Yarn Zombie

It’s been oppressively hot and sticky here lately. Motivation for doing anything productive is low. Travis’ family is coming by tomorrow. They’re going to be camping up at Mohican State Park, which is alternately nice (yay family visit!) and horrifying (oh my god the weather is supposed to be in the upper 80s and humid). It’s not even noon here and already it’s over 90 degrees. Blerg. I figure if everyone starts getting heatstroke, we can all just come back to the house and play Wii.

Speaking of which, I’ve exercised for 16 days straight with Wii Fit. Yay me! I have lost weight, too – not much, around 3 pounds, I think. My weight fluctuates daily, but even with the up and downs, I’m starting to see a general downward trend, which is cool. The interesting (and not so cool) part is that I seem to be a bit shakier on my Yoga stuff than I was when I first started doing this. I have no idea why that is.

The hard thing about exercising, for me at least, is that there’s very little immediate pay off. It’s not like I can do 10 push ups (ha! Obviously, I’m speaking rhetorically here) one day and then do 20 the next. Improvements come gradually, which is why the silly little WiiFit motivational rewards are nice. I know there’s no way I would have been able to force myself to exercise this much had it not been for the Wii. Even now, when I’m screwing around doing yoga poses without having the Wii on, I’m easily distracted and don’t hold them for anywhere near as long as when I’m actually on the balance board, watching the TV. Yay, TV! (I guess)

Despite the heat and humidity, I’ve been in a baking mood lately, which is pretty stupid. Nothing cools the house off after a hot summer’s day like turning on the oven and baking some bread! Nevertheless, that’s what I’ve been doing. Travis made some challah dough the other day, and I turned it into cinnamon swirl bread.

I’ve got another two loaves of that I need to bake today sometime. Did I mention it’s over 90 degrees already? Not even noon?

Other random food p0rn:

That second pic is from an omelet I made using a bunch of leftover Five Guys french fries. I recently discovered that there’s a Five Guys in Columbus, and we’ve been there twice now. Such good burgers! Two thumbs up on the grilled onions. Anyway, they gave us about 6 metric tons of french fries (we even ordered the smaller size, too), so we took a bunch home with us. The next morning, I chopped some of them up and threw them in a skillet with some yellow pepper and onion. I didn’t have to use any additional oil or butter because of the oil in the french fries. After they were heated up, I moved them to a plate and made an omelet in the same pan. When that was set, I threw the veggies back in it along with some cheese and bacon.

It was really good! I thought I deserved points for creativity for the usage of french fries as a breakfast food.

Also, I got the new Michael Ruhlman cooking book, Ratio. I’m really intrigued by the ratios in the book, but alas, I have only one egg in my house, and need to get more before I go totally nuts with it. Also, it would be helpful if the weather could cool off and I could have the oven on, at least a little bit. Please?

No Etsy update this week (because of the aforementioned family visit), but I’ll probably do something over the 4th weekend. The last time I dyed yarn I was a bit meh about it, but I’m looking forward to doing the next batch (partially to overdye some of my meh yarn). I’ve got a bunch of yarn name possibilities in my head that I want to turn into actual yarn. Like magic!

So, we got a Wii last week. I’m trying to get more in shape, but absolutely detest exercising. The kayak has helped a lot – I enjoy taking it out, but we can’t kayak every day (we seem to be getting it out about 2 or 3 times a week lately). Hence, the Wii.

I’ve played my fair share of computer games, but honest to god, the last console game I had was an Intellivision, so the world of console games is entirely new to me. Getting used to a controller rather than a keyboard didn’t take long, though, and the Wii is really intuitive for the most part.

At first, I was just playing with the WiiFit. That’s the game that comes with the balance board, and was my main reason for wanting the Wii. I’ve been working out with the WiiFit for 8 days straight now, and almost every day for over an hour. I’ve never exercised like that, ever, but now I’m doing Yoga and strength training. The balance games are dorky fun and addictive. What’s nice about the WiiFit is that it gives you instant feedback in reference to, say, how well you held a yoga pose or completed a strength exercise, and it provides silly little motivational rewards to keep you interested (you’re good at one exercise, so it unlocks a new one, or, you’ve completed X amount of hours of exercise, so your Fit Bank changes color). Anyway, it’s held my interest so far.

Interestingly, my back hasn’t hurt nearly as much as it has in the past when I wake up. This is probably due to me starting to do yoga. I’m still going to get a new mattress, though.

So, for the first 4 days or so we had the Wii, all I used on it was WiiFit, but we got a few games and have been trying that out, too. Our Wii came with WiiSports, and we’ve been playing a lot of the tennis, bowling, and golf. Travis and I played 2 player tennis for the first time yesterday, and it’s awesome. We destroy our Wii opponents!

I’ve always enjoyed playing computer golf games, which is kind of weird, because I detest actual golf. After I gave the golf on WiiSports a whirl, we went out and got the new Tiger Woods golf game for the Wii. From the test drive we gave it yesterday, I can tell that’s going to be a lot of fun. The only concern I have with the golf and tennis games is that I’m going to get a stupid Wii-related sports injury. I cannot force myself to moderate my movements at all, so I’m swinging the Wii remote around like I’m actually playing golf or tennis. The area right under my right shoulderblade is sore today.

In other news, I spun some yarn a few days ago!

I had a set of roving balls go unsold on Etsy, so I decided to spin them myself rather than relist them. Then I put the yarn on Bela’s head.

She tolerates it because I take her for walkies.

Not sure if I’ll be doing a shop update this Friday. If I do, it’ll probably be on the smallish side, since I’ve been all distracted with the Wii and doing some ebay stuff. I don’t sell a lot of stuff on ebay, but I’ve been trying to get rid of a few odds and ends (mainly excess cameras and some craft supplies). What I love is the people who want to come pick up an item rather than pay shipping charges, when the item description clearly lists shipping as the only way to get the item. It’s even better when they bid on something first, and then contact me to see if they can pick it up rather than get it shipped if they win. No, freaky ebay people, I don’t do pick-up! I don’t want to meet any of you in person! Shipping is not that expensive! One would think that if they were looking for stuff that you could pick up locally, they would stick to perusing Craigslist.

Speaking of Craigslist, there’s a new Weird Al single/video out.

It rocks. Haven’t really thought about Weird Al in a while, although I’m pretty sure that Dare To Be Stupid was the first cassette tape I ever bought, but it makes me happy that he’s still out there making music. Actually, this song makes me want to dig out some of my old Weird Al music and listen to it. And also get some styrofoam peanuts. This song is a freakishly spot-on Doors parody, and the notes on YouTube say that he even got Ray Manzarek to play keyboards on it, which is pretty amazing.

I’ve been doing fibery stuff this week. I needed a break from yarn, and Travis and I have got a bunch of stuff going on this weekend, so I figured tomorrow (Friday), I’d just do a smallish fiber update in the shop. I made some sets of batts…

…and balls.

And hey, I actually spun something! I was combing up a set of balls, and I liked them so much, I combed up a ball for me to spin. I plied it with some coordinating tussah silk.

So, fiber week was pretty fun. I’m going to be dyeing yarn for a bout 3 days straight, I think, starting on Saturday (hi Katie!), so I should have a buttload of yarn ready for next Friday’s update. But this week’s is all about the fibery goodness.

Random lightning picture!

I’m always happy when I can manage to get a picture of lightning.

I’ve been considering getting a hummingbird feeder lately, but have decided that I’m too damn lazy to clean it out all of the time. Since I don’t want to accidentally poison hummingbirds, I decided to just get another regular birdfeeder. This one sticks to a window.

I wasn’t sure if the birds would actually use it, and it sat untouched for a few days. This morning while I was at the computer, I heard this loud THUNK noise. I turned around and saw Ellie sitting, dazed, on the barstool that sits right by the birdfeeder window. Apparently a bird got up the nerve to try it, and Ellie attacked. A few minutes later it happened again. For the rest of the morning Ellie sat like this:

No more birds came back, though. Hopefully in a week or so the birds and the cat will learn to coexist.

Been in the mood to make food lately. Tried out a few recipes. Made some chicken breasts based on this recipe, and they were absolutely delicious and moist. Panko breadcrumbs FTW!

Also was intrigued by this recipe for baked feta. I didn’t have feta, so instead I used queso blanco.

It tasted good, but the texture of the cheese was kind of plastic-y, so that freaked us out a little bit. I’d like to try it with the feta, though, someday.

And then I got out the masa and played with it like it was play-doh. Wound up making some little taco cups.

How cute are those?

I’m trying to get up the nerve to make eclairs/creme puffs next week. Maybe on Tuesday, while the yarn is still wet. I’ve been inspired by Ruhlman’s post about pate a choux, and I think making the dough is within my reach. It’s the filling and topping that make me nervous. I’m a big sissy when it comes to separating egg yolks and whites. I’ve seen some recipes that just use an instant vanilla pudding mixture as the filling, but that seems too much like cheating, even for me. Anyway, I’ll keep you updated on any kitchen-tastrophes that may ensue.

First this. Then, today, this, this, and this. Wow, June is off to a fantastic start, is it not? Let me know if something good happens.

In lieu of anything else, here’s a picture of a turtle.

Hola! Been busy with misc. family stuff the past few weeks. Not too much going on around here. Travis and I made about 30 metric tons of Chex Mix in order to have snacks for when we go kayaking, but instead I think I’m just eating it all while playing Morrowind (an old game, but still fun). The kayaking stuff balances out the sitting on my butt playing video games part, right? Right? [Crickets...]

Done a bit of dyeing here and there, and am planning on updating the shop with some new yarnz tomorrow. Hooray yarnz!

This is one I did, which I was sketchy about until I reskeined it, and then I loved it. It’s called Bee Wings. Yellow yarn almost never sells, but screw it, I dye it anyway because I love yellow.

We got a new camera, not too sure if I mentioned that here. It’s a Canon PowerShot SX1 IS. It has a crazy long 20x optical zoom on it. We got it specifically to take out on the kayak with us so we can shoot nature photos, but it’s also come in handy for spying on the birds at our birdfeeders. We have a family of house sparrows that are absolutely adorkable. There’s a mom and dad Sparrow, and their two doofus baby chicks who are all, “Chirp! CHIRP!! Feed me seeds! CHIIIRP!!!”

That was recorded using the new camera. It’s kind of fun to have a video camera that will zoom in so close. It’s making me want to put out humminbird feeders so I can catch some hot hummingbird action on (digital) film.

Recipe of the day! Heidi’s making cauliflower. And that means so will I for dinner tonight, although I will be using frozen cauliflower. Don’t judge me.

Anyway, I thought I’d pass along one of the coolest things I’ve seen on the intertubez lately, courtesy of a post on the AV Club (I heart the AV Club!). I guess this has been out for a month or so, so you may have already seen it, but it was new to me and completely awesome:

I’ve watched this about 10 times already today. Not only is the song great (a re-imagining of Li’l Wayne’s “Let the Beat Build”), but the video and audio were recorded live, in one take. Plus, it’s one, long single camera shot, which I’m always completely impressed by. Finally, everyone participating looks like they’re having so much damn fun. I love all of these people.

I’ve been waking up with awful headaches lately. I blame it on our uber-shitty mattress. We bought this very nice, expensive mattress in about 2003 and it worked fine for a few years until it developed a gigantic crater in the middle. No amount of flipping and turning will resolve the issue. And of course, I don’t have the receipt for it anymore, so I think any warranty issues are moot. Stupid mattress. Anyway, the next one we get will just be something cheap from Ikea, probably. I figure there’s no point in spending a lot of money on a mattress again if it’s just going to go crappy on us in about 5 years anyway. I’m bitter and jaded now.

We’ve been able to take the kayak out some more. I’ve figured out a half-assed solution to my whole ‘paddling in circles’ issue. I tried the J-stroke, but I don’t think I was doing it correctly (thanks for the tip, though, Elizabeth! , and after screwing around with the paddle, have figured out that if I hold it off-center, I go more or less in a straight line. Basically, I dip the paddle in the water deeper on the right side than on the left, but keep paddling with an even stroke. That works better than me holding the paddle centered and trying to stroke extra hard on the right side. I don’t know, I’m gimp. This is probably horrible technique, but it lets me paddle more and get more exercise, so I’m happy.

Kayaking pictures!

These are some cormorants we saw at Kokosing Lake. We first saw them (not the exact same birds, but birds of this type) in DC when we took the paddleboats out on the Tidal Basin. They’re very strange, because they sit really low in the water, and can dive and disappear for a long time. We didn’t know what they were at the time and called them Nessie Birds (like the Loch Ness Monster). Travis’ dad knew exactly what they were when we described them to him, though. Anyway, I guess they live around here, too.

Friendly turtle at Knox Lake:

Geese freaking out:

Great blue herons at Knox Lake:

I love seeing the Great Blue Herons. They’re so gangly and cool.

We took Bela out with us again on the kayak when we went yesterday, and she did really good. She sat most of the time instead of standing up and sticking her butt in Travis’ face. I still can’t really tell if she’s having fun or not, although I kind of think she is, especially when the geese get all pissed off and start honking at us.

Been working on some fibery stuff this weekend. I’ve got some batts and balls done, and will be putting them up in the shop this afternoon, I think. There’s a few more sets of stuff I want to make this morning before the update. I may toss up some yarn I’m trying to destash, too. I’ve accumulated a huge amount of yarn that I can’t sell at full price since the skeins have multiple knots or areas of funky yarn in them. This is the stuff I normally knit with, but after a few years of dyeing yarn, the amount of yarn has grown pretty big. It’s starting to freak me out – like I have too much yarn to knit with, and then I just get overwhelmed and don’t do anything. Stop scaring me, funky yarn! Anyway, I think I’ll be putting some of that up at reduced prices in case anyone is interested.

My dad is coming into town later this week, which is nice. We’re planning on hitting North Market in Columbus and getting some of Jeni’s ice cream. NOM!

Working on getting some yarn ready for a shop update tomorrow.

Yay, yarn! I’ll start putting them up tomorrow morning, barring any unforeseen weirdness. No fiber right now – I’ve been in a yarn mood lately, and a bit of a fiber slump. I did order some new dyes, and got some fiber dyed today, so maybe that will give me a boot in the butt. I’ve also got a ton of raw fiber I need to process, and now that the weather is warmer, I can start doing that and getting stuff dyed. I just love dyeing season.

I had weird light today, and took the yarn outside to get some better pictures. I really liked the way this one came out:

Travis and I took the kayak out a few days ago. We went to Charles Mill Lake up by Mansfield first, but screwed something up when we inflated the kayak, and could only paddle in circles. That got kind of frustrating, so we packed everything up, came home, googled what the hell we did wrong, and then tried again out at Kokosing River Lake. Good news and bad news – good news is that we were able to fix what we screwed up, and the kayak more or less went in a straight line, the bad news is that it only seems to go in a straight line when Travis is paddling. Apparently I naturally paddle in circles. I know, in theory, what I’m doing wrong, but it’s confusing because it doesn’t feel like I’m doing anything wrong. I must be paddling harder on one side than on the other, but it feels even. Heck if I know. Anyway, I have paddling issues. Hopefully I’ll get it figured out.

Here’s some pics from the latest adventure:

Bela in the boat.

Great blue heron.

Kokosing River Lake. I panorama’d this from 4 or 5 photos, so it looks better bigger. The water was high, so we were able to paddle in an area of the lake that would normally be too shallow for even the kayak to get to. It was pretty awesome.

Yeah, I know, it’s completely blurry, but I’m pretty sure this is a pair of wood ducks. The Kodak (which is what I use on the kayak, since I’m too scared to take the Nikon out on the boat) has a gigantic lag time on it compared to the Nikon, so my action shots are almost always blurry.

Saw a bunch of turtles! Yay, turtles!

Been doing a bit of cooking lately, because I got sick of eating take-out all of the time (except for the cheesy fries they now have at the ice cream place down the road from me. Cheesy fires = NOM!). Here’s the healthy food I made:

It’s basically samosas that are baked in won ton wrappers. I started out with this recipe (101 Cookbooks, again – I love that site!) but wound up adding potatoes, cauliflower, green onions, and garam masala to it, so they turned out more like samosas. Good, but I’m not sure the amount of prep work was worth the result. I think I wound up way overcomplicating things, though. It was my first time working with won ton wrappers, too. I have some leftover, so I need to figure out what to do with them.

Here’s the god-awful-bad-for-you-but-so-freaking-good food:

Matzo crackers, covered in caramel, and then covered (again) in chocolate, toasted pecans, and salt. NOM X 10000!! I used this recipe, but substituted milk and white chocolate chips for the semi-sweet. I have thoughts to try this again, with maybe using a graham cracker base, and sprinkling the top with some alderwood smoked sea salt I got from Whole Foods. I think the smoky salt might offset the sweetness.

Did some dyeing today. Got an absolutely amazing red on a few of the skeins. It’s uber-sexy.

So, I guess Disney (which means, ABC) has teamed up with FOX and NBC on hulu, which is good news, because ABC’s media player absolutely blows. I don’t think any ABC shows are up yet (Lost isn’t, at least). I wonder if they’ll ever make Twin Peaks available. That would be awesome. I was poking around hulu this evening and discovered that they now have both Jesus Christ Superstar and Johnny Dangerously available to watch online now! I know how I’m spending the rest of my evening!

Did a buttload of dyeing earlier this week, and just got a shop update done. Yay!

I may work on making some batts this weekend. I dyed a bunch of mohair locks an absolutely gorgeous shade on blue on accident (I thought I was dyeing BFL, but no! Twas wrong!), and that combined with the current upcoming pandemic flu makes me think that the blue locks would be a lovely base for a Captain Trips themed set of batts.

A bit coincidentally, when Travis and I were in DC, we did really good at not spending a ton of money on souvenirs and misc. crap. What we could have spent a ton of money on, but didn’t, was books – the gift shops at the Library of Congress and the National Archives had a fantastic selection of books, but we managed to only buy three (mainly because we were walking everywhere and didn’t want to haul around 12 tons of books). The three we chose to get? ‘Death of a Gunfighter’ by Dan Rottenberg, ‘Judgment Days’ (about the relationship between LBJ and MLK Jr) by Nick Kotz, and… ‘The Great Influenza: The story of the deadliest pandemic in history’ by John M. Barry. Three days later, swine flu became all the rage. Creepy! However, now I feel extra prepared to welcome my H1N1 overlords.

Travis and I have been trying to get the kayak out as much as possible lately, which has been a little difficult, because of the off and on again rain showers. We’ve taken Bela out on the kayak twice. She’s actually really good, except for her habit of standing up and sticking her butt in Travis’ face when he starts to paddle. So that needs working on. She also seems really interested in geese, to the point where she wants to jump off the boat and chase them. We’ll probably let her once it gets warmer, just so we can see what happens.

Getting into kayaking may have the inadvertent side effect of turning us into birders, more so than we already are. I’ve always liked birds, and we have birdfeeders at the house, and a few bird identification books. I like to know what kind of bird I’m looking at. However, we’ve never gone out in the wilderness specifically looking for birds.

Being on a kayak on a lake or river (although we’ve just done lake paddling so far) puts us in a different environment than we’re used to, and we’ve seen some pretty cool birds so far. The most incredible thing we’ve seen was a little island in Knox Lake, which just happened to be a nesting habitat for Great Blue Herons.

How awesome is that? They were everywhere, and their nests looked gigantic. For some reason, I never expected GBHs to nest in trees. I thought they nested in marshy reeds, like little baby Moses. Also saw what I think is an osprey:

I don’t think ospreys normally hang out around here, but I guess it could be on its way to a breeding ground or something. I don’t think it was getting much action in Knox Lake.

We’re back from DC. It was awesome. We had incredible weather (except for Monday, which was rainy) and walked about 17 million miles while we were there. Travis had his little GPS unit with him while we were walking around, so we’d get back to the hotel at night and see how far we’d gone. I think on our biggest day we walked over 14 miles in one day. I had no idea I could even walk 14 miles in one day, let alone walk over 10 miles a day for 5 days. So, that’s pretty cool. I feel all healthy now.

Here’s some pics we took. I’ve got about a billion more I haven’t uploaded yet, let alone all of the film I took that I haven’t developed. I’ll get to all of that eventually.

We had a great time. We only hit a few Smithsonian Museums, mainly because the weather was so beautiful I felt like being outside more. We went to Air and Space and the Museum of the American Indian, which, incidentally, has the best cafeteria food ever. The cafeteria is divided up by region (Meso America, Pacific Northwest, etc) and features food that comes from that region. It’s pretty expensive, but worth it. We ate there twice. The first time I had salmon cooked on a cedar plank. Nom!

Other places we ate: Ben’s Chili Bowl (twice – oh, cheese fries, how I miss you), Lalibela’s, which was an Ethiopian restaurant:

The Commissary (twice – potato pancakes! Also, I got a cucumber cocktail there, which was kind of bizarre), La Villa (Peruvian chicken! Fried Yucca!), Naan and Beyond (Indian food!), and misc. DC carts. DC cart food really kind of blows, honestly. If you order a pretzel, make sure you request that it comes with salt. Avoid the sno-cones.

Most of the time we just hung out by the monuments. Here’s the Jefferson Memorial, as seen from paddleboat.

We went paddleboating on the Tidal Basin and managed to not drop any of the cameras in the water. Hooray!

My favorite is the Lincoln Memorial, though. So awesome. Even at night, there were a bunch of people there. If I lived in DC, I would just hang out on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial all the time.

Also went by the White House a few times. Obama, are you home??

We saw the organic veggie garden they’re planting, too! I didn’t get any good pics of it, but it was really cute. Organic veggies = organic NOM!

Saw this guy fall into the WWII Memorial, which was funny.

Luckily, it was a warm day, so he probably dried off in about 20 minutes or so. He managed to not drop his camera, too, so kudos to him.

Here’s the Metro:

I love the Metro! I heart DC and its easy and accessible public transportation.

When Travis and I left DC, we swung by an REI in Maryland and bought our kayak. Now we can be extra healthy!

We’ve always enjoyed canoeing, but haven’t really done it at all since we’ve been in Ohio. It just seemed like too big of a thing to try and do with 2 dogs, and I hated the thought of doing outside stuff all day and having to leave them at home. Now that we just have Bela, we thought that we’d try giving kayaking a shot. She’s small enough that she could fit in a two person kayak with us.

The kayak we got is an inflatable one. Here you can see Travis and his dad (who got to have a nice visit with us, too – yay!) working on getting it inflated.

It only takes about 15 minutes to set up, less, I think, if we got our electric air pump working. Travis and I have taken it out twice so far.

We are rocking our pfds. I had never kayaked before getting this, only canoed, and when I started paddling I was amazed at how easy it is. I told Travis I thought it should be a lot harder. But, apparently, not so much. We’re going to try to take Bela out in it this week. Hopefully that will go okay. If not, I guess she can just stay home while we go out and have fun. I hope she likes it, though, since we already bought her a puppy pfd.

Wearing it doesn’t seem to bother her at all, which is good. We haven’t tried taking her in the water with it, though.

Fortunately, we have an abundance of places near our house where we can use the kayak. We’re only about 10-15 minutes away from Kokosing Lake and Knox Lake, which both look kind of low key and mellow. Kokosing Lake is where we took the kayak out for its maiden voyage.

We also took it to Alum Creek State Park, which has a big reservoir. That was more crowded and had motorboats on it. I think I like the smaller lakes better. We’re also about 5 minutes from a put-in spot on the Kokosing River, which is Ohio’s first designated scenic water trail. Kayaking opportunities abound!

Yesterday I dyed a bunch of yarn. I did some microwave dyeing for a change, and did some blendier stuff. I was going to try to do some kettle stuff this week, too, and work towards an update at the end of the week. Yarnz, I have missed you!