Don't Put That In Your Mouth

Apologies for the extended lapse in posting, but life has been running away with me. Most of the time, that's a good thing. Lately, the best thing I can say about it is it sure isn't boring!

Hopefully I'll get around (eventually) to describing our December comings and goings, maybe even some details about our trip back to the Northwest last summer (some day) or even get organized enough to post my niece's wedding photos (yeah, right). All things that are on my list, but not in the top ten. Luckily, my knitting adventures are still available on Ravelry.

This last week we've been having to adjust to a new family diet. No, this isn't some New Year's Resolution to get healthier. This is all my husband's fault, really. He had been dealing with a skin irritation thing for months (if not over a year) but unwilling to go have it checked. I went to the pharmacy to have his symptoms diagnosed as best as they were able and we got some pills, but the doctor suggested that a blood test for allergies would be the best (and easiest) way to find the cause rather than continue to treat the symptoms. Hubby wouldn't go for it. Fine, no problem, doesn't affect me, so what do I care, right?

Then comes the day when our daughter, N, has a similar rash on her cheeks and what came to be lovingly called 'orange peel' skin on her forehead. Well, hubby can stick his head in the proverbial sand as long as he chooses, but nothing's harming my daughter. So, I take her into the doc and he says the quickest and easiest thing would be to have the entire family go on a gluten-free and dairy-free diet for two months. Hubby doesn't want to have the entire family's diet turned upside down "on a whim", but does actually agree on getting her blood tested for allergies and food sensitivities since he feels more willing to follow restrictions if there's a medical necessity for them. (He just wanted something definite on paper.)

So we do that. Luckily for us, the two weeks while we're waiting for the results were filled with visiting family, holiday feasts, and lots of good cheer. Come the first week in January, we've got the results. She's sensitive to 26 things including milk (but not cheese), flax, soy, almonds, eggs, garlic, yogurt, and gluten. A few will, most likely, be permanent though the majority of them should subside as we deal with a major systematic Candida issue.

Now it's two months without any of the offending foods. That would have been totally do-able, no sweat. Enter Candida. With this bad boy, we also must cut out ALL fruit, sweeteners, fermented or cultured foods (like cheese, pickles, and vinegar), molds and fungi (mushrooms, peanuts, pistachios, dried herbs) and high-carb starches like corn, potatoes, squash, oats, carrots, etc.

I immediately went through our fridge and pantry and had a friend come take everything away (in two car loads!). Our first day's breakfast? Tea, sliced green bell pepper, and rice crackers (which did have garlic, but it was all we had). Yum. The kids were, shall we say, less than thrilled. That was the day, however, we went to the library and bookstores to scour cookbooks for appropriate recipes. Then it was off to the store(s) for disheartening trips where I simultaneously hunt for elusive items uncontaminated with the offending foods and gently repeat a dozen versions of "no" to my kids as they ask for samples and/or other foods that we no longer can have.

After two days, I've reached my limit and put a moritorium on complaining about everything we can't have. It felt at times that I was the big mean mommy and the other three members of our family were victims of my stinginess. Enough, I said. We're doing this to help N and we just have to deal with it. We can only talk about the things we CAN have, face forward, stay positive.

It became obvious very quickly that there are still lots of food choices available to us, but in order to avoid the NOs, we're going to have to make a lot of our own foods. Our own salsa, spaghetti sauce, and salad dressing. So I need to plan ahead, spend more time on preparation, and buy even more food fresh, but those are all good things, right?

Once we had our fridge and pantry restocked with the good stuff, things got a lot easier. Fresh salsa and guacamole were a big hit. (Yes, I know avocados and tomatoes are fruits, but I made exceptions due to their lower sugar content and versatility. Don't take away my tomatoes!) Last night we had coconut chicken and rice with broccoli and almost felt "normal".

Our son has had the hardest time, I think, because he puts up a lot of self-inflicted restrictions himself. "I don't like that, That looks weird, I'll have something else" was all we heard for a while. It's hard for us too, because we know he's growing and needs his protein, but the main sources are either unavailable or unappealing. My mother has offered to pay for his own blood test so that we can stop restricting food unnecessarily. It'll add another layer of complexity to our meal planning, but could be better in the long run. Of course, then hubby and I'll want to have our own tests done. Won't dinner be exciting then!

Now I'm researching wherever I can to locate acceptable substitutions. It's amazing how excited we all get to find some little tidbit of information that allows us to have a previously denied food. Like ghee. Oh my goodness. You should have heard the squeals of delight when I found that was allowed within our restrictions. I immediately started to make some and that night we had plain popcorn with ghee and, again, the kids felt "normal". (The high-carb starches turned out to be acceptable "in moderation".)

What to use to make tunafish when all the condiments are restricted? Hummus! And the kids actually like it!

The egg issue had been a stickler as all the usual substitutions for eggs were also unacceptable. Yet, I just found that salba seeds can be used as you would flaxseed as a substitution, so I'm anxious to try that! Yeah! Salba are chia seeds and it's nice to think that they're good for something other than obnoxious holiday gifts from the 1970s.

This first week of New Food has been quite a rollercoaster. At least for now, we're still enjoying the ride.

November in Review

Starting the month off we have a bunch of these in our garden. They were evidently confused by the unusually warm autumn we were having. I don't remove plants that volunteer to grow, so these are everywhere in our garden. Considering that we haven't done anything with our garden for months, it's just nice to say that something is growing!

By Veterans' Day, we were off to Mexico. The weather was lovely though the natives thought it was too cold. This is the cathedral in Morelia which is always a lovely site to see.

The main reason for this particular visit was our niece's wedding. The kids sure clean up nice, eh?

The bride, of course, was beautiful (as always) and one of the calmest people in the entire group.

Mr. A made quite an impression on all the senoritas. Evidently, when you dress him up in a tux with 'grown up' shoes, he suddenly learns how to tap dance. Despite the language barrier, he was in the middle of the dance floor the entire night rocking out. Some sort of cute cross between Michael Flatley and Michael Jackson.

Here's all the cousins (except Mr. A) in one place which rarely happens. Strange group, but they're family, so what can you do. Gotta love 'em.

We came back home just in time for Thanksgiving. Warm house, lots of food, loving family. What are we most thankful for? Pumpkin Pecan Cheesecake with Maple Cream, of course.

On Black Friday, we avoided the malls and headed out to the Homestead to make new friends.

We met big, busy, tough friends . . .
and we met small, sleepy, soft friends.

We learned how to twist string into rope . . .

and we learned how to weave string into cloth.

We even learned where the string comes from.

And as the sun began to set, we hurried for home.

All in all a lovely month. There was lots of yarning going on as well, but you'll have to check me out on Ravelry to see all that.

More Self-Made Hoops to Jump Through

It seemed very serendipidous that I should receive my new copy of Elizabeth Zimmermann's Knitter's Almanac at the very end of October. This little gem reads like a novel or diary at times with monthly patterns thrown in. Very entertaining for knitters and non-knitters alike. Everyone wishes their grandmothers were like Elizabeth.

So of course this means I was reading along on November 1st when I got the idea to work through the projects! Not wanting to wait until January to start (especially since I need to deplete my stash by October next year), I'm bucking convention and starting in November!

I realize it doesn't look like anything now, but Elizabeth promises me that it will shortly become a Moccasin Sock. The interesting thing about this pattern is that it's worked from the leg, down across the instep and then curves around the toes to the sole which is worked from the outside perimeter to the center in a spiral. Very strange, but the benefit is that as the sole, heel, or toe wears out beyond the point of darning, the sole is replaceable! Simply rip back to the offending part and re-knit a new foot! Cool, huh? I just hope I can follow the directions.

And just to sneak in another FO - here's another scarf I whipped up while on the go. All these big sweater and shawl projects aren't travel friendly, so I've resorted to popping gloves and scarves into my purse for portable knitting.

Progress, One Hand at a Time

Here's the latest result from my knitting efforts. I finally got tired complaining about cold hands when knitting outside and started (and finished) my first glove! I simply left the thumb and index finger open so that I can more easily manipulate the needles. I can easily see a habit forming. I'm liking this glove thing. Small, yet detailed; quick, yet meaty.

I've only finished one, however, so we'll see how long it takes to finish its mate. I'm not sure about the yarn choice, but free is my favorite kind of yarn. Plus, there's plenty to make matching gloves for the whole family!

And a final picture of a checkerboard scarf I whipped up last week just to have a small travel project. The yarn is a tad scratchy, so it's only good outside a jacket, but I do like the colors.

The End (That's Only The Beginning)

Here's our youngest reading the 100th (last) lesson of his reading book. He is very excited to be at the end of it! He's never had much of a desire to read, but it's sure sneaking up on him now. He's reading cereal boxes, screen shots on his Nintendo DS, even my emails over my shoulder (which I'm torn over - when his sister does the same thing, I go ballistic, but I don't want to put a damper on his reading - big dilema)!

With all the celebrating today, we thought it'd be nice to bring out the first book that our oldest read. Of course she had to pick a book from the library that was out of print, so getting a copy became a ginormous feat! She taught herself to read when she was five years old, so our son is technically the first child I've had to instruct.

In the same memory box was a book from my childhood, so I read that to them as well. Oh, for the love of books, it was an awesome night!

Now if only I could locate the book that my father read to me so often I had the entire thing memorized (I was two or three at the time.) Unfortunately, I don't remember the title, but it was about a ghost and a mouse and all the foods they ate - everything cheese. Cheese crackers, cheese souffle, cheese bread, cheese cake, cheese this and cheese that. It went on forever and I loved it to pieces. If only I could ever find it again . . .

3 Down, 123 to go!

Having cleaned up my yarn stash, my task now becomes to actually work through it all! Here's my latest finished projects.

Here's my latest love's labour - a spiral shawl from Meg Swansen's "A Gathering of Lace". Christened the 'Nautilus', this was for a dear friend with a deep love of the ocean and everything in it. The yarn is a lovely dark brown and teal green which always made me think of tidepools. She'll be wearing it at the ocean soon when she's in Mexico for a family wedding.
I changed the edging used in the book to one that seemed to fit the style of the internal spiral better. Everything about this shawl was wonderful and such fun to knit - the pattern, the edging (where I had to add some beads, just because), the yarn.
And no matter how many lace projects I make - whether shawls, scarves, bookmarks, or curtains - I'm still struck dumb with how transformed the objects become when they're blocked. A little bit of water, a tug here and there, a few pins, and lots of time to dry (making sure to keep the cat out of the bedroom), and W. O. W. Amazing.
This little neckwarming gem was whipped up yesterday during our regular Knit Night Out. A quick crocheted loop on one end, a big bulky button, and voila! One more skein down!!
This project jumped into my Works In Progress pile very unwittingly. I had noticed the stitch in a book earlier in the evening, and just wanted to try it out. Of course, once I had a couple inches completed, and confirmed that the stitch was pretty cool, I couldn't very well frog my work (not without a very good reason). Bing, bang, boom, a new scarf.

A new rule I've added to my promise of no new yarn purchases, is that I'd like to have less than 100 types of yarn by the end of the year. At that rate, I should be able to make our Ten Twenty Twenty Ten final deadline. Somehow, adding more hoops to jump through is making this entire insane project more workable.

Forward Progress

These two bags are the first round of sorting out the dross from my yarn stash. Over 100 skeins of yarns out! It took me a couple days to be in the proper mindset, but once I started, it was surprisingly easy. I did, however, have to knot the bags so that I didn't change my mind and sneak some skeins back into the stash.

And here are some of my newly organized stash shelves. I've even entered all of my stash into Ravelry. Down to 126 different yarns! Now I just have to hold myself back from starting 27 new projects.

My mother and I now have a new deadline for our stash disposal. 10/20/2010, as in October 20, 2010, which gives us exactly one year. A tight deadline, perhaps, but I like the memorable date and it would still allow us time to buy new yarn for holiday projects.

No time to think about new yarn just yet though. Must get back to the stuff I've got. A knitter's work is never done.

Smart, Yet Not Intelligent

While cleaning up the garage today, I made a drastic mistake - the memory of which will forever live in my brain. Now that I replay the outtakes in my head, I realize there may have been more than one mistake. The final count is hazy; I think I blacked out. One moment, I was cheerfully moving things from the Wrong Place (where they were dropped in a scurry of simply getting them out of the house) to the Right Place (where they actually lived on a semi-permanent basis).

Then there was a time warp of some sort because the very next moment, I remember coming to with a large crochet hook and the beginnings of a fleece rug (well, the first foot diameter) in my hands. I had to pause to attempt to recall what led me to this moment and only had a vague memory of thinking that if I could just empty some of the stash yarn cubbyholes along the wall, my stash wouldn't seem such a daunting obstacle. I did notice that one cubbyhole only had four balls of yarn in it which made it the top contender for elimination. These balls of yarn were fortunately very bulky fleece fringe (bought for pennies) I had previously tied into a continuous strand; unfortunately, they were also the size of basketballs.

Here's where I simultaneously learned two things: 1) it would not be reasonably feasible for me to clean the garage by actually working up my entire stash, and 2) I had just created another Current Project which was exactly opposite from my goal of finishing the projects I have started BEFORE beginning any new projects!

Stupid, right? Wait. There's more.

After I had sufficiently kicked myself for the fleece incident, I returned to the garage to continue the stash clean up which mostly consisted of cramming the bags of yarn into the cubbyholes in such a way that they did not fall out. Again, there was a fuzzy moment when a large number of bags fell out and my mind immediately started counting them as they landed. Let's skip the grusome details and focus on the final outcome.

I counted my stash. Each and every bag of yarn. I knew I couldn't count the actual skeins (what to do with partial skeins or oversized balls of yarn recycled from sweaters?) and only counting the bags would, I thought, give me a baseline to rate my progress. This would give me the total number of unique yarns I have in my stash. This must, I thought, be a workable number. After all, our house, and therefore our garage, is pretty small. It just can't hold that much stuff!

Well, including the 11 sweaters bought to be frogged in order to recycle the yarn and the 15 jersey knit tshirts and dresses bought to be spiral cut to make a crocheted rag rug, the final count was 240. It took me a while to fully process that number. At times throughout the day, it has seemed perfectly within the range of Normal. Other times, it seems to prove my insanity. At others, I think I must be woefully lacking in the stash department and will be judged accordingly. Maybe my mother and I were a bit hasty in our mutual pledge to forego any new stash purchases until our current stash was depleted.

When I actually did the math, however, it finally sunk in. At the rate of 10 yarns/projects a month (highly unlikely), it would take me two years to work through my stash. Two years - 730 days - 17,520 hours - with No. New. Yarn.

My first reaction was to cast on some new projects - fast, easy scarves or tiny bookmarks or something - to get a jump on the holiday season. Then I had my best thought all afternoon - something even faster and easier. This season, I could just give the gift of yarn!

So . . . how does your stash rate?

The Swan Has Landed

Today's Lesson: "It doesn't matter how long it takes to accomplish something as long as it's completed prior to the deadline."

I seem to have learned this lesson well, because I just finished a project I began over two years ago, yet I still completed it five weeks before the deadline!

The project was Mystery Stole #3 which was later revealed to be themed after Swan Lake. It's an asymetrical stole where the first half appears 'normal' (aka human) and the last half becomes feathered into a swan's wing. There was an option to add beads to the pattern, which I enjoyed so much I added even more than were called for. This picture is from when it was being blocked this morning.

This was my first major lace project and when I cast on, I thought it would be for me. However, once my niece announced her wedding, I knew I was now making it for her. I just hope she has a happier ending than Odette.

And then there were four . . .

We must announce a dreadful occurrence which happened today. When making our rounds checking the homestead today, we noticed one of our Delaware hens under the coop dead. Not sure what happened to her really.

I've been on a two-month vacation (more about that in future posts!), and all I had noticed when I returned last week was that she was the only one that had not grown a comb. She was noticably larger than when I left and about the same size as our other four hens. Then yesterday (or the day before, I'm not sure) when I was walking by their pen, I noticed that she seemed to be vomiting (if chickens can do that) a clear liquid - waterish, but snottier. She seemed to get over it well enough and I didn't think anything of it until we found her body.

I'm sorry, Diana/Artemis (we're not sure which was which ever since our two Delawares molted). We were blessed to enjoy your company as long as we did.

A World Premiere!

Here's what I found under the chicken coop this morning! It's pretty small, but very heavy. Now if only we could have figured out which one laid it!

We've opened up their nesting boxes now (which had previously been blocked off so they didn't mess them up unnecessarily), so hopefully they'll start laying their eggs in more accessible places.

My darling husband says this is the most expensive egg ever produced since we've spent almost $500 getting to this point. I say it's all downhill from here. I sure hope so.

Finally, PROGRESS!

After almost, ahem, three years of effort, we have a actual sweater instead of four blocked pieces sitting forlornly in the knitting basket. Of course, this is just two shoulder seams kitchenered and one sleeve set in, but geez, that's something! I only have a couple weeks to go before I'll be handing this over to my sis which may be enough time for me to actually finish seaming it up and possibly dye it. Then again, she may want to do that herself.

This colorful art was sooo much fun to work on I'm almost sorry it's finished. I know I wasn't supposed to start any new projects before I finished all of the ones in progress, but this was for a really good cause and besides, what Mama doesn't know won't hurt her.

And just to prove I could, this project was finished in 19 days. Now I think I know why some knitters work on only one project at a time. It's pretty darn exciting to actually finish projects while you're still jacked up on the newness of them!

Here's the gleeful birthday recipient of my handiwork! She had picked out the colors from my stash and I had a good lesson in asymmetrical design. You'll notice I was even able to overcome my need for even stripes in a predictable color sequence. I'm breaking all the rules now!

And yes, even though I have projects that have been waiting their turn patiently for years, I had the gall to continue to ignore them in favor of finishing my silk lace socks in time for . . .

THE YARN HARLOT!! Of course, I won't mention that I was too skattlebrained to remember to actually bring my knitting to keep me calm OR any of her books for her to sign. I did remember to bring the socks I worked so hard to finish in time, but I didn't remember to actually show them to her.

I did, however, give her this photo of my son and his knitting. He wanted to come himself to show off his handiwork, but I vetoed that.

I do have a couple more projects started (shhh! Don't tell!), but I'm trying really hard to finish them on a first come, first served basis.

Garden Update

The mammoth russian sunflowers are living up to their name and are growing wonderfully along the fence. They seem to really like the sun there.

The star jasmine is doing a great job in covering up the chainlink fence. This is only its second year, so I'm very impressed with its progress. Just look at all those blossoms!

The broccoli grew like crazy and produced beautiful heads, but, alas, they were infested with aphids and inedible (for humans, at least. The chickens loved them.)

The watermelon plants (with french breakfast radishes on the side) were coming along grandly until I made the mistake of transplanting some to space them out better. I've managed to save about two-thirds of them, but the shock was quite disastrous, as you can see. Of course, when I mentioned to my mother the plants' droopy appearance hours after transplanting, her immediate response was "well, yeah, watermelons don't transplant." Oh, really, mom? Now you tell me. Where were you this morning?!

Here the tomato plants have taken over the marigolds and dill that was planted with them. You can't see any of the snap peas and only the climbing vines of the beans. The spinach, cilantro, and basil are coming along nicely in the front.

I haven't been able to sprout any lettuce plants this year (seven varieties and not one lousy sprout). Remember that lovely volunteer lettuce plant we had earlier? My otherwise-lovely husband took it upon himself to harvest the entire plant (!), a.k.a. premeditated first-degree murder, after we already had dinner, so, get this, the entire plant ended up in the compost bin. Now, I normally love my husband, but I couldn't even look at him for a week!

All in all, a perfectly fine garden. Some things are great, some things not so much. But, as a whole, a very nice place to spend some time.

My only wish? Come back, bees! We miss you!