Oh Hai!

Wow. Well. Here I am and I survived. Right now I have a big meeting to plan and prepare for and compared to what I've been doing the past two months, it's a piece of freakin' cake. As of two weeks ago, I'm back to relatively normal work days, I am no longer getting up at 4:00 am and I'm feeling pretty human again.

What had me so busy? Well I was in charge of planning and organizing this.



We sent 32 riders and a bunch of support people on a ride from our office in Morgan Hill to Las Vegas. Here's a bunch of them at the office just before we sent them off:




They had some wild days including crossing Death Valley in 116-degree heat. Here's a link to Patty's blog - she was one of the riders and she can tell it a whole lot better than I can! From what I've heard from those who were there, it went well, and it was worth all of the time spent. So yay. First big project at the new job accomplished.

Now that it's not all about work I've regained some energy. There has been knitting:

Girasole continues to grow. I'm nearly halfway through chart F (the next-to-last chart before the edging) and I still love it. It looks kind of crappy here but I'm blaming that on the fact that there are nearly 650 stitches in each round and I'm limited to a 47" circular and can't spread it out. And the fact that my photography skills are seriously lacking (that includes the color - it's more lavender and less grey than in this shot).




I also pulled out the Grafton Fiber I spun during Tour de Fleece:

And made a pair of Fetching (Fetchings?) for a friend.

The color below is a little more accurate:

It's a nice pattern but I find if knit as written they're too short. So I added an extra cable repeat on the cuff and another at the fingers and an extra 2 rows on the thumb. Easy peasy.

Mom, Those Things Have Been In Trees!

A few weeks ago my youngest niece decided she wanted to go apple picking for her birthday. So we spent the afternoon here. At one point while we were in the orchard she wanted an apple so her mom wiped one off for her. She wouldn't touch it until it had been rinsed in water, saying 'Mom, those things have been in trees!' Oh the horror. Cracked me up.

Anyway, we came home with this:

This is about 17 pounds. The niece and her family went home with nearly 70. Yikes.
A tiny portion of the 17 pounds was turned into Norwegian Apple Cake. Apparently it smelled too good to wait to get a picture before we dug in.


The following week we had an influx of figs from the tree so I made the same recipe again, using figs:

It was good but the apple version was better.

The garden is slowing down but I made tabouleh using some cherry tomatoes and parsley which are still doing well.


Today's cooler weather sent me into a cooking frenzy. I made beef stew, baked some spicy drumsticks and made some chocolate peanut butter cups this afternoon.


The stew isn't pictured and you can thank me for that later. It has been in the fridge for a while and cold stew looks well...gross. Anyway, it was nice to have it cool enough to want to use the oven again, and the house smells great.

Obligatory Puppy Pictures

Miele continues to grow. She has learned how to play and here she is trying to teach Trouble to do the same:

She's developed this lovely habit of bringing stuff into the house and chewing it all over the rug. Here she'd decided to drag the entry rug from the kitchen into the living room and use it as a placemat for her dried corn snack. So sweet that she likes a proper table setting.

Tearing the house apart each day is exhausting!