lots o knitting

the common cold is only good for one thing: knitting time. for the past three days i've watched a lot of tv (including the world series -- dare i say, i'm glad that's over) and knitted in between nose blowing and tea drinking. i can't say i've ever been this stuffed up in all my life. blech.

the silver lining is that i have made good progress on the eggplant scarf, which was on hiatus until i received some more yarn in the mail, and have also got a few rows in on the tree jacket. in other knitting news, i got my invite to ravelry -- yahoo! check me out!

f.o.: li'l green

newest f.o., this one for two of my favorite nebraska cornhuskers who are expecting a li'l red of their own anytime now....

bambino blanket

the deets:

pattern: made up completely -- wicked easy, good ol' standby garter stitch for the blanket (great for knitting up during the many rugby and baseball games i've been watching lately) with a made-up crochet stitch for the edge. the crochet pattern i guess might have a real name, but i don't know what it is since i made this up
yarn: lion's brand homespun in green and cream

needles: u.s. size 10.5

started: approx. 8/1/07

finished: 9/14/07

the pud likes the blanket, too. to the future owners, please excuse any fuzzy spots in the yarn. ena liked to sit on it when i wasn't working on it.

my cat won't stay in one place long enough to take her photo.
yet she was very interested in being in the photo. probably
because she wants to show off her pink camo collar.

props to the rocks

good job rockies! i'm so excited to watch your luck carry through the world series. for the first time in a long time, i'm going to root for the NL. shh, don't tell....

restoring world order

you bet your ass they are the best team, mr. laporte. at least we've got that straight.

saturday night out

we ate dinner at a new-to-us restaurant last night called olea. it's in the pearl district, and serves a great menu of mediterranean/pacific nw cuisine. we enjoyed a very leisurely meal that started with prosciutto wrapped dates (with a vanilla oil -- yum) and cornmeal fried sardines with caper aioli, joined with two glasses of brut rose. mickey had steak frites, and i had wild mushroom and rapini buccatini, both of which paired great with a bottle of jigsaw pinot from the willamette valley. we were stuffed from dinner, so no dessert, which was unfortunate because they had delicious options. the restaurant was in an impressive building, with great lighting (i'm very picky). and, the service was perfect. i'm definitely going back.

we also saw cabaret, starring wade mccollum and storm large (of rockstar: supernova fame). it was pretty good -- not as good as the dinner, but enjoyable enough. mickey and i agreed it didn't take the themes far enough. i felt like the acting was a little flat and storm's gestures were forced. wade was delightful as always, but i feel like they could have let him be a little more tawdry, like in hedwig. overall, i felt like it had a lot of potential, but the director played it safe and stifled two actors who have so much potential to capture the raw, sexual, racy side of the show.

then, i came home and fell asleep on the couch and missed the 11 inning win from the indians. sounded amazing.

go rockies!

weekend score

we started the weekend on a high note with the chili cookoff: 33 chilis, about 60 people, a few rain sprinkles, and all around a good time. we are so grateful for our friends and colleagues who came to the party.

we're ending on a low note: new zealand lost to france in the rugby world cup. as a sky tv broadcaster once said: we are drinking from the slough of despondency. i'm stunned. disgusted. o new zealand, you broke my heart today.

it's october and it's raining

damn you, weather gods. i said no rain until after the chili cookoff. i have 60+ people coming to my house this weekend, and i need to be able to plug in 30 crockpots in another location besides my small kitchen.

but, since it's raining, i'll take the opportunity to knit, watch the playoffs and catch a few rugby matches in between.

is that a rain cloud with a silver lining? this i ponder...

and so, the season comes to an end....

it's only fitting that today, the last day of the regular season, it's raining and gross and i feel a bit gloomy and wistful. rooting for the mariners this season was quite a ride. there was a stretch there in august where it really looked like we could make the playoffs. september came and went, and i have to admit i didn't watch most of those games, mostly because i couldn't experience a heartbreak every other night.

this texas series gave me a chance to see some new guys in action, giving me hope for next season, not to mention some stand-out performance from that little bowl-haircutted jamie burke. at the same time, i dread the decisions that will occur this winter to determine the line-up for next year.

i beg of the front office in seattle: please don't trade yuni or beltre. i'm fine if you get rid of sexon. i actually encourage it. seriously.

despite the ups and downs, it was a sweet, sweet summer of baseball. until next year, my favorite mariners...

PS: go rockies.

finally, the FO i've been waiting for

last night, i finished the new zealand blanket.

finished. seams sewn. ends woven. fringe embellishment added. finished.

so, for any reader who's new here, this is the blanket i started last february during our trip to new zealand. instead of buying souvenirs, i bought a skein of yarn in most of the spots we stopped at during the trip. i had managed to purchase all but three skeins by the time my granny died and we had to come back to the states, so i purchased yarn in denver and in oregon (on our last day off before going back to work after a month).

i've been knitting off and on ever since, and it seemed like i would never finish. and once i did finish, i dreaded sewing the thing together.

but all of a sudden, before i realized it, i was finished with all the squares, and the sewing took no more than two rugby matches and an episode of globe trekker (translation: about 3.5 hours, max, with some stopping in between). fringe took another hour. and voila.

it's not perfect. i made mistakes. but i love it still.

gratuitous close up of the first square i started knitting, in the rain, in kaikoura

for all the knitters, here are some details:

pattern: design source collections "four seasons throws" for 12 squares, misc. patterns for 8 squares
yarn (not in any order, including location purchased):

• utiku wools perendale ("iris", utiku; orange "traffic", utiku)
  
• shepherd colour 4 me (light blue, dunedin)
• cleckheaton country (maroon, dunedin; black, whangarei; sage, taupo; olive green, whangarei; heather grey, dunedin; butter yellow, kaikoura)
• cleckheaton country naturals (oatmeal, greymouth; grey tweed, dunedin)
  
• rainbow pure wool (teal, blenheim; red, greymouth; navy, greymouth)
• crucci, clan stewart perendale (cream, blenheim)
• ashford tekapo (rust, whangarei)
• lamb's pride worsted (blue magic, denver; mottled red "prairie fire", hillsboro)
  

needles: my granny's hand-me-down metal needles, u.s. size 10

started: approx. 2/8/06

finished: 9/19/07

modifications: pattern blocks measured approx. 11.5 inches, vs 13 inches, as called for by the pattern. i also increased the blanket size by adding 8 squares, which required the addition of different patterns than what design source called for. i found these online in various sources, plus made up a couple.

*sigh*

how it's made: pre-beer

saturday mickey, our friend karen and i had an amazing opportunity to tour a hops farm, thanks to an amazing woman, friend and former coworker of mine, amy. karen, mike and i are big beer fans, not to mention homebrewers ourselves, so this was a great chance to see how our beloved beer starts out.

located outside keizer, amy's family farm supplies an insane amount of hops to anheuser-busch, as well as to a local hops distributorship which supplies hops to local microbrewers. her family has been farming this land for three generations. incredible.

amy gave us a complete tour of the working farm, which is in full swing these days, harvesting and drying nugget hops. the tour started in the field, where we watched the hops vines get cut from the tall wires where they've been strung for growing. the hops vines are transported by large red trailers to the processing building.

hops cutters in the field

to start the processing, the hops vines are hooked on large meat hook-like devices and run up to a machine that essentially rubs the hops cones from the stems.

hops being strung for processing

through a series of conveyor belts and sorters, the cones are separated from the vines, and run across the road to another building. here, the hops are left to dry in heated swimming pool-sized compartments for nine hours.

the sorting process

mickey, karen, me and a pool o' drying hops

after drying, they're moved to a huge warehouse, where they settle for another day. then it's off to be bagged, and finally the hops are driven to the local buyers, where they're sold to make yours truly her favorite beer of choice.

we (loosely) calculated the following:

• each bag of packaged, dried hops holds 200 pounds, or 3,200 oz
• at roughly 2 oz of hops per home-brewed batch of beer, that means that each bag has enough hops to produce 1,600 batches of home-brewed beer
  
• our 5 gallon batch of homebrew produces 52 beers each, so conceivably, the hops in each bag are used to make about 88,000 bottles of beer.
  

but wait, there's more.

we saw at least 50 bags in the warehouse, waiting to be driven to the distributor. that tallies to 4.4 million bottles of beer. !!!

AND: that doesn't include the bags they'd already taken to the distributor that morning; nor the 10x10x30 pile of dried hops waiting to be bagged; nor the two full swimming pool-size drying compartments; nor their entire harvest of willamette hops that had already been processed and shipped earlier in the month.

amy jokingly said, they're changing the world at their farm. she's not kidding. that's a LOT of happy beer drinkers. i feel drunk thinking about the magnitude.

in addition to growing hops, amy's family also is the largest hosta grower this side of the mississippi, and also grows thousands of other perennial plants for nurseries and plant sales. as we drove through their farms, amy was sweet enough to give us several plants to take home. oh, and we left with a bag o' freshly dried nugget hops that will probably allow us to make at least 5 batches of beer.

our hostess with the mostest, with her favorite flower on the farm

as if hops and free plants weren't enough to put us in a state of delirium, amy's mom had prepared us the most delicious lunch to enjoy on their swimming pool patio: the richest, tastiest chicken salad sandwiches served on croissants, homemade pasta salad, fruit, and for dessert, a pistachio cream cake that put me in a state of such ecstasy that i could barely drive back to portland.

i'm honored and extremely grateful to amy and her family for sharing her farm and its bounty with us. it was beyond anything that i could have expected when she invited us down.

truthfully, i can't think about a more perfect way to spend a september saturday. THANKS AMY!!!!

All Blacks haka

the kapa o pango haka, just to get you in the mood for this month...

baseball or rugby? my teevee may explode...

as is evident on my blog, i'm a pretty serious baseball fan. this is my favorite time of year because the pennant races are in full swing, and every game counts. sadly, my beloved mariners are sucking it up, and thus, the fact that my second favorite sport is gearing up at this moment offers a delightful distraction from having to watch the m's lose yet another game.

yes, that's right: it's international world cup rugby time. and thank goodness for setanta sports, because i can watch all the games from the comfort of our basement! the all blacks from new zealand look good this year, but of course, i'm biased because as i've said before, i'm slightly in love with dan carter.

i received the best email all year from a girlfriend of mine who's married to a south african, and big springboks fan. he used to play rugby in SA, and they're equally excited about the world cup. she emailed to let me know she watched a special on dan carter, and just for good measure, attached a photo of the fly half.

to quote amanda, "well, yum"

i won't hold it against them that, should the all blacks and springboks match up, they'll likely root for that long haired pretty boy percy montgomery. :)

i also have a date this coming week with semaphoria and ivar forkbeard to watch a little rugby action. they're both former ruggers, so it's great time spent enjoying their company and learning about the sport.

i love rugby. i love that my friends like rugby. it's going to be a great month!

back from the west

this weekend we spent a fabulous weekend with third base and her family in idaho, plus saw my ma and her husbot for a couple hours as well. it was a whirlwind trip that was far too short in terms of vacations, but still we got some QT in with my fam.

my lil sis is pretty amazing -- she and her husband study gracie jiu-jitsu. my BIL is already a blue belt, and this weekend, third base tested successfully to earn hers. apparently she's one of only a couple females who practice jiu-jitsu in their gym in salt lake city, and it was pretty impressive to see her kick some serious ass in class. she and her husbot were kind enough to teach us a few jiu-jitsu moves during class on saturday, and the good news is that neither mickey nor i broke our necks in the process.

probably the highlight of the weekend was spending an entire day playing games with those two, plus my nephew, who is such a delight and is a wonderful, smart and silly boy. we see them so rarely, and admittedly i don't always prioritize my family above other trips that we take, but this trip reminds me that time passes too quickly, and that people -- especially my nephew -- can change so much in just a year. note to self: see them more often, and be a better aunt.

as an aside, i was also struck by how gorgeous salt lake city is (we flew in and out of there). every time i head back to the mountain west, i feel slightly homesick for the bright blue skies and scrubby mountains. i love oregon, but can't help but ask myself where in the mountain west can i find an affordable, liberal, young urban city to park for the next decade. this is my dream....

i'm yarn torn

so, no, the nz blanket is not done. but, it's 1.5 squares away from being done. and no, the baby blanket i started for a girlfriend is not done either, but it's an easy project (garter stitch all the way), so it's easy to pick up whilst watching the mariners.

but, i've bought this pattern and am anxious to get started. it'll be my first sweater, and i want to not only love the yarn but love the final product. the sad thing, though, is that i just got back from a visit to two LYSs and didn't find any yarn (in my price range) that fit the bill perfectly. karabella aurora 8 was the closest, but i'm not 100% sold. which tells me to keep searching.

the pattern calls for a worsted weight wool blend, something like alpaca/merino/silk. i didn't really see any that i loved. so i moved on to consider di.ve teseo which comes in pretty colors, but i'm afraid it's too heavy (wool/microfiber). the yarn i really want to use is cascade pima silk, which i adore after using it for toots's baby blanket. but the knitting lady assured me that it was not the right choice because, being cotton and silk, it will be heavy and drapey.

gak. what to do? yarn suggestions are appreciated.

off to work on one of two blankets.....

laying down a tasty beat

the guy next door is holding a garage sale today. apparently it's not been going very well, because he's now pulled out a stand up bongo drum, and is pounding on it with two wooden mallets. is this similar to a rain dance? is he attempting to conjure up garage sale goers, trinket trackers and junk gypsies?

alas, i fear his garage sale entertainment is not working. i think he should get that mariachi band back.

history, i suppose...

in may, our ISP was having a sale on domains, and i proposed to mickey that we should buy "asteriskforbarry.com". i didn't know what i'd do with it, and plus, we also debated about whether it was fair to single out barry over all the others who admit juicing. in the end, we didn't buy it, and i'm fine with the decision.

i don't support barry bonds if he juiced. i don't really even like him as a player. he's never really done it for me, and lately he seems so bitter and arrogant that i can't stand to look at his surly mug.

oddly enough, though, despite this, a little tiny part of me, at this moment, feels a tiny bit of sympathy for barry bonds and the treatment he gets, not only from the press, but also from mlb upper management. while i haven't seen selig's statement on tonight's accomplishment, i did read with disgust the milquetoast response barry got from selig on 755. selig could have been a bit more congratulatory, or at least more polite. mickey's theory is that selig's response means that mlb knows something that the rest of us don't know. i am not sure what i think of that theory, but can see his logic there.

nevertheless, today history was made, like it or not. i just sure wish that i felt like celebrating it. i just can't find it my bleeding baseball heart to do so.

867-5309

mickey observantly informed me that today at 5:30:9 was the jenny second.

8/6/07 5:30:9

get it?

photo magiq

i finally got around yesterday to uploading our vancouver pix to flickr, so enjoy. what a great trip that was.

speaking of photos, i love the magic of digital photography. it's so fast, so economical, and over the years has allowed me instant gratification for photo viewing after a vacation. i'm not willing to invest in a professional grade digital camera, though, so normally my photos look quite good, but not jaw-droppingly amazing.

we took exactly one roll of film on our vacation to paris and london this year, and just today i had those pix developed. i'm kicking myself now for not taking more film, because the pictures were astounding. the clarity and detail mickey captured with them was gorgeous. there is one photo of big ben that made me feel like i was standing in front of it again.

while i don't think i'll give up digital, i'm definitely ready to recommit to film. i know i'll end up carrying around two cameras, but after looking at this set, it's totally worth it.

business time

we watched this several weeks ago and forgot how funny it was until our friend neffry reminded us of it on wednesday. i've watched it four times since then...and will probably watch it four more times this weekend.

sweet, sweet mariner lovin'

as if wednesday's game wasn't awesome enough, tonight's victory over the bo-sox capped off a fun week to watch baseball as a mariners fan. i'm telling you -- 2 of 3 from the angels, and maintaining position at 1 out of the wild card. now, if we can hold up against daisuke tomorrow.... oh, to be in seattle this weekend....

oh, and one more square of the NZ blanket done. two more to go. i can't find the ball of yarn for the last square. guess i'll deal with that when i get to that point. which will probably be in probably another 4 months. frick.

update: just read this post by a rabid reds fan, and though i don't share a passion for this particular team, i do consider myself a devout follower of the church of baseball she references. plus, it's the most enjoyable writing i've read in a long while. huzzah!