Lightly Toasted

I got my first sunburn of the year yesterday. I made the trek out to the New Hampshire Renaissance Faire grounds to help get them ready for our upcoming season, and while I made sure to bring sunscreen with me, I didn't bother to put it on once I'd arrived. As a result, my shoulders are a little toasted and tender this evening.

The site's looking good, and next Saturday will be our last big push to get everything ready before the season begins. The faire will be open May 13-14 and 20-21, and I invite all of you to come visit. And next time I'm going to be working outside for any length of time, I'll actually use the darned sunscreen!

Po' Folk Food

Growing up in a thrifty household, we ate a lot of "economical" meals: tuna casserole, hamburger helper, stuff that started with a box of pasta and a can of condensed cream of mushroom soup, and the like. We grew and preserved a lot of produce, made jams and jellies, and while there was meat in every dinner, there wasn't much of it, and it was always an inexpensive cut. We ordered a party-size pizza every Sunday, had a slice each for dinner that night, and the rest got wrapped up for our lunches the rest of the week. Aside from that Sunday-night pizza, the weekly grocery budget for our family of four (plus at least two cats) was $100 well into the late '90s, and Mom made it work.

As a result of this upbringing, I acquired some unusual food-related affections. The one that's probably the least healthy for me is also one that few people are familiar with: P&P loaf. It's essentially bologna with bits of pickles and pimentos in it, and it's got a distinctive, tangy flavor (sort of like the difference between Miracle Whip and mayonnaise). Along with things like licorice and Moxie, you either love it or hate it, there is no middle ground... and I love it. I don't let myself get it very often, because it's so processed, but every now and then it's something of a treat.

The good thing about having been raised this way is that I know how to weather economic downturns and tight personal budgets without resorting to things like ramen (which is absurdly high in sodium) or boxed mac-n-cheese (which we ate, but only after it had been doctored with some real cheese and a little bacon or ham, and always with two different vegetables on the side), and I can do all sorts of creative and tasty things with a couple of veggies, a little meat, and some pasta or rice.

The downside is that sometimes I do weird things (like drain a can of tuna and mix it with mayonnaise and sweet relish to make sandwich filling, or eat cold pizza straight out of the fridge) or have odd preferences (like p&p loaf), and people look at me weird or turn up their noses in disgust. But hey, to each their own. I'll keep eating my po' folk food, and y'all can eat whatever you like -- and maybe we'll find some common ground along the way and start swapping recipes.

Bevy of Beauties

At Jane's request (hi, Jane!), I have some knitting photos for y'all today.

First off, my Venation shawl, which you've seen before, but my good camera takes much better pictures than my tablet:



It's especially pretty close up:



Next up, the Colonnade shawl that you may remember me working on a month or two ago:



Also prettier close up:



There's this one, which I finished a while back and call SockTooth:



And this rustic beauty that I'm calling Old Orchard, after the colorway of the Gnomespun fiber used to make it:



Such interesting colors in it:



I've got a few hats that are awaiting blocking (a soak and a stretch to even out stitches), and I'll share them with you when they're ready.

Slow Days

Slow days at work are rough. Monday and Tuesday were great, with enough orders coming in that I knew I'd have stuff to do the next morning, but today things petered out around lunchtime, and it was a struggle to find things to do until it was time to go home. I swept, I restocked, I did some production, I cleaned one of the bathrooms, I packed orders that don't ship until next week... and I was thankful to have a job where occasionally not having enough to do is the biggest problem.

Flying Solo

Because of the deep and complicated trust issues in my family, it always surprises me when someone demonstrates trust in me. At my last job, the boss sent me out to the gas station to get fuel for the generator we had on the job site, and he handed me the company credit card to pay for it. My mother's voice rang out in my head, asking if the boss was insane, because I could charge all kinds of things to that card and be gone before he found out. Being a responsible and mature person, I would never do such a thing, but the "this person trusts me not to do such a thing" thought is always a bit of a surprise.

Today I was told to take one of the company vans and go down to the loading dock (on the other side of town) to meet a delivery truck. Our production facility is a) on a steep hill, and 2) on a road with a hairpin turn, so while the oil, garbage, and UPS trucks can make it, a tractor trailer can't, and we get some of our bulk ingredients delivered by such vehicles. So we rent a loading dock at the other end of town, the truckers call us 15 minutes before they pull up to the dock, and someone takes one of the vans over to meet them and unload the shipment. I'd done this twice with other staff members, but figured it would be a few more times before I had to do it by myself. Turns out today was the day.

Everything went smoothly, but it was still a bit of a shock to be sent out on my own. It's nice to know that my employers find me trustworthy, even if it does get my mother's voice going in my head every time.

It's A Bird, It's A Plane, It's A... Lawnmower?

One of the things I love about the village in which I live is that, at night, all I hear is the river. Sure, there's the occasional vehicle passing through, and there used to be live music at the bar behind me (but the bar's closed now, and up for rent, if anyone's interested), but aside from that... just the river.

So when I distinctly heard the sound of a small engine just now, I was a bit befuddled. At first it sounded a bit like a lawnmower, and I wondered why anyone would be mowing their lawn at 9:30 at night, but then it changed direction and seemed to pass overhead, so I re-thought my guess and decided it was probably a small plane. Why anyone would be flying over this little hollow in the dark is beyond me. There are a couple of airstrips not too far away, but I almost never hear or see planes here, and this is the first time in three years that I've heard a plane at night.

Curiouser and curiouser.

Family

I know some of you like having pictures to go with the stories I tell, so here you are. My mother, grandfather, and grandmother:

And me with my grandparents:

My grandmother usually wears glasses, but didn't want them covering her eyes (she has the photosensitive lenses that darken when she goes outdoors), so she's squinting a little to be able to see the person taking the picture.

For a little historical perspective, this is my grandfather after his first tour of duty during WWII:

I'm so glad I got to see my grandparents. I was worried, when Grandpa was in the hospital in February, that I wouldn't get the chance to see him, so this was a precious opportunity.