Happy Birthday Big Brother

In honor of Seth's (the youngest of my 5 older brothers) Birthday today I thought I would show you all this adorable picture that Seth's wife, Chrissy sent me recently. It made my day.

If that's not adorable, I don't know what is.*

I can't imagine a baby that is a more perfect mix of both mom and dad than Luke is. Maybe he'll one day grow up to look more like mom or dad, but for right now, he looks so much like both to me that I can't tell where Seth ends and Chrissy begins. And just to prove my point...

And there's the Birthday Boy himself with Chrissy at a family mini-golf outing circa 2007. Have great Birthday Seth, we wish we were there to celebrate with you!



*For the record, I think ALL of my nieces and nephews are adorable.

Brace Yourself -- it's a knitting post!

Not that I think there are many of you, but sorry to any males who may be reading my blog. Of course, there may be more of you than I think but since only the women comment or follow my blog, I'm choosing to ignore the existence of you men.

As a child, I can't remember a time when I wasn't in possession of matching a matching scarf, hat and mittens set made my by Grandma Baker. Whenever I went to stay at my grandparents' house once or twice a month she was always working on either a hat, baby booties, or some form of baby blanket and eventually, I became curious.

*Just for the record, my grandma, although a knitter, was not a grandma who sat inside knitting all day. She was the designated family "school shopper", since my Mom was never the "mall" type and would take me to the mall whenever I was in need of some new duds. She indulged me by continually walking to "pebble beach" (a scattering of gravel in the shallows of the river running through her town) where we would seek out fossils then drag them home later. I can even remember making my Grandpa come down with us so he could be used as slave labor to drag the bucket of rocks home -- poor man.*

Back to the point: When I was somewhere around 10 years old I decided I wanted to learn how to knit. Grandma started me off on two straight needles with some scrap yarn making a simple scarf and for years, all I did was knit scarves. I did, and still do find the repetition of a simple scarf very soothing. Somewhere around 10th grade (I only remember this because I can recall doing it at a District Chorus Competition) someone taught me that I could knit in the round and make a hat almost as easily as I could make a scarf, which gave me a total of two projects in my knitting repertoire.

I was content to continue my lethargic scarf making until forcing my sister-in-law, Chrissy to teach my to crochet back in 2007. This was my first ever granny square.  And sorry for the blur, my low-light photography skills have never been stellar.

--On a side note, who recognizes the background fabric? That chair has lived at my parents' house, then in Seth and Chrissy's house, then in my house in Oakland, then in our apartment in Squirrel Hill and is now at what will hopefully be it's final resting place, Ben's house. That chair has seen better days.

That one granny square eventually became this afghan which is packed away somewhere in the mess of our worldly possessions in my parents' basement. I still haven't sewn in all the strings. I finished it over three years ago. I'm not proud.

After delving back into the knit/crochet world, I joined a knitting group in Pittsburgh. I'm sure you've heard me talk about them at some point or another. I loved that knitting group. For 3 or 4 hours every Tuesday we would sit around in a group of 10 or 20 women. There were some younger girls (and the occasional male) but for the most part, the women were 40 and up. We had a wonderful time though, laughing, eating, laughing, knitting, and crocheting. And most importantly, it taught me that I really could do more than just crochet granny squares and knit and purl (not that many of you necessarily have any clue what I'm talking about). And eventually, it was bound to happen, I got a real job that required me being there from 8-5 every day and I had to start missing my beloved knitting group. But I kept knitting. And now that I'm here in France, without a job, I find that knitting is what keeps me sane. Having a project, even just a hat, means that I have something to complete, something to accomplish.

And having all of this spare time has led to experimentation. I've been trying harder and harder patterns (*gasp* Patterns? I never thought I had the mental capability to read knitting patterns!), forcing myself to learn new techniques. Which has led to these:

Since Heather has now had her baby, I can now show you what the baby blanket looked like that I made for her out of thrifted angora yarn. It's a lace pattern and I'm in love with the striping.

These bibs were made for a fellow GTL wife's new baby. I made about a million of the cabled bibs, which was my first cable experience. And the ducky bib is one of my favorites. It was my first experience with knitting a design into a piece and also my first time making an I-cord.

I really am so grateful to have this craft to keep me busy and my hope it to continue the learning process. I've already made myself a little shrug as well as a shrug for little Kimber (I've mentioned her before, right?), but that'll be another post.

The End is Near

Not to sound morbid or anything. What I intended to convey in the title is that the end of the semester is drawing near and we've been busy! Well...Michaels been busy, I spent most of the week either hugging the toilet (which I had thankfully cleaned the day before) or moaning in bed. But more on that later.

We made a first attempt at making the Indian fresh cheese, paneer, a couple of Mondays ago.

It's a component of our favorite Trader Joe's Indian-in-a-bag that we have been sorely missing.

Making it really made us wish we could attain some cheesecloth over here. It left one of our two kitchen towels stiff and smelly until the next laundry day.

But despite the smelly towel and the fact that it probably wasn't the most authentic paneer, it ended up turning this Paneer Curry with Peas into one of my all-time favorite Indian meals. 

My herb garden has been growing like weeds in all the glorious sunshine last week. Not that you can pick one bit of green apart from the other, but the plant on the far right is my bean plant. It is now 5" taller than the stick that is supporting it.

In my quest to convince Michael that raw veggies aren't the devil, we (read: I) decided to make ourselves some Vietnamese summer rolls.

 Don't ask me why our move to France spurred this intense yearning to make and eat all things Asian. I don't understand the correlation either. I just know that these were delicious.

We did indulge Michael's sweet tooth with these orange iced cinnamon buns for our usual Sunday brunch a few weeks ago. He still has one left to finish though and I want my tupperware back!

And we spent another day basking in the glorious sunshine. I read and Michael studied.

Then we fattened ourselves up again (must make up for all the lost calories in those vegetarian curries) with Thomas Keller's lemon-brined fried chicken. If you have a day, I'd highly recommend the recipe. However, unless you plan to make an early (2:00pm) dinner, I would suggest that you brine early in the morning for dinner later that day. The chicken ended up a little salty for us, and anyone who has eaten with us could tell you that the food would then be way too salty for the average human.

Just after the stalker incident, detailed in my last post, I took the little girls that I teach english/babysit to the Jardin Botanique (Botanical Garden) just down the street. I was attempting to take a new picture for the top of the blog but as you can see, my attempts were thwarted by Eleanora's Vanna While impression.

 Who knew of black swans' existence? I certainly didn't before our trip to the Jardin Botanique.

And later that night we made this deliciously ill-fated currywurst. Currywurst, for those of you who haven't been to Germany lately, is some sort of wurst sausage, fried then cut up and topped with curry flavored ketchup and a soft roll. It was ill-fated because I took some medicine later that evening that left me hugging the toilet while said currywurst came back up and subsequently led to me laying in bed, moaning about my burning stomach for the next 3 days. Sorry if that was tmi (too much information -- for the non 20 year old readers).

 This photo is just meant as proof of what an awful housewife I am.

 Oh, and I also rediscovered my love of drawing with this lovely rendition of

these sunglasses that Michael bought during last year's trip/wedding/honeymoon in Hawaii. Can you all believe that it's almost been a year?

*gasp*