T-Shirt Necklace

Today begins the countdown. I have no idea when the Businessman will be home, but I know it will be today.

Almost makes me want to pack the kids up and go away on a daytrip so we're not here when he finally gets back. I'm sure he misses his children (as much as I miss my waistline).

I'm in better spirits today, thanks in large part to Ben and Jerry, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, and the knowledge that I consumed less than half of one, and all of the other in one night.

What I Made:

The T-shirt necklace is all over the internets these days. I first found it here. It's ridiculously easy to make one yourself, especially when you see the pricetags some of these are fetching.



This one started as a cheap green T-shirt I got at the craft store when I got the rest of the tie-dye supplies. I tie-dyed the shirt and then cut the strips per the tutorial. The kids loved stretching the loops to make them curl and hide all their raw edges.


I like the way the colors sort of mottled once all the slicing and curling was done.

I Wish I Could Go On A Business Trip

The Businessman is halfway through his five day business trip. I miss my freedom my knitting night having someone else handle the weird night noises him.

The other night I woke to the pleasant noises of my cat tormenting a mouse. He played, and played, and played and I finally dozed off. (the Businessman takes care of these things). I woke to the charming sound of his crunching said mouse. Now, 90% of the time, my cat does not eat the heads of his prey (I have never owned a cat that didn't leave something behind). I have looked everywhere and I cannot find any evidence of these shenanigans.

Did he eat it? Did he not? Proving either outcome is a bit more than I can handle right now.

In other news, the bird nest under my deck is on it's second round of hatchlings. I do not envy that mama. Even when her mate is still within a one block radius of the nest and not out of town, living with maid service, free meals, and "working hard" whatever that means.

Ugh, I need caffeine. I hope my Starbucks got their espresso machine fixed. It was broken and I almost cried.

What I Made:

This was a top I knit last summer.



Here is a detail of the bodice.



And the hem.



Leaf tank by Fiona Ellis, Vogue Knitting SP/SU 2008
Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece "Nymph"

Meme Awards And Yankee Doodle Socks

I think it's safe to say I have made a blog-friend.

It started as a comment here, and then I made a comment there, then she posted about this yarn and totally twisted my arms behind my back, around my hip and under my knee until I could grasp my hands around my credit card and buy some for myself.

Wait, I'm mixing up Sweet Mama Jones with my yoga instructor. But a true girlfriend enables impulse shopping jags, right?

Anyway, I'm certain we could randomly meet in a coffee shop somewhere and have a caffiene induced henfest discussing our similarities and differences for hours. Then we would take a look at our charming albeit boy focused families and realize we were both in dire need of a chic flick.

Except she probably lives about 60 of my yarn stashes away from me. The internet, it's a blessing, and a curse.

She honored me with an award recently:



The rules of receiving said award indicate I must give a shout-out to seven of my favorite blogs. How can I narrow it down to seven?

The Mouthy Housewives-It's new-ish and there's some serious sass here. But if you have fallen in love with the characters on your kid's TV, there's still help!
Kerrie Robertson Illustration-How could I not divert my adoring fan base to my Personal Illustrator? I envy people who can draw.
Me Anders-My high-school BFF. Let's flood her with comments and shock the hell out of her, shall we?
Notes From the High Country-My friend who is doing an internship on Mount Rainier. Ask her a question about banana slugs, glacier milk or sourdough doughnuts. Demand she post answers--especially for that doughnut recipe.
The Pioneer Woman-She already has about 15,000 hits a day, but yee haw she's funny!
April Showers-Without her I wouldn't have a favicon, triple columns, or tabs across the top of my blog (I'm still working on the tabs).
SITS-The premise: They feature a blog every weekday and you learn the value of giving and receiving comments.

Those are my seven favorites tonight. Tomorrow it will change.

What I Made:

I finished the socks! Made from the very yarn that created a link between Mountain Mama and Sweet Mama Jones.



Can you believe how large my 6yo's feet are? I may have to stop making socks for him soon.



SMJ, when do boy's feet stop growing?

The Amazing Tightrope Walkers

Behind my house, there is a wetlands area. Before the wetlands, there is a big chunk of HOA property that has a playground (we affectionately call it the plague-ground because the prairie dogs were practically under it when we moved in), and a half-hearted attempt at a volleyball court.



Right now, the only purposes it serves are a vampire larvae mosquito nesting ground after a few days of rain, and a catch-all for every weed species you can imagine. Since the National Seed Lab is only six miles away, I feel having all this weed selection, a mere stone's throw from our lawn is redundant.

But two intrepid gentlemen have figured out how to get the most out of their HOA dues.

What They Made:

Behold: the tightrope walkers.





Isn't this the coolest thing you have ever seen? They're very nice guys and more often than not, they end up teaching a few tight rope lessons to the neighborhood kids.

I decided not to post their names because I fear the HOA would disapprove and I sort of like having the Greatest Show On Earth in my backyard.

Plus, it gives the vampire larvae mosquitoes variety.

Detail Orientated

I was going to write this post about my fax-impaired supervisor and how she used to tell me she was "Detail orientated." Then I decided to give her the benefit of the doubt and researched the difference between oriented and orientated.

It seems they are interchangeable. Orientated is more common in Britain and oriented is more common in the States and technical writing.

It still made that small muscle behind my eyeball twitch in much the same way as when Vicious drags my silverware across the tiles in my patio furniture. Maybe it wasn't the use of the word orientated so much as the fact she was about as detail oriented as a college house painting business.

She also wrote could of, should of and would of in her emails. As in "I should of learned good grammar."*

What I Made:

My mom and I had a dollhouse when I was little. Not that I ever played with dolls. Alas, the house is gone, but my mom has kept several of the miniatures in a shadow box. I snapped some pics for the archives (you know, those days when life gets in the way of What I Made).



This is detail oriented:



I cross-stitched that when I was 10-ish. It's two inches square.

I wish my eyes were still that good.

*I should have learned better grammar.

How Does My Garden Grow?

This episode of What I Made has been brought to you by rain, dirt, and sun.

You have been warned.



Isn't it impressive? Are you completely underwhelmed? Don't worry, it gets better (though arguably not much).



Yummy's radishes. He's very excited.

The first time I had a garden, it was a community garden rental. They were notorious for having about 234 kazillion weeds per square foot of dirt. I had one patch of scruffy, weedy looking plants and decided nothing worthwhile could grow there so I hoed everything up...

...and discovered hundreds of the cutest miniature radishes. I quickly replanted them and prayed I hadn't killed them. I hadn't, but the critters boring holes through them rendered them inedible (to me).

Yummy's are safe from my hoe if not from as yet unknown critters.

Vish's peas:



I'm still reeling from that close-up. I wonder what else my camera is capable of?

My arugula. Mmmm. Tasty, peppery, arugula:



I snack on it like popcorn. Except I don't snack on popcorn. I snack on arugula.

Rainbow chard, a red one:



I should be harvesting any day now.

Cut And Assemble My Sanity

As a child I mostly played puzzles, books, and crafts. One of my favorites was Cut and Assemble books. You got a book, say the Neuschwanstein Castle, and inside were pages and pages of pieces you were to cut out. Glue was applied to the tabs and, with careful manipulation, you created your castle. Or Taj Mahal, or sailing ship, or working clock.

I loved those books. I remember feeling so empowered when my mom got me my first X-acto knife.

I was three.

Kidding! I was 29.

Hee!

What I Made:

All I can say is thank you Canon for having the coolest Cut and Assemble projects online. Free ones!




I printed this guy up and made him during a car trip into the mountains. I was able to do this without the instructions so I have to say these are very well designed though most of them are too complex for my brood. I would recommend printing in color if you can.

Someday I'll let the kids have all the fun.

Rainy Day Projects-Tie Dye

The Businessman loves costumes. He spends the entire year collecting costume parts, drooling over nasty, cheap wigs, wishing I spent more time sewing garments destined for his costume closet, and dreaming of the costume store he wants to open in his retirement.

I keep telling him this cannot coexist with our Mini-Golf Course in Kauai (my retirement dream is Hawaii--he just needs something to keep him busy) but he just won't listen.

Last night I got the announcement that today is Crazy Hat Day in VBS. It is reassuring to know we have an endless supply of "Crazy Hat Day" props.



What I Made:

Thanks to the fates who love to amuse themselves by watching my life, I had to break into the rainy-day cabinet this week, the first week of Summer vacation. I have seriously depleted my supplies, which makes the Wii seem more like an investment rather than a frivolous purchase.



Vicious won't wear his because he's afraid I might wash them. My green fingers have done nothing to convince him the dye doesn't wash out.

What She Made-Elizabeth Skinner

Her name was Elizabeth Skinner. She was one of my childhood inspirations. She taught me how to take a small idea and brainstorm it into something big--something that challenged all previous ideas. Something that could make the impossible possible.



She lost her battle with cancer when I was in junior high. I remember her struggle, but I don't remember her ever being weak. I remember her covered in paint, and helping us church kids with our crafts, and encouraging my creativity.



Shortly before her death, she found some old chairs, stripped them down and painted them with whimsical images that may have meant something profound to her. These chairs are a small memento of a truly, wonderfully, creative person. The sight of them brings back so many memories.



She donated them to a church auction. My mother won them. I don't know what the final bids were. It doesn't matter. They were worth every penny.



Thanks for inspiring me Elizabeth.



I hope they put you in charge of zebra stripes up there. And giraffe spots.

My Favorite Salad

I'm in a quandary. I started knitting a summer top, with the intention of wearing it on the 4th of July:



If you look carefully it's a white star. The rest of the bits were to be made with the four skeins of denim yarn I had leftover from making my denim cardigan.

The problem? I can't find my fourth skein. Ergo I can't finish the sweater. Ergo I will be naked that day.

It's really my only option.

That or drinking heavily, shrouding myself with the star and poking knitting needles into my eyes and out my ears (I call this self-voodoolation) to create lovely red stripes on the antique white I chose because it looked so good with this blue.

Two options. How to choose, how to choose...

What I Made:

This time of year I fall in love with my favorite salad.



A couple handfuls of spinach, a small handful of blueberries (any berry works), a sprinkle of candied nuts, some crumbled chevre...



...and a tasty raspberry vinaigrette. Brianna's Blush Wine vinaigrette is also wonderful, but Annie's was on sale.

I have tried unsuccessfully, to recreate this dressing. Does anyone have a good recipe for a sweet, raspberry vinaigrette?

Monter Truck Invites-How To

Okay, it seems I'm getting lots of traffic for these invitations I made. Here's a quick how-to. I made them several weeks ago so I only have a pic of the final product. Just refer to the photos.

You will need:

• Premade cards and envelopes. I found these kraft paper colored ones at Michaels. I liked the color. The color becomes your "sky."
• A couple sheets of scrap book paper. I used a bronzy-brown which I later found out revealed a black-brown color when ripped.
• A couple sheets of sandpaper OR a different shade of scrap book paper.
• Monster truck stickers (BMX bikes would be cute too!)

Cut the scrapbook paper into rectangles a bit larger than the width of the card (you can trim it later) and about 3-4 inches tall. Ask your kid to rip each rectangle in half down the middle. The rougher the tear the better.

Do the same with the sandpaper, but with slightly shorter rectangles.

Glue the scrapbook mountains to the card, then glue the sandpaper mountains on top. Stagger them a little. Trim the edges even with the card.

Add the truck sticker and you're done.

For the envelopes:

• paint
• toys with treaded wheels--I used Legos.

Pour a little paint onto a plate or something and roll the wheels through it. You'll want a scrap of paper handy to roll off the excess paint. Roll the wheels across the envelopes.

This part isn't in the pictures above:

My handwriting leaves something to be desired, so I printed all the pertinent info onto regular printer paper and tore around the edges. Then I glued that to the inside. I also printed each invitee's name and tore the edges of those and glued them to the front of the envelopes (This might not work if you had to mail them).

If this inspired you, I would love to see some pics! You can email me from my profile, or leave a link in the comments.

This Might Be Why The Economy Sucks

True Story.

I worked in an office of six supervisors with about forty people under them. I was one of the forty and every few months the supervisors would shuffle us around. Of course, this meant we got to learn every sup's style.

Then the technology changed and our supervisor assignments became more permanent. When I learned who my supervisor was going to be, I went home and told the Businessman to knock me up. He obliged and I only had to suffer nine more months with her.

TMI?

One day, she had a meeting with me because she felt I was the best candidate to "update" our fax cover sheet.

"I just took a class and they said the best ways to get something noticed were large words (I assume she meant font size), logos and color. This has our logo already. Let's make the words bigger and add color."
"Um, it's a fax coversheet."
*blank look* (she was good at those)
"Color might be difficult."
"I know, I thought we could print them on yellow paper and fax them that way."

I'm sure the company got back every penny they invested for that class.

What I He Made:

Yummy was a half day kindergartner and usually ate his lunch at home. The end of year field trip required a sack lunch. The morning of the field trip, I got up and told him I needed to pack a lunch.

"Mom...Hel-lo...I already packed my lunch."



This is what he came up with. A bento box with strawberries, carrots, crackers, bologna (cut with a small bat-shaped cookie cutter) and cheese. For dessert he had a fruit leather. He even filled his water bottle (I slipped in a little container of Gatorade powder since I didn't need to add anything else).

Overall I'd say he did very well. I was going to make PB&J.

If I didn't have this truly wonderful child, I might still be trying to fax yellow coversheets. With big words. Like 'yellow' or 'fax'.

Stay tuned for a few more Sunday Supervisor stories.

RunPee

The Businessman saw that I was on the computer yet again and told me to go to a cool site he had heard of on NPR.

"Type in run pee dot com."

I hesitated, worried this would be just like the time when I was blogging and he needed to know what time Dick's (Sporting Goods) opened. For future reference, their URL is a lot longer than the one I first typed in. Oops.

RunPee.com is where you go if you're the kind of person who has to pee in the middle of a movie. Always. They list the current blockbusters and tell you at what point you can go and not really miss anything important. They even tell you what happens during the three minutes you were gone.

My favorite part: They sell maternity-sized T-shirts. Looks like they figured out their target market.

They also sell "multi-purpose" mugs. I didn't want to think too hard about that one.

What I Made:

I have a couple BBQs in the schedule (vegetarians heart BBQs). I made a double batch of this Sesame Peanut Noodle Salad. It's vegan, and it can be a light side or a substantial meal. My pics didn't do much much for the dish.

The Geekfest

So something happened over the weekend that the Businessman thought you would enjoy. It's sort of a ramble, but when isn't it?

Random knitting pics for your pleasure while I prattle

We gave Yummy the Wii Lego Star Wars for his birthday. It's a pretty cool game. It has strategy and puzzles, which I like, and lots of fighting, which TBM likes and you can play two people together so we sort of complete each other.

TBM challenged me to a geekfest after the kiddos went to bed. He pulled out the Wii and the case of Miller Light (which he bought for the geekfest because it's crap so theoretically we could consume a lot of it) and we started playing.

Now, for some reason, I was exhausted. TBM politely mentioned it might be all the manual labor I did in the garden but he and I both knew I had done nothing more strenuous than hoe a little dirt. I felt a little queasy but all hell broke loose when we got to the pod race. We both had to beat Annikin and I didn't have the advantage of growing up with video games (which I am thankful for) so we ended up replaying this race over, and over, and over again.

Next thing I knew I had motion sickness. I pulled my character out of the game and let TBM finish the race and then ran my own little podracer into the bathroom where I...er...used The Force.

Look, a Hat!

Still exhausted, though less queasy, I flopped onto the couch, turned my character back on and passed out. TBM made it through about 635 more levels before I woke up.

I only drank about 1/4 of the can of beer. I don't know how this little incident affects my geek ranking.

1. Cashmere silk shawl I haven't finished yet
2. Lidster in a luscious alpaca
3. Some sparkly gloves--my design
4. Felted cowboy hat--now too small, need to make another one
5. My transition shawl--I knitted it while moving from Washington to Colorado.

It seems I've been nominated for an award. I will research this and get back to you.

A Look Into My Pantry

I'm subscribed to 61 blogs, so forgive me for forgetting which one of you cleaned your pantry, and thus inspired me to do the same. I usually clean it out twice a year, but I think I skipped my fall cleaning so I was overdue.

Secretly, I love looking in people's pantries. It tells me so much more than the medicine cabinet. I'm hoping you're the same.

Before/After



The pictures don't look that much different, but there are some key features I want to point out:

• The kids can now reach their cereal
• I now know I have 14 different flours, 8 different seaweeds, 15 pounds of pasta (not nearly enough), 5 different salts, 6 different nut butters (of which the Businessman only eats Jif) and 6 different kinds of vanilla. Too many beans and grains to count.
• TBM and I are tall, so we can easily access the top shelves of all our closets and cabinets. This is one area where I'm glad genetics didn't fail me. All my weird flours, liquor, and rarely used appliances live there now.
• The black things that looked like mouse poop on the third shelf turned out to be black rice--phew. The black things on the floor that looked like black rice--not so much. There is now nothing edible or mouse chewable on the floor or bottom shelf (there never was anything edible on the floor, but now I can sweep it easily).

That was What I Made today. Sorry the post is a little blah, but I feel a little blah today.

What does my pantry say about me? Besides the fact I could feed a small country (or two teenagers) for a day.

BBQ Pizza

Last year about this time, my father in law announced that he was going to hook his propane grill up to his natural gas line. Knowing this man was the key role model of the Businessman, and therefore the font of all home improvement knowledge TBM has, I got worried. Very worried.

"Did you get the adapter?"
"Nope, don't need one!"
"Uh, yes you do."
"Nope, I don't!"
"Is your will up to date?"
"I can just hook it right up."
"There is a difference between the propane your grill usually uses and the natural gas your home uses."

Luckily, I managed thwart his attempt at becoming a gas explosion.

This year, we inherited his old grill (this was not my motive all along), and he is getting the UberFlamethrower 6000X, which is configured to use the natural gas line. Our 'new' grill is any self respecting American Family's dream, but I'm a vegetarian and am really fond of my little round grill. It's the perfect size for my paella pan and for pizza.

What I Made:

Barbecued Pizza

I don't have a recipe for my pizza dough--I sort of wing it and go by the feel--but any pizza dough recipe will work. This dough was half bread flour/half white whole wheat flour (white whole wheat flour is my favorite all purpose flour these days, but you need the gluten in the bread flour). Add a slurp of olive oil, salt and water with your yeast dissolved in it. I let my KitchenAid knead it about 10 minutes.

Or you could go the the grocery store and get their lumps of pizza dough. I've done it and it's great.

When it has risen, punch it down and divide it. A large handful of dough will make the size crust you see here. Let it rest a little (optional) and roll it out or toss it. Smack that puppy on the hot grill and let it firm and puff up a little (about 10-30 seconds)

My grill works best at low because it has these tongues of flame that will reach out and burn the crust to charcoal. If you don't have lingua el fuego go ahead and raise the heat.

When the crust has set, flip it over and add your ingredients. This one is fairly traditional pepperoni. It's for my kids and the Businessman. I make meat for them on occasion in order to get that feral look out of their eyes.

Put the cover on and let it cook away until the top is done to your satisfaction. If this is your first pizza, you might want to stick with olive oil/herbs as a topping (AKA Fococcia) until you get the timing right. No one eats pizza that looks awesome if the bottom is black beyond recognition.

I made my pizza with sauteed mushrooms, sundried tomatoes, olive oil, fresh mozzarella and salt. Then we ate it and I forgot to take a picture.

But there will be more this summer. There always is.

And because I'm ornery like that, I inaugurated the new grill with...



...A veggie burger. I'm sure the ole FIL will be pleased.

In Which The Businessman Builds Me A Garden

I hope everyone had a nice Memorial day and I hope you took a moment or two to remember those who gave their lives so we could still have ours.



Kind of appropriate that I finish this one this weekend. This gives me 'til July 4th to make it a pair.

What We Made--Weekend Project Edition:

Once upon a time, I had a wonderful little garden. It made me yummy salads for work and provided lots of flowers. I never saw a snake there. I miss it terribly.

Next to our house is a deeply sloping hillside. The previous owner thought it would be best to line the hill with groundcloth and then dump several tons of rock on it to make it look sellable.



The problem, of course, it that in a clime with regular flash-flood inducing rains, the ground cloth was like a Slip 'n Slide. As you can see in the photo above, we started placing landscaping stone to prevent the rocks from tumbling their merry way into the lawn (which has been mown since this picture was taken).

The Businessman decided it was time for action. He told me two tons of stone was going to be delivered.



I would have expected two tons of rock to look like, well, two tons. Luckily, TBM called in his Buddy and I didn't really verify if it felt like two tons.

Three yards of dirt arrived (no pic). Then a rainstorm came and out went TBM. He tarped and diverted as much water as he could while I worried (from inside the garage) about the lightning strikes everywhere and the muddy rainwater carrying our dirt into the gutters.

Sunday, he cottoned on to me and tried to put me to work. We He shoveled, pulled, lifted, heaved, hauled, and in general ruined my nails. I tried to take more of a 'Brains in this Operation' approach, but he wasn't fooled.



Then he saw I had the camera, and I got a temporary reprieve. Sorry TBM, I warned you I would post it.


I call it Man Trying To Act Cool. He strained his back here. Not really.

And now I have three large planting beds. With two more to follow next year.





TBM suggested I could shovel some rocks and dirt today while he's at work.

Hmm. No thanks. I think I'll go look at plants.