Category: To Occupy my Time

For the love of all that is holy, it’s a conversation, not a Mother May I game!

Stone Soup is usually pretty normal in their family relations. However, we’ve started a plot where Val, the redhead is having upheaval because of confusion about the direction her relationship with her longtime boyfriend Phil is headed.  They were both happily plunked in “not getting married” but now the waters have been muddied.
What drives me crazy is her reaction.  She doesn’t know what her feelings are about marriage, which is fine.  But she reverts to the classic “he must ask me” stance that is not in keeping with the tone of the rest of the strip.  
Val, all you have to say is something like, “Let’s have a chat about where we are now with the whole marrying thing.”  And boom!  You and your partner can come to a conclusion together. 

The wit that is contained in the 12 Bottle Bar

I purchased the 12 Bottle Bar book because I’m interested in building a home bar and doing it with only 12 bottles seems like a grand idea.  I had no idea the authors would be so amusing.  They also feature other amusing authors, such as Sam Greenspan, who tells us about “11 Drinks Not to Order for the Opposite Sex.”  This paragraph in particular amused me.

Zoolights

Deborah and I visited Zoolights to see the choir she is usually a member of perform.  They sang Christmas songs and songs from their repertoire.

Then we walked around and took in the lights.  (And the animals.  We saw the baby elephant! He was, predictably, quite cute.)

This is a river with alligators and hippopotamus and other animals.

I grabbed a photo of this kid because he looked too young to have a Letterman jacket.  He struck me as maybe a freshman, maybe.  I looked a little closer and guessed from the early 1990’s dates on the patches on the jacket that it was perhaps first his father’s jacket.
(Letterman jacket side note.  I was checking the spelling and found this Portland Oregon store that made me want to get my own Letterman jacket. I want the all-wool with the sailor collar.)

Self portrait with Deborah. (And lights)

We sat and people watched and chatted under this great dragon.
It was a fun night.

Kombucha update.

Brewing is going well.  I’ve established a rhythm. I brew on Sundays, transfer the scoby to the new jar and drop chopped up ginger in the finished brew.  The new batch goes in the oven with the light on and the finished brew gets a lid and sits for four days to absorb the ginger flavor.  Then I strain out the ginger (and the bits) and pop the finished kombucha in the fridge.  It’s delicious, and so much cheaper than buying bottles for $3.29.
This is a new batch on the right and a finished batch on the left.  The scoby’s grow “mothers” which are baby scobys you can give away or use to start more batches.  I’ve given one away and used one to start a new batch.  You can sort of see the scoby in the jar on the right.  It’s that grayish looking thing floating on the top.

Four hours and I’m done. The making of Jalie 2920

Modern Domestic was having a sale and I wandered down and came home with a pattern and some fabric.  I’m after leggings that actually are a correct fit.  Ones that don’t bunch up at the ankle. And, with this pattern, if I want to channel my 80s self and make stirrup tights, I now can.  (I do not want to do this, but still.)

Here’s the mini-skirt fabric. I like it because it looks like math and the planets.

Here is my new elevated cutting table.  Those are Ikea bed risers (which sadly, they no longer produce) and the legging material laid out on my table.

There is not enough material.  
I later figured out that I had extended the pattern too far and should have kept it at its original length. So it was fine.
The material itself is this great Eileen Fisher four-way stretch fabric. It feels great and feels like it will last a very long time.  
Cutting out the skirt.  
And the finished product.  
The instructions for the skirt have a typo in them, but I did okay.  Also, I would suggest marking the leggings (I used masking tape and a ball point pen) with which is the back seam and which is the front seam.  Once you sew them together it becomes unclear which is the back and which is the front.  I also sewed a bit of ribbon in the back of both the skirt and the leggings so I could identify the back.

Not quite what the headline writer was going for.

I picture Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, resplendent in their explorer’s gear, sitting in front of a computer with worried expressions.  What’s this box? It’s so bright and shiny. It’s a web? Webs are much sturdier now than they used to be.  Have spiders gotten strong? 

(But really it’s a story about Lewis and Clark college and their difficulties with Yik Yak.)