Sweet Jordans in Paris, yarn and the bits

We had an afternoon out, Grandma and Esme and I, at the new bakery/deli in Paris  TN.  It is called Sweet Jordan's, and was started with a lot of community involvement to help provide jobs for people with special needs.  The location and the building are awesome, large, spacious and very inviting.

We had their special, and I was really happy to get soup and sandwich together - that is hard to find at anything less than a traditional restaurant.  Sometimes, at a well established 'traditional restaurant', greasy spoon all the way up to 'family dining'... I feel like I'm invading someone's cherished space, some tradition what have you... and I'm not sure if we can 'attend'... but I didn't get that feeling - more like a chain restaurant that was not a chain, but had the same 'anyone can come in' atmosphere.  It felt like you could come and go or sit down and enjoy, there was so much space and a variety of different sitting arrangements for different groups.

 There is a children's playplace that has been lovingly created, as well, to resemble a downtown street with shops, and a separate place with chairs and couches that Grandma said looked 'perfect for book club meetings.'

Yarn.
The pink is for a cowl for Esme, to see if she likes that more than a scarf.
The other is 'REEF' color in Red Heart, for me.. I guess as sort of a Christmas present.  I'm not sure what I'll make with it yet.  But it caught me... so I guess I have to find a pattern or at least an inspiration to try to knit.

Out at the Beach

We all went out to the beach, Mark took the photos (and didn't get wet).  Esme and her friend were swimming for hours.  I got definitely sunburned.  I had my hat and shirt but I should have worn them more of the time we were there.  We had a lot of fun sitting on the beach after a bit and watching the girls bounce around. One more day of vacation and then back to work.

Father's Day 2017

Mark got a happy Father's Day card, shockingly chartreuse bath towel (to match his new choice in shorts), some cookies and candy he likes and of course, a holiday potato.  It just isn't a holiday without a potato being exchanged between them.  // ha

Other than that, his wish was to stay home and relax.  The weather was very rainy and stormy, too, so it was a really good idea.

I've read two more books, started on a third.  Listened to my music yesterday and drew this for fun.  Esme sat beside me and drew  something of her own, too.  Then, when I was nearing the end of the drawing, she said the rabbit needed to have a kite. 

Micron Pen. it is sort of an Italian villa... we watched Under the Tuscan Sun the other week, and a I started this drawing the tower and doorway kind of took over...

bits of vacation

I've had a busy few days off - and done most of the things I'd told myself I needed to get done.  I made two new yarn toy bags for Esme's room, found a hanger hook bar at the thrift store and put it up in her room for coats and hats (no bookends, though.. still thinking on that one -- she has some on one of her tables in her room and I might move them), went through some of my fabric and patterns, made two good new items for Esme's closet, and sorted out all of the too-small and stained things that had to go.  I cleaned a bit more, and made banana bread :) 

It feels good!

Plus, I asked Mark if he could find me one of his hard-drive platters to make a stand for my cone thread.  I saw a cone thread holder on a website for $$, and was pretty sure we could mock something up that would work in a similar fashion.  I have this big cone of thread a coworker gave me.

This is the result of one safety pin (hooked on top of machine), a size 1 knitting dpn (double pointed needle) and a hard-drive platter that spins on its own ball bearings. 

It really works, without any more adjustment than just sitting there.  The thread goes through the safety pin on the bobbin winder, through the tensioner like normal, and through the needle.  It slowly unspools itself as the machine runs.  I had to take the cone off to wind the bobbin from it, but it wasn't that much of a hassle to put it back on.

Then I drafted a shorts pattern for Mark using something from my collection and they worked out, too.  If I sit down and make a pair for Esme (out of some different fabric) I'd have made almost everything I had planned on during this vacation.

I work tomorrow, and then two 'regular' days off.. Thursday is Esme's meet-the-teacher registration day.  We bring the school supplies and get her registered in the class.  Friday is her first full day at school.

M6594 and moe crocheted toy bags (tiger bags)

I spent much of yesterday going through and washing lengths of cloth out of my remnants box.  This is M6594 by McCalls, peasant dress with pants pattern.  It is the third time I've used the pattern - as it is time-consuming and also takes lots of elastic and fabric in general.

I had a hard time finding something I wanted to make it out of - not enough of a fabric, too bright and loud etc...finally mixed and matched these two light colored prints and came out pretty good.

The one on the right hand side was my project today.
Where a dress with regular facings usually takes me about an hour to make, not counting the zipper - this one takes about three hours for some reason -- mostly because I'm not used to dragging all that elastic through.

 

A crocheted toy bag to help contain some of this giant collection below... at least they aren't tumbling down off of shelves and such.  The white crochet net I made a few years back is providing some backup ... but I probably need to make a third one out of the orange yarn I have to really make sure it is all contained.   Good thing is - they aren't sitting in cardboard boxes where things can lurk at the bottom, and she can see through the bags to dig for one she wants.

  

bits

Esme and I had a day in town yesterday - got lots more books at the library, including a few cookbooks for me and a copy of 'Daughter of the Forest' by Juliet Marillier.  It was recommended for anyone who liked Catherynne Valente.  We also found 'Sleep Like a Tiger' which had been on my list!

I came home and made a chicken recipe, which involved deboning the chicken.  That is not usually in my comfort zone (Mark thinks I'll take a finger off).  My mother never let me handle knives or raw meat during cooking lessons - well into my teens.  I'm still catching up on the experience now as an adult.

The recipe turned out great.  Esme ate every last little bit of hers.  There is enough to make a sandwich left in the fridge.  I woke up dreaming about a pumpkin pie.  I hardly ever dream of food.  Too much recipe reading lately *heh*.  I do have multiple cans of canned pumpkin in the cupboard from Christmas.

We are still in 'official vacation' for homeschooling, until the 5th.  I'm working on a book of my own - something completely creative and not based on reality.  I'm letting a stream of consciousness sort of thing happen, at times writing long lists of related words and then as I write the next part of the story I realize some of those words work into it.  It's turning out quite psychological and dreamlike.  Fun.  I've gotten three chapters and have rewritten it from start to finish a few times over now.  It started out dismal and the sun is starting to shine in now as a solution is dawning ahead of them.  Again, fun.

Don't have a lot of plans for today -already did the fresh writeup and clean copy in my folder.  I was going to read it through again a little later and mark it up again.

Great fury dragon picture and vacation

Esme's 'Great Fury' dragon page

drawn after watching How to Train your Dragon again the other night.

She says the symbols at the top right is a sword that if you cut it on it's tail the plastic beads inside will come out and it will be 'ded'.  It also eats fish, as indicated by the symbol on the left.

I have nine days off starting today.

We are preparing to go to a crafts bazaar in town.

I have a few plans for this vacation.. some sleeping in, some reading, some sewing... teaching Esme for her next week of school.  For now, we are having our 'weekend together - both of us', as she said this morning.  I finished the thick knit socks the other day and they have been a great thing to put on as soon as I am home and sit reading while Esme has bopped around making dragon lairs, fish dinners, penguin egg laying stations and other things with her Knex and other toys.

Probably some puppy pictures this week - they are still small but very lively.

At the last day of vacation

It is the last day of vacation.. and we haven't been able to truly enjoy the nine days, but they are just about over.  Esme has been intense, but her cough and etc. are about halfway better.  She really needs to go to school tomorrow...


We've had a couple of  'feeling better but too much sass' days... it would be much better if 1.) it was warmer outside and 2.) she didn't have a cough that just hangs on.  We read the level 3 Secret Garden easy reader together last night - and I hope she got some of the message in it.

We took her out for a ride on her bike on the road, raised the handlebars and the seat.. she was making really good progress on the level road riding up and down.  Of course she fell several times, got back on after the tears... seriously she was more upset it seemed at the prospect her bike bell might be broken then she was at falling over the handlebars and saying we were supposed to catch her...  She has good spirits about trying it again - we had taken the training wheels off but will probably put them back on for the next lesson at least to start.

bit

We had an eventful morning.. try again for the zoo on another day.  Mark demonstrated his excellent road skills and made me aware I need to practice them more, too.  Esme is up at Grandma's house and I went out to the garden to weed corn and mark some plants to *especially* save seed from later...  I should finish the second pair of pants I abandoned halfway through last night.  My right hand is green as grass and probably will be quite sore later tonight... and my shoulders will be glowing with sunburn.

Tomorrow is 5:30 am sunrise - I checked... and contemplated more in the garden while I was down in the corn pulling grass, on places I have been over time, and the memory of being at the experiment station down in the corn and pumpkins weeding and stealing shade in the plant rows in the middle of the afternoon....cold water evaporating on skin that was beginning to speak of sunburn and dust sticking up to the elbows in the splatter pattern, the smell of grass and roots and the sound of water gurgling down into holes that are invisible to the eye..carrying water again and again over the land tracing the same steps lightly and carefully through the field while leaning lopsided to balance the bucket weight.  That is a muscle memory that still 'feels' the same even twenty years later...  I didn't quite appreciate it as much back then - when I was fourteen - but I do now, and the moments string forward to me across the years as I unwind a vine from this or seek the roots of a weed there...   I imagine living in an endless summer to just grow corn and pumpkins and beans all year long... and think about time travel being in actuality this specific skill - to pull a moment forward and 'mix' it across all the years and learn more from time in a 'stack' of moments year after year.   That is because this is how my memory works -- a moment is only a moment because you have done something in it that 'sticks' and it can pull you back to it time and again - a twisted stitch or stop in a seam, looking deeply and seeing light shining a certain way, unexpected discoveries, a word of advice that suddenly makes things clearer and purposeful...

This is the time of the year I am the most contemplative...my habit to be reflective and think about 'being' in general.  As I weeded I thought distinctly of the moment last year watching the sun rise over the Duluth cityscape, receiving a beautiful birthday text from Mark, but not liking where I was, who I was with or what I was faced with and feeling all of the buoys of my spirit, Mark, Esme, home... were far away from me.. they were somewhere, safe, .. but I wanted to get back to them and could not yet.  I remember pulling the jacket around me...feeling 'bare' as the other clothes we had worn were in the washing machine, seeing people stream by in vehicles as the morning just barely lightened, and being whistled at for being out on the street with a newspaper that early in the morning...    I am home this year and where I want to be - family safe, corn in the garden growing, sewing on the table in the house... and time in time, to feel the sun rise up and turn.
 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

//In Other News//  :  The Cherokee White Eagle corn is almost as tall as the Glass Gem corn, although they were planted two weeks apart.  The Peaches and Cream Sweet Corn is tasseling and silking.. while the Mandan Bride mixed Indian corn is tasselling at half the height and no silks yet to be seen.  The Japonica corn (planetd just after the Glass Gem) is just as tall as the Smoke Signals corn... and the Pink Hopi Corn is hanging on in the very back of the garden.  I should have kept better records on it all - but tied some orange tags around some stalks to indicate that I think they are doing better than their peers and I should save their seed for next year. 

The pea crop is excellent - our first in many years, maybe ever for me, that has produced 'food'... I did not keep them separate either, the Mammoth Melting sweet peas seem to be the ones that are dying off now and the Wando Peas are the ones that are just starting to go gonza... the Bosnian Bean is starting to put on beans and is wandering as high as it can - over six feet.  Shackamaxon beans starting to climb, the King of the Early have flowers on them already.. lots of green tomatoes getting ready, cucumbers.. the zucchini family is not doing very well out there - very little produce but there is some.

Blue aleurone, red striped pericarp - crossing my Indian corn

Just one ear - but the idea seems to have taken hold!

I tried to cross up two distinct separations of my Indian corn this year, the red-striped variety that seemed so dominant last year with the blue/white kernel flour corn that produced a few stunning ears. I ended up with this, a blue aleurone layer with red striped pericarp. Not too bad - and definitely different than anything I have seen in my very short year or two looking at odd corns. I am proud of a tiny accomplishment, even one ear :) when it shows me the process is working.

I think there will be a total of about thirty kernels on this cob that show the cross - and the rest are regular white and red striped, perhaps holding some of the genes but not showing them. Since the blue aleurone is the trait passed by the father of the corn this collection of kernels and other blues will have to be planted as the 'tassellers' next year and plant either the red-striped or a selection of white kernels as the mother plants and detassel them. That is a lot of work, but it would produce interesting results.

I am hoping the 'test plot' of leftover seed will do something this year. I put out just about twenty seeds left from the parents of all of these corns - and they are up about two inches and looking like they are not having any mineral deficiencies. The drought took so much of the experiment in the first part of the year I could not help but plant another round just to see what happened.

The experiment in the west field - blue vs. black, is still going but with only half-hopes of producing anything. Some of those plants have already tasselled out at 3 feet tall - and others look like they could be healthy enough to maybe put on an ear. We've had a bit more rain now, so we'll see what happens there, too.

I have ordered Mandan Bride corn to grow next year - and Japonica Striped Maize as well. The Mandan has the food qualities I want in a corn for people and animals - and the Japonica was just too pretty, with pink, white, yellow and green striped leaves and deep purple ears lending on variegated. The Japonica is a 'popcorn' breed though, so it will need to be planted far away from the field corn.


separate your popcorn away from the field corn

You can see above what happens when popcorn genes interfere with the process. They are dominant for ear size, even over the mother plant. This mistake, and the drought - led to some sad things this year. But, it is a learning experience. That is why I'm doing this, to learn and create something new.

Note : today is the first day of vacation - go back to the work on the 30th.

last day of december vacation

My week is up... back to normal tomorrow with an early morning shift. We plan on going to Grandma's house today and helping her with a few computer things. Esme is pretending to be a butterfly doctor, and blowing bubbles all over the kitchen etc etc... I have been working on a few more yarn projects.


blue sweater, Vanna's choice Lion yarn, size 7 straight needle

This will be a slightly larger sweater for this year, using the one from last year as a pattern. I am also making a circle rug out of scrap yarn, crocheting it in the round. It is coming along quicker than my knit afghan is... but it will get slower and slower as it grows and probably 'catch up'.


butterfly 'doctor'

She is also holding one of her dinosaur toys and singing 'there is a new tooth on the way' to the toy. This morning I had to laugh because she had taken towels and covered up the puppies downstairs because they were cold. They did seem to appreciate it. I have another round of cleaning to do down there with the mop and scrub brush before we go see Grandma. I'm actually feeling well now.. and it is warmer downstairs right now with the sun coming in. It is nice.

first day of december vacation

Today is my first day of December vacation... the last vacation of the year. It will last about a week. It comes at a bad time for a few people at work - but we had to scrabble and schedule whatever time was left somewhere in late October.. and things that happened since then have made this a bad time. *sigh* I did need it, though! Hopefully they will all hold it together until I get back next Monday. My sick is not entirely gone, Mark is still coughing - but Esme seems good. We hope not to have to do a lot this week and just heal up.

I went to the store last night and used Nana in Minnesota's Christmas gift card to buy a few things for Esme, a blanket and stuffed animal and two games, all to put away for Christmas. Not out of the gift card, I bought a yard of cotton fabric and yarn to continue projects today. I plan to make a new 'Cinderella' type dress for Esme with longer sleeves out of the new fabric. I have some little projects I am preparing to send out in the mail, and a doll to drop off at work sometime this week for the auction for a coworker's mother's medical bill. And I have the bean seeds to learn more about. So, I have some things planned but nothing very intense.


'dragon front' dress
used McCalls 8001 pattern with alterations
her dragon pants had a hole in the seat,
so they ended up on the cutting table to remake...

got myself right onto this and now it needs sleeves, zipper and hem. That will take a few more hours but it should be done tonight if I keep on it. I went a little crooked on the neck facing tacking (ziggy stitching there) but it wasn't enough to redo it. For the sleeves I took the short cap sleeve that comes with the pattern and combined its shape with the coat sleeve in the pattern! Adjusting for the length of her arm the sleeves ended up very useable.... maybe not perfect but pretty close to it.

100% cotton brown fabric, mixed with Kona green cotton and the recycled 'dragon pants' to extend the skirt panels. I am hoping the Kona cotton (thicker, more nap) will keep her warmer this winter in the chest area. I had mistakenly thought the 100% cotton plain fabric would be warmer than the 65/35 polycotton blend... it actually seems the opposite. However, the 100% Kona cotton with its thicker weight and fuzzy nap seems warmer than either of them. The cotton fabric does wrinkle badly... but hey, she is four years old. Warm is more important and anything and everything she might wear would have wrinkles in it eventually ;)

dreams
I had that weird dream again last night -- the one where people come to me and tell me they did not have any food... We were searching for people after a disaster and trying to gather survivors and supplies. A skeleton fog said it had warned me of the 'oncoming famine' before...why had I not done anything about it... and it disintegrated. That nearly woke me up, as yes, I have had these dreams before. That was a 'brain pay attention and think as if awake' sign from my subconscious. Famine dreams are supposed to be very bad omens, sickness and business problems to come, if the famine is happening to you and you have helplessness over no food. But, in the dreams, it is always a survival situation where I have to help everyone, where I go find the food...make the food, scour the forests and the dead gardens and cupboards. In the dream I dug in a pantry and brought out an apple, and a potato, a can of soup and some beans and began to gather pots and equipment to make a soup. A big guy from work arrived and looked at the food in one of the pots. He was hungry but he commented to someone else who had gone to get me that he didn't want to eat that, wasn't there anything else? That was what there was - I could add some more water and another potato and make enough that everyone could have some.

In other recent dreams I am trying to collect seeds out in a dead garden and everyone else is just worried.. I am planning with the materials at hand while those things are still there. I was sorting through metal and useable parts, hinges and screws and nails in a ruined antique shop that had price tags on everything including the registers... all old as if someone had a last dash to make a profit and still had to abandon the place. It was as if I was looking through time at people arguing about if they were allowed to sell a piece of paper at one shop while there stacks and stacks piled in another corner that no one had remembered... weird games my brain plays... I wish I could write them all down and make sense of them, maybe a good book.

Anyway, they say cooking for other people during a famine is a good dream omen - of being able to help in bad times and offer encouragement to others. I'll take that. And I like that in those dreams I do not feel helplessness when faced with the situation, but instead take action. Those sort of 'mettle' tests are good to know which road you might travel... I take these kind of dreams as tests and preparations for life in general, that my brain somehow sees necessary to feel capable of 'getting going when the going gets bad' etc...

PVC tent and end of vacation

It is the last day of my vacation. We got a lot done this week. This is what I made today, a PVC tent to go over the top of the truck bed when we go to the flea market. So many times we have baked out there in the sun wishing for something like this. I can stand up underneath the canopy, but Mark has to slouch just a little bit.. that was as far as I could stretch it at 45 degrees before it wanted to buckle AND keep the side bars and top bars all the same length. What is best - it breaks down into pieces and all of the long lines are the same size, so it can be built up fairly quickly. I even glued the most important joints (45's on top) into short bits that would work as full pieces.

The whole thing cost about 20 dollars, and the bedsheet that is clipped to it was a two dollar find on clearance a while back.

Also during this vacation I've made pants for Esme, a skirt and drawstring pants for me and done a LOT in the garden. Grandma and Esme found some random gourds out behind the garden that I didn't plant... something maybe turned over when the loggers were out there. Mark had gourds all over the property a few years ago. I DID plant some more cheap pumpkin seeds near there tonight and a few more peas in the garden.

I go back to work tomorrow.. and work for a straight week. What a vacation gift.

Misc Happenings

Esme cut a third tooth last night. She ran a fever with it but is better now.

We've contacted my Dad in Iowa. We're going to stop by there for a visit too on our way up next week or so. Wow the time is flying. I requested this vacation months ago and it is almost here.