Apples, apples

Yesterday was a busy apple day at our house.  I picked a big Trader Joe's bag of apples from our Lodi tree around 6 AM and got them cut and cooked before leaving the house at 9 AM.  Owen and Robbie had arrived to help on the porch roof project by the time I was cooking the apples.

After a day of errands and appointments I arrived home around 3 PM and went immediately to stretch out for a little while.  Soon Bob needed me to go to Fairlee to pick up a quick clamp or something like that, which I did find.  It was good he told me it was blue!  I picked up two orange C-clamps for my own schemes while I was there.

After supper (fresh delicious sweet corn on the cob from Killdeer stand--plus some leftovers) I set up the Victoria strainer to make the applesauce.  The first go-around I had put the plastic guard on incorrectly and applesauce dripped everywhere...which I partly alleviated by putting a black plastic garbage bag under the collection bucket...but then realized my error, fixed it, and then the applesauce just slid into the bucket happily.

Bob kindly cranked for a little while before going back to the porch roof/lawn watering projects.  In the end there were twelve quarts of applesauce, very lightly sugared, ready for the freezer.  And I was totally ready for bed!

Here is the applesauce project set-up...making applesauce in a construction zone has its drawbacks, but it does work.  Notice the nice orange C-clamp.  There are two of them holding the sturdier board to the wimpy board.  There was a bit of bounce as we cranked, but all is well that ends well.

Ready for the freezer.  Now to make space in the freezer...!

A memory

Yesterday I was working on the computer to prepare for my Dartmouth email account to migrate to the cloud (yay for clouds, I guess...) and found an elderly email from daughter-in-law Laura...well, actually a report of a phone message from Laura.  She and young Anne had been out driving.  Anne asked if they were on the Freeway.  Laura told her they were on the Freeway.  After a brief pause Anne asked,  "When are we going to be on the Fourway?"  I thought that was really funny then, and I still think that is really funny!  Hooray for angel children and their thought processes.

Another one from last weekend.  Jonathan, Alissa, and children were at our house for dinner, but really so Jonathan could help move heavy stuff and do some electrical wiring.  After their long walk following supper the kids were at the table, newly moved into the new house from the storage shed, and were eating a delicious lime and raspberry dessert their mom had made and brought.

When 4-year-old Caleb finished his dessert...the first one to do so...he turned in his chair and looked at his grandfather and me and said, "Powered up.  Ready to work!" and jumped down from his chair and headed out the back door as fast as he could go.   As you might expect, there were smiles all around.  What a great attitude!  More of us could develop that one...

Another Day...

Yesterday was a busy day swimming, doing errands in the Upper Valley, doing laundry (AT HOME!!!), getting ready to come to the temple.  I left the house about 2:30 and finally arrived at the motel in Lexington at 7 PM after several stops (library, coop for Kosher salt, Sam's Club, rest stops, etc).  I made up some of Orchid's Cool Tangy Noodles so Jonathan and family could have them while they are here.  they arrived around 8:20 or so.  The children were in good spirits and acted well until bedtime, which was shortly. I was worn down and in bed by 9:45.

This morning breakfast was hectic with many other motel guests, some of whom were pushy-pully types of guests.  If you were courteous, which we tried to be, you waited and waited and waited.  Jonathan has just driven the family in to the Boston Aquarium to drop them off and will then come back to the motel to work from here while they are gone.

With the peace and quiet prevailing, I think now is a great time to shower and get ready for the temple!

Larry Godfrey came to do the remaining excavating and back-filling for the porch.  Yay!

Hot Water Showers at last!

Yesterday when Sister Vogel and I got home from the temple, there was Bob with clean clothes on, damp hair, shaved face...on a Friday!!!  That has not happened since May when the hot water heater was removed from the log cabin.  Since then Saturday showers at Jonathan and Alissa's house has been the norm.  I was too tired to shower last night but have a lovely hot more-lengthy-than-usual-for-me shower this morning.  Heavenly.

New house coming along

The builders and Bob have been working like crazy on the new house.  As of today, Day Eight, both levels have floors, outside walls, and interior walls framed in.  Bob is cutting out the windows and doors.  We are waiting for the roof trusses, which have not yet arrived.

My part in the deal has been to stay out of the way...easy to do with so many other activities to take care of, and to prepare for the trip to Utah which is next week.  Really looking forward to seeing all my babies, both the 30-somethings and the 14 and under crowd!

Time flies...

It has been ages since I wrote.  I was working furiously on the Sock Madness Forever project. I just missed getting into the fourth round.  Being horribly sick for five days put me out of the running, but I did finish my round three socks, a lovely yellow cabled pair.

Since then General Conference has come and gone. I have listened to the talks since then multiple times and am trying to put into action in my life the action items I got out of the talks...particularly Elder Oaks' talk on Desires.  My actions in the past have not supported my desires.

Also since the last post the log cabin that Bob built for us 39 years ago has been taken down and the logs burned.  We are getting ready to put up a stick-built house on the same location after excavating under the porch and putting in additional foundation.

The cellar room under the porch will be a food storage room so the main cellar can be used for other things.  Maybe we can actually have purposed rooms all over the house instead of everything a mishmash of uses.

Sock Madness 5

A few weeks ago on Ravelry I noticed that there was going to be a Sock Madness competition.  It turns out this is the fifth year of this competition.  It corresponds to basketball's March Madness, though I think it does not end until June.  Well, I thought I would like to try it.  There are seven patterns to be knit.  Everyone gets the first pattern, and if it is completed within the first two weeks, the knitter is put onto a team for the rest of the competition.  I signed up for the competition but then sort of forgot it.

On 9 March I went to the Sock Madness site and found that the pattern had been dispensed on March 4th and there was two weeks to do the knitting!  I was already behind the eightball.  So, I downloaded the pattern the found a good supply of two blues in Baby Ull yarn and got started.  I started out on two sets of size 4 double-pointed needles, then at the heel moved the socks to one long size 1 needle for the Magic Loop technique.

The first heel had a very large hole where the leg meets the heel, but I thought I could fix that after completing the knitting. So, knit, knit, knit.  No house work, no genealogy, no fabulous meals (or even passable meals.  It was a good thing we had a fair amount of leftovers in the refrigerator!), just knitting.  I realized that these were going to be too long for my feet so I left off the last 8 rows of the second pattern repeat on the feet, finished the toes, photographed the socks and sent them to the Sock Madness fairy.  Whew!  Finished on the 15th with two days to spare.

The next morning I found an email saying that my socks, though lovely, did not meet the competition guidelines and needed to be re-knit to include those 8 rows of the second pattern repeat.  She also told me not to worry, that there was time to make the change.  What! What! Really?!  So, I started un-picking the Kitchener stitched toes.  This was a real pain so I thought I would clip a stitch up on the pattern repeat then just ravel out.  Wrong!  That didn't work very well either....so I used my fingernail clippers (the only cutting tool at hand) and clipped all around both toes then raveled back to the right place for picking up stitches to re-knit.  It was really a MUCH more complex job than I expected.

Amazingly, I did get the job done, but had run out of the blue yarns, and since we were at the temple this week, I only had some leftover orange Baby Ull in my bag, SO there are two orange stripes.  Finally, finally, they are really done and I sent the new finished sock photo to the Sock fairy as well as posted it on the Supporters Sock Finishers thread on Ravelry.  I am very happy to have finished them.  Bob is willing to wear them, but I think they will be too large even for him!  We shall see.

It will be interesting to see what the other sock patterns hold for us. I don't think I will commit so much time to the next sock patterns.  I need to get back to more important things, though I do want to use up the sock yarn in my stash.

One of the nicest parts of this competition so far is that the wonderful designer of this sock pattern has sent me several emails.  She lives on the Isle of Wight and is a fabulous gardener. I would love to become friends with her...though it would be a sacrifice for her because she is emailing everyone who finishes a pair of her socks!  That is a fabulous gift to the knitters.