Ye Olde Weekende Wanderings

Last weekend was a glorious exercise in variety.

Friday Night: Out for drinks and a little dancing with friends, home around 3am for a weeeeee bit tipsy sleepover.

Saturday Night: Attending the Westmont Bright Hope for Tomorrow dinner.  Classy outfits, wine, a fundraising dinner.

Sunday: Church, and a visit to Camlann Medieval Village, a "working" historical village a la Williamsburg (on a MUCH smaller, more ragtag-band-of-misfits kind of scale), depicting rural England, 1376.  We saw archers, a potter, 3 sheep, learned about different arrowheads, and the horrors of warfare, then capped it off with trenchers, pottage and mead for dinner. 

Yes, we are a strange people, my roommate and I.  Join us, won't you?

Gonna Live Off th' Fatta th' Lan

I have a tragic tendency for checking impossibly large piles of books out of the library.  Coupled with my delusions of ultimate domesticity and knocking up against my natural laziness, distractability and forgetful procrastination, you have a recipe for super-stoked-and-ain't-never-gonna-happen mental disaster.


Today I went to pick up a copy of Daisy Cooks! Latin Flavors That Will Rock Your World that was on hold for me at the library (at least I know I will cook some food - THAT I can do).  I LOVE watching her on PBS.  I get SO hungry - her food is beautiful and terrible for you and I want to just plunge my arms into the pot and hug it and hug her and her little east coast accent.  While there I wandered into the cookbook section and found Washington Local and Seasonal Cookbook and Slow Food Nation.  (Of course, spitting right in the face of these two acquisitions I stuffed my face today with a quarter-pounder, fries and a soda from McDonalds.  What can I say, I'm well-rounded.)  Then I saw another amusing treasure - Storey's Basic Country Skills: A Practical Guide to Self-Reliance.  Pages and pages of summaries on how to run your own little country home from start to finish.  Handy tips on how to:

• buy land
• dig a well
• rotate your crops
• make cheese
• butcher livestock
• shear sheep
• keep bees

I actually really want to try to make some cheese but I have a nagging fear that I might just end up poisoning myself...

CraftFest 2010

Kara!!!

Kalin!!!!

Mochi!!!!

These are the faces of CraftFest 2010.  I went to Denver for the Labor Day weekend to see Team Lundquist and their mascot extraordinaire, Mochi.  We ate, crafted, ate, crafted, slept, and put the cycle on repeat.  So many delicious things, so much crafting, so much Degrassi marathon as background noise.  I love these two kids.  We also saw Lindsey and Nate Ballinger and their gigantic furry dog child Angel, who was incredibly huge and incredibly sweet and it was incredibly funny to see her and Mochi "play". 

Kara took me to The Fancy Tiger, an amazing little craft shop.  Maybe too fancy for every day use, but they had AMAZING fabric and BEAUTIFUL yarn.  I conned Kara into making me a case for my circular needles (she previously made a glorious one for my double pointeds).  I was seriously torn over the fabric choices but finally settled on Lizzy House's RIDICULOUSLY cute Castle Peeps pattern in brown as the base of the case with the green town print for pockets.  Kara supplied the lovely button and the skills.

I don't know if you can see, but the dude on the left is totally playing a lute and singing.

I knit Kate Davies' owlet sweater in a beautiful autumn red Spud and Chloe yarn (55% superwash wool, 45% cotton so it can go in the washer!) for my friend Maria's baby daughter.  I love the S&C motto: "Sweet yarns for real life". 

I haven't blocked it yet, so it still looks a little frumpy.  I also haven't added eyes.  You're supposed to use buttons, but buttons on a baby sweater seem dangerous, so I have to decide if I just want to sew 'em on real good or maybe stitch on some little eyes in a different color.  (Next I plan to knit a larger one in grey for her older daughter.  Then finally a full-size one for myself!)  Even Kalin got in on the fun, doing some paper craft.  Alas, I did not get a picture of the bitchin 3D robot he brought into existance.

And that, my friends, is the story of CraftFest 2010.  Now accepting applications for 2011 craft- and food-centric awesomeness.

Rot!

Oh bother,  I've got blossom end rot.  Well, I don't, but my tomatoes do.  From what I gather this is usually caused by uneven moisture or by calcium deficiency.  I have a sneaking suspicion that mine is due to bad drainage.  I'm really going to have to rethink how I work in the big plastic tubs I bought this year (more gravel on bottom? Bigger/more drainage holes beneath that gravel? Mulching? Was it mulching? It was mulching, wasn't it!? I SHOULD HAVE MULCHED!)  I'm worried all my little babies will turn grey and creepy and rot from the bottom up.  Can I get at least ONE good, ripe tomato?

Admittedly this whole container gardening thing was a domestic whim and I sort of just threw in and flew by the seat of my pants.  I tend to do that - just "give it a whirl" without doing appropriate research beforehand.  But I've really enjoyed what little gardening I've done and would like to do better at it next year and plan ahead and actually plant the little suckers on the right schedule.  So I'm going to get myself a copy of The Bountiful Container and do myself some research!

On the plus side, at least my chard is doing well.  Those guys are tough!  Mommy's little soldiers.

One Classy Dame

Is it silly that I'm totally stoked for these Katherine Hepburn stamps I bought today?  I want to send more mail.  I want to travel back in time and be her best friend.

Roommate + Asian Food Products = Awesome

On her most recent trip to Thailand my roommate brought me the best present: Thai tea! 

If its logo is a thumbs up, it's gotta be good.

The last time she went she brought back juice boxes of the stuff and I fell in love.  It took us a bit but we found a restaurant near us that makes awesome tea.  Of course, I wanted to try making it at home.  The internet claims you can make it by just steeping a lot of strong black tea with some various spices like star annise and vanilla bean, but when I tried it ended up tasting like Chai tea.  Similar sound, different taste.  But, being Thai and all, this stuff is the real stuff!  Make a single serving in the French press, add way too much sugar, some ice and a healthy dose of evaporated milk and you've got heaven in a cup, my friend.

Heaven is apparently a beautiful pumpkin color.

Also Asian food and roommate related, this weekend was our eighth friendiversary (thank you, Westmont, for bringing me a delightful bud and awesome roommate).  We ended up making Indian food and watching a Bollywood movie from the 90s which prominently featured big hair, a climactic bike race, and someone punching someone else approximately every five minutes.  It was my first foray into Indian food and I was quite excited. 

This is what you need to make potato and chickpea masala and lamb tikka: 

I was going to make rava dosas (sort of like crepes) to go with the potato chickpea masala, but Liz made naan, so I've still got the semolina and rice flour.  The masala was so darned easy to make and sooooo delicious that I'll just have to make it again soon and make the dosas this time.  Next time I go to a BBQ I want to bring this instead of potato salad. 

This pic isn't as well-staged as I'd like, but can you blame me?  I was so busy

starting to stuff my face that I completely forgot about photos!