Laurabelle's Blog

Since I finished the lace shawl, I needed a new project. (Two works-in-progress aren’t enough, especially if they involve sewing-up. I dislike stitching my knitted pieces together.) Therefore, I started a steering wheel cover.

The good thing is, it’s small and will be finished pretty quickly. It’s also a cable (which I like) and an intarsia cable at that (which I had never tried before). It was fun at first, but unfortunately it became boring fairly quickly.

I made a mistake in the cable a few pattern repeats back (I twisted after 10 rows instead of 8). I spent a while thinking about whether to go back and fix it, then decided I couldn’t bear not to (now that I’d noticed it) and ripped it out. Still, I’m at least two-thirds done, and it won’t take me too much longer to finish.

A few months ago I joined Ravelry, and it has changed my knitting world. I can search for patterns and see what yarns people have used and how it looks on various body shapes. I can look up a particular yarn and see what people have done with it. And last but not least, I can record my own projects and stash.

To Jeff, late at night: But if I stay up a little bit longer, I can tick off another 5% on this project!

This weekend Jeff and I tried our hike to Sky High Lakes and Summit Lake a second time. I guess the third time will have to be the charm for this one.

We drove up to Yreka on Friday and got to the ranger station in Fort Jones just in time to get our campfire permit for the year. The lady who issued our permit mentioned that there might be snow on the trail, but we weren't sure her information was accurate or relevant to us (she was reporting information given by rangers and didn't seem familiar with the trail herself). We decided to proceed with the hike regardless.

We spent the night in a motel and got on the trail by about 9am on Saturday morning.

The trail was lovely and felt easier than it had last year, both because the temperature was more comfortable and because Jeff had new boots (and therefore complained less). The streams were deeper than last year but still passable; we encountered a few snow patches at medium elevations but nothing to worry about.

I finally got some wedding photos uploaded to Flickr. They're not very high-resolution images (and how I got them is a not-yet-finished saga, which I hope will eventually have a happy ending). However, they're there for folks to look at.

I restricted access to friends and family for any photo that includes anyone besides me or Jeff. If you're a friend or family member and don't have a Flickr account, let me know; I can give you a guest pass to see all the photos (although you won't be able to add comments).

The Saga I referred to is that the wedding photographer appears to have disappeared. She took photos of the wedding and put them up on her website so we could see them; so far is fine. Admittedly I then took a long time getting an order in, which I did last October. I mailed her a check with a list of the image ID numbers I wanted. I also ordered a high-resolution CD of all the images, and she assured me in email that I had the right to upload the images to Flickr. Great.

But since then I heard nothing more from her. I emailed her multiple times, until my emails started bouncing (with a weird "Temporary error on maildir delivery" message I've never seen before). I tried phoning, but the phone number on her website goes to someone else now. We had another lead, but that didn't pan out either. I did email her again this week, and it didn't bounce, but I haven't heard anything back either.

I know she took my money; I have a copy of the cancelled check.

The photos on Flickr are scraped from her website, but I don't feel guilty because I did pay her to use the images. I'm hoping I'll get to replace them with a better version at some point, but at this point I'm really not sure how this is going to turn out.

I am not generally a spontaneous person; I like to plan things out. Jeff and I had plans for this weekend (maybe not perfect plans, but plans nonetheless). As you might guess, our plans didn't exactly work out.

We had been planning to hike the Alder Creek Fall trail (starting at Wawona near Yosemite's south entrance). I worked a slightly short day on Saturday; Jeff picked me up, and we headed straight to Yosemite. The drive was excellent — nice traffic levels, and we saw no fewer than four large gliding birds that we thought were California Condors (I could be wrong — I don't remember seeing white on the bottom of the wings although I didn't get that good a look).

The plan was to stay the night in Wawona, then start on the trail on Sunday morning. It would be a two-day hike, in-and-out, camping at Alder Creek Falls. Unfortunately, what I hadn't planned for well enough was where we would stay the night on Saturday. I had sort of figured that would work itself out, I think; I guess I figured there wouldn't be many people there in the off-season. When we got there and realized that, gee, there were people there and we didn't have campground reservations, we panicked a little and decided to start hiking with the last of the sunlight and camp somewhere on the trail. Then when Jeff tried to fill out a wilderness permit (on paper from my organizer since they were out of actual forms), he noticed that the Alder Creek Trail was closed for controlled burns. Expletive!

This made me pretty mad at the park ranger who had responded to Jeff's query about hiking in the Wawona area that weekend, since she had not mentioned any controlled burns. I'm sure they plan these things in advance, and that's important information!

Jeff and I went to Article Pract today for a couple of knitting needles, and then we passed by Bakesale Betty. Jeff decided he wanted a chicken pot pie, so I ordered one. We were both tempted by the cookies or lemon bars but abstained.

I was handed a bag containing two boxes. I said, But there are two boxes! The guy said, I know, I put in an apple pie too.

That's some freebie! We figured it may make business sense because it's getting toward the end of the day and maybe they weren't going to sell it anyway. Also, they've gained substantial good will as far as I'm concerned.

The pot pie takes over an hour to cook at home, so we had dessert first. Mmmm, pie.

I tripped, fell, and skinned my knee on the way into work today. I also overstretched a muscle or something in my calf on the same leg. I’m not sure which is worse, the pain (and limping) of the strain or the embarrassment of the skinned knee. I’m twenty-mumble years old, and I thought my skinning days were long over.

A co-worker noted that the day could only go up from there, and he was right.

Yesterday Jeff and I made a rice-and-beans dish called Moors and Christians. I chose it by letting the cookbook (How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman) fall open to a random page; that method seems to have worked out excellently in this case.

Moors and Christians is basically a stew of black beans, bell pepper, onion, and garlic (and optional tomatoes) served with rice pilaf. The recipe doesn't call for any spices, but we added some -- which I now have to write down so I don't forget the next time we make this! We put a bit of saffron in the rice; the beans got cumin, turmeric, and a smidgen of habanero powder for just a little heat. (We actually have measuring spoons labeled smidgen, pinch, and dash, in that order from small to large. The dash is about a quarter of a teaspoon, and the smidgen looks like less than a sixteenth of a teaspoon.) I think next time I will put turmeric and cumin in the rice instead of saffron, and I may cut down on the habanero powder as well. It was not too much this time, but I don't think I would want the beans any hotter.

I created my dæmon on the Golden Compass movie site. Friends, do you think a tiger dæmon is right for me?

Thanksgiving, like most of my fall, was marked by food — as well it should be. It was just Jeff and myself for for our little celebration, since we have no family nearby and friends already had plans. But we put together our own little dinner, with Cornish game hens instead of turkey, because one only needs so much leftovers.

The menu:

• Creamy sweet potato soup
• Glazed, stuffed, roasted rock Cornish hens
• Wild rice and porcini stuffing
• Broccoli gratin
• Bread (store-bought, but from an independent bakery)

Most of the recipes are from the Joy of Cooking, 1990's revision. However, I must recommend the sweet potato soup, which was not from the Joy of Cooking. It's like liquid sweet potato pie.

I am thankful for my husband. I am thankful that we both have good jobs that we enjoy and that let us live comfortably. I am thankful that I have a home to stay and be comfortable in; I am thankful that I am not driving or flying this week.

I didn't take any pictures of our Thanksgiving dinner, unfortunately (the hens did turn out fairly nice-looking), but I do have photos of some of our other gustatory adventures.

At the end of October, I made beef stock and canned it in a new pressure canner. The impetus for the canner was Eatwell Farm's "Tomato Party," an event spurred by a medfly quarantine preventing the farm from distributing its tomatoes and much of their other produce. The tomatoes could not leave the farm while raw, but they were safe if cooked for at least thirty minutes, so they let members come and cook their own tomato sauce on-site. Jeff and I canned ours in boiling water, and it seems to have worked well enough, but our equipment was less than satisfactory.

Then it turned out that the farm's current laying hens are about to stop laying enough to pay for their feed, so the farm is going to get rid of them. Jeff and I are buying five hens, four for stock and one for cooking. We used to freeze chicken stock, but that is inconvenient both because it takes up freezer space and because it has to be melted before use. So I bought a pressure canner, and its first run was with a few jars of beef stock.

If you're wondering what a pressure canner looks like, imagine a big burly aluminum pot with screws to hold the lid down and a pressure gauge on top. It's more or less a very large pressure cooker.

We used the first jar of our very own beef stock earlier this week in French onion soup. Needless to say, it was excellent and much more satisfying than the "beef-flavored stock" I have been buying out of laziness. Honestly, stock isn't very hard. It does take a bit of initial time investment, but it pays off in laziness at the end.

Speaking of Eatwell Farm, I made an amazing omelet a few weeks ago. Well, it probably wasn't as good as a gourmet chef could make, but it was both tasty and beautiful. I generally achieve tastiness to at least some degree, but beauty in my cooking is due more to luck than craft.

All of the major ingredients in this breakfast came from Eatwell Farm (eggs, onion, bell pepper, and potatoes). Technically I think the peppers were grown on another farm due to the quarantine, but they came in our CSA box.

You may have noticed that the menu did not include dessert. This was mostly because we were too tired to make a pie last night, but it was just as well; we got pretty full. Besides, Jeff made me a pumpkin pie for my birthday earlier this month, and we both enjoyed that mightily. Especially Jeff.