...4.30...W.I.P. Wednesday...

...Mom had given me this cream coloured toboggan the last time I was up visiting...and said that she wanted some flowers embroidered across the front...to hold the fold in place...and to make it prettier...of course...

...so I just started with some little clusters of french knots in a bright yellow...and then started making lazy daisy petals around those...

...Mom had actually given me the embroidery thread...

...so I just used the colours she had chosen for that...

...and then I went back and added a few more red french knots and then did little white petals around those to fill things in a bit....and then using the green...I went back and embroidered some little leaf coloured vines twining around the flowers...

...I was really happy with how it turned out and I've already mailed it to her and she likes it a lot...

...what's in your workbasket this week?...

...Link to previous updated post...with no pictures...3.19 - W.I.P. Wednesday...

~Have a lovely day!

...4.29...Tuesdays with Julia...

...we made the *VEGAN POULET POÊLÉ À L’ESTRAGON...the asterisk is just there to tell you that this recipe can be made ahead...

...we served it with rice and peas...and we liked it a lot...

...all of the particulars are over at The Vegan Version...

~Have a lovely day!

...and here's a link to a previous pictureless post...3.18...Tuesdays with Julia

...4.28...Over the Weekend...

...weekend breakfast was a homemade english muffin with a tofu egg (baked slice of tofu sprinkled with kala namak (black salt) and pepper...vegan cheese and vegan bacon bits...and tea...

...then we headed out early to get the shopping done...

...nothing unusual and store shelves still stocked...

...and then we spent the aftenoon putting out the pine straw mulch out front...

...it's a harder job than it looks like...lots of squatting and bending and lifting...

...because you kind of have to 'tuck' the pine straw up under the bushes a little bit...

...and around small plants as well...we were happy that the coral bells survived the winter...and the deer...haha...

...I wish you could just step out onto my back porch and smell this jasmine...it's divine...

...a little garden update...I'll be running the strings soon for the rattlesnake beans to climb up on...and I'll also be harvesting all of the colourful carrots soon...before they flower for sure...I've pulled up a couple and they are still quite small...but maybe they are just a small variety...I'm afraid that they'll get woody if I leave them much longer...and it will...of course...be more carrots than I had before...haha...

...this is the hanging planter that Mom gave us last year...and I had put it in the garage over the winter because Mom keeps her wandering jew plants in the pumphouse over the winter...but she WATERS them...and I did not...so mine did not return...but surprisingly the Mandevilla that she had put in the center is coming back...and she said she'd give me some more wandering jew when I cup up to visit...

...I think the only food prep I did for the week was an Instant Pot full of garbanzo beans...

...link to previous photo-less post...3.17...over the weekend...

~Wishing you a lovely start to your week!

...4.26...Dinner and Movie...

...starting with some Blogger comments...

...to my sweet sissie Karen who blogs from her boat at McCraw Sails...Hey K...so happy that you got another visit with Richard...and I'm glad your friends are back at the dock...that window job looks daunting and messy...but I'm sure it will turn out perfectly...Love, T...

...to karen from Pumpkin Sunrise...Hi Karen...I know what you mean about the shopping...I do much better if I'm not actually looking for a specific thing...and your Christening blanket is going to be so beautiful...such a pretty pattern...

...to Éphée from L'éphémère quotidienneté des repas et autres trucs de magie...Hi Éphée...your taquitos look amazing...I'm sure they would be a favorite of Our Airman...he loved taquitos when he was little...

...to Penny from Snap That Penny...Hi Penny...your Easter celebration sounds lovely...sheet pan dinners are such a good idea...and your spring trees budding and blooming are so pretty...

...I know I said I was going to start my Shakespeare anthology...but I sort of went down a rabbit hole after reading on Leslie's blog A Friend to Knit with...that she was making Aureliano by Claudia Quintanilla...so of course I hopped over to Ravelry to see the pattern... and I read this in the notes...

Named after a character from Gabriel García Márquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” this sweater is a nod to the novel that profoundly shaped my view of reality. Aureliano, the founder of the magical town of Macondo, the most beautiful city imagined in literature, symbolizes the book’s enchanting realism. This piece captures the essence of seeing the world through a magical lens, where every detail holds a deeper meaning. - Claudia Q

...and so I thought...Wow...that must be a pretty powerful book...and believe it or not my library has a copy...it was a Columbian novel written in 1962...so I'm reading a translation...it's an existentialist novel with a bunch of characters...so the family tree is kind of necessary...haha...it's good...not a quick read though...

...and Breakfast for Dinner...love that...

...and the movie was an old Doris Day movie...Don't Eat the Daisies...listed as a comedy...and I suppose it had some funny bits...but it wasn't hilarious...and parts of it were pretty serious with friend betrayals and such...

...what have you been watching and reading lately?...

~Have a lovely weekend...

...4.25...Friday Favorites...

...I've been enjoying this ginger tea at night...it doesn't have caffeine...

...and I'd dropped some salsa on one of my favorite striped shirts...so I made a little batch of bleach gel an dabbed it onto the white stripes just where the stains were...and it worked perfectly...

...I've posted about it before...I don't keep this gel...but just make some whenever I need it...

Bleach Gel

1/4 Cup water 1 Tbsp cornstarch 2 Tbsp bleach

...and here's a link to a previously photo-less post...3.15...Dinner and a Movie...

~Have a lovely day!

...4.24...Delicious Vegan Food we ate...

link to previous

...we got Chinese takeout...delivered...so much fun...

...btw...did you know that MaPo tofu is a deceptive dish as it almost always contains meat...this restaurant has a vegan version though...

...what delicious food have you been eating lately?...

~Have a lovely day!

...link to old post...3.13...Delicious Vegan Food we ate...

...4.23...W.I.P. Wednesday...

...you knew I was keeping the 3X sweatpants didn't you...haha...

...after I washed them in super hot water...the first thing I did was to get out my little fabric shaver...and shaved off all of the little nubs...

...a lot of fuzzy shavings...the red is left over from the last thing I shaved...

...so this is one of those garments that has a wide band of elastic stitched all the way around...so I don't really want to take the entire waistband off...

...so I just ripped the stitches at each side and the back from the waistband and the three rows of stitching through the elastic...

...and then stitched up and removed the extra fabric...

...and these are the skinnier sweatpants...

...by far the most difficult part of this was putting the drawstring back in...but I finally taped the drawstring to a long tapestry needle and that worked well...

...and succeeded in getting it all the way around...

...what's in your workbasket this week?...

~Have a lovely day!

...and here's today's retro post...3.12...W.I.P. Wednesday...

...4.22...Tuesdays with Julia...

...this week we made the second of the celeriac recipes with the celery root that we'd gotten at Mom's local grocery store...VEGAN CÉLERl-RAVE BRAISÉ...

...it's a little bit like turnips...and maybe parsnips too...it's still not my favorite vegetable though...

...and all of the particulars are over at The Vegan Version...

~Have a lovely day!

...and here's the link to another post you've not seen yet...the Tuesdays with Julia post from March 11...(well...you've seen the post...it just didn't have any pictures...

...4.21...Over the Weekend...

...I can post photos...

...I'm cheating though...I actually created a whole new blog that's private and I'll probably never actually publish anything to it...and I upload the photos there in html mode and then cut and paste them into Affectioknit...so far it's working...I'm going to try and go back and upload photos to all of the posts I missed...but I'm a little bit daunted by that task...

...maybe I'll do one a day and post a link to it with the new post...that shouldn't be too overwhelming...

...we started with the weekly shopping...

...a lot of normal stuff...they were completely out of the little bundles of cilantro...so I gathered all of the loose bits into a bag...

...and then because it wasn't a neat little bouquet that I could put in a jar in the fridge...I needed to process it right away...

...so I took all the leaves off the stems...

...and just gave them a pulse in the food processor...

...actually a few pulses to get the consistency that I wanted...

...and then I packed it into my little muffin tin...so I could freeze little hockey pucks to use to make guacamole...

...juiced some limes...

...and spooned that over the chopped cilantro...to help hold everything together...

...ready for the freezer...

...when they were frozen...I popped them out of the muffin tin...

...and just store them in a freezer bag...and then it's easy to pull one out to make a batch of guacamole...

...and while we were out...we stopped at the thrift store...specifically because I wanted to get some of these foam mats...and I was pleasantly amazed that they actually had four of them...perfect...I love it when the universe gives me what I need...haha...and of course I picked up a couple of other things too...there was an empty bin...and I use these in the garage all the time...and a strainer that I thought would fit our Magma pot system...

...I'm going to draw white lines on this black side to make a grid pattern to pin my knitting to for blocking...

...so I took it out to the driveway...

...and gave it a good scrub...

...both sides...it's in really good shape...

...and I stood it up on the porch to get good and dry...I'll store it in the attic between uses...and I'll have to get a white sharpie to draw the grid pattern...

...and then I scrubbed the steamer basket...

...and tried it out on our pots...and the smallest ring fits the smallest pot...

...and the middle ring fits the mid-size pot...

...and the largest ring fits the biggest pot...again...I'm so thankful that the universe gave me the exact strainer to fit all my pots...

...and the final thing that I got was a pair of sweats...I just grabbed them at the last minute because I thought they were cute and would be good workout pants...I did hold them up to myself...and I liked the croppiness of the legs...and the fact that they had POCKETS...all pants should have pockets in my opinion...but the Man said those are way too big for you...and I said nonsense...they have a drawstring...

...well...they are actually rather huge...size 3X...so maybe I'll 'fix' them to fit me...but I may just re-donate them...haha...

~Wishing you a lovely start to your week!...I'm so happy to be back to posting normally...