Well, it’s one of those weekends.
Had a substantial amount of work to bring home, and it’s rainy. Somehow, I’ll figure out a way to make bracelets to sell, knit some of the BSJ #2, and do some baking or cooking, as well as cranking out presentation swag.

C. & I have a trip planned to REI tomorrow: we didn’t have one in our area before, and it’s sort of the mecca of outdoors gear. Pricey, to be sure, but well worth a trip to poke around & look at things, try stuff out. I’ve been to the Boulder store, and it’s huge & fun.

Been home since yesterday, as I’ve gotten some plague or other, and am trying to rest up so I can actually go on vacation. And it’s…RAINING! Yep, rained no less that 4 times yesterday, and looks like it’s about to start up again this morning. Unreal. I’m wondering if Rob McKenna* is around.

(*From So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish by Douglas Adams:

“Rob McKenna had two hundred and thirty-one differently types of rain entered in his little book, and he didn’t like any of them…

And as he drove on, the rain clouds dragged down the sky after him for, though he didn’t have know it, Rob Mckenna was a Rain God. All he knew what that his working days were miserable and he had a succession of lousy holidays. All the clouds knew was that they loved him and wanted to be be near him, to cherish him, and to water him.”)

It’s as persuasive as a brain slug. Once it’s in the fridge, watch out. It’s hard to think of anything else. We’re demolishing it over the weekend, and will lament the resulting weight gain quietly, over the course of the next week or so.

I wish I’d been keeping track of how many days it’s rained in the last 3 weeks, because it’s astounding. Everything is damp. We can’t work outside, except to harvest waterlogged strawberries & leafy greens, and hope that the sun wins the daily battle soon.

The reverse is worse, of course: no one wants a drought. Damn. Damn! I have so much to do, and no way to do it, right now.

Back to spinning like a mad spinning thing, there’s nothing else can be done.

PS. Baked the vegan lime cheesecake last night: tastes very good, but totally like key lime pie. NOTHING like cheesecake. WIll be correcting the pies with a whipped “cream” layer, to see if the surmise is correct.

Lucky me, that Apple released the 3.0 update…Camera Plus won’t work right now. So, enjoy the photo of the rainy day without the benefit of Camera Plus’ optimization.

Time for baking.

In the effort to use up the lime juice, I decided to try a risky thing: a vegan cheesecake. Bought the Tofutti “cream cheese”, the Earth Balance shortening & graham crackers to make the crust…and away we’ll go. Probably on Saturday, or maybe Friday night. The sucky thing about cheesecake is that you have to wait a good handful of hours before eating it. Grrrr! The lime cupcakes were fun, but I’m so over making things with all that butter…just makes me feel sluggish, somehow.

It’s just over a week til vacation & I’m really excited to go: my twin nephews are getting older by the day & I want to see how much bigger they are from last year. I mean, they’ll be 2 in August…time is really going by fast.

Trying to finish the garden fence, but the weather’s not cooperating. Grrrrrr.

Had a new experiment yesterday: scalding flour to make bread. Well. It probably would have worked out ok, except I did my usual n00b bread-baking mistake, and forgot the salt. And bread without salt is just…yuck.
Otherwise, it’s not bad. Good texture, etc. I’m converting it to breadcrumbs, and consider it a lesson learned. Sort of. I’ve “learned” this particular lesson before, with remarkably little retention.

I want to bake something else, to use up the rest of the lime juice, but am hard pressed to figure out what. Something light, I think. Hmmmm.

I recently saw a vest that someone on Ravelry had knitted, and it really grabbed my attention, but the recommended yarn (Noro Kochoran) is reputed to be very…shed-dy…that can’t be a word. The yarn sheds mightily. So, I grabbed my giant tumbleweed of stashed roving, got out the Blue Steel (4 oz.) and Camo (4 oz.) blue-faced leicester wool from Zarzuela’s Fibers, and went to town.

I’ve been spinning ever since, and just finished setting the twist in the wool long enough for the stupid rain to come back AGAIN, and drive me inside to dry it over the fire. I’m more appreciative than ever of the wood-burning stove.

In other news, key lime cupcakes were baked & consumed…and the lime/cilantro coleslaw was shredded, mixed & consumed…and now I’m looking for a few more recipes, so I can use up all of the organic lime juice, because it’s just that f***ing good.

And I’ve been installing more garden fencing…we’re looking even more Englishy-cottagy, now that the rains have increased our green lushness to at least 400%. I mean, it’s usually very verdant and pretty around here well into fall, unless we get a drought, but this year, it’s vivid & dark & amazing.

We also have mushrooms coming up everywhere:

Unidentified mushroom

I really wish I knew what some of them were: I’m too afraid to eat any of them, though.

Tomorrow holds much of the same glorious boring stuff: spinning, knitting, cooking, garden work, walking…I have no complaints at all.

is a sad, sad day. Too much work to do, and for so many hours: the day was gone pretty quickly.
Oh well. Still leaves tomorrow, and I intend to make the most of it.

Spent a half hour winding the slub cotton I bought a few years ago into balls and realized how much I hate knitting cotton, so I slung it right into my mom’s lap, with my blessings. She has no such issues.

Am torn between starting a knitting project (don’t know what to make, and have a lot of yarn rolling around here) and reading my book “Let the Right One In” (the Swedish vampire novel).
Or writing this entry…guess which won?

But now I’m going off to read my book.