Where some of the Christmas money went...

We're getting smarter this spring. It will be fun to have a class Q and I can do together. I've always bemoaned the fact that OSU's Master Gardener and Master Preserver series happen in the middle of the week in the middle of the day.

Winter Yard Work

This morning I got most of the leaves from the driveway moved to the proper mulching places, pulled out all the plant remains that froze early this month, created the new rhubarb bed, transplanted and divided the rhubarb, and put down more weed-suppression cardboard between the house and the strawberries. It started raining then.
I hope the rhubarb makes it after it's rough treatment. It looked so easy in the tutorials but seemed less obvious in real life. Ah well, I have it on good authority that it's pretty tough to kill rhubarb, so we'll see.
I also dug a few of the parsnips. I'm anxious to fry them up.

Christmas

The last few days before we left for Colorado were full of finishing.

I made three double batches of granola and gave out bagsful with all of the Christmas gifts. My recipe is adapted from the one from the America's Test Kitchen cookbook. Each single batch has...
3 c. rolled oats
1 c. walnuts, chopped
1/2 c. coconut
1/2 c. sliced almonds
1/4 c. sunflower seeds
1/4 c. sesame seeds
1/3 c. vegetable oil
1/2 c. honey
I use the bottom of a roasting pan at 325F and stir every ten minutes or so for 25-30 minutes. I add a bit of lemon zest on top for the last 5-1o minutes. The granola turns a beautiful golden brown when it's done.

A tradition started last year when I made peanut butter cups for Q's stocking candy. We really really like this recipe. (Q got my traditional stocking candy too - dark chocolate orange, a Toblerone, and assorted English chocolate.)

Four of the gifts were tea towels (mother-in-law, sister-in-law x 2, aunt). Each person got one green and one brown - there were two each of the leaves and squirrels.

We had four days in Colorado that involved lots of food and lots of sweets. We played Catch Phrase, Pictionary and Scrabble and built puzzles. It was very fun.

Christmas Day at my brother and sister-in-law's house

Boxing Day at my parents house

I had to show off my mom's cunning seed saving arrangement. As the label featuring my maiden name shows, these paint jars were once mine, a very long time ago. She keeps a list of what kind of seed is contained under each color of lid. Yay reuse!

Monday was a running about/coming back from Portland day. We got cute cookie cutters (including a hedgehog) and glasses I couldn't resist at Ikea.
We also went to OMSI, where we have a membership. We went to see Samson, the T. Rex skeleton but had forgotten there was also an exhibit about the science of fear (Scream!) in place. It was a really good time.
I used some Christmas money at Portland Nursery to get a rotary cultivator and at Territorial Seed Company for wires and row cover for the front garden bed. We still need to arrange covers for two of the raised beds that are being used for tomatoes. I've got the entire garden plan laid out now. I'll have to post it soon.

2009 Harvest and Preserving Totals

Out with the old year and in with the new. The old lists for 2009 now reside here. 2010 will go up when we start the harvest. :)

Just over 200 lb. harvested.
Banana Pink Jumbo Squash 10 lb.
Basil leaves 2 lb.
Beets 5 oz.
Blueberries 1/2 c.
Broccoli 2 lb.
Cabbage 9 lb. 2 oz.
Carrots 4 lb.
Cauliflower 1 lb. 2 oz.
Corn 16 ears
Cucumber 2 lb. 12 oz.
Edamame (in pods) 1 lb. 5 oz.
Eggplant (12) 6 lb. 10 oz.
Italian Prunes 45 lb.
Lettuce a lot!
Parsnips 3 lbs.
Peas 11 1/3 c.
Pumpkins (9) 29 lb.
Radishes 6 lb. 8 oz.
Rhubarb 4 lb. 8 1/2 oz.
Rutabagas 7 lb.
Strawberries 8 lb. 4 oz.
Tomatoes, Beefmaster 2 lb. 8 oz.
Tomatoes, Cherry 2 lb. 13 oz.
Tomatoes, Purple Cherokee 10 lb. 3 oz.
Tomatoes, Roma 25 lb. 8 oz.
Turnips 19 lb.
Yellow Squash 10 oz.



Apple Slices, frozen 24 c.
Blackberries, frozen 2 gal.
Blueberries, frozen 2 gal. ($1/lb.)
Cabbage Burger Filling, 7 qt.
Corn on the Cob, frozen 54 half ears
Hard Apple Cider 25 bottles (22 oz.)
Marinara, 8 qt. ($3/qt.)
Peaches, 20 qt. ($2/qt.)
Pesto, 13 meals (9+ cups)($4/pt.)
Pickles, 13 qt.
Plums, canned, 6 qt.
Pumpkin, frozen 4 1/2 c.
Strawberries, frozen whole 7 gal.
Stock - chicken, turkey, and beef - lots.
Tomato Paste, frozen 18 oz.
Tomato Sauce, canned and frozen, 9 qt.
Tomatoes Diced, canned and frozen, 14 qt.
Turnips, diced, frozen 1 1/2 gal.

The Teapot!

Arrgh...I was saving the teapot for last in the birthday post and ended up leaving it out. Q got me a tea pot. It's in the left of the big birthday photo. It's dark blue, holds 40 oz. (although it doesn't look nearly that big), and has it's own strainer. A nice deep strainer so I can make a little tea or a lot. I've been drinking a lot of tea...

Birthday and End of School

On Monday afternoon I decided to follow through on an old idea I had had to make my students hats for Christmas. I had two already so there were only 7 to do in 84 hours. I don't know why I'm crazy. Anyway, I did manage to get all but one done and they were huge hits. The kids thought it was really cool and the 8th graders were apparently way jealous. I wrote a couple of limericks (we just studied them) to explain why ends weren't tucked and the last hat wasn't done and poor S had to wait until the weekend when I dropped off his finished hat.
Q took a picture of me in it before it went to its home. I think I like it best of all and Q thinks the wave chart I created for it looks like sound waves. He thinks I should make some for my shop. We'll see. I'm having so much trouble getting all my Christmas gifts done and have several custom orders in the works for various people (including a sock monkey!) that the idea of adding new product seems absurd.

Here are the slippers I'm making for my dad, currently felting in the washing machine. They've been a bit of a time sink due to yarn amount issues. (I had to entirely reknit the first one when I ran out of the correct dye lot.) I really hope that they felt down well. Doesn't the red make them look like archetypal clown shoes. I had to put my own slippers next to them to give scale.

Now, on to the birthday! My 31st was simply lovely. We went and saw Zombieland (hilarious movie), ate at Marche (red wine braised lamb shank), and had Sweet Life for dessert (yellow cake/walnut/espresso/cream deliciousness). It was also the best loot I've had in quite a few years - lots of variety and oh so thoughtful. :)
The flowers are from Q's folks. the books and puzzles were Q's perfect thrift store finds; the leaf shirt was from Q too. Mom got me the Bobbsey Twin books as an early birthday present this summer and the clothes and picture frame are also from Mom and Dad.
Mom knew I've been looking for small silver frames to put the old pictures I have in for display in the guest room. As you can see, the picture from her second birthday fits perfectly.

Anyway, we fly out on Thursday and I have 4 sets of tea towels to make as well as a few other surprises before we leave! EEEKKK! Luckily, I've always felt sleep was overrated. Happy Holidays!

(Fairly) Quick Beef Stew

Q made fun of me for not writing down what I did last time to make the beef stew he liked so much. I call it "fairly" quick beef stew because it still takes about an hour to make, assuming the beef is thawed, but that's still pretty quick, since beef stew often requires all-day or at least a couple of hours to slow cook. We recreated another one of my off-the-cuff stews tonight, so here it is...

Cut 2 lb. beef (we used steaks, since there isn't a lot of simmer time I've been skeptical about actually using stew beef, but that will be the next experiment) into about 1x1x2 chunks. Dry it on towels.
Heat vegetable oil in a pan until hot then add 1 clove minced garlic. After about 15 seconds, add the beef. Cook until the beef is brown on all sides.
Add root vegetables (tonight was 3 carrots and three potatoes, I used 2 rutabagas and a turnip with the carrots last time).
Sprinkle about 3 tablespoons of flour over the mixture and stir to coat. A nice, sticky floury mess should start sticking to the bottom of the pan.
Pour in about 3/4 c red wine and use this liquid to deglaze the pan. Add 1 1/2 c beef stock, 1 t rosemary leaves, 1 bay leaf, and about 1 T salt.
Simmer the stew for about half an hour. Determine whether to use the lid by how thick the sauce is. Add more flour if the sauce doesn't seem to be thickening up.

It doesn't end up with a lot of liquid and what it has is really thick so we eat it with bread and butter to sop up the gravy. Yay! Now I've recorded it and Q can't make fun of me for that anymore!

Brrrr...

It dipped above freezing for the first time in about a week today. It's been really weird weather for Oregon - dry, sunny, and frigid. We had a low in the single digits this week, which just doesn't happen. Although it's now a comparatively balmy 31 degrees the first rain moved in this afternoon, which has apparently made the roads a bit icy.

Q and I chose to hunker down at home for the evening. I turned on the fireplace and was practicing with my guitar. My students are going to prepare a version of One Day by Matisyahu (minus the beatboxing) this spring. They've been asking to do a "modern" song and I finally found one that would sound good acoustically with our limited resources and have appropriate content. One student will play guitar, another piano, another some kind of percussion and everybody will sing. It should be great. It did mean that I spent a couple of hours finding tab online and creating a piano part from the Youtube video the other night though. I've spent the last few days learning words and getting the chord progression firmly fixed in my head. I'm very excited.

I also found the chords for Loreena McKennitt's Highwayman with a note that the author had arranged it using Travis fingerpicking technique. Awesome internet - I searched for it, got a Youtube tutorial on the style and am on my way to adding a new fingerpicking song to my repertoire. I would love to get the new song down enough to play/sing it for my students since it's such great classic poetry, they're love music and stories so much, and we've been studying metaphor, simile, etc. in our writing main lesson block.

I don't know if House of the Rising Sun counts as fingerpicking but everything else I've been doing is strumming with the occasional mix-up of rhythm or a simple bass addition. I can only imagine how people who have learned how to play guitar properly will cringe at me if I ever get good enough to play in front of someone besides the cats, Q, and my students (who know I'm teaching myself and am not very good but think it's cool I'm trying).

I've been having trouble posting lately because when I'm not working on orders (nothing new or exciting) I've been making Christmas gifts, which can't get posted until after the 25th. I'll have to have post-Christmas show and tell post!

Yay, it's the weekend!

Great Link

Today's post at Cold Antler Farm is lovely. Sometimes a bit over the top folksy for my taste but I do feel a kindred spirit there.

First Real Frost

It is cold here! After a mild frost in mid-October we've stayed well above freezing, until last night. Our first hard frost that left the steps icy and the car windows needing to be scraped. There might even be some light snow next week. Lows are in the mid-twenties for the next few days, possibly into the teens next week.

Weekend Successful

Cats adorable. House clean. Cranberry salad made and eaten. Off to see one of my students perform in Swan Lake.

Thanksgiving Dinner

I don't know if the never frozen, biodynamic, free-range turkey made a difference, if the stars aligned just right, or I'm just becoming a better cook but this year's meal was by far the best I've ever made. We just made the stuffing, mashed potatoes, turkey, gravy, and cranberry sauce today. Since it's just the two of us I'm luxuriating in making our Thanksgiving in parts. The cranberry salad is tomorrow. Haven't decided if pumpkin custard is being made tonight or tomorrow.

Q paid me one of the nicest compliments I've ever received as he ate tonight. He said that over the last couple of months my cooking has gotten to a whole other level. That it was always good but now it's really great. I guess I'll keep cooking for him. :)

Besides all the big things I have to be thankful for I was especially grateful for living in such a fertile state today. The Thanksgiving dinner ingredient roll call...

Turkey, potatoes, onions - Culp Creek, OR (40 miles) (biodynamic)
Cranberries - Bandon, OR (130 miles) (organic)
Celery - front yard (harvested just before cooking)
Sage, thyme, bread, salt, sugar - who knows
*** I know I could have made the bread from local ingredients and gotten the spices local but there's no need to be pedantic, is there? ***

I realized we're really getting a lot better on the local eating front. Tuesday's Beef Stew was made with local beef, beef stock (from scratch), turnips, rutabagas, carrots, rosemary, and red wine. Only the salt and thickening cornstarch were imports. Wednesday was chanterelle's in white wine sauce over egg noodles. Noodles were imported, everything else (except the salt) was local.

Tonight I made the marshmallows for tomorrow's salad. I ran out of corn syrup a while ago and didn't want to buy more so I used a substitute recipe. I think it worked although I don't think the sugar completely dissolved. This may be because I made a 1/3 recipe of the syrup and then directly added the marshmallow ingredients while it was still hot. Maybe make the syrup ahead of time, cool it and then make the marshmallows? Eh, the sample I took is good enough for me, only a tiny hint of crystals. Cranberry salad will be local cranberries, walnuts, and cream; homemade marshmallows from imported sugar; and pineapple from Hawaii. Some holiday traditions are just required though.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Binky Thinks She's a DVD Book

Pear Cider

Update, Thursday night: Okay, no pictures but we it ended up making 10 full bottles of cider plus a little bit. We'll see how it tastes in a couple of days.

The pear cider is almost bottled, pictures going up tomorrow but I wanted to get the nitty gritty details down tonight. It started at a 1.073 before fermentation. It was down to a 1.000 after. I added 2 c. of sugar to the must to bring it to 1.021 tonight, which suited our tastebuds. After crushing two campden tablets and dissolving them in a little juice we added them to the mixture and are letting it sit overnight before bottling. Better to have flat cider than the potentially explosive (even refrigerated) product from last time. The flavor seems good. Bottling will be a fun activity tomorrow morning while the turkey bakes.

Turkeys and Soup - It Must Be November

We went to a farm about an hour away, Brice Creek Croft, on Saturday morning and helped with the preparation of our Thanksgiving turkey.I don't know which one ended up being ours but Q and I learned how to do everything from beginning to end to harvest a turkey. Valerie and Bruce (the farmers) had one other couple out helping and we did all twelve of their turkeys in the space of three hours. We didn't actually help with the killing but they didn't look distressed as they hung there bleeding out. When turkeys are hung upside down, the blood rushes to their head and they get really docile. She carefully cuts the major vein and artery in their necks without cutting the trachea so they just bleed to death without any suffocation.
I really liked dressing them. It's interesting to see all of the different organs and demystify where meat comes from. We now have an 18 pound turkey sitting in the fridge ready to be roasted for Thanksgiving. Hopefully, I'll get a good picture of the final product.

We also bought a box of vegetables from her and I decided to use the pumpkin for the pumpkin peanut butter soup recipe I've been wanting to try. I was going to try to cook it in its own shell but when I finally got the top off I realized that the pumpkin was almost all meat and there was no way to fill it with anything! I ended up baking the pumpkin and the sweet potatoes and then blending all the soup ingredients together before just simmering them on the stove top for a while. I made a half batch due to how much peanut butter we had and I'm grateful because it is really rich and a little goes a long way. We decided it would be the perfect appetizer for some autumn pork dish. I wasn't a huge fan of the sour cream and chives but Q thought they really made it work. That pumpkin was so meaty that we still have half of it in the fridge and the pumpkin pie filling I made out of the first half was enough for the soup and two pies. Mmmmm...Here's a picture of the Chicken Tortilla Soup we had a couple of days ago. It's been a very soupy week around here.

Digit's belly fur is starting to grow back in and you can't really even tell where his surgery scar is. He's not shy about showing it off.
Digit and Binky love it when I leave blankets out on the couch after we've used them.

New Hat Designs

I just finished my first hat using the owl pattern I created. I finished while I was in Grand Junction and Mama was kind enough to model. I also go an adorable picture of her smiling at me in it but I only got it by promising I wouldn't post it - so this is all the blog gets.
Q just did a modeling session for my new Space Invaders Bold. The one showing off the hat is posted on Etsy. The one showing off my dear husband gets posted here.

Pumpkin Soup

I finally made the Pumpkin Soup recipe from Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Even though she warned in the book about scraping too enthusiastically, I still poked a hole in the bottom of the shell. I wasn't being overly careful though, since it was just for us.
I had to put in a picture of the shell in its pool of soup though. It really would be a beautiful centerpiece for a dinner. Q didn't like the soup so I'm stuck eating all of it. It's good, but I'm not sure it's really "eat 2 quarts in a few days" good. It had roasted garlic and sage as the ingredients, which is why Q wasn't a big fan (not an over the top garlic fan like I am). I really like the idea of baking the milk/stock/seasonings base inside the pumpkin and then serving the finished soup in its own tureen though so I'll have to explore other options - Peanut Butter Pumpkin Soup has potential. Of course, with this recipe I'll have to completely change how it's created (bah to "pumpkin pie filling" as an ingredient) but I like the flavor choices. Perhaps sweet potato chunks cooking in the broth/peanut butter/spice mixture inside the pumpkin...Oh, my patient, patient husband.
I just got back from my annual visit to Grand Junction, CO to help with my mother's holiday fair - a trip I always look forward to. I think we figured out it's over 25 years old now, started ever so long ago by my dear grandma. We know that she continues to look down on us and "purr" in satisfaction when she sees us carrying on one of her favorite pet projects.
I was very lucky while I was there and got to see a beautiful light snow storm - big fluffy flakes that fell just long enough to leave everything covered in a sparkling white layer. What a treat.

The Pumpkins

Apples are amazing. Here are the 4 green pumpkins we sealed in a box full of apples for a couple of weeks (can't even tell which is the one that came off the vine orange can you?)...

Hmmm....maybe ordering that turkey wasn't such a good idea since Q and I should have an exclusively pumpkin based dinner apparently. After all, the pumpkins above are in addition to the 6 c. cooked I already have in the freezer.

After the new windows were installed we rearranged the living room. It is better in every way.

What's He Doing?

Digit got himself up on the tower of pillows behind Q. As soon as he was settled, Q said "What is he doing?" I took a picture since describing it would not really do it justice.

On a totally unrelated topic, I used the green pumpkin. I followed a deep dish apple pie filling recipe, substituting thinly sliced green pumpkin for the apples, and baked it, covered, in an 8"x8" pan for about an hour at 350F. It turned out very yummy, especially topped with whipped cream.

The Driveway is Empty

Yes, it really took over 4 months to finally disperse the last of the soil pile. It's weird having a whole driveway again.

Where it went...

• A large amount got moved in below the front window (visible below) for next year's asparagus bed, which requires deep soil. There's so much fill rock there that it was way way easier to just build up a bed.
• To the left of the driveway, there has been a challenging weed patch on a thin layer of soil over rock, so hopefully the cardboard/dirt combo will take care of that.
• The irises on the right of the driveway have been way overgrown for a very long time (since even before we moved here 5 years ago). I knew grass had invaded them, lurking there. The grass used this stronghold to mount an attack on the new corn/bean/squash bed this summer, which means it was time to fight back. All the dead iris got pulled but there was such a mass of root that I couldn't even begin to weed out the grass from it. Scorched earth became the new tactic. If the iris survives this harsh treatment, good for it. If not, too bad, new things will be planted there. That soil should get moved over in bits this spring to the other end of that bed, where we're putting in a potato box.

In a true me-like moment, the reason the dirt getting moved made top priority is because I'm hoping to get the City to deliver 7 cubic yards (the only size available) of dead leaves on our driveway. Grass and weeds are in several places where they have no business being and hopefully sitting under a foot and a half of leaves all winter will kill them dead dead dead. Anything that hasn't disintegrated into nothingness by the end of the winter gets thrown into the compost bin and it's a win from every angle.

Due to the time sensitive nature of this endeavor and the relative lightness of leaves, I'm anticipating that the leaf pile will get much more quickly dealt with. After that, I'm considering pressure-washing the driveway to discourage any more hare-brained schemes for a while.

Once the leaf mulch gets put down the garden will officially be put to bed for the season and I'll just keep occasionally checking my three winter beds, ready to throw protection over them if a serious frost is expected.

(Sidenote - don't the new windows look nice? I'm in love with them.)

Finally, the fate of the banana pink jumbo squash. I baked this half for about 25 minutes, cut side down, then turned it over, filled it with bread stuffing and baked it, covered with foil, for 35 minutes more. I should have used more butter in the stuffing and should have baked the whole thing probably about 15 minutes longer to get the squash really mushy. It was delicious anyway and served as our primary food source for most of the weekend. The other half got baked later (only one half fit in the oven at a time!), cubed, and frozen.

On Halloween Day, I pulled out the last of the vines and brought in my last 6 pumpkins. (I'd harvested 3 before.)
One was ripe - stuffed pumpkin or pumpkin soup in its own shell for dinner later this week? One was irrevocably green. I found recipes online that suggested paring it, slicing it thin and baking it like you would apple pie. I will report that experiment's results when it is completed.
Four were not quite ripe. The handy internet suggested placing them in a bag with apples. Apparently, the apples release ethylene gas, which will ripen the pumpkins to orange. It warns about less flavorful pumpkin but that's what nutmeg and ginger are for, right? Another experiment that I will report on when I learn the results. Pumpkins are currently locked in a box surrounded by Jonagold and Golden Delicious apples from Thistledown.

We siphoned the pear cider off into the other carboy on Saturday. It seems like it's going to end up tasty. A little weird right now but the apple was also not as fantastic when it was totally fresh. We're letting it sit a bit longer to clarify and then we'll probably add more sugar to get it nice and sweet like I like it, used Campden tablets to kill the yeast, then bottle it.
The last bottle of the apple cider was drunk on Halloween night. It was very bubbly and very alcoholic. Fermentation had continued quite nicely, even in the fridge. I know it's desirable to have it a bit bubbly but I'd like a product that can age for a few weeks at room temperature in its bottles this time, even if that sacrifices sparkle.

RIP Gerbil

I went down to the media room tonight and found one of the gerbils dead in their cage. Cassidy is no more. Butch seems fine, as well as can be expected for a four year old gerbil. Cassidy was the greedy plump one. In my imagination I suspect that gerbil diabetes contributed to her demise.

I've got a few orders to knit up and have a bunch of stuff I want to prepare for Mom's boutique. I feel like I'm getting sick so I'd better get busy in case I get the flu that's going around.

The Catch Up Post

Digit seems to be on the mend and we've been busy, so here are the last few weeks. :)
Our new super awesome windows are being installed this week. We had to make one of the windows in the bedroom bigger to meet egress requirements so we decided that while were at it to just put in the sliding glass door we always talked about in there. It's very cool. They're probably going to finish the last ones Saturday morning. Their guarantee is that our climate control bills each month will decrease by at least 40%.

Hungarian Mushroom Soup from Sunday. This is the first time we tried this recipe. It is definitely a keeper - and pretty quick to make.


The Banana Pink Jumbo Squash. I'm looking forward to baking it. It ended up 8 lb. 5 1/2 oz.

Here's early October's massive root vegetable harvest and tomato plant removal "party" (party of one - me). Q finished our last compost bin that day.
This is the harvest of "early" cabbages. We've still got the late variety out there. They looked like little heads, especially weird since some were about perfect "baby-head"sized.
I sauced the last of the tomatoes that I pulled off the plants while I made a double batch of cabbage burger filling. We froze seven quarts of filling. (You can see the jar of sauerkraut I was starting hiding behind the coffee maker. It's in the fridge now. It sure smells like sauerkraut - working up the nerve to taste it!)

Cabbage Burgers
1 lb. ground beef
2 lbs. shredded cabbage
1 medium onion, chopped
1 1/2 t. salt

Brown beef, add cabbage and onion and cook until tender, adding oil if needed. Drain and freeze or use fresh.

Dough - Dissolve 1 pkg. yeast in 1/2 c. lukewarm water. Add 1/4 c. sugar and 1 t. salt. Scald 1 c. milk, melt one cube butter into the hot milk. When cool enough, add this mixture plus 1 c. water to the yeast mixture. Beat in 2 eggs. Add 5-6 cups flour to make a soft dough. Let rise until double, roll 1/4" thick and cut into 4" squares. Place filling at the center of each square and seal; place seam-side down on a cookie sheet. Bake at 375 degrees for 20-25 minutes.

We used our first quart of filling for dinner early this week and have had the leftovers for lunches all week. I used the gluten free flour blend for the dough and it worked well, although it had to be a bit thicker than usual - continuing to perfect the combo.When the filling's already made it's a pretty low work meal although letting the dough rise takes time.

All's Right With the World

Digit's home and when he's sleeping like this, carefully supervised, he looks like he's back to normal. The rest of the time he looks like this...
He's got to wear the doughnut any time he's not directly supervised so he doesn't mess with the ten staples in his tummy. A place on his neck (for blood draw?), both of his front "wrists", his tummy up to his chest and the backs of his thighs are all shaved, making him a funny looking kitty at the moment. He's staying in the kitten cage for at least a few days because he's not allowed to jump or play or do much of anything. He's on some powerful painkillers and a round of antibiotics but he's still got a remarkably loud purr. His purring and his chowhound tendencies were remarked on by the vet tech.

Binky keeps sneaking around with her nose wrinkled, not believing that this smelly creature, who smells of the vet office, is her brother. I'm so grateful to have him home. The surgeon seemed hopeful that he could likely go on to live a normal life. And the weekend is starting! Yay!

Yay!

Digit made it through his surgery and he's apparently recovering well. I'm so grateful that we can afford what it takes to save our beloved pet and he'll likely be able to have a normal life if all goes as planned. He's going to come home tomorrow if he continues to recover well. He will have been gone for 5 days!

My Kitty is Sick

My dear kitty Digit (a.k.a. the best cat ever) is sick and goes in for surgery today. I don't really know if anybody reads this, but if you do, send him your warm thoughts. He has slept on my head every night since he was a tiny kitten. It's been more uncomfortable since he grew into a 12 pound cat but his purring in my ear has always been so soothing. His sister Isabel is trying to make up for it by sleeping and purring on my chest, but I know that we both (and Q) want Digit to come home and get well. I'm sure I'll post more details sometime soon.

To add to the useless projects list...

Possibly one of the cutest things ever. The best part is the way the body and shell are two parts. It is imperative that I make one of these at some point.

Owl Knitting Template

I'm thinking of making a baby hat with this pattern around it. It would decrease in four panels at the top like my Space Invader hats and be ribbed at the bottom. The 84 stitches means it would be a 16" circumference, which meets the baby/toddler head size.