A picture and a thousand words
Susan's project and family blog
We got to Kevin’s home right before the Eagles game on Sunday. Sharon was very amused to see Kevin in his jersey on Sunday morning, and even more so when Neen showed up in hers to pick us up. None of my photos from later in the day came out (mostly since the Eagles fans got less happy as the game progressed), so here’s a pre-game kitchen shot with two Westbrook jerseys and one Akers.
I felt underdressed. 🙂
Kevin, mid-game, joining in the anti-Donovan banter.
We started out our Pennsylvania trip with a visit to my sister’s new apartment in Philly. I loved being there. We didn’t get to see Sharon’s last apartment in DC, so I’d last seen her place three years ago and this was a completely different experience. Combine her great sense of style with a creaky, wonderful , light-filled east coast apartment with old-fashioned, quirky heating and N layers of paint… Kevin kept looking my way and catching me mid-grin. I loved it.
We combined good eating with a healthy amount of downtime. Shar was very busy with schoolwork, so we napped and read and knit while she worked on some of her cases.
Perfect for the day after a redeye. We kept interupting each other with random bits of thought – here’s Sharon cracking up to Jim Gaffigan on youtube.
We went to the panini and gelatto place around the corner for lunch, Monk for dinner (a return visit for me and Kevin! Neat!), and a neat French/modern place for brunch the next morning. A church nearby had bells that rang frequently (my mom would have known the names of the hymns, but my brain just hummed along with the notes and couldn’t quite remember the words). Lots of city sounds at night, and we woke to cheering for the Philadelphia marathon.
I made an executive knitting decision that the Sunrise Circle Jacket was just too much math and counting to be a good trip knit (I’m nearing all of the increases for the front, and my row gauge doesn’t match what’s required, so I’ll need to recalculate all of the increases -– a mess). While I was pondering what to bring instead, the Yarn Harlot made an irrefutable case for knitting the Noro Striped Scarf. I’d been hoarding a yarn store gift certificate from Kevin’s family for my birthday last year that covered the yarn perfectly, and now I’m knitting away. Choosing yarn was very difficult, since a skein of Noro is essentially a mystery, colorwise. I tried to find colors I liked, and nothing too neutral, but you really never know. Two skeins of each colorway, hopefully enough for a scarf and a hat.
I meant to just start and be sure that my needle size was right, but the color shifts are alluring and I got several inches in.
The yarn feels wonderful (soft and smooshy), and the sheen from the silk is amazing. What a great, fun knit, at the perfect time of year, and I’m so happy that I can show off the gift purchase to Kevin’s family since we’ll be there in two days! 🙂
The phone lines were all lighting up earlier this week with the news that my great aunt and uncle would be in town. Their son (and my mom’s cousin), Robert, lives on Bainbridge Island. Kevin and I were both delighted, and we managed to skip out of work early to race to the ferry on Wednesday. We made the 5:30 ferry with minutes and minutes to spare (yay!) and Robert’s kids were able to make it, too, so it was quite the dinner party. Irene made us all Chicken Paprikash for dinner – a great meal and a fun family tie as that’s one of the recipes that Mom copied from Irene in the early 80’s, and I copied from Mom when I moved out to Seattle. After dinner, we went through some of the photos my mom had recently sent of the Denver Crew. I’d gone through all of the photos and culled ones with the family from 1979-82. There was lots of exclaiming over old girlfriends, mustaches, how young everyone was, and how old I am now compared to the baby photos. 🙂
Perhaps after four-plus years on the West Coast I’m particularly starved for family contact, but I do have to say that it is a treat to have an evening with family and to revel in all of those shared connections. Despite not having had that much contact over the years, I still feel like they were a known presence when we were growing up. It’s amazing how quickly everyone settles into family mode – that certain mix of shared stories and catching up and belonging. I can never get over how much Uncle Bob reminds me of Papa (my grandfather). I hope that when I’m that age people can talk to me and know without a doubt that I’m related to my siblings, even if we haven’t always lived in the same place. That would be a great thing.
I made the mistake of taking out the camera late, and then only taking photos when people were talking over decaf and wine, instead of asking them to stop and smile. Oops. Hopefully you’ll get the sense of all of us enjoying gabbing away about so many subjects, from family history to current activities, to all of the recent energy and financial issues.
And one with Robert in it. 🙂
One of the exciting pieces of the night was that I finally got Bob to sign my painting. We have two of his paintings – one of the San Juan Mountains near Pagosa Springs that Bob and Irene gifted us for our wedding, and one that Bob painted on an autumn visit to my grandparents in MA. My grandparents gave me the Fall painting in 2003 when I moved into my new apartment in Boston. It was my first real art. 🙂 I’ve always loved it, but it wasn’t signed, and now it finally is.
🙂 Wonderful.
There’s a DL at work for home owners – it’s high traffic but I enjoy reading it. A month or so ago, there was a thread about moles, with photos of the little molehills, and since then I’ve been noticing them everywhere at work and around our neighbourhood.
Yesterday morning I woke up and thought that certain parts of the landscape looked unusual…? I didn’t get out to photograph them until after the blower/pine needle roof fest, so these photos are a bit obfuscated by pineneedles, but they’re freshly-dug dirt, classic circles, flat-top volcanos, etc. I’m thinking moles?
I know that this is supposed to be one of the major stressors of lawn care, but so far (knock on wood) I think they’re kind of cute and unexpected. We shall see. Given that all of the “mole” googling that I’ve done quickly devolves into rants about lethal poison and major explosives, my live-and-let-live sense of things is growing. Our squirrel vs. birdfeeder fight was so chastising (they didn’t even NOTICE the horseradish!!) that I’m loath to tread where so many others have failed. I’m more just hoping they find greener pastures in our neighbours’ yards. 🙂
We got up early-ish for a Sunday (10, to listen to the Eagles game). I worked on un-taping the MBR, which quickly spread to vacuuming, and then all out cleaning. Kevin helped me get the bed and mattress back in shape, and assembled our new coffee table (pictures soon!!).
The bright and sunny morning deteriorated around 1, so Kevin went out to work on the the roof and gutters before the rains came, and I went out to rake the lawn. The skies held and we got hours of yard cleanup in before it got dark.
My raking:
The leaves are only half down, but it makes such a difference to have the patio and grass clear!
We still have tons of wood on the patio (a co-worker may be picking it up) — perhaps it will kill some of that moss?? In the meantime, here’s the Sunrise Circle Jacket progress:
I’ve had to redo the math on the sleeves, and I didn’t have a chance to get to the math on the jacket fronts before I needed some mindless knitting, so I put the first sleeve on a holder for the moment and started the second.
The purple in these photos is still way brighter than the yarn — think more of an eggplant.
Here’s Kevin up on the roof, happy with his blower.
Isn’t this photo sort of deja vu?? Amazing how all of the needles pile up in just a few weeks.
I’m glad that we did all of the work — we’re about halfway through the leaf and needle season, but it’s too dark to do any of this after work, and we’ll be gone for most of the Thanksgiving week. I’d rather leave knowing that our gutters are clear and the lawn is happy, especially after all of the rain we’ve been having. 🙂
Way back in December of ’07, I painted two of the master bedroom walls blue. We were planning to paint the remaining walls white (since they were shoddily painted and some of the walls needed repair), but then we had a series of guests to stay and lost momentum. With our house’s first anniversary, I gained a lot of momentum on stalled projects, and painting the rest of our bedroom was pretty much top billing.
Kevin had flag football at 9, so I got up when he did (early for a saturday for me!!), we moved the bed, mattress and box spring, and I was done the edging and walls by noon. Not terrible, even if white-on-white painting has to be one of the least rewarding things ever.
And another great thing to have off the list.
The mirror that was in the bathroom was, realistically, a heavy, ugly behemoth.
But, somehow, when I was taking it down from the wall it struck me as having potential. Turns out that it is the perfect size for the MBR closet wall, so we may be saving ourselves money by reusing it. (My favourite option was a gorgeous glass mosaic mirror of a field of birches on Etsy, but $700 was definitely too steep. Major sigh.)
One coat of brown enamel spray paint, plus one coat of black:
Not the fanciest option and we’re both opposed to wall anchors (we repaired about forty of them after moving in here), but it’s still about perfect for the money. 🙂 Now we just need a nice bureau and a fancy glass vase to put in front of it and we’ll be a class act!
We got our final CSA bag this week! On one hand, it’s disappointing to be at the end of a great 22 weeks, but on the other hand we will still be working on squash and turnips and apples and tomatoes and plums for ages, so it feels a bit premature to be sad.
Several people have written to ask what a CSA is. CSA = Community Supported Agriculture. Basically, you buy a stake in a farm’s crop at the beginning of the growing season, and each week you get a big bag of produce. There are lots of different programs in the Seattle area, and all of the details are different. We went with Tiny’s Organic. (Organic was a moot point to us, but we liked that the bags were about ½ fruit instead of all vegetables. Most of the options are geared to about 4 people, and it’s easier to make it through an entire week’s bag when some of it can be used for baking, waffle & ice cream toppings, etc.) We paid about $40 a week upfront, and picked up a bag each week at a bookstore about five minutes away. There were lots of heirloom varieties of things, and we tried many vegetables for the first time. (Fava beans were a big hit, and we’ve loved the different kinds of arugula and herbs (esp cilantro). I’m so sold on winter squash, now, too.)
They included around 10 recipes each week – a major benefit especially when cooking something for the first time. We both loved unpacking the bag – it felt like a gift each week, and there was a fun element of surprise. Little things in life, but I love not having to pick out summer fruit at the grocery store (almost always disappointing) – just having delicious, healthy things appear was a treat. We probably broke even or saved about $5 a week on vegetables and fruit, so it wasn’t a major cost savings, but the only things we bought week to week were mushrooms, and tomatoes until August. Not bad. 🙂 And when we’re left to our own devices we tend to be a week of shopping and cooking/week of cheese sandwiches and pasta sort of people. It’s nice to have the fruit and non-frozen veggies just appear and beg to be used.
It wasn’t a total success – we couldn’t really keep up with the cucumbers or melons (a minor source of stress). Next year I’ll try making pickles and maybe we’ll just gift the melons to amenable friends. 🙂 We both wished for more beans, peas, broccoli, etc, though those crops were apparently a particular challenge with the weird growing weather this year. And I am still a bit baffled by turnips and beets – I buy that they’re great for you but I’m confused whether you can eat the greens and I need more recipes. Something to research in the off season, I suppose.
I’ve been noticing many of the quilt and craft bloggers organizing their fabric stash and it seemed like such an appealing idea that I couldn’t help but emulate.
I love that pretty shoebox – it’s the perfect spot for all of it. Sorry for the slightly off-focus shot – the camera seemed drawn to my curtains and new coffee mug. (I love the blue/aqua/brown leaves. Kevin has a orange/red/brown one that makes him just as happy. It’s nice when we both get to win on color schemes.)
Here’s a bright closeup!
I waited until the very brightest part of the afternoon to take photos, but bright in Seattle in November is a laughable concept. We are in DEEP cloud season, and it’s been raining so much that all of the nearby rivers are flooding. So I had to use the flash, but the colors are still cheerful and so neatly folded. 🙂