Sarah Jane Humke

Random-assed Friday

Sarah Jane Humke

August 14, 2009

I am now into serious packing, you know, making a list and checking it twice kinda stuff. My suitcases are curiously devoid of clothing. I’m not taking a lot as I plan on getting some stuff while I am home. I will also be staying a lot with friends and family and that means access to normal American washing machines! You have no idea just how exciting that thought is. Honestly, it makes me want to pack my entire wardrobe just so that I can wash and dry it in a normal washer and dryer. The miniature washing machine that we have in this house just plain ol’ sucks. It makes the laundry smell funny and takes forever to clean it.

Anyway, the suitcases are still fairly full. Oddly enough, there is a lot of electronic stuff in them given the fact that I’m about one step away from being the Unabomber. It’s odd. But one suitcase is half-full of dog biscuts that are gifts for all the dogs that I will be seeing and the other is half-full of blankets. And these are big suitcases!!!

The Big Black Suitcase

The Orange Monster

I have this very strong urge to cast on something lace. I have no idea where this lace urge is coming from, and really it’s not the greatest time for me to want to cast-on lace knitting but I think that I may actually give in and do it. So if you see someone cursing their way across the Atlantic on a United flight or cussing their way across Canada with some alpaca/nylon trailing out the window of a silver SUV crossover, say hi!

Look ma! Lace!! I made LACE!!! Woo hoo!!!

So, some oddball things that are added to the To Get list:

Marshmallow Fluff The holiday season is soon upon us and fudge here is seriously lacking in the fluff.

Plastic Roaches I bought a gross of these little buggers several years ago at a party supply store in the town that I lived in. I have put these in packages and letters, hidden them in desk and silverware drawers and generally made a nuisance of myself with them and I am nearly out. Gotta restock my fake bugs!

King Sized Pillow I’m not planning on bringing this one back with me. I had the brilliant idea of maybe getting a cheap one of these somewhere before I start out on the road. I know my dad will not be pleased with me taking up this much space, but I know that I’ll sleep a ton better in the myriad of hotel rooms that I’ll be laying my head down in if I have one good pillow that I can use. A $10 investment in sleeping a lot better for 2 months, I’d call that a deal!

Ok, have to go get stuff at the store now (the Jiji cat is out of her special food and she gets pissy when she is hungry!!!).

7 Days

Sarah Jane Humke

no comments

August 13, 2009

7 days.

1 week.

That is all that is left until I leave on the Travel Insanity Tour ’09.

I can’t wait to see y’all!

Block(ing) Party!

Sarah Jane Humke

no comments

August 12, 2009

I finished knitting the Feza scarf and immediately decided to block it a bit so that it didn’t look quite so much like a red, green and orange rope around my neck.

Here it is in it’s Soak bath.

Here it is about halfway blocked.

Here it is all pinned up. I didn’t go totally nuts blocking this as soon enough it is going to be wrapped around my neck and, let’s face it, will probably get stuff spilled on it or snotted.

And here it is all done with the coat that it is going to be worn with!

I also finished the Flower Power blanket last week and promised pictures so here it is!!!!

Also, I turned the heel (not very gracefully, but it’s done and done!) of my first sock yesterday so I have to include a picture of it as well. Alas, this sock is not going to fit on either of my feet (and yes, I did try it on both in the vain hope that one of my feet had significantly swelled-up and I had just failed to notice it) so I am going to have to either A.) use them as very boring stockings for the cats or B.) find someone with little feet to give them to. Oh well, I’m just glad that they look reasonably foot shaped! Just so that y’all know, it’s hard to take a picture of a sock!!

Today I worked in the conservatory, trying to get it straightened up and looking good. This also means a rather lot of potting up and dirty work. However, it is going to look great in the end! No pictures yet as it doesn’t look great as of now:-)

I Wanna PACK!!!!!!

Sarah Jane Humke

no comments

August 10, 2009

I keep trying to pack only to find myself stymied by the fact that I am going to need to wear/use some of the items that are still on the list in the remaining 10 days that I am here. I should be outside enjoying what little I have left of the lovely English summer except that the summer is now being so very English! Today, much like the past few weeks, has alternated between overcast and drizzly and has been actually kind of windy and cold-ish. I’m sort of at a loss as to what to do. The Flower Power afghan has been finished for Cesar and Pam (I wove in the one end this morning), the Feza scarf is done and blocked (there will be a post about that as soon as I can take a picture of the finished scarf [the hubby forgot the data disk for the camera in his computer this morning so no photos today!]) and the other scrapghan is getting to the point where it is unwieldy to work on (also, quite hot).

So, I have been trying to get my plants ready for my absence. We did some rearranging in the conservatory to free-up some space. The violets are now nicely arranged mostly on a couple of shelves which will hopefully make it easier to water them (also, to protect them from kitties who think that they make a nice bed!). I plan on moving some of the more tender plants that I have outside into the conservatory before I leave and marking those that I want the hubby to move in prior to the first frost. It’s sort of weird to be thinking about these kind of things in August, but if I don’t, I’ll probably get home to a bunch of plants outside that have been taken by the cold that I wanted to try to keep for next year. It’s one of my weird superstitions that if I prepare for something to happen, it won’t, but if I don’t prepare, it will. It is a good chunk of the reason that it is set-up so that if need be, we, the entire family, are able to evacuate at a moments notice.

Me, OCD? Never….

Travel Plans

Sarah Jane Humke

no comments

August 8, 2009

So, it is now really real. My travel plans are pretty much in carved in soap stone at this point. This means that they are booked but could change due to the varagancies of the Travel Gods. Or weather. I mean, it is autumn in the Midwest not exactly an area known for it’s weather consistancy. Still, I don’t think that I should have too many problems the time of year that I will be there. So, here is the plan as it stands today:

August 21st London to Chicago via Dusseldorf

August 26th Chicago to Iowa

August 28th to October 4th Iowa to Alaska back to Iowa

October 5th Iowa to Orlando

October 10th-ish Orlando to Key West with the hookers

October 15th Orlando to White Plains, NY

October 16-18 RHINEBECK!!!

October 18th White Plains, NY to London via Dusseldorf

I should start calling this the “Traveling Insanity Tour ’09”.

Anybody who wants to meet-up with me on the way just give me a holler in the blog comments!

Another Letter

Sarah Jane Humke

no comments

August 7, 2009

To: The Producers of Battlestar Galactica

From: The Still Disgruntled Fan

Y’all should have had Joss Whedon write the last season of the show. He knows how to write a good ending.

Shopping List

Sarah Jane Humke

2 comments

August 7, 2009

Here is my shopping list for the US so far*:

Kool-Aid Believe it or not they don’t sell this paragon of sugary virtue here at all. However, I don’t want it to drink, I want it to dye with as apparently it makes an excellent wool acid dye that doesn’t smell bad and it pretty non-toxic. It is also something that is good to trade with other fiber freaks (sort of like smokes in the “big house”, ya know?).

Fritos They don’t have Fritos here. This makes it rather difficult to have the chili-with-cheese-and-sour-cream-eaten-with-Fritos meal.

Jeans Everything is sized so differently here. I swear, given the sizing of the jeans, no one has an ass here. They are just sitting on the back of their legs.

Orchid Basket I need this for one of the orchids that they have. I guess maybe I just got used to being in Florida where these are sold at Home Depot. Then again, orchids grow like weeds in the trees there too….

Beads, Buttons and Fabric JoAnn’s, here I come!!!!

IKEA Cat Scratchers I guess that cats here don’t scratch, much like they don’t pee or poop either as evidenced by the lack of clumping cat litter.

Underwear See “Jeans” above.

Yarn/Fiber Duh. I’m going to Rhinebeck dudes.

Lysol I guess that they don’t have germs here either.

Charmin On-The-Go This is a little roll of Charmin that has a hard plastic case. It’s great for traveling. I carried on of these in my purse for a year and it saved my ass many times! Alas, the version that they sell here has a plastic bag type of covering for it and I fear that when the roll gets a little smaller it will be less sturdy and in need of the protection.

Plastic Baggies The baggie culture here isn’t nearly as sophisticated as in the US.

Pepto-Bismol This stuff costs a small treasury here. Seriously, it is mucho expensivo. For what folks living in the States (I’ve become more sensitive to saying “Americans” since I got here. I mean, there are lots and lots of Americans and only some of them come from the US) would consider a “travel sized” bottle you pay something like $20. Dude, this is on the list for Costco!!!!

A Cheap DVD Player Our US DVD player bit the dust a few weeks after we got here. So we got one that would play UK DVDs (yes, they are different, doesn’t that suck on so many levels???) and Tech Support thought that he would be able to break I mean hack it so that it would play all the different DVDs no problem. Alas and alack, it has proven more difficult than that and I have not been able to watch any of my favorite DVDs except on my computer. Doh, suck.

Black Beans There is also not a whole lot of Mexican cooking here. Go figure.

I know this sounds like a hell of a shopping list, but I have 2 large suitcases that are going to be filled mostly with things that are not coming back with me. I’ll give you a hint, there are 2 afghans, a throw blanket, 4 small travel pillows and a passel of large books that aren’t coming back with me. I’m not taking a lot of clothes with me (see “jeans” and “underwear” above) as it is obvious by the length of this trip that I am going to need to hunt down a laundromat at some point in the trip.

*List is subject to change. Change may occur because the writer saw something that she did not think of in the UK or merely because it was “way cool” or “so fraking cheap!”

Moo!!!!!!!

Sarah Jane Humke

4 comments

August 6, 2009

I am so very excited! Today I got my Moo order and I have to share with you! They’re so cute! Here are some pictures:

Cute, but simple, packaging.

Sturdy and reusable case.

Amazingly cute and colorful cards!

My personal set of STICKERS!!!!!!

These are the business cards. The have Moo advertising on the bottom because they are the free ones. If you buy them, they don't have this.

I have to say that my experiance with Moo has been excellent and I would totally get behind anyone who wanted to use them. I saw sellers at Woolfest using the Mini Moo cards as price tags/business cards and it looked really professional.

Good luck to all the Sock Summit folks. Wish I were there…………

(Countdown to The Big Trip [AKA: TBT] 14 days!!!!!)

Just one of those days

Sarah Jane Humke

no comments

August 4, 2009

Today I am having one of those days where everything is going great. You know, one of those days that you think that you really should be working towards world peace as you could probably get it worked out by noon. One of those days that you think that you really should go shopping as you would find the perfect fitting pair of pants on sale!

Today, so far, I have figured out a route for my flights within the US that is both convenient and half of the price that they were going to charge me originally. I guess that “nearby airports” means something different to Midwesterners than it does to normal folk. I was putting DSM into the search feature and when I exchanged that for MSP…. voila! Cheaper flights! This booking had been bothering me for several weeks as it hadn’t yet been booked and not getting any further away.

Another thing that I “mastered” that has been tickling my brain for a bit is combination knitting. When I was at the UK Ravelry day, I found that I had been twisting my stitches as I was doing a bastardized version of both combination knitting and continental. I started working on continental but it still didn’t “feel” right. I mean, it felt more difficult than what I had been doing before. My lace knitting teacher that day sent me a link to Annie Modesitt’s website where pretty detailed instructions for combination knitting are given. So, today I went there and voila! I get it today! I need to refine it a little bit but I think that I just needed to understand a little better what the hell I was doing on the needle to get the differences between the two types of knitting.

So, now I am off to IKEA to try to work some shelving magic so that I can use the space in the conservatory a little bit better. I need to do this before I leave otherwise the Hubby will have a serious time trying to keep all the plants straight and watered and, well, alive.

Toodles!

Ask and you shall recieve

Sarah Jane Humke

no comments

August 3, 2009

So, requests have been made for recipes of the deserts that I have shown here. To tell you the truth I never even thought about posting them despite the fact that all of my neighbors who have gotten some of these goodies have requested the recipes.

So, to start, is the fruit crumble. I got the basic recipe for this from the A Family Cookbook by the First Presbyterian Church of Ackley, Iowa. This is the church that I grew-up in and the recipes were contributed by the members of the church. It works with pretty much any seasonal fruit that you have laying around…

Fruit Crumble

Mix until crumbly:

1 C. Flour (I usually use 1/2 white flour and 1/2 stone ground whole wheat flour from the local watermill. I tried it with a full cup of the whole wheat and it wouldn’t “set” right)

3/4 C. Uncooked Oatmeal (though I usually use a 1 C. measuring cup and just don’t fill it quite to the top as I like it really crumbly)

1 C. Packed Brown Sugar

1/2 C. Melted Butter

1 tsp. Cinnamon

Press 1/2 of crumble mixture in a 9″x9″ pan. Add 4 C. of fruit (can be either fresh or frozen). Cover with this boiled mixture:

1 C. Sugar

1 C. Water

2 T. Cornstarch or Flour

1 tsp. Vanilla

Put the other 1/2 of crumble mix on top. Bake for 1 hour at 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

Another one that I tend to make and are a crowd pleaser are my banana bars.

Banana Bars

3 C. Flour

2 C. Sugar

1 tsp. Baking Soda

1 Pinch of Salt

1 C. Margarine

4 eggs

2 Mashed Ripe Bananas

2/3 C. Milk

2 tsp. Lemon Juice

Cream together dry ingredients with margarine and eggs. Mix in bananas and milk. Add lemon juice last. Pour into a 12″X 20″ baking pan (two 9″X13″ pans should work as well) and bake at 350 degrees F for 30 minutes or until the top is a light golden brown and it is cooked through entirely.

Banana Frosting

2 tsp. Vanilla Extract

4 T. Margarine

4 C. Powdered Sugar

1 Ripe Banana, mashed

Mix all ingredients together until proper consistency.

And last but not least, I found a recipe for English Sticky Toffee. It’s on-line, so I’m just going to post the link. However, I will tell you, it’s not as dificult as it seems (hint: I didn’t do any sifting at all!)

English Sticky Toffee Recipe

So, I think that I’ve given y’all enough for a good sized sugar coma! Have fun!