Dog Park Days

Dear Mom,
Well, it happened again and another week flew by. I hope this doesn't become a habit. This week I did keep the house clean, though....or as clean as 2 dogs will let it be.
Now that the weather is behaving like it should (Except for the rain part. We need the rain. Even my crabgrass is struggling.)  our visits to the dog park have lasted longer and more dogs have been there to play. Patsy has a special friend. His name is Ace and he is a 2 year old chocolate lab.He and Patsy....well, they love each other in a dog sort of way.

Ace's mom and I have exchanged email addresses so we can easily arrange play dates and coordinate our dog park visits.

Patys now knows the word "Ace" and the phrase "Dog park". "Dog Park" may be a better motivater than "cookie".

And while Ace and Patsy race around and burn off loads of energy, good ole Bumper sniffs around and marks all the territory as his, finds some shade, barks when the wild ones get too close, and generally avoids the action.

In June, the water level was where Ace and Patsy are standing.

Plus, Ace's mom usually has a few treats in her pocket which are smuggled to Bumper when the others aren't looking, and it didn't take him too long decide that she just might be his new best friend.

My knitting needles are clicking away, too, and I am making really good progress on Baby Cables and Big Ones, too. I think I am gonna really, really like wearing this sweater.

Last night I reached the point in the pattern where the designer suggests trying the sweater on to check for fit, which I have, and so far, so good. I'll divide the sleeves and the body next and what you see above will start looking more like a sweater and less like a poncho. The weather isn't just good for the dog park. It's been perfect knitting weather, too.

Love,
Kim

p.s. I made Jayme's Psalm Blessed Apple Crisp, and it may be....no IT IS... the best apple crisp recipe EVER. I had everything I needed on hand and the really good part was that I could walk out into the back yard and pick the apples I needed right off the tree!

The Traveling Salvation Show

Dear Mom,
We have been singing this Neil Diamond song around here a lot lately...



...because this "popped up" off the country road north of our house.

For the last 5 nights, we have been serenaded with gospel music and lots of revivalist preachin'!
Love, Bonnie Jo

Loved

Dear Mom,

Grammie and Grampie have found one another again.  They are at peace.  They have an eternity of grace together.  I loved them so much-ly.
Love,
Wendy

A little knitting

Dear Mom,
Gosh, blink and a week has passed by with almost nothing to show for it. If you could peek through the computer screen at the house behind me, you would know that my time wasn't exactly spent cleaning. (Although I did have to de-clog mr. dyson- he was choking on a chunk of wood chips, thanks to you-know-who.)

The Young Man's tennis coach became the father of a baby girl last weekend, so a knitting project was put on hold so I could make this gift.

This is Elizabeth Zimmermann's Baby Surprise Jacket, and I used about 1and 1/2 skeins of Claudia Hand Painted fingering weight yarn. The colorway for this yarn is called "Strawberry Latte", but I think it looks like Neapolitan ice cream.
I covered a button with a bright pink gingham check,

and used Lizzie's freezerpaperandfabricintotheprinter trick to make a HandKnit by/Care tag for the sweater.

After the fabric came out of the printer, I trimmed it to size and ironed it to some fusible interfacing to give it a little backbone and to stop the edges from fraying. (I hope.) I loosely tacked the tag to the sweater allowing for some stretch when the sweater is worn. All done and ready to give.

No excitement planned here for the long holiday weekend. I'll be cleaning what I didn't get to all last week. But mostly I hope to enjoy the screened porch. After a scorching hot and tropically humid summer that gave me only a handful of comfortable days/evenings to enjoy the porch, we are to be blessed with mild weather this holiday weekend and I plan on spending as much time out there as I can.

Love,
Kim

Ishbel

Dear Mom,
Before this turns into Patsy's blog, I am gonna hurry up and show you some knitting. I finished Ishbel last night during Project Runway, blocked her during Austin and Santino, and she is ready for her debut.

I used about 1 1/2 balls of Panda Silk, a beautiful blend of bamboo, merino wool and silk. This was a well written, easy to follow pattern and I feel like it was finished pretty quickly. I can't remember when I started, but I think it was all done within a week. I will definitely make more of these.

Love,
Kim

p.s. I know you don't watch Project Runway, but I really wanted Gretchen to go home.

This is getting to be a habit

Dear Mom,

I need  Mr. Dyson to invent a wood chipper attachment for my vacuum cleaner.

Love,
Kim

Dish cloths and tennis meets and other stuff

Dear Mom,
I've been watching a fair amount of high school tennis these past couple of weeks, and I take knitting along with me to alleviate some of my nerves. It helps my stomach not to churn itself up too much if I have knitting in my hands. Unfortunately, the knitting I would like to be working on is at the point that I really need to pay attention which means it has not been tennis friendly. So it shames me to admit that I have been knitting dish cloths in public. Not that there is anything wrong with knitting dish cloths. Nothing AT ALL. Because actually my favorites are the hand knit ones. It's just that this sort of public knitting is not going to do anything to promote the art of knitting.

But, they (the dish cloths) are mindless knitting and heaven knows I need some new ones. Why is it that the hand knit ones are always the ones to get chewed up in the garbage disposer? The store bought ones never sneak down there. Except I am pretty sure that this one has Patsy's name all over it.....


And speaking of Patsy....
She keeps trying and trying,

and trying to sneak this through the dog door and into the house.

Let's just take a step back and take another look at that last photo. Just promise you'll pretend not to notice the clutter on that kitchen desk.

Because even Bumper knows that this isn't right.

Ishbel is moving along rapidimento. I have a scant 15 rows to go to finish!

I'll show you once it is blocked. This could easily be the start of Ishbelitis.

Love,

Kim

Pickin' Time

Dear Mom,

We have a bumper crop of cherry tomatoes this season. The Captain picks tomatoes every day.

Uh-oh...here come the scavengers helpers. 

It didn't take the girls long to figure out how to pick their own tomatoes.

Golda can pick and eat a tomato in two bites!

She loves tomatoes so much, she will "fetch" when I toss them into the yard.

Captain is preserving the tomatoes by drying them and then layering them with garlic, oregano and basil in mason jars topped off with olive oil.  

Love, Bonnie Jo

Dear Mom,
I finished the cotton sweater I've been working on, just in time for the return of heat and humidity. Oh well. I was foolish to think the 90 degree/90% humidity were behind us.

The pattern is Kira, and the yarn is Cascade Yarn's Ultra Pima, color Marigold. The sleeves have a pretty lace detail:

 The thing that attracted me to this sweater pattern is the unusual neckline detail. I liked the option of wearing it open as shown, or buttoning it closed-

I covered buttons-

This was a pleasant knit. The instructions were well written and there was just enough going on throughout to keep the boring parts interesting, but not so much that I had to concentrate too much and the lace pattern on the sleeves was easy to memorize. 

Up next....

Ishbel.

 

And I know I am still in the easy part, but this is fun already AND! the start to this shawl is brilliant. BRILLIANT, I tell you!

There are designs of my own swimming around in my head and making there way into my sketch pad, but right now it is a joy to be working my way through yarn and patterns that have been patiently waiting for me.

Love,

Kim

Fingerpainting and Facepainting

Dear Mom,
Fingerpainting of a different sort.

and face painting, too.

Apparently Magic Sorcerers need purple eyes and yellow stars.
Love,
Wendy

Fingerpainting and Brownies

Dear Mom,
Today marks the first day of the last full week of summer vacation.  And the weather is beautiful.  Perfect for fingerpainting.

and brownies.

Double Chocolate Espresso Brownies

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1/4 tsp. baking soda

1/8 tsp. baking powder

1/8 tsp. salt

14 oz. semisweet chocolate squares, finely chopped (I use Scharffenberger; expensive but oh! so! worth it!)

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup butter

1/4 cup light corn syrup

1/4 cup brewed espresso (Starbucks, of course!)

3 large eggs

1 Tbsp. vanilla extract

1 cup coarsely chopped nuts (I used hazelnuts)

6 oz. dark chocolate, coarsely chopped (Scharffenberger again)

Coat a 9x13-inch pan with cooking spray.  Line pan with aluminum foil, allowing ends to hang over short sides of pan.  Tuck overlapping ends under rim on short sides.  Coat foil with cooking spray; set pan aside.

Combine flour and next 3 ingredients in a small bowl.  Place chopped semisweet chocolate in a large bowl; set bowls aside.

Combine sugar and next 3 ingredients in a saucepan.  Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until sugar and butter melt and mixture comes to a rolling boil.  Remove from heat and pour over chopped chocolate in bowl; let stand 2 minutes without stirring.

Beat chocolate mixture at low speed with an electric mixer until chocolate melts and mixture is smooth.  Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition.  Add flour mixture; beat at medium speed until well blended.  Stir in vanilla, hazelnuts and dark chocolate.  Spoon batter into prepared pan, spreading evenly.

Bake at 325 degrees for 38 to 40 minutes.  Cool completely in pan on wire rack.  Cover and chill at least 2 hours.

Carefully invert brownies from pan, using overlapping foil as handles; remove foil.  Invert brownies again on a cutting board; cut into squares or circles.  Drizzle with mocha syrup (I used Starbucks again!)

Next week school starts.  I have really, really loved my kids extra much this summer.  We did a LOT of swimming, baking, playing and dancing.  I will miss hangin' out with them.  So we will spend our last 10 days of summer vacation playing harder.  More.  Washing the car.  Listening to music.  Laughing and loving.

Enjoy your days . . . .

Love,

Wendy

Back to School

Dear Mom,
The kiddos are back in school and we are trying to re-adjust to the routine. I have to say it is easier to fall into the semi-nocturnal summertime routine than it is to adjust to the 6am alarm clock. For all of us. That first morning the dogs didn't even come downstairs until it became clear that we were up for real- or at least until they heard milk being poured into bowls of Cheerios.

Bumper is an old veteran of the school days, but I think Patsy forgot all about it. She watches mournfully as they walk to the bus stop.

The longing is so bad, that coupled with Patsy's speed and expertise at jumping over the gates (and earning her the nickname FloJo), I have had to close the back door and keep her inside to prevent her from joining the queue at the bus stop. (Having your MOM chase down the dog while wearing her pajamas in front of everyone on the bus is mortifying for anyone after the age of 11.) (The MOM doesn't like it either, but that would never occur to the wounded.)

At the parent meeting for the tennis team, another mom and I volunteered to make locker decorations for the team. I have finished my half, will pick up the other half at the meet tonight and tomorrow afternoon I will hopefully not get lost in the high school as I go searching for the lockers to put them on. I am confident that I will only go missing until supper is late and my family is hungry, when they are sure to send out the search party. When I volunteered to make the decorations, I didn't realize how sadly under-represented the sport of tennis is in the craft/party/scrapbooking department. It just would have made things so easy if I could have purchased a bunch of paper dessert plates that look like tennis balls - they have baseball plates, basketball plates and even football shaped plates. NO TENNIS. However, I think that what we came up with is even better. We used the stiff felt you can find in the craft store, cut it into 5 inch circles, used a white paint pen to draw the tennis ball lines, added a Shamrock sticker (the school is the Westfield Shamrocks), added the names with a green paint pen, stuck some magnets to the back and TAH DAH locker decorations.

Also, today is my day to provide the pre-meet snack for the team. To say "snack" is deceptive. These are highschoolboyafterschoolbeforeamatch kind of snacks. Which really means that I just packed 26 sack lunches and took them up to school- turkey sandwiches, apples, pretzels, cookies and water bottles.

On a more fun and creative note, CarolWhoseHouseGotStruckbyLightning asked me last week if I had an---get this-- extra bucket hat  that she could borrow for an upcoming fishing trip. Well. yeah. But I didn't want her to have to borrow an extra hat and seized upon the opportunity to make another bucket hat. This time I had a theme. Behold, Carol's fishing hat:

side a

side b

If you look closely, you can see that I used the freezer paper/copier trick on this side to designate it as "Carol's Fishing Hat- made by Kim- August 2010".

And, needless to say, there is knitting. I am nearing the end of this cardigan, which is going well, but it feels like I have been at it long enough and I am ready to be done. Silly, to be finishing a cotton sweater at the end of summer, but this summer was too hot to wear it anyway, and maybe I'll have a few days in September when it will be just right. Time to start thinking about what's next for the needles. Definitely something wool.  I much prefer the kindness of knitting with wool.

Love,

Kim

MMMMMMMMore Baking

Dear Mom,

We have been busy baking (and eating!) our Farmers' Market blueberries and peaches.  Blueberry Muffins and Peach-a-Berry Cobbler were yesterday's treats.  I got the recipes from Acorn Farms and share the Peach-a-Berry Cobbler recipe here.  OH. YUM!!!  My favorite cobbler so far . . . .

Peach-A-Berry Cobbler

1 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1 1/2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 cup milk

1/4 cup butter

1/4 cup packed brown sugar

1 Tbsp. cornstarch

1/2 cup cold water

3 cups (approx. 5) fresh peaches, sliced and peeled

1 cup fresh blueberries

1 Tbsp. butter

1 Tbsp. lemon juice

100% TLW (Tender Loving Wendy = cinnamon-sugar-nutmeg sprinkles for top)

For topping: stir together flour, sugar and baking powder.  Add the milk and butter all at once.  Stir until smooth; set aside.

For filling: in a medium saucepan, stir together brown sugar and cornstarch, then stir in water.  Add peaches and blueberries.  Cook and stir over medium heat until thickened and bubbly.  Add 1 Tbsp. butter and lemon juice and still until butter melts.  Pour into a 1 1/2 qt. ungreased casserole dish.  Spoon topping in mounds over hot filling, then spread evenly over filling.  Sprinkle with 100% TLW.

Bake cobbler in a 350-degree oven for approx. 35 minutes.  Serve warm with ice cream!

Enjoy!

Love, Wendy