How to knit two mitties on one needle.

I know many folks already know how, and many more don't care, but Tamara asked, so here we go: I am doing a pair of mittens in worsted weight on size 7 needles.(I went out and bought a 47 inch circular. Wahooo!) I am knitting from the inside and outside of the same ball, but if it helps to imagine ball A and ball B, please do so. The mitten cuffs are 40 stitches around so . .
with ball A, cast on 20 stitches of mitten #1.


With ball B, cast on 20 stitches of mitten #2

Push all the stitches to the other end of the needle. Now,


With yarn b, cast on the other 20 stitches of mitten #2

And with yarn A, cast on the other 20 stitches of mitten #1. Slide these stitches half way down the needle


and begin working the ribbing for cuff #1 using ball of yarn A.


You will have two magic loops hanging out on either side of the cuffs. When you knit the front halves, slide the needles through the work again so that you have that magic loop on either side. Amazingly enough, it doesn't seem to leave a loose ladder between the two halves of the cuffs. Does it make sense?




And here we are at Thanksgiving dinner. Not every waiter knows how to use a camera.

squeeee!

Go to http://whatyouthinkongrows2.blogspot.com/ and see all the nice things Donna Leee said about my latest book. I'm scuffing my toe in the dirt and grinning like a goof! Shazam, shazam, shazam! I don't think it'll be too much of a spoiler. And I'm SO tickled that she liked it!

cakes and photos.

Bells asked a while ago why one would use a package mix when it's just as quick and easy to make a cake from scratch. I saw a scratch cake recipe in the paper yesterday. Allow me to compare.

Package mix: Set oven to 350
Scratch cake: Set oven to 350
Package mix: spray pan with Pam
Scratch: Butter bottom of pan. line with parchment paper, butter paper and sides of pan and dust with sugar.
package: blend cakemix with 3 eggs 1/4 cup oil on high for 3 minutes
Scratch: In a small bowl whisk together spices with baking soda. In another bowl, cream butter and sugar till smooth. seperate eggs (2 more bowls)wisk yolks together till lemony colored and blend yolks into butter/sugar mix. Whip whites till stiff. Sift flour and baking powder into another bowl (that's 5 bowls so far)Blend flour and spices into butter egg mixture a little bit at a time, alternately. Then fold in whipped egg whites.
Package: Pour into pan
Scratch: pour into pan
both: bake till toothpick insertede into center of cake comes out clean.

Um -easier? Faster?

Blast Blogger!

I wrote an amusing and photo heavy post of our activities yesterday, and it will not let me load the photos. I think, perhaps, the airwaves are clogged with angst-ridden teens blogging about the clueless monstrosities that have unaccountably been assigned to them as families, and the extremity of the agony endured when the whole clan assembles for food and football.

We on the otherhand, went to the zoo! The metro area just passed a big bond levy to support and expand the zoo, and in gratitude, the zoo was open and free today. It was damn chilly, but we went anyhow. And we had so much fun.

The animals are always rude to me. Hippos showed me their bums.

The sea lions made faces at me.

The sea otter was paddling around, floating on his back and working vigorously at a patch on his tummy. Then I realized that he was cleaning his boy bits. A couple of dads came by, noticed, and one said, “Well, it looks like the otter’s really lonely. Let’s go kids.” I could hear a childish voice trailing after him asking, “But if he’s lonely, shouldn’t we keep him company?”

The chimps were placidly picking their noses and then sucking their fingers.

The Mandrill was picking fleas off his toes.

The orangutan was wishing he was back in Sumatra with a lovely lady orang of his own.

And the new star of the zoo, baby Samudra was out with his mom and an aunty.

It was crowded,

And kept getting colder. Even pink princesses were bundled up.

Rather than let DH get chilled, we cut our tour short and headed back to the barn. But return trips are definitely in the offing.

We lounged at home for a few placid hours, warming up to room temperature and recouping our energies, then we dressed up and met C&J for dinner at the Portland Steak and Chop House. Don't we all look nice?

We had cocktails and DH explained the three degrees of cocktails - "Sophistication, relaxation, humiliation. I like to stick to the first one."

Here are my tiger prawns with grilled asparagus. Who needs turkey when there are tiger prawns available?

C and DH preffered turkey. J had prime rib. Dining out is SOO nice! No house cleaning before, no hours in the kitchen, a leisurely, delectable meal, followed by no dishes, no football, and no leftovers to portion out. It's an annual tradition for us.

May your shopping days be sane and may you emerge unscathed!

Happy shoesday

I grew up in Eastern Oregon. I am obliged to own a pair of cowboy boots. These are about as sissy as cowboy boots can get. They have jewelry and frillies, fer crysake! They don't get a lot of wear, because I have abnormally high arches and they sorta hurt, but every now and then, I gotta go country. I loves 'em!

DH is almost over his respiratory crud. His technique of staying under the covers all weekend until the illness gets tired and leaves has a LOT to reccommend it, not least being its effectiveness. He has made it to work yesterday and today. There's tomorrow, then he gets a four day weekend to rest up in.

And next week this time, we will be flying to Oahu to see my niece, her dear husband, and most of that side of the family. Brace yourself for eager and inexpert photos of tropical flora and touristic fauna. If only I had a camera the night I saw the guy walking down the main drag of Waikiki wearing a hat made to represent the end of a penis. I nearly wet my pants, I was laughing so hard. Shrieking with glee I kept remarking to DH, "I've never seen such a perfect dickhead!" People turned to see why I was howling, and I would point at the lad, blushing amidst his buddies. Poor boy. I think he just wanted to fluster some girls, and wound up being followed (they were headed the same direction we were) by an old bag who didn't have the manners to shut up and be invisible. It's like young women wearing revealing clothes, then being all upset because dirty old men notice. Well, DUH!

Meanwhile I have house sitters to comfirm and clothes to pack and lists to make and ohh, the vacation mojo is perking away right proper!

Here, at last, are the finished cropped finger gloves. I have yarn left. Not enough for a pair of socks. But mitts . . . Bet I could get a pair of mitts out of it. Lacey mitts. (cue the music as design possibilities start dancing through my head like little ballerinas in the Nutcracker: Snowflakes, flowers, the coffee fairy . . .)

There is some knitting going on

I am currently working on a pair of crop-fingered mits in this wonderful terracotta shade hand dyed by Dave Daniels. The yarn is merino and silk. I'm doing a pair of gloves simultaneously on one long size one circular needle. I must be pretty simple, because I am enchanted with the magic of knitting two gloves in the round at the same time. But size one needles - this is taking forever!

The gloves are for our favorite waiter who sells more of my books than anyone else I know. He deserves a princely reward. Anyhoo, DH wouldn't wear glovies in such an almost-sissy color. For him, black, dark gray, or dark navy. Or maybe a dark brown. Nothing fun or easy on the eyes. He is about as conservative as they come, bless his dear heart. And it's about time to make him a back-up pair.

He has a stinking cold, so we're having a very quiet weekend. The cats are worried about him, since he fights colds by going to bed and staying there. Every so often, a furry person comes up to me and explains that things are not the way they should be. They lead me to the bedroom, with worried looks. I listen to make sure that DH is still breathing, then I take the furry person away for a bit of a cuddle and some comfort. I worry about him, too, but colds need to run their course.

Well-spent Thursday

Most of Thursday was involved with making rumballs. You make them well before Christmas to allow them to ripen. Here's the basic recipe:

Roxie's Rum Balls

6 oz choc chips (1 C.)
1/2 C. sugar
3 Tbs light corn syrup
1/2 C. rum
2 1/2 C finely crushed vanilla wafers (appx 1 box. Nabisco tastes the best.)

Melt choc chips . Add sugar and corn syrup. Mix. Add rum and cookie crumbs. Mix thouroughly and form into small balls. Allow to ripen in an air tight tin at least several days.

No baking. The hard part is shaping all those little balls. I bought a tiny ice cream scoop and saved myself hours of work and mess.

I mix everything in a big tupperware bowl. That way, I just dump in the chocolate chips, and stick the whole thing in the microwave to melt them. Saves cleaning the double boiler.

You really need to crush the heck out of those wafers. You could open a box of them, dump them into the tea towel embroidered with the lecherous coffeepot leering at the coy teapot by your dear aunt Honoria, fold the towel into a package, and let your three-year-old work the whole thing over with a rolling pin.

Or you could open three boxes, dump them into the pillowcase embroidered with multi-colored roses by your dear aunt Plethora, gather the top closed, and let your teenager smash it against a door frame till it stops going crunch.

Or, you could get the king-sized tie-dyed bedspread embroidered with orange and turquoise dancing bears by your dear aunt Euphoria, dump in ten boxes of cookies, fold up the edges, secure with bungie cords, and let your husband's troup of Morris dancers go crazy on it for a full rehearsal.

I never make less than a double batch of these. A meat grinder is my weapon of choice when it comes to crushing those cookies, since I often make double quadruple batches, and that's a LOT of cookies to crush. (8 boxfulls) This time around, it was a triple quadruple batch, divided into various flavors. Cookie crushing will burn out your blender in no time flat. It nearly burned out my whole right arm.

DON'T BE STINGY WITH THE RUM!!!

Various flavors you ask? Instead of rum use Grand Mariner, or Framboise, or Amoretto, or Drambuie, or Bourbon, or add a tablespoon of cinnamon to a batch. I made two alcohol-free batches, one with raspberry jam, and one with orange-juice concentrate.

For shipping, I usually just pack them into a tin, seal it with packing tape, and slap a lable on the top. Both Paul and Dave commented that this was odd. Howcum? Is it not a good thing to do? How should I ship them? I want to do it right, folks, and my ignorance is vast.

No pictures. Bowls full of chocolate goo look just like bowls full of chocolate goo. One inch balls of chocolate goo look like a herd of very small ponies has wandered by.

One year, when my father-in-law was still alive, I made a batch with coconut instead of cookies, and white chocolate. For a coconut afficianado, it was bliss!

If you come up with cookie-crushing alternatives, I would love to hear them.

Check this out!!

http://www.opb.org/programs/artbeat/videos

This is such a rush for spinners and techno geeks. Some of you may want to show your husbands and Signif Others. A glass spinning wheel that really works! And a glass seismograph. And . . .

A while ago, I did a brief interview with my DH about my knitting. To wit:
ME: Many bloggers are posting interviews with their spouses about their knitting. Would you mind being posted?
HE (Strong silent type that he is) No. (with indulgent smile.)
ME:How do you feel about my knitting?
HE: I like it. It makes you happy and you make really nice things.
ME: (blushing) Thank you! Do you know what my favorite yarn is?
HE: Depends on your project. Usually the high end, good quality natural fibers. Good wool or good silk or a blend. Oh, and you like bamboo.
ME: Do you mind how much I spend on my knitting?
HE: No. You make good quality things for our friends and for yourself. And I really like the fingerless gloves you make for me.
ME: I would make you socks and sweaters if you could wear them. (He's a human heater.)
HE: I'd wear the ones you've already made me if we had really cold weather more often.
ME:Do you mind how much I spend on my tools?
HE:(with a twinkle in the eye) You mean the needles and stuff you get for a quarter at estate sales?
ME: Well, how about all the space the stash takes up?
HE: If it wasn't yarn, it would be something else. We're that sort of people.

The interview sort of collapsed then, with me hugging him and musing on how lucky I am to be with this wonderful man.

It's his birthday.

The baking frenzy went on so that DH (my Darling Husband) could take treats in to his co-workers (the locusts) to celebrate the anniversary of his natal event. Surely I am among the most fortunate of women! Another good year in his company. Yayyy!!

He is smart, funny, handy, generous, patient and cheerful. He can fix anything, and he is willing to talk through any sort of problem we run up against. We've never had an argument in over 14 years of marriage and 5 years of "going together." He is a stand-up, truth-telling, honorable man and oh, Lordy I do love him. Happy birthday, light of my life, and may we enjoy many happy returns of the day!

PS, he totally rocks my world!

I'm cooking today!

How to make cheesecake pie

Put on your apron.

Get out your favorite bowl.

Take 16 ounces of cream cheese, 2/3 of a cup of sugar, and 1/4 tsp of almond extract and blend till fluffy.

add three eggs one at a time while beating.

Pour into a 9 inch pie pan and bake for 35 minutes at 350 degrees or untill golden brown.

Mix one cup of sour cream, 3 tablespoons of sugar, and 1 teaspoon vanilla extract, and pour over the hot pie. refrigerate. Serve well chilled.

DH requested cupcakes to take in to the locusts at work.

Boxed German chocolate cake mix and canned pecan/coconut frosting. I'm at the top of my game here.



Locusts get really hungry. I also whipped up some lemon cupcakes with cream cheese frosting.



And packed them in a basket. Tomorrow, happy DH and happy locusts. Why? Well, I really love him, . . .

Sunshine!

We have been under a bit of weather lately. Sometimes it rained like a cow peeing on a flat rock - a real toad-strangler of a storm. Sometimes the rain couldn't make up its mind if it was going to be a heavy fog or a light drizzle. You could walk in it for an hour an not get really wet. But for weeks, it has been gray. But somehow, an unlikely ridge of high pressure has rolled over us, and there's this bright thin overhead, and the sky is blue! Blue, I tell you! It is sooo blue!

Here we see Saint Roxanna with a celestial nimbus surrounding her beatific head. Under other lighting conditions you might mistake it for frizzy grey hair, but in the sunshine, it's a veritable halo! I love sunshine.

And since I love self-portraits, I did a silhouette. Do these leaves make my butt look big?

Important notes

Mothers, teach your young sons not to piss into the wind. The neighbor's kid learned the hard way yesterday, and I wish I had been holding a video camera when I saw him. His pants, shoes and hands were liberally besprinkled. The kid is three, going on delinquent, and peeing on the rosemary is the least of his crimes, but I still won't eat spaghetti sauce at their house, belive you me!

We have a warm, windy wet system blowing through, denuding the trees and covering the lawns and streetes with a thick red.brown.yellow carpet of leaves. A carpet that offers all the traction of a layer of lard. This is a time when us old farts get to watch the bold youths slide through red lights, sideways, gripping the steering wheel so hard that they will need muscle relaxants to uncurl their fingers, and shoving so hard on the brake that it sprains their eyebrows.

Important note 2: Four wheel drive does not guarantee any wheel stop.

I worked till five and wound up driving home in the dark last night. I have never liked driving in the dark but for some reason, it seems worse every year. I don't wear glasses to drive, so it's not a question of refractions and reflections and dazzling of lights. I just can't tell where the CARS are! I see the headlights ok, but if I'm changing lanes, how far away IS that guy? Are my eyes changing, or am I just getting timid in my old age?

Note # 3: Pay your bills just as soon as you get them. The barstids are setting due dates that give you not even two days grace time. I'm complaining, but the company blames the post office and the post office refuses all responsibility. Petty beaureaucrats suck rocks!

Sunday morning . .

five AM, and on Sunday, we sleep in. No alarm clock. Only the sound of my beloved gently snoring, the pitterpatter of rain on the roof. The air is cool, the bed is warm and I'm coasting in that magical state half between dream and conscious(that place where when all the little id-jits get to come out and play with my creativity) when the drowsy peace of the morning is rent by the skitter of claws on hardwood as Newton's third law of motion comes into effect and impetuous south-directed momentum is changed to east-directed momentum on a relatively slick surface. With a blood-curdling squeak, the fierce Manxian warcat hits the bed like an eleven pound fur-covered cannon ball, pounces on my belly, vaults to the headboard shelf, squeaks again ("Crivvens!") then hurls herself down onto my belly, his belly, and off out of the room, pursued by the other two cats who had been quietly sleeping with us.

"Uhhhh?" my beloved querries.

"Pepper," I reply.

"Mmmm." He rolls to his side and pulls the covers up to his ear.

Two minutes later, Fly comes in, grumbling. Anyone who has lived with cats knows the sound of cat grumbles. Anyone who doesn't know the sound wouldn't understand if I wrote them out. I feel the bed shake as his fourteen pound ponderosity mounts the mattress. Grumbling,("Damn kids. There ARE no brain-sucking vampire squirrels. I got up for nothing") he walks across the bottom of the bed and up my side, then plops his black velvet butt down next to the pillow and stares at me, thinking fiercely, "Hat."

I groan quietly, but submit to his command and shift down in the bed till most of the pillow is free. He then drapes himself around the top of my head, taking full advantage of the warmth in the pillow space I have vacated.

Meanwhile Pepper and Ben are experimenting with their old buddy, Gravity. Sundry small thumps, crashes, and clatters errupt from different areas of the house. I refuse to rise and deal with it. Instead, I drowsily try to figure, from the sound, partially muffled by cat feet over my ears, what the different sounds mean. That must be the pencil can next to the phone. And that's the magazine basket again. Brief silence, then, Crash,Rattle,prangtingtingtingting.... Hmm. The recycling bin? That sure sounds like catfood cans rolling around on the kitchen floor. No. I will not get up.

Oh drat. Fly, our only indoor/outdoor cat has fleas! Ewww, now I feel imaginary tiny beasties prancing all over my skin. Is it annoying enough to get up and deal with? Is it? Well, is(yawn) zzzzit?

6AM: With a blood-curdling squeak, the fierce Manxian warcat hits the bed, . . .

another knit-in

The theme for today was - autumnal tones. Sorta. I was planning on using the brown tablecloth, but then more people said they would come, so the brown cloth wouldn't have been big enough. I gotta sit down and color-code my tablecloths so I know how big each one is without unfolding the whole thing. The only cloths that are long enough for both leaves out are the white ones. (Note to self: create a long brown cloth) I have been treating myself to a new napkin ring when I have stuck to the Weight Watcher's plan for a week. Everyone got a different napkin ring - wooden, or metal. Tan napkins, white plates (Our everyday salad plates.) yellow cups and saucers, and dark red marigolds in little vases.

Oh, it was so much fun! It always is. We are talking about maybe getting together for a weekend sometime and extending the fun.

LG brought a cornucopia of goodies - muffins and savories (cheese and bacon pastries, feta and roasted red pepper pastries) and a jar of awesome peach jam (made, no doubt, from awesome peaches) I had hot honey-butter biscuits (YUM) and chicken salad sandwiches which pretty much vanished. The potqto/rosemary bread was so good I wouldn't be surprised if people ate the filling just because the bread was around it.

And we talked about - politics natch, and men, of course, and kids, school uniforms,pets, and what's been up in our lives. One of us lives four houses away from a landslide site and I asked her to tell us about it. Wow! And this of course led us to discussions of the economy and house prices and building codes and before we knew it, hours had flown and it was time to go.

It's a lot of work to pull these soirees together, and clean up afterward is more or less work depending on how much handwashing is required. And to show up for one of these requires hours out of a busy weekend, and the effort to find new locations and get along with new people. And ya know what? It's worth it!! It is so nurturing to get together with like=minded friends.

Afterthought pocket

I NEED pockets. I need my glasses and a pen and possibly some gum. I need a place to put my hands when someone is just begging me to swat them upside the head for perpetrration of acts of blatant stupidity. So I picked a spot, unraveled a few stitches each way, edged it with that ubiquitous green Cascade wool, and,
knitted a pocket flap, then sewed it down. Ever so much easier to do when the garment is all done and you don't need to do lots of planning and measuring and stuff.

So I have blown pretty much the whole day catching up on the adventures of Agatha Clay (Hetrodyne) Girl Genius, and I am in deep smit. She is SO like Sanna, only with Mad Science rather than with magic. And a little more over the top of course. The Gilgamesh paper doll left me squeeing for minutes. If you haven't read Girl Genius, and you enjoy zany comics, you are in for a swell treat!

I get a do-over for the knitting meeting. It's been a month since I got bit, and we are again scheduled to assemble here tomorrow at 10. Oh boy, oh boy. We are having chicken salad sandwiches on potato rosemary bread, warm biscuits with butter and honey, grapes, and (cheating) maple cream sandwiches from Safeway. MJ gave me a loaf of pumpkin bread last weekend, and LG is bringing some treats as yet to be named. We have six definite and four strong possibles in reply to the twenty four invitations I sent out. Ten is a good number. Ah heck, any number is good. I LOVE giving these parties!

and so I like KNITTED something, and it was like cool!

Well, Blogger is being a complete pill about loading photos today and will probably get them in the wrong order, as it has before, but . . . About a year ago I got a pound of roving from Abundant Yarn and Dyeworks. It was colored mallard and teal with touches of peacock and small flights of parakeet. It was lovely, mysterious stuff.

About a year ago I sat down at my wheel and spun it up then plied it. It was dark and blended and erratic as a wood-duck.

Over the last week, that yarn has suddenly sung to me, called me, invoked my time and attention. So, wanting a mindless project, as usual, I began knitting a rectangle. It was wonderful the way the colors playaed together. I would never had combined them that way, but they twined and flowed in poetic harmony.

I used up all the yarn and knitted a rectangle about five feet long. Then I measured with my hand from the center of my breastbone to the point of my shoulder (a handspan, actually) measured that out on the rectangle, and clipped a thread, raveled down a handspan and then some, picked up the live stitches, and knitted a cuff of some dark green cascade I had. Then I lay it down on the floor, lay my shoulders on it, figured where the other armhoe should go, clipped another thread, raveled and knitted another cuff. Sewed the shoulder seams, and found that it was assymetric. Well, hooray! I sewed on a concho for a button, added an afterthought pocket, and now have the coziest eccentric vest ever. Love it. If only Blogger would let me post more photos.

Everyone who has suggested that I read "Agatha Hetrodyne, Girl Genius", you were right, I adore it!!

check this out!

http://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1267

a quick fly by

Kate asked how to do a blog interview. Easy peasy. I send you the autographed book. You read it within the month (so we can get the Christmas rush, please.) and send me a couple of questions. I send back answers. Then you post them, along with a brief summary of the book (and encouragements to all your loyal readers to buy the entire series)on your blog. If you haven't read any of my books, I'll send you all three for your thorough study and enjoyment.

For eye-candy, here's a picture of der UberTreeHouse - the treehouse with double-pane windows, two glass doors and a front porch. If you plug in the extension cord, you have electricity, and if you drag the hose up there, you have running water. All it needs is cable TV and it could rent to some college student for $200 a month.

As a college student, I sub-let an apartment that had such a leaky roof that a previous tennant had given up, pulled all the waterlogged plaster and rotted lath off the ceiling, stapled up heavy plastic sheeting, waited till the water pooled in the center, poked a hole in it and stuck a bucket under the hole. One drip for the whole ceiling. When the rain got heavy, and the bucket filled quickly, you learned to wake before it overflowed. The sound of the drips changed as the bucket filled. That was a great old place. It was so cheap that no one wanted to mention the fire in the basement. It wasn't a big fire, and didn't seem to impair the structural integrity of the place much. I had a cast-iron clawfoot six-foot long bathtub in my bathroom.(A VERY romantic gentleman poured champagne over me in that tub.) And the main heat source was a steel drum with a stove pipe attached. Oh yeah, and someone had pulled all plaster and lath off the wall between the kitchen and the livingroom, and nailed a few 2x4s between the studs to make display shelves. VERY rustic but lots of charm.

What cheap apartment memories do you have?

fur faces

Miss Pepper is head honcho around here. She will nonchalantly get up, walk across the living room and smack one of the boy cats for no visible reason. Or, she is just as likely to wash his ears. She keeps those boys on their good behavior.

Candy, AKA Pickles is the doyenne of the davenport. She COULD walk around smacking other cats, but she doesn't want to lower herself. When she wants to move to a spot one of them has pre-warmed, all she does is walk over and stand there. The boys get up and move. She and Pepper maintain strict neutrality between their ruling bodies.

Ben, what with getting randomly smacked, ear-washed or dominatrix bullied, is just tuckered out most of the time. I find that little white face peeking out at me from the oddest locations. ("How did you get under the nightstand?")

While I was out and about today, I causght this jolly pair, guarding the car. Who drives a convertible with the top down in November around here? Since it was near the auto-parts store, I can only assume that the top refuses to go up.

So I went to my Weight Watcher's weigh in and, what with Halloween and a roast beef dinner and one thing and another, I was up three pounds. And yet, I'm cheery. Why? Well, I can get into my skinny jeans again. At least 16 ounces of that three pounds was denim. Oh, I look FINE in my skinny jeans!

And another cause for cheer is that the third book in the Sanna series is now available on line. Sanna Meets Dauntless Swiftsure can be ordered from Author House Press or Amazon or your friendly neighborhood bookstore. (It's cheapest to order from Authorhouse.com) Or if you would like a free copy signed by the author, you could do a blog interview with me. Oh, come on! Do an interview with me. I'm easy. I'm fun! It's a great book! Would ya? Would ya huh? Puleeze?