fred

this weekend was filled with some of my favorite things. yoga. coffee. rain, honest to goodness rain, not just mist. knitting books. wine. brunch with friends. a john wayne movie. and i got sweet, sweet plant. meet fred.

fred is a snake plant, or mother-in-laws tongue. i got him at swanson's nursery. i'm really exicted about him. he is supposed to be impossible to kill. we'll see. i'm hoping to start cultivating a green thumb. i would like to someday have a vegetable garden, but i'm working towards this goal slowly. the last plant i got was 4 years ago, with no research invested. after it became apparent that it was going to die, aaron decided to spray paint it copper and call it art.

someone once thought we got it at ikea. which is probably the best compliment one could hope to get from a spray painted, dead tree. i hope fred has a longer, happier life.

seattle with teens

we had kids last weekend. or, rather, we had kids come to visit us.

meet micah. meet rebekah. cute, right? micah is aaron's brother. rebekah is his sweet girlfriend. it was a bit akward at first, neither of us have spent much time with micah since he was about 10, but it was fun getting to know him again.

things to do in seattle with people under 21:

mingle among the tulips at skagit valley

drive to deception pass on whidbey island

here cute couples exist in the wild

you can take a nap

or pretend to be a bear cub

 (the possibilities are quiet endless, really)

other fun things we did include some hiking in the de leo wall park (cougar mountain). i love this park because it is so close to seattle, and there are so many miles of trails. plus it is all low altitude, so you can hike even in the winter, without running into snow. perfect!

it was also fun to expand their culinary palate. we took them out for thai and ethiopian food; and might have started bekah on a serious thai tea addiction. also, are you aware of how much teenage boys eat? crazy.

socks, oh my!

i am a knitter. i mostly knit hats and scarfs, but have also knit a sundry of other items including, washcloths, fingerless mitts, beer cozies, and even a sweater (no photos, yet). all of this is well and good, but the item that i most want to make is socks.

i've knit one pair of socks before and it wasn't my favorite item. the needles were oh-so-tiny as was the yarn (very fiddly) . and after thousands of stitches, you have, um, one sock. you have to do it all over again! and this time, it needs to match the previous sock exactly. that being said, they really are one of my most comfortable pair of socks. every time i wear them my feet are happy.

i fantasize about being a sock knitter. i think logically it is the most perfect item to knit.

• it travels anywhere
• everyone needs/wants/wears socks
• you can knit in the summer and still wear the result
• $15 could give you a completed project
• can you imagine having this drawer full of hand knit socks? yea, me either.

what to do? i am thinking about purchasing sock innovation: knitting techniques and patterns for one-of-a-kind socks. perhaps seeing those beautiful patterns will make the task at hand less daunting? or maybe more inspired?

a rather long but boring update

no new news, so you will have to make do with somewhat boring news from the many facets of my life....oh, yes, sit down for this.

i have been knitting a semi-boring stripped scarf for the last few weeks. yes, weeks. i don't know why scarfs take me so much longer than any other item. it was an attempt to use some last bits of yarn that i wouldn't normally have any use for color-wise. what i am mostly proud of is that i have succeeded in making the stripes totally random. this required a pep talk from aaron, and i found myself opening (and closing) microsoft exel, in an attempt to create a pattern. once it is finished i have one or two other ideas in mind for using up some spare skeins...then maybe i'll have earned some sparkly new yarn (actually, decidedly un-sparkly).

last week i had two separate people get in touch with me concerning genealogy. i have four separate genealogy blogs, one for each grandparent line. i post on these sporadically, when the mood hits. occasionally someone will contact me on the blogs, which leads to several emails. this is a great way to meet distant relation. it was exciting to share information with both people. i discovered my great-great-great grandfather was a drunkard that committed suicide by drinking rat poisoning after a night of drinking and beating his wife. less than charming. but validated by the August 21, 1884 edition of the st. paul daily globe.

my sweet parents bought me another subscription to a food magazine. in addition to the everyday with rachael ray mag, i am now the proud subscriber to the foodnetwork magazine. i really like my monthly fill of food porn, however, they are starting to pile up. i've noticed that i keep every issue because i might some-day-in-the-future i might want to this syndrome. i now have a binder and i'm methodically going through every past issue and tearing out anything i might want to make someday and then filing it in the appropriate filed section (breakfast, pasta, vegetarian, poutry, etc.) and recycling the rest. hopefully this will clear up a bit of space and lead to me actually making the recipes.

life has been going exceedingly my way lately. i hope it is for you as well :)