Finny Knits

Running update: virtual murder

noreply@blogger.com (FinnyKnits) — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 02:39:00 +0000

I was all excited to share this morning's run update, even remembered to bring my watch to work with me and everything so that I could let it do its uploading voodoo, but then I realized that WHOOPSY I got a new computer at work and crap I have to redo the CD setup magic on it before it will all work harmoniously again.

Damn it. Don't you know I tried it anyway. Just plugged my thumb drive into the new strangely-oriented USB dock on this mystery machine to see if, by some miracle of technology, it would just know what to do and then make everything work without me having to rub two sticks together and chant with CD-roms between my thumbs and forefingers.

And that was a poor decision.

Evidently, ThinkPad technology hasn't improved to the point of artificial intelligence and Magic yet, as the only thing that plugging in my Garmin thumb drive did, without the software pre-loaded, was fuck everything up and cause this new machine to contemplate suicide.

You have work to do, Lenovo, is all I'm saying here.

BUT NO MATTER - let's not waste our time trying to think up ways to punish a laptop for being New But Still Useless or the Garmin for being Not New Anymore But Still Unnecessarily Complicated and instead focus on the big triumph of the day.

That being the sound beating of my Virtual Partner.

See, friends, my life is small and I measure success and my own personal greatness on my ability to outperform virtual entities. This likely comes from a place in my psyche that knows I'll never win a real race against real people so instead must create an environment in which I *can* win and therefore feel superior to someone. Plus, I get to deliver a sound beating, even if it's just a virtual one, and that fills me with pride - violent and unmerciful pride. Which may also only be virtual pride if I think about it too much, so let's not.

Sound beating delivered by Finny! Suck it, Virtual Partner.

In other delusional news, I'm also back in the 24s with these runs, which is much more palatable than the 25+ shit that filled my first back-in-the-training-saddle week, and despite what the watch may say with regard to pace, here (it was clocking my pace as I took the photo, not the average pace of my run, obviously, because that was more like 9:36, which isn't all that impressive either but let's focus on the sub-25 time, OK? Fine, then), the time filled my heart with joy.

When I finally found the time, of course.

Because I lost it somehow as I was sprinting the last .10 of my run and bent my wrist at an unfortunate angle, thereby brushing the nipple sensitive bezel with my wrist and switching its display from Time to Virtual Partner mode. And don't you know that I was too afraid of deleting my time, a la September of 2009, to just go clicking around pressing buttons to find it, so decided that I'd bask in the glow of my Virtual Partner vomiting onto the virtual curb and save the special news of my actual time for when I could see it on the big screen of my new laptop oh right.

You see I've gone full circle.

Anyway, I could tell this was a faster run and there was no way I was going to destroy those numbers in a haphazard exploration of the mysterious sea of techno-bullshit inside of that watch, so I just had to hope to hell that the time was still in there when I regained consciousness from my breathless post-run collapse and plugged it into the computer.

Which I never did. Because my new computer is not intimately acquainted with the watch yet. Like I said before. You remember.

Full circle again.

Thankfully, later, upon realizing that my new computer was just as hair-pullingly difficult as the one it replaced and coming to terms with that fact, I sacked up enough balls to touch the bezel of the watch and in this sacking up I managed to find my way through the menus to my time without deleting anything I'm currently aware of or care about. Yay for dumb luck!

So, rather than be totally pissed that my watch has again proven its mental superiority or that my new laptop is just my old laptop in a vaguely new-looking costume, I feel like Magellan for finding my time and I feel victorious because the Virtual Partner screen showed the Virtual Partner having reached the puke threshold :58 seconds behind me.

Loser!

Not that I barfed, mind you, only the Virtual Partner barfed. I, on the other hand, bent at the waist in my driveway and allowed nausea to pass me by while I recovered from my tunnel vision.

There's really no reason why running at a 9:36 pace should give a person tunnel vision, but there you have it:

I'm slow, but not as slow as last week.

I'm not fast, but I am faster than an imaginary virtual figure that lives in my watch.

I don't hit the puke threshold like a wild animal, but I do experience extremely disorienting tunnel vision after running at a pace that wouldn't even cause most runners to break a sweat.

I have some work to do if I think I'm going to nail down a sub-60 10K PR in April.

And suddenly my triumphs seem depressing and I feel the need to find a virtual someone to get on the receiving end of a sound beating.

Hey! Surprise! It's still raining.

noreply@blogger.com (FinnyKnits) — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 02:40:00 +0000

It's raining again, which means that it's obviously time for me to do a garden update so that I can post pictures from a time that didn't involve myself and the dog wearing raincoats to go outside.

Yes, I put a raincoat on the dog.

No, she is not a Chihuahua and no, it's not for fashion reasons.

It's so that her absorbent back and shoulder areas don't cling to every drop of moisture during the microbursts that explode enthusiastically during our walks causing me to then spend 1+ hours in the laundry room toweling off a dog that does not relish being toweled.

Just so you know. I'm not one of those fruity dog owners who dresses their dog. I need to be very clear about this. If you need proof of my not-fruitiness with the dog, just look at her worn collar and ask yourself, "Would a fruity dog owner let her dog's collar, the easiest item of dog fashion to replace, get ragged and sad like that?" To which the answer would obviously be, "No way! The owner of this dog is obviously very practical and level-headed and would also never dress the dog for Halloween."

Whoops.

Anyway, whatever - I hate walking the dog in the rain and the raincoat makes me hate it less. But it makes the dog hate it more, aside from any fashion POV, so this whole diatribe was pointless.

Like I was saying, though - it is raining again and I'm reminiscing on some rain-free moments from the weekend when I, and all of my neighbors, emerged from our homes, rubbed our eyes against the light emanating from the unusual bright ball in the sky, and proceeded to figure out what the hell was going on with everything and everyone.

During my post-run neighborhood catch-up session, and while I managed to pull all the weeds in the front yard while exposing the better part of my rear end to the neighbors thanks to my not-weed-pulling-appropriate running shorts (score!), I discovered that shit was, indeed, alive and growing in the front yard.

What bulbs are these? Who the fuck cares!

Hell - we even had daffodils in bloom! In January!

You know what these are because I just told you. Cheaters.

I know, this place is mad.

Plus, and even more affirming, a good number of the 800+ wildflower bulbs were coming through the mulch, which I pointed out triumphantly to the group - especially those who looked upon me with expressive doubt when I was tearing out our lawn for my Crazy Meadow Thing.

Crazy Meadow THIS, people.

Yep. No idea what this is.

I also managed to prune our Bloodgood Japanese maple tree so that it didn't look like it had its own flag sticking out of its head anymore.

Something I should have done a long time ago but didn't because I was afraid of destroying the tree somehow with poorly placed prunage, something I've been known to do.

Thankfully, with one carefully (and totally at random - nice) placed cut, the flag was lobbed off and TEE DAH the tree looks normal.

I didn't take any pictures of it, because it's all depressing looking without leaves, so you'll just have to take my word for it.

Just imagine this:

Before: Smallish Japanese maple that looks normal but for a long spindly branch waving around above all the other branches.

After: Smallish Japanese maple that looks normal but for the fact that it's way smaller than the Coral Bark Japanese maple we planted nearby and at the same time. Pffffft.

In other Get With The Program news, the drought tolerant grass plugs have apparently gotten a good dose of watering thanks to our recent (and perpetual) storms and many of them have decided to do me a solid and put on some green.

I will admit to photographing one of the finer specimens. Can you blame me?

Some of them decided they saw their shadow on February 2 and have gone back into their holes to come up with a way to explain to their friends how they managed to be mistaken for grass plugs when they're obviously groundhogs.

Which means that these particular grass plugs still look brownish and smallish and aren't doing anything to make my case to the doubtful neighbors that I'm not a complete loon. Thanks, fellas.

For that, I didn't take their picture. HA! I win!

Against grass plugs...my life is small.

After watching my neighbors step back from me in conversation as a result of my post-run aroma, I retired to the backyard to continue weeding because what better way to completely exhaust already exhausted hamstrings than to bend over for the better part of two hours to pull rampant oxalis out of the flower beds?

You know I have no control over this.

You also know that I walked like a pirate all week because of this behavior even though I didn't say "Arrrrrrr" once and now I'm regretting that.

Thankfully weeding wasn't just all pain, exhaustion and me flashing my pasty parts to over-the-fence-lookers (I see you, shitty neighbors! No one believes you're trimming your palm tree!). I actually found some stuff back there, too, so that now I can look at their pictures while rain beats down on the roof and I worry our porch will fall down before it's finished.

Oh, and let's not forget that my Post-Run Snack Break was a complete success this weekend because:

1. I actually had a post-run snack instead of just letting my stomach shrivel into a nauseous knot
2. My post-run snack was kumquats from my tree:

Yes! That means the kumquat tree is now a realized dream, which, in my opinion, is the best kind of dream. A sweet and sour one that looks cute on the patio and gives the squirrels some place to dig because oh those poor things the garden, front yard, side yard, lawn and landscaping aren't enough.

*PUCKER*

Fuckers. I hate squirrels for that shit. I found an avocado pit in the pot this time and I hurled it at a squirrel running by along our fence. I'm badass like that. Even though it didn't even come close to hitting the squirrel. Gave the dog a good jump though!

(It didn't hit the dog either. Calm down.)

Since it was still sunny when I was done feasting on kumquats and throwing shit at squirrels, it just felt right to take part in my favorite spring/summer/fall/time when it's not raining activity - going to the nursery to shop absentmindedly for things.

And since I managed to weed an entire corner of the garden only to find that there wasn't anything there but weeds and now it was, sadly, bald, I realized another dream: to have my very own lilac bush.

So, witness ye, the beautiful future lilac, which, right now, looks like an unkempt and spindly hydrangea but is not.

The immediate need for this lilac occurred when I was under the influence of the latest issue of Sunset magazine and my neighbors had said their own lilac was starting to set buds.

Which gave me a legitimate reason to go to the nursery even though all I really want to do is go there and walk around all the twigs stuck in pots.

Which is what the nurseries look like right now. Bare root this, canes of that, evil rosebushes, leafless bushes like that lilac and The Mystery Section.

See, I know the lay of the nursery land for most times of the year. Like, in summer, I can walk into the nursery, blow right past all the sun perennials and eyeball my way along the foliage to lay my hands on the specific variety of tomato I want.

No problem. I wager I could do this blindfolded. Or at least really drunk.

This time of year though? Late winter? It's a little harder. Everything's a stick in a pot.

Sometimes a stick with thorns (rosebushes) or a stick bush with two leaves (lilacs) or a stick with some little sticks wound around (raspberry canes) it or a really tall stick with some littler sticks making a crown at the top (fruit trees).

I find it hard to get too wound up about a stick in a pot though, so shopping absentmindedly at the nursery for things this time of year isn't usually very dangerous.

Until I ventured into The Mystery Section and found out that HOLY SHIT we can grow rhubarb here.

So, I bought one. And not because it was the only thing at the nursery with leaves on it.

I guess we'll see how that goes since I can't harvest fuck all off of it for, like, two years, but I have hope. Strawberry Rhubarb Pie hope.

Lawdy. I think I just wet myself. Doesn't that sound good? The pie, not the wetting. Nevermind.

And that is how I come to the end of this wildly swerving post. I planted rhubarb and a lilac bush. We have early spring bulbage. The grass plugs are mostly not lame. My entire neighborhood has gotten a good look at my rear end. It's raining.

Have great weekends, all.

Tote taming and other debacles [Tutorial]

noreply@blogger.com (FinnyKnits) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 02:07:00 +0000

When I was, like, 8 and enrolled in gymnastics my mom would ritualistically torture me before class by taking me to the side of the gymnasium and tying my hair back into pigtails with those hair rubberbands with the marble thingees on them.

I think the marbles were supposed to make it easy for the mom to make a quick ponytail and less painful for the kid's head due to less alleged pulling and snatching baldheaded as a result.

Um, ponytail FAIL.

That shit always hurt.

I think it was because my hair wasn't thick enough for two pigtails to be made and tamed with the rubberbands so my mom had to be all twisting it around and around until it would hold and in the process ripped free a lot of what we used to call "baby hairs" which were actually just "regular hairs" attached firmly to my 8 year old scalp.

Anyway, that's my association with those marble-studded rubberband things: Pain, the sound of ripping hair, my mom breathing hot and angry on my neck, the subtle creeping of my unitard as it crept up my nubile ass crack.

So, in short - not a good association.

Which is why it's so weird that I've totally been obsessing about those very same hair rubberbands lately. And not in a "keep those fuckers away from me" way, either. More like a "maybe I'll just buy some at Target and wear them when I go running for fun", way.

What's wrong with me? I haven't even blocked out the bad memories and, yet still, I fawn over these representations of childhood torture as though they're my Strawberry Shortcake doll or Rainbow Brite.

Which, for the record, were too very happy associations from my childhood to the point where, when I saw that the woman behind me in line at Target was purchasing both a Strawberry Shortcake toy AND a Rainbow Brite doll, I felt no qualms about pointing out that she had, in her very possession, my entire childhood right there.

And so help me if she didn't burst out with the same gleeful kid-like smile of agreement when I said it. It was like I was back in 2nd grade with my friend Sierra and we were admiring each other's Strawberry Shortcakes to see whose still had the most of That Strawberry Shortcake Smell it its hair.

That was the most sought after thing, you know, The Smell. If you haven't smelled a Strawberry Shortcake doll's hair, I daresay you have not lived.

But that's not what this post is about. It's about the marble hairband torture devices and how, after all this time vividly remembering how much of my hair was left on the gymnasium floor as a result of their abuses, I went out a bought a package of them and it was the most wonderfully indulgent thing I've done in a long time.

And I think it cost all of $1.

But don't you think for one second I'm putting those fuckers in my hair.

Oh noooooooooooooo.

Instead, I hatched a craft with them.

A craft that had been festering in my mind for a long time. Or at least as long as I've been carrying cloth bags with me in my purse to avoid the hated plastic bags so popular on the freeways of California.

Show of hands - how many of you have mistaken a blowing plastic bag for a seagull or other bird and, as a result, have swerved wildly into oncoming traffic to avoid it only to realize that it's a fucking Safeway bag and wow did I almost just cream an old woman in a giant Mercedes?

No one? Well. You're fancy then.

Anyway, this craft.

This craft came as a result of having to contend with wadded up cloth bags messing up the interior of my purse so that when I went to pull them out and fill them with things like Sapphire or Brussels sprouts from TJ's all of my pursely belongings would go flinging everywhere and onto the ground. And then I'd have to hunt all over hither and yon to recollect the contents of my life.

Pathetic.

*I could do better than this*

Well, for a while I had a cloth bag with its own stuff sack, which worked fine until the stuff sack had been stuffed one too many times and expired right in front of me in line at TJ's, of all places.

I cried a sad tear of frustration because I knew then that it wouldn't be long before I was flinging tampons all over the cashier's stand again and, somehow, they hadn't turned over cashiers yet, so it would likely happen to the same guy as the first time and WOW did he seem horrified to have a tampon hit his arm.

Dude. It's a tampon, not a boa constrictor. Relax.

Anyway, in my depressed state, I ruminated on a solution to this problem and the solution managed to involve the painful yet adored marble headbands of my youthful years.

Let me stop blathering and just share it now so that y'all can at once; tame your cloth bags so they'll stow safely for shopping, indulge your desires for childhood nostalgia and, perhaps, avoid any faux-seagull induced collisions with expensive German automobiles.

Tote Tamer

By Finny

Materials:

1 cloth tote bag

1 marble hairband

Equipment:

Sewing machine

Thread

To make:

Sewing closely to the metal bracket of the hair band, straight stitch the band next to the inside edge of one of the tote's straps, on the outside of the bag.

Fold the bag in half vertically, with the rubberband on the outside.

Flip it over.

Roll the bag from the bottom up.

With the rubberband on the outside of the bag, now, wrap it around and close it.

It's a miracle.

And no flying tampons.

Enjoy.

Oh, and if you're into donating to excellent organizations who make it their mission to provide relief to people suffering from horrible disasters, Direct Relief is my org of choice and they can always use your help.

Just saying. Haiti fell down and it will be a long time before it's upright and Direct Relief has been helping since the get go and they'll be there for a while.

Running update: Peg-legged

noreply@blogger.com (FinnyKnits) — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 02:57:00 +0000

It's been a glorious running time since last November when I stopped carting along all my miscellaneous running accoutrement for the sakes of training, improving my times, hydrating to avoid raisin-liver, fueling to avoid raisin-stomach and so on.

I did not realize how nice and glorious it actually was until this morning when I went out to reacquaint myself with the concept of tempo or interval running.

You know, that Supah Technical thing I do which is probably not really Tempo or Interval running in the way that, say Runner's World or a legitimate runner would consider it to be since it doesn't involve a track or anything measured in 800s.

No, instead my idea of a Tempo run goes like this: run at pace for 5 minutes, sprint for 1 minute - repeat until you've covered your normal short route and found yourself back at home staring at the dog and hope to hell that the Garmin says something like less than 25 minutes and a pace below 10:00m/m.

It's disappointing when you can't even live up to your own ill-conceived training concepts, let's say.

Let's say that because that was me this morning, coming in at 25:30 and a pace of 10:01.

Barf.

I mean, I nearly barfed. As I huffed toward the driveway and tried to use my Jedi powers to force the Garmin to read 24:anything, I nearly barfed down the side of Bubba's truck.

And then again when I looked down at the mentally-superior Garmin and it said 25:30. Boo.

I got to wait until I was at work with my Garmin USB stick, watch and online graphing tools before I could experience the next blow. That being the 10:00m/m+ pace.

Good thing I really wanted that whole wheat bagel to stay on the inside and really didn't want to walk back downstairs for another one because I might have been apt to chuck on my laptop just then.

Sad.

I blame my peg-legs.

That's right. I'm a fucking pirate out there with my sore-to-the-point-of-full-rigidity hamstrings which are the result of some post-run weeding I did over the weekend.

And let's talk about that for one second because how is it that can I run six miles and experience no sore muscles whatsoever but throw in an hour of weeding and I'm hobbling around like I need an eye patch and a parrot on my shoulder.

Even with all the douchey post-weeding stretching that I do so that I don't get the post-weeding hamstring soreness that I always get regardless.

I can't win.

Also, I'm sure my slowness had nothing to do with the casual naked runs I've been enjoying since my last official race when I finally secured my sub-30 5K PR and became delusional as to my own speed.

Pfffft - I don't NEED this watch telling me my pace. I'm fast, bitch! I run 9 minute miles like, off the couch, man, and I don't need some new fangly wrist-mounted device to tell me that. Get out of my way! I might crush you with my speed blur!

Not to mention the fact that a 9 minute mile pace isn't exactly lighting the roads aflame or anything. A fact I'm continually faced with since I read a lot of runner blogs by human people who regularly run in the 6s and 7s and have sub-20 5K PRs.

How is it possible that legs can move so fast? I have legs. They can't move this fast. These people must have super human legs. Or, you know, at least a passing acquaintance with legitimate training programs.

Whatever.

The point here is that I'm back to my Supah Technical training with the intent of somehow securing a sub-60 10K PR in April. and WHOA do I have more work to do toward that end than I imagined.

I mean, I really thought that taking a break from slaving for the Garmin and just enjoying my runs would have a positive effect on my pace, if anything, because I wouldn't be, you know, hauling that huge beast around on my left arm and, like, discombobulating my pace every fifteen seconds by swinging my heavy eyeballs in its direction to check my pace, elevation, time, Virtual Partner Asshole status and so on.

Apparently my ability to measure the drag coefficient of this Garmin is in question. Which, obviously, since I had to look up "how to measure drag" and then didn't understand any of the results and just grabbed "drag coefficient" because it sounded brainy and like a form of math I could certainly never do.

Yay. I'm slow and a math retard.

Well, I guess we haven't learned anything new today BUT I'm back at the helm of my own running delusions and there is a race on the calendar so let's enjoy that, then.

OH. One last thing. I got the new 2010 model of Brooks Adrenaline GTS' and HO HO they have removable insoles, unlike the 2009s which were sewn down with a great intensity requiring me to either go without insoles (bad for knees. bad for shin splints. bad for Finny.) or use substandard insoles with too little cushioning (why bother) or stack green Superfeet insoles in there and loosen the laces to accommodate both the insoles stacked on insoles and my feet.

Which is what I've been doing. Because I needed the cushioning. Because my shin splints are firey hot beasts of fury and if I run six miles without insoles in these post 2006-model Brooks' they become enraged and try to kill me with shin pain. (The 2006 model of this shoe was the last one that had cushioning enough to my taste. Ever since, they've firmed up their insoles and my shins have been bearing the brunt.)

So I stacked insoles and my feet into the shoes and went on with my runs.

It was not ideal. There was some top-of-foot bone crushing and some side-of-baby-toe rubbing but there was not any shin splint fire or searing knee spiciness, so I dealt.

Until such time as I gave up with my fancy idea of switching 100% to trail running so I can't buy street running shoes and also trail running shoes because that would be kuh-razy! and just bought myself a new pair of street running shoes when I saw that Brooks released their 2010 model of the Adrenaline GTS and LO it had removable insoles.

That's a long way of saying a pair of running shoes has removable insoles, yes.

Sorry.

It was a big moment for me.

Thankfully, I was not judged harshly during this moment of absurd excitement since my Running Crazy coincided favorably with Bubba's Backpacking Crazy as he lost his shit over his new Big Agnes sleeping bag with integrated sleeping pad sleeve at that very same moment.

A sleeping bag with sleeve on the back for your sleeping pad. THAT IS GENIUS. So genius I'm pissed I didn't think of it first. Even after all those nights of waking up with my ass on the cold hard ground and my sleeping pad just WAY THE FUCK OVER THERE because I'd slipped off of it during a night of rustle-y twisting.

Anyway. We both get excited about being able to take things in and out of other things, I guess.

And I guess that also sounds a little porny.

So I'm going to end this post and act like it didn't happen.

OYW : Sew Along 2010 : February

noreply@blogger.com (FinnyKnits) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 15:42:00 +0000

Hey Donk,

I'm pretty impressed that other people made the hat, since I realized about a second into that published decision that I maybe didn't choose the easiest pattern to get the new year started.

Sorry, folks, I was distracted by the notion of a new hat. And I love hats. Let it be known.

Thankfully, some of you folks are brave souls and went ahead with the hat-making even though the pattern called for such mysterious items as fusible interfacing and impromptu math (which I bungled to the power of Pi. Sorry. See noricum's comment for proper calcs. Hey - you knew I didn't do math. Whaddya want? For the record, though, my fuzzy math actually produced a fine usable lid, even though it was mathematically erroneous. Story of my life.)

Also thankfully, you chose an easy and good recipe for the hat-fearful so that we could all experience some ~along success at the starting gates. Thank you for that. I enjoyed my spicy garlic dressed Brussels sprouts very much.

And, finally, big congrats love to laeroport, this month's winner and the first One Yard Wonders : Sew Along 2010 project hero.

You won my heart over with the skirt-turned-awesome-hat, you total over-achiever, you. You're going to get a lovely surprise in the mail from moi if only you'd just send your full name and mailing address to me at finnyknits AT gmail DOT com, soonly. Though you can begin bragging about your wild success to just anyone who will listen right now. Go ahead. People will understand.

Moving on to February, though, when people get distracted by chalky candy hearts stamped with misspelled love notes (which are not welcome in our house because we both find poor grammar as unattractive as dudes in skinny jeans) and greeting cards clearly created for those who forget they love their sig other except for one day a year and therefore choose to express sad and trite cliches to the tune of "For my husband on this special day. I love you more than the moon and stars. Will you be my Valentine?", when we have projects that have nothing to do with any of those things.

Thank god. Because, blech.

Sorry. I'm a Valentine's scrooge. I won't go into the details. You understand. Bubba and I rekindle our love regularly over pizza night dinners and repeat viewings of Battlestar Galactica because we are just that sophisticated and glamorous and also our love is very mature and dynamic. I also find the asking of one to be one's Valentine to be about the most retarded request on the planet because what the hell does that even mean, but I'll stop now.

Because I said I wouldn't go into details and, whoopsy, there they were. Some of them anyway. Know that I spared you my "Long Valentine's Day Rant" and be grateful.

SO - instead of that rant, let's talk February projects.

Kelli's Fabric de-stasher from One Yard Wonders: Folklore bag by Lauren Booth

My Fridge de-stasher recipe: Roasted spicy cauliflower with capers

Ingredients
1 head of any type of cauliflower (regular , Romanesco, purple), cut into florets
2 T capers
2 T olive oil
1 T red pepper flakes
1 T kosher salt
1/2 T fresh ground black pepper

To make
Preheat oven to 425.

Toss all ingredients in a 9x9 glass baking dish, making sure to coat the cauliflower evenly.

Roast in the oven for 15 minutes, remove to stir them up a bit and return for another 10 minutes until some of the cauliflower has gotten dark and roasty. Serve warm.

And now y'all can just go off into the sunset of February and return to post photos of your masterfully executed projects to the pool by February 28th knowing that this year is not a leap one. Sorry. HURRY.

Kidding. You needn't hurry. I didn't see any fucked up math in either of this month's projects so you probably won't have a total meltdown over your kitchen table as you're trying to cobble together the sum of your life's math skills even though you nearly flunked out of college algebra and just desperately want to finish your project or anything totally theoretical like that.

No, you should be fine. This project looks fairly straightforward and cute. And delicious, also. Eat your vegetables damn it! That's right - because I says so.

Cheers,
Finny

Yaktrax and skinny jeans.

noreply@blogger.com (FinnyKnits) — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 02:32:00 +0000

A while back I tried to send myself to an early grave by going for a run on a particularly chilly and icy morning without anything between my feet and the slip-sliding ice crust but my good old Brooks'.

That was some scary shit, friends. Let me just confirm that for you now.

Thankfully, Lesley read my post and wasn't put off too much by my swears and whining to offer a keen word of advice. Specifically: Yaktrax.

Now, yes, this does on the surface, seem like a proprietary piece of running gear that I don't necessarily need since the weather rarely calls for it more than maybe twice a year BUT I am not just a NorCal suburban runner who has no call for ice-crushing foot devices otherwise.

HO HO no! I am an all-weather gal, people. An all-weather gal that finally put two and two together last weekend and remembered to pack the Yaktrax for a trip up to Tahoe where, dontchaknow, it was snowing like a god damned beast.

Yes it was. That is a way that it can snow - beast like.

The best part came when, in gathering myself and all my clothes to take the dogs out for a DOGS GONE WILD leash-free walk, I actually remembered to strap on the Yaktrax for an inaugural hike up the road.

Can I get a hell yeah? Come on - just this once.

Fine. It was still awesome though. Because I was able to descend the stairs in front of the house, then move down the sloping driveway and up and down the hilly roads which were thick with ice and snow without nary an awkward slip.

Seriously. None whatsoever.

The dogs, however, could have used some Dogtrax because their hysterical asses were slip sliding away, even though it didn't make a lick of difference to them or slow them down on their mission to sniff every muther effing snowball, footprint, tree trunk, other dog, pine needle or otherwise mundane item during our morning and evening hikes.

Dogs are funny like that.

Me, though? I didn't have ass-sniffing to distract my mind from the slick state of the roads, so instead relied on my Yaktrax to keep me upright and moving in a self-propelled direction rather than a direction dictated by the dimensions of the ice beneath my feet.

And, because I'm a fucking genius, I realized that when one returns to the house after a nice stable Yaktrax walk with the dogs, one needn't remove the Yaktrax from one's shoes. OH NO. Just leave those bad boys on the shoes and swap one's shoes for slippers. When one goes to take the dogs out again (which happens a lot more often when there's fun shit like snow and woods outside in which to cavort) one need only swap the slippers for the Yaktrax swaddled shoes.

HOLY CRAP YES.

The clicking that went on in my brain at this moment of realization was loud enough to be audible from outside my own noggin.

Impressive, I know.

Anyway, that's a long way of saying that I broke in my Yaktrax this weekend and I'm sold. 100% sold. Also, I got to snowshoe with the dog in the woods and, while I haven't made a big fucking deal about the snowshoes Bubba gave me for Christmas, you can all rest assured that I've now found a new hobby about which to obsess during the winter months because LO if that's not some awesome fun.

Though I could do without the buried Audi rescue mission interrupting our peaceful moonlit snowshoe. The poor dog - she could have gone on for another hour if it hadn't been for the jackasses who decided to drive their low-profile Audi wagon up an impassible and unplowed street.

Some people just have unreasonable expectations for their vehicles and their own driving ability. Especially when the driver in question is so obviously ill-prepared for a trip to the snow that he's out trying to free his car from the ditch by sweeping snow away with a housebroom while wearing an argyle sweater vest and skinny jeans.

By the way, I did say his. As in, this was a MAN wearing skinny jeans. And an argyle sweater vest. Over what appeared to be a Faconnable dress shirt. With penny loafers WITH socks.

I feel that perhaps the only reason I offered to help them by bringing a shovel and my keen un-fucking-the-car-from-the-snow skills was that they were bigger chicks than me and I feared their blood might be on my hands if I knowingly abandoned them to free themselves only to find them frozen to their broom and one another in the early morning hours.

Of course, you know that after we successfully freed the Audi, with all of its passengers from the set of 90210, got them backed down the impassable road toward the clear road and I began my snowshoe trek back up the hill with my shovel (you know I'm not leaving my shovel) for the third time in 30 minutes (HI, TIRED NOW), they then decided they would take another pass at the impassable road.

And you know they got stuck again.

And you know that I did not go back to help them once again because I can't be responsible for stupid people. And the concept of hiking back up and down that hill again rather than buring my face in a glass of champagne seemed idiotic.

It's champagne, people! Chilled right in the snow! It must be enjoyed right away - at its chilly-mostness.

Wow. There's a throwback term that I'm not even sure is a real throwback term from the old hip-hop days. Sorry for that.

So, to sum up - Yaktrax are broken in. Snowshoes are awesome. Dogs don't have built in foot treading. Metro dudes should carpool with capable snow people who drive cars with a clearance over 3". Always keep an eye on your shovel. I just made up and/or referenced an archaic and grammatically horrifying hip-hop term when referring to my evening's cocktails.

Thanks for playing.

Soup Person [RECIPE]

noreply@blogger.com (FinnyKnits) — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 02:19:00 +0000

Hello world, I am a Soup Person.

Did you know there were Soup People and Non-Soup People?

Yeah, me neither. I just assumed all people ate soup since, you know, it's soup and not, like, foie gras or veal or something all controversial with its own blood-throwing advocacy group or whatever.

In addition to being labeled a Soup Person (which I'm fine with, by the way, this wasn't like being labeled a Snooty Bitch, which I might very well be but don't want to necessarily be labeled), I've come to further label myself as a Tomato-based Soup Person.

Why all the labels? Well. Why the hell not AND it's one of those little things Bubba and I learned about each other after we moved in together and the wintertime came and I started making things like minestrone and chicken soup (which, yes, does not include tomatoes, but go with me, here) and he would get all, "Yeah, OK. I'll eat it." rather than, "Fuck yeah I want chicken soup!" which is what I was expecting.

See, when we moved in together, there were shockingly few things we didn't see eye-to-eye on, so this was a big discovery. I realize people have bigger relationship/marital discoveries than soup preferences, but we haven't had many, so this counts. For us.

Friends, Bubba is a Cream Soup Person.

Weird.

So, when I was all, "Fuck yeah, it's raining and I'm making chicken soup and this is going to be perfect!", he was thinking, "Fine. I'll eat this woman's chicken soup and then I'll sneak into the kitchen and make broccoli cheese soup or some other creamy business that will illicit my current response from HER next time. Take that!"

Ok, so it probably wasn't that malicious, since Bubba's such a nice guy and barely ever sneaks into the kitchen to make creamy business (enjoy that last comment for a moment), but I definitely get more excitement from him when I produce a baked potato soup than when I emerge triumphantly from the kitchen with a perfectly recreated bowl of my mom's chicken soup.

Not that it matters to me at that point because I'm already head down in the bowl, but I register the lackluster response nonetheless.

Anyway, the point of all this Tomato-based Soup Person vs Creamy Soup Person (there are also, I've learned, Broth Soup People, Chunky Soup People, Seafood Soup People and Bisque People) is that I made a tomato-based soup that we both liked and which I've now eaten four nights in a row without starting to hate it.

Those are a lot of miracles for one soup, people, and I'll ask you to recognize the significance.

The original recipe came from a chef at my office who so kindly indulged my begging after I had the soup for lunch and decided immediately that I must make it and have it for four nights in a row.

I then adjusted the recipe, or so I thought, to accommodate the smaller crowds at my house (2) rather than the hoards of folks at the cafe for lunch (150+).

Plus, my adjustments also meant that the soup was thicker, rather than ahem, soupier, and sort of approached the creamy sensation Bubba's always looking for. This was because I omitted the 1/2 gallon of vegetable broth the original recipe called for. So you know. In case you want to serve this soup to your whole neighborhood OR want a soupier, um, soup.

What it comes down to is that I do most of the cooking, and I like tomato-type soups and Bubba will eat most anything anyway, so when I decide I'm going to make something that may not be his exact #1 choice of whatever, I have to find some way to make it seem like it's for both of us when really it's mostly for me and my desire to relive my lunch soup fantasies.

I know. I'm a sick person. With a small life. And boring fantasies.

OK, all Soup Person rambling aside, allow me to share with you my amended recipe so that you may serve it four nights in a row, or perhaps only one night in a row if you have a family of 10, and maybe most people will like it even if they're staunch Creamy Soup People like Bubba.

Freaks.

Chickpea and Tomato Soup

Original Recipe by Dennis Feray, Pure Ingredients Cafe
My changes in BOLD

Ingredients
2 cans of chickpeas (drained and rinsed well)
24 frozen whole homegrown tomatoes, thawed, skins removed, crushed (or 32 oz of canned, crushed tomatoes. Wendy says Muir Glen tomatoes are a good substitute for homecanned.)
1 yellow onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, chopped
2 T ground coriander
1 bunch of cilantro, washed & chopped
1 bunch of parsley, washed & chopped
3 oz butter
Juice from 1 lemon
1 jalapeno seeded and minced (FOR GODSAKE - WEAR GLOVES)

1/2 jar of sliced HOT jalapenos, drained
Kosher salt & black pepper to suit

To make
In a Large stock pot, on medium heat, sauté onions in all of the butter until translucent, add garlic and sauté until fragrant, about 1 min.

If that's not the start of a fabulous meal, I don't know what is.

Add coriander, cilantro, parsley, jalapeno (fresh and canned) and sauté for about 2 min.

This soup is also awesome if you're feeling choppy with your new knives.

Then add tomatoes and chick peas.

Bubba: "No tomatoes are as good as OUR tomatoes." but I still encourage you to make this soup.

Bring to a boil and reduce heat to simmer.

Don't you just want to put your face in there? I know. Me too.

Simmer for about an hour and then remove from heat.

Add lemon juice and puree soup with a immersion blender. Season to your taste with salt and pepper.

Serve with a parsley garnish and, if you're fancy and fabulous, a swirl of olive oil.
If you're EXTRA FABULOUS and/or serving this to me, for some reason, swap the olive oil for truffle oil and let the swooning begin.

Proceed to defend the Tomato-based Soup empire.

Oh - almost forgot - I had this last night with with a toasted pita filled with melted cheddar and goat cheese and it was pretty fucking good, so I recommend that, too. You know, if you're ever serving it to me and want me to get all swoony.

Also, there was gin, but I doubt that was related to the swooning. It was more to blame for my early 8pm bedtime.

That's all.

I am One with the raincoat.

noreply@blogger.com (FinnyKnits) — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 20:13:00 +0000

I'm pretty glad now that I took all these pictures of the garden's progress before our part of the country became soaked to the bone.

My neighbors tell me that NorCal is weird because our bulbs start coming up in January.

Because now it's been raining for about five solid days and I'm trying really hard to understand how people can endure places like Seattle (Hi, Chelle!) and Portland and anywhere else I don't know specifically that also experiences long periods of Rain Only weather.

It's downright soggy around here, y'all, and my run Tuesday morning was as much like swimming as any of my summers growing up except it was about 30 degrees cooler and I was wearing long pants. Or, more specifically, tights.

Ugh, tights. Soggy wet running tights. Just let yourself imagine that for a minute. It's truly gross.

Anyway, it's still raining here, which is great because it means my millions of bulbs and plants are getting their thorough soaking and, you know, instead of forgetting about all the photos I took with my new camera I can share them with you while also remembering what it's like to be outside without a layer of GoreTex between myself and the world.

Yay, it was a glorious time.

This is a flower on the peas. Can you fucking believe that? Where do they find the time?

And I'm really pretty impressed with these winter-type vegetables as they're all growing and producing flowers and not dying even though I was sure that our frost and short days would mean certain death to little green things, which it evidently does not.

That is a small broccolini. Which is why I believe they're called broccolini. The -ini means they're small. In some language. I think.

What it may mean, however, is that little green things may not progress past the Little Green Things Phase because, while our last frost date may be nearly two months off, I have already accepted delivery of the summer's garden seeds and YOU KNOW that once March 1st rolls around it's going to be Tough Shit time for little green things that aren't producing food yet.

Garlic, peas and kohlrabi. All in a race against time and my shovel.

Sort of sad, yes, that some of these plants might not make it to fruition in my race to get priority items like tomatoes and melons into the garden, but that is the plight of the winter vegetable in my NorCal garden - you have to be fast-growing or high priority to stand a chance. If you don't fall into one of those categories, well, then you must make due with my limited patience.

Nothing is more high-priority than the kumquats. I mean, obviously.

Poor things.

And if you're fava beans, with the specific purpose of replenishing the soil after a summer of The Great Corn Destruction, then you can grow as fast as you want but once you get to bean-setting, I will get to bean-turning-under, which makes some people like my neighbors very sad. And, as of when I took these pictures last weekend, there are definitely beans are on the horizon.

Or so says the Money Chicken, that sly bastard.

I guess we can queue the neighborhood howls of misery and sadness now because the favas are not long for this world.

But you won't hear any bitching from me. I mean, yes, technically I do experience a single moment of "Oh, but what if I just let one of these plants put out some beans for me?" before I ruthlessly turn them under and let them put some juice back in the dirt, but it's nothing a reminder of crop failure due to poor soil can't remedy.

I can't have that again. I nearly had to run headfirst into traffic. Tomato Sadness - it's a real problem.

So, I have already got my eye on the shovel and have warned my fava-loving neighbors that, once again, I will ruin their lives by dispatching my fava plants before their prime, and no one has called CPS on me so I think we're good.

Not that CPS could do much since I've been told by some crazy people that plants are not children, but I am choosing to still see it as a good sign.

And now that I've told you all about the winter garden I'm planning to destroy in the name of summer vegetables, you can begin preparations for Adopt a Crop 2010 in which you will be contemplating melons.

Yes, doesn't that sound fun? Contemplating melons.

I'll leave you with that thought. Naughties.

Hick yards and gaping holes. This is a long one.

noreply@blogger.com (FinnyKnits) — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 01:27:00 +0000

Remember how I did all those ridiculous things to my front yard?

Like plant 800 wildflower bulbs and landscape the sidewalk patch/pee hole with $.99 worth of random ass seeds?

Not to say anything about the 200+ xeric grass plugs...

Well, you remember. I'm sure you do.

And I'm sure at least some of you were thinking, um, Finny - aren't you afraid that it's going to look retarded even after it's done looking like the surface of the moon or some hick's front yard? And to that I say yes. Yes I'm always afraid of having a shitty looking yard or a yard that looks like it's totally out of place or was created by people with limited mental capacities.

Thanks for asking!

Thankfully, the yard is starting to show some promise even though it's only January, our contractor has been wandering all over it even though he *tries really hard* not to and the signs of life are coming up totally at random which sort of lends to the retardedness of it all.

I, however, am choosing to see these little sprouts as a good sign that all that shit I painstakingly planted while being made merciless fun of by my neighbors just might actually blossom into something aesthetically appealing.

Or at least it *might* not look like hicks live here in, say, four months. Meaning that I'm giving this yard until June to perk up and make at attempt at filling in with wildflower blossoms and livelier tufts of grass and, hey, a few poppies and iris would be good, too.

Secretly, though, I'm hoping that the off-hand comment one of my neighbors made, when faced with the confirmation that 800 flower bulbs were indeed planted in our small front yard, will somehow come true.

That comment being, "Shit! 800 bulbs? I bet it ends up in Sunset Magazine!"

Hey, a bitch can hope.

Meanwhile, our contractor is funny. Let me tell you more.

See, we're having our porch rebuilt because half of it was showing signs that it might go out for a pack of cigarettes and not come back. Like - it was starting to, on one side, sink into the soft it-used-to-be-all-orchards-around-here soil.

Sad.

So, we brought in a contractor to do away with the existing concrete pad and rebuild our porch columns since that is a job that Bubba and I need to stay reeeeeeeeeeeeeeaally far away from.

We did have to make up a new mantra to get us started though: Just because the rental yard has jackhammers and concrete mixers available, does not mean we should rent them and then abuse our house and selves with them.

It was tough to resist getting in the truck and going to the rental yard *just to look* at the jackhammers. That much is true.

Anyway, the very skilled contractor did away with the porch concrete and, in its place, we had about a week where there was a nice gaping hole in front of our house.

The hole changed as the week progressed - one day it had a pile of dirt in it, one day it had crushed rock in it, one day some rebar, the next day a lot of rebar and some apoxied holes in the foundation - all kinds of progress. But the point is that for a solid week or so, there was a big hole in front of our house and, consequently, directly in front of our front door.

Now, in normal neighborhoods, this might not pose a problem, but in our neighborhood, where our neighbors are traipsing in and out of our house at all hours of the day and night (thankfully they still knock) and we accept daily deliveries thanks to our online shopping habits and we are constantly swarmed by solicitors, not having a front porch from which one can access a front door becomes a pretty obvious problem.

Our brainier neighbors just came around back and knocked on our back door. This is fine. Excellent, perhaps, and what we were expecting.

Our less determined neighbors have stopped coming by until such time as we can offer them a more hospitable entrance. We now hold our conversations in the middle of the street so that the local traffic can get in on the action.

Our Dutch door sharing neighbor uses the Dutch door.

Our shitty neighbors yell from their front porch.

All of these things are acceptable and were, mostly, expected reactions to the sudden existence of a hole in front of our house after they all got past the fact that there was a hole where our porch used to be and HEY, that's a nice scaffolding and what's it going to look like and so on.

You know, neighborly kind of things.

What I did NOT expect was the absolute brainlessness of delivery people and solicitors.

Let me share an example.

I did NOT expect that a FedEx delivery person, when faced with a giant hole instead of a front porch, would try to approach the porch from a side angle, thinking - I guess - that approaching the house head-on was somehow altering their viewpoint and that, by some strange mystery of physics, if they went to the side of the gaping hole, the porch would somehow reappear and TEE DAH they'd be able to leave their package in the only place they thought a package could go.

No, I did not expect this, but that is indeed what happened. As recounted to us through hysterical laughter by our amused contractor.

The best part was that, when our contractor suggested that they might drop the package in the backyard and Delivery Man agreed, he then returned to the front of the house with full intentions of hanging his FedEx tag on our front door knob (with Delivery Area marked "back door") by way of wading through wet concrete to do so.

Thankfully our contractor is not only a rational being, but also patient and possessing the necessary physical strength to restrain a FedEx delivery man hell bent on hanging a door tag where it did not belong. We came home to find all packages and associated door tags stacked by the back door and no sneaker marks in our concrete.

And that our contractor had tied yellow Caution tape around our front porch.

Yay.

And, since I've decided we've got time for another, "And, this idiot..." story, I will tell you that I found myself really wishing I owned a shotgun/lived in a state where I could own a shotgun/wouldn't have a shotgun pried from my tiny girl fingers and used on myself if I dared to point it at someone, thanks to the stupidest solicitor on the planet.

See, you might have heard that we had a big hole in front of our house where our porch used to be. You've heard, right? Thought so.

Well, you can imagine that this situation offers up a unique challenge to solicitors because their whole goal in life is to get to your front door and then bother you endlessly about random bullshit you couldn't give a crap less about while you make up a hundred excuses for why talking to you is a waste of time.

My favorite is, "Oh, I'm sorry. My husband makes all the financial decisions in this house. I'm not allowed to handle money."

I laugh to myself every time, but only after the door is closed. I mean, really, if you've got one Jew in the house, who do you think is handling the money? Right. But they don't know that.

Anyway.

During our week of A Hole Where the Front Porch Should be, I found myself at the back of the house doing some random thing when I heard the dog start to lose her mind in the someone's coming to the door way that she does when, say, a neighbor approaches the front door.

But I thought to myself, no one can get to the front door, so they'll either go away or come around back, and I'll just go about my business here, hunting down some fabric for this hat, or whatever.

But then the dog didn't stop barking. And she's not an overly enthusiastic bark-for-no-fucking-good-reason kind of dog. So I was intrigued. I left my fabric bins and wandered out into the living room to find a solicitor limboing under the Caution tape and contemplating a precarious climb up the dirt and crushed rock heap to our front door with a Special Offer! door tag or some such nonsense.

I'll admit it to you here, I sorta lost it on him.

I mean, I'd had enough of people doing incomprehensibly stupid bullshit under such comprehensible circumstances. I couldn't, and still can't, understand how one would see Caution tape wrapped around a big hole and think, "Hey, that's fun! These homeowners have set up a little O-course for me. I shall enjoy it greatly before bothering them about a security system they've repeatedly informed me they do not want! Excellent!"

At first I just opened the door and told him to stop. Like, "Hey! Don't go under that tape! Just stop."

And when he kept coming, despite my raised voice and vigilant finger-wagging, I removed my censor.

"What the fuck are you doing? Don't walk in there!"

And when he stood there and tried to do the, "Hey, this will only take a few minutes." thing, I screamed at him to get off my property or I'd let the dog out. Thankfully, the dog was still barking because I had my hand on the doorknob as though I was going to open it and give her the opportunity to investigate the squirrels racing up the street tree.

But again, he didn't know that, so he finally retreated. While giving the dog the hairy eyeball. Whatever - it got him out of our porch hole.

Of course, I had to share this little interaction with our contractor who, after finishing pouring the new concrete yesterday, left us a little gift.

Well, if he's not the funniest contractor ever.

And, because I'd made all kinds of squealy noises about "Oh, Bubba, we should write our initials in the concrete wouldn't that be SO CUTE!" when we were talking about pouring the new pad, and even though Bubba looked at me like I'd just told him I was going to go vegan on him or something, Funny Contractor left us this gift as well, tastefully etched into an out-of-the-way corner of the porch:

To say that I screetched with delight would be wildly underestimating my reaction. Bubba just rolled his eyes in that way that tells me he loves me, but at this moment, he's trying really hard to remember why.

Alright, that's all I've got. You're free.

Running update: About that sub-60 10K PR, then...

noreply@blogger.com (FinnyKnits) — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 02:45:00 +0000

With all my blathering about food lately (and, Hi - did you come here hoping NOT to see any more photos of Brussels sprouts because, I know) I feel obligated to tell you all that I'm still running.

Unlike previous years though, I'm not starting this year with any big mentally captured goals of setting a new half marathon PR or running multiple half marathons or, really, anything with the words half or marathon in it.

That is correct, friends, I *may* not run a half marathon this year. Like, maybe not even ONE.

Maybe. It's only January after all. And you know how I get when people start goading me about things and the Active sends me perfectly timed emails or I feel like a fatty or I haven't scratched the New PR itch in a while.

But, the moral of the story here is that I am, indeed, still running and doing so naked - without my Garmin or Camelbak or Luna Moons or other running sidekick accoutresmant.

Though, to come perfectly clean, I will say that I have signed up for my first 2010 race. And, truthfully, I've set my first 2010 running goal: to run an *official* sub-60 10K.

Now, yes, according to my own clock, I did run a sub-60 10K when I ran this race last year BUT the official race timers (who I'm not trusting because they were dressed in shiny mermaid costumes complete with seashell bras when it was 40 degrees outside so it's possible that their mental capacities were compromised) said I ran it in 1:01:37 which is bullshit because OH WAIT the course was .2 miles longer than it was supposed to be. And then there was some math involved that proved that if the course was its normal length (6.2M), I would have finished with a sub-60 time BUT WHATEVER.

Remember - I'm over it.

And, anyway, it gives me a nice goal to work on this year. Though, to be perfectly honest again (I'm all about honesty today - what WILL I say next?) I'm hoping to nail this one down at the 2010 Mermaid so that I can go on to lounge my way through the remainder of the year replete with self-satisfaction.

Or perhaps work on another PR. Or actually do that trail running thing I was all whimsical about as I was getting ready to drag my dehydrated carcass through last October's Rock N Roll San Jose.

Who really knows!

That's kinda fun, right? The whole Not Having a Very Specific Plan for Running thing. Right? Like, I'm not going to drive my whole 2010 into the ground without having a hard solid plan for it in January, right? RIGHT?

Sorry, I get afraid that I'm going to fall victim to my own lazy tendencies and find myself at the end of the year looking back over twelve months of What The Fuck Was That with nothing to show for myself.

But, if I, at least, manage to eek out a sub-60 PR I can feel like something was accomplished and I'm not just running the neighborhood to peep on my neighbors and scope out new front porch designs.

Not that that's what I do now. No, no. We're not being *that* honest today.

What the F I do with a ton of Brussels sprouts.

noreply@blogger.com (FinnyKnits) — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 02:12:00 +0000

Dear Donk,

It would appear that my new blogging format is just me writing you an old-fashionedy letter via the internets. Weird, that.

Anyway, the reason why this is Day #2 where I write to you rather than just blog indiscriminately for anyone who wants to correct my fuzzy math or tell me how I called the Kitchenaid attachment the wrong thing is because I actually did both of our ~along projects this month.

I know! Total crazy.

So, as you may have seen already, I finished the hat, which was perfectly successful in that it fits, no one died in the making of it and it's Hotness. Perhaps I was drunk with the success of our first ~along project or perhaps I just wanted to do something new with the third serving of Brussels sprouts taken from the stalk I got at TJ's for $2.99, but after the success with project #1, I went ahead with project #2 - the making of the spicy garlic dressing and, in case you haven't guessed already, there wasn't a normal "salad" to toss with this dressing.

I went against the grain of society and tossed the dressing with Brussels sprouts and. YES. GOOD.

And let's briefly touch on that, shall we? The fact that one can buy a stalk, or rather adult leg-sized LOG, of Brussels sprouts for less than a Happy Meal. I mean, sure, little kids aren't going to be like, "Hey mom, buy me some Brussels sprouts instead of a cheeseburger", after which the mom goes, "Ok, child. And then we will drive home and I will roast them up for you all tasty-like and serve them on a real plate for lunch.", but for a moment, while standing in Trader Joe's swaddling my stalk of sprouts, I had a little bit of hope for the future of America's nutrition.

Not that I'm going to forego my clandestine trips to Wendy's or In-N-Out, but all I ever hear is how we're all a bunch of fat Americans because fresh food is too expensive and WOE we can only afford to feed ourselves garbage that's not even food. Because I bought a stalk of Brussels sprouts for less than $3 and that's six servings of delicious sprouts right there. Amazing - six servings of fresh food for about $.50 a serving.

What I'm trying to say, here, is that I made your salad dressing recipe from our first month of the One Yard Wonders : Sew Along 2010 and rather than toss it with salad greens, I tossed it with Brussels sprouts and it was delish.

And that delicious dish probably cost me about 50 cents, fought cancer, filled me with brooming fiber, protected me from all my coworkers' germs with vitamin C and it tasted like a million damn dollars.

And, oh by the way, where do I get off being all fucking preachy about nutrition and food, anyway? Oh she of the Bacon Sandwich Where The Bread Is Bacon? Yeah, I don't know either. I was just struck by this situation and felt the need, I guess, to let it out for everyone to witness.

Everyone, please meet my Inner Crazy. Inner Crazy, please meet everyone.

Now that you're formally introduced, I can think about sharing all the pictures of my new knives and how I've let the Cuisinart rest quietly in the cupboard so that I can cavort lewdly with my knives and all of our vegetables.

Ahem. Not now though. Now is for the Brussels sprouts.

Brussels Sprouts with Kelli's Spicy Garlic Dressing

Ingredients
1 cup of Brussels sprouts, trimmed, halved
1 T butter
1/4 c water
1 recipe of Kelli's Spicy Garlic Dressing

To make
Mix the dressing in a medium sized mixing bowl. Set aside.

In a small saucepan, bring water to a quick boil. Toss in the butter and pour the sprouts on top. Cover and turn the heat to medium-low. Steam for a few short minutes or until the sprouts are bright green.

DON'T LET THEM TURN ARMY GREEN. Then they'll taste like ass.

Drain the sprouts and throw them into the mixing bowl with the dressing.

Toss. Serve. Go to town with your fork. You know how to eat. Just do that.

That's all.

xo
Finny

I guess it really was a good hat day even though it involved math.

noreply@blogger.com (FinnyKnits) — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 02:47:00 +0000

Dear Donk,

I will say this, after I triumphantly decided that TEE DAH our first sewing project was going to be the Good Hat Day hat by Rebecca Malmström , I immediately regretted it.

Because I suddenly remembered that I'm lazy and this project had some seemingly complicated elements like heavyweight fusible interfacing and cutting of circles (fuck, math), two things that can confuse the simple-minded like myself.

But, not being one comfortable with flaking on my promises (or seeming like a big fat wuss), I forged ahead.

I did go to the One Yard Wonders Flickr pool seeking reinforcement from other crafters since SURELY someone had made this hat already and I'd be able to see just how great theirs came out so what was I so worried about, but, frighteningly, there was none to be had. No one had made this hat yet.

LAME.

Sure, there were a million of those keyhole creatures and, LOVE YOU some people had already made my Not Ugly Car Trash bag, but no hats yet. Boo.

I was forced to go forward with no references other than the pattern and the book and, you know, lots of finger crossing and good trusty swears and by some miracle there were precious few fuck-ups that resulted in seam-ripping.

It was a miracle and I am grateful for these miracles (and my momentary ability to do math) and so I will share some things with you that I discovered while watching the Patriots lose in a most hideous game where they forgot to play football and instead fell down a lot.

Not that I'm a Patriots fan or anything, I mean, obviously, but I expected some good football out of Hotness Brady and, sadly, there was none to be seen.

Moving on to helpful tips you can use while making your Good Hat Day hat if you're making it to showcase the reverse side of the fabric, which I was. Because I think it's cuter. But if you think it's cuter to do it the other way then, whatever. You can ignore me. Also, you should know to just take my tips as you would tips from any low-grade lunatic and not equate them with The All-Knowing Truth or anything because, hello, I'm just one person and could be wrong. So, like, proceed at your own risk or whatever.

1. Sewing the band seams.
Where it says, in what I believe is Step 1, to fold your hat bands in half WRONG SIDES together and sew the short ends together, instead, fold your hat bands in half RIGHT SIDES TOGETHER and sew the short ends together. Kay?

Otherwise you'll end up with the wrong side of the seam showing on the right side (outside) of your hat. Which you don't want. That's a little *too much* wrong side on the outside for me even though you know how I love me some wrong.

Anyway, it's not the kind of wrong that I had in mind, so I had to do some mid-stream ripping and re-sewing of seams. No hard feelings, though, it took my mind away from the bloodbath on the TV (see: Patriots shit the bed, paragraph 7).

2. Measuring the circles for the top.
To measure the circles for the top part of the hat, I used this math and this method for cutting.

Math:

First, get the Diameter of your circle. Which is the Circumference you already measured (that's the inches around your noggin + 1/2") divided by 2. In my case it was 22/2 = 11.

Then, get the radius for your circle.
For those of you who are math retards (like moi) or have been out of junior high math for a while (also like moi), the formula for that is: R = D/2 (D = Diameter, R = Radius) or 11/2=5.5. Then she says to add an inch or something, so do that and you're radius is 6.5.

Cutting:

Then cut a piece of string about an inch or so longer than your radius, so, let's say 7.5", and tie a knot in one end of the string. Pin that string (through the knot) down to your fabric, holding a fabric marker or chalk at the other end of the string, and draw a circle holding the string taught.

Like so:

Then double your fabric over, pin it together in the center, and cut yourself out two circles of the same size. Dandy.

3. Sewing your lid on so seams face in.
When you go to pin these top of the hat circles to your topless hat, pin the circles right sides together, and then pin them to the right side of the exterior band (that's wrong sides of the top circles TO right sides of the exterior band) so that when you turn it right side out, the raw seams will be on the inside.

4. Fuck the slipstitching of the interior band.
Y'all know I hate to handsew things and that hatred has done nothing but grow and intensify with time. I do not enjoy it, is what I'm saying. And, thankfully, I already had a similar hat on hand (made by the geniuses at Fossil) to which I could refer when debating whether it was necessary to handsew in the interior band of this hat.

My example hat, which I love very much, simply had the interior band folded upward and left unattached, a feature I'd never fully appreciated but suddenly came to love very much because it meant that TA DAH I was done.

And, you know, I left it that way and tried it on and totally dug it. So, there you have it, I don't think it's necessary. And it still looks finished inside and causes no issues from what I can tell, so you can decide whether you're willing to waste those extra minutes of your life and soul handstitching this interior band into place.

Your call.

OK, so that's all I know about the hat. I sewed it and it didn't take all day and it was pretty fun to make and I made it using all stashed items, so the whole de-stashing theme is safe with me so far. Even the heavyweight fusible interfacing was found lurking at the bottom of one of my fabric bins and the fabric I'd been coveting since Philigry so kindly swapped it to me was just waiting to become this hat so I had to make a big ZERO trips to the fabric store for this project which is YAY.

So, go on people, make yourselves a hot new hat and don't be all skerred of the math because, lord knows, if me, The Math Retard, can do it - y'all can, too.

xo
Finny

On burning the shit out of myself.

noreply@blogger.com (FinnyKnits) — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 00:55:00 +0000

Right now I'm currently obsessed with three things; my new knives, my new camera and the fact that the front of our house has been ripped off to make way for a new porch and in the last 12 hours we've had at least two earthquakes, so you know, our house could be 100% porch, and maybe even "house"-free, at any point.

Yay.

So, you'd think that I'd post about any of the above topics except that I don't have proper photos of any of those things and, without photos, I feel like their stories would fall flat. Mostly because I guess I need photographs to distract you from my poor storytelling abilities.

*Sigh* These are my short-comings as I've come to accept them.

So - in lieu of being able to show you the photo of my knives all snuggled up in the new drawer organizer or my camera producing something incredible (wow - the bells, the whistles, the WTF does *this* button do of it all) or my house without a front, I'll talk about pork.

Because obviously that's what a Jew would talk about in lieu of all standard subjects, right? Yeah, it makes no sense. Welcome.

In order to bring some semblance of reality to the purpose behind talking about pork, I'll preface this post (can it be a preface if it comes in the middle of a post? I don't know.) by saying that the pork isn't really the significant part of the story. No. The significant parts of the story are the rekindling of love with my favorite Brussels sprouts recipe (which incidentally includes bacon - appropriate) and the fact that EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. I make this pork chop recipe, I burn the fuck out of myself because I'm retarded.

Let's start the FACE part of this story, then, since the PRE part has been so frankly put.

Once upon a time I didn't make pork chops until I'd skated by all my life into my 30s. Which, for the record, was just two years ago.

Not that I didn't like pork or pork chops or pork loin or bacon (obv.), but because my mom never made it and so, therefore, I hadn't the foggiest idea where to begin and, hey, we've got all this other shit to eat, so why bother with The Mystery Other White Meat That Sometimes Comes With Barftastic Cream of Mushroom Sauce Barf?

But, Bubba? Oh, he likes pork chops. Yes indeedy. (Sorry, I really felt like I had to say "indeedy" right there, even though I'm totally ashamed of myself.)

So, being the husband-pleasey wife that I am, I set out to make pork chops. Actually, no, I set out to make The Best Pork Chops because I'm competitive and egotastic like that. I MUST ALWAYS BE THE BEST IN BUBBA'S MIND. ALWAYS.

I'm a psycho.

Anyway, I came across a recipe in Real Simple that seemed promising and would lend itself well to a pan sauce I was certain I could master with little effort on my part. I was pretty cocky about the whole thing, really, especially given the fact that I'd never laid a pork chop in a pan in my whole life and what the hell does a Jewess know about cooking pork chops but I set out sure I was going to make them The Best regardless.

Sometimes I can really be delusional.

So, I procured my necessaries, which was really only two bone in pork chops and some olive oil and set out to make these magical The Best Pork Chops like I'd been doing it all my life which I plainly had not.

And while I was all flush with I'm The Bestness I hoarded up our farmshare Brussels sprouts for two weeks so that I'd have enough to produce the Brussels sprouts feast that we've come to love thanks to Dig and her fantastic recipe which also includes bacon (bless you, Dig).

Really, in my head, we were preparing ourself for a The Best meal like none other.

And then I burnt THE CRAP out of my left hand doing the stupidest kitchen maneuver short of jamming my hand down the active disposer.

See, this recipe calls for browning the chops in a pan on the stovetop and then sliding them into the oven to finish cooking. Fine. This is all fine.

But because I was getting all fancy and shit, I had it in my head that, yes, I will brown them on the stove, finish them in the oven and then remove the chops to individual plates while I deglaze the pan with some white wine and VOILA create a very tasty pan sauce for the chops.

Except that my brain does not comprehend the fact that once a pan has been in the oven at 400 degrees for 6-8 minutes, that the handle will remain at or close to 400 degrees for, oh, I don't know, about 10 minutes or more after it's been removed to the stovetop.

Like, YES IDIOT, the pan's not technically IN the oven anymore, but the handle's probably still pretty fucking hot.

Which it was. Which is how I burned the crap out of my left hand when I went to reposition it on the stove to pour in the white wine from the awaiting bottle (but not my Drinking Glass because obviously I need all that wine for myself).

Oh.

And, you know, on its own, that's not much of a story. Because who hasn't burned their hand on a hot pan handle at some point, right?

Except who, may I ask, has gone about making the same exact meal multiple times and burned the crap out of their same hand EVERY SINGLE TIME by doing the EXACT SAME STUPID THING because they just don't learn?

Well, I'll save you the suspense, it's me.

So, what I'm trying to say is that I've gotten really good at making these awesome Brussels sprouts and a white wine pan sauce while holding a bag of frozen peas in my left hand.

Also, I have a nice pan handle tatoo on my left hand into which my large sauce pan fits swiftly.

Yay for that.

Thankfully, after I did this last time and then saw my neighbors while still clutching the frozen peas, these same neighbors had pity on me, thought they'd save me from myself and came over for dinner the next night with a lovely and useful silicone pan handle cover so that I'd not burn my left hand down to a stump in the name of pork chops.

Merciful, these folks. I love them lots.

Anyway, as a thank you for sitting through this painful and rigorously mind-numbing post, I will offer up this menu as a token of gratitude.

Though I will warn you that you may want to keep that bottle of wine in the fridge until such time as you actually need it rather than doing a "one for the pork chops, one for me" dance with your wine glass because it can result in, ahem, impaired reasoning skills that may then result in burning the fuck out of your hand.

Just saying.

Pork Chops with White Wine Pan Sauce and The Best Brussels Sprouts

Pork Chops by Real Simple

Brussels Sprouts by Dig

Pan Sauce and all associated foul language by moi

Firstly, this is more an order of processes to a final meal than a recipe. So don't get all, what kind of recipe is this, loser? because I'll have to smack ya.

OK, firstly again, gather your Brussels sprouts up and trim and halve them so that what you have is a pile of perfect looking bright green gems with some loose leaves and IMPORTANT no little bugs hiding in their leaves. Yay. Set aside.

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.

Cover a rimmed baking sheet with foil, lay out a few strips of bacon, per Nici's recipe, and slide them in the oven until they're roasty and not burnt, about 8 minutes. Remove the pan to a cooling location. Leave the oven on 400 degrees.

Warm up your ovensave pan and add the oil, thus beginning the pre-oven portion of Real Simple's pork chop recipe.

Set out some plates for later because this menu moves pretty fast. Just make sure they're out of the way enough so that you can still function.

Add your pork chops to the pan and follow the recipe, turning when they've browned - about 2-3 mins per side.

Slide the pan into the oven. Turn the oven light on to remind you that HEY IDIOT THERE'S SOMETHING IN HERE.

Grab a good sized mixing bowl and pour in the ingredients for the Brussels sprouts' dressing except the bacon. Whisk it up, crumble the bacon, stir that all in and set it aside.

Take out a small sauce pot and add about 1/4 cup of water. Throw your Brussels sprouts in there with a pat of butter.

OH YES BUTTER.

Put the lid on the pot and position that baby over one of your smaller burners and bring it to a quick boil over medium heat. Turn the burner off and let it steam briefly - only until the sprouts are bright green. Strain them and dump them in the mixing bowl of dressing. Toss. Set aside.

Return to the oven (about 8 minutes have passed) and remove the pan from the oven WITH AN OVEN MITT.

Place the pan over one of your larger burners (turned off) and plate the two pork chops, leaving just the pan goodness in the pan.

CRUCIAL DETAIL: Slip the handly silicone handle sleeve onto your pan, grab the half-drunk bottle of white wine from the fridge and turn the heat up to med/high on the stove under your pan. Wait a minute and then splash in enough wine to despackle the pan of all of its porky loveliness. Allow it to boil and reduce into a lovely syrupy sauce. Pour it in equal amounts over the two pork chops.

NOTICE HOW YOU DON'T BURN YOUR HANDS. Rejoice appropriately.

Spoon the sprouts onto the plates. Refill your wine glass. Serve your dinner and enjoy savoring it without having your left fist wrapped around a bag of Trader Joe's frozen peas.

The end.

Now we're cooking with beans! ...wait...what?

noreply@blogger.com (FinnyKnits) — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 17:02:00 +0000

Firstly, don't get me wrong, I do not make new year's resolutions like every single person I've talked to this week. Just, like, be advised or whatever, because if I get the question again I'm going to fucking lose it.

We all clear? Good, then.

However, I did do a thing that's New and Healthy that I'll share with you here, but my motivations were purely those of hunger for delicious things and curiosity about the unknown. Also, I had some time on my hands and thought it'd be fun to make a very chopping-intensive recipe so that I could use my new knives.

But AT NO POINT was I motivated by becoming a New You in the New Year or any other cliched new year bullshit. That's for Toyota commercials and aerobics instructors and other societal retardation I do my best to avoid.

The thing in question here, anyway, was to cook with dried beans.

Yeah, told you, not really a new year's resolution-y thing. Because what psycho is writing up their new year's resolution list going, "You know, I think the #1 thing I want to do this year is to cook with dried beans."? None. That's something so mundane that it can only occur to a random mind at a random moment and then just hang out there until presented with the proper circumstances.

And the proper circumstances presented themselves over my holiday break when I found myself with the latest issue of Cook's Illustrated, a new set of sharpasfuck knives that needed quality time with my cutting boards and a cold, rainy day that wouldn't be complete without a really good soup.

And some fresh-baked bread.

And some leftover blackberry crisp from the Christmas Eve Feast that was lingering in the fridge.

What I'm saying is that the Hunger for Delicious Things part was thoroughly satisfied. Obviously.

The Curiosity for the Unknown Thing, well, it also went swimmingly. The Unknown Thing being dried canellinni beans.

I don't really know why I decided suddenly a while ago that I should learn how to cook with dried beans, but it was in my head and when I ran across a third recipe calling for dried beans, I was like, OK, I get it World, I should learn how to do this. In case, like, we all go back in time suddenly and canned beans no longer exist.

So, now that I've made this recipe and gone through the motions of cooking with dried beans, I can sleep at night knowing that I won't show up in the faraway past without the basic knowledge of how to cook with dried beans.

Which I realize makes me sound totally nuts and I'll just say this, I know.

BUT - if you haven't cooked with dried beans and you're wondering what the process is like, let me explain it to you super quick so we can all be prepared for an unplanned trip into the past before the time when canned beans existed but during a time when eating beans is really important. I have no idea what kind of time this would be.

Cooking with dried beans

Dissolve some salt (1 1/2 T) in a bowl of water (2 qts), add a cup of dried beans (I used canellinni) and let it sit overnight or for at least 8 hours.

Rinse the beans well and pick out any bad looking ones. They'll be all wrinkly and fucked up looking, which is fine.

Use them as you would beans from a can.

That's all.

Now I sorta wonder what the big deal was all about. Oh well. Better than if it was a huge pain in my ass. Which is was not.

What also was not a pain in my ass was this recipe from Cook's Illustrated for Hearty Minestrone.

And if you're at all familiar with CI recipes, you then realize that my calling it not a pain in my ass is pretty significant because those recipes?

Usually, a total pain in the ass.

Worth it - for sure - but major pains. Mostly associated with the amount of dishes I have to clean and the amount of prep involved. Plus, there's always the procuring of random ingredients (salt pork? Is this the 1900s?) and the multiple cooking stages (stovetop to oven to resting on the counter to blowtorching)(just kidding about the blowtorch thing) that makes a CI recipe stand apart from, say, a recipe I make up in my head from shit I've got lying around the crisper.

BUT WHATEVER. This recipe isn't that bad. As long as you like to chop. And I have a whole drawer full of new knives (which I'll bang on about later when I have a picture of them in their new awesome organize-y drawer) that wanted to chop things - and not just my fingers.

For the record, I've only engraved one fingernail with these knives so far and I've used them quite a bit since Christmas Eve when I opened them and immediately went to the kitchen feeling choppy.

And thank you again to my MiL who keeps renewing my subscription to CI for Christmas every year even though I strayed from its instruction at one point and tried to kill her son.

2010 Sew Along. Now with de-stashing power!

noreply@blogger.com (FinnyKnits) — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 22:24:00 +0000

Dear Donk,

I'm sure that despite all my self-promoting this year you never would have guessed which book I'd suggest for our 2010 sew along.

Nope. No way you'd have guessed it.

OR - you totally would have guessed it with only one guess because BIG SURPRISE I suggested One Yard Wonders.

SHOCKER. I know, I should have told you to sit down so that you'd be able to bear the surprise. Apologies.

But, friends - to be clear - we're not just choosing it because I'm in it. On page 113, thank you Aunt Colleen for pointing that out to the family at Hanukkah because while I had the wherewithal to gift the book to everyone, I failed to find and mark My Page for their benefit. Which, if you're me, is pretty surprising given how self-promotey and LOOK AT ME I am, but that's how it went. My laziness won out and I left it up to the recipients to find my page. And then I failed to commit it to memory because I'm not such a good sales person.

ANYWAY.

We had many other reasons for choosing this book for this year's ~along. Reasons that also coincide with the other part of the ~along.

The cooking part.

Let me back up.

Another reason why we chose One Yard Wonders was because of its extreme stash busting power. We love to de-stash, don't we? Or at least we really like the idea of de-stashing and maybe doing something with that precious Never Going To Be Able To Find It Again So Better Do Something Useful With It fabric besides leaving it to crumble at the bottom of the sacred fabric basket in the craft closet while you instead make a hundred projects from that putrid pink and green striped vomit fabric bought for one project but now involved in all projects because GET IT OUT OF HERE.

Anyway - this book is a de-stasher like no book has been before. One yard of fabric, 101 projects - GO.

And, to go full circle on that de-stashing mantra, just try and tell me that you don't force the same kind of de-stashification on your fridge. Like, when you have dinner menus motivated 100% by your desire to get rid of the GOD.DAMNED.CHARD. Or maybe you have normal food lurking around your house like, I don't know, apples or half loaves of french bread or something that doesn't haunt you when you sleep.

Anyway, the point is this - we will de-stash the fridge while we de-stash the fabric - one month at a time.

Each month we'll have one fabric project from One Yard Wonders and we'll also have one recipe, from either Kelli or myself, derived from moments of fridge de-stashing.

Whether your fridge includes one or more of the ingredients from the de-stashing recipe is not important. If you want to make the recipe and your fridge is mercifully devoid of the stashed food in question, you're well within your rights to procure all the ingredients and make it anew.

Meanwhile knowing that the leftovers may need to then be de-stashed.

Just saying.

You can do one or both or neither of the projects or work them up into some sort of unholy combination and load them into the Flickr pool by the last day of the month so that we can judge you and award a prize to a monthly winner and then come back again on the first of the month to do it all again.

Did you get all that? Those were the rules for the sew~along, in case you missed them.

They are basically the same rules we've had for the last three years (can you believe this is already our fourth year?). Now in bullet format for your (and mine - who are we kidding?) enjoyment:

At or around the first of the month, Kelli and I will both post the month's ONE sewing and ONE cooking project and one of us will announce the previous month's winner. It's possible that the number of projects might change and we'll just expect you to be adults about the whole thing. Embrace change and what not.
By the last day of the month, anyone who wants to participate will finish one or both of the projects and post pictures to our new One Yard Wonders : Sew Along 2010 pool for judging.
We will then show back up at or around the first, announce the winners and do the rest of the stuff I just said in the first bullet.
It will go on this way for the year and, at the end it will be the end and you don't need a bullet to tell you that.

And, these things are obvious, but I feel the need to have them in writing lest we get the questions; you need a copy of the book to do the sewing part, you do not need to sign up, you don't have to participate every month and there's no cookbook so don't worry about having to buy one of those, too.

There will be other questions, I'm sure, but we'll just piss those people off when they show themselves.

And before I peel off of this long-winded Welcome to Sewing With Psychos 2010 post, let me share with you January's Projects:

Fabric de-stasher from One Yard Wonders: The "Good Hat Day" Hat by Rebecca Jo Malmström (and, no, I didn't choose this because she has the famed and desireable ö in her name. Though that didn't hurt.)

Fridge de-stasher from Africankelli: Spicy garlic dressing

Ingredients
1 tablespoon or more of Dijon mustard
2 teaspoons olive oil
2 teaspoons red vinegar
1 pinch of garlic salt
1 pinch of coarsely ground black pepper
juice of 1 lime
2 cloves garlic
1 tablespoon honey
any fresh herbs you may have -- I used thyme

Blend this in a food processor, adding more red wine vinegar and lime juice if necessary. This is also easy to make if you want to omit the chopped garlic by simply adding all ingredients to the Dijon mustard bottle and shaking with fury. Then pour over your salad and enjoy.

And if you so desire, you may add this badge to your sites/blogs/Facebook profiles to pledge your allegiance to de-stashing in 2010.

Cheers,
Finny

Again I'm reminded that this garden does not need me.

noreply@blogger.com (FinnyKnits) — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 00:50:00 +0000

When I came home from almost dying during my super icy morning run (I've now got a pair of YakTrax - thank you Lesley for that one) I went out and found my garden covered in an icy death crust that I was sure meant that I'd soon be facing a bunch of vegetable beds of brown goo where my pretty green plants used to be.

NOT SO.

When the ice thawed and I found my way out to the beds in the daylight hours, I found that the only plants to have gone to goo from the frost were the nasturtium, which was no big surprise.

They do this every year and it is, in fact, their job to turn to goo and cover the soil until spring when they get dug under and TEE DAH the soil springs anew.

It is the circle of life thing. Sing it if you want. Just not around me. Thanks so much.

Everything else though, including the icy little pea tendrils which I was certain were going to cuh-roak under the ice, was AOK.

In fact, if I didn't know better, I'd think the frost did them some good. Like, made them sure that it was their season and time to grow because they were safe from the summer vegetables that are always rushing them in and out of the beds because the summer vegetables are totally the teacher's pet. Where the teacher is me and I keep pets like tomatoes.

You understand.

Anyway, the kumquats, lemons, peas, purple kohlrabi, broccolini, leeks, garlic and fava beans are out of harm's way for the moment and have been enjoying some winter time rains while we've been enjoying the winter time snows.

It's all just very whimsical and growie out there. Which, of course, means that I am intermittently waxing my snowboard and flipping through seed catalogs.

I won't spoil the fun of 2010's Adopt a Crop, but I think I found the perfect melon. And it's not even one of my own! HA! My jokes have not improved!

So, because I came here, not with the intent of torturing you with my inane sense of humor, but rather to show you pictures of the plants I did NOT kill - let's see these mystical creatures:

Money Chicken asked for a scarf for Christmas. Notice he is still nude because he is a naughty little bastard.

Garlic - Alive+

Kohlrabis - alive and some are very purple.

Peas - alive with tendrils AND fancy rain drops.

Lemons - obviously alive. Not even a mad shearing can kill this tree.

As Bubba would say, the kumquat is "quatting":

So, now that I know that all this shit can live without my intervening with a floating row cover or other device that requires me to remember I have a garden growing out there when it's 30 degrees outside, I feel free to go about my business ordering seeds for a summer garden and riding around on the slopes of Tahoe without another thought to the vegetable garden.

I mean, sure, I'd like to eat some broccolini or kohlrabi one of these days, but while they're not dead out there, they're not really growing all that fast either, so I'm not going to get super worked up for that.

Though, when these kumquats come ripe, which I WISH THEY WOULD ALREADY, I will eat all 11 of them in one standing and I won't even feel guilty about it because it's not like there's a full dozen or anything. Who could eat 12 whole kumquats at once? Ridiculous.

De-Crapping [Tutorial]

noreply@blogger.com (FinnyKnits) — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 00:34:00 +0000

Do you know what being in my house for extended periods of time makes me want to do?

De-crap.

Like, de-stack my living room of old magazines. De-stuff my dresser drawers propped open by clothes not worn in recent memory. De-pile the books emerging from beneath large pieces of furniture.

De-stick the cupboards stuck closed because some errant and unused wok utensil decided to get wedged all the fuck in there on top of all the other long-handled utensils so that when I went to get the big tongs out I had to engage in a battle royal with the kitchen cabinets to the tune of jamming my arm up the back of the drawers to dislodge the offending spoon thus rendering my left arm useless for the better part of Christmas Eve.

And then de-redundant the kitchen counter because TEE DAH! Bubba got me some sweet new knives and now I am complete in the knife way for the rest of my days and can return the coutertop to things other than a big knife block and rest my brand new SHARPASFUCK knives in the forthcoming in-drawer knife organizer. Yay!

I drag along behind me, to these occasions of great reckoning, two bags. At the end of the day, one of the bags goes in the trash, the other goes to Goodwill/Hope Services/Salvation Army/The Donation Center Most Conveniently Presented at the Close of De-Crapification.

And once the de-crapification is done, the organizing can begin. And I think we all know that I love organizing.

Lawdie do I love it.

Look at that - only unread books. I *knew* they were in there.

To open a drawer and, rather than see a random assortment of items all knotted up in hellfire and rubber bands, I see an array of useful things organized in a way that will allow me to, first, easily choose the thing I need and then, second, close the drawer without having to play chicken with the stuff that pops up in the front by pushing it down with my hand until the last possible second when I pull my hand free and slam the drawer closed SUCCESS. Phew.

I crown myself Queen of Long-Handled Utensils. Also, please enjoy the apron drawer.

Yes. That is a good moment. And when I can spread that good moment throughout my house after a successful round of de-crapification? I get all annoyingly gleeful and satisfied in a way that makes me question my sanity and what's wrong with me that something this stupid fills my soul with joy.

De-crapping this nighstand took a whip and a chair.

So, my life is small. But you knew that.

And thank you, Hope Services, for delivering a yellow "We'll be at your house on such and such a date to pick your crap up" card to our mailbox today. You are the official Donation Center Most Conveniently Presented at the Close of De-Crapification and therefore win the coveted Sack of Indiscriminate Bullshit. Enjoy.

For those of you wading through this mess of a post for a tutorial - here you go. It's a shortie.

Another thing to do with old cards: Thank You Postcards

Pick the good ones
Sift through your pile of old cards and pull out any that fit the profile:

Any that say Thank You on the front or have a pleasing design
Aren't destroyed in some way
Don't have a lengthy note scribbled on the back of the cover
Are between 3 1/2"x5" and 6"x4 1/4"

Save the good part
Cut the card in half - recycle the scribbly half (and also absorb the thoughtful message, fine)

Say Thanks - Version 1
Scribble your own thoughtful thank you message on the blank left side of the back of the cover.

Send it away - Version 1
Put your address on the right side there,add a $.28 stamp and put it out for the mailman who may or may not have a searing case of Queso Gas.

Say Thanks - Version 2
Scribble your own thoughtful thank you message on the blank back of the cover from corner to corner.

Send it away - Version 2
Slide it into an envelope, address it like you normally would, add a $.44 stamp and put it out for the mailman who may or may not secretly love you for introducing him to Skillet Queso Dip regardless of any aftereffects.

And then you can bask in the super de-crapified glory of your organized house. And read a book from the unread pile, maybe What the Dog Saw.

Happy Day When You're Not Working. Hopefully.

noreply@blogger.com (FinnyKnits) — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 22:09:00 +0000

Surely you didn't think I'd forgotten my favorite holiday pastime of berating holiday decorators.

I mean, really now. I live for this crap.

So, before we disband for our traditional fried chicken (homemade, of course) dinners, stockings stuffed with booze and observing of other people's holidays on the slopes of South Lake Tahoe, let us first enjoy an excellent example of why I refuse to succumb to the delusional cries of those who wish, "I'd just get in the holiday spirit, already."

Because if *this* is the spirit, I want no part of it.

This time in motion picture with sound.

And in case you were wondering, this is the house to which I've been referring and pointing my middlest finger.

Happy Day When You're Not Working. Hopefully.

Door-mounted organizer from inner tubes [Tutorial]

noreply@blogger.com (FinnyKnits) — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 22:17:00 +0000

When left to my own devices to entertain myself, my day usually includes all or some of the following:

Running
Taking the dog somewhere beachy or mountainy
Eating Wendy's or In N Out for lunch
Watching 80s movies
Crafting
Cooking
Generally fucking off

This past weekend Bubba was out of town, thus leaving me effectively to my own devices, during which time I did all of the above. (In order: 6 miles, mountainy, Wendys, Say Anything, Not a $20 Bill Mini Wallet, turkey chili, playing Abduction) Plus, my other Best If Done While Unsupervised activity - Settling Annoying-Ass Household Debts.

The debt in question this time turned out to be the kitchen sink cabinet because it's been haunting me in that well-known Surely You Can Do Better Than This way for some time. But it wasn't so bad that I was ever inclined to do much about it because oh who just gives a rat's ass what it looks like under the sink anyway?

Right?

I would have agreed with you 100% up until this past Sunday morning.

See, my fab cousin gave me some new fab orange kitchen towels for Hanukkah on Saturday as part of our yearly kitchen towel swap and when I went to put them into the raggedy-ass basket that lives under my sink and serves the purpose of holding all Towels in Waiting, I found myself not wanting to subject the new pretty towels to the ugliness of the cabinet and all of its crappery.

Yep, that's right, I feel bad about making new towels sit in an ugly basket in a messy cabinet, so don't ever call me insensitive.

But at the time I was putting away the towels (and the not-to-be-forgotten-and-also-lovely towels from my sister), it was nearing my bedtime (and the next showing of Star Trek III: Search for Spock - don't you judge me) and I didn't have the wherewithal to contend with cabinet ugliness, so I just shoved the new towels in there, shoved the old towels in the dog's rag bag and went about arranging myself in bed for some prime Spock Finding.

Towels thusly forgotten, I focused my attentions on supervising the bridge crew returning to Genesis for Spock's body and fell asleep in the middle of the bed, which is another thing that happens when Bubba's out of town. I, however, do not use his pillow because that seems weird.

Anyway - when I woke up Sunday morning OH MY GOD I was on fire to redo the kitchen sink cabinet.

Seriously.

I couldn't walk the dog fast enough to return to the house and begin to make real the very clear vision in my head of how that cabinet should look and function which was obviously something my brain had been working really hard on while I watched Captain Kirk grow ever rounder and slept to the tune of Jada's dog snores.

It's strange what my mind does when I'm not awake to supervise its activities.

My mind had come up with some good ideas, too, if I can speak for it, so before I knew it I had removed all the cluttery, cleaned and painted its interior, gone on a junket to Target for organize-y things despite the ALL HAIL CHRISTMASness of that fucking place and returned to create an excellent door-mounted bag organizer from some of our old bike inner tubes.

Before: Total shame.

After: Triumph by inner tube

And so, I ended up creating a suitable living environment for my new pretty orange towels, the Now Larger For All Your Chard Disposing Needs! composter (that steel canister), all my paper bags and the other miscellany that likes to rule beneath the cover of the kitchen's plumbing.

And in the event that you, too, want to create an excellent door-mounted bag organizer from some scraps of bike inner tubes and a few staples, follow these short instructions:

Gather together your materials:
One road bike inner tube (preferably busted already so it's mostly useless)
One staple gun with at least four staples
A pair of scissors or other suitable cutting device

Identify the door onto which you will mount your bags.
Hold up your biggest bag (folded) to make sure you're picking a good-sized door for this. Or, just recycle that big-ass bag because who really needs it anyway?

This is the side of the cabinet I chose to adorn with the organizer. The door is hardly visible, but I trust you know it's there.

Staple down your first strap.
Triangulate the center of the future bag-holding area and make marks about 1-2" in from the edges of the door. MAKE SURE THE DOOR IS THICK ENOUGH AT THESE SPOTS TO ACCOMMODATE THE LENGTH OF YOUR STAPLES OTHERWISE THEY COULD COME POKING OUT ON THE OTHER SIDE. JUST SAYING.

Staple down one end, holding the gun to shoot the staple out vertically, to the first spot then stretch out the inner tube so that it's stretched beyond the point of your next mark and staple that down, too. You want this thing taught, so don't let it be all flappy and loose. Ew.

Trim excess.

This was before I trimmed the excess.

Staple down your second strap.
Triangulate the ideal spot for the bottom strap and follow the instructions for the first strap from "make marks about 1-2" in from the edges." Don't forget about that making sure the door is thick enough thing. Just trust me on this.

The bottom strap is key. It keeps the bags from sproinging about. Which I promise you don't want.

Load your bags in there.
Rejoice! They're not all floating around annoyingly with all your other cabinet bullshit! WOO! And, hey, you have a really big gift bag for some future birthday haver! Woo! I hope they don't read this blog because then they'll know their gift bag came from my kitchen cabinet and that's kinda ew.

Sorry!

And now I shall commence making another cord basket for those towels because what you don't see in this photo is how the other side of that basket is totally broke down and crying out to be a garden basket until such time as it's hurled into the Big Composter in the Sky which is actually the Big Composter in my Backyard.

Updated: The aforementioned cord basket. Nice.

Not a $20 Bill Mini Wallet [TUTORIAL]

noreply@blogger.com (FinnyKnits) — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 00:41:00 +0000

Yeah, so, you know how when you go out with the three dimensional people for activities like drinking in a bar or drinking in a house or drinking in a country club because that is where people sometimes have weddings, you might swap out your normal Big Girl Purse for, say, a smaller more demure clutch?

Or maybe you're one of those whores who just ditches the purse and shoves all your necessaries down your cleave or maybe in your back pocket if you're wearing jeans loose enough to accommodate a layer of plastic.

And you're faced with that moment of What the Fuck Do I Do With My Credit Card and ID and this $20 bill just in case some rube bar doesn't take Visa?

Yeah, you know this moment in the Preparations for Going Out.

And, if you're me or like me or like most bitches I know, you take that $20 bill, wrap it around your ID and credit card and either throw it loose into your clutch or slide it into your back pocket, just tempting fate to come ruin your night by having these crucial items go missing. Or what if they get demagnetized? Does that still happen if the magnetic strips touch? I don't even know.

But, if you've had those moments and you're annoyed by them and you resort to using things like hair bands or binder clips or barettes or complicated currency origami to keep your necessaries together, this tutorial is for you.

Because this mini wallet, which is NOT A $20 BILL (see, worked that name in there so you could make sense of the title. You're welcome.), fits nicely into most clutches and super small purse things as well as your back jean's pocket provided you've left a little breathing space in those 7s for a thin layer of fabric and plastic.

If you're me, this is rarely an option because, friends, my jeans - they are tight. Yeouch.

Anyway, this is not about my questionable attire, this is about making sure that you have the means to pay for all those cocktails and, at a later hour, the necessary snacks and maybe, at an even later hour, some questionable entertainment on one of your city streets with lots of flashing lights - but that's not important. The important thing is that you do it with grace and style.

At least the amount of grace and style that can be garnered while you quickly and easily locate your Visa despite your crossing eyes and half-exposed rear end.

Moving on.

Not a $20 Mini Wallet Tutorial

Print this thing

Materials

2x 8x5.25" main pieces from main fabric
2x 6x5.25" pockets from contrasting fabric
1x 4.5x5.25" pocket from contrasting fabric
1x 4.5x5.25" pocket from main fabric

Step 1: Press the pockets

Fold the smallest main piece and two contrasting pieces in half horizontally and press.

Step 2: Sew the pocket piece

Place one of the large main pieces right side up and pin the smaller folded pieces, lining up raw edges and stacking the small main piece on top of one of the contrasting pieces as seen here.

Pressed edges should be to the middle of the main piece.

Sew a 1/4" seam around all edges.

Step 3: Attach the back

Place the other large main piece on top of your just-sewn pocket piece, right sides facing, pin and sew a 1/2" seam, leaving one short side open.

Step 4: Turn right side out

That's all. Just turn the thing you just sewed on three sides ONLY, right side out and press.

OK. So you had to press, but you get it. It's easy.

Step 5: Finish your wallet

Fold in half, lining up short edges, pin in place and sew a 1/4" seam around all sides, being sure to fold in and press the bottom edges for a clean finish.

Step 6: Load it up and hit the bars. Or whatever.

Your ID, credit card (even a non-Zappos one, though I don't know why you'd bother) should fit snugly on one side and your cash should slide in easily on the other when it's folded in half.

Like you can plainly see here.

So, from where I stand, it seems like you're ready to jump off the roof into your awesomest 7s and hit the town without dropping your Zappos card on the dance floor as you attempt an iffy move to show off your quad prowess and/or whale tail.

And don't even be telling me you don't know what a whale tail is because I know you've witnessed them thanks to the Supah Low Jeans trend which has yet to dissipate. Not that I'm not guilty of this horror, I'm just saying, I have rekindled my love with my belt collection and everyone is the better for it.

So, like, wear a belt and carry this wallet and maybe when you're out drinking your face off you'll make less of a horse's ass of yourself.

OH! And if you have a friend who falls victim to this sort of thing, and you still need to make her a gift for the holidays, you could make one of these up real quick like from leftover scraps in your stash and save us all a little eyesore in the new year.

And, if you have a friend that fits into any of the following categories, this thing might be good for them in the following situations:

New mom/Diaper bag wallet
Retired mom/Park walking wallet
Commuter/Laptop bag wallet
Student/Backpack wallet
Dog owner/Dog park wallet (hello, this is me)

Updated!:
Hiker/Don't get lost without your ID wallet
Snowboarder/Lunch costs $50 at Heavenly wallet

Yay.

To get you all in the spirit

noreply@blogger.com (FinnyKnits) — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 03:24:00 +0000

After that one post where I railed against society for leaving the designing of Hanukkah decor to basement-dwelling monsters, I'd like to say that I made peace with the situation and moved on to more productive endeavors like, say, designing something more aesthetically pleasing to prove that it could be done.

Well, I can't say that. Because that's not my way - to go out into the world making right what is wrong. No, my way is to bitch about it.

Which is why you see a label on this blog called Finny Bitches and not one called Finny Fixes.

It's a character flaw of mine which I've fully embraced. I figure, why fight something that comes so naturally?

Anyway.

What actually happened after I ranted about the aesthetic abuses laid so heavily on Hanukkah decor was that I went on to find more fuel for the fire. Meaning, I went to the internet to hunt down even more ugliness. Just to prove to myself that there was, indeed, some sort of awful theme running through Hanukkah decor outside of the few examples I easily found and linked to from my post.

Well, HO HO, was there ever some ugliness to be found. WOW.

Though I found that the most egregious missteps were to be found in the menorah department.

This is the department where, if you're a Jew or someone who knows a Jew or someone who's marketing a product to a Jew and wants to appeal to every type of Jew on the planet and needs an outlet for kitsch where one can express all of one's alliances through a single holiday vessel - you come to let your hair down and really Be Yourself with the innocent and unknowing menorah.

At least that's what the menorahs out there are telling me.

Particularly the cat ones and the Harry Potter ones and the Mel Gibson ones (though the irony here is intensely satisfying and also no one's really taking this one seriously).

I'm going to go out on a particularly precarious limb here and say that people are treating menorahs like some treat their Christmas trees - all decorating them up to be a unique and authentic representation of themselves and their most honored and random-ass pastimes.

Much like the golf-loving father may have a golfing-type ornament for their tree, a golf-loving Jew may also have a golf-themed menorah.

Like high heels? If you celebrate Christmas, go here. If you're a Jew, go here.

Vespas anyone? That random enough for you? Christmas-havers. Jews.

My point is this - while Christmas and Hanukkah may be different holidays celebrated by different religions and different people doing different things while filling themselves to the brim with different not-so-good-for-you foods, the decor can be equal (and mystifyingly similar) in its ugliness and at the root of it all everyone is overdoing it.

A point I've been trying to prove all week on Facebook as I've been celebrating a new holiday called The Festival of Ugly Menorahs which I'll share with you now. Enjoy.

Festival of Ugly Menorahs : Night One
The Sea Monster Night

Festival of Ugly Menorahs : Night Two
The Special Holiday Visitor Night
(Hint: those are tampons)

Festival of Ugly Menorahs : Night Three
The Inflatable Night
(This thing is 6 feet tall and goes on your lawn)

Festival of Ugly Menorahs : Night Four
The I Had Too Much Manischewitz and Spent Night Three in the Loo Night

Festival of Ugly Menorahs : Night Five
The Musical Night When Our Ears Also Witness The Ugly
(Hint: This menorah plays Klezmer)
(Hint: Klezmer is Jew music)
(Hint: Think clarinets and accordions)
(I think you get the ugliness now)

Festival of Ugly Menorahs : Night Six

The Night of Holographic Ugliness

Nights 7 and 8 are yet to be revealed as they have not yet occurred, so I will spare you the final days. Perhaps, if all goes well and I find some particularly stunning gems, I will share them with you as I ready my latke-making outfit for the final night's festivities.

And, before you comment and ask me what the fuck a latke-making outfit might entail, I will tell you that it is not fanciful, nor does it include flashing lights, inflatable accessories or outwardly visible tampon strings (no, that's for beach whoring. And, ew.)

My latke outfit, as it's commonly known around my family, is a black cotton v-neck sweater, jeans and low-heeled boots (2 inch heel max) with gel insoles. One must always be Gellin' when one is Latke-Makin'. Or something like that. Also important are the breatheability and cotton-ness of all items of clothes because that means that they are washable in HOT water and don't shy away from two tons of detergent.

Because you will smell like a nice crispy french fry when you're done frying enough latkes to feed any Hanukkah crowd and the smell will haunt you unless you go home and immediately burn or thoroughly wash with scorching water and soap all of your clothes from that day. You should also take advantage of the "Repeat if necessary" option on your shampoo, shave off all exposed hair, hose yourself off with Purell and commence a week-long diet of kale and purified water until the latkes have been expunged from your soul.

It's an effort, I won't lie to you.

So, if I get through all of that without accidentally lighting myself on fire (which has some implications I won't go into due to the super pissing-off-of-random-people-ness it provokes) during the lighting of my parents' traditional and not-ugly menorah, I may come back here and share with you nights 7 and 8.

If I don't, well, you can assume I've had all I can take of Hanukkah, menorahs, ugliness and smelling like a french fry's armpit and have moved on to other things. Like figuring out how to get through Christmas without yanking down my neighbors' musical manger display running amok next door.

Two more things to do with old cards

noreply@blogger.com (FinnyKnits) — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 00:51:00 +0000

So my post title is totally uninspired - don't let that deter you from reusing some more of those old cards that I'm sure you have hanging around after my last three years of Save Your Cards For Other Purposes hysteria.

You do, right? Have a big old pile of cards from this year, including some holiday ones from Holidays 2008, that you are getting ready to pitch because your 2009 cards are coming in through the mail?

I knew it. Because so many people love you that they keep sending cards. Love that.

I mean, I love that now.

Now that I have the super fancy Card Holder Thingee (hey, leftover ribbon from an Amazon.com box can be fancy) to handle the incoming cards. Before the Card Holder Thingee made an appearance in our house, I would go through three very distinctive card having stages.

1. Excitement - There's something in my mailbox and it's not a bill for supplemental taxes - RE-FUCKING-JOICE.

2. Uncertainty - Now that I've opened this card and enjoyed its message, where will I put it so that Bubba can also enjoy the message that may or may not include a newspaper clipping or printed out email from a not super tech-savvy relative? Does it go on the mantle where a breeze may blow it into the fireplace? Does it go on the entry table with every other goddamn thing?

3. Guilt - After having just put the card on the table for the requisite week so that all inhabitants could have adequate time to appreciate its beauty and/or decode the meaning of the enclosed newspaper clipping, is it OK to throw it away or is this sender of cryptic newspaper articles going to hunt through my house to find their card shrine next time they visit? Because if that's the case, we need to move, disassociate ourselves with this person and change our identities. In that order.

But with the Card Holder Thingee, thankfully some order was introduced to my life, and insodoing, also some peace. And we haven't disassociated anyone, though it's up for debate as to whether they'd care.

When we get cards now - throughout the whole year - they get appreciated from the mailbox to the table, where they may sit for a day or so - and then pinned gracefully to the ribbon, where they will hang adored until the next holiday when they're torn asunder and turned into some variety of craft.

Or used to scrape out the pee cement adhered to the bottom of Rocket's litterbox.

I'm just saying - sometimes I need a rigid tool for the job and I don't own a scooper because I just dump the litter all at once but sometimes the litter has formed an immovable mass which can only be dislodged with a rigid object and sometimes that object needs to be cardstock and sometimes the only cardstock around is a big ugly card with somebody's kid on it.

It's OK. Feel free to use my cards to scoop out your litter boxes, too.

And, HOORAY, that's an unintended but totally legitimate 3rd Thing To Do With Old Cards that I hadn't even meant to include because I thought you'd all hate me and/or stop sending me cards.

Well, whoopsy. It's out there now, so I hope you can still love me enough to send me cards so that I can appreciate them on the Card Holder Thingee until such time that they're either recycled in a cat pee-free way or, you know, the alternative.

Moving on.

Thing #1 You Can Do With Old Cards: Wrap gifts with them.

If you have something small, like, say, a Going Out Without Your Big Girl Purse Wallet that you just crafted and are giving to some friends as a way to test out a new tutorial (coming soon), and you want to wrap it, but just not in that way where you're folding giftwrap around it and trying to not make it look like crap, try using a cute card instead.

Like so...

Gather your materials:
Glue stick
Old card
Ribbon
Scrap paper
Hole punch (not pictured because I forgot)

Glue your scrap paper over the inside of the card, covering up any sentimental notes or divulging of personal holiday secrets.

Trim the scrap paper edges, if necessary, and fold the card along its original crease.
Slide your smallish gift in there like you're filling a taco.

Punch a hole on one-side, making sure your item is in the middle of the card.
Then punch a hole on the other side and at the top.
Thread ribbon through all three holes and tie a knot. Or a bow.
If you're fruity like that.

See how it is all snug in there?

And you're done. Wrapped. Ready to go.

Thing #2 You Can Do With Old Cards: Make Gift Card Holders Just Like Target. Or Whoever.

Gather your materials:
Old card
Gift card for Chili's or something fancier because you really treat your mailman nice unlike us WT folk
Razor blade
Envelope to fit

Open the card and tear it in half, severing front from back. Scary.

Center your gift card on the old card's front, design side up, and make marks around your gift card at each corner, about half an inch up each corner, with your razor blade.

Move the card away and connect the corner lines, bottom line to side line.
Slide your gift card's corners into the slits and then the card into your envelope.
Feel free to put a fruity stamp on the envelope and maybe write a little note on the card so the mailman knows to whom he should deliver a bag of flaming poo when he realizes you gave him $10 to Chili's instead of the C-note he'd had his heart set on.
Greedy bastard.

Then, if you're like us, do this with all your gift cards and set them out in arm's reach of the front door so you can catch the UPS guy during one of his visits to your front door and give him the gift of Skillet Queso this holiday season.

Because nothing says, "Thanks for always putting my packages on the back doorstep so they're safe!" like an alarming case of Queso Gas.

And then there was that #3 Thing You Can Do With Old Cards that I said before, but you can just scroll up and read it there so that I don't have to talk about cat pee anymore. Barf. I can smell it in my nose now.

Happy Holidays.

Why it's good that Hanukkah stuff is ugly as hell

noreply@blogger.com (FinnyKnits) — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 00:14:00 +0000

Alright, it must be said, the Hanukkah decorations I see around here are the ugliest, clunkiest, most designed-as-an-afterthought-by-the-gimp-in-the-basement pieces of shit imaginable.

Really. That is what I think.

Every time I'm strolling through Target, or doing some casual online shopping for whatever (shoes. It's usually shoes.) or on the off chance that I wander into an actual store sometime between the months of September and January and happen to cross the Holiday Decor aisle or the register festooned with holiday froo-frooiness, I see how Hanukkah has gotten the shaft in the decent decoration department.

And that's once I get past the sub par wrapping paper designs and cheesy clip-art paper plates and Fischer-Price dreidels. Those things I've long learned to live with in their totally-unremarkable-except-for-their-ugliness forms.

But the menorahs? That's where the rubber meets the road for ugly Hanukkah design.

I feel that, when it comes to designing menorahs, the job must have been doled out to someone as a form of punishment based on the results I see for sale in the greater USofA.

There is no way that a sane person, possessing both the ability to see out of both eyes and the aesthetic sensibilities of a diseased rat could create these menorahs unless they were being forced to create them, in the dark, with only a limited number of symbolic references and while at gun point. With the goal of making them as quickly as possible and uglier than the guy's next to him who's already had his arm shot off for making one faintly passable.

May I offer up a few examples?

I may:

Blue base. Blue light bulbs. Star of David. We get it - it's for Jews.

The cat-lovers version, naturally.
Because why wouldn't cats represent a holiday based on the miraculous ability of one day's worth of lamp oil lasting eight days? Now, show me one of these cats with its tail on fire, and we'll talk.

Is this supposed to be a Basque take on the menorah? Wow. Maybe let's not push it.

My favorite of the heinous designs - the Made from Whatever Small Item We Have Nine Of design.

Why must there be so many electric versions? Are we not to be trusted with matches? Will the bulbs burn out automatically in eight days? What about on shabbat? Isn't there some rule against using electricity on the sabbath? I don't know any of these answers.

Anyway, what I'm trying to tell you people is that, even though I am about as unobservant as a Jew can be, I still find it disappointing that in this day and age of aesthetically-pleasing toilets, we can't even come up with a half decent array of Hanukkah holiday decor. And, so help me Hannah (that's a Finny's Mom special quote right there) if I see another deer candle holder being pawned off as a menorah I'm going to punch someone in the fucking throat.

Meanwhile, I've bought exactly zero Hanukkah, or even Any Holiday, themed merchandise in recent memory, save for the cards I put together with the help of Tiny Prints and under the guise of wishing people a "Happy Ski Season!" because I can't even be associating myself with holidays if they're going to look like this.

Thankfully, we'll always have the ubiquitous snowflakes, generic blue paper from the kid's birthday party supply aisle and silver ribbon from the wedding section with which to wrap the festive underwear and socks (what? You don't give your loved ones undergarments for Christmas? Terrible.) Though lately I've resorted to taking the horrifyingly bad wrapping paper and turning it white side out or scrapping traditional wrapping paper altogether and going for the Spanish newspaper some jerk-off keeps tossing on our doorstep.

As it turns out, El Mensajero offers better choices for giftwrap than Target. Something I never would have guessed.

But, hey, as long as all the accoutrement is completely unappealing, I won't have to torture Bubba with trying to convince him that we should have in it our house and that we should celebrate holidays like normal people rather than the way we actually celebrate them.

Running update: More like skiing

noreply@blogger.com (FinnyKnits) — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 02:45:00 +0000

I suppose this is the time of year I could be recounting the horrors of holidayness for you all, but I'd wager you see that most everywhere else in the whole wide world, so there's no real need for me to do it here, too.

If, for some bizarre reason, you feel the need to get my take on the absurdity of the holiday season, you might refer to some of my previous years' posts for that. Be warned that these are not the merry, blinking, squealing with holiday cheer kind of posts one might expect from someone with my pleasant disposition (that was a joke - happy holidays)- so just proceed with caution. And know that there will be swears.

Instead of bitching about how my neighbors have covered their entire house with lights and an animated nativity scene complete with baby Jesus singing Jingle Nuts on a loop, let's instead talk about how fucking cold it was this morning when I went for a run.

Friends - it was cold.

How cold was it, Finny?

So cold that if I had balls, they'd have been frozen right off and would probably still by resting on my front porch where I first came into contact with the morning's temps while outfitted in all of my running clothes.

Now, I know that a lot of you crazy whores live in places that get much colder than it does here in sunny NorCal and let me just tell you that this fact means very little to me when I go out to run around in it, so don't get all "Well, it was 20 below when I went out to the snowmobile this morning and I had no problem so you should shut up" because unless you were going out to run three miles in that weather while slipping and nearly tearing off a left leg while you were doing it, I don't give a rat's behind.

Really. I don't.

Because when it's in the high 20s (I think it was 29) when you pull on your running tights and then put on the long-sleevey top and the special Don't Freeze Your Tits vest and the insulating gloves and the ear-warmer headband - all on the advice of your now frozen Bubba who came back from walking the dog with his face frozen in a painful grimace - it matters not the temps elsewhere in the world.

Because you are Here. About to go running in twenty-something degree weather.

And, hey, by the way, watch out for the Everything because it's all iced up.

This was Bubba's advice to me and it was life-saving because LO it was icy. And being a NorCal girl from the inside out, I can tell you that I'm ill-prepared to be running around on icy streets.

Now, snowy streets? Fine. I ran while we were back in Kansas and the snow was falling and the streets were all snowy and it was AOK. I never slipped. I wasn't all that cold. A good time was had by all. And by "all", I mean me and the funny dog who'd escaped his fenced yard and was running free across the school's baseball field being chased by his very slow and ill-equipped owners.

But icy roads and 29 degree weather? Um. No. This really isn't my specialty. In the sense that I'm not awake enough at 6am to calculate the precise movements required to dodge leaves frozen to sidewalks, black ice holing up in the cracks of the street, frost accumulated on lane markers and so on.

To put it plainly, my run this morning - while invigorating and if-I-do-say-so-myself quite quick - was terrifying.

I slipped. I slid. I screeched. I pissed off my left groin muscle when trying to control a surprise slide into the ditch. I skied from one side of the intersection to the other without any proprietary ski equipment or the know-how to cross-country ski.

And, less terrifying but still ever-present, was the cold.

My ass cheeks, I believe, are still monkey-butt bright red right now from the effects of the bracing morning air caressing them roughly through the thin layer of spandex in my running tights for three miles.

My fingers just regained feeling to all of their tips.

My cheeks are now deadened against the weather and are turning black with frostbite.

OK, that last one's not true - but they were cold, too.

What's really probably deadened from exposure are my plants.

Whoopsy.

Now, it is well-known that I'm not so good at protecting nubile plant growth from the harsh effects of winter weather, but for some reason I put plants out there anyway, knowing full well they'll be frozen soon enough.

Last year, I was pleasantly surprised by the arugula and fava beans that took a frost and kept on growing, but I sort of don't think the frozen little tendrils of the pea plants are going to, like, thaw out and spring back.

That would be a miracle.

I do, however, hold out hope that this frost wasn't enough to discourage my kumquats from fully ripening, since they are citrus and are supposed to do well in this weather of ours here, so hold out hope for that.

See those ice crystals? Yeah. Welcome to California.

The nasturtium, however, is totally toast. Which is fine. That's what it's supposed to do - get all frosty and then get all brown and wilty and then spend the rest of the winter acting like a cover for the soil underneath. Fine.

Everything else? Well, I hope it had fun with the extra month of frost-freeness because our first frost date was 11/1 and, welp, today was what I would consider our first frost and today is not 11/1.

We'll see what this means for our last frost date, but I can tell you what it means for running - it means I need a hat. And maybe some more insulating pants. And a new hobby for a while - an indoor one.

The Not Leftover Prize

noreply@blogger.com (FinnyKnits) — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 21:20:00 +0000

Firstly, good job getting through that post with all its talk of grody old turkey and squooshy gooshiness. I nearly barfed re-reading it to figure out what I was getting at with this whole book giveaway thing.

Meanwhile I already want to make that turkey pot pie again because My Trailer Sense is tingling and also we don't have any smoked turkey left so, you know, I always want what I can't have.

Just so you know, we haven't really had anything all that mind-bending since the Turkey Pot Pie incident of the other day, so there aren't any other recipes to recount in glorious detail or with side stories about squooshy gooshiness. BUT I did like the turkey leftover ideas you guys had and the movie suggestions for a long day of needle-breaking crafting.

I see I'm not the only one who loves John Cusak and that makes me feel better about myself. Now, if someone else can admit to nearly peeing the floor with excitement when Bravo! announced their John Hughes-a-thon, I'd appreciate it. Because I nearly did. Pee the floor that is. I think that of my favorite all time movies, he probably created 90% of them.

But you know this.

Also, his untimely passing marks only the second time in my life when I've been legitimately sad over the passing of a celebrity person. Like, I've felt real sadness as though a friend died. OK, I didn't cry - but there was definite bummed-outness. When Chris Farley died (also untimely and sudden), I might go as far as to say that it felt like a little bit of me died, too. Which is super dramatic and ridiculous, sure, but not completely untrue.

That man could really rock a lunch lady outfit.

ANYWAY - you didn't come here to hear me lament the passing of movie folk. No, you whores are here to see who won the copy of One Yard Wonders because you can't wait to see the dog on page 113 eyeing down my project sample.

Ew. Sample. That sounds nasty.

I promise, though, that there's no nastiness visible in my pattern or its photo with the dog.

OK, enough stalling - the Random Thingee Chooser randomly chose Two Sisters Sewing to receive a free copy of this extra-awesome-because-I'm-in-it sewing book!

hoooooooooRAY! Also - send me your full name with mailing address and phone number to finnyknitsATgmailDOTcom so that I can pass it on to the Storey Publishing (Hi Storey! Wuv you!) gal so she can send you your book. YAY.

For the rest of you whores who are now all sad that you didn't win the book - I sorry.

But, if you who soothe your sadness the way I do, which is to say by shopping, I say hop over to Amazon and grab this book up as they're still in stock for the low and totally doable (not in a sexy way) price of $14.25.

And, if you're about to skip town on this blog because of my relentless shilling, let's change the subject.

Have any of you baked your own dog biscuits and, if so, do you recommend any particular recipes because I'm about to become that guy and make dog biscuits for all the dogs in my life don't want to be wasting my time with just any old random dog biscuit recipe.

Because those dogs? They are, like, so picky when it comes to their treats. I mean, it's not like they'd just eat any old disgusting thing right out of a muddy puddle on the ground or anything.

Sorry I changed the subject to something stupid like dog treat recipes. I'll try to think of something more riveting next time.