Just another Food Post

I've been doing some knitting but it needs ripping so instead I will distract you with brightly colored food.
This is one of my all time favorite meals because it's super delicious, very easy to make, colorful and low in calories. It takes very few ingredients too!

Beet and Broccoli Slaw Stir fry
Ingredients:
1 bunch of beets
Rice, cooked
1 bag Broccoli Slaw mix
Extra Virgin Olive oil
 Instructions:
If you haven't cooked your rice, start it right away. I usually use brown rice but I happen to have a very large bag of basmati rice from Sam's club so I used that. While the rice is going, wash and peel your beets, then julienne them. (That basically means cut them into little strips.)  A note about the beets here as well. I usually use a bunch from the store but this time I used some from my parents' garden, about 3 medium-sized beets.

I love how reddish-purple they are. I just love beets. Cover the beets in water in a pot and set them to boil for awhile. I left mine to boil while the rice was cooking and that seemed to be enough. Then you can drain them. Now you'll want to take out your wok. (If you don't have a wok you can probably just use a large frying pan and it will work just fine.) Add a tablespoon or two of the olive oil and let it heat for just a minute.

Now open up your bag of broccoli slaw mix and dump it in, add the drained beets and just stir fry it up. I waited until it looked like the broccoli parts were getting transparent around the edges so I knew it was finished.

To finish it off just put some rice on a plate or in a bowl and top with your stir fry.


The best part? This plate, with 1 cup basmati rice, and about 3 1/2 ounces of the stir fry vegetables with 1 Tablespoon of Gluten free soy sauce is only about 291 calories. It makes a fabulous lunch, leaving room for other awesome food later!

I made it for my lunch today but I've made it for supper too and just eaten a little more. It's delicious either way!

Reemerging from the Depths

Oops, a couple of weeks sort of slipped away from me there. Sorry! I have been doing some fiber pursuits but not a ton. I was in this play last week you see. It was very quick, we started rehearsals Monday and our first show was Wednesday, we did shows through Sunday and then basically collapsed.
Here are hubby and I in our costumes.


It's a little bit fuzzy, I'm sorry. We were at the historic Musser Mansion here in Little Falls. Hubby and I both said we miss the mansion. It was beautiful and so fun to spend time there. Hubby especially misses the books.

I did bring my drop spindle along. I've been working on this:

Isn't it lovely? It's Cloudlover as you can see. Merino/Silk 80/20 about 4.3 ounces. As I said, I'm spinning it on my drop spindle and I would guess I'm about half done. I'm planning to wind off the spindle soon so we can talk about that more later.

As you may also know, I'm participating in the Summer of Socks and the first month is over so it's time to cast on the second pair of socks! The focus this year is on Indie dyers/designers. This month the goal is to knit the Lotus Heart Socks from Zarzuela's yarn. Originally we were supposed to knit them out of the Chromatic Sock yarn base but her mill unexpectedly discontinued the base so she offered up a couple of other choices. I chose to purchase a skein of the Chromatic that was left off her website. It's called Sprout and I love it!

I found that the yarn (which is Superwash BFL) is a bit thinner than I'm used to so I'm knitting it on size 0 needles. This may be asking for trouble on a deadline like this but I'm still doing it.

The Lotus Heart pattern is absolutely lovely so far. You knit the cuff sideways then graft it together, pick up and knit down. I have only finished the cuff so far;

It's absolutely lovely. I'll be grafting it and picking up to knit down this afternoon. Unless I decide to spin. The tour de fleece really got me involved in my spinning again and I want to spin so much now. All the time.

Plus, I do have to make dinner at some point or the natives will get restless. Then there's the whole matter of needing to figure out what exactly I'm making for dinner, that's always an interesting question.

Would an Actual Starving Artist wear Silk?

I've been very light on the blogging lately but heavy on the actual fiber manipulation. Case in point? My new Baudelaire socks.

Aren't they lovely? This is some lovely green yarn a friend dyed for me to my specifications. I basically said, I want green and more green and bright green. I got bright green!
I knit these a few weeks ago when I wasn't feeling well. Lying in bed staring at the computer while it played video podcasts and knitting seemed like the best activities in world and so, that's what I did. (Actually, they may still be the best activities in the world. Especially now that my sinuses aren't plugged up and I can taste coffee again.)

If you've seen the Baudelaire pattern before, you probably noticed that it is knit toe-up so I took the opportunity to learn a few new techniques from Wendy Johnson's Socks from the Toe Up.
I did a short row toe with a provisional cast on for the first time, I actually (successfully!) knit a Slip Stitch Heel Flap heel and did a Russian Bind-off.
I have to say, I've never really loved toe-up socks but these gave me hope that I 'could' love them someday. They will probably never take the place of top-down to me, but I am encouraged to try toe-up more often.
Since I'm in Summer of Socks and I finished my Yarn Pirate socks already, I dug out a languishing UFO (Unfinished Object) and started working on them again.

These are my Vine Lace socks in the Sugarplum colorway, also from a friend. (This is probably the first semi-accurate picture I have taken of these socks and this lovely yarn. It's beautiful but very hard to photograph.) I cast these on a long time ago but since you have to pay attention to the pattern and can't just zone out and knit (yes, the other day I had to tink back 3 rounds because I did it wrong and couldn't rip back just that section.) they didn't get a ton of love. I decided they are beautiful and deserve to get finished so I dragged them out and started knitting again. I actually managed to finish one and cast on the second one already, I'm making decent progress although it is slow going because I've been doing lots of spinning. It is Tour de Fleece after all.
As you know, I've been working on the Grinchy yarn for quite awhile now. It's somewhat soul-sucking to spin 12 ounces of very lightweight singles in the same colors so I haven't worked on it a lot but I decided that finishing it during the tour was very possible and should definitely happen. I started working on it and Monday, I ended up with this.


Isn't it lovely? 3 skeins of light fingering weight yarn in a 3-ply. The skein on the far left is navajo plied when I ran out of one of the bobbins but I think it still works. The problem? My original plan was to knit the Wispy Cardi by Hannah Fettig. I love it and still love the idea.

The problem? I'm about 100 yards short. Disclaimer: I just estimated yardage as I wound it into hanks and I have not remeasured now that I washed the yarn.
I think though, rather than trying to fudge it, I will ask my lovely friend who dyed the Merino/Silk in the first place to dye me a braid of Merino/Silk in just the deep blue and I will spin that and use it for all the ribbing in the sweater. Meaning, I will have way more than enough yarn (I hope).

I've had a few other fiber adventures too. There's one I've been especially excited to share.
Last month's Zarzuela's Fibers club colorway was very unusual.

It's called Abundance and it's dyed on Polwarth/Silk

It had so many unusual colors in it that I was afraid it would get muddy if I spun it wrong. I decided the best thing to do would be to specifically try to keep the colors near each other, making it very colorful.
I spun a lovely chunky yarn.

The colors really looked great together. As soon as I saw the yarn, I knew what it wanted to be and I barely resisted the urge to wind it and cast on immediately! I did manage to wash the yarn first though and hung it on the fan overnight so it was dry in the morning.
I skeined it up as soon as I woke up (well, after coffee) and started knitting.


Any guesses?


It turned into a lovely Starving Artist Slouchy Beret.

(I cannot get the picture to sit up straight. I should also mention, I am super critical of all pictures of me and I specifically do not like this one. Double chin AND huge nose? Blech!)
I think the hat turned out cute but it does need some blocking. It only wants to slouch back and I think a tiny bit of volume at the top would be nice. Also, I dyed my hair. Does that look medium blond to you? (me neither, it's way too red and much darker than the picture on the box.)

I've also decided to try to be better about putting my stash up on Ravelry so I'll be uploading a few pictures today. Hopefully, if I just do a few a day, I'll have it all up in no time at all.

Summer of Socks for the Win!

You may remember that last weekend I took my Yarn Pirate socks on some adventures. This weekend was no exception. My cousin and her husband are on the fair board for the Wadena County Fair. My mom and I went up to Wadena to hang out at the fair and attend the rodeo in the evening.

It was a wonderful day. We hung out with her adorable children and watched her son compete in the kids pedal pull event. He won 3rd place for his age group and got a trophy! He was so excited. We also saw all the animals including some fiber animals.

This lovely sheep is resting because it was ridiculously hot.(Don't tell her but she may not be a fiber sheep. I think she's a meat sheep. Shhhh!)
These alpacas were pretty apathetic too.














There was an amazing petting zoo where there were tons of animals to touch and feed that looked well cared for and happy (with the exception of a very scared Wallaby). There were miniature Zebu, deer, alpaca, llamas, baby potbellied pigs, several types of goats, and a Scottish Highland calf.

Since it was the first day of the Tour de Fleece (The spinning event that follows the Tour de France) I spun some of my Baby camel and silk next to the baby camel!

We took several pictures and I am making the least weird face in this one although it looks like I have about 12 double chins, please ignore that!


Here's a little bit closer shot of my mini spindle. I ordered it on etsy a good long time ago. It was very inexpensive and fits really well in my purse, that's why I had it along.

Finally, it was time for the rodeo and we settled down to watch. Me with my socks of course!

It's pretty hard to take pictures of a sock-in-progress and a bucking horse at the same time.

These pictures turned out pretty great actually. You can sort of see the sock and definitely see the rodeo!
It was a great, if hot time.(And I'm not talking about cute cowboys.)

I actually got quite a bit of my socks done and so, Sunday evening while hubby and I were critter sitting, I managed to cast off and do the afterthought heels.

So, here they are, finished socks. I'm very happy with them, although the foot in just a tiny bit longer than I would like, it's a little difficult to plan where your heel should go if you haven't done it before.
I really love them though and I can't wait until I actually feel like wearing socks again. I'll be pulling out a hibernating pair to finish now since it's weeks until I can start my next Summer of Socks socks.

I'll share more about my spinning adventures later this week.

Awesomesauce!

I may have mentioned earlier that I have a problem with Gluten. Well, I should clarify. I don't have a problem with it, my body does. It hates it precccciiiioooouuuussssss. Sorry, I had a little Gollum moment there.

Anyway, when your body has "special" dietary requirements, and I know I'm not the only one out there that does, you try to make it easier on yourself. You rid your house of the foods you don't eat. That's all well and good....until you need to leave your house.

Let's face it, in our modern world there are very few times you can just be a hermit and stay at home, you have to leave your house a lot of the time. When you have food Challenges as I like to call it, whether they are self-imposed or not, you have to consider it all the time. Do you not eat meat? Then if you're going to be out during a meal you have to plan for that, you bring food along or you plan to eat somewhere that you can have choices that fit into your dietary requirements. It's not always easy and sometimes it downright sucks but you do it, often because you don't have a choice.

I find that living in a small town makes this challenge that much more difficult. Not only are there many more limited options but I don't want to be one of "those" people who is constantly complaining and not able to have fun because of my complaining. Often this means I don't go out at all but that's not a bad thing. Monetarily and healthfully, that's a great thing as a matter of fact. If I cook at home, I save money and I generally cook very healthfully. As a matter of fact, really focusing on being gluten free and eating at home is what's kick-started my weight-loss and I want to keep that weight-loss going!

Some days are easy, you're at home, you can whip up a quick meal that you can eat with no issues. (That's if you remembered to go to the grocery store.) For me, Thursdays are a challenge. Let me explain.

I generally watch my friend WoolPrincess' children on Thursdays. That means, I get up very early (I am SO not a morning person) and spend the day at her house with her two girls. I love them to pieces but their house is not gluten free. That means that sometimes my lunch is a challenge. If I were organized enough to pack a lunch for myself, it would be much less of an issue, but that's another story altogether.

Some days, my lunch is an apple with peanut butter and I hope there are no bread crumbs in the peanut butter. Today though? Today, it was wonderful!

This may not look like much but this is Awesomesauce.

I really considered naming it Awesomesauce but I didn't. Instead, let's call it;
Sarah's Cilantro-Lime Vinaigrette
This lunch was inspired in part by my friend JennaKate's blog post about her similar salad but I took it and made it my own.

I started with mostly fresh ingredients and added no sugar, but still got a lovely sweetish, tangy-ish dressing thanks to some Stevia. So, here we go!

Sarah's Cilantro-Lime Vinaigrette
1/4 c. Fresh lime juice
2 T. Apple Cider Vinegar
1/2 a bunch of cilantro, chopped as fine as you can stand to chop
1 packet of Stevia (There are lots of brands including Food club, Great Value and Sweet Leaf, whichever you have will work.)
1/2 t. Garlic Powder
1/8 t. salt
1/2 t. French's Dijon Mustard with Chardonnay
3/4 c. Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Put all the ingredients together except the olive oil and whisk thoroughly, slowly drizzle in the olive oil while whisking. Pour on your favorite salad or whatever and enjoy. Can be stored in the refrigerator in a tightly sealed container for up to 5 days.

I took my dressing and drizzled it on some rice noodles and added some fresh veggies.



Doesn't that look wonderful? It was! It was a fairly low calorie lunch too so I still had some calorie-room to play with. According to My Fitness Pal, it was only 278 calories for the whole lunch or 73 calories per Tablespoon of the dressing.

A note about my abbreviations: From here on out, here are the abbreviations I use:
T. = Tablespoon
t. = teaspoon
c. = cup
They seem pretty standard but I don't want to mess anyone up.

Adventures in Sock-knitting

Last week (on the 21st) Summer of Socks 2012 started. It's basically a group of us that think sock knitting is a great activity in the Summer. There are rules if you want to be eligible for some of the great prizes but either way, it's a fun time. I've had a great time so far, just chatting with other enabling knitters in the group. We encourage and tease each other so much and we just started!

The theme this year is Independent Artisans so Indie Dyers and Designers. The first month you are to use either an Indie Yarn or Indie Pattern. I started off with both! I have some lovely Yarn Pirate in my stash (it's recent. Shhhh.)

This is a skein of Superwash BFL in Harmonia. It's lovely subtle shades of a deep burgundy Red and Grey. I love it! I debated a lot about which Indie Dyed Yarn I wanted to use for the first month and finally, finally landed on this one. I wound it into a ball.

Then began the long, tedious process of finding just the right pattern for it. I read through what others were choosing, browsed my queue and put a lot of thought into the pattern. I eventually, finally chose Medallion Lace Socks by Andrea Fox. It's a free pattern and a very lovely one.

I cast on and knit my little ribbing rows and started to notice something.

See how it's striping so lovely? I was in love with the stripes and they were so unexpected. I really didn't think yarn like this would stripe at all. I started to second guess my pattern choice. Eventually I did start the pattern but just about halfway through a repeat I realized I wasn't loving it. I think the pattern is lovely and the yarn is lovely. But not together. I think the yarn striping the way it does hides the pattern and that lovely pattern really deserves to be shown off. I will knit the pattern someday but not with this.

At this point I had some choices to make, do I rip the whole thing or just back to the ribbing? Do I start over from the toe-up or top down? Eventually I decided to restart and do a toe-up sock so I recast on and got to knitting. My sock had some adventures this weekend too.

I went down to my parents' house and we did all sorts of wonderful things.

I went to my niece's swimming lesson. It's sort of just play time in a pool since the kids are so young.


Isn't it striping beautifully?

We went to the 3M Family day tour where sadly, cameras are not allowed and got to see where my dad worked before he retired and where my brother works when he's working there too. It was great fun but lots and lots of walking!

I played 4-wheeler Tag with my brother and lost because he's way better at it than I am and also, I was "it" when we ran out of gas.

I sat by the bonfire with coffee and knit for awhile

 I even knit in between hands of Skip-Bo and my turn at Farkle.
 
 I really had a blast at my parents' house and I got lots of knitting done.

In this last picture you can even see the line of waste yarn where I'm going to place the Afterthought Heel. I haven't done that type before but since I want the lovely stripes to continue up the sock, I thought now would be the perfect time to try it out.

Of course I'm home now and back to the 'grind' as it were. I'll continue knitting away though and hopefully have a sparkling new pair of socks to show off soon!

My Day

I had this really grand plan that I was going to blog today since I haven't yet this week and that's terrible but I caught a cold this weekend and so my day has gone like this:

Vaguely wake up while hubby is getting ready for work. Acknowledge that it is storming. Get told to go back to sleep. Amazingly go back to sleep. (Mostly be amazed that you can sleep when you can't seem to breathe) Wake up. Wonder what time it is because it's very dark out. Blow nose. Figure out what time it is. Lie in bed watching TV and blowing nose. Decide you don't want to make coffee because you can't taste it anyway and why waste good coffee when you can't taste it. Blow nose. Drink tea. Get bored of lying in bed. Decide that really, taking a shower would make you feel a lot better. Procrastinate for 2 hours by playing on the computer and blowing nose. Decide again that the shower is a really brilliant idea. Peel off pajamas, blow nose and get in the shower. Forget shower routine because your head is too fuzzy. Get dizzy and feel like passing out. Realize that if you do pass out you will have to lie on the floor bleeding until hubby gets home. Realize that it will be 4 hours until he gets home. Decide to get out of the shower pretty fast. Cough a lot. Put on clothes and lie down. Play on the computer while blowing nose 1200 times. Put a roast in the oven. Play on computer and blow nose some more. Wonder how there is anything left of nose after all the blowing. Drink tea and eat Gluten free cookies. Decide to take pictures of fiber from this month's clubs because you are sick of lying in bed. Find fiber and camera. Take pictures while nose drips. Put away fiber (sort of) and try to find camera cord. Decide camera cord is not worth passing out. Lie down.

So, there you have it. I have nothing interesting to show you because that was pretty much my whole day. More later when I feel a little better can find my stinking camera cord.

Finished Socks, When It's too Hot to Wear Them

Thank you to everyone who left the wonderful comments on my last post about me blogging about cooking. It seems to be a general consensus that I can blog about whatever I would like. I'm glad to know what others think. I'm planning a few food blog posts now but in the meantime, I'll keep it up with the knitting and spinning talk.

I've been trying to do some more spinning lately and it's going very well. I'm still working on my Grinchy Idea fiber though so nothing new there.

I decided it was sort of sad that I don't have any sweaters with any red in them and I tend to wear red quite a bit so I cast something on but I will save that for another day.

Today, I have an actual finished object. It's shocking isn't it? I feel like it has been so long since I've had a finished object. I'm really excited about these too.


Here are my Hermione's Everyday socks.
I originally heard about this pattern on Round the Twist with Carin. I was excited to learn it was a free pattern and looked it up almost immediately. It's a very simple texture pattern and it is easy to zone out while knitting it but it keeps you interested too. I really love the way it looks in this yarn.

The Specs:
The Pattern: Hermione's Everyday Socks
The Yarn: Plymouth Yarn Happy Feet Color 5 (Which I call Berries)
The Needles: US 2 (2.75mm)
The Modifications: I added my own heel (Eye of partridge) and toe but knit the number of leg repeats recommended by the pattern, which is longer than I would normally knit a sock leg.
Notes: A lovely pattern that I will definitely knit again.

Unfortunately these socks are finished just in time for the weather to get hot and make me wonder why I'm knitting socks.

Chock Full of Beaded Goodness

I've been knitting away on Evenstar and little else (I would link the pattern but I can't get Ravelry to load right now and I have linked it before so if you're interested, look a post back). I really am ready for it to be done so it's been all beading, all the time around here.

If it didn't look so good I would have taken a break from it but it still takes my breath away when I look at it.

I still find it hard to believe that I could have knit it.

I'm over halfway around it with the edging, trying to do 2 repeats each day. So far it's working pretty well, although I do want it done now so I should really step it up. If only I hadn't started playing Lord of the Rings Online with my husband, I'd have way more knitting time.

But it's Lord of the Rings and as evidenced by my knitting a shawl called Evenstar, I am a pretty big Lord of the Rings nerd. Well, a pretty big nerd altogether really.

I just dry-pinned out a small section of the edging for you to see, I haven't truly blocked it at all. I'm waiting until the whole thing is finished. At which point I will probably have to buy more pins and wish for blocking wires.

The spinning has been pretty sparse lately because my knee still isn't at 100% from when I hurt it awhile back so I've been trying to rest it as much as possible.

That also means that I haven't been doing much exercising. It's hard because it's so beautiful outside and I want to be out there but my body does NOT want to cooperate. I haven't mentioned it much on the blog but losing some weight and feeling better about myself have been my goals for awhile and I'm still eating well and making better food choices so I've still lost some weight but I do want to start exercising more often too.

I'd actually like to start mentioning food and exercise and such on the blog since I cook so much and it's a large part of my life but I'm not sure about whether you, my gentle readers would be interested in that. Leave me a comment. Tell me:
a) Definitely talk about food and going Gluten Free here.
b) Start another blog about Food because I'm here for knitting content.
c) I'm not interested in your Gluten Free Adventures at all so keep me out of it.
d) Some other option I haven't thought of.

Hope to hear from you soon and I promise to try and be better about blogging more often. The last couple of weeks just got away from me.

Bead 1, Knit 1

Somehow it managed to get to Tuesday without me even realizing it. I try to blog on Tuesdays and this week it seems to be flying by and I don't feel like I have anything interesting to show for it.

I'm knitting a border on Evenstar. It has beads, it's taking forever. If I do 4 more repeats I will be halfway. That's 200 more beads. Kinda scary sounding isn't it? I'm trying to do 2 repeats per day but the last couple of days sort of got away from me so instead I'm trying to catch up. For those of you who don't know, Evenstar has 56 repeats of the border around. There are 5 beads on each beaded row which is half of the repeat (on the wrong side rows). Each repeat is 20 rows. That means 5 beads per repeat x 10 rows with beads in each repeat = 50 beads per repeat. Yup, it's scary that math. It's going along pretty well but like I said there are a lot of beads. That slows me down a lot.

I have a system in which I load my crochet hook with 5 beads, knit the right side row and then the wrong side row with the beads then load more beads. It seems to be working but it looks pretty boring. Do you really want pictures of that?

I'll go bead and knit for awhile now. Maybe pictures later this week.

Shepherd's Harvest 2012 Recap

Last weekend was Shepherd's Harvest Festival. It was a blast! My friend WoolPrincess and I went down on Friday afternoon and luxuriously (for us) stayed in a hotel. It's luxurious because we usually camp. It was a great time. Very relaxing and lots of knitting got done.


WoolPrincess was taking classes but I decided not to. She has lovely baskets to show for it. She took 2 basket classes and has 4 baskets. Well, a couple aren't woven yet but she's excited about it anyway.

Prince William came along and he had a great time too!

He briefly considered living in a Yurt. We decided it wouldn't have enough room for all our furniture. It was for sale though.



 He got a little wild and took his hat off for the Hammered Dulcimer player. This guy was great! He had a cart with instruments on it and he moved it around and played various instruments. The lady who whooped and applauded extremely loudly when he started up with the banjo was a little disturbing though.


He checked out my friend Karen's booth. It has lots of lovely dyed yarn, fiber and homemade jelly. We brought home a jar of homemade jelly. I keep forgetting to try it though. I know she makes wonderful stuff!
 
We even spent some time knitting outside. Even in beautiful sunlight I cannot get a good picture of this yarn. It's much, much brighter green that that. I was knitting shorter socks to wear in the summer with capri pants and such. I say was because they are finished but the final specs will have to wait.


We capped off the amazing weekend with knitting at Caribou with Audrey! That's my friend who moved far, far away but is back for a visit.
 
I was pretty conservative but I did bring home a few goodies. (Please ignore the package of epsom salt on my kitchen table. It's for plant-watering.)

All in all, it was a wonderful weekend and a well needed rest. Back to the grind this week of course though! I'm spending my week putting the house back in order and debating beads for the Evenstar border. More on that later too.

A Monogamous Knitter?

Once again my computer and camera seem to be having a spat so instead of fighting with them, I've decided to just use a crappy cell phone picture again.

I've actually been pretty monogamous with my knitting lately, it's so unusual for me but I love the progress so I can't complain. I'm working on Evenstar, as I mentioned before. The pattern is so beautifully written and I'm absolutely loving watching each element emerge.

It makes it worthwhile to just sit and knit on one thing.

This weekend I will be attending Shepherd's Harvest Festival in Lake Elmo, MN. I'm leaving on Friday so this may be the only blog post this week but I'll be bringing Evenstar and maybe a couple of socks to knit, that's all. I intend to finish this baby soon!

I'm still debating the beads in the edging. Yes, they would be gorgeous but they take forever, I would have to buy them because I don't have the right ones right now and I'm just not sure. We'll see what happens when I finally get to that point.

I did go to see the Avengers this past weekend. If you know my husband, you know why but I loved it! I started a new sock project to knit during the movie. (My husband was appalled. He actually asked me: "Are you really going to knit during this movie?" I said: "Have you met me? YES!") Since I couldn't knit Evenstar during the movie and my current sock projects are patterned, I dug out some yarn and started something else. You'll have to wait and see and see the boring plain socks I'm knitting, I can't get a decent picture with my phone. The color is washed out no matter what I do.

In the meantime, I'm going to knit on Evenstar some more and pretend that I'll have it done by this weekend. (Hah!)

A Sweet Little Pig Story

I was going to tell you about how I am making great progress on my lace. It's Evenstar by the way, for those who care about such things.

Instead I'm going to tell you a story.

Once upon a time there was a guinea pig. Her name was Nellie and she was in her late middle years (which is 5 or 6 for a guinea pig.) She was passed from a boyfriend/girlfriend who broke up and no longer wanted her, to a nice lady with other guinea pigs but really, it was too much for this lady to take care of another one and so when the opportunity came up, Nellie went to live with another family. This family lengthened her name to Nellie Kellie so it was more like her new guinea pig sister Henny Penny and tried to do what was best for her. They tried to give her a bigger, more open pen so she would have room to run. Nellie was set in her ways though and she hated it. They tried to get her to be friends with her piggy sister and live in the same pen, nope not up for that either.


Eventually this new family decided to let her be what she wanted to be and allowed her to stay in the pen she were used to, with her aqua pigloo and live her little guinea pig life.

Occassionally she got a bath because let's face it, she was a pig and then she had to tolerate being snuggled.

She put up with it pretty well, but she didn't love it. Not like her piggy sister loves to be snuggled.

One day, a few months ago, it occurred to her human mama, who she had been living with for over a year, that she was getting on in piggy years. She didn't move quite so fast, she didn't flip her pigloo quite so much and there were a few days where she slowed down a great deal. Her family was worried about her so they watched her really close but she still ate and drank and pooped, the greatest measures of guinea pig health so they just kept a close eye on her and fed her a few more treats to keep her eating.

She seemed to perk up and act like her old self a lot more so the worry mostly passed, although her human mama kept it in the back of her mind.


As hard as it is to remember, our pets are only on loan to us and eventually they must cross the Rainbow Bridge. Last night, Nellie crossed the rainbow bridge.

Today I will be snuggling with her Piggy sister and trying to remind myself that we did the best we could for her but I have to say, I don't think I'll be doing too much knitting.