A great Bday

Got surprised with a weekend trip for my birthday! Started off on Thur. and we ended up in Stonehedge Inn. Our room was beautiful and I even got to have a massage in the spa.




Dinner at this place is the best I have had since I have left California. This is a BIG statement but it is true.

On Friday we drove along the coast to Maine.




The beaches here are not my wonderful Pacific but oh well.


I know this looks fake but it really is a picture I took of a lighthouse that we stopped at



Once we got to Portland Maine the eating began! We were lead to J's Oysters for oysters and a beer. This place was really great for sitting around and eating lunch with all kinds of local characters.



Yum oysters (ok, maybe I had one too many beers and the picture got a little blurry)



To end the trip we went and got a donut at Tony's. My friend Andrew insisted that I needed to do this.



Not sure if my stomach agreed.

A great time and will surly go back!

Everything is just fine

I finally finished the Yellow Collar Bohus sweater. Thank god. I have to say that it is pretty boring knitting this sweater. I am glad it is done. I really do knit knit knit still. I have been working on a rush job for a designer that I knit for. Been knitting like a fiend!

Spent the beautiful warm weekend working outside. We cleaned up around the pool and planted and bought stuff. I bought this hummingbird feeder that I fell in love with. Not sure if we will get hummingbirds in these parts of the woods (well maybe a few but not what we are used to) but we are going to try.



And last but not least we started the vegetable garden. I still need to buy plants and I am going to sprout some seeds (still too cool here to plant them) but I went ahead and planted brussel sprouts and onions. We also put a little fence around the garden so that the pooch won't step through it.



Life is good...

Spring?

I think Spring is here. My bulbs are coming up and there is gardening going on. It hasn't gotten very warm but I CAN feel my hands and feet again.

I love my hyacinth



We started our vegetable garden. 3 cubic yards of dirt was dumped into our neighbors driveway (shhhhh, they won't care).



Our neighbors Jeff and Cathy are the best! They helped us shovel all of this into the beds. I must admit that "one of us" (cough) was a wimp when it came to shoveling. I raked and evened out the dirt in the beds though!



What a good feeling when it was done. Today we are going to look for a fence to put around it so that the critters can't get to it.



Oh and about knitting...
I started the "Barn Raising" blanket shown here but had to put it aside for a sweater that I am test knitting.



uh, ignore the cat and dog fur that I just noticed on the ottoman. I think my animals are molting for the summer.

Been sick but enough about me...

Cat scans and sinus stuff and teeth stuff and codeine and LOTS of antibiotics. Ok, that is the short synopsis and enough about me.



I realized that Dakota aka Esther doesn't get enough attention on this blog so here is a current (as of today) picture of the freckle face girl. Here is another:



She is the best and I love her so much!

So, my sis wanted me to copy a sweater for her. This sweater is one that she has had for too many years and it is tattered and well worn. Her FAVORITE sweater in the whole world. So I did my best and bought cheap yarn (her version was a TJ Maxx special so cheap yarn was called for). Voila...I did my best with it. Knitted it over and over until I got it right. Glad it is done.

I went to the "Woolapalooza" and all I came home with is wool

Yup, Mr Yarn and I headed over to the Woolapalooza on Saturday. It was sheep shearing time. The National Audubon Society sanctuary (Drumlin Farm Wildlife Sanctuary) a beautiful place right near our house and this was an event there.



So some old hippy guy was shearing the sheep with these big ole scissors. I must say that I felt like he was manhandling that poor sheep a bit and I felt sorry for the poor thing (the sheep not the man).



Next, we went to go see the Nubian goats. This is MY personal favorite. We got to see a baby. Awwww.



About 15 minutes before we got into the barn this cutie was born. Doesn't get much cuter than that (shhhh, I liked the Nubian goat better but don't tell anyone because goats aren't as cool as sheep in knitting circles, but you can make goat cheese out of their milk)



This sheep looked like someone sheared it with a Flowbee. I couldn't stop myself from yelling to it "Hey baldie, looks like you were sheared with kitchen scissors"



We watched the dog boss the sheep around. Those sheep sure knew that the dog meant business. He had them running one way, and then the other and all around and everywhere. I heard one sheep say to the other "Man this dog is a tyrant, I need a drink".



Just because I am a bit odd I took a picture of a chicken. I love chickens. I want to own chickens (Mr. Yarn said that is all good and fine with him but what the hell are we going to do with them in the winter...he won't let me waste electricity heating the coop).

Ok, so that was my Audubon experience and we even became members. Stay tuned for my bird watching adventures (that is after I take up Kayaking and juggling).

More fun with food and snow

So as promised I took a picture of me playing with food.



Here I am wrapping potato strips around a cucumber. Not as easy as it looks. Do not try this in your own home.



Frying it up (have more than one cucumber on hand if you want to do these stupid baskets.

What this basket looks like after you have suffered through making them




NOT worth it. The little morsels that go inside were well worth it though.



The short ribs were fantastic and the meal was a success. Just don't bother making little baskets out of potato strips and you will be fine. Note to self: Don't play with your food...simple is best.

Oh, and while we were cooking and drinking wine on this lovely 50 degree SPRING day, Denis yelled over Neil Young on my iPod: "It is SNOWING". Yup...I thought he was messing with my head but Noooooo

Obsessed in the kitchen...

I just got this cookbook and I want to make everything that is in it. So, I have really obsessed with the potato recipes. This is the one that I am going for first



It is little potato baskets that you make by slicing a potato on a Japanese slicer (makes long long threads) and you wrap the long thread around a cucumber. Then you fry it up in a fryer and slip it off the cucumber. You have a basket. The basket is filled with potato balls that are glazed in a homemade stock that has been reduced to nothing.



So, I made the stock and I fried up the little balls today. You have to fry them a second time but since we can't do this all at the last second you can fry them the first time and freeze them.



This is going to go with Short ribs with mushroom Jam (or something that sounds stupid like that in the recipe). We got that recipe at a cooking class that was given by the chef of a local restaurant. A dinner that we will test out on our neighbor Denis. He is game for anything (as long as there is good wine to go with it).

The new dog in town

ZEPHYR. from Evan Lane on Vimeo.

Evan's girlfriend Lauren just got a new puppy. Evan shot this video.

Flowers and Spring and Whiskers on kittens

Really, I was going to blog about how nice it was yesterday and how my bulbs are coming up. I was going to take a picture of the little green sprout coming out of the ground. I was going to say how it felt like spring was near and 50 degrees felt wonderful. But....



The flakes are the size of boulders.

I still love you California

We are back from our trip to California. Besides the fact that I was sick as a dog with bronchitis and ended up in urgent care, the trip was great. I was on every medication known to man but still was back "home" and happy to be with Annie and Tim and we got to see Evan and my mom and sister and brother. We also got to have dinner with our pals. I miss them all more than words can describe.

So, I took pictures. Lots of em.

First off is my Granddogs



This is Dahlia. I got to meet her for the first time and she is the best. I wanted to sneak both of these guys home in my suitcase but Annie wouldn't let me.

This is Ricky



I didn't get a really good picture of him. He is also the cutest dog in the world (besides Esther).



We drove down 101 to L.A. and I got to see my perfect ocean. Not the fake ocean that I live near now. This is the REAL ocean.



Check out that sky.



How could I ever have taken this for granted? This is Marina Del Rey at its normal. I forgot how beautiful L.A. could be.



Ok, the traffic sucks in L.A. and this is at 9:30 in the morning on a Thursday.

On the way back to the Bay Area





Things I miss about Oakland







It is called DIVERSITY.

Ah yes, and these were sitting outside the Longs Drugstore in February



Back to Annie and Tim's and ready for party time



Birthday girl

Tim built Annie a birthday cake. She is the cupcake queen so this was appropriate



And just in time we made it back home before the storm hit. We are lucky to have the best neighbors in the whole world.



Back to reality

I am not dead even though it feels like I am

Here is a picture of the snow melting. It is practically GONE. Um, still looks like it is there to me but everyone in the know seems to think that we are on a warming up trend. Yeah, I will believe it when I see it...

So, I have my 30th cold in a row. I never have gotten better since I moved here. I think I am better and then WHAM another cold. This time it is like an elephant is sitting on my chest. Wheeeee, how much fun flying to California on Saturday. That should be swell. Not to mention that it will probably rain there too despite all the "Oh, it is so hot here" comments I have gotten all winter.

So, here is something embarrassing that I will share with you...
I hate Valentines day. It is stupid and contrived and it has always bugged me. So on that special day Mr Yarn and I usually play it down. I ask for cheap chocolate made out nothing found in real life. You know the chemical type that you find at the drug store. The ones that all the pathetic men are buying at the last minute because they forgot what a "special" day this is. *I* usually buy Mr. Yarn a cheesy pair of boxer shorts that I buy at the drug store. The ones with hearts and stupid stuff on them. This year Mr. Yarn came home from a trip to India on Valentines day. He had beautiful flowers delivered to me in the morning (breaking protocol but they were beautiful) and when he came home he had bought me perfume that he knew I had wanted. He went all out. I kept to the routine of boxer shorts. However, this time I ordered them online because for some reason New England doesn't go for cheesy drug store boxer shorts the same way that California does. So, I pick what I can and have the damn things monogramed. They were suppose to read " I (heart) Janis" Cheesy enough, yes?

The morons took it upon themselves to bump it up a notch in case the Mr. has more than one Janis in his life




Ohhhh p.s. (I am writing this a couple of hours later)



It is snowing.

Knitting and such

I am working on the Large Lace Collar Bohus. We are talking size 0 needles here. I did just finish another sweater that I am doing for a designer that I can't post. I swear that I finished it and blocked it this morning.

In other news...



Nikko is getting obese because she can't prowl outside in the snow. I think I better have her start doing the Wii Fit.

Dirty snow

When I found out that I was moving somewhere that it snowed all the time I was like a little kid with dreams. Dreams of the white fluffy stuff that I could tromp in and throw and play in. Little did I know that over the season the snow never goes away and melts. It sits there and collects dirt. It collects salt. It is just something that you start to ignore as if it weren't there at all. The other day driving home I noticed that it is downright ugly.