violetismycolor

Snowfall and me

As my husband keeps pointing out, I was raised in southern California. I grew up as a very outdoorsy tomboy on a dairy farm in LA county. 

I was outside all the time

a) because I was one of the oldest of a VERY big Catholic family and we lived in a very small house

b) because going outside was one of the only ways to get any privacy

c) because the dairy was big (I think about 62 acres, shared with Mr. Schmidt's dairy next door) and there was so much to explore

I spent a lot of time watching the cows give birth in the dry cows' corral, making a "house" in the haystacks, playing in Coyote Creek and catching frogs there, climbing trees, playing cowboys and Indians with my sisters, brothers, and cousins next door. But it almost never rained...and it CERTAINLY never snowed. I had complete freedom to wander. As long as I was in by dinnertime, life was golden.

Now, don't get me wrong, I LOVE Oregon. I LOVE Portland. It's best on sunny days but I don't really mind it in the rain. BUT being stuck in my house on snowy Portland days drives me to distraction. I NEED to be outside of my house for at least part of every day. NEED TO.

Luckily for me, those snowy days tend to pass pretty quickly but seriously! When I heard it might snow again next week, I about lost it. Come on, weather gods, give me a break!

 

Knitting, addiction

 

I have started knitting again, as I said in an earlier blog post. As with most things I do, I am a bit obsessive about it. I have three WIP's, as they say in the knitting world...Works In Process. One of those is the off-white Bailey cardigan (see photo at left) that I mentioned in an earlier post. I chose an off-white, organic, washable wool because I wanted something that I could wear with just about everything. I also wanted it to be soft and comfy.   

The second project I have is a hat, which I have just started. I am hacking about 3 different patterns to make something unique and am using the yarns on the right, the black Zara DK yarn and the red Grinasco Top Print. These yarns have been in my stash for longer than you might think. Many, many years ago, I owned a yarn shop here in Portland. It was called Spindleshanks Yarnworks, Ltd. (a mouthful, right?) and was filled with gorgeous yarns. When I closed the store in 1996, I took home some lovely things. The yarns that I am using for my hat were from my store. I am part of a Ravelry group called the Stranded Podcast Group. They are having a KAL (which I have learned means a Knit A Long) using commercially dyed yarns. This is why I put this project on the needles.

My third (and so far, last) project is a Noro scarf. This is using two different colorways of Noro and alternating them every two rows. This gives a beautiful striped scarf. I will post a picture of that some other time. It is a fun project that requires very little thought; it's just pretty zen. I take that project along to my morning coffee group and I can knit it and talk at the same time. 

Anyway, my white sweater project requires real concentration right now since I am making the sleeve caps, and I am watching the Olympics and not really able to concentrate on knitting anything complicated. Soooo...the white sweater just has to wait for right now.

Better get back to knitting....

 

Have I talked about my Instant Pot addiction?

Last October, I read an article in the New York Times about a new Instant Pot cookbook. It seems that the author of that cookbook, Melissa Clark,  a reviewer for the Times, fell in love with the Instant Pot after being asked to review it. She loved it so much, she spent a ton of time re-writing all her favorite recipes so that she could use it.  I was so excited by the article that I immediately ordered an Instant Pot and her cookbook on Amazon. Am I ever glad that I did!

I now cook with my Instant Pot at least twice a week, probably more. I can make so many things in just a fraction of the time that it would normally take without sacrificing any flavor. This is especially true for things like pot roast or pork carnitas. But it is equally true for things like sweet potatoes (love! sigh!) and soups/stews. In fact, as I sit here writing this entry, I am eating the slightly spicy (chipolte pepper) sweet potatoes that I made last night. I rewarmed it and topped it with some cottage cheese and it is amazing!

I have become such an advocate of this product that I have inspired at least a dozen people to buy one. I gave one to each of my sons, and now they are big fans.  I am now getting rid of my crockpot, because my Instant Pot can be used as one of those. I can also make yogurt in it. Last week, I made homemade Indian paneer, out of my other favorite Instant Pot cookbook, Urvashi Pitre's Indian Instant Pot Cookbook.

I am not being paid to spout all this Instant Pot love; I just can't help myself!

 

Family History Organization

I have been working on family history (or genealogy) for the past few years. I have become quite good at being able to find records and am piecing together the lives of many of my (and my husband's) ancestors.  This is all good.  My big problem is Organization. 

I have been collecting records and "trying" to put them in their proper places, so that I can find them again. However, some of the time I am working on my desktop and some of the time on my laptop. Only at my desktop do I have a big, secondary hard drive where I have a file for each generation and each family in that generation. When I am working on my laptop, usually at night, while watching TV, I do download the files and label them appropriately. But I don't often find the time to MOVE them from my laptop to their proper filing folder on my desktop. I would much rather be hunting down new material.

The other thing that I am trying to do is to write a story about each family group. I collect the birth, marriage, and death files. I find newspaper articles and census records,  property records and wills. I look at my ancestor's siblings and their families and I try to get a sense about what these family groups were going through while they lived. This is much harder than it sounds. But it IS my ultimate goal, to leave a record of these families that my husband and I come from and to tell their stories for future generations. But there are SO MANY OF THEM!

For any interested party, the filing system that I use is this. I create a file for each direct ancestral couple. I use the first 4 letters of their last names in this system, in order to keep the file names an appropriate size. My husband and I are Gen 1, our parents are Gen 2, etc. So a file for our grandparents would look like this:

03_SMIT John_JONE Mary

That would be the file that would start with their marriage and go on with each child having their own sub-folder in their birth order: 1_Thomas, 2_Joan, 3_Clara  etc. In those files I would put all their BMD records and information on their children, censuses they are in, etc. When my own direct ancestor marries, they get thier own couple file. This works pretty well for me. My ancestors had lots and lots of kids. My husband's family, less so.

Each record gets labeled like this:  SMITH JOHN 1896 BIRTH   or   SMITH JOHN JONES MARY 1913 MARRIAGE

Doing this also makes it easy to find a record, as I can spot the year I am looking for, and what person or persons are involved in the record.

Okay, enough explaining. Time to do some record sorting....

 

 

Blog, reinstated

I went to my book group this morning. I have been a part of this group for at least 15 years! Unbelievable! One of the things that being a part of this group does for me is that it stretches me, in terms of what I read and how I think. So many of the books that we have read would not even have been on my radar. The group is made up of such smart, interesting women. I get to share so much of their lives because, besides discussing the books (which we really do), we also share our stories.

This month's book was Michael Chabon's latest, Moonglow. The book is a cross between memoir and novel. Chabon's prose is always so rich and full of truly masterful metaphors. It is (ostensibly) the tale of his grandfather, a member of Operation Paperclip in WW2, husband of a mentally-ill European refugee, step-father to that woman's daugther, electrical engineer, rocket enthusiast, model builder, anger-management challenged ex-con, and more. The narrative is built by that grandfather telling stories of his life, not in a straight line but meanderingly, as he is dying and under the influence of serious pain-meds.

The way memories are kept and dispensed, the same way I try to eat Christmas treats, slowly and with true savor, was the key to this story. I read it in about 5 days and, when I put it down, I couldn't wait to dive back in. I haven't loved a Chabon book this much since Kavalier and Clay.

 

 

 

Other projects worked on this week include my A-line off-white cardigan, which I am knitting in Swan Island Yarn's Organic DK Washable Wool (color Natural). The yarn is a dream to work with. It is soft and has a lovely hand, and it knits up into a wonderful fabric. I have finished the fronts and the back and am currently knitting the two sleeves (at the same time, with 2 balls of yarn). This way the sleeves will match exactly, with the increases in the same places and the number of rows just the same. I hope to get down with that in the next week and then I will throw another project onto the needles. Stay tuned.

I am just starting a button-front, sleeveless shirt. I have sized the pattern to fit me and cut out the fabric. I will work on fitting adjustments this week and perfect the pattern. I intend to use this for a series of tops for the summer.

 

Ross turned 30 this week. We went out to Masu Sushi, which is owned by a friend of mine. It was our first time there, and all I can say is WOW! The food was amazing. Bonnie and Zerek, John and I, and Ross all just gorged on the delicious sushi and tempura. Ross celebrated with a drink called My Little Kitty, which was a berry puree based cocktail. Delicious! He let me try a sip and I agreed. Ross's favorite cake is Red Velvet, and though he is dieting, he made an exception for a Red Velvet birthday cupcake. We had loads of fun! Too bad Adam and Priya weren't with us!

We also went out to a Blazer game. Our bank treated us to great seats at the Moda Center. Bonnie and Zerek joined John and I and it was a blast. The Blazers were absolutely hot! The Chicago Bulls were terrible. The Bulls couldn't seem to land a basket of any sort in the first quarter and the Blazers couldn't miss one. They earned 50 points in the first quarter and it was a first for ANY franchise. We won, of course. A fun night out was had by all.