Happy Thanksgiving, Y'all!

I hope that everyone else who celebrates our American Holiday O' Gluttony is as stuffed with wonderful food as I am! We had a lovely heirloom turkey cooked with garlic, butter and fresh herbs; collard greens and red kale sauteed in olive oil with garlic and toasted pine nuts; oven-roasted brussel sprouts; ridiculously sweet sweet potato casserole (I tried to cut the sweetness a little bit by using barley malt and molasses in place of half the sugar, but it was still pretty darn sweet); mashed potatoes with sour cream; green bean casserole; cranberry dressing made with my ever-improving homemade bread; homemade cranberry sauce; homemade turkey gravy; chocolate cream pie; and pumpkin pie made from scratch using real pumpkin straight from the shell, topped with freshly whipped cream. Yum! I had more fun in the kitchen this year...

My cooking obsession continues unabated. My mom is visiting right now, and she's loving every bite. This week I've made lots of bread, rolls, breadsticks, pumpkin muffins, pumpkin soup (had to use up all that fresh pumpkin!), azuki bean and sweet potato salad, Chinese 5-Spice stir-fry, amazing from-scratch brownies (I don't remember the last time I made brownies not from a box), granola, Ancient Grain cereal, sauerkraut (this is still "cooking" in the basement), and a bunch of other stuff I can't remember. We also opened up a jar of my pickled beets (remember them from the comedy-of-errors canning session?) and they turned out amazing.

I've also been doing some knitting, although it all seems to be for fun and function rather than work. We've been trying to keep our heat lower this winter to save some energy, so I decided I was finally going to make myself some felted clogs. The nice thing is I'm fast enough now that I could whip them up in an evening in front of the TV. They turned out great! I'd show you a picture but my browser is not cooperating tonight and the photo upload pop-up refuses to pop up. Sigh. My laptop needs some serious help!

In addition to the felted slippers, I also made Sydney a Little Cable Hoodie and pair of Ballerina Slippers of her very own. I realized that Owen doesn't have any mittens that fit him, so I knit him up a pair with a skein of Wool Ease Quick n' Thick that was sitting on my office shelf for some unknown reason. I decided to make him a hat, too, but I didn't start it until after he was asleep so it ended up waaaay too big. He has a big head, but not quite that big. Fortunately my mom loves it so I gave it to her (the only problem is that now she wants matching mittens, and she's leaving on Saturday - I'd better get busy!).

We'll see if this post will actually publish. And I'll try to get back in the next couple weeks (I'll try for days, but you know me - no promises!) with some pictures. I'll have to get the kids to sit still long enough to get photos of their stuff!

Obsess much?

I had coffee with my new friend and fellow designer Leila (who hopefully will be adding her talent to the Gardiner Yarn Works pattern line very soon) yesterday and I sort of had a revelation about why I'm not feeling the design mojo so much lately. It's because of my obsessiveness. I get obsessive about stuff that I'm interested in, and I can really only obsess over one thing at a time.

When I first started to design knitting patterns, there were so many things to obsess about. When am I going to get published? When am I going to get published in Interweave? How do I start my own pattern line? How do I grow my pattern line without going broke? How do I set up my website? How do I set up a shopping cart? How do I lay out my patterns in InDesign? How do I do my own graphics in Illustrator? How do I get yarn shops to buy my patterns? How do I get knitters to make my patterns?

Lately, it seems like I've been running out of these types of questions with respect to knitting. I've even cracked the final frontier at long last (assuming I don't jinx myself and get cut from the winter issue)! Instead, my obsessive tendencies have focused on other things - mostly food. With my lack of cooking knowledge, I've got a lot to learn when it comes to food. My living green obsession has also started to rear its cute little head again (poor Bill is being driven nuts with all my fun little changes around the house in order to get us living "greener", like power strips that turn off our internet hub and upstairs cable box when we're not using them, which sucks when you crawl into bed, get all cozy and reach for the remote only to realize that the bleeping power strip, which is across the room, is off...).

Can I manage to get through the day without driving at all? (Today, the answer was yes!) How much Oregon produce can I get at the store this time of year? (Swiss chard, collard greens, cabbage, rainbow carrots, spinach, lots and lots of apples and pears, broccoli...) Can I shop only the bulk foods aisle, the produce section and the meat department at the store? (Almost...but I still have to get the kids their darn bunny crackers.) Do we like acorn squash? (Not so much, it seems.) What's quinoa and how do I use it? (Still TBD!) Can I compost this? And what do I do with compost once I have it? (Yeah, I know you're supposed to put it on the garden - I'm not daft!)

I have to say, my new obsession with biking and eating has really paid off. I've lost nearly 20 lbs, I can ride up the big hill below our house with Owen in the trailer and not feel like I'm going to have a heart attack, I'm not nearly as sweaty (and it occurs to me that I was sweating like a pig in late summer because my body was trying to get rid of all those toxins) and I'm not dead tired by 3 pm anymore.

The kids are also benefiting - they're eating a lot more variety than they used to (it's embarassing to think of how many meals of plain white rice they ate when we ordered in Thai food over the past couple of years), and Sydney actually admits to liking spinach! This is the girl who for the longest time refused to eat anything from a plant, even berries. She's making great progress (and Owen continues to eat just about anything as he has since the day he was born).

Now the question is, how do I get my designing obsession back? I'm still very happy to knit, but I'm just not as into all the rest of it. Where's my mojo? Have I finally burned out after working like a fiend for the past few years? I'm guessing that this too shall pass, and in the meantime my family's pretty happy with the homemade food and the clean house. I'll be delighted to get within kicking distance of my pre-pregnancy weight without actually going on a crazy diet! More veggies and more exercise - who knew that would actually work?

Let's try for some coherence this morning...

So, yesterday was all about tears of joy and grinning like an idiot at any stupid little thing (I even cried during Bush's morning speech, which has never happened before - well, I've never cried tears of joy, anyway). And nagging adominal discomfort...but we won't go there. I suspect Owen picked this bug up when I took him to the doctor for his flu shot on Thursday morning and I am not pleased about it. Anyway, I realize yesterday's post was all over the place and didn't really express what I was feeling very well. Please forgive me - I haven't eaten in a week!

This clip from my favorite political show pretty much sums it up better than I ever could:



We're back, baby! America is back in business, showing herself to be a global force to be reckoned with instead of a bully to be scorned. I'm sorry to be so off the rails these days, but I am just so proud of all of us - each and every one, including the McCain supporters (apart from the ones who are blatantly racist and still insist that Obama is a Muslim terrorist...they can kiss my grits) - who turned out to vote in record numbers and showed that we haven't lost our idealism and fresh-faced optimism. And that white people will vote for a black candidate, even though we still have plenty of race issues to work through as a nation. And that smear campaigns and the politics of fear don't fool us anymore.

I know that we have a lot to work through over the next four years, and I'm sure Obama is going to screw up just like every president does. However, I am just so delighted that we've resoundingly decided to look to the future rather than clinging to what's familiar and seems safe but hasn't been working. I am so proud of us!

And now I have a little something for my mom, who has been waiting oh so patiently to see the kids' Halloween pictures. Here they are - my little dragon and mermaid!



Note that the dragon (who everyone thought was a frog until he turned around and showed them his wings) already has a chocolate-covered face... Our neighbor brought over goodie bags for the kids before we went out trick-or-treating and of course they immediately tore into them.

Sydney's school does a Halloween Parade every year, so we all went to see all the kiddos in their costumes. Here's our girl, looking frighteningly grown up!



And this has nothing to do with Halloween, but it does have to do with Bill's mad construction skillz. Check out the kids' new play structure which was designed on-the-fly and built by their dad!



Here it is being put to good use...



Now, keep your fingers crossed for us that we kick this stupid bug! I am so very ready to feel normal again!

Thank you, America!

Last night, the cynicism that has been building in me over the past eight years finally flew the coop. My faith in the American people and their love of their country is restored. We decided against fear, suspicion and xenophobia and embraced our futures with open arms. We've got a lot of healing to do, no doubt, but we picked the right guy to do it, I have no doubt.

I know that Obama's victory, while sound, was not a total landslide. Many, many people voted for McCain and while I think that John McCain is a patriot and wants to do the right thing for his country, his campaign showed that he wasn't the right man for the job. He wasn't the McCain of 2000 - he let himself be molded and dragged around by the same people who worked so hard to destroy our democracy over the past 8 years. He didn't make the right decision about his running mate. His campaign took the low road while Obama's campaign for the most part stuck to their message and stayed out of the mud. They weren't perfect, but there were many, many things that the campaign could've gone after that they didn't touch. Even though Bush is on record as having been the Worst President Ever, McCain still ran his campaign straight from the Bush/Rove playbook. And he lost because of it.

Our country is still very much divided between red and blue. I don't think it ever will or should be any different. Even though I like the theoretical idea of a permanent Democratic majority, I think it would be very harmful to our democracy. We need people of all political stripes to keep us on our toes. What we don't need is a president like we've had for the past eight years, who systematically dismantles the controls that the founding fathers put in place to keep our democracy running. If I sound like a bit of a conspiracy theorist, it's because I started reading a little book called The End of America last week. I had to put it down until after the election because it was scaring the crap out of me. Everyone should read this book to see why Bush truly was the Worst President Ever. I don't think McCain would've necessarily wanted to follow in Bush's footsteps, but McCain has shown himself to be easily manipulated and brash in his decision making. We need someone who will clean up Bush's mess, and I'm so glad we've got him.

To any McCain supporters who've managed to read this far (kudos to you if you have!), I know it's hard to read things like this that you probably don't agree with at all. I know, because I've been reading concerns posted in various places by McCain supporters who think the world is going to end now that Obama has been elected. Let me try to reassure you. Obama is not going to tax you into oblivion. If you have a low or moderate income or a small business, you'll probably save money when Obama implements his tax plan. If you make over $250,000 per year, you can probably afford the extra $3000 or so you'll pay under his plan. I just ran our income through the Obama tax cut calculator, which you can find at his tax page, and our family will be paying over $1000 less in taxes under his plan. Go check out what you will save!

Of course, there are those with small businesses who "make" over $250,000 per year. The key terms here are "gross" vs "net". Obama is not going to suddenly start taxing businesses on gross, which is something that has been implied. If you net more than $250,000 from your business, congrats! That means you're probably grossing a couple million dollars and have a very successful business. There's this theory that taxing people a bit more on incomes over $250,000 is going to suddenly bring the economy to a halt and force people to stop hiring, but I would think that businesses would be encouraged to hire people, give them raises, etc. because that would mean they'd get a tax deduction for those employee expenses and wouldn't have to pay more taxes.

And now I'm going to stop rambling - why am I up posting this at 6:30 AM PST anyway? Stomach flu. Owen was the first to succumb and woke us up early Saturday morning with the barfies. We thought he'd just had too much Halloween candy until Sydney came down with the same thing on Sunday. Then I got hit with it and am still trying to recover. Both the kids are home from school because it just won't quit, and we're all quite miserable. I've been up since 4 because I just generally feel icky. It's going to be another fun day, I can feel it. The only good thing about it is that I slept most of the day on Monday, meaning I wasn't able to spend the day obsessing and predicting doom and gloom regarding the upcoming election. Aren't I lucky?