I want to live in a conservatory

23 Feb 2011 Leave a comment

by katsmama in favorite things, gardening Tags: , , ,


I ordinarily don't like red, but this warmed my soul.

We went to the Denver Botanic Gardens last week- the kids had the day off school, so I got a sub so we could have an adventure.
DH had a conference in Denver, so we loaded up the car and went down. We were prepared for the worst,  “bring coats, wear a fleece!” I said as we left the house, but we were graced with amazing weather.

I’ve been to the gardens a couple of times, and this time I bought a membership, so I can go again. I’ll drag other people, too, so beware! Or, wait patiently for an invitation…
You would think that February is an unlikely time to tour a Botanic Garden, but I planned it knowing that the conservatory has at least an hour’s worth of hanging-around time. Everytime I go there, I wish my house was a greenhouse. Not a sunroom, or a lean-to.   I want to live in a conservatory.

Marni's Pavilion has a rotating orchid display.

 Lots of things were in bloom, it was warm and humid. Perfect for a February day, with uncertain weather predictions.We saw banana trees, and pineapples and bamboo, and a waterfall. And orchids! Love orchids.

I’ll sort through the outdoor pictures and post about them another time- it turns out we couldn’t have picked a better day- sunny with no wind. Today I want to share the flowers in the conservatory. Aah. Orchids.

There were four or five of these sprays of dangling orchids, moving in the breeze from the fans. Amazing.

Norwegian Lagoon Socks

11 Feb 2011 Leave a comment

by katsmama in arts and crafts, favorite things Tags: ,


Here’s why I love Facebook: I grew up with a friend, since 4th grade, when we were in girl scouts, all through middle school and high school, then we graduated, and never saw each other again. Small towns being what they are, I heard about her. She was in a band, got married, lived in California, but not much else. Then shortly after I joined FB, I saw that she was on, and I was so excited. We friended each other, and I get to see what her life is like, and read her blog. http://chksngr.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2010-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-05%3A00&updated-max=2011-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-05%3A00&max-results=50

If I go to the reunion in 8 years, it’s only if she’s going.
Anyway, about the socks. Every Monday, on her blog, she has a Muse post- usually short, an image that inspires her, maybe a red plate on an apple green tablecloth, or just after Christmas, I think, a Norwegian lagoon, with brilliant blue sky, white iceberg, reflecting a brilliant blue sea. I happened to be knitting a pair of lace socks in shades of denim, and the stripes were stacking up like that Norwegian lagoon. I was going to comment on her blog, but I can never get through her security- my pop-up blocker blocks her comment thingy, and I lack the patience to figure it out.(yes, I recognize the irony, here- I have patience to knit socks by hand, but not to figure out a comment thingy. I’m an English teacher, I recognize irony.) I showed DH, and he said, oh, you should send a picture to Felecia.
I kept forgetting.

Meanwhile, they have become my favorite socks- I got the yarn last summer in Massachusetts, (yes, I went yarn shopping on vacation, why do you ask?) and these are the socks I pull out of the drawer whenever they are clean. So soft, and even if they don’t go with everything I wear, I make them go. Sky goes with everything, right?

Pure wool, hand dyed in the great Northwest. Love these socks.

Blood, toil, tears and sweaters

20 Dec 2010 2 Comments

by katsmama in arts and crafts, favorite things, learning Tags: , ,


I highly recommend using sock yarn for sweaters because it's machine washable.

I knit for fun, really I do. I like to have something to do with my hands when watching TV, or riding in the car, or waiting at the dentist.  I also like to plan projects, and see them come alive.  A couple of years ago, the girl was reading the American Girl books, and when reading the Kirsten series, she asked me for a sweater like Kirsten’s mom made for her. It was cute- a black and white, Nordic ski sweater. I had played a little with knitting in two colors, and felt comfortable with it, so I took on the project.  http://www.amazon.com/Changes-Kirsten-Winter-American-Collection/dp/0937295949/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1292820841&sr=1-1

We wound up misplacing the book- it turned up later in the closet under the stairs, so I couldn’t make up the pattern by looking at the illustration on the cover.  At that point I didn’t feel comfortable looking at an illustration and making up a sweater pattern anyway. 

The inspiration for the sweater. we never made the hat or mittens.

Actually, I don’t think I could do that now, either… So I found a pattern in “Knitting Without Tears” from the library. This is a book I highly recommend, by the way, if you are ready to graduate from scarves.

I cast on about 200 stitches in sock yarn for the body, and started on the patterns going up the body to the armpits. It was kind of fascinating- you hold the black yarn in one hand, the white in the other, and go across the rows, knitting four of black, 3 of white, or whatever, and row by row the pattern builds. Checkerboards, snowflakes, giant backward letter “s” . With the amount of work this was going to be, I wanted it to fit for a  few years, so I made it extra long, and by the time I got to the armpits, it was time to start the sleeves.  This was where I got stalled. 

You look at a sleeve, and it looks small, but it winds up being more than a quarter of the size of the body of a sweater. I cast on what I thought was the right number of stitches, and went about 4 inches, before I thought of trying it on the girl. Too small. It is now a mini dress for Barbie. Start over, The other thing about sleeves is that they can’t be just cylindircal, because arms aren’t. But the thing about working with two colors, is most of the patterns have repeats of 8 stitches, so increasing gradually messes up the pattern, and increasing too suddenly makes the arm look goofy.  Ask me how I know. 

By now it was March, and even though in Norway, I am sure people wear Norwegian sweaters well into summer, here in Northern Colorado, we are riding bikes and playing soccer. I put away the sweater for a while as being just too frustrating.

Took it out again in the fall, ripped out the sleeves, reknit to make sure they matched, then attached them to the body of the sweater. At this point, I really started cruising. It still took a while, though.  The girl’s school had a spirit day, whose theme was “Dress as a book character” I made it down the home stretch and finished the Kirsten Sweater in time for her to wear it to school. 

Now, the reason this has come up now, 3 years after I started knitting that thing, and 2 and a half years after I finished it, is that when I picked up the girl the other day at school, she was wearing it. “Oh, you haven’t worn that for a while.” I said.

“Yeah, I just found it in the lost and found.”

Yikes- the school newsletter had just announced that as of  Friday, anything still in the lost and found would be taken to Goodwill. As I said, I knit because I enjoy it, but that sweater has a little bit of my soul in it, and the thought of it being sold at a thrift store was a little jarring. I’m glad to have it home again. Don’t ask me what I’ll do when she outgrows it. I’m not ready to think about it.

Heating the house with tea

13 Nov 2010 Leave a comment

by katsmama in favorite things Tags: , , ,


The tea stein.

So, as rain turns to snow outside my window, I have begun the yearly process of trying to heat the house with tea. It works, somewhat. After a gloriously warm and dry fall, we are finally getting some cold weather.
We live in an older house, a mid-century-fabulous, low-slung ranch, with huge windows facing East and West in the living room. Love the house, but it isn’t very draft proof. DH said something about using a stick of incense to find the drafts in the front window, and I said, “Oh, so you can caulk the cracks?” He looked shifty eyed- he hadn’t thought about it that far. We don’t have a caulking gun, so it would involve a trip to Home Depot. Home Depot is a place that makes DH very uncomfortable.
So, I am heating my house with tea. In the past I have tried heating with a pot of soup, simmering away all afternoon. I have also tried it with chocolate chip cookies, but I’d like to be able to zip my ski pants, so instead, it’s tea.
Before I got my electric tea pot, I used to fill the kettle, turn it on high, walk away. When I eventually returned, it would be boiled away. I would have heard the whistle, if the whistle hadn’t broken. This runs in the family. My dad would do the same thing, walk away, get caught up in something, and when he came back, the pot would have boiled dry and started to melt. He burned through the bottom of several tea kettles this way. Eventually, he started making tea in the microwave. This has been suggested to me, but with the microwave you don’t have the advantage of heating up the house as well.

To me, winter interest means it looks good through a window, covered with snow, while I drink tea.

It is probably only psychological, that the house is warmer when the teapot is going, but the placebo effect can’t explain everything. So, once the water is boiling, I slosh some sugar into my big pottery stein, add a teabag and fill it with water. I cup the mug in my hands to warm them, try a sip, but of course it is far too hot to even slurp carefully, so I bring it to the couch, and set it on the end table to cool. Or, sometimes I sit cross legged and put it in my lap, although that sounds kind of creepy, now that I see it written down in black and white. I hear your diagnosis, “deep rooted psycho-sexual problems.”
The tea finally cools enough to drink, and the pottery mug keeps it warm for a longish time, but by the time it is half done, it is too cold, so, I turn on the kettle again, go to the bathroom, and when I get back the water is hot, and I refill. Now, here is the beautiful part, since it is half cold, the tea is just right, immediately, so with the second round, I don’t have to wait as long. The tea might be weak, though, so I tip some more sugar in from the bowl, and add another tea bag. The process repeats itself all afternoon, all winter.

This is a broccoli plant- and after the snow melted, I actually picked the broccoli- and it's fine!

Even Sharks Don’t Celebrate Shark Week

23 Oct 2010 Leave a comment

by katsmama in arts and crafts, favorite things, holidays, Uncategorized Tags: , , ,


So, like three years ago, I got a great idea for a halloween costume- a surfer being eaten by a shark, head first. I had seen a shark hat on the internet, but it was ridiculously expensive, and I thought, I could make that. Then, the boy wanted to be a praying mantis that year, and wanted me to be a venus flytrap…so I put it off. Then last year, I thought of it again, and googled instuctions, or patterns, whether knit or sewn, and preferably, free, of course. Nothing.

 Now, I am a pretty good knitter, good enough to follow patterns, and good enough to figure things out on the back of an envelope. So, I bought some Cascade 220 at the local yarn store, now sadly out of business (moment of silence, please) and examined an extrememely realistic plastic shark out of the boy’s toybox. I started knitting. Like, almost a year ago. What slowed me down was uncertainty about the fins. I wanted to felt the hat, shrinking it on purpose in the washing machine, and I know that I can expect about a 25% decrease in length, but less than that in width, so knowing that, how long do I make the dorsal fins? And the pectoral fins are smaller, but by how much? And the tail, it’s crooked, but is it crooked enough to rip out and try again, or is that the kind of thing felting will hide?

Before felting the shark is floppy and flaccid.

The thing with felting is, there is no going back, so the hat sat in a tote bag for almost a year, not because of a failure of knitting, but a failure of nerve…of will… Anyway, with Halloween coming up again, I figured it was time to do or die, so I took a few photos and threw it in the washing machine. I checked it once in the middle, decided it could go a little longer, then left it in slightly too long. I got distracted. It is really cute, but it isn’t as long as I’d like. Some might say my head is too big. They might be right…

Felted stuff shrinks a mysterious amount- it is hard to predict how it will fit.

Knitting patterns, I have discovered, are hard to write, so if I get organized between now and the rapture, I’ll write it up- this has really great possibilities, of course, thing about the variations of “being eaten by something” costumes. I long for a little blond girl I can dress up as the Princess Bride being eaten by a screaming eel…what about a worm, or a goldfish? Squeeee! Someone needs to have a baby so I can make a goldfish hat!!!!

Oh, wait, someone did have a baby. Excuse me. I have to go buy goldfish colored yarn.

Eyeballs, gills and gums (do sharks even have gums?) then I added lacy picot stitched teeth. I might redo the teeth, except it's kind of a pain.

Hillbilly Goldfish Pond

20 Oct 2010 2 Comments

by katsmama in favorite things, gardening, gardening in containers Tags:


I keep upgrading my water gardens- I started with a galvanized washtub, which held pretty much 1 fish and some floating plants, then I got a plastic liner for a whiskey barrel, which had space for 2 fish and some floating plants. 

This year, I invested my fortune in a horse trough, which holds about 130 gallons of water, lots of plants and 10 goldfish. At least at the beginning of the year it had 10 goldfish. There’s been some attrition.  oooh, shiny.

Birds love any water feature, no matter what size, and in the years since I have been putting in container ponds, more and more birds have come to the yard.

I have made a concious decision not to have a pond in the ground- for one thing, I think it shrinks the pond.  My tank takes up a good amount of space in the landscape- it provides a structure, a shiny backdrop, a formal oval of water reflecting the sky.  Most naturalistic ponds don’tlook very natural to me, unless they are a lot huger than I have space for.  I think A 130 gallon in-ground pond would look puny and insecure in my garden. When I chose the galvanized metal tank, I decided that I wanted it to not look naturalistic- I wanted the informal formality of an above ground pond. When we had a party this summer, we put in floating candles. It looked magical.

Intalling was easy- I leveled out the place I wanted it to go, digging out the weedy grass next to the patio, and stretching space out- there is a foot wide tulip bed to the west of it, where tulips and irises will help conceal the metal. 

Maintainance is easy, too, maybe too easy, considering how many fish have died this summer.  I dip my watering can in every few days to water tomatoes and potted plants, then top the tank up with a hose. Water hyacinth and a papyrus provide filtration and ogygenation for the fish, and mosquito larvae provide a food source. I don’t have a fountain, because I haven’t wanted to deal with the hassle of electricity. In the future, maybe solar fountain technology will improve, but for now, it is a still water pond.

Fall is here, and the weather is too cold for the water hyacinth and I have moved the papyrus in for the winter.

Rustic Apple Tart and Hand Pies

16 Oct 2010 Leave a comment

by katsmama in favorite things, food, learning Tags: , , , ,


Hand pie- it’s a perfectly cromulent word.

These could have stayed in the oven for another five minutes for that golden brown deliciousness.

Worlds collided today when the girl brought home My First Cookbook, which  has a pastry recipe, and I picked a zillion apples from our tree. A surprising number of them weren’t wormy.

Look how many of them don't have worm holes! We don't spray or anything, so worms are the rule rather than the exception.

I chopped enough for a crockpot full of apple sauce, and a pie. Then the girl’s recipe turned out to be for tarts, and I said, what about hand pies? Hand pies, she asked, did you just make that up? Ummmm, no. I’m sure I’ve heard it somewhere.  So, we’ll cut circles, put in apples, then fold them over.  The circle we chose to use was the ring from a half gallon sized canning jar, which made lilliputian sized pies…They’re very cute.  The girl made pie crust for the first time, and we actually should have asked Grandma or Great-grandma for lessons, because I think I’ve only made pie crust twice before in my life.  The girl did a good job, though, it’s nice and flaky.

Baked them for a surprisingly long time- I guess I’ve learned something with this project, because I keep saying how surprised I am. It took about 25 minutes at 350, which was enough to brown the bottoms and lightly brown the tops. The apples are still a touch crisp, so it could have gone even longer. We had enough for 6 half moon shaped pies, and I rolled the scraps into a freeform circle, dumped the rest of the seasoned apples into the center, then folded the edges up over it, into a rustic apple tart.  “Rustic?” she says, as if that isn’t a real word. Rustic is totally a word! The rusitc tart held together beautifully when cooled and sliced.

Promise me you'll eat this with ice cream.

Rustic apple Tart

3 cups sour apples, peeled, seeded and chopped

1 tablespoon sugar

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 tablespoon flour

your favorite pie crust recipe, or whatever instant pie dough solution you like best.

Toss the apples, sugar cinnamon and flour together in a bowl. Roll out the crust and cut reasonable-sized circles. On reflection, the canning lids, about 3 inch diameter, made very small pies. Place on a parchment paper covered cookie sheet, fill with the apple mixture, fold over and bake for 25 or more minutes. For once, we forgot to put sprinkles on top, but sprinkles would have been good.

For the rustic tart, I was recalling something I read in Cook’s Illustrated a year ago, so there are probably better sources of instructions. Roll out the dough, place apple mix in the middle, with a good 2 inches of border. Fold up the edges and crimp it, then bake for 35 to 40 minutes.  Because the top is open, it is easier to test these for doneness- just stab an apple with a paring knife to see if they are soft enough.

Simple Pleasures

15 Jul 2010 Leave a comment

by katsmama in favorite things, gardening Tags: ,


I love my new watering can. Shortly before mother’s day, we strolled into Jax, which is a curious hybrid- farming/camping/ military surplus/ high end housewares store. There was a display of galvanized watering cans out front, and I said, ooooh, and made goo goo eyes at them. My husband took a risk, (I am hard to buy gifts for, did I make goo goo eyes seriously, or was I being ironic? is it wrong to give a practical gift, or should the mother’s day gift be gushy and romantic?) anyway, he took a risk, and bought it for me, and it is even better than I expected. It is my new favorite gardening tool.
I use my pond as a garden water source sometimes- I’ll dip a watering can in and spot-water my tomatoes, and any other new plantings that need it. Then, I use a hose to top off the pond, so the goldfish get fresh water, and the plants get lightly “fertilized” water with the chlorine burned off. This is absolutely the best watering can to use for this- it has a bucket handle, and a pour handle, the spout comes off at an angle very close to the bottom of the can. It is also well balanced, easy to carry, even when full- it holds about 2 gallons. Because the opening on top is so big, it fills very quickly when I plunge it into the water.
My favorite part, I discovered by accident. I was watering a tomato, and set the can down, hoping to kind of prop it up so it would still water for a minute while I pulled a weed. It balanced perfectly, tipped up, slowing pouring the 2 gallons of water out onto my tomato plant. I don’t have to stand around with a can in my hand any more, I can set up the water, pull some weeds, deadhead a few flowers, then refill the can and set it up again.
Why, you ask, don’t I just use a hose? I do, sometimes. I have a soaker hose set up in most of my beds, but really, most of my plants don’t need to be watered on a daily basis. Some, like the tomatoes, really do need water regularly. Some, like lavender, actually resents it. Rain water is enough for a lot of my herbs, and most of my “xeric bed” is set up to thrive on precipitation. Living in a semi-desert area, it works for me to just spot-water the things that need it. Your favorite gardening tool?

Propped up watering can

This is the can in action, soaking an Oregon Spring tomato plant. Yes, that's a dandelion right under the spout. I just pulled it.

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