El mosquito no esta bonito.

I'm not going outside again for a long time.

Since we had a big group of friends coming into town to stay with us this weekend, I wanted to spend a day in the yard, tidying things up.  I know that I'm a mosquito magnet, and that the gentle "natural" repellents don't work on me.  Those containing pure DEET help, but I hate spraying those chemicals on.  I decided to forgo the repellents.  In another brilliant move, I also decided to work in a tank top and shorts. 

I trimmed bushes, weeded, used the leaf blower on the driveways and flower beds, and got to finish a project I've been wanting to do for a long time - removing the ivy from the rock wall by our outdoor fireplace.  It isn't done yet...but it's a start.

I noticed a snake clinging to one of the low-hanging tree branches there.

I think it's a juvenile brown snake and totally harmless.  I used a rake to carefully move him to the neighboring woods.

Almost immediately after finishing my work, my leg broke out in quarter-size itchy blotches.

Over the course of the next few days, my ankles and calves swelled with bites big and small, and I had poison ivy rash on both wrists and my right upper arms.  I slathered on the hydrocortisone and decided to take an "outdoors break".

So, I've been enjoying the outdoors...from inside, like my safe view of this squirrel handily besting one of our squirrel-proof feeders down by the pond:

I started a new knitting project (a cardigan):

I made a card for a friend who was getting married:

And, I finally finished the front living room.  The back living room has been done for a while:

But the front living room, for the past year and a half, has been completely empty, other than a couch, a couple of beat-up chairs (future projects), and our board game cabinet.  I've been really motivated to finish it, because it's the first thing I see when I walk in the door.

Front and back views (I believe you can click on the pictures for a larger view):

I've got my puzzle table (IKEA) set up right by the big windows, to catch all the available light. 

We have some wingback chairs for cozy reading spots:

And, I refinished this table that Todd found at an auction for $20...

...and it makes a perfect sturdy table for assembling model kits.  I'm so glad to have this room done!

Even though I have done an extraordinary amount of cooking/baking this past week (16 pounds of hamburger with caramelized onions, 10 pounds of chicken, 7 pounds of rice, 3 different types of cookies, cookie bars, 2 batches of blueberry muffins, 2 batches of cupcakes, and cinnamon rolls), it wasn't long before I felt like baking again.  We had some fresh local peaches, so I made peach crisp.  Todd made himself a plate, and asked if we had vanilla ice cream to go with it.  We didn't, of course, because an ice cream addict like myself *never* keeps a readily-available stash of it.  But I started thinking.  There's a local orchard that keeps a permanent summer stand at my gym, and they have the most beautiful blackberries I've ever seen.  What if I bought some and made a sort of blackberry reduction sauce for vanilla ice cream? 

So I did.

I cobbled together a recipe from multiple sites, boiled my berries down...

...and made the most delicious ice cream topping I've ever had.

Plenty of seeds...just like I like it!

Blackberry Reduction Sauce

Ingredients
3 cups fresh blackberries
1/4 cup + 1 tablespoon sugar
1/4 cup + 1 tablespoon water
1 teaspoon vinegar (or lemon juice)
1 tablespoon cornstarch (and a bit of water to dissolve it)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Directions
Combine blackberries, sugar, and water in a pot and bring to a boil.  Mash some of your blackberries (I wanted mine chunky, so mine was "lightly mashed"), and add your cornstarch (dissolved in a bit of water).  Simmer for about 10 minutes.  Remove from heat.  Add vinegar and vanilla.  You can strain out the seeds at this point if you'd like.  Stir, cover, and store in refrigerator until ready to eat. 

This is a quick 15-minute recipe, and yields delicious results.  I think it's a nice summer treat, and if you're inside making blackberry sauce, you are probably safe from the evils of mosquitoes and poison ivy.  Win - win!

Have a great week! 

Eek! My First Steek

It's been a busy few weeks here, preparing for company both this past weekend and next.  The pictures that have been leaned up against various walls for weeks have finally been hung.  Final coats of paint have been applied to waiting surfaces.  And, I finally found a coat rack!  I've been searching for months, but the only ones I've found were at antique stores, and they were not quite the right style or price ($65 and up).  Then, miraculously, I found one on clearance at Target for $17.  Simple, and it fits right in!  At last, I have a place to hang my bag!

A surprising source has taken care of my fungal gnat problem, too.  Because I'm completely inept at caring for houseplants and ALWAYS overwater (or, conversely, never water at all), we've struggled with the pesky fungal gnats that love to lay their eggs in wet soil.  I bought a carnivorous plant last year (a pitcher plant) that never seemed to do much.  This year, though, sundews came up from the same soil.

See all the gnats caught on their sticky stems?   Hooray!

I've been keeping an eye out for new wildlife, but all I've spotted so far is this really cool hawk - variety unknown - that perched in a nearby tree for a quick rest.

Inside, I've been a baking machine.  I've been baking bread (recipe here):

A 3-layer lemon cake with vanilla bean frosting and mascarpone filling (recipe here):

One of my favorites:  pull apart bread, this particular variety being cinnamon and sugar.  Lovely rise...

The moment of doubt when the dough, buttered, seasoned, cut, and stacked, doesn't fill the pan:

Relief!  The first rise takes care of that:

It bakes up beautifully:

A little icing seals the deal!  Recipe for lemon variety here - switch out lemon for cinnamon and sugar to make this particular variety.

I've been knitting, too, but I'm afraid it's been a real exercise in frustration.  I am not content to knit the same easy stockinette patterns over and over again - I want to continually challenge myself.  I decided a few months ago that I wanted to knit myself a sweater.  Not just any sweater, though - a stranded knitting sweater with sew-in sleeves and a steeked neckline.  I picked my pattern (Aunt Fred), ordered my yarn, and got to work.

The first issue I had was switching my dominant yarn color after a brief knitting hiatus.  The result?  The background color changed, and I didn't notice it for SEVERAL INCHES. 

I frogged it down to the mistake and then proceeded to knit it incorrectly, AGAIN.  I had to frog it all the way back to the blue ribbing at the bottom and start over.  Nice progress on the body, the sleeves knitted up nicely, but I attached them incorrectly:

You can't see here, but I knitted several inches above what is shown here before I realized my mistake.  I frogged and re-knitted it TWICE before I finally got it right.  Next came the shoulder shaping.  Again, I knitted it incorrectly TWICE before I finally got it right.  My stitch count was off by 10 stitches, but by this point, I didn't care.

I was ready for my steek.  I had put in 7 lines of "waste yarn" in the middle of the sweater, where the "placket" (V-neck) was going to go.  I spent a night watching youtube videos on how to crochet up and down the sides of the waste yarn to secure the edges...

...and then made my cut down the center, between the reinforcement.

Curses!  I didn't properly secure the top or bottom stitch, so I had little 1-inch pieces of yarn flapping.  I grimly tied them up and kept moving.  I was confused about the shoulder-seaming directions (now WHERE does that fourth needle come from?!?) so ended up grafting them together.  They look shoulder-like, but I'm not sure how they'll hang.

I picked up the stitches for the collar...

...but was confused AGAIN.  Pick up stitches along each side, and then short row wrap and turn along back of the neck...ugh.  Short rows.  I got hopelessly confused and ended up putting the sweater aside, even though I'm in the home stretch.  I need a break from it.  I started another sweater - just one color, and what I thought were detailed directions, but soon I saw the dreaded "Follow this same pattern, changing up x and y as needed, for 28 more rows."  I'm not someone who easily sees patterns, and I really prefer to have each row written out - especially when you have cable rows and seemingly random placement of knit and purl stitches throughout.  I put that away, too.  I think I'm going to take a knitting break for a while!

Phew!  I'm exhausted just thinking about it.

Have a great week! 

Egg-straordinary!

Finally...finally!...I settled on a color for my office.  It's called Betsy Ross House Moss, and it's a light olive color.  I love it.  It felt so good to paint over all those sample colors!

Now my office is completely done, except for a few pictures I haven't hung.  So here it is:  first, my work station, which has a lovely view of the woods and the pond.  The two tables make an "L" and give me lots of space for both work and crafts.

The green is not as bright as it looks here, but you can see my 'craft corner' (binders, acrylic rubber stamps, paper punches, glitter, glue, blank cards, embroidery and embossing supplies, etc., etc.).

This is my knitting space.  The tall cabinet holds my yarn, and I've got supplies on both shelves of the little table, formerly an IKEA kitchen island.  My yarn winder is attached to the corner, and the chair - also from IKEA - is my favorite knitting spot.

Another craft corner view (again, the walls are not pea-green like they appear here...they're more olive and very muted):

This table is just to the left of my work station.  It holds my sewing machine and supplies, and beneath it I have my fabric organized by pattern.  The white cabinet holds a TON of patterned construction paper, and the structure on the wall, which is a bit hard to see here, holds my rubber stamps.

Finally, my favorite art - three pages from a 1920s children's book, each depicting a different insect (or arachnid):

LOVE!

Although we've been busy, it's been very peaceful here.

Still seeing lots of wildlife, like this barred owl.

The geese have returned to our pond, and they make a pretty picture on the water.

We stopped by the local farmer's market this weekend and picked up some fresh eggs.  I love the different colors!

Speaking of eggs, I was cutting invasive vines out of our berry bushes this weekend when I spotted an abandoned bird nest.  I knew it was abandoned because it contained one empty eggshell and one half-empty one with a deceased chick inside. 

I sterilized the nest with a bleach solution and attempted to boil out those egg fragments to clean them.  Boiling rotten eggs does not make a pleasant smell, and I'm afraid the dead-chick egg had to be tossed.  The other was able to be cleaned and placed back in the nest.  I am building a collection of bird nests and have them displayed on a table in our front living room.  That space isn't quite done, but I'll post a picture when it is.

I've been baking a lot.  This peach-blueberry pie was amazing.

I made challah for the first time, too.  It's an annoying dough...sweet egg bread is, for me, the most difficult to get a good rise out of.  After two rises, you spit the dough into two unequal parts - say, 1/3 and 2/3 - and braid them.  You then stack the braids and give it another rise.

To give it that dark finished look, it gets a very generous brushing with egg white and water.  Then, voila!

It reminds me again not to be afraid to tackle a baking project.  It's just one foot in front of the other to get to the finish line!  Full recipe and fantastic step-by-step directions can be found at Bakingdom.

Have a great week!