Lemon Tree Tales

Thanksgiving Aftermath

Ah, thanksgiving was a success! The menu consisted of: turkey (of course), mashed potatos, baked yams with marshmellow creme, cornbread stuffing, green bean casserole, glazed carrots, cranberry sauce, gravy, challah bread, pumpkin pie, sweet potato pie, double chocolate brownie and whipped cream. There was enough leftovers to have a complete second meal the next night and a few odd leftovers the following day. The timing wasn't perfect for cooking the meal, but it wasn't that far off either. I suspect this will improve with practice. I have discovered to my dismay that I'm allergic to red wine and will not be drinking it in the future. (It makes my jaws tingle and ache and gives me an overall feeling of unwellness. Not good ... but white wines are still okay.)

Best of all was spending the day with loved friends. Next year we hope to have even more loved ones share the day with us. But this will entail more future planning than what we did this year. (I ended up grocery shopping the day before!)

The kitchen is finally cleaned up .. thank goodness. But the glow of the holiday weekend faded abruptly last evening when I received a distressing phone call. It turns out that my stepdad has cancer and was given only 4 to 5 months to live. Apparently he had surgery last Monday to remove his colon and part of his stomach. That's not good and I'm very sad. (I wonder if that's why he's been on my mind the last week or so.) After all, this man raised me from the time I was a one-year old until I graduated high school and left home at the age of eighteen. I'm going down to southern California to pay my respects to him while he's still around. Hopefully he'll  prove the doctors wrong, but I suspect that he's not been the same strong man that he was before my brother was killed almost eight years ago. I think that it's true what they say about the body being more susceptible to disease when the heart's sad.

Preparations

Ah, life has been interesting here the last few weeks and has kept me from getting around to everything that I'd like to complete. I've been playing with quilt layouts on EQ5 for the sock-monkey baby quilt. I'll post them later. Ultimately I'll probably use a variation from Alex Anderson's baby quilts with love book, rather than use the house block I originally wanted. It's not that I don't like that block, I do, it's just that time is just catching up to me rather quickly. There's just not enough time to figure out how to do that block justice. I'll have to save it for later.

The other thing that I've been trying to complete is my package for prairie mouse in New Zealand. She's my swap partner for the Pincushion Swap that Booga J is hosting. Ah, I'll probably have to use DHL tomorrow and see how fast it can ship out. I have lots of goodies ready to go and will post pictures of the packages another time.

Finally, I'm getting the final menu planned for Thanksgiving this Thursday. I'll cook one of those Jennie-Os turkeys (greatest thing ever, you take the frozen bird in its package and cook it til the built-in thermometer pops) and side dishes. I'm searching the internet for a good sweet potato pie recipe as well. Eventhough I'm a white girl from Southern California, I was raised on a very traditional soul-food menu. Growing up I was the only white kid in the household -- made for some interesting conversations when I tried to explain why my siblings didn't "look" like me. At any rate, my stepdad cooked the best turkey-day dinners. Somehow most of my friends never got why I thought dishes such as collard greens, black-eyed peas, or sweet potato pie were the greatest things to eat. Ah, I almost forgot ... I need to search for a good cornbread stuffing recipe too.

Primary Colors Bunny

Here is the finished Wee Bunny for young Master B. He was very happy to receive him today. Now he doesn't have to covet the one that his new baby sister got 5 months ago. Turns out that green is his favorite color so I'm glad that I used three big pieces of the green polka dot fabric. The other colors were also at his request. Nothing better than a 3 1/2 year old who knows what he likes.  :-)

Here's the back:

I think that I made this tail a bit too big. It's almost the same size as his head! This is such an easy pattern to whip up ... thanks to Hillary of Wee Wonderfuls for sharing it.

This means that I now have 8 items remaining on the UFO/to-do list. Yippee! (Yes, but the items left to do aren't as easy to complete ... gotta put some work into getting them done.)

Noro Scarf - Day One's Progress

Look at what I accomplished last night! I couldn't find my book with how-to-knit instructions so I searched the net for info. I found this site with great pictures that made it fairly easy. Of course I had to start, then stop, then repeat a few times before I felt confidant enough to continue. I started with 12 stitches and somewhere along the way it turned into 13. I'm thinking that I forgot to slip off one of the old stitches. Oh well, once I noticed the problem I just treated 2 stitches as 1 and now it's back to the original 12 count.  :-) And I discovered yesterday that this is the month of Norovember with lots of great pictures at Flickr. What a fortunate coincidence that I chose a Noro yarn to start knitting!

This is going to work out well. I was able to do something crafty yet still keep the hubby company in the living room. I'll save the sewing projects for daytime. Today's agenda is to make the Wee Bunny for young master B (one of the nine remaining on the list).

A New Beginning with Noro

This my friends, is the start of a new adventure. There will be pitfalls, slipped stitches, perhaps some frustration. Ultimately I believe that there will be more instances of joy, awe and pure relaxation. Yes, I've decided to take the plunge and try, once again, to learn how to knit. So today I drove to the LYS ... Commuknity (wow, you have to check out this store if you're ever in the San Jose, CA area!) ... and bought these two skeins of Noro's Silk Garden color #50 yarn. The extremely nice salesman steered me to the circular addi turbo brand needles, promising that I would love the way they performed. What the heck, he seemed well-versed in the ways of knitting. Plus he and his wife are costumers so already there's a kindred spirit. Not to mention that anything with the word "turbo" in it must be good. Remember that I'm the one who gets the speeding tickets in our family. (I've been better at slowing down but it's soooo hard to do on the 5 when I drive down to LA. It's nothing but straight open road for more than 200 miles.)

My first project will be a simple scarf ... all knit, no purl, just to keep it simple. The thing that I really, truly want to make -- the thing that just makes my heart sing when I look at it -- is the gorgeous Lizard Ridge Afghan shown in the Fall 2006 issue of knitty (designed by Laura Aylor). There's even a Lizard Ridge Knitalong and here too ... wow! Okay, I'm smart enough to realize that I just can't possibly try something like that until I've practiced for a while. But I'm just dying to get better so that I can try it too. Don't you just love the colors? See, there's my love of bold and vibrant color combos again.

Remember to Vote tomorrow!

Tomorrow is Election Day here in the USA so please remember to get out and vote! No, I won't get into who I do or not like, or which measure I do or do not support. I think that's entirely up to each individual to decide on their own. I only wish to remind everyone that we live in a country that allows all of its citizens to vote upon reaching the age of 18. It is a right that we should be thankful for and take care to follow. Since we often travel, Steve and I are signed up as absentee voters. That means that we have already voted and mailed in our ballot last week. Now we don't get a cute little sticker that says "I voted!" but that's okay. I know that we've added our voice to the system.

Now, on an unrelated note, I've had disturbing news today. Apparently, an acquaintance (NOT a friend) has decided to take his disagreement with my husband to a new low today. We've found out that he's had access to my husband's computer server -- and read his emails and files. He even created a "back-door" to get in after this access was discovered and blocked. I can't tell you how upset this has made me. All this because this acquaintance has been having an affair with another acquaintance of ours and is afraid that his wife will find out. (It's a long-distance torrid affair. Apparently they manage to fly to different parts of the US to be together and the wife believes that he's out working.) I never wanted to be in the middle of this, but damn, what do you do when someone effectively becomes a thief and violates what is essentially your "virtual" home? I'm sorry to bring this up, it truly doesn't belong on a predominately craft blog, but I feel just as violated as when our actual house was burglarized a month or so ago. I just needed to vent ... okay, more crafts will appear in the next few days. (I have another sewing circle with Rachel on Wednesday.)

Presents for the Girls

These are two little flapper girl covered tape measures that I made for Miss L and her younger sister, Miss J. (Now you know that you can't show up with a gift for one and not the other. Much crying would ensue. So to keep the peace I made two that are just slightly different, yet same enough that there's no upset.)  These are probably the eighth or ninth ones that I've made since discovering Craftapalooza's tutorial. I'll probably keep making them because they're so cute and easy. Maybe next time I'll try it without stuffing, without a yo-yo, and just felt top and bottom with some applique ... or embroidery ... or ribbon, oh my!

On another note, YAY! this is just one more thing to cross off the list - only 9 more items to go!

I hope everyone had a happy Halloween. Marcus the Carcas was a great success and only scared one small trick-or-treater. Fortunately candy prevailed and smiles were seen all around. We had quite a few takers this year. Only a little bit of candy was left over. The best thing was seeing how many little ones were oh so polite. Lots of "thank you's" and "please" and even one "thank you ma'am". It's enough to make you feel hopeful for the state of the world.