Stew Update

My stew was freakin' fantastic! It came out perfectly! The only thing I might do different next time is add a bit more potatoes and maybe some stock (since I'm adding extra potatoes). It wasn't very stew-like. It was drier than I had expected. We ate it with a fork, but it was great. The meat was moist and tender, the veggies flavorful. My first total success on my Friday-From-Scratch-Dinners! Thank you, Alton Brown, Cooking God!

I Can Make Yarn!

I went to the Puyallup Fair last week with Charles. He works with me at the shop. We saw all of the animals and all of the stuff they sell on TV. I picked up a drop spindle while I was there for super cheap!
I made this:
It took me about 3 days to do. It's not very big, but I'm quite proud of myself!
Here's a picture of my spindle:
And here's the roving that I picked up to make some more:
The new stuff I bought is a lot more slippery than the roving that came with the spindle. I also saw a woman with a spinning wheel made out of pvc pipes and a wheel chair wheel. Neat!

I also made breakfast this morning. I'm quite proud of myself! It's a layer a hash browns, then some cheese, then a mixture of eggs, ham & green onions topped with more cheese. It came out really well.
Now, I'm working on a stew I got from watching Good Eats. I've already got my meat in the oven. Only 5 more hours to go! I hope it comes out okay. I feel confident because my breakfast came out so well. Today, it a good cooking mojo day! (I hope!)

It's Been a While!

I didn't realize it had been so long since I last posted!
We had a big sale at the shop last week. The 9-9-9 Back Issue Sale. 9th month, 9 days, 9 discounts. It started at 10% off and went up to 90% off on the last day. I think we did pretty good. Rick isn't too happy though. Most people waited until it hit 60% off to start showing up. We were hoping they would start coming in at 40. Then, on the last day, a bunch of people that we've never seen before showed up and grabbed chunks of books. They didn't even really look at them. We also had a few regulars get greedy and buying multiple copies of things "because they were so cheap." If it's so cheap that you're willing to buy 2 copies of an X-Men book, maybe you can buy some of the crap like Spawn that we were hoping to get rid of! We had great sales. Broke records every day even with the huge discounts. It gives us a chance to put in some fresh stock too. I think many people had stopped looking in our back issues previously because it was the same stuff all the time. Like I said, I think it was a success....it may just take a while to convince Rick of that.
We got in a collection of Garbage Pail Kids too. I had Barry whip this up for me:
It used to say "Knittin' Brittany." He did a great job!
Not much else going on. Amy (Barry's sister) is going to have her baby today. She's been having complications so they're going to C-section. We just mailed out her baby stuff today. Just in time!
Hoping you're having fun in the land where ALL chocolate cake is German!

Some Completed Projects

I just wanted to show off some completed projects.
First, I have Amy's (Barry's sister) baby gift.
It's a crocheted stuffed bear, baby hat and blanket. They are all made from baby acrylic yarn. The bear was super hard. The first row of crocheting is always the hardest and this whole thing was made so that it was like doing the first row throughout the whole thing. This bear is truly one of a kind since I won't be making another.














Next is a baby hat, booties and mittens.
These items are for a girl in my knitting group. She quit her day job to dye yarn for a living. Here's her website: A Swell Yarn Shop. This is some of her work. She has a show coming up in late September (or early October) and she needed some knitted samples.

Sick, Sick, Sick

I've been sick these past couple of days. I think I had mild food poisoning Monday from a Mexican microwave meal. Tuesday, I had stomach pains and kidney pains. I thought I had appendicitis. There's a thing where the doctors press on your abdomen in a certain spot and it hurts really bad if you have it. I tried it and it hurt! The earliest they could squeeze me in was 4. By that time, most of the pain had gone and I was feeling better. I figured better safe than sorry though. I just have a minor bladder infection. I think the abdominal pain was left over from having nothing to eat on Monday except ginger ale, saltines, pepto bismol and water. I was so happy that after my appointment, I got Arby's and wolfed down a sandwich. My tummy hurts again. Maybe I should have started out with soup.
The rest of this week, I've just been headache-y, tired and my tummy kind of queasy. I still haven't gotten back my full appetite. I ate 2 pieces of toast for breakfast and I'm stuffed! I did sleep a lot last night though. I went to bed at 8 and got up at 7. I don't have a headache, so it must have helped.
It turns out that Barry was trying to kill me. He filled our water at the hand pump that was at the camp site. We brought the jug home and when I started feeling sick, all I drank was water. Tainted water! I don't really know if the water was tainted, but since I've been drinking real bottled water, I've gotten better.
I've been working on this crazy pair of socks. Eunny Jang's Entrelac Socks. Insanity! First, the socks are made for someone with long, skinny feet. I have short fat feet. The entrelac technique is so complicated, I have no idea how to modify it for size. I'm hoping that a larger needle will widen the sock and maybe I'll just stop a few blocks short on my foot. I hope it'll work. It's taken me 2 days just to do the freaking toe!
Amanda let me borrow her Cardcaptor Sakura DVDs. It's been really fun. I watched a few episodes when they were playing it on TV. It's nice to start at the beginning. Unfortunately, it's subtitles only. I don't mind subtitles so much, it just makes knitting harder! ;D

What I Did This Summer

Barry and I just got back from our trip to Greybull, Wyoming. We met my parents there and camped at a KOA. I don't have the pictures yet, but when I do, I'll add them.

Day 1 - Saturday
We left at 8 in the morning for Yellowstone National Park. We got stopped by a car fire just outside of Spokane. We were less than a quarter of a mile from it. It held us up for about 45 minutes. No one was hurt. It did start a small brush fire, but it looked like it was under control by the time we passed it.
That night, we got to Bozeman. It's a town just to the north of Yellowstone and I guess a great spot to stay if you're going there. We went to 8 out of 12 of the hotels in town trying to get a room. The last one we went to was charging almost $200 for one night! We said screw that and stayed at a KOA. We went to Fudruckers for dinner. I feel bad because we got there 1/2 an hour before closing and they had already cleaned everything up. They were super nice about it though, so we gave them a big tip.

Day 2 - Sunday
We ate breakfast at a local place. I had the best Sausage Gravy and Biscuits this side of the Mississippi! They served the sausage in one piece and it was huge! The biscuits just fell apart they were so fluffy. Yummy!
Then we headed into Yellowstone. It was a beautiful drive. Lots of mountains, trees and a huge river. We saw a few groups doing whitewater rafting as we drove past. Once we got into the part, almost immediately, the back-ups started. People were stopping all over the place to take pictures of deer. Who hasn't seen deer before? Big whoop! So, we passed those people and then we saw a buffalo. Barry and I got out and took some pictures of it. From a safe distance of course. We laughed at the people that stopped to look at stupid deer. We also saw some moose and a bear.
As we went through we stopped a lot at the hot springs stuff. We saw Paint Pots, colorful pools and steam rising from the ground.
Of course we stopped at Old Faithful. When we got there, we had about 1/2 an hour until it was time for it to blow. The weather didn't look very friendly. It was cloudy and there was thunder in the distance. A ranger started going around and suggested that everyone take cover. We decided to sit in the rain. A bunch of people went under the trees (which was worse than just sitting out on a bench) and others started putting up umbrellas (we moved far away from them). "Gee, there's a lighting storm coming, think I'll pull out my trusty lightning rod!" The lightning struck pretty close, but we held our ground! We weren't going to miss this! We got rained on and hailed on and eventually the geyser went off. Totally worth it!
After Old Faithful, we had to hurry to make sure we got to the campground before dark. We got there around 7ish and got set up alright. The people there were really nice and had 2 cute boxer puppies.

Day 3 - Monday
We went to a place in middle of the desert with dinosaur tracks. They were pretty cool. I was afraid I wouldn't be able to see them. They just blended right in with all of the ripples in the rock. They were created by dinosaurs walking in mud and then the mud drying and more mud forming on top of it. We were able to see the big tracks though. There were supposed to be small ones too, but we couldn't see them through all the ripples.
Then we went to Shell Falls. It was a long winding drive up steep cliffs. They were very pretty.
On our way back, we stopped by a place called Dirty Annies. I had a ginormous burrito.

Day 4 - Tuesday
We went to Thermopolis to The Wyoming Dinosaur Center and Dig Sites. We took a tour of the dig site. We saw an allosaurus feeding ground and they had left the bones in the ground to show where everything was at. Then we checked out their museum and got some souvenirs.
After that we went to Star Plunge Hot Springs Water Park. There were 3 pools, one indoor and 2 outdoor, 3 water slides, 2 hot tubs and a steam room. The indoor pool was built in 1900 and they've added the other stuff around it. They just pumped in water from the hot springs. The water was a little smelly and cloudy, but it felt really good. I went on 2 of the slides, Barry went on all 3. We tried to go into the steam room, but the smell was really strong in there, it was too hot and my glasses fogged up.

Day 5 - Wednesday
I talked my parents into to going to Yellowstone. We saw more buffalo. Herds of buffalo! We checked out the Natural Bridge. Pop stayed with the car because he was having a hard time breathing and left his inhaler behind. It took us about 1/2 and hour to walk there. We even saw a really old guy with an oxygen tank! When we got there, we saw a marmot. The natural bridge was okay. Not as impressive as the one in Virginia. When we got back, we took a short cut and almost ran into a buffalo.
We saw Old Faithful again, this time under sunny skies. We stopped at some more of the hot springs stuff.
We came back to a wet tent! It had rained while we were gone. We had left the "rain shield" off of our tent, so the top was just netting. Our sleeping bags, air mattress, pillows and some clothes got soaked. Luckily, the mattress held most of the water, so the bottom of our tent didn't get wet at all. The KOA had laundry rooms, so we dried our sleeping bags and pillows. It was kind of nice sleeping in a warm sleeping bag.

Day 6 - Thursday
Barry and I went to Cody and left my parents behind in Greybull. We checked out the Buffalo Bill Historical Center. They showed us a map and pointed out the five museums. I thought they were just trying to make is seem big, but really, it was 5 museums in one big place. We went to all 5 of them. The guns museum was massive! The Buffalo Bill part was interesting and had all kinds of neat stuff.
After that we ate at the Irma Hotel (it's been around since 1902 and is named after Buffalo Bill's daughter). It was really yummy! It was a beautiful place and everyone was really nice.
Then we wandered around town and checked out the shops. We were mostly killing time until the gunfight started. That's right, a gunfight! They do it 6 nights a week all through the summer. It was really cool! It wasn't all super serious. There were some great jokes! It had Buffalo Bill, Wild Bill, Calamity Jane and Butch Cassidy. Very fun!

Day 7 - Friday
The drive home was uneventful. We left at 8am and got home at 930pm.

What kind of yarn am I?

What kind of yarn are you?

You are Shetland Wool. You are a traditional sort who can sometimes be a little on the harsh side. Though you look delicate you are tough as nails and prone to intricacies. Despite your acerbic ways you are widely respected and even revered.
Take this quiz!








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