Sunday, August 26, 2012

Sunday Afternoon in August

Okay, the sheets on our bed are changed, we have clean towels. The violet farm in the bathroom has been tended to and the extravagant window ledge they sit on cleaned. There's a load of clean dishes drying in the dishwasher, and I'll put them away once they're finished. The last time I made broccoli cheese casserole (one of Rich's favorites), I divided it in two and froze half. It's defrosted now, so all I have to do is stick it in the oven, make a salad (I've got a tomato that's right on the edge), stir up the homemade ranch, cook the Sister Schubert's, and I've got dinner ready. Not bad!

It occurred to me this afternoon that cold weather is coming. This last week has been an absolutely awesome reminder of that: There was one day when the high was in the 80s! In Texas! In August! Unbelievable! Anyway, cold weather will be here eventually, and I threw away most of my socks last spring.

I love Cool Max Gold Toe crew socks. I became acquainted with them, maybe, six or seven years ago, at which time I loved them so much I bought about ten pairs, in black and white. (Some pairs were black, some were white. They weren't pairs of black-and-white socks, 'cause that really wouldn't go all that well with anything.) A year or so later I bought another ten or fifteen pairs. Seriously, I wore these things every day.

But now, all these years later, they're worn out. Really, really worn out. Threadbare, in great big patches. And they don't make them any more.

Isn't that the pisser? You grow to love a product, depend on it, and the manufacturer decides they can do better. No Gold Toe Cool Max crew-length women's socks exist any more. Anywhere.

So I decided I better get busy and knit my own.

Yes, you heard me. I'm going to wear custom knit socks. That used to be the norm, you know. Time was that everybody knit his or her own socks, no matter what their station in life (as I understand it, Coolidge was the last president who knitted his own). Knitting your own, insuring a perfect fit, was the best—and sometimes the only—option. Part of a sailor's (and, BTW, a pirate's) expertise was, out of necessity, knitting and darning [repairing] their own socks.

If Long John Silver could do it, so can I. But I'd better get cracking.

I'm not the fastest knitter in the world. And socks are pretty quick, but they do take some time. In the last few weeks I've learned how to make two-at-a-time cuff-down socks (well, actually, I made mitts, but it's basically the same technique) and two-at-a-time toe-up socks. So I should be all set to zip through some socks. All I have to do is get started.

While we're waiting for the new Fall TV shows to start, we're catching up on the Sherlock episodes we haven't seen. So tonight I'll be watching Benedict Cumberbatch and knitting.

What could be better than that?

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Learn how to knit

In the last few weeks, in addition to dealing with all things Oktoberfest, I've learned how to knit two-at-a-time top-down socks (or, actually, mitts) AND two-at-a-time toe-up socks.

Seriously, what knitting frontiers are left for me, other than lace…which my attention span is much too short to allow.

Monday, August 13, 2012

Dinner

Dinner prep took three sessions today, though it was just because I didn't want to spend too much time at one stretch.

  1. Boil the eggs, make the homemade Ranch dressing.
  2. Assemble the Butter Burger patties and get them ready to cook.
  3. Mix and fill the deviled eggs, chop the olives for Rich's Wimpy Burgers*.

And in between I got stuff Oktoberfest stuff done.

Still to come: Make the green salad, cook the burgers. Get out the chips. (It's hard coming up with menu after menu that doesn't heat up the kitchen, though it's actually only 102° today.) Eat. (I'll post recipes sometime when I'm feeling motivated.)

Oh! And here's my version of the Anthro-inspired Scarflet:


Yeah. Lovely.

Knitting and deviled eggs in one post. What do you expect?


*Yes, he grew up in Chicago.

Thursday, August 2, 2012

It's hot

It's hot. Hot as in 106° in Southlake right now, and the predicted high for today is 109°. It's 3:28pm, so we're half an hour into the high demand period for electricity. Ercot, the people who control these things, are begging people in our area to cut back on electricity usage between 3 and 7pm on hot days like this, or face rolling blackouts. And seriously, I don't want to be anywhere with no AC and no fans on an afternoon like this! So at 3pm, we dutifully reduce our electricity consumption. Our thermostat automatically goes up to 83°, we turn the ceiling fans on, we lower any shades that aren't already lowered, and try to sit as still as possible. And, of course, no stove, no oven, no washing machine or dryer, no dishwasher, no unnecessary lights…no anything electric we can get by without. The lights thing is especially hard, since we have as much glass (windows and doors) as possible covered. We have a bunch of Redi Shades everywhere, little $5 paper accordion window shades that actually come with an adhesive strip so they don't need any hardware at all. (Well, the ones stuck to the sheer curtains in the breakfast nook have a few straight pins in them, but I added those.) They help a lot, but it makes the house—which is designed to let in tons of light—very dark, and makes me feel a little like a mole.

At least all that sitting still means that I get a lot of reading and knitting done. I finished the Anthro-Inspired Scarflet, from AllFreeKnitting.com.

Mine doesn't have the little pearly flower thing. It's made of Lion Wool in Cobalt Blue, to match the Fire on the Mountain Clogger jackets. (Yeah, I danced with them for 16 years, and my sister is still a member. It's for her. If you follow that link above, she's the blonde in the left-hand photo.) It doesn't look nearly this delicate, since it's worsted weight, and the edges are curling like crazy.

I'll take a picture of my version after it's blocked and no longer looks like a big blue tube. (Very curly edges.)

In the meantime, not generating heat in the kitchen is stretching my cooking imagination to the limit. We've had chicken salad two days in a row (first Carol's Sesame then a my own version of DC that doesn't involve the horror of Miracle Whip), and we'll be ordering pizza tomorrow. Slow cookers aren't too bad, but on the extremely hot days (like today), it's best to avoid those, as well.

So no cooking today. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go finish that novel Tevilla gave me. And maybe dabble in some socks.