three favorite pix

these are three favorite photos from the past month. nothing like catching mountain snow and beautiful beaches in one month. travel is such a miraculous thing.

new year's resolutions

so far, this is what has been running through my head:

1. lose 20 pounds (and if i lose 10 in january, my reward is booking a trip to mexico...hey, it's an incentive)
2. be more motivated around the house, and not just go to bed at 9pm every night like i love to do
3. work hard and take advantage of a great professional opportunity that has presented itself to me
4. see friends more
5. read more
6. blog more

so far:

1. lost 4 pounds since new years, am exercising during the week (not saying how often, but at least it's something), drinking less, eating less, cooking at home, and eating sensibly when out
2. took one entire carload of crap to goodwill, organized boxes that hadn't seen the light of day since we moved to this house in 04 (and found stuff i thought i lost), hung pictures in the dining room that had been sitting in a pile since we moved
3. working more, but feel very positive and in a good mood about it, plus not panicked like i have been prone to be in the past
4. went to dinner with a friend the other night, have plans with a couple more for later this month, and am planning a girls getaway with college friends for april or so
5. started reading a great little book on account services to help me do my job better
6. (insert debbie downer sound here)

it's not that i haven't had things to say, i just have been doing all those other things so have not had time on lappy to catch up. i have pix from christmas to upload and share, photos of the tree jacket's progress, a recipe for the most delicious marinara sauce i've ever had (thanks to step-sis monica), and other bits and bits to share.

stay tuned for all of this....i have done so well on all the other things on my list that i am sure i'll finally catch up on ye olde bloge.

happy new year all -- may your 2008 be propserous and full of adventure!

flying to the wild, wild west is not as easy as taking a wagon train, i suspect

greetings and happy holidays from wyo! we've had a delightful stay in my hometown these past few days. there are 12 of us here at one time, all in my mom's house, and despite the occasional sniping and snapping, we're all getting along well. spending christmas with my fabulous nephew has been fabulous. he's such a great kid and even though i called him a frog today, he's cute as can be. plus, we had a white christmas, and even though the weather was frigid, it's been gorgeous.

the only drawback to this entire trip has been our flights. we had used free tix to get here, and i think that our travel karma from last christmas's travels has worn off. we missed our flight to riv last saturday, due to a late flight from PDX that caused us to miss our connection. we spent the night in south denver (aka colo. springs) at the radisson, on horrid sleep number beds with no luggage, and therefore no deodorant, toothbrushes or fresh clothes. 29 hours after leaving PDX, we arrived in riv.

today, when we got to the airport to fly home, we were bumped because our puddle jumper plane had weight restrictions and they chose us because we paid nothing for our tix. we supposedly will fly out tomorrow, but i don't have a lot of confidence in great lakes aviation (aka great waste aviation), especially after seeing how poorly they manage their ticketing, flight schedules and passenger lists. it's a long story, but suffice to say that the people at reservations and at the ticketing counter are not on the same page as the people who actually board the planes, so just because one person says you are confirmed on a flight, the people boarding the plane may think otherwise. note to self: never fly them again. they are AWFUL.

when i'm home, or perhaps at the airport tomorrow, i'll upload some photos of our trip. stay tuned, and in the meantime, happy new year! my new years' resolution is to blog more, eat and drink less, and be more motivated.

since it's that shopping time of the year

i've been cruising etsy.com for the past few weeks trying to get inspiration for christmas gifts. there are so many great ideas, and honestly, the challenge i have is that i want to buy a lot of stuff for myself instead of other people (eek -- that's a selfish statement!). nonetheless, there are such great ideas on here, and if you need a late xmas gift, you should go on here, even if all you do is print out a picture of what you bought someone, since it probably won't ship on time.

i'm headed to riv for the week, and can't wait to join the millions of other travelers tomorrow flying through pdx and dia. gag.

sorry i've been delinquent with my musings lately. i've not given up on the ol' blog. i don't really have a good excuse for not blogging, except that i haven't had anything of note to bring up. my new year's resolution is to be on here more often, if nothing else than to give myself a continued writing exercise that doesn't consist of marketing jargon and other drone-ish terms.

have a very happy christmas, and enjoy time with your loved ones or yourself. kiss someone under the mistletoe. drink spiked nog on the coutch. stay up late and get up late. watch "love actually" a dozen times between now and the 25th. i know i'll be doing all of the above.

xo

delinquent...

where did november go? i just realized i've not posted in weeks. it doesn't seem that long. i've not been that busy. i guess i just forgot to.

we're in AZ this week for the thanksgiving holiday, and what i love is that the most difficult decision i'll make today is whether i'll go to the pool before lunch, or afterward. wait, scratch that. i also have to find a proper recipe for mojitos to go with the green chili i want to make for dinner.

i'm making much headway on the tree jacket, and have started a new book. i'm getting to bed before 11 every night, and the only negative thing that's happened is that toots and i got yelled at by a retiree for walking on the golf course cart path because it was private property. never mind that it was before 8AM yesterday before anyone was golfing, and that it was on the part of the course where our house is, and that she was letting her two dogs run rampant on the perfectly maincured greens. i can't wait until the time in my life when the only worrisome issue i have on a day to day basis is protecting my 55+ golf course from 30-something and a baby stroller.

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.