The Joys of Summer

I can’t tell you the number of ways that I love summertime. There are so many! But, chief among them? The FOOD. That’s what summer is about to me. All those lovely, fresh fruits and vegetables which are tasteless and colorless at other times of the year come alive with color and flavor in summer. Tomatoes, cantaloupe, watermelon, sweet corn on the cob… oh, just thinking about all of it just makes my mouth water. Some summers go by in a blink around here and I miss some of those great flavors before they pass me by. This year, I’m going to make a point to savor it all. The best thing? My favorite thing about summer is fruits and vegetables… practically guilt free, and good for me too.

Yesterday I spent most of the day nursing a lingering migraine. Spending the day in a dark room with my eyes shut was not my idea of a good time, but it was necessary. Even though my headache was not gone by evening I was itching to get out of the house for even a few minutes, so I went to the store to pick up a couple of essentials, then we stopped as a family at the Rita’s Italian Ice stand. I wish I had brought my camera, because by the time we were done, BoyZilla was dripping in sticky grape and was a perfect vision of what summer is all about. I do confess that for me it was a chocolate custard, but next time I will get a lemon-cherry combo ice. Yes, I am already hoping for a next time, though I know that I cannot expect that any other trip this summer will be on an evening as lovely as last night. We’ve been having warm weather with no humidity this week, and that is truly a rare event worth celebrating.

Ok, it’s time for work! At least it’s a short week.

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A Card for Genny

I couldn’t blog this the other night when I made it, but Lookie!!

I really enjoyed making this! I got the idea for the flowers from this hat pattern, and went into my button stash and a jar of confetti for the rest. I printed the saying on my computer first, directly onto the card paper. I found the saying on the internet (thought it was appropriate for the person I made it for) and set it using my greeting card maker software.

Several people have asked me about the card stock I use. It’s this one by Avery (the label people). Their plainer cards come in boxes of 30, and with these, you only get 20 in a box, but the paper is really quite lovely and worth it.

I find that making cute little cards is the perfect antidote to the problem of big project monotony. Often I find that I can’t focus on a large project very well. This happens to me during times of stress, or when there’s a lot going on at work or something. With small projects like these i can feel like I’ve made something cute and it does usually involve yarn and it offers a sense of accomplishment–and the all-important break from the project that I can’t seem to concentrate on anyway.

Tonight we had a family pool party with my Mom and Tony, aunt and uncle, and cousins. It’s an almost annual event that includes a ton of wonderful picnic foods. I supplied the steak and hot dogs. Yes I said steak. We eat GOOD in my family. There was only a scrap small enough to give my cat a good snack later. It was a beautiful day, too… hot, but not humid at all, and breezy. This is rare for a Maryland summer and I’ve learned to take full advantage of days like this when they happen.

I did bring some knitting along but only knit about 8 stitches in total. The company was just too good.

it was a great day. Too bad it has to be over… sigh.

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Sigh…

Ever have one of those days where you bite your lip and it REALLY hurts, but you keep biting it, over and over, because it’s puffy and just in the way? Haha, yeah that’s my life today. It seems like nothing I did turned out right. I didn’t knit a stitch. I think that might be the root of the problem. And the project I was working on for work fought me every step of the way. It was a complex document, with many sections, and a series of other documents at the end. The main document had its own styles for headings and subheadings and such, and the other documents, which are examples of forms and such, had styles all their own. So of course nothing played nice with each other and I fought and struggled with it for hours before giving up. I hate it that I’ve been using Microsoft Word for 10 years now and I still don’t always get how it works. I wish I could still use WordPerfect. Complex documents were so much easier back in the day… sigh. So I feel like my gum-and-band aids attempt at fixing this document was less than ideal. Which makes for the feeling of a giant, wasted day. A giant, wasted day with no knitting.

I should know better.

I’m itching to cast on something new. I want to work on my Girasole blanket or the Coraline cardigan. I must, however, avoid the urge. I have so many other things to finish! Sigh. And more yarn’s coming tomorrow. I have visions of tiny flowers on a greeting card…

My brain’s a busy place.

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Back to Everyday Knitting…

…On what turned out to be a most unusual day. It seems hard or somehow inappropriate to even talk about my mundane knitting when there was such a horrific accident on our Metro system today. I am not the most praying person, but I am indeed praying for all of the victims and their families this day.

But, on to the knitting, even with my heavy heart. I realized earlier today that it’s been a while since I’ve updated Jen’s Hello Kitty Scarf. A solid 6 weeks of knitting, and this is what I’ve got:

It’s probably close to three feet long now. I figure I’ll knit until almost the end of the ball, then fringe. So it will be however long it is. Thankfully, Jen is small and so it doesn’t need to be hugely long. But it will, I am convinced, be quite long enough.

And ok, here’s a yarny confession:

Yes, I hit the Knit Picks yarn sale last week. I got 22 balls of Andean Treasure yarn, with which I am going to make Ysolda Teague’s Coraline Sweater. I met Ysolda at Maryland Sheep and Wool this year and she was wearing that very sweater. I was smitten! And totally thrilled when she said she had made the pattern in larger sizes. Wow.

Then today? I ordered small quantities of brightly colored sock yarn for another birthday card project. I’ll be rushing. Shhh… it’s a secret.

Oh, and Jon and Kate? I’m so over them now. So sad for the kids.

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Father’s Day Hearts

I had to give up on the knit necktie greeting card for now… it just wasn’t working out. I’m sad! But I came up with this instead:

I have a long way to go in the “it doesn’t look like first grade art” department, huh? But, I hope he likes it. It has a knit heart, sparkly Mod Podge (because the plain mod podge wouldn’t do!) and carefully printed upon and then recklessly torn up paper. I still have to learn the art of effective yet not overkilled and messy gluing. (Is that a word? Gluing? It looks weird.) Any advice for an inexperienced card maker? I’d love to get better at this.

Of course, Tegan had to get into the middle of my photo shoot:

And then my daughter spent 10 minutes digging the cat hair out of the card. Ick.

Today was a busy day. We had a party at my mom’s house, where I made homemade guacamole and lime fizzies. Both seemed to be well liked. I’m on a lime kick these days. I had never made lime fizzies before so I sort of “winged” it. Basically I squeezed about 5 limes into a measuring bowl, and then added enough sugar to make it syrup-y. Don’t ask me how much, but it was a lot. Then mint leaves and stirred it all around. Then poured about an inch or so of the lime/mint syrup into the glasses, over ice, and then filled the glasses with club soda and stirred. (The glasses were actually small plastic party cups, so for a tall glass, perhaps more lime syrup would be called for.) Yum! Someday I’ll post my guacamole recipe but I don’t know proportions for that, either. I’m a very seat-of-my-pants sort of cook.

Tomorrow is Father’s Day but we don’t really have any big plans. Some years are like that. We have lots of housework to do and grocery shopping. Maybe I’ll surprise John with a meatloaf. He’s pretty easy to please.

I miss my dad.

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