On the one hand, I'm feeling very happy. Mr Deplume and I are going away for the weekend with friends. It should be a lot of fun. We'll take pictures and shop and eat and have a great time. The kids will be having fun watching movies and eating out with Grandma and Grandpa. 


But on the other hand, my friend is suffering, and I cannot help. Her brother was killed and all I want to do is be there for her (even though she lives three states away). Also thousands of people in Haiti are grieving their loved ones, and again, there's nothing I can do. I can hand some money to an organization who is helping, and pray, but it still feels like it's not enough. 


Back in another part of my brain, I'm trying to find a knitting project that excites me. I'd prefer one that involves that alpaca yarn I bough last year. I've been searching for weeks, and cannot find anything I want to make. Why I'm so obsessed with finding the perfect pattern defies reason. 


My brain is a difficult place to live sometimes. derr. Maybe the trip will clear my head. Let's hope. 

Can I fix it?

I am calling on you experts and fearless folks alike to tell me what to do. I've been working on this flingin' flangin' "afghan" for far too long (well over a year). Entrelac is only fun for the first 100 squares or so. After that, it's more tedious than stockinette, and slower, too. I think the project is pretty in any case, and would love to see it finished some day, so I've been working on it again lately. I got through an entire row of squares the other night and decided to switch to a longer needle so I could see how wide it's shaping up to be, and I found this:

You see, there are not supposed to be cube-corner-shaped bits on blankets. I screwed up, by adding a square jutting out from what should have been the right edge of the work. For those of you not well-versed in entrelac, there should be alternating diagonal squares and triangles that create smooth edges up the sides of the piece. I've illustrated it thusly:

And of course I didn't notice this until after I had completed an entire row, consisting of hours of work. I know I could rip back and reknit the whole thing properly, but I know myself. If I start frogging this baby, I'm never going to re-knit. Too mind-numbing.

So my question is this: Would it work for me to snip the yarn, unravel just that square, and bind up the eight live stitches somehow so that the work can go on without undoing all of this? If so, where is the best place in the square to break the yarn? Then again, I might have screwed up something earlier, too, if I managed to attach the errant square on two sides, which should not have really been possible.

In the immortal words of Winnie the Pooh, Oh bother.

Ranty Ranterson updates her blog.

Disclaimer: My apologies to those who are not into running, barefooting, or semantics. Feel free to move along and wait for the next post. I promise there will be new knitting content in the very near future.

On to my rant of the day

I just read this on a well-known running message board, in a forum geared toward experienced runners, most of who wear normal running shoes:

I checked out barefoot forum, but it seems to be populated predominantly with hard-core BF runners! I'm not there...yet. Some poster got repeatedly chastised for referring to running in VFFs as barefoot running.

Just for make sure for myself, I checked out the dictionary for a definition:
bare·foot (bârft) adv. & adj. With nothing on the feet.

I grow weary of the lack of clarity when people claim to BFR when really they just aren't in big clumpy running shoes. How is it so hard for people to get over that fact that they aren't really running barefoot if they are wearing shoes? Even when the shoes have visible toes. Running in minimalist shoes is a great thing-- but even little shoes are still shoes. It is not a value judgment to say that one is wearing shoes. It is a fact.

It reminds me of the first of The Four Agreements by don Miguel Ruiz,"1. Be Impeccable with your Word: Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean." I know that Ruiz was speaking more metaphorically, but its wisdom holds true here, too. Why is it so hard for people to just speak the truth? Live the truth? Most agree that's important in the big picture. Isn't that big picture made up of a zillion small moments? It seems to me that if we work on being true in each little experience, the big truths will be easier to come by.

Here ends Norm's Tuesday tirade.

P.S. I'll probably come back and edit this post in the very near future. I feel like I'm on to something here but am communicating it poorly.

Here I am, posting another video link...

I love this SNL sketch. It's especially relevant during the Christmas shopping season.


I other news, I've started a new knitting projects, the Ganomy Hat by Elizabeth Zimmerman. Unfortunately, I think it's a tad small for me. I'm going to keep going with it, though. If I cannot block it out to be comfortable, I'll put it on the mitten tree at church. It's a win-win situation that involves no frogging, right?

Pompateuse

That's how I'd spell it. It could be pompatus or pompitous, but regardless of the spelling, I love this song. And peaches.



Speaking of peaches, I love this song, too, as do the kids.

Busy day

Wednesdays are truly hump days for me. This is how today went. It's like this most every Wednesday:

Get up, shower, get kids to school, go to knitting group at Mika's where I drink three cups of coffee, eat a cinnamon roll, and revive the long-suffering entrelac blanket-to-be. Leave the knitters to go pick up first kidlet from school, go home, help clean up the big box of Legos that fell the across dining room floor, eat lunch, empty dishwasher, fix broken Batman toy, grab kidlet and laptop and walk the four blocks to the office to pay some bills. After a couple of hours of work, pause to go pick up second kidlet from school, go back to office and finish the bill-paying, gather up both kids and walk home.

Take a deep breath. *whew*

Kick off my shoes, start a new load of laundry, pull giant load of brand-spanking-new kitchen towels out of the dryer, fold stuff, realize that choir practice is in 20 minutes. Put shoes back on, jog off to church for an hour of high-velocity singing (seriously- this director practices a dozen songs in under an hour. You can work up a sweat just being there).

Here's where I get a break. Church hosts a "Cook's Night Out" on the first Wednesday of each month. That means that after choir practice, I just wandered over the the parish hall to join my family for a dinner that Mr Deplume and I neither thought up nor cooked. And it was good.

And now we're home. Kids are in pajamas, homework is done, TV is on, and a bottle of Newcastle sits next to me, helping me celebrate another day of life.

Squash is good, most squash recipes not so much

I grew squash in my garden this summer. I planted too many plants (as usual) and ended up swimming in summer squash, cucumbers and acorn squash. I managed to eat or share all the cucumbers, almost did the same with the summer squash (a few ended up in the composter, poor things). Luckily, acorn squash are a little less picky about time, so the last 5 of them have been waiting patiently for me. Then to top it all off, someone gave me an organic butternut squash last week. They've been sitting on my kitchen table, taking up a bunch of room and mocking me, telling me that I'd have to cook them with brown sugar and butter like everyone else does.

But I'm not one to be bossed around by cucurbits, and I have searched high and low for squash recipes that don't taste like pumpkin pie or that Thanksgiving yam stuff with the marshmallows on top. A while back I stuffed an acorn squash with black beans and ground beef and garlic and cumin and chili powder, topped with cheddar cheese. It was good. Too bad I didn't write down what I did.

This week, determined to use that butternut squash, I found a recipe for Garlicky Baked Butternut Squash that sounded worth a try. I didn't have parsley so I substituted basil and rosemary, and had to use half acorn squash, but overall it turned out really good. Note: acorn squash takes longer to cook than butternut, so nuke the acorn a bit first unless you want acorn lumps in a sea of butternut puree.

Best part about the recipe is that Nigel refused to try it. How is that good, you ask? It means that I get leftovers.

I have a problem

It's November in Illinois, and I hate shoes.

As many of you know, I started running in the spring of this year. I did a sorta "couch-to-5K" method and ran that 5 kilometer race on July 4. I ran it in 36 minutes and change, and was not dead last. Apparently, not very many people actually train those 12 weeks and actually run a 5K on the first try, so I'm proud of my accomplishment.

But it all came at a price: shin splints. I iced them, I stretched my calves, I reduced mileage, but every time I ran, I had pain. I had lumpy hurty shins and nothing seemed to help. So I googled for three straight weeks and ended up looking at the testimonials of barefoot runners for whom doffing the shoes was the magic cure-all for running injuries.

Now me, being a pretty moderate sort of person, thought "ehhh, that's kinda weird and radical." But the more hippy-dippy, trust-in-nature side of me won out, and I gave it a shot. On August 10 I took off my shoes and ran a 1/4 mile around the high school track in my socks after my normal shin-paining run. It felt good enough to try again.

In pretty short order, I just stopped wearing shoes for running altogether, and aside from some achilles issues (fairly typical "Too Much Too Soon" injury after having spent years in shoes with elevated heels), I'm making progress.

But now it's getting cold. Over the last weeks, I started looking for some minimalist shoes to keep my tootsies warm this winter, thinking myself not tough enough for winter temperatures. But after trying on countless non-normal running shoes, I cannot find any that don't feel like foot coffins (as some of my favorite barefooters like to call them).

For now, as long as I run when it's sunny and dry out, I can count on warmish streets, even when the air temperature is undesirable. But be on the lookout here, dear readers, for makeshift running "shoes" that will let my feet feel free yet protected from the chilly monsters. I have years of crafting knowledge and the whole Internet at my disposal. It promises to be a ton of jury-rigged fun!

Halloween

Not much to write today, but I'm trying to post here even when there's nothing earth-shattering to report. So I'll share my kids' Halloween costumes.


Nora is Pippi Longstocking, with the dress "made" by me. I put the quotation marks in there, because it is actually a t-shirt top sewn up to be narrower in the bodice, then attached parts of two other t-shirts for the skirt. No real measuring, no sleeves to set in. Best part is that she asked if I could make her a couple of other dresses like that, but matching. That's the kind of clothes sewing I can really get behind-- straight lines only.

Nige is Bumblebee, the Transformer (his cousin was Optimus Prime. Two good guys ready to defeat any evildoers we might encounter on the walk around town). The only thing homemade on this costume is the binding around the neck, which is the handiwork of Grandma Karen. The material of the costume is a knit, and started to run at the neck when stretched. Thanks to her for a suit that can proudly be worn throughout the winter. (He loves all his superhero costumes and can regularly be seen around town fighting crime.)

I wore my old-timey dress to school on Friday for the kids' Halloween parties. It was fun. Six yards of fabric and a zillion hours of hand-stitching the skirt, and I've worn it twice. I'm going to be 19th-century Midwestern lady for all the foreseeable costume ocasions. (No new picture of it, sorry)

Fisharoni Surprise

It's no secret that I have a deep love for vintage craft magazines. They are glimpses into 20th century American life that you just can't get anywhere else. Lately I have a developed a particular fancy of The Workbasket, for it was not just a craft magazine, but also included gardening and cooking.

The garden section was ever filled with great information about how to store tuberous begonias for re-planting the following spring, and how to prune wisteria so that it will continue to bloom well. But then sometimes it would have a great tidbit like this:

Q. What is the vegetarian diet for venus fly trap plant? -- Mrs. R.G.H., OH
A. As these grow best in living sphagnum moos which decays with fertilizer, give each leaf of fly trap a tiny piece of lean raw beef each week.
(April, 1976, p. 28)

The cooking section relied heavily on recipes sent in from readers, for which they were paid. In 1953, a printed recipe was worth. In 1970, they were still paying $2 for recipes. (They did raise the reward to $5 by 1973 though. Housewives were apparently on to their game.)

While there are lots of good knit and crochet patterns in these volumes, my true enjoyment comes from those $2 recipes. My family and faithful readers will remember my foray into bacon cookies, which came directly from The Workbasket. And upon getting a 1966 issue given to me (thanks, Joy!), I immediately found this gem:

Fisharoni Surprise
1 (1 pound) can salmon, flaked you know, I haven't eaten canned salmon in probably 20 years. I could go get a can to try this out
1 medium can baked beans really? maybe I should rethink this recipe
1 medium size can tomato soup oh hell no
2 cups cooked macaroni thus the "roni" in the title. should I really be surprised?
1 medium size onion, chopped and sauteed in butter
2 tablespoons butter or margarine
salt and pepper to taste

also in that same issue was a recipe for Rosy Ham Loaf, which was a combination of ground ham and ground pork, mixed with tomato soup (of course!) and dry mustard, and topped with pineapple. I think that if I ever made this one, I'd need to serve Rosy Perfection Salad from Weight Watchers as well. (go on, click the link. you won't be worry)

Mr. Deplume has come up with the idea to have a dinner party wherein each guest must bring a dish made from a Workbasket recipe. The dishes must be prepared exactly as written. Everyone I talk to thinks this is a grand idea. I think that I would need to have a lot of pizza in the freezer in case we ended up with a inedible table full of canned soups and frankfurters. Look for your invitation in the mail!

From the random earworm files of Norm...

This song has been bebopping its way through my head all afternoon. I have no earthly idea why. I do love this movie. I think I need to add it to my Netflix queue again.

A few pictures

I once again have the writer's block. When in bed at night, my mind is FILLED with subjects I want to write about. But as soon as I drift off to slumberland, the blog imp comes and steals them all away from me. So, I manage to write pretty much nothing. Thankfully the camera still works, and each picture is worth a thousand words, so I'm gonna have a slide show.

First, the boy's 5th birthday was at the end of August (so sue me, I'm a slacker). I had a modest goal of serving him a cake not purchased from a grocery store's bakery. He wanted a Transformers-themed party, so I had my work cut out for me. Jumping to my aid was my friend Kaia, who owns a car-shaped pan, so I embarked on my first cake decoration attempt: The Autobot named Bumblebee. I used to think that I'd like to decorate cakes as a hobby. It turns out, I do not. (There's a chance that I would have enjoyed it more if my pastry bag and bag tips hadn't been MIA, forcing me to use only a Ziploc freezer bag and my gumption to frost the cake)

It's completely lopsided, but the boy was happy with it, and it tasted pretty good.

Next, I owe you a picture of my kitchen. There's still a soffit to be built around the sink's vent pipe, but the wallpaper is up and the painting is basically done. Even in its unfinished state, it's a 382% improvement over how it had looked since we moved in. If only I could afford to have the floor and counters replaced....


Lastly for today, I owe you a picture of knitting. However, the knitting I've been doing is too boring to bother turning on the camera. I've recently been knitting neck gaiters (the pattern spells it "gator" but I don't think that's right), one being an exact replica of one I knit in the spring, for Citizen Sam. I don't think I ever posted about this before, so I'll show you a picture of its older twin. (You can see that I made a hat in the spring too. I haven't made another hat yet, but I have more yarn, so it's probably just a matter of time).

If one 9" knitted tube weren't boring enough of a summer knit, I've cast on another one, this one navy blue, for keeping in the family. I think all this k2p2 ribbing is finally giving me the motivation to get back to more challenging projects. So that's good.

I really hope to keep up with the posting, and not put writing off enough for another month. But we'll see. My slacker-fu is very strong.

Uh, that was weird...

I just went into my upstairs bathroom, flipped on the light, and was promptly greeted with an explosion. The light bulb on the sconce by the mirror blew up. I have never known that to happen before. Anyone of you, my faithful reader(s), who can allay my fear that our home's wiring is irreparably dodgy? Please someone tell me that sometimes light bulbs in normal, safe homes shoot holes in themselves? Or was this just a warning shot? Should I be moving all my valuables to a secure location?


P.S. I find it funny that Firefox's spellcheck recognizes "dodgy" and "wonky", but not "bockety"

Norm's Bits

I've never seen the Larry King Show. I have, however, seen several comedians do impressions of Larry King, many of which include him just rambling through his thoughts, one after another. I have never understood why he would do this, or if he really even does it (The Google tells me that it's a column called "King's Things", but I'm still dubious). Lately, though, it seems that nothing I wish to share here is long enough for its own entry, so I'm gonna pull a Larry and do the random thoughts thing, no matter how inane it seems to be. It might be stupid, but it keeps me from posting this crap on Twitter or Facebook. So here goes:

The kitchen is almost done. But the closer I get to finished, the slower my progress seems to be.

I knit a hat, hoping to break through my lack of knit-ability lately. I started it, ripped it out because it was too big, reknit it smaller, and it's still too big. Still no mojo. Dammit.

The youngest member of the Deplume household starts kindergarten on Tuesday. I'm nervous as a cat about it (and that's saying something-- both of our cats are very nervous critters).

I intend to ditch my $40+ per month Verizon cell phone and get a Net10 one instead. I've procrastinated on it for almost three months, though, because I'm not sure how to switch the phone number over.

I'm going to try my hand into barefoot running. Maybe I should have said "dip my toes into barefoot running." No, that would be lame. Either way, I attempted it for the first time this week and it was not nearly as hard as I thought it would be.

I screwed up and took my daughter to the dentist for a cleaning after only five months instead of six. That's a $152 mistake, as insurance refused to pay for the visit and the fluoride treatment.

Until this morning, I had forgotten how much I like Big Lots. $1 nail polish? $2 Organic granola? What's not to love?

My daughter is at her first slumber party tonight. She thinks she will get homesick. The party is all of three blocks away.

I got a little bit of a sunburn today at the pool. I'm 37 years old. I should know better.

I think that's it for now.

Kitchen pictures

I'm in a knitting slump. I made a sock, it got set aside, I finally picked it back up and made it too short. I pulled out the toe and re-knit it, made it longer, and it's still too short. It's just par for the course lately. A while before that I crocheted a granny square. As I rounded the last corner of the second round, I realized that I had made a granny triangle. I also have a sweater that I started, and I keep thinking that I'll never be able to finish it, so why bother working on it at all. See? I have lost my mojo.

The upside to failing at the yarny arts is that I have been working on the long-suffering kitchen. (By the way, I do mean to say that it has been doing the suffering. The poor room has been terribly embarrassed at its state for more than three months now.)

This last weekend, I finally primed the walls (with a miracle product called Gardz) and then painted the ceiling. Of course I dislike painting ceilings on a good day, but painting over a mushroom-colored glossy ceiling is a special brand of Hell (should that be capitalized? I assume it's a proper noun, right?). After about three coats of ceiling paint, I was left with this (see what I mean about a sad kitchen?):


Yesterday, I decided to tackle the wallpaper. I was a little intimidated because A) it's only my second wallpapering project, the first one being the dining room a couple of years ago, and B)this random-looking wallpaper has a repeat which I really thought I was unable to find. But I pressed on, found the three tiny dots that signaled the pattern's matching point, and dove in. I was left with this.



It's the only wall that is done so far. I hope to get wall #2 done today. It's slow going because it's all windows and cabinets and doors everywhere, but I have hope for the future of my kitchen. Now if I could only happen upon a spare thousand dollars to have the floor replaced...

That figures.

First full day of vacation. Younger child under the weather. Just found that rechargeable batteries did not take the charge the other night. Trip to Target imminent.

Will update more colorfully soon.

In the mornings, Mr. Deplume is up and is gone for work before the kids and I awake. Our routine is such that he brews a whole pot of coffee, drinks some, fills up his brewed-but-cold moving sauce for my mornings. It works for me, because I am not a morning person and brewing coffee is pretty taxing on my barely awake brain.

Just to illustrate how very mushy my brain is in the mornings, I'll share with you an anecdote:
I just went to refill my coffee, but it was cold (obviously) so I headed through the kitchen to heat it up. I walked straight to the refrigerator, opened it, and started to put my cup in. At that point I got a breath of the cold air and thought "hey, that's not gonna heat up my coffee". So I felt silently embarrassed, walked back across the kitchen and heated the drink in the microwave.

I of course had to immediately share this via IM with Mr. Deplume, who is at work, and he replied thusly:
I was getting ready to brew the coffee here, filled up the carafe to pour into the Bunn... instead of doing that I walked into my office and poured cold water into my coffee cup. Guess we are on the same level of awareness this morning.

That is proof that we're soulmates, right?

Lots of stuff (I wish I had a better title, but it just ain't gonna happen)

It's been a busy few weeks in the Deplume household. There has been a garden planted, school year ended, kitchen cabinets painted, miles run, and anniversaries celebrated (our parents, not us-- ours is next month). I have taken pictures of a lot of it, but will only share a little here.

First off, a couple of weeks ago my mom and sister had a garage sale. I put some things out too, but I only made $12, so I don't think it really counts as my sale. My mother had this for sale. She got it at an auction with some other things, and didn't immediately notice anything other than the cute bunnies. I brought it home of course, thinking that I'd tuck it away for a risque gift-giving occasion. There are a few of my fellow yarnies on Ravelry who I think would particularly enjoy it.

There's a problem, however. Our son saw it and promptly claimed it as his cup. He wants to drink out of it all the time. He would be crestfallen if I took it away from him. This is another one of those situations that makes me wonder about this parenting gig. How am I supposed to explain why he cannot keep his beloved bunny mug? If I don't take it away, how long until he or his older sister figures it out? This is one of those things that will have us all in stitches as we reminisce around the Thanksgiving table in 2038, isn't it?

In other news, I finished the shawl that I thought would never end. In all honesty, it probably should be another inch or two bigger, but I just couldn't bear to knit anymore. It had been with me for 13 months now, and it was time to get those needles back. I think I'll make a sweater next-- with hopes that it would be done before fall sweater season, 2009. I don't hold out much hope on that, though. I do love the colors and the yarn is very soft, I hope that despite its petite-ness (petite-i-tude? petition?) I'll manage to use it lots.
Ravelry Link




There is more news (and pictures) to share, but it's now 6:52 PM and I'm the only member of the family not in my jammies yet, so it will have to wait until tomorrow. See you then!

I've gone high tech, I think

In an effort to make it easier for everyone to comment, I installed a new gadget that should allow you all to post comments without having to a) register/sign in to some web service and/or b) be 100% Anonymous.

In theory, you should be able to choose the "guest" option now, and then can type your name in the "nickname" box. Be warned, though, that if you forget to type something in for your nickname, it will name you "guest" and, well, that's no better than before.

If you have any problems, please email me your issues (normdeplume 720 at gmail dot com-- without the spaces, of course) so that I can try to fix them. I cannot seem to sign out enough to test it all for myself.

In which Norm is again stickin' it to the man

We love popcorn here at the Deplume household. I grew up in one of those homes where there was a dedicated popcorn-cooking pan. It was made in large enough quantities that there could be leftovers the next morning. It was a big deal.

However, when I grew up and Mr. Deplume set off to make our own household, we didn't have a popcorn pan. Nor did we have the room in our 465 sqft. apartment to have one, let alone an electric popcorn popper. The only 'real' option for us was to start purchasing microwave popcorn.

Problem is, microwave popcorn isn't any good. It's usually heavily-laden with that nuclear orange diacetyl (the butter-flavored chemical that tastes nothing like any butter I've ever encountered), salt (enough to kill a slug) and hydrogenated oils. Still, we stuck with it, addicted to the ease of plopping a packet into the nuker and pushing the "popcorn" button. I had resigned myself to doing this for the rest of my days.

But lately, we've been having troubles. First, our microwave was too small, so the bag would get stuck, burning the popcorn. Then, we upsized to a larger unit, only to find that the bag would still get stuck if we didn't center it right. There were other problems, all very irritating, which ended with one of two problems: unpopped kernels or charred popcorn-shaped briquettes.

So this morning I was avoiding housework (as usual)and started looking at popcorn poppers. Thanks to The Google's power, I happened upon this recipe for homemade microwave popcorn. I headed to the grocery store to buy popcorn and lunch sacks. Brought them home, threw 1/4 of corn in the bag with a drizzle of canola oil, folded it up, and two minutes later I had popcorn. Popcorn plus bag (both bought at full price in my little neighborhood grocery)cost $.27, which is considerably less than I normally pay for the pre-bagged stuff. Take that, Act II and all your friends on the convenience snack shelves!

I love being cheap-- bargains are fun.