Surely I am among the most fortunate of women! DH made cinnamon rolls on Sunday!  Oh  My Gosh!  Bliss, bliss, bliss by the mouthful.  What is better than the smell of cinnamon rolls in the oven?  Well, the taste of warm cinnamon rolls in the mouth, of course!

So I was crossing the Sellwood bridge and saw this.  Does it say "Condom?"  Interesting name for an extension crane.

I sent a fish hat to my niece.  Her daughters and husband got into fights over who gets to wear it next.  Obvious Christmas presents on the needles, now.  First off - the pink one.  I had trouble getting the eyes straight  -  so, instead of a wall-eye pike, it's a cock-eyed pike.

It's a great way to use up those bits and bobs.  Top picture is most accurate colors, bottom picture shows the patterning.

Next, a blue fish for a young lady.  then, a brown/grey fish for the husband.  I might use some fun fur in the grey fish.  Because I can.

Quiet is good, too.

Hard though it is for me to believe,  this beautiful woman is my twin brother's GRANDAUGHTER!  I made a fish hat for her mom, and now everyone in the family wants one. The blonde bombshell here wants pink.  Her sister wants blue.

Her big brother, who looks just like his grandpa,and will look great in this warm and rustic wool and alpaca stocking hat.  I may knit him a fish hat for fun, but young men usually don't have the strength of character to wear playful hats.  Except maybe for Jayne.  From Firefly.

"If you saw a man walking down the street wearing that hat, you would say, 'He's not afraid of anything!' "

Thanksgiving was nice and quiet for us.  There was a frosty sunrise, then a slow, peaceful day.  Well, almost peaceful.  I got a call that my oldest bro is in the hospital with appendicitis.  He's inHonolulu with his daughter, so he couldn't be in better hands.  She will make him mind the doctor,take all his pills on time, and get up and walk, even if it does hurt.  She's a wonder!

At 4 in the afternoon, DH and I got dressed up and headed downtown for our 5:30 dinner reservations. I had wild scallops with basil risotto. DH had the classic turkey dinner.  We shared a slice of pie, and cruised on back home.  No dishes to wash, no family drama, no hangovers, no repercussions.  I LOVE a quiet family holiday.

And then, Black Friday.  My Australian friends have been wondering what all this Black Friday stuff is about, since as far as they know, it's the Friday before Easter.  It's sort of hard for me to explain, seeing as how I won't play.  Trying to explain BlackFriday sales that start at 8PM Thursday night, or "Door Buster" sales that have people sitting outside a store for 72 hours in order to be the first in line for a $200 flat-screen TV.  Trying to explain fistfights at Toys-R-Us when the store runs out of the must-have item of the  season.  I think I'm becoming adrenalin intolerant.  I really don't WANT to shove in with the masses and experience the unnecessary roughness of full-contact, hand-to-hand shopping.

There are stores without so much madness.  Costco, right after opening, anywhere but the electronics department was a cruise-through.  Petco wasn't bad at all.  We were going to a little alterations shop where DHfound me my very favorite tote bag, but they weren't open, so we went next door and visited the Asian grocery store.  It was fascinating!  There were lots of people there doing their weekly shopping, but they were tolerant of tourists like us, lollygagging along and being flummoxed by the packaging.  "Pickled mustard in a plastic bag? It looks like half a cabbage." "Dried shredded squid?  For the kids' lunch boxes?"  "Want a can of quail eggs?"  There were live lobsters and fishes in tanks, vegetables and fruit of mysterious sizes and colors, noodles made of everything from wheat to corn starch, and bags of eye-searingly brightly colored candies.  If you get a can of Cambodian boiled peanuts from me, you know where it came from.  We went in to kill time and came out with $30 worth of groceries.

Other quiet stores this time of year are drug stores and hardware stores.  I try to get all my shopping done by Thanksgiving, but somehow, the year slipped up on me when I wasn't looking.  I usually mail my Christmascards today.  Not gonna happen this year.  I still have to write the sucker.  And as for the holiday rum balls - it's time to get those started, too.

Well, the holidays will come, whether I'm ready or not.  And we will all enjoy them to the fullest, because we are just that kind of people.  If you're in the area, come to our party at the Monaco Hotel from 1 till 5 on the 30th.  There will be singing!

I have such wonderful friends!

Tim asked me why my scarf has a nose.  He sent me the picture, as he sees it.  I laughed and laughed.  Tim's an artist with a bright view of the world.  Thank you, Tim.

http://timstravelplace.blogspot.com









And if you don't usually read Murr's posts, check out this one.  http://murrbrewster.blogspot.com

Scroll back through their posts for more brightness.  I do.

We have been deluged lately,(raining like a cow pissing on a flat rock) and I have been seeking brightness.  To my surprise, I find a lit candle is deeply comforting.  The gift of fire is under-appreciated in this electric age.  (Until the power goes out, that is.)  And yet, right down on a primitive level, we respond to flame.  It fascinates.  It gives us a measure of control over our environment.  I am thankful for my bucket of candles, because, lately, I always have one burning.  Put a mirror under it, and get twice the light!

And last, but certainly not least, Becky has been purging the stash, and sent me two boxes of fabric that she bought in West Africa several years ago.  She started a quilt, then put it away.  Now, I get to finish it and donate it to Medical Teams International with the suggestion that they send it to the AIDS orphanage in Africa to complete the circle.  Pictures when it's finished.  She has a splendid eye for color and design!

Really, I have the most wonderful friends.  Thanks for stopping by!

knittin' through the storm

 Keeping my hands busy has involved little triangle scarves.  One in pink cotton, with silver beads

 And one in Shanghai bamboo, wit a picot crochet edging.  This one, I knit mostly while watching Lincoln.  These scarves are just like potato chips.  I can't stop with one.  And since I wear them all the time, more is better. Other people knit socks.  Good for them!

Border detail, here.  I might add some beads.  A little bling is a good thing.

Today, I hit the treadmill again and put in 2.5 miles.  Yay me!  And other than that,I have done damnall. Well, ok - watched Dancing with the Stars, ran a load of laundry, loaded the dishwasher, took out the garbage, farted around on Facebook for much too long, petted kitties.  Ya know, I'm an incredibly lucky woman!

Get it while you can

Yesterday was clear and sunny, and I took myself out for a five mile walk because this is November in the Willamette Valley, and God only knows when we will see sun again.  It was GOOD!  The wind was right chilly, but that blue sky just pops the top on my can of joy. It opens my heart.

I am surprised at how far I can walk now.  Used to be that a mile was about my limit.  Now, I am setting goals further and further away.  Can I get a cup of tea there?  Well, that'll be a great excuse for a walk.

Unfortunately, we also discovered a new chocolatier within walking distance.  Hike 2 miles, buy a $5 truffle, eat it on the way back for a net gain of 275 calories.  Not a good idea.

Worse yet, it's time to start the Christmas rum balls.  I can feel the slow-fat creeping up around my hips like an incoming tide.  (Some people fall into quicksand. I have fallen into slow-fat.)

And the rain, it raineth every day

Winter has kicked in with a vengeance.  Dark and rain and wind and rain and swear to dog we could raise diving ducks in the puddle at the end of the driveway.    I'm sort of out of training for this.  After that sunny October, I was fooled into thinking this might be a bright winter.  Our old Fly cat, the only cat who goes outside, is really ticked off at us because we have misplaced the warm sunshine again.  He goes from door to door, demanding that we open Heinlin's "Door into Summer," and every door in the house now seems to be tuned to deluge.  So he hunkers on the sofa and grumbles, glaring accusingly at us now and then.

And though he's grumpy, he's not a touch on the ski resort owners.  All this precipitation is coming down as water.  The snow level is above most of the resorts.  Usually they like to open for Thanksgiving weekend but this rain is melting any skiff of snow that has accumulated so far.

I can't, in conscience, be pleased with this, even though we are scheduled to drive over the passes for a wedding in December.  Lots of people make their living with the ski season.  Just because I hate, hate, hate to drive in the snow, it's still not right for me to hope the freezing level stays above the passes.  It's not right. Really, it's downright immoral.  Sigh.

Saturday was DH's birthday.  Being the boy he is, what he wanted for his birthday was to make a donation to the Marine's Toys for Tots fund-raiser.  Surely, I am among the most fortunate of women.

We went to see "Lincoln."  I liked it much more than I thought I would. It's an adult movie in the very best sense of the word.  It's cerebral.  You have to use your brain while you're watching. It's about the politicking needed to get the 13th amendment passed. Beautiful cinematography, wonderful acting.  Tommy Lee Jones sort of stuck out (he's so identifiable) and I was startled by his bad wig, but by the end of the movie, he was totally believable, and the wig was SUPPOSED to look bad.  Daniel Day Lewis was brilliant.  Magnificent makeup, splendid costumes (The lace is all handmade!  Lincoln's socks, though - I don't think they were hand-knit) And Sally Field is due an Oscar for a subtle, richly layered character that could have been a cheesy caricature.  I wouldn't mind seeing it again.

Oh, and the glorious language that they used!  I could wallow in the language for hours.  "This is a man with cold slime in his veins instead of hot red blood! He is a reptile so low that you could not crush him beneath your boot. And yet . . ."  I wish  I had written this.

Shades of November

 LG and I took a lovely saunter the other day through a fine old neighborhood close to downtown.  Some of the sidewalks are paved with gold.

The homes are wonderfully diverse, with elegant big three story houses and cozy little single story blocks of 1930s apartments all shoulder to shoulder.  The neighborhood was the first"Development" in Portland, built shortly after the completion of a major bridge, and it was laid out rather like part of Washington DC in an X with a large circular rose garden in the center of the X, and four subordinate rose gardens at the compass points.  Wide alleys go down the center of each block, so all deliveries of coal, ice, milk and so on could go on without impeding the flow of traffic on the main avenues.  Why, some of the homes were even built with - garages!  For the horseless carriages that were coming into fashion.  The surviving garages are about the size of a garden shed.  Others have been knocked down and replaced by structures you can actually fit a car into.

Like most of the homes of that era, these lovely old buildings were built with basements to house the furnace.  Due to the high water table in the area, this is often achieved by digging a four foot deep foundation, then piling the soil up in a berm about another four feet high, all around the basement walls, so there's always a flight of stairs up to the house. In the old days, Japanese maples were quite popular as front garden shrubs.  I do love standing on the sidewalk and looking up through a venerable, well-grown Japanese maple.  They're so graceful in any season, but especially elegant in their fall color.

The big leaf and broadleaf maples have their own glory, though, and they scatter it wantonly under foot.

We finished our stroll at a wonderful little coffee shop. Then, my infallible sense of direction failed me, and I almost lost the car.  We had meandered so freely that I couldn't remember precisely where it was parked.  I knew for sure which quadrant it was in.  I sort of knew which street it was on, but which block?  LG, however, brought us safely in and we cruised safely home, eyes, hearts and bellies full of goodness.

I will, however have to pull up my socks and start paying more attention to what I'm doing and where I'm parking.  One of the nightmares that shakes me wide awake is the fear of being lost.  I'm almost never lost, and I'll tell you, a cold grue swept over me when I realized I didn't know which block to turn on.  Old age is threatening, and  I may  have to start writing down where I parked the car.

You young people, appreciate your flexible and dependable memories!  Revel in what you have!  Before you know it, you may remember where you parked, but it may be where you parked last week.

November tea

It's the second Saturday again.  Red velvet cupcakes, orange butterballs, almond puff, dried fruit (mango, papaya and pineapple) and fresh dragon fruit plus all the tea, coffee knitting and conversation that 15 women can manage in two hours.    Oh, and turkey salad, jazzed up with spicy apple pie filling and rolled in a sun-dried tomato tortilla.  Then LG brought a warm peach pie, and a batch of awesome oatmeal cookies with chocolate chips. Life is GOOD!

I have worried about the problem of needing to seat some ladies in the living room and some in the dining room.  I shouldn't have worried.  My wonderful friends get up and wander from room to room to share all the conversations and say hello to everyone.  There is no kid's table problem.  We're ALL kids here!

Late Halloweeen report

My Jack-o-lantern turned out pretty cool.  (Got the pattern off the internet.  We bought 3 boxes of full-sized candy bars, and the Oct.31st deluge kept most of the kiddies away.  We had only 42 this year.  So now we have all this candy to deal with.  As if, "Just don't eat it," were a viable alternative.  I suppose we could freeze some.  It's risky, chomping down on a frozen Snickers.  Don't think the Skittles will be happy in the freezer, though.  And no one wants a miserable Skittle.

DH is roasting a trial turkey today to get his chops back in time for Thanksgiving.  It's just a little bird  this time, and I can use left-over turkey for the ladies' tea onSaturday.

Chocolate cupcakes, orange butter cookies, turkey salad roll-ups, dried fruit (mango spears and pineapple slices) maybe oatmeal and raisin cookies,  - - am I missing anything? Ya wanna come?