Tuesday...

(it's currently a few minutes after 10 PM on the West Coast, so i'm counting it as still Tuesday across the entire North American continent)

the trash story is not quite ready to be told (it involves some photo-editing that is being delayed by a combination of technical problems and user-laziness), so i will share a few of the several thousand shots i've taken in the past month or two (each of which tells a story that was intended as an individual posts... did i mention user-laziness???).

i have a fondness for collective nouns, which is evidenced by the title of this forum, and i learned a new one today.  while they lack the numbers to properly qualify as a nuisance of cats, my girls more than make up for it with their total lack of respect for my fiber crafting lifestyle.

the box they're perching on contains some quality mill-spun yarns i purchased to hand dye and (potentially) resell.  i made the incredible mistake of leaving the box on that table for a few minutes, and they have claimed it as a new resting spot... within petting-range of the studio computer, so they get even more love all day (and night, cause insomnia is my default setting most days)...


i'm growing tomatoes on the windowsill.  the plants have grown quite a bit since i took this photo a month ago. will have to take some more soon.  there are a few large clusters of decent-sized cherry tomatoes at this point, but they are still refusing to ripen.  the plants, however, have reached little shop of horrors proportions, and i am fairly certain that they will attack any day now.

i've been engaging in experimental baking almost every weekend.  recent episodes include: pita od jabuka (Croatian apple pie)...

old fashioned donuts (technically not baking, but there was flour and kneading involved)...

and spicy, cheesy crackers made with white cheddar and freshly-grated Parmesan.  before...

and, after!!!  (i had to nibble a few to make sure they tasted good enough to photograph)...

finally got started turning the empty hot chocolate containers i've been collecting all winter into a really nifty system for displaying some of my yarns (way less loony than it sounds, trust me)...

and i made this interesting looking contraption out of an old canvas stretcher (rescued a year or two ago from a stack of horrible paintings one of my aspiring-artist neighbors left leaning up next to the trash) and about 50¢ worth of tiny nails.

Monday...

(promised myself i'd post something every day this week, so i'm gonna cheat a bit and post these photos before midnight, then come back and add the captions, so it still counts as my "Monday" post.)


went for a late afternoon walk with the camera and the boy in tow. most of the photos i took were of trash (will explain why tomorrow).


standing in the middle of la rue Sherbrooke Ouest at a red light.  the boy always drags me to the intersection to cross the street (instead of in the middle of the block, as the defiant New Yorker in me tends to do) because he's Canadian and it's against their programming to break rules...

a cherry tree branching out over the sidewalk.  i was very tempted to steal one, but i behaved (but i've made a mental note of the tree's location for one of my future late-night strolls!!!!)....

i smelled these roses before i saw them.  such a pretty shade of pink...

(we strolled around Monkland Village for a while, eventually popping into the grocery store for fixings for dinner, then headed back down the hill toward home)

a cluster of well-chewed leaves on a copper beech.  the sky was actually much darker than it appears in the photo, and the tiny bits of light visible through the lacy holes caught my attention as i walked past the tree...

the bent cross outside the old church seemed to be making a poignant statement...

an alleyway that leads to the heart of the block (i.e., where the back of houses on one street are right across from the back of the houses one street over).  all the blocks in the neighborhood are like that, and it's sometimes fun to walk down the alleys and look at the backyard gardens and patios on either side of the alleyway as you go...

Notre Dame de Grâce Park at night...

southern edge of the park...

back home with bay scallops, calamari, baby bok choy, shiitake mushrooms, ginger, and garlic for dinner...

added some scallions and a green chili and everything is prepped and ready to go, with a quickly tossed together sauce on standby and peanut oil for stir-frying...

served atop steamed white rice.  the boy wanted a wide bowl...

but i prefer to eat everything out of a cereal bowl...

after dinner, we put out the recycling, and i used the cover of darkness to retrieve an old frame from the trash for a future craft project... but i will save that adventure for another day.

any ordinary day...

i had an interesting conversation with my mother last week...

me:  (sleepily) hi, mom.

mom:  i didn't realize you were sleeping.  i won't keep you long.  just calling to wish you a happy birthday.

me:  it's not my birthday, mom.
mom:  it's not?  

me:  no... that doesn't happen until tomorrow.

mom:  are you sure?

me:  pretty sure.

mom:  well... happy birthday, anyway.  

yep... that pretty much sums up life at present.  

this vacuum of inspiration and motivation has left me reconsidering the people, places, and things i have loved across my lifetime.  in this vein of thought, i recently woke up with a desire for something so simple and ordinary, it seems almost impossible to believe i have denied myself the pleasure for more than 20 years.


can you spot the forbidden culinary treat?

somewhere back in the nineteen hundred and eighties (doesn't it sound ancient?), the FDA issued a slew of warnings on the dangers of eating under-cooked eggs on account of the horror commonly known as salmonella (i may have to bathe my fingers in holy water to remove the curse of typing the word).  being young and impressionable as i was, the countless reminders splashed across every form of media available at the time left me frightened that my much loved soft-boiled or over-easy egg was a guaranteed sentence of death.  gone were the fingers of buttered toast dunked into a creamy yolk.  gone was the joy of piling bacon and egg between two halves of a toasted English muffin... then pressing down till the drops of golden yellow began to seep along the edges (that my mother was disgusted by this ritual only added to the enjoyment).  looking forward to Sunday brunch (which simply meant eating breakfast later than usual) was the only thing that made sitting through the early church service tolerable.  gone too was the privilege of licking the last traces of batter from the spoon and bowl when my mother made cakes (i was convinced that the raw eggs in the batter would kill on contact).  for over two decades, i waited, and seethed, and gasped in shock every time i saw someone consume an egg that was not cooked to the point that it could be used to drive nails into the hardest of lumber.


then i woke up yesterday with an overwhelming desire to try something so foreign to the norm... it seemed almost brand new.  now, not having boiled an under-cooked egg in decades, i cracked open the shell...

...only to realize that i had been a bit overzealous in my timing.

three and a half minutes later...

toss in a pinch of the cracked pepper (the current mix is black and green peppercorns with whole coriander and allspice) and pink sea salt lingering on my plate...

i took the big plunge with a piece of well-buttered, toasted English muffin from the past weekend's experimental baking...

it's funny how something so under-whelming can be the most incredible thing i've tasted this side of the millennium.  further proof that all those FDA warnings should sometimes be taken with a grain of salt... and buttered toast.

stuff...

so... i'm working on a sweater/shrug/cardi, called Georgina (here on Ravelry).  about halfway through, you're instructed to take the oddly-shaped piece of lace off the needles...

 and block it aggressively...

(which just means to soak lightly and pin it out till it dries).

after removing about a million pins, the lacework stays open!!!

because there was nothing better to do, i created SpongeBob PinHead!!!

and took about a hundred photos of a silly grey kitty i found climbing all over my stuff.

something old, something new, something curly, something blue...

so, i bought this book last week...

and read every word on every page the same day ( i actually fell asleep with the book in my hand that first night). there were so many beautiful photos and techniques to get the spinner's imagination racing, but my heart just about stopped when i got to this page...

now, i must admit that my French vocab is limited to the items that end up on a shelf in either my kitchen or bathroom, but this is one word of French every knitter instantly recognizes.  bouclé (literally, curly) is a type of yarn that is characterized by a curly or knobbly texture, depending on the materials used.  i have adored handspun bouclé yarns from a distance, but i was always too intimidated to give it a try... until now.  so, with my new bible at my side, i searched for some suitable materials to sacrifice to the gods of trial-and-error... and i began to spin.

i settled on using the wool as my loop and the blues as my core and binder, so i continued spinning wool singles...

then wrapped that around my core. that blue yarn made for a lousy core and snapped multiple times from being held taut.  several splices later, i finally had a bobbin full of wrapped core yarn ready for the final step.

using the same stupid-thin thread as my binder, i plied it back in the opposite direction, doing my best to open up the curls along the way (which would have been easier had i not done so thorough a job of wrapping the core). because of the color contrast, it is incredibly easy to see where i lost control of the process.

even after spending the night on the niddynoddy, there is zeroooo balance in this finished yarn.  it is curly in more ways than one.

...but everything looks pretty twisted into a hank.  not bad for a first effort.

oh... and i made stupid-good cupcakes, with creamy,whipped frosting...

in a word... yummm!