Sounders FC!!!
Chrissy and I are officially soccer hooligans. We snuck into Qwest field to take this photo.
Also there’s progress on my weekly growth picture.
Growth Week 2
Growth Week 2
Two of the three plants have sprouted. I’m not sure if the other seeds are going to they might have rotted because it’s been raining a ton. More pictures next week!
A couple weeks ago we bought a window planter while Paul was in town. We fastened it to our railing and I planted some spinach, broccoli, and rosemary.
Houston we have liftoff!
Bad Cell Phone Picture of our first signs of growth!
Hurray! I was starting to get worried since it snowed about four hours after I set the planter up outside.
There was some cat grass that I was growing inside until fluffernutter dumped it upside down into the sink…
It has been snowing a lot and for days. So we took a few more pictures.
Car is covered in more snow now
Casey likes the snow, look how high it is on her!
D'awwwwww
We received some presents from the parents. The larger ones that can’t go on the trip with us were opened early.
Thank you everybody!!!
My Car
Today we woke up to discover it had snowed most of the night and both of us got work off.
first going outside to discover the snow
Casey playing in the snow
Paul excited over the snow
not so tall snowman
apparently the snow wasn’t good snowman making snow.
making a snow angel
we went to the park to try snow angels and sledding on cardboard boxes made from a microwave box
result
sledding on cardboard
wipe out
Paul on cardboard
the park was pretty in the morning
more of the park
the cardboard eventually fell apart so we went to get real sleds and our friend Chrissy joined us.
Chrissy and I sledding
I veer to one side
she goes the other way
Paul coming down the big hill
There he goes!
Chrissy goes on the smaller hill
we found our own smaller private hill to sled on. It was awesome because you could coast without running into trees. We enjoyed it.
Paul on our hill
I'm a snow ninja
ninja sledding
Hadoken!
Paul is king of the hill
WEEEEEE
:-)
All in all an awesome day
Paul and I want to experiment with yarns/stitches but devoting a ton of time to a huge project to that might take a while would be a pain. I want to try out many different stitches without investing a ton of time to just one project. Our solution is to make a patchwork blanket that will be huge and snuggly. So I have been increasing my stitch repertoire from the just basic knitting stitch (garter stitch I believe). This blanket will be interesting in that it will not have a uniform patch size and everything will have different stretch, but I think it will be special because we’re making it together, especially while apart. My goal is to try to keep synthetic yarns to the minimum and to use primarily nice fibers. Cleaning this blanket will be a pain, but meh, it’s our blanket that we’re making together.
First Patch I made (basic knit/perl stitch):
other side:
I used circular needles for the first time but I knit back and forth with them, and it was my first time mostly successfully using this stitch. The yarn is called Quatro from Cascade yarns, it’s 100% Peruvian highland wool.
it’s Color Number 9432
from Cascade Yarns site:
Patch I recently made with recycled yarn that I got at the Fremont Sunday market with the seed stitch:
I LOVE this stitch
I need to pick up some cable needles at some point, I want to try to do some cabling for my next patch.
Pardon the bad pictures they were taken using my isight.
I love these yarns and I wish I had the patience to make a scarf, hat, and/or sweater out of them. But I love this blanket and what it will be eventually. Most of these I only bought one skein of so they will probably be used throughout the blanket but with different stitches. Very few things can be made with one skein, so this is almost doomed to be patchwork yarn. But it’s all really really nice yarn.
Need to try some felting soon…
Casey the Brindle Dinosaur!
Prepare for take-off!
Now we’re ready for some serious camping!
Casey with her new saddlebags
Art projects are in the making, many of them for the Holiday Season coming up so sadly cannot post pictures of them.
I was surprised with how foggy today was so I thought I’d share.
Super Foggy Day
You can usually see much further out. It’s nice though, whenever it was this foggy in Florida it was muggy and uncomfortable. With this you just can’t see much further than a block. I wish I had a chance to get a picture of this tree that was a bit taller than a house, because you couldn’t see the top of it.
On the camping front we recently got in two sleeping pads, the kind that are filled with a foam so you can compress them, but they auto-inflate.
And I ordered this yesterday in anticipation of Casey going camping with us at some point:
Casey's Backpack
First it’ll probably be at a camp site, and eventually we’ll find some back country place we can take her with us.
I’ll post pictures of her wearing it once we get it in.
So it has been getting chilly here and it is officially fall. The leaves are changing and falling everywhere and it’s fantastic.
View from a bus stop
So naturally we go and get some Pho and Paul drinks out of a coconut to remind us of warmer tropical times we are pleased to not be a part of.
Paul drinking out of a coconut
The gravy for this is pretty much entirely stolen from Issa Moskowitz’s book Vegan with a Vengence, and is by far the best gravy I have ever had (veg or not).
Gravy cooking
Ingredients
Gravy:
.25 cups flour
2.5 cups water
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
2 teaspoons mustard seeds
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 16-ounce can of chickpeas, drained
2 pinches of ground cumin2 pinches of paprika
pinch of rosemary, thyme, oregano, and coriander
2 tablespoons soy sauce
.25 cup nutritional yeast
about 1 cup of finely chopped Nummy Seitan (see previous recipe)
Biscuits:
1.333 cups unbleached white flour
.333 cup nutritional yeast flakes
1 teaspoon dried herbs
5 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
5 tablespoons margarine
2 tablespoons raw apple cider vinegar
1 cup soy milk
Directions:
Preheat oven to 450°.
Mix the flour, nutritional yeast flakes, herbs, baking powder and salt in a medium bowl. Cut the margarine into the flour mixture until mixture is crumbly.
Measure the 2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar into the bottom of a one cup measure. Top the cup off with soy or rice milk. Stir gently and let sit for a minute to curdle.
Add the “buttermilk” to the flour mixture and stir into a ball of dough.
On a lightly floured surface, roll the dough out to about 1 inch thick. We just balled up the biscuits like you would with cookies, but the recipe suggests that you should cut biscuits with a sharp cutter and place on lightly oiled cookie sheet.
Bake approximately 10-12 minutes in a 450° degree oven.
Biscuits out of the oven
While the biscuits are baking, prepare the gravy
First, mix the flour with the water until its pretty much all dissolved.
Use the oil to fry up the onions and mustard seeds for a few minutes until slightly browned, add the garlic and saute a bit more
Smash the chickpeas until they are pretty well broken up, and throw them, the chopped up seitan, the herbs, and the soy sauce in the pot.
Lower the heat a bit and pour the flour/water into the pan. Stir until a thick gravy forms.
Put the biscuits on a plate and pour the gravy over them. Enjoy!
~fin
