Rocky Mountain High

Husband, Daughter and I spent a week in Montrose, Colorado visiting Husband's family and celebrating his 40th birthday.

Shortly after arriving at In-Laws' house Daughter snuck my camera and snapped a few pictures of the birds in the back yard.

This is fairly representative of the 37 photos she took. Mixed in with the birds, she also managed to get a couple of pictures of Nephew smiling.

He's almost 5, and he's a great little guy, but he doesn't quite trust me. He was quite serious for most of the time we spent with him. He has recently mastered both tying shoes and putting on belts. He likes to practice these skills on everyone in the vicinity. If you're wearing lace-up shoes and aren't paying attention you'll have your shoes retied and quadruple knotted in no time.

One of the disadvantages my Colorado family has to deal with is the horrible scenery around their homes. This, for instance, is the view looking down the street from In-Laws' house.

Go ahead and click on that to make it bigger. Those would be the San Juan mountains. Imagine having to look at that kind of nastiness all year long. One of the days we were there we visited one of Brother-In-Law's friends who has an annual pit barbeque. This is Bill's house:

He made it himself. Seriously. His own two hands. Sweat of his brow. Here's the view from the front deck.

Again, who would want to live with that? Who would want to be able to walk outside in a bathrobe before taking their shower in the morning knowing full well that no one can see them? Who would want to be able to shoot skeet from the yard and not worry about hitting anyone?

Those two on the left side of the picture are boys aged somewhere in the area of 11 and 13. They were shooting every bit as well as the adults were. It was both impressive and a bit humbling.

One of our other side trips was a visit out to Uncle's house. While we were there he got out his bow and arrows, and we spent a good bit of the afternoon shooting. Even me, though I don't think I've had my hands on a bow in around 30 years.

I remembered many of the things that I learned long ago: Arrow goes on the inside, odd colored fletching faces you, stand sideways. I did forget one thing, but I don't think I will again. Don't turn your wrist in. This is why I won't forget...

I've had that for a week now. It's a little smaller, but has turned some really interesting colors.

While some of us were peppering the target with arrows (or losing them in the bushes) Daughter and Nephew were having fun on "The Red Tractor."



Colorado. It's a nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there. Well, actually if my family wasn't all in Michigan I'd move out there in no time flat.

While we were visiting I came to realize that some of the people who read the blog don't really care about knitting at all. So in order to make it easier for them, I will now set the knitting content apart from the family news. So...

*** Knitting Content ***
During the odd moments in between family functions I made a pair of socks. They're plain vanilla socks made from Deborah Norville Serenity Sock weight.

They should look good with jeans. Which I won't be wearing in the mountains because I live in the flat, flat Midwest.

H is for...

Happy Anniversary and Hockey Knitting

Only 12 short years ago Husband and I tied the knot.

A lot has happened in the intervening years. Good things have happened, bad things have happened, but Hubby and I keep plugging along. If I had one thing to do over again, however, it would have been choosing a different day to get married on. I would pick one that was farther away from Fathers day and Husband's birthday. If we had gotten married in say October, there wouldn't be much chance that when I handed H his Anniversary card he would ask, "What's this for? My birthday?" Not that I'm saying that happened today.

If only Husband was a bigger hockey fan, he might have an easier time remembering what June 7th is. Brother finds it easier to remember.

He and Sister-In-Law (who was Brother's Girlfriend at the time) spent most of my reception in the bar of the hotel that our reception was in watching the Detroit Red Wings win the Stanley Cup. It was the first time they had won the cup since 1955. They have won it again 3 times since then, and this week they are going for it again. At the moment they lead the Pittsburgh Penguins 3 games to 2.

When you're watching hockey, you have to have just the right kind of knitting. You need to have something that you don't have to look at. Nothing with charts, nothing with lots of counting, just good plain knit stitch over and over and over again. So when the playoffs started (and I will admit that when the playoffs started I was cheering for the Chicago Blackhawks, until they were annihilated by Detroit,) I started working on a wallaby for myself.

Acres and acres of knitting that I don't have to look at.

Because the Cup changes everything, and I don't want to miss a second of it. (Note to the NHL ad department, I wouldn't mind a little remuneration for using two of your tag lines in one sentence.)

G is for...

Gazpacho

But not the kind of gazpacho you're thinking of. You are thinking of the cold soup, right? I thought you were. In our house, however, gazpacho is this:


Confused? I can see how you might be, so let me explain. First, let's revisit the 1970s. Back in the day there was a fashion item that had a brief moment in time called the gaucho pant. For those who are woefully out of touch with the fashion world I will tell you that "gauchos" are pants that come to around mid calf and have wide flowy legs. They are inspired by the pants worn by Argentine cowboys. My first, and to tell the truth only, 4H project was sewing a pair of gaucho pants and a matching vest out of some burgundy colored fabric. I may have even worn them once or twice outside of the end-of-the-year fashion show.

This lovely (?) fashion came back into vogue last year, and Daughter decided that she would like a pair of these pants. The only problem is that she can't seem to remember what they're called. One morning she asked me to get her her brown gazpacho pants. As with most family legends, one time was all it took. She now owns several pair of gazpacho pants, and there's no hope that she'll ever call them anything else.

F is for...

Well, several things, actually.

First, F is for Footwear. Well, not footwear as in the typical shoes and boots, but more in the sense of the foot coverings you put on before you put on your shoes or boots. In the course of one week, I worked on these:


Clockwise from the top they are 1. A pair of theoretical socks. The Yarn Harlot recently made a pair of socks in honor of one of her favorite TV shows. This got me thinking, and I decided that I should make a pair of World of Warcraft socks. The cuff you see here is the beginning of that project. The yarn isn't exactly what I was hoping for (I ordered is from KnitPicks) so this is definitely not the final pair, but hopefully I can work out some of the kinks with them. 2. Socks for Daughter. You'll note that there are three socks in this picture. This would be evidence of the fact that Gauge LIES! Before I knit sock number 1, I made a gauge swatch just like I was supposed to. Based on what that swatch told me, I did the math and made a lovely little sock for Daughter. Because I am a simple person, when it came time to create the second sock, I naturally just copied everything I did for the first one, assuming that they would turn out the same. HA! Sock number 2 ended up being significantly bigger than sock number 1, even though I used the same needles, stitch count, etc. FYI, if you have bamboo needles and are knitting in a near zero humidity environment, then move to a 35% humidity environment, your gauge changes. 3. Socks I made for myself that turned out just like I wanted them to. 4. The ball in the middle represents the socks that I made for and gave to a friend, even though I really wanted to keep them for myself.

F is also for Family. On Mothers' Day I got to spend a large chunk of the day with my whole family which is unusual because Son generally prefers not to hang out with us. Husband took the hint I gave him 3 weeks ago and made reservations for us to have brunch at Pappadeaux's. After stuffing ourselves full of as much food as we could we came home and I was given my gifts. Chocolates, bandanas, and a couple of projects from school from Daughter, Chocolates from Husband and a Gnomish Warrior action figure from Son. We then played a little Magic: The Gathering.

All in all it was a good Mothers' day. And I got one other gift from the whole family. My Happy-Day-After-Mothers'-Day gift.

Thoughtful, no?

And finally, F is for Flowers. My favorite scent in the floral kingdom comes from these guys, who hang over my neighbor's fence into my backyard.

E is for...

Expedition

Last week was Daughter's spring break. Rather than spend the week lazing about the house, or jetting off to a warm and exotic location we decided to take a trip north and visit Mom & Dad. This particular expedition requires a drive of 375 miles pretty much due north from Chicago. This journey is all about getting to the destination, as there's not a lot to look at on the road. There's Wisconsin:

Which consists of farmland, farmland, farmland, Milwaukee, farmland, farmland, farmland, Green Bay, farmland, farmland, farmland, Marinette.

Then there's the U.P.:

Which can be described as Menominee, woods, woods, woods, Escanaba, woods, woods, woods, Parent's house. Normally I bring a book on CD to listen to in the car, but I didn't get a chance to go to the library before we left, so I could either search for a decent radio station (which in the rural areas we drive through is difficult) or let Daughter listen to her portable DVD player without the headphones. I spent a week humming songs from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

No visit to my hometown is complete without visiting two local establishments. The first is a fast food restaurant that I worked at for 3 1/2 years.

They make THE best french fries that I have ever had. They do not, as some have asked, serve kangaroo meat. I don't know where the name came from, but I do know that there is a loosely related chain in the Rockford, Illinois area. My personal favorite meal is the steak and cheese-no onions-extra cheese, medium fries, medium drink. Daughter likes the kids meals because instead of a toy, kids get a free soft serve ice cream cone.

The second must-have food on a Marquette trip is a sub from Togo's.

All of the displaced yoopers that I know feel like they have to have a Togo while they're home. Opinions on what to have vary, but the majority of people go for the #16, unless they're in the mood for something hot, in which case the Torpedo is the way to go.

It only just dawned on me while taking the above photos that I apparently like foods best if the sign for the establishment has a picture of a goofy looking person holding the food in their left hand. I didn't take a picture of Big Boy, but I have to stop there as well, because my high school friend is a manager there, not necessarily because I have to have the food. But there again, goofy guy holding food up in left hand.

Mom told me that there was a new (to me) knitting shop in town, so one day Daughter and I went in to check out Knitter's Niche. Shockingly, I was not able to get out without spending a little money.

Some Tofutsies to make a pair of socks for Daughter.

Some Happy Feet for me.

And a skein of cormo wool from a UP farm, milled at a UP mill. After all, it would be bad form to visit the place, then not stimulate the local economy, right?

D is for ...

Delayed

At Christmas the gift I got from Husband was an envelope with a picture of my present in it. It hadn't actually come in yet, and was delayed until recently. I finally received it the other day and can now enjoy it.


It's a Kindle, which is an electronic book reader. It uses a wireless internet connection to download books from the Amazon store, or I can download books to my computer and then put them on the Kindle with a USB cable. It's a nifty little gadget, and Daughter is very taken with it. She is now doing her required 20 minutes of daily reading on it, and she usually ends up spending more like 45 minutes. The trick is going to be making sure that she doesn't figure out how to download things or we'll end up owing Amazon $5,000 in no time flat.

Also on the delayed pile are these socks.

These were made using the Yarn Harlot's basic sock recipe and one of my Sock Gang skeins. I received the wool 3-6 months ago, but I was delayed in making them up.

And last but not least, these socks are also delayed. I got the wool (Fleece Artist Nova Socks) from the Fibreholic when she came to visit last summer.

This is what the skein looked like:

This is what the ball looked like:

And this is what the socks look like:

Only they're actually darker. The sun (which has also been delayed) is finally shining in Chicagoland and now that it's warm enough to go outside to take pictures the sun is washing all of the color out. I now have a quandry. These are supposed to be for the woman who leads one of my study groups but I really like them a lot. Would it be wrong to hope that her feet are hideously misshapen so I have an excuse to not give them to her?

Golden Oldies

When I was a kid my parents gave me a subscription to National Geographic World magazine. I remember looking forward to receiving my issue each month, and hoping that it would be one of the ones with a poster in it. At one point my room was nearly wallpapered in posters that had come out of the magazine. Being the pack rat that I am, I didn't throw them away, but carefully stored them up in neat piles on the bottom shelf of my bookcase. When I got old enough to move away I packed them all up in a cardboard box and they have traveled with me to every place that I have moved to since then. Husband has often bemoaned my tendency to accumulate things, he's more of a throw-it-away-the-instant-you're-done-with-it kind of guy. Today I proved that there are actually good reasons to hang on to important things like the box of magazines that you read when you were 11 years old.

Behold the cover of the March 1980 copy of World magazine.

I remember trying valiantly to get my hair to feather like that, but it was just not in the cards for me.

Inside were articles on raising service dogs,


animals that camouflaged themselves by changing color,


the article on horse vaulting,


and, finally, an article on a boy who's family made soft pretzels. His name was Michael Tshudy, and the story was about the pretzel bakery his parents operated in Pennsylvania. It was the first pretzel bakery in the United States, and still is in operation today. It's called the Julius Sturgis Pretzel Bakery. One of the features of the article was a recipe for making soft pretzels at home.


You can probably tell from the state of this page as opposed to the others, that this recipe got a lot of use. I used to make these quite frequently as a youth. The were best when they were fresh out of the oven, although they were still really good the next day if you sliced them in half and put them in the toaster. I even made these in high school. Once each year our German class would be allowed to use the home-ec room to make any german recipe that we wanted. Some people make german chocolate cake, some made torte, and my group always made pretzels. As I recall, the were always well received.

After high school this magazine got boxed up with all the others, and didn't see the light of day again for a very long time. Just recently, however, Daughter and I went to a hockey game. During the game she ate 2 huge pretzels and asked for more. I told her that I had a recipe for them at home, and promised her that we could make some. Four short months later, I finally lived up to my promise and today she and I baked her first batch of pretzels.

That's Daughter, holding a 29 year old magazine with a recipe for some of the best pretzels you'll ever make. I suggest you all dig out your copy and give it a go, they're just as good as I remember.