party recovery

Well, I know I left you hanging there in that last post. Would the dishwasher get fixed? Could she make it all work for the big biology bash??

The simple answer, my friends, is YES. (say this while your fisted hand is pumped quickly down from above your head.) Dishwasher dude came, he was charming, and one $50 seal later, plus $130 in time and labor (20 minutes of labor, including going out to the truck) dishwasher no longer leaked. Fine. I was willing to pay the price.

So, in the middle of my work week, I stopped working around 1 pm on Thursday to prepare for the big event. I made an apple/pear crumble and a fudge brownie pie. I cut up toppings: artichokes, mushrooms, olives, pineapples, feta, mozzerella, peppers, sauteed onions, ...and more. I made enough dough for 5 large cookie sheet pizzas. That's approximately 3.5 lbs of flour. I made sauce. I made salads. I set things up. The guests came a little after 6. I drank a glass of wine while organizing the pizza dough, negotiating toppings, and being official pizza baker. It was all a huge success. At 11 pm, the last guest left. Whew! We'd fed pizza to 12, and everyone seemed happy. (aside from Sally, who was a little overwhelmed by the crowd and a visiting 4 year old who baited her, and she kept doing alarm barks.)

On Friday morning, I was really beat. I worked at the computer, I talked on the phone, and I did this: The hat. It is made out of handspun, mostly. Cranberry Cotswold, White Border Cheviot, and the leftover reject mitten yarn (Icelandic gray, gray alpaca, and dyed silk.) I paired the gray mitten yarn with a commercially spun alpaca for extra warmth. Then, I spun up a lofty alpaca single and crocheted a little extra warmth on the inside. (a certain Dad needs this extra warmth where some of his hair used to be...) The knitted thrum plan didn't work out (blotches of white alpaca everywhere) but the crocheted spiral was a nice addition.

Now, it's finished!


















In a continuing effort to show where I live...The photo above, of the neighborhood during snow showers, offers a different view from our house. The big white house there across the street is divided into apartments, it's mainly section 8 housing (government subsidized housing for poor or sick people, for those of you who aren't US citizens) and is across the street from the former crack house. There's a bit of the crack house on the right of the photo. Someday I'll show you our house built around 1930, which is really quite lovely. It's just that living close to the university and the downtown here is seen as not very nice when you could live in the newly built suburbs, so, most of the professors, etc. don't live here.... I will continue the neighborhood and crack house saga in another post! I did really enjoy the brief snow dusting though. Gotta build up the anticipation. Next post, I'll describe more about "the people in my neighborhood, in my neighborhood, in my neighborhood... YEAH! Who are the people in my neighborhood, the people that you meet, when you're walking down the street, the people that I meet each day!" Wow, that was a little Mr. Rogers for you. I must still be pretty tired.