damn hood. I wrap up venison, pork and elk.  I've been wrappin' up meat since I quit drinkin' milk.  Boom chucka-chucka-chucka- grunt, whoof, grunt"

With all of us working on this, it took us about three hours of steady labor.  We took some of the meat to the butcher to be smoked (ham, bacon, hocks) or ground for sausage, and most of the rest went into the freezer, except for a tenderloin and a skirt steak that got marinated and grilled for lunch.  Deelicious!

Tomorrow, Dh and I are planning a nice walk.  Hope the rest of you find an equally pleasant way to enjoy Father's Day.

The letter C

 My camera and computer are not communicating well.
Here we have photos of c-things, but they showed up inverted.

I am SUCH a techno-incompetant!

Calla lilies

Cat on Car

Cottage

Wednesday the somethingth of - June - is it June already?

http://www.basicallybenita.com  Here's the link to Benita's blog with her letter a week meme.  And here's another couple of catch-up photos that cover A and B.

Aquamarine  ocean and Beautiful Beach in Fiji.

Amiable Bucky entertaining friends at dinner on the ship.

So, DH and I have decided that as long as we are still somewhat springy in the knees, we'd better do some of the things that look like fun.  He had yesterday off.  We went zip-lining.  That violet speck amidst all the greenery is me, shrieking in glee and flapping like a fruit bat from perch to perch.  Oh dear lord, how I loved it!

As you can see.


 It was the Tree to Tree Adventure Park.  Zip lines are only one of the fun things they offer.  There are also obstacle courses and sky walks and all sorts of other things you can do waaaayyyy up above the ground while attached to steel cables strung between mighty firs.  I didn't feel brave or strong enough for the obstacle course, but the zip line - The last time I had that much adrenalin in my system, I didn't have any clothes on.

Another good sport

Here's Igor in his new fishing hat.  He's SUCH a good sport!  His birthday is the day before mine and 20 years later. No wonder I love him.  Us Pisces need to swim together.

Basically Benita has a meme going - photos for one letter of the alphabet each week.  So this is my A for Adorable Igor.

I got this photo on board the ship one day.  It sort of illustrates the way I have been lately.  Not so much anti-social as chrysalidic. Mentally pupating. Digesting that feast of sensory and intellectual stimulation.  Fear not.  I am nowhere near done with my gestational process.  I crack out of this cocoon to reveal -- a bigger caterpillar.

So I will use this photo to illustrate B- Bigger and Better Bugs!


OK, Confession time.  DH and I just bought an RV.  I feel so embarrassed!  It's so - middle-aged of us.  My inner committee is mostly thrilled with the idea of getting to goforaride  and travel with the bed and the cats and the comforts of home but the Scotch Bitch is in a total swivet about spending that much money.  It's not THAT much.  It's a 30 ft. long 1997 rig, so the price is good.  It's well taken care of.  And DH has gone back to work - did I tell you that?  One of his co-workers needed knee surgery but the shop was so short-handed that he couldn't get the time off, so DH agreed to fill in during surgery and recuperation time.  (DH can do all the jobs in the shop.)  He signed a 90 day contract.  He collects retirement AND regular pay, and we have our medical coverage back for a few months.  He could probably work as long as he wanted at the shop, but he doesn't want to work full time permanent.  He wants to see the USA in his new Chevrolet with his darling wife.

SO, the brakes are being replaced, and we are getting a solar panel to keep the battery charged, and by this time next week, I should have a picture of the new rig.  But I'm still kind of embarrassed.

Hellooo?

I have not been sick or dead or anything like that.  I have just had my brain in neutral.  Things have been going on just fine, but I haven't gotten around to blogging about them.  So, here's catch up!

 I have, of course, been knitting.  Here's a fishing hat for Igor.  I have to get photos of the puppets as well.  And there have been hats for MedTeam Intl.  The knitting goes on just fine with the brain in neutral.

 Saturday was Ladies' Tea and Knitting.  I made a coconut cake where you pour cream of coconut over the hot cake, then frost it with coconut pudding.  I made little pineapple upside down cakes for anyone who couldn't eat coconut.

My Pink Peace roses are blooming, so I used the peach-colored tablecloth that matches, and used them for cake decoration.




It makes rather a pretty table.  The bright thing in the foreground is a crazy-quilt tea-cozy.
 I also made orange biscotti, and Earl Grey tea biscuits, and I served Hood strawberries.  The cake disappeared.  There were cookies left.  (Napkins tucked into the ice-tea glasses.)

It was, as always with these girls, great fellowship, wonderful conversation, and lots of laughs.  We practiced working "behoove" into the conversation.

I found some neat little green mini lasers that are waterproof.  There's a picture of me on Facebook with one shining through my teeth.  Green grin ;-)

   

Good sport!

I knitted some eensy teensy baby booties for Ed's first granddaughter.  My price? I also knitted a rainbow trout hat and requested at least five photos of him wearing it in public.  His wit and good humor continue to delight me!

We have all the weather you could possibly want this May.  Blizzards in Maine, tornadoes in the midwest, a heat wave sliding up the east coast, and - surprise - rain in the Pacific northwest.  But there's no such thing as climate change, right?  I think the tornadoes are the scariest.  Floods; you know where they'll be and you can get to higher ground.  Hurricanes; pretty much the same (though where you can find higher ground in Florida is a mystery to me)  With a blizzard, you keep the pantry stocked and stay home till it thaws.  Earthquakes just happen and there's not a damn thing you can do.  But tornadoes - the sky gets dark, the wind picks up, that funnel cloud starts dropping down, and you have any amount of time to be terrified while it hits this house, skips that one, and flings entire cows through the air.  Even if the tornado doesn't hit your house, the tanker truck it picked up just might.  Can the folks in Oklahoma build their houses underground?