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It didn't hit me until later that I had recorded the sun setting on August.
So, hello, September. I'm in a bit of a funk, so that's about as much enthusiasm as I can muster at the moment.
I rounded up some singles. 
They need mates. And that's about as much enthusiasm about that as I can muster at the moment.
Last evening I hit the work wall -- that point where I knew I could not.read.one.more.word and could not type.one.more.letter.
I had done a deposition in the morning, and in the afternoon I was editing transcripts. I had not met my goal for the day of 100 pp. edited (which is not even as high as it should have been), and only did 55 pp., but I could.not.go.on. I had to do something -- anything -- other than work. So I stopped for the evening at, I don't know, about 6:00ish or so, and did anything other than work. I gave Vincent a much-needed bath. I canned four pints of tomatoes. I went outside and did a little bit of garden cleanup -- a very little bit, as the mosquitoes drove me inside in fairly short order. I called a friend and gabbed for an hour or so. Then my husband returned home from the fundraising event he had attended, and I debriefed him on that event. (or did he debrief me? how does that work? heh.). I also filled him in on the latest news of the day from Abigail. It was very restorative, but I still could not return to the computer.
Today I started out full guns in the morning, but the glorious weather beckoned. I took a break of an hour or so and went out to the garden, soaked in some sun and fresh air, set up a new raised bed, and filled it with layers -- I used the cardboard in which the plastic raised bed came for the first layer, followed by layers of newspaper. I am sure, according to The Recipe, that I overdid it on the cardboard/paper. I sprayed it with a hose. (there is something so primally pleasurable about spraying with a hose.) I emptied two compost bins to add to the lasagne layering in the new bed. I know many of you cannot relate to this, but it was so.much.fun. Playing with the dirt -- nay, making dirt.
Uh-ohhhh, though: In the best composter, I found critters. Little rats. Damn. Long ago and far away, when Vincent was about a year old, we had rats in our compost, and we hired an exterminator to come and poison them. He was very succesful -- not at poisoning the rats, but poisoning Vincent. That was the first time we almost lost Vincent. The exterminator bastard (I've since heard this story repeated time and time and time again by dog owners) told me strongly when I pressed him that "the coating on the poison pellets is SO BITTER no dog would EVER eat it, so don't worry about your pet." Aha. $300 worth of induced vomiting and vitamin K shots later, I wanted to make HIM eat it. To give him credit, he did offer to pay the vet bills. I stupidly said, "No, that's all right. All I care about is that the dog is alive." Stupid me. It didn't occur to me until later that more than likely the exterminator had insurance to cover such an eventuality or he wouldn't have so quickly offered to pay. But whatever. That was all an aside to say that after that episode, I became a crazed killer woman and ruthlessly stabbed all the rats (that of course did not die from the poison because Vincent ate it all) with a pitchfork.
Nowadays I am a softer, kinder woman, perhaps. Or perhaps the little guys today were at a much cuter stage of development. Or perhaps it was WTF Wednesday and ..... whatever.
I even had one on my shovel and I was going to fling him, but a) I did not want him to mistakenly run up my arm and land on my head or down my clothes when I flung, and b) he was so cute. He sat on my shovel blade and looked at me in such a cute way. So all I did was empty the composter and let them run. They probably would not survive for long anyway, out in the open, but at least I did not do The Deed. Yeah, WTF?
So, yeah. The kinder, gentler Norma. WTF. Heh.
And after the garden interlude, I was so much more productive for the rest of the day. The time off was imperative.
(Does this look like a sick dog to you?)
Pumpkin Watch proceeds. That mud, I believe, is raccoon footprints. Stay tuned. It does seem to have grown since the last photo, which is a good sign.
I wore lots of hats this weekend.
Peace Fleece Co-Op Liaison
a) meet up with Margot, the Queen City Knitters Peace Fleece Co-Op Leader, for a little parking lot fiber dealing,
b) survey the goods. That's a lotta Peace Fleece. The Shaba green -- one skein is showing on the lower right -- is mine.
c) package them up. (Carole, yours is the big-ass one on the bottom - don't worry, I'm not sending you a big case of steno machine paper. No, I'm not saying you have a big ass. Stop that! Margene, those are yours on the left, looking for a box the right size....Vicki, yours on the top.) Carole, if yours doesn't arrive, well....um.......then I don't know what happened to it. It's not like I even like the colors you chose or anything. *cough*
d) go out to nice lunch with spouse. That is a very important part of being a Peace Fleece liaison, just so you know.
P.S. Check Yahoo groups if you are interested in a Peace Fleece Co-Op. (Wholesale! Prices!) Margot tells me there are several groups out there.
Skywatcher:
Transcriber:
Failure:
I keep trying this pattern but can't get it right. There is a disconnect between the instructions and my brain. The instructions for keeping all the yarn on the back side for the knits and pulling it forward for the purls (double-knitting) BUT THEN putting Yarn A BEHIND the purling needle before purling seems inconsistent to me. I can't seem to understand the concept. I've tried it two ways, but they both seem to have the same effect of KEEPING YARN A in the back, and my fabric does NOT look like the fabric in the picture. Ugh.
Consumer:
Kaleidoscope has Mmmmmmmanos 15% off this week. That's three skeins of Color No. 109, Woodland. The colors are very accurate in my photo. I went in thinking I was going to buy Mulled Wine, but when I saw them in person, this one was my favorite, hands down. I've wanted to make My So-Called Scarf for-, like, ever. Hello, my name is Norma and I'm a scarfaholic; what can I say.
Knitter:
A little handspun/hand-dyed here, (I have no idea why it photographed all curvy like that, but whatev.)
a little Trekking there,
a little red scarf here,
and a little Ribby Shell there.
And y'all thought I didn't knit.
Tomato Canner:
Blog Administrator:
I've added a Frequently Asked Questions entry to the Red Scarf Blog. Don't take this in the wrong way (please put on your humorous reading glasses), but really, people, regardless of what some people told you while growing up (they lied) there IS such a thing as a stupid question.
I do believe all questions that have been asked and asked again and again are clearly answered in the blog. Even for skimmers, it should be well and truly clear by now. Please read the blog and the links before you put on your thinking cap to come up with another question. I am happy to answer questions and don't like to blow anybody off by just not responding, but I am a very busy person with a very busy job and now two blogs which is a very time-consuming endeavor. Of course I enjoy it -- it's my hobby and a very fun pastime -- and I enjoy the comments, and I certainly want you to join up and help out -- but seriously, if one more person asks where to send the scarves or what color to make it, I think I might just blow a fuse. All info is printed at least four times there in that blog and in my entry about red scarves in this blog and on the link that I have linked to at least three times. Please read it.
P.S. The scarf should be ANY SHADE OF RED (that means true red, burgundy, russet, orange-red, bluish-red, reddish-blue, cordovan, cherry red, raspberry red, brownish-red, etcetera) or red combined with other unisex colors, or in a pinch, if you don't have any red, some other unisex color. It can be made of any material except the following: marshmallows, tin, fiberglass, pressure-treated wood, play-dough, leftover pizza, toilet tissue, and paper towels. These materials are STRICTLY PROHIBITED.
It CAN be crocheted. It could even be woven, or sewn in patchwork if you are talented that way. (remember those awesome mittens I got at the NH S&W Festival last year?) 
How cool would that technique be in a scarf, huh?
It should be 60 inches long or longer, and 5 to 8 inches wide. It can have fringe or no fringe. It should be soft. It doesn't matter if it's machine washable, although that would be a plus. There IS a preference for unisex designs. PLEASE DO NOT MAIL THE SCARVES until January. Orphans.org does not have the space to store them before then. The address for mailing them is printed in the left sidebar of the Red Scarf Blog, as well as in the Word document that I have linked to in the blog at least three times. DO NOT BE PARALYZED by indecision. If you would like to participate, just make a damn scarf. Use your common sense if you have any. If you don't have any, borrow some from a neighbor. It's not rocket science.
End of rant.
Any questions?
Red. It should be red. It should be a scarf. And don't mail until January, or I'll send somebody to break your kneecaps.
I so would have been fired if I had gone into teaching.
Dear Sandy,
For your birthday, I couldn't think of what to get you. You might say I was rather LOST for ideas. 
(hot) 
(sexy) 
(oooh)
(mysterious)
Have a hot and sexy birthday, girlfriend, with maybe a little mystery thrown in. October 4th. October 4th. October 4th........ ABC better not be messin' with our heads.
Love,
XO
Norma
Tired of hearing about the t-shirts yet? Too bad.....
'coz I seem to be still in my t-shirt phase. Kim calls me Halters R Us.
I'm enjoying this book, you may have noticed. Given how much I have used it, this might have turned out to be the purchase of the decade for me. Not bad for 8 bucks or so. Well, then there was the $249 (or something) for the sewing machine. What was that I was saying about false economy, Katy? But damn, I've used it far more than any of the expensive knitting books I've got. Which, now that I think of it, is sad, really.
This is one of those roll-top dealies that can be worn off the shoulder. Reminds me of Marilyn Monroe a little bit. A big jump in sophistication, but still a t-shirt.
I used the pattern in the book modeled here: 
I tried it on and it looked pretty good on me. It'll look really good on a 21-year-old. I hope she likes it. The other day we chatted:
Me: Do you have a wish list for which t-shirts and which designs for me to do next?
Her: No. Just don't use all my t-shirts. I need some to sleep in and stuff.
Me: LOL. Um. Should I stop now?
Her: No. It gives you pleasure.
That's my girl.
So. I thought I was done. I really did. And then I got this brainstorm.
A bandeau-topped sundress.
This is something that will really need to be modeled to show how cute it is. It was hard to get a good photograph of it, either flat or on a hanger. Here is a bad shot of the back. 
It's a bandeau that ties in the back. Because it is snug-fitting, the words on the top will flatten out and be readable, not all bent up like that. Below the tied portion, it is open so some skin on the back will show below the bra line. I put some shaping in the waist, which again doesn't show very well because of my hurried photo-taking. You can see how it curves in at the waist in the hanging-up photo. It was all very convenient to do that, because where that shaping is is where the sleeves of the original t-shirt were, and to cut them out made it curve inward anyway. I just had to seam that up and make it flow downward toward the waist and back out toward the hips. The bandeau is six or seven inches that I cut off that humongous Steamboat t-shirt, and the hem of the green t-shirt provided the hem of the dress.
This was my own creation, based on inspiration from the book. There was a top in the book that was like this, and I thought, why not a sundress? Here's hoping it fits. I think it will. NOW I'm done. Really.
But wait........ now that I think about it.....
--------------------------On another topic.....
Hey, get a load of the Red Scarf blog. We are still working on it, but it's taking shape. Thanks to Scout for all your help. I've been right out straight with work and will be out of town for work for a couple of days. It's great to have friends who are eager to help. In which case, why the hell don't you all come over here and do these transcripts for me, huh? I know. Never satisfied.
Update at bottom: Another Red Scarf Project button!
Thanks to Jen, we now have an official WTF Wednesdays button:
Grab it, save it to your own server, and have fun with WTF Wednesdays. Do not hotlink. Hotlinking is bad. That means you should, on your PC, right click it, click "Save image as..." and put it on your own computer, then upload it to your blog from there. Do NOT click "copy image." "Copy image" is BAD.
I don't know what you do with Macs, but I presume you know WTF to do with it if you are a Mac user.
So, apropos to Wednesday, WTF do we have here?
....to be continued.
Maybe next Wednesday. All together now: WTF????!!!!
P.S. Guess what? I'm still swamped. So, um, I'll take care of more Red Scarf business in a bit. I will get the blog up and running, and a couple people have come up with some buttons for me already. One day at a time. One day at a time.
Here are some button teasers for ya.
Thank you to my Vermont neighbor Dusa for this one:
And my old pal Kim for this:
(great minds think alike!)
Scout made this one. She's also custom-dyeing some yarn for the project. There'll be a giveaway, but you'll have to promise to use it for the project. Fair enough? I think so. Thanks, Scout!
Go ahead, take one. You know you wanna. Remember the button etiquette as above, right? And when I finally get the Red Scarf blog up, if you'd link your buttons to it, it'd be appreciated.
The Orphan Foundation of America is gearing up for Red Scarf Project 2007. This gives us a lot of lead time to make something before January. Please consider knitting or crocheting a scarf or two for this very worthy cause. The OFA will be launching the initiative at the NYC Knit Out on Sept. 17. OFA will receive the scarf contest donations, and students will model the winners in 8 categories.
Please read the guidelines carefully. Some of the more important elements that jump out at me are:
UNISEX COLLEGIATE-appropriate styles are requested, approximately 60" long by 5 to 8 inches wide
DO NOT MAIL BEFORE JANUARY, due to space constraints
ANY SHADE OF RED, and red combined with other unisex colors
They are LOOKING FOR A NATIONAL DROP-OFF SPONSOR -- Einstein’s is not able to assist this year and Barnes and Noble has declined. If you have any ideas or contacts, please let Annalisa Assaadi know. Her phone number is (571) 203 0270. I'm thinking there has to be a college-age-oriented sponsor out there -- a music chain, a clothing chain....Target...something. I'm disappointed in Barnes & Noble. They run the college bookstores at Colgate University, Hamilton College, and probably any number of others. But I also can understand what it's like to be a person, or a business, that is constantly being asked to volunteer resources. It does get to be burdensome, and the line has to be drawn somewhere. So hopefully some business will see the opportunity to bring in traffic during that very slow after-holiday month of January and step up to the plate on this one.
Here (assuming this works -- I've been having a plethora of formatting problems with this entry for some reason) you can download a Word document with the full info and guidelines about the project. There is even a free Lily Chin faux cable reversible scarf pattern at the end.
Feel free to print it out. Please pass the word around!
Here are the yarns I have reserved so far for this project. I've been saving them since the project ended last year.
Irish Donegal Tweed
GGH Via Mala, 100% merino. It was originally dijon mustard gold color, but I dyed it red last year.
I will donate and host a blogspace for people to showcase their red scarves for the project. Let me know if you're interested. Also, if you would like to knit a red scarf for the project but cannot afford the yarn, let me know in the comments or in an email and I will enter your name in a drawing for free red yarn from my stash to knit a scarf for the project. If you have yarn to give to somebody for this purpose, please let me know. We can try to match people with yarn as much as possible. Last year a few people knitted beautiful scarves with yarn I sent them, and it felt good for all of us. I'd like to continue the tradition.
AND I'd like a button. Anyone?
This is a project that touches my heart in a very big way.
There's been some harvesting around here. I canned a few pints of tomatoes this weekend, and the fall-like weather prompted me to make some nice cabbage soup. That same weather prompted me to make a stew of vegetables and farmed Vermont venison, and roast a chicken stuffed with rosemary, parsley and thyme from the garden, and serve it with my usual melange of what's-in-the-harvest-basket. This time it was green beans, zucchini, summer squash, baby potatoes, cabbage, broccoli, and red onions sauteed in a combo of olive oil and butter.
Pumpkin Watch will continue, but there is sad news to report. I discovered that that pumpkin is the ONLY pumpkin that has survived, and the plant from which it grows has succumbed, as have all the others, to downy mildew. The Watch may not be as exciting as I'd like, but we'll do it anyway. Because the plant is stressed, the pumpkin will probably not grow anymore, but also because it is stressed, it will send out a message to ripen. The fruit's job is to make seeds for survival of the species, and when the plant gets sick, the last bit of remaining energy goes to seed production, therefore ripening.
Much of the vegetable garden has been very recently (literally in a few days' time) overtaken by disease. All of the cucurbits -- cucumbers and squashes -- are struggling. Insect damage and the aforementioned downy mildew have taken their toll. When this sort of thing happens, I could cry. My pole beans, which were thriving just last week, also seem to have been taken over by some sort of disease. There's still a lot of stuff to eat and to harvest, but some of those crops are just withering away now. So sad, after all the work and good care I've taken. This is not anything new -- it happens many years. I'm excited to see if the large-scale permaculture compost layering that I'm hoping to do along with Jen this fall will improve the situation for the future. When I surveyed the vegetable garden area yesterday afternoon, though, I started to hyperventilate, thinking about the volume of materials I will need to bring in for it. We've been saving newspapers and having others do it for us, too, but that is only a small portion of what we'll need for the project.
There were several questions about the tomatoes the other day. If you've read me go on about the tomatoes before, you may want to skip the rest of this post. :)
The tomatoes in the photo of my post the other day are a cluster-type variety that I can't remember the name of, sorry to say. I can remember that it said "cluster" on the label, but that's all I can remember. As you can see, they are doing extremely well -- very fruitful and perfect.
I also grew Early Girls that didn't do so well this year. Usually they are one of my better performers. I think because of the cold and extremely rainy spring, they didn't get off to so great a start. When it was time for blossoming and pollination, it was non-stop rain.
Because this was shaping up to be a "weird" year, and I could tell that at the beginning of the summer when I was buying my tomato plants, I decided to concentrate on the old standby and family favorite: Big Boy.
Other years I have grown Better Boys, which I didn't feel were any better than the Big Boys, and Beefsteak and other various and sundry varieties -- there was an Italian striped tomato that was pretty cool, and there were yellow ones that were delicious, but I never could embrace a yellow tomato -- my brain just couldn't wrap itself around it -- and I haven't grown them for a few years, except last year I grew a yellow cherry tomato. Also, yellow tomatoes are less acid, and I must admit that it is the acidity of a good tomato that I really like. I will never understand people (even some great chefs) who say you should add sugar to tomato sauce "to cut the acid." Give me my damn acid! Tomatoes are not supposed to be sweet! Well, not that kind of sweet, anyway.
I also like Brandywine, but this year could not find any at my nursery. I grew some Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes and some Roma Italians this year, as well.
My method for planting tomatoes: Dig a very deep hole. Aim for all of the plant to be underground except the top two leaves (although this year mine were not planted as deep as that, because I was a bit lazy.) In the bottom of the hole, I put a small handful of each of the following: bone meal, lime, all-purpose organic fertilizer, and Epsom salt (because my soil is magnesium-deficient. I used to get blossom-end rot before I figured this out. I thought my plants had tomato blight, but I had misdiagnosed that, thank goodness -- I found this out from my gardening bible -- and it was a magnesium deficiency that was causing the leaves to turn brown and die and the plants to wither away, as well. The easy, cheap answer to magnesium deficiency is Epsom salt.). I also put a splash of liquid kelp in the hole, set the plant in, fill the rest of the hole with water, and then fill it in with soil.
I've written about this several times, but for newer readers, I swear by the red tomato mulch that I get at various organic gardening places, but someone even wrote me this year to tell me she saw it at Wal-Mart, so I guess it's gone mainstream now. Imagine that. Since I first wrote about this stuff a couple of years ago, several readers have written to say that they've tried it and they now swear by it as well. Right, Adelaide, for example? :)
The tomato cages that Jen exclaimed about the other day are these from Gardener's Supply, and they work beautifully. They are pricey, but worth the money. The ones we have are at least 12 years old. Now they have the even taller ones, that, if I were just starting out, I'd buy instead of the ones I have, because my tomato plants tower above the existing cages and flop over the top. We have five of these, as well, and we like them even better than the cages. They are sturdier to stand up to being pushed into the ground year after year, and they are easier to clear old vines off and put away at the end of the year. Get some. They are worth every dime.
Sunflowers, you just gotta love 'em. They're even prettier against a nice blue sky, but I like this shot against a cloudy sky that looks pure white, too. Laura generously sent me the remainder of the packet of seeds from which her amazing red sunflower grew. I can't wait to see if it grows for me next summer. Thank you, Laura!
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