This started, in fact, as a knitting blog.

I got some new blocking pins at the festival.  I've seen them in the knitpicks catalogue but couldn't picture their usefulness until I saw them in person.  They have turned "I hate blocking" into " I don't hate blocking as much."

This is called the Chilkat Cowl by Rosemary Hill (Romi).  I've always loved her designs.  The yarn is a blend of cashmere, silk, camel and alpaca from China Road. It is a cowl long enough to pull over your head and the tassels are drawstring to close up the gaps.  I may have ordered some additional yarn in blues to make another... or two.

I also may have accidentally purchased 6 times more blocking mats than I will ever need (I can't believe my math skills failed me and I somehow thought I would need 48 sq ft.)  They may come in handy at school. 

I also moved the blocking staging area from the dark recess of a storage room to the den in the basement, realizing that I could tuck it away out of site.

Diet realizations of the week included the fact that I can not buy delicious protein bars (even when they have 30g of protien) because I will eat the entire box in two days, defeating the purpose of low calorie high protein.  Back to beans and quinoa I return.

Also, while culling some photos I found this one which I took while waiting for road construction to let me pass.  These are my favorite goats that I pass every morning on the way to school.  I love them.

In the heart of summer break.

The only thing I've heard/read that has offered some solace in light of recent events.  My friend Stitchjones posted it.

The first sentence "Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief."  I have lost a good bit of sleep in recent days thinking of those state-orphaned children.  When I do sleep, I wake in the morning with that feeling characteristic of profound grief.  Upon waking up- mind says "hey its a great day"- mind reminds you of the conditions of those kids- sadness resumes.

I have to stay away from it so as not to descent into abject sadness.  But sometimes I have to watch it to bear witness.

Greathusbandbob got a jumpstart to his heart yesterday.  They put him to sleep and shocked him with the paddles and for now he is sino-correct and no longer in afib.  Should it not remain that way he'll undergo freezing part of the muscle via a tube down his throat followed by a pacemaker.  

LSAT- I had been procrastinating.  At first I thought it was due to fear of failure.  But it may be that my brain needed to marinate the thinking process.  Logic games have been my weakness.  When first trying them a score of 0/7 was not atypical.  Today I worked through 4 problem sets and got a 7/7, 4/5, 4/5 and 4/5.  That gives me an 86% which I've got to believe is at least passable. 

Food and exercise- I'd give myself a B- for the week. There were days of no exercise or a bagel (never on the same day) but there have also been days where I followed the rules, went walking even when I was disinclined, and ate the right food even when the wrong one was an option.  That little extra push is what makes it a B- instead of a C+.  The two classes of exercise a day has proven to be mostly unrealistic.  I am intimidated by anything other than the dance classes and two a day wears me the hell out and invites inconsistency.

And finally the knitting.  I bought this yarn at the Waynesburg Sheep and fiber festival. It is cashmere but it is thinner than spiderweb lace weight.

I'm not sure what the hell I was thinking.  My leetle sausage fingers  have been incapable of casting on and knitting 2 stitches each on 4 double pointed needles for this pattern.

It's called Lyra by Herbert Niebling.  There is also an option for a larger version that becomes a square.  I've decided to use this yarn purchased at a Pittsburgh festival.  

It may be hard to see but this is one of those gradient skeins.  I have probably started 3-4 different projects with it.  I'm thinking this may be the one.  It's a no tv-no distraction- quiet time sort of knit and every row that turns out with the right number of stitches feels victorious.

Cooking shows

Are my new favorite thing.  Baking shows for now.  Just watching them manipulate ingredients makes me a better cook.  In the same way that when Liza the dog sees horses she thinks she’s a show horse.  I’ve binge watched "nailed it" and "zumbo's just desserts"- both on Netflix.

Today I made sausage vegetable lasagne.  Sausage and broccoli and carrots in the sauce, spinach in the cheese mixture.  Classico marinara sauce and oven ready lasagne noodles.  Everything was "on point" (that’s a cooking term) except the dish was filled too full and made bad burning smells and lots of smoke in the oven.  It was pretty amazing though.  It tasted just what I was hungry for. #proudofme.

Yesterday the dog was hilarious.  She devised a multi-step plan to score a walk.  Used to be she'd just bring me the shoe.  Yesterday she whined at greathusbandbob until he opened the door where I was still in bed.  She jumped on the bed and pushed me out with her nose and her digging at the blankets.  She waited for me to have coffee and breakfast. Then she brought out the tennis shoe.  Then she brought out the other one.

Food in the house

Buddha Bowl

I went to the grocery store and picked food that I liked to eat in a bowl.  

Ingredients:

quinoa

grape tomatoes

cauliflower

broccoli

carrots

celery

parsley

sunflower seeds

pine nuts

roasted chick peas

roasted pinto beans

cucumber ranch dressing

Lazy cooking

Sometimes you just don't want to cook.  And you don't have any "fast foods" in the house- cereal, leftovers, eggs, salad stuff.  So you get creative.

I present chocolate granola burritos- ingredients (give or take)

Cashew butter, unsalted cashew pieces, oatmeal, dark chocolate pieces, chia seeds and honey.

Carefully stir.  It can be a hot mess.  Put in a tortilla and wrap.

There is some fine tuning to be done- more honey- less cashew butter- maybe salted cashew pieces.  I just needed something filling to eat so I would quit thinking about ice cream.

Project the First.

The yarn room.

It’s wrong much more than it’s right.  Probably because I bring things in without taking other things out.

I’m going with the grocery/department store theory that you have to move product for people to notice it again.

Shelf one- worsted and lace.  Purple/maroon anyone?

Shelf two- the top is yarn club stitch jones skeins and baby yarn.  Next is sock yarn and suede and Noro.  Third down is madelinetosh and elsbethlavold.  Below that is a sweaters worth of borocco baby alpaca, a few projects that I’d actually like to see myself complete and balls of leftovers.

I snapped a photo of this mini shelf with some alpaca that I once had plans for only to notice the crate to the left with a pile of more suede (I thought there was more somewhere and an entire bin of Kaffe Fasset pastel worsted. Also a couple of "I wonder how big I want them" log cabin afghans in cascade and elsbethlavold.

The discard pile is t as bad as it’s been in the past.  Last year I made an unwind the project bag.  That didn’t work so I reunited them with their friends.  There are no yarn police out there to tell me I can’t have them with regular balls and skeins of yarn.  I was left with a couple of organizing bins that I’ll take to the tv knitting corner and try to make sense of it.

Juicy Lucy

Carrots ginger oranges

 

Apples oranges spinach

 

You haven’t lived until you’ve seen/heard a juicer eating a carrot.

I like to watch the wheel go round.

body to go with the hair.

I've cut my hair short three times now.

Once at the end of high school.  I didn't love it then but I look back at pictures and it looked kind of adorable.

The second time was right before I went to South Africa.  I wasn't sure what the water/shower conditions would be and didn't want to fight that.  It was a good plan and I look at pictures and I don't hate it.

The third time was yesterday.  There are no official life changing events in the works.  Except maybe instead of the event precipitating the cut, the cut has precipitated the event.

There are three more days of school left next week.  Summer lists in the past have included 3-5 things- some of which I do and some of which seemed like a good idea at the time of list making but then weren't that interesting to me.

This summer's list has two items.  One is to finish what I started last July and spend at least an hour a day at the gym. This plan also includes the juice machine- maybe twice a day with a solid dinner and a meal replacement protein drink. I am fairly certain this one will stick.

The other is to study logic problems.  Right now I get about 50% of them right.  When I first started looking at them I was getting 0%.  I just have to remember that.  I kill it on the reading comprehension problems and am getting better at the logical analysis ones.  I believe this one will stick because I've noticed that once I step into the world of logic problems, time does that going by faster thing and the next time I look up it's three hours later.

For the big reveal for anyone that didn't see it on the book of Face...

Keeping in mind that this was at the end of an entire day of rotating grades in first a field day and a water day, it looks pretty o.k.  The pink shirt was the only thing I had to change into and was most necessary after a day like that.  There were not remnants of make up to be found.

The sign of a good hair cut is that you don't automatically want to brush it out as soon as you get home.  That's the first time this has happened.  Although it may have something to do with the fact that I was still in shock and also terrified at what I had just done.

In trying not to imagine myself looking too much like an old lady teacher person I've pretended that it's a Molly Ringwold, Mary Lou Retton sort of cut- except for they are old ladies now too.