yarnporn.com

In late October my son found some orange seeds that we’d planned on planting 6 months before. I planted the three most viable looking ones and only one sprout appeared.

maybe, I hope, I think so, it could be

Since the sprouting it hasn’t grown much, just this side of two inches– I’m almost confident that its a real orange tree sprout and not a weed seed that found its way into the potting soil.

Since the 29th of October I’ve kept it in good condition and have managed to not kill it off by neglect. Although I almost killed it by leaving the light over it on too high an intensity over Christmas holiday.

I haven’t planted anything else, but I’m planning on ruining my yard this year and cutting a 5×20 foot garden right in front of the house. I say “ruin” somewhat tongue in cheek because the beauty of a yard or  garden is subjective. I tend to think a perfectly manicured lawn is lovely, but I live with two children, four dogs, and a patch of feral strawberries that are determined to keep such a yard a distant and unrealistic dream.

Have you ever run over cleverly concealed ripe strawberries with a mulching lawn mower in August? I did, the carnage was great. Day one smells like a strawberry punch, day three after the mowing smelled like strawberry wine, day 10 and my yard smelled like a Ceasar salad. Not wholly unpleasant but mildly disturbing in that I was tempted to fetch croutons and Parmesan every time I went out to water the hedge.

Usually I try to scatter my food gardening as unobtrusively as possible around our property, a side effect of living in a family house is the fear that everyone is going to criticize any change, no matter how small and no matter how great of an improvement it might be over the way things Grandma had them arranged.

Grandma had dark fake wooden paneling in the living room– and I took so much flack for removing it. Mom’s dog used to pee on that rhododendron by the front door, never mind that the plant is dead it had sentimental value. Can’t dig there because we buried a cat there 4 decades ago.

The reality of it is though that if Matt and I hadn’t purchased the place then it would have been bought by people who would have seen it for the money pit that  it is, razed it to the foundation, torn out all the landscaping and built a duplex here. This year, I’m just going suck it up, brace myself for the finger pointing and cries of heresy and treat my property as my property and manage it the way I like instead of catering to a bunch of people who never bother to visit unless someone has died anyway.

I love you– I really do. But we need to get a few things straight:

My dogs will never be vegetarians. I appreciate your sentiment about my animals eating other animals, but they were designed to eat other animals so I’m not going interfere. Besides Greta’s bowels do bad things when she manages to get a single corn chip, and as much as she loves a nice raw head of cabbage last time she got at one the neighbors called the city suspecting that we had a corpse rotting in our backyard.

Actually, rotting corpse would have been an improvement. CSI wouldn’t have scooped that poop. Lawrence Fishburne’s character would have been all “F–k this, I quit.” and then he would have stormed off, the rest of the episode would be the other characters trying to figure out who stepped in what and where did Lawrence Fishburne go?

Bacon grease is an essential ingredient in blueberry muffins. It makes them last longer, taste better, and its cheaper than coconut oil which frankly does a 2nd rate job. I will make you any other type of muffin, even the cranberry ones, completely vegan if you like but I draw the line at my blueberry muffin recipe.

Tofu is awesome, stop pretending that its a meat replacement and accept it as tofu. I will defile neither tofu nor my meatloaf recipe attempting to appease your perverse appetite that craves both moral superiority and down home good cooking at the same time.

Justify it all you like, if you are vegan and don’t eat beans and bean products you are a crappy (and likely malnourished) vegan, pastatarians don’t count. Fake chicken nuggets and egg free ramen do NOT have enough protein to keep your brain functioning, which is probably why you feel like crap and don’t have the mental acuity to calculate exactly how much protein you need to eat each day.

Finally, I’ll happily make as many vegan portions for dinner as there are vegans, which tends to include enough for seconds if you like and a bit extra for the omnivores to sample if they like. Do NOT pout because you don’t feel included or because you think I’m trying to single you out somehow by not offering you meat products that I know you will make a big deal out of not eating– that attitude just makes you come off as a permanent window licker on the short bus of life, its just rude.

I thought that was it, but I have one more: Under no circumstances are you EVER to claim to be a strict vegan with “soy sensitivities” and expect me to cater to your bizarre dietary claims with anything other than a good stout bowl of oatmeal and a look of piercing disdain mixed with a pinch of distrust.

Honestly, I prefer days that are a cool 60 f (that’s 15.5 c for those of you that live in civilized countries) overcast to drizzling, and preferably with a nice chilly breeze.

There is no sweater wearing on these gorgeous tropical sun drenched brightly lit days, my beautiful socks must stay in a drawer while my feet go flopping around naked in dusty leather sandals, and my freckled skin does its absolute best to imitate a tan.

I don’t so much tan really, I just kind of turn into a reverse white on dark freckle pattern.

The two skeins on the left are from the same colorway as the one on the right.

Superstition from FiberOptic.

I just finished the two on the left (the one on the right is from before.) The new skeins are sock weight, and Navajo plied to keep the colors in solid blocks.

I am also working on buttoning up some sewing projects. First there were the needle rolls:

Even though this one has my knitting needles in it, I’m keeping one of the other ones, my needles are purely for display purposes.

I feel so organized.

And then there were my bloomers  and chemise. Those are finished now, but I’m still holding off on the hardware for a corset. Should a busk and boning magically appear on my sewing table that would be finished next, but I’m not going to count on it happening any time soon. I finished my last corset by gutting the hardware from a bustier, for better or for worse, I’m all out of bustiers that I’m willing to chop apart.

So that’s pretty much it for now, at least until I run into some more slightly less than finished projects.

I hate being sick.

Physical symptoms of the flu aside, I get this antsy feeling because I’m not doing anything other than taking periodic swigs of cough syrup and popping ibuprofin along with minimal housekeeping duties. I know myself well enough to know that I am not in the right state of mind to start any projects.

However this self knowledge didn’t stop me from trimming Josey’s hair, and giving Lexi a touch of color.

Isn’t she just the cutest?

I think it turned out well.

Alexanne seems pleased with her new look. She told me that she looks like a rock star now and she wants a motorcycle. I told her to reign in that inner diva and that I don’t think anyone makes a motorcycle with training wheels. The conversation ended well enough, although Lexi made it clear that she was not amused by my flippant attitude.