Friday, September 11, 2009
Posted at 10:46:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
I made a new ironing board cover!!! I followed the directions on U-handblog mostly (except I traced the original cover before cutting off the casing, instead of cutting it off then adding 1", because that's just silly), and it turned out great! I cut out a piece left over from my nice bag bag (because I think that's what she meant by heavyweight "furnishing fabric") to help keep the metal grid from coming through on the ironing, followed that up with some cotton batting (threw away the hideous old falling apart foam stuff), then put on the new cover, which is made out of Alexander Henry "hoshi (star)" fabric left over from the lining of the Rooster Bag I made as a gift for Susie a few years ago.
I have always loved the fabric but hadn't found the perfect thing to use it on for myself. An ironing board cover is great, because I'll get to see it every time I iron! It fits perfectly and looks 1,000,000 times better than my ugly old cover, which was entirely unworthy of my room. The fabric actually looks tons cooler than the picture above, but it's really hard to photograph because of the small detailed pattern. Here's a scan of the fabric so you can see it better. I used almost every pin in my pin cushion when I sewed it! The sewing turned out so good, thanks to my new sewing machine. Nice nice nice nice stitches, so smooth and perfect. I even used a fancy stitch to prevent unravelling. My new machine makes such a difference. Love LOVE.
Note: I do have a nice full-sized ironing board, too (a cool silver-fabric covered one) but it's too big for my room so it lives in the basement and I never use it. I used to use it when we lived in Manchester and I had to iron Dean's shirts all the time. Poor exiled big ironing board. But at least the little cheapo one that I actually use is good looking now!
It is so DARK out today. No wonder I'm confused about twilight vs. dawn.
Posted at 3:05:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
I had a really fantastic weird dream this morning. I was staying at my parents' house (which, as usual in my dreams, was huge with a million rooms, had tons of other family member guests, and was nothing like their real house), and was out on the banks of their pond at just the hour when the asparagus came out for the evening. The pond was like the pond at our land, with a pondy section and a second, shallower, trees-down, swampy section, with a bit of land in between the two, and it was on this strip of land that I happened to be crouched when the asparagus came out. I'm pretty sure it was at twilight and not dawn, although I was a little confused about that in the dream. It makes more sense that they'd come up at dawn, but I'm pretty sure it was 7:30 PM, and why would I be up at dawn, anyway? Regardless, it was the most amazing thing ever. They came up like one of those time-laspe photography videos about something growing, with the plant waving all around with jerky motions, poking through the dirt and reaching up up up, growing before your eyes, thirty seconds from tip to top, to fully-extended asparagus spears drinking in the night air like a bunch of Indian pipes or fiddleheads, magic and woodsy and unbelievable but really happening right in front of my eyes.
Posted at 1:54:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
The next night, I was leaving soon, but I had to see it happen again. I was sitting outside with my parents talking (strange and mysterious things were going on in the distant swamp-pond, with unexplained waves and a very large turtle) and I realised it was getting dark, almost 7:30. I had to see the asparagus come up one more time! I wanted a flashlight and someone to go with me, and I rushed around through their giant confusing house (two extra stoves in a room, just because) looking for June. She was the person who would most appreciate the phenomenon. I found her and she said absolutely. It was June as she is now, not the Puddin' Lane era June who usually shows up in my dreams! We were going to do it. But I woke up.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
I finished my Maine Food Pyramid! It's not as classic as the one from last year, but I still like it. Note that the size of the sections doesn't reflect the volume eaten, but rather the number of servings of that food (mostly). For example, I ate about 11 different instances of bread and crepes and 10 instances of sea salt, but the volume of each was not similar, or I'd probably be dead right now. And all-day octopus doesn't actually deserve its own triangle, because I only had one instance of it (the other triangles represent 2-3 instances, except the fennel & truffles one, which had more instances but extremely tiny amounts...), but I gave it one anyway because all-day octopus is great and the color looks good.
Posted at 1:32:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Anyway, it's just a rough representation, anti-linear brain style, not scientific. (Why am I even explaining this? Who would expect otherwise?)
[Edit: Oh, and the prosciutto was duck prosciutto. That's why it's listed separately from pig.]
Wednesday, September 09, 2009
The maple tree at the end of the road has orange leaves already. Just a few, but they're there.
Posted at 3:49:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Tuesday, September 08, 2009
Dean hung my crown-of-thorns for me!! It looks awesome.
Posted at 8:27:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Here's the view whilst reclining in my chaise. And here's how it looks in context.
I need to make a new cover for my ironing board. The foam is all falling apart and the metal grid showing through! I can't believe I just realized this now. It makes xxxxx marks on the item you're ironing, if you're not careful. I have no idea how to make an ironing board cover, but it can't be that hard, right? I found two very pretty how-to thingies online: 1, 2. (Love the fabric on the first one.) Anyway, should I use that same crummy foam stuff underneath again, or something else? No idea.
Posted at 5:20:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
I picked up my framed crown-of-thorns woodcut print at Jerry's Artarama today. I'm really really happy with the frame I picked out. It's rosy-colored brushed metal, which brings out the warm tones in the piece. And I got museum quality glass, which was ridiculously expensive, but it's going kitty-corner from my chaise window and I'm going to be looking at it all the time, so it would be kind of bad if it was all reflectiony. Dean insisted and he's right.
It's a nice day today but I have a kink in my neck and can't move it to the left. And my left arm feels weird and wonky. But it's still a nice day.
Monday, September 07, 2009
Wow, Bob's doing "Do You Hear What I Hear?" on his Christmas album!
Posted at 8:17:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Here's the track list: 1 Here Comes Santa Claus / 2 Do You Hear What I Hear? / 3 Winter Wonderland / 4 Hark The Herald Angels Sing /5 I'll Be Home For Christmas / 6 Little Drummer Boy / 7 The Christmas Blues / 8 O' Come All Ye Faithful (Adeste Fideles) / 9 Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas / 10 Must Be Santa / 11 Silver Bells / 12 The First Noel / 13 Christmas Island / 14 The Christmas Song / 15 O' Little Town Of Bethlehem
Am I going to hate this, or love it?
Wow! That's the best lemonade I've ever had! Dean got the fresh-squoze lemonade at The Merry Table and it's nice and tart and foamy and real tasting. Sitting in the sun at The Merry Table = :-)
Posted at 1:13:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
This has been the nicest vac. Fun, interesting, not tiring. Beautiful weather. I even slept well every night, with my own pillow! I love sunny Maine.
Sunday, September 06, 2009
Dinner at Five Fifty-Five, and we got to sit in the edge balcony and spy on the hands of the kitchen. I overhead the waiter telling someone else that 555 used to be a fire station, then a library. Makes sense.
Posted at 8:00:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
We got two cool drinks: Dean had a variation on the "Bitter Sweet Harvest," with gin instead of lemon vodka. The other ingredients were fresh cucumber muddled with gervertztraminer grapefruit juice. (They spelled gerwertztraminer with a "v," so I'm doing it too... not sure what the deal with that is.) It was really good and I wanted to steal it but I refrained. I got "Roots," which had house infused beet tequila, sarsaparilla soda, and fresh carrot juice, on the rocks with a salted rim. You could taste all the different roots in it. I liked it! There's no topping that great Aunt Sarah cucumber-tasting infused tequila drink I got at 555 that one time, though.
For food, Dean had a "Beets Me" and a tomato bisque, and I had a blueberry and goat cheese salad (it came with a delicious little blueberry corn muffin) and an all-day octopus with pickled green tomatoes. We also shared a truffled lobster "mac & cheese" minus the lobster (to make it vegetarian). That was my idea, and it was a good one, since that dish is delicious but way too filling for one person.
The all-day octopus was so good. I told Dean it's an all-day octopus because it plays all day, but he kept arguing that it's not an all-day octopus, it's an all-day braised octopus, and it's braised all day. Wrong. WRONG. It's like a day octopus, but it's an all-day octopus because it plays all day long instead of just part of the day. That's why it's so tender.
555 has incredible bread. Fluffy salt bread, and tasty dense little flaky biscuit breads. Waitress, when I hesitated at the question: "It's okay to want more." YES. It is okay. I ate tons more than Dean did.
For dessert we had "warm 'toll house' chocolate chip cookies" with milk. They were actually nothing like toll house cookies and were more like fluffy little chocolate chip shortcake biscuits (we shouldn't have been surprised; 555 always puts a twist on everything), but they were really good. It was a good thing we had two cups of milk because Dean dunked his and I drank mine. Milk with crumbs on the bottom = bleah. And Dean got me the individually wrapped salted caramels to take home. Salt + caramel = ♥. They were not what I expected (sticky waxed-paper wrapped chewy pulled caramels, not chocolate-covered salt-topped ones) but they were so good.
Why does Portland have so many incredibly good restaurants???
We had breakfast/lunch at the Maine Diner (Jim Nantz for me, natch), then flew up the rocky coast to the Knox County airport to visit the Owls Head Transportation Museum, and to sightsee all the pretty little rocky islands along the way. There were a million! A large percentage of them had houses on them, too. And in certain stretches of ocean, we could see billions of tiny colorful dots in the water, like pin heads in a pin cushion. Lobster traps. There were SO many!
Posted at 3:56:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
When we got to the airport, the lineman told us the museum guys would give us a ride to the museum, which was across the runway and over a stretch of grass. He radioed a guy who picked us up in an old woodie. WOW, there is a lot of room in the back of a woodie! I guess that's why they're good for surfboards.
The museum was really interesting and we actually wished we had more time to look at everything. It was cooler than a normal museum; more like a combo museum/classic car meet. No dry and dusty vibe. They had all sorts of different modes of transportation including airplanes, cars, trucks, horse-drawn carriages and delivery vehicles, bicycles, motorcycles, engines, etc. My favorite was the Eliot Cricket III. The Model T snowmobile (skis on the front, chains on the back) was pretty cool, also. Very Maine-ulian. And of course I loved the lime green Karmann Ghia. I adore Karmann Ghias.
Afterwards, we headed back to the woodie, where three museum guys were chatting as we walked up:
Woodie driver young guy: "Yeah, that's the People's Republic of Connecticut for you."
Old guy: "I can't STAND Connecticut."
We didn't say anything, just exchanged highly amused "!!!" looks and asked if we could get a ride back.
A couple minutes later, the woodie guy, who had been silent for the rest of the drive, suddenly asked us, "So, where are you from?"
We both cracked up. "Connecticut."
I think "I can't STAND Connecticut" should be a new memorable-quote-to-say, like the Asian lady tourist in New York's quote, "I stepped on a chewing gum! I hate this US." SO great!
Posted at 12:32:00 AM by Laura W. Petix.
Olive oil treatments = ♥
This relaxy Maine vac = ♥
Salt = ♥
Good planny plan session = ♥
I should make a new Maine Food Pyramid about this trip! I'm not going to write much about today because I'm relaxing and enjoying, not writing, but everything was nice and fun and unexhausting.
Browne Trading Co. salty brie sandwich for me (all out of smoked trout, but I had smoked salmon instead) / Amato's Italian for Dean, eaten outside on patio; short Coffee by Design; Portland Head Light wander (it's pretty and Dean wants to go back!) (lots of nice rocks and ocean and kites); my nails are really long and it's hard to type; it smells so nice and oceany around here!!; Old Port shops wander; The Salt Exchange for dinner. Salt, salt, and more salt! Seven kinds. The brown smoked one was really good. Dean had a mint julep. I had a marg with black Hawaiian salt on the edge (good barrier to keep Dean from stealing my drink!). Nice and small portions, fresh and innovative flavor combinations, creative drinks, good desserts, friendly and professional staff and nice owner = ideal restaurant. Also, salt.
BTW, Sea Dog root beer is really good, almost like Weinbros! Especially when you're really thirsty from lots of salt.
Bottom layer of my new Maine Foods Pyramid = salt? Oh yeah, cheese. Must work on diagram.
[Above left: My entree, which had locally foraged mushrooms, black rice, a poached egg, and truffle vinaigrette, with sea salt on top, natch. It was vegetarian, but I only shared a few bites with Dean because it was good.
Stripey strip: My drink (the receipt said "Strawberry Salt"; I can't remember what the real name was) / Our cheese plate / The clams that came with Dean's entree, which they served on the side to me instead, so his could be vegetarian. Notice they were presented on a huge slab of salt! ♥ I also got "House cured duck prosciutto with baby bok choy salad, fennel, rhubarb, orange blossom honey vinaigrette." Doesn't that sound awesome? It was both delicious and pretty, especially the translucent grapefruit-pink gelatinous squares (not sure exactly what those were... but they weren't the rhubarb, because that's what those super-thin shavings strewn about on the plate are. (Oh yeah, and you can't see it in the picture above, but the cheese course came with gelatinous lumps too, which were quince. YUM.)]
