At last - some knitting

I really must finish these socks in the next few weeks. My cotton/elastic ones made from elann esprit are rapidly wearing out, many of them having been darned already. I want a new pair to take on holiday.

The other day, I felt like a change of pace and piled all the thrifted bulky acrylic into a box and brought it up to the living room. I got out my #35 knitting needles and starting knitting with three strands of the yarn. That's 25 stitches on the needles on the left! I thought I might make pet blankets and take them to the SPCA.

What a difference from the socks and their skinny needles and yarn.

Cass at Shut Up I'm Counting mentioned elann Pegasus on her blog today. I'm very interested in getting some of this yarn, so I think I'm going to have to put in an order soon. I have a few yarn credits due to me at elann.

Oh, and while you're on the computer, follow up that link to Cass's blog as she's having a 555th blog post contest. Tell her I sent you.

The benefits of homeschooling

I love the way homeschooled kids get to mix with people of all ages and be comfortable around them.

Yesterday, my friend's older son celebrated his 17th birthday. He invited a few friends over for pizza followed by a couple of games at Planet Lazer (this is a place where the kids run around in a darkened room with loud music, blasting away at each other with laser gun-type things). Sort of like indoor paintball!

There were a couple of 17 year olds, a couple of 13 year olds, and my three, who are 16, 12 and 9. The birthday boy couldn't imagine inviting just one of my boys, so he invited them all. Where else would you find a 9 year old at a 17 year old's birthday party, if not within a group of homeschoolers?

Many parents who send their kids to school seem to think that spending most of their day with a large crowd of their peers is getting them "socialized". I prefer our way - my boys have friends aged 6 to 80, and that results in a rich social life and an ease around adults that is good to see.

Congratulations

My husband has such confidence in our abilities that when my son and I returned home Friday night we found this banner adorning the shelving in our utility room - right in front of us as we walked in the door.


The funny thing is that we didn't even notice it. My youngest had to point it out!


We haven't received our black belts yet. Apparently everyone who tested did pass, but new belts won't be handed out until next week. Our plain black belts will be replaced later by fancy ones embroidered with our names.

In class last night, we started learning the first of three patterns that we have to know for our second Dan test. It's called Gae-Baek and looks something like the one on this site. Although our school is part of the International Chang Hon Taekwondo Federation, our style is slightly different from that demonstrated on these videos.

What's for dinner?

Whenever my kids ask me what's for dinner, I usually say, "Food"! Drives them nuts!!

Anyway, knowing that they like rice noodles, I made a noodle salad today. I thought it looked lovely - I made sure to add lots of colourful ingredients, like radishes, bell peppers, green onions and blanched kale. I made a dressing with olive oil, sesame oil, tamari, lemon juice, ginger, rice vinegar - haven't a clue what the amounts were, I just tossed them in until it tasted right. Pretty or not, the younger two took one look and decided not to eat it!

I also made a lettuce salad and a tomato/pickle/olive salad which were more acceptable.

And the dessert (top of the picture) was only rejected by one kid. I can't give out the recipe as it's from one of my books - Raw Gourmet. But I can tell you that it's a raw version of date squares, but way better than the baked ones. The top and bottom layers are made with almonds and steelcut oats, ground up and mixed with maple syrup (or in this case rice syrup). The filling is made from fresh Medjool dates soaked in orange juice and blitzed in the food processor.

I read in the Vegetarian Times magazine that all almonds have to be pasteurized before consumption in North America because of two cases of salmonella. TWO! What about all the cases that have resulted from people eating flesh foods? Now that the almonds are heated above 118 degrees Fahrenheit, they are not really raw, as they cannot be sprouted. I'd like to be given the choice between raw and unpasteurized. The irony is that if the almonds are being exported, they don't have to be treated. That's nuts!

Introspection

I’ve had an emotionally draining time the last few days. Well, probably the last few months actually, when you consider I was working my way towards my black belt test and all the pressures that entailed.

I thought that once my black belt test was over, I would feel a huge weight lift off my shoulders. I did, for a while. I now have more time to knit, read all my library books, play Tetris on L’s DS Lite, and look forward to my holiday in a few weeks’ time.

However, I am a sensitive type (well, before someone calls me on that, sometimes I miss cues from others that something may be wrong, partly perhaps because my hearing is not as good as it could be and I don’t pick up on the nuances of the conversation). But as I was saying, I’m sensitive when it comes to taking things personally. My regular instructor (not the same person as the instructor who conducted the testing on Friday night and confirmed I had passed the test) made a comment about it being an “OK” test, and I then began to think back to what I could have done better (even though there were four of us). Instead of focussing on the positive, there I am beating myself up mentally and wondering whether tonight’s Taekwondo class will involve a number of criticisms of what we did wrong.

I will have to remember to take any criticism as a way of improving my Taekwondo and not a personal attack.

That’s something I find really hard, and I’m so grateful to my friend, who I was on the phone with for at least an hour last night. She is a wise woman who always has a considered opinion to share.

I was in tears at least twice during that conversation, and considering that she is going through chemotherapy she could have said to me, “What’s your problem, at least you don’t have cancer!” But she’d never do that.

I had one of those experiences last week where you mentally step back and think, “Woah, where did THAT come from?” In the phone conversation with my friend, she affirmed for me that I was justified in feeling hurt, though she reminded me that usually when someone says something it often has to do with what’s going on in their lives, and they didn’t necessarily mean to hurt you.

However, even though I know that, the pain in my chest from the constant thoughts running around in my head has been worse than any physical aches and pains resulting from fighting black belts on Friday night. It’s a good thing that I have this physical outlet for my frustration, because otherwise I think I’d have an ulcer by now!

You won’t see me over at Four Friends and a Blog any more - I have decided to focus on this blog from now on. I like posting frequently and to do this blog justice I don’t want to have to divide my time. I will try not to be so gloomy in future!

Black belt testing - photos

Me breaking with side kick

K breaking with side kick

Me, sparring with gear on, including sexy gumshield

K pad kicking

Me, spinning flying outward crescent kick

Me, step sparring

Patterns

Click on the pictures to make them bigger. You will see I have blurred out the faces of the other people.

I made it!

I did it! I passed my black belt test this evening. And so did my 12 year old son, and he tested not as a junior but as a full black belt (normally you have to be 13 or over to do that).

The last few weeks have been quite stressful. I had watched part of someone else's test before, so sort of knew what to expect, but I was rather nervous about it all. I have been studying the manual, learning the theory (such as the history of Taekwondo and the meanings of the patterns) and working on the physical side of it in class and at home.

Today I managed to eat a little but the butterflies were getting in the way.

K and I arrived at the dojang just after 6.30pm, expecting a bit of a wait, but as it turned out the examiner had whizzed through the previous belt colours and was already testing the blue belts, so we were next. We started our test at about 7.30 and finished at about 9.45pm.

We had to perform nine patterns - I made a mistake in the very first one, but thankfully most of the rest were fine. Then we did pad kicking, then step sparring (which is stepping back and forth with set attacks and defences, not hard, but challenges the memory because there are 27 combinations to remember, plus you have to have prepared some of your own.

We had to do self defence techniques, including getting away from two guys, one holding each arm. We had to put on the protective equipment for the sparring - I even had my mouth guard in, because things can get a little crazy when those black belts start going at you. Actually, it was a lot of fun, the atmosphere was good - I did get bopped on the nose at one point, but it's OK now!

At the end was the board-breaking and theory. I was able to recite the history of Taekwondo perfectly and answer the examiner's other questions. K was a little slow off the mark with a couple of the questions - long silences while I willed him to say something.

At first, I didn't have a lot of success with the board-breaking. When I tried the 3 board side kick, the back board broke but the others didn't. The examiner checked the stack of boards and found that some were way heavier than others - they hadn't been cut in advance and dried out so they were absorbing the impact rather than snapping in half. When he chose the lighter boards, I was able to break two at a time with a knife hand and two at a time with my side kick, and one with a spinning back kick. I didn't succeed on the 360 back kick or the flying side kick. K broke most of his boards.

Because of the shortage of good boards, we didn't have to do the 4 way kick or the double board break in the air with the feet.

The test went by fast. It didn't seem as gruelling as I'd been led to believe. There are enough less active segments where you can get your breath back. So I will get a plain black belt at first, but in a few weeks I'll have a new dobok (uniform) and a black belt with my name embroidered on it.

Of course, I can't relax just because I achieved this rank. This is only First Dan of a total of nine. I am now an Assistant Instructor and not only will I be helping to teach others in class but I'll have three new patterns to learn. However, the Second Dan test won't be for at least 30 months, so there's plenty of time.

I really must go to bed now - I have a headache, and whilst I am only aware of a scraped ankle (from a board) and a bruised hand (from a board) at the moment, I may wake up in the morning with a few aches and pains. It's worth it, however, to know that I passed my test!

Oh, and my friend Anne came to watch (yay, my cheerleader, minus the pompoms) and took a bunch of photos with my camera. I haven't looked at them yet. I'll upload them in the morning. For now, it's time to try and get some sleep.

On food intolerance and nagging

Here's an update since my whine about my oldest son. I mentioned he seemed to sniff and clear his throat a lot. He would eat a lot of oranges and grapefuit every night, but had mentioned that he didn't want to eat them any more because they were making him feel sick. So I stopped buying them and, guess what, after a few days he seemed to have lost the sniffles. However they came back, and now I suspect tomatoes. He eats a lot of canned tomatoes and commercial salsa and I think a couple of weeks of not eating them will do him good. Maybe we can reintroduce them later on and see if he notices any effect.

I did get a heavy tome out of the library on food allergy and intolerance, but it didn't really help. I was hoping to be able to look up a food and its likely symptoms, but of course everyone has a different reaction to different foods.

I made a decision yesterday that I would try to keep my mouth shut around my dear son if it was something I'd said before. In other words, if I had something new to say, fine, but if it was another nagging session about how he should be getting more exercise or whatever, then zip it, mum!

My friend Amanda told me that she had tried a new way of doing things. If a mess was bothering her, she would clear it up rather than nag her son to do it. She felt a lot better. At the time, I responded that I would feel resentful either way. If I nag L to clear up the food mess around his computer, I feel resentful that he doesn't do it immediately, if at all. If I do it, I feel resentful that I feel like a maid! Lose lose for me.

However yesterday I was washing dishes and decided that while the water was hot I would go downstairs and get any plates or whatever from the computer room and quietly (without being a martyr) remove them and wash them. I felt good - I knew that the dishes were all clean, there wasn't a smelly pile of stuff downstairs, and I didn't have to nag L to do it. That wasn't so hard. Thanks Amanda!

You learn something new every day!

I learned something this week. If you want to rant, sometimes it’s a good idea to type it into an Appleworks document and leave it on your “desktop” overnight. It gives you a sense of perspective and means that you are less likely to say something you’ll regret in public!

So this post is a very different version from the original, but that’s a good thing!

I also learned that it’s very easy to find something that will support your point of view. Google the subject you want to read about, and there’ll be a million sites with a million points of view, so you’re bound to find one that says what you wanted to hear.

So I might google “the benefits of a vegan diet” and find some very reassuring articles and research which support my beliefs, and if I choose I can then refer to this “evidence” when arguing my point with others.

We don’t like it when others disagree with us, do we? Or is it just me? I have had someone disagree with me twice in an online forum this week, stating that she has read that vegan and/or raw diets are not sustainable or optimally healthy and that there is no evidence that our ancestors ate that way.

Of course, my hackles rose and I started typing up my rant ready for publication.

Then I had second thoughts.

I realise that I have read much to support my point of view, both online and in books. She has done her own reading, which obviously comes to a different conclusion.

We can try to make assumptions on how our ancestors lived, how early humans ate, from archaeological finds. We can make assumptions on what the human body is designed to eat based on the fact that our digestive system is similar to a herbivore’s and totally different from a carnivore’s. Some people use religious texts as their “proof”, but that has no influence on me, as I do not subscribe to any organised religion.

So I have decided that in future I will keep it simple. When someone asks me why I am vegan or eat a lot of raw food, I will keep the answers personal. My personal reasons cannot be refuted, argued or questioned (although people will undoubtedly try).

I am vegan because I believe it is good for me, I eat a lot of raw food because I feel great, I lose weight, I have more energy, my conscience is clear as I am not contributing to the mass slaughter of sentient animals, and I am helping the earth as I have a smaller “footprint” (I read today that becoming vegan is better for the planet than buying a hybrid car).

Even though I believe, totally, that the first humans must have eaten a raw plant diet, those first humans didn’t keep journals, so we will never know how they really lived. I believe that the perfection of nature means that the food we are designed to eat is the fruits of the trees, unadulterated - our bodies are perfectly designed to digest these foods as they come, straight off the plant, not cooked to death, or processed into something that can’t really be called food. I cannot believe that humans are the only species on the planet that have to cook their food.

Oops, I’m off again - better stop now before this post gets to be a mile long!

Wheat and rice

I made bread today. Not unusual, though I think that this is going to become a less frequent activity, not just for me but for many people. Have you noticed it's harder to find flour? For a while I was buying organic wholewheat flour from Extra Foods, a supermarket that I visit each week for some of the basics. Then they stopped stocking it. I found a different brand at a nearer smaller store, but after only a short while of buying it there, I couldn't find it. Now my last hope, my regular health food store, has had dwindling supplies and what they do have has gone up in price - a lot.

Apparently there is a wheat shortage. I read in the New Scientist that a mould is threatening the main wheat growing areas in Eastern Europe.

Now, what would we do without wheat? Well, I know we'd survive. Where we live, we have a lot of food choices. Not only that, but having done the reading about raw and living foods, I know that people can be perfectly healthy without grains. They are not an essential part of our diet, and in fact can cause health problems, especially those that contain gluten.

However I realise that in many parts of the world, taking wheat away could lead to starvation, as it would take some time to plant alternative crops and they may not be able to afford to import what they need.

What annoys me is that people plant massive areas of land in a single crop, therefore leaving themselves open to hunger if a bug or mould comes along that attacks that crop. Why do we leave ourselves so open to disaster? Diversity is what's needed.

I would love to see each city, town or community being as self-sufficient as possible. R and I were talking yesterday about how quickly the entire infrastructure would break down if just one link in the chain of supply was to break. What if we didn't have fuel? No trucks to bring our food to stock the stores, no garbage trucks to take away our waste - most of us would be in dire straits after only a week or two without the convenience of all we take for granted.

This is a big subject, and not one I want to delve into too far, because I'd rather focus on the positive.


I'll end on a good note. The health food store was out of the usual agave this week, so I bought some rice syrup. Wow, this stuff tastes good. R and I, being brought up as carnivores (!) unlike our children, have had honey before, and rice syrup is very similar in taste and texture. We all like it.

Odds and ends

I wanted to write about a few things, none of them momentous enough to merit its own post! So here they are.

Last night's dinner was a VERY large salad - lettuce, mushrooms, peppers, tomatoes, green onions and cucumber. With it, R and I had some raw nut burgers that I made up as I went along, and they were quite good, though they would have been better had I used walnuts instead of brazils. I think that those brazils had been sitting around at the bulk food store too long as they had an odd taste to them. Anyway, I have nearly used them up. I just mixed everything up in my food processor - nuts, parsley, a little onion and garlic, seasalt and a couple of tomatoes for moisture, and made little patties which I put in my dehydrator on low heat for a few hours.

I have spent several nights this week sitting up past midnight, reading the books Uther and The Saxon Shore by Jack Whyte. These novels are excellent. For depth of story, historical detail and content they rival Diana Gabaldon's Outlander books (high praise indeed)! A friend recommended the series to me - the first book in the series is The Skystone.

The series starts in Roman-occupied Britain and chronicles the development of the community that becomes known as Camulod. By the end of Eagles Brood/Uther, the baby has been born that is called Arthur, who is destined to become High King of Britain. I have two more books to go. Highly recommended.


And finally, a little bit of knitting, which has definitely been neglected lately. I used some chunky yarn I had left from another project to knit this little purse. The stitch is called Woven Stitch - it does look woven, and is denser than regular knitting. It's made by alternating these two rows (even number of stitches, stitches slipped purlwise)
Row 1 *K1, slip 1 with yarn in front, yarn back*
Repeat across row
Row 2 *P1, slip 1 with yarn in back, yarn fwd*
Repeat across row

I cast on 30 stitches with a size larger needle than that recommended on the ball band (because it tightens up) and knitted for 7 inches. The width is almost 6 inches. I found a red zipper at my local thrift store for 10 cents which I handsewed in, then sewed up the sides with the yarn tails. A quick and simple gift.

Murder in the living room

When my kids get a new Lego set, they don't necessarily play with it in a predictable way! Here's their photo story....

Death of a traveller

Scene 1: Here he comes.


Scene 2: Oh no!


Scene 3: Aaaaaargh!


Scene 4: Digesting...


Scene 5: Aaaah, that's better!


Scene 6: Not again!


(Just in case Scene 5 needs explaining, the dinosaur has pooped out brown Lego and a Lego skeleton. Typical boys, being amused by bodily functions :o)

My Christmas Cactus is confused!

I was watering my plants on Monday, when I noticed that one of my Christmas cacti was flowering again. I have a few of these, a couple of them quite large, and they always look lovely in December. However this one is the over-achiever of the bunch, and likes to think it's an Easter cactus as well.

Knitting with wire

Here's a simple piece of knitting which makes a great gift. Well, I say simple - the first time you knit with wire, you have to learn a slightly different way of knitting, but whilst it's easy to drop a needle it's almost impossible to drop a stitch.


All you need is a spool of 26 gauge silver wire (I bought mine from Michaels), two thin double pointed needles (I suggest old ones so you don't ruin some expensive needles - this is a good time to visit the thrift store), some small beads; and some wire cutters are useful too though not essential. These little cutters came as a part of a set of five tools for handling wire and they have come in very useful when I make earrings.


I strung about 60 beads on to the wire before I started. Then I cast on three stitches to one of the needles. Use the most basic cast on possible - three backward loops (e-wrap). Don't make them tight. Now you're going to start knitting i-cord, which means that you will knit the three stitches, but do not turn to knit back the other way. Instead, slide the stitches from the left hand end of the needle to the right hand end - the wire will be coming from the far left - you will then knit the three stitches again, bringing the wire across the back to knit the first stitch. When you knit the second stitch, put the tip of the needle into the stitch, slide a bead up to the back of the work, and knit the stitch. Then knit the third stitch. And so on and so on, until the bracelet is the length you want.

I found a little clasp on an old silver bracelet that I was able to use to fasten this particular bracelet. You could find packs of these clasps at Michaels, but if you're not going to make lots of bracelets then a thrift store might come in handy for one of these too.

When it was long enough, I looped the cast on tail around and "wove" it through the knitted loops, using a tool to curl the end so that it won't stick into the wearer. At the bind off end, I snipped the wire, threaded it through the three live stitches three times to make a loop for the clasp to grab onto, then wove it back into the work and curled the end over.

Remember to keep your stitches loose enough to knit - pull the wire through far enough, because you can be sure you'll get stuck if it's too tight. And you can reshape the work slightly as you go, if any of the wire loops are sticking out a little messily. Have fun with it!

Knitting book review

Whenever I go to my local library, the first section I head for is the knitting books. I often borrow books that I’ve had before, because it’s just so nice looking at the pictures!

Two of the books that I borrowed this week are No Sheep for You by Amy Singer and Knitting for Peace by Betty Christiansen. I like both books, so thought I’d do a review of them for you.

No Sheep for you - Amy R Singer

The sub-heading for this is “Knit happy with cotton, silk, linen, hemp, bamboo and other delights” and as you may have guessed it does not have any patterns in it that use wool. Amy is allergic to wool - I’m not, I choose not to use it, but I can benefit from her book too. (Actually, I don’t use silk either, but I still like the book!)

Amy starts out by telling us all about the different kind of fibre options that are open to us - hemp, linen, cotton, silk, rayon, bamboo, corn, lyocell, modal, soy and synthetics - where they come from and how they are made. She also lists the yarn’s qualities, how it should be washed, dried or blocked - very comprehensive in an attractively presented and entertaining way.

The second chapter tells us how to substitute yarns. Say you see a pattern for a beautiful garment that you really want to make, but it’s knitted in wool, you need to know how to substitute that yarn with something that will give you a good result. The only thing that we non-wool users can’t do is felting.

After reminding us of the need to knit a gauge swatch, we’re into the patterns. There’s a good choice of things to make in varying levels of difficulty. Twenty one designs including three women’s cardigans, two men’s sweaters, socks, thrummed mittens (using silk instead of wool), a coat, a bag, a lacy shawl, interspersed with more handy hints.

Knitting for Peace - Betty Christiansen

The sub-heading for this book is “Make the world a better place one stitch at a time” and its mission is to tell you about many of the organisations that accept donations of knitted items and also give you patterns you can use to make things to give.

Chapter One starts out with a history of wartime knitting, and how knitters the world over have helped clothe and comfort people in need. We are given a short history of organisations like the Red Cross, The Ships Project and the Revolutionary Knitting Circle and contact information for them in case we want to follow up.

The following chapters describe twenty charities or companies that are working for the benefit of children, elders, premature babies and animals and there are 14 patterns including socks, a child’s vest, a blanket, a shawl, hats and teddy bears. They are all simple to make and the book is in inspiration to any knitter wishing to give back to the community.

Happy Knitting!

Stop the world, I want to get off!

The title reflects how I was feeling this morning. I have since calmed down, but boy, was I mad!

Someone said to me last week that teenagers are designed to drive you crazy, that way you start to look forward to the day they leave home and don't try to hold on to them too long! Hmmm, there might be a grain of truth in there.

Both yesterday morning and today, L was ranting to me about how there's nothing to eat for breakfast. Bear in mind that he's been up all night, so is probably tired, but when I have just got out of bed the last thing I need is a whining complaining kid giving me hell.

I want him to eat well. I want him to choose healthy options. So when it comes to certain foods, I try to limit them or not buy them at all. I keep the sweetener in my bedroom so he doesn't help himself to it at night. If we have ketchup and mustard in the house, I often keep a tight rein on that too, or it gets slopped on bread by the gallon, along with a slab of vegan "butter"! Today he said he wanted to make pancakes for himself - but we only have a stainless steel frying pan, which makes a mess of pancakes, but I refuse to buy a non-stick pan for health reasons. He won't eat porridge - says I wouldn't let him put in enough sweetener so he could taste it. Smoothies are OK now and again. Fruit - nah, apparently the oranges and grapefruit that he's been eating at night are now making him feel sick, so those are out.

After a winter of inactivity, where the most physically challenging thing he did was walk upstairs from his bedroom to the kitchen, he's looking a little chubby, a little pale and pasty-faced. He sniffs and clears his throat constantly - too much mucus, I'd say. The other day he finally agreed with me that he needs to do a cleanse or at least change his diet a little - less stodge - because he's finally noticed he's not feeling that great. However, when it came down to it, he couldn't do it and was cooking himself great mounds of pasta and tomato sauce as usual.

I have to confess I don't receive L's whining well. As I said to my husband, all these parenting books (which I no longer read) tell you, as parents, how to communicate, how to deal with your kids, etc etc. I know that, as an adult, I should be the one to "set a good example" and "behave how I would like the kids to behave" and all that, but I'm afraid it all goes out of the window in the face of a whining kid. I am regrettably easily irritated, quick to give L the argument he's looking for, and hell yes, I want to have the last word, so it was a good thing that shortly after we "had words" this morning he went to bed and I had a chance to get over it (after a good cry).

I say we need fewer parenting books and more books for teens on how to be less selfish and self-absorbed!

Progress - with the sock and the garden

Wahoo, I finished the first sock last night in the Berroco Comfort sock yarn. Being vegan, I don't use wool, so was very glad to find this yarn at Wool and Wicker in Steveston when I was at the coast a few weeks ago. It's 50% acrylic, 50% nylon, so will hopefully be hard-wearing.

Pretty colours. Knowing how one can languish between socks, I immediately cast on for the second sock and have completed a fair amount of the ribbing at the top of the sock.

The weather office forecast 20 degrees for this weekend, and our thermometer did show it reached 24 Celsius on our deck this afternoon. It was hot work, raking the lawn. There were lots of walnut shells (the walnuts that I left on the ground last autumn have been cracked open by the magpies and crows and eaten) and dead leaves, and now that it's been raked and many wheelbarrow-loads have been dumped at the bottom of the garden, it all looks much neater.

I was delighted to see that the violets are spreading further afield too.

I will take my blistered hands (unaccustomed to hours of yardwork!) out there again tomorrow - I think I will be heaving rocks, so that'll be my workout. The weather is supposed to be hot again.

Salad dressing

A good salad dressing can make all the difference. If my kids like the dressing, they'll eat lettuce - if they don't, they won't!

A local restaurant introduced us to Little Creek dressing, which is a very addictive blend of sunflower oil, raspberry vinegar and nutritional yeast, among other things. However, it's over $9 a bottle so we hardly ever buy it, preferring to make our own.

I have a recipe book that local charity TRACS was selling as a fundraiser (The Responsible Animal Care Society) that has a dressing recipe in it that is a guaranteed way to get the greens into the kids. It includes flax oil, lemon juice, tamari, nutritional yeast and garlic, but after a while you need to try new things so I invented a new dressing which is less acidic. This one is also a winner with the kids.

Here's the recipe. It's in metric, so for you people who always measure in cups, 250ml is equivalent to one cup. The "three parts of oil to one part of vinegar" rule always serves me well as a starting point.

450ml extra virgin cold-pressed olive oil
150ml balsamic vinegar
3 cloves garlic, minced or chopped finely
quarter teaspoon each of seasalt and black pepper
2 tablespoons nutritional yeast flakes
1 tablespoon each of mustard and agave (or other sweetener)

You can add dried or fresh herbs to this if you want.

I use a jug with a lid with the millilitres marked on the side, which makes it really easy to make and shake. It's a good idea to make this ahead of time to give the flavours a chance to blend. Refrigerate between uses, but bear in mind that the olive oil will probably set solid in the fridge so take it out and give it time to be pourable again, or sit the container in warm water to speed up the process.

Video games are too addictive...

and I'm talking from experience here! I resisted having video games in my house for the longest time. A couple of years ago, my oldest son was on a campaign to have something, whether it was a Playstation or an Xbox or whatever. In the end, I caved and told him he could buy himself a system and he chose the Playstation 2. Then we had the negotiations over what games he could buy. We were very wary of anything with a Teen label and definitely forbade anything with a Mature rating. Gradually he built up a small collection of games, mostly racing games plus Kingdom Hearts 2 and Star Wars Battlefront 2. Then came the handheld game - I gave him permission for that too (I had held out longer on that because I felt that if he had a portable system he'd be taking it everywhere and not participating in anything)! He bought a Nintendo DS Lite and some games - Super Mario, Tetris, and a few others.

I have no interest in those Super Mario-type games, where the little character is jumping around from platform to platform, blasting coins or whatever out of the way, but I did have a go at Tetris. Hmmm, quite fun! Occasionally I would ask L to lend me his DS and the Tetris game, which he thought was hilarious - mum wanting to play a video game, har har, she's coming over to the dark side!

He rarely plays with either system these days - too stuck into his computer - and he lent his DS to his brothers. I decided to play a little Tetris....not just the basic game, but the others that come as part of the package. Oh my, did I get hooked!

What worries me about this game is (a) how I can get addicted to it so fast, (b) how it's such a time sucker, (c) how it disturbs my sleep if I play last thing at night, and (d) how I can continue to get visions of those little coloured squares popping up in my head at any time. Last night, I sat on the sofa at 9pm with that little screen in front of me and I didn't put it down for three hours! I'm sure I saw a lot of Tetris blocks in my dreams.

This morning, I made my son laugh even louder. I gave him his DS Lite back and said, "Keep this thing hidden away from me for at least three weeks." Now that the temptation is removed, I can get back to the important stuff, like knitting, reading, Taekwondo practice and sleeping!

This is where we were today

Our homeschool support group met at the BMX track today. It was a good turnout. Lots of kids whizzing over the bumps, and lots of mums to yak to.


When I got out of bed this morning, the sun was shining, but when we were nearly ready to go out we had a shower - a white shower - sort of soft hail. I wondered whether we'd be cold at the track, but thankfully it stayed dry and when the sun came out it felt warm.

We met a couple of new families, one from a nearby town and another from Calgary who are moving here for the husband's work. Even though they didn't have bikes with them, their kids still had fun. I noticed two of the older girls playing cards, and some of the boys abandoned their bikes and started up a game of baseball.


It was good to see my boys getting some fresh air and exercise, and I got some much-needed decompression time with my friends (after the stresses and strains of getting the teen - who had only had three hours sleep - out of bed, out of the house and into the van)!

Mmmm, lunch

I'm sure many people think that a rawfood diet is very boring, or limiting, or ascetic, or...insert a negative adjective here.

In fact, it is tasty, healthy and simple, and I believe that it's the way we are all meant to eat.

A raw meal can be as easy as eating some fresh fruit. No preparation, no mess, no waste for the landfill. Or it can be made complex by soaking, sprouting, blending and dehydrating, if you have the time and inclination.

I originally read the book Nature's First Law about 5 years ago. I was totally convinced. I don't think that anyone who reads this book could deny the obvious - that all the creatures on this planet were designed to eat a raw diet, just the way all the wild animals do now.

Many of us get defensive when our beliefs or lifestyle are questioned but we need to remember that just because we've been doing something for years, or just because it is tradition, that doesn't mean that we should continue doing it.

Think about it - why would humans be the only species on the planet that should cook their food before they eat it? Every animal (and I include humans in that) has a perfectly designed system for eating and digesting and eliminating and the food that grows around us (plants) is perfectly designed for nourishing our bodies. If we mess with that perfect system, what do we get? Degenerative diseases, of course.

I have been an aspiring raw foodist since I read that book, and whilst I don't maintain a 100% raw diet 100% of the time (I tend to have more success in the summer and fall off the wagon in the winter) I totally believe that my goal should be 100%. I managed it today - a whole pineapple for breakfast, a small salad and a couple of energy orbs* for lunch, a mango and an orange before Taekwondo and a couple more energy orbs afterwards. I didn't go hungry, I had lots of energy, and I'm glad I had the willpower to avoid eating the fresh bread that I made for the rest of the family. (Bread does NOT agree with me.)

*Energy Orbs
2 cups of raw nuts (almonds are good, or a combination - today I used almonds, brazils and cashews)
15 fresh Medjool dates, soaked in water for 20 minutes
half a teaspoon of cinnamon
half a teaspoon of vanilla extract (not the artifical kind)

In a food processor, grind the nuts up finely. Add the rest of the ingredients and process to make a cohesive mixture. Take small spoonfuls and roll them in your hands, then roll them in coconut (today I used a mixture of coconut and ground up raw cacao beans).

My baby is 16 today

I can't believe it! Sixteen years ago today, I gave birth to a little 7lb 5oz boy (well, he didn't feel so little coming out, he WAS my first after all).

Above is a photo of him at one day old, next to the huge rabbit that my sister bought for him. He still has that rabbit, but now that he's 6 feet tall the proportions are a lot different!


I like this photo of me - despite the excess post-baby weight, my hair and skin looked healthy - I was 29 at the time.


This was how I kept him with me in the garden when there was laundry to hang out! He didn't seem to mind.

Happy Birthday L!

A class with Cat Bordhi

I had a very enjoyable day in the company of knitting magician, Cat Bordhi, and about 24 other women, learning how to knit a Moebius.

Cat has written a few books, two of them being A Treasury of Magical Knitting and A Second Treasury of Magical Knitting. How she looked at a moebius and figured out how to knit one is beyond me, but now I can knit one too, and I feel very clever!


If you don't know what a moebius is, it was discovered way back in about 1856. According to Cat, it cannot be found in nature. It is a human discovery - to discover your own, all you need is a strip of paper - put some sticky tape on one end, twist the end of the paper a half turn (NOT 360 degrees) and stick the ends together. Then put a pencil on the centre of the strip and start drawing a line - keep going - all the way around - and you end up exactly where you started. In other words, you have now created a three dimensional object that has one edge and one surface!

After learning the special cast on that Cat writes about in her books (the set up takes a little time to learn and do) the knitting is easy and VERY impressive. Your knitting grows outwards from a central cast on - you have to see it to believe it. You see in the photo below how half of the knitting is stocking stitch and half is reverse stocking stitch? That happens naturally as you knit - there's no purling.


I'm using some yarn that I bought from the store that was hosting the class - Art of Yarn - a bit more expensive than I usually buy. It's Ty Dy from Knit One Crochet Too - all cotton and the colourway I'm using is called Painted Desert.

Welcome to my blog

I just spent the last hour setting up my own blog. My first posts are my knitting designs that I originally published on Four Friends and a Blog, a blog that I have been sharing with three friends since the beginning of last year.

When I first suggested to my friends that we start a blog together, we had no idea it would be so much fun. One soon starts to look at everything as an excuse to post - whether it's knitting progress, a particularly good meal, an outing, a good book...

Two of my friends now have their own personal blogs, and, well, I decided it was time I did too.

Four Friends and a Blog has been quite successful, I feel, with readership rising and being maintained at a reasonable level, if that's a measure of success. Many positive comments have been made, both online and to us personally. However I can't help wondering how long it will continue to thrive, considering that a lot of the "good stuff" that the four of us were posting about is now being published on separate blogs.

I could be accused of contributing to the demise of the communal blog by setting up my own, but I wanted a place I could call my very own where I can say what I want without worrying about the sensibilities of my co-authors. I'm not sure how I will divide my time between the two blogs - only time will tell.

Double thick child's hat

I made this Double Thick Child's Hat from TLC Wiggles yarn in two colours. I'll warn you now, it's fun, but you have to be careful not to create extra stitches from the colourful loops!

Opened out, it looks like this...


Odd, eh! It's reversible and double thick when worn. You just push one colour inside the other to wear it. Below is my 9 year old son modelling it with a goofy face - it's a bit small for him though. The circumference is 19 inches and the depth is 6.5 inches.


Here's the pattern - I made it up so there are no copyright issues!

TLC Wiggles (acrylic) yarn, two colours, one ball of each
US #6 or 4mm circulars (16 inch length) and dpns
My gauge was 5 stitches/inch

Cast 90 stitches (using the long tail method) on to the circular needles, join and knit in the round until your work measures 5 inches. I use the position of the yarn tail hanging off the bottom of my work to keep track of complete rounds, but it might be a good idea to place a marker at the beginning of the round for the decreasing part. Change to double pointeds when there aren't enough stitches to fit comfortably on the circulars.

Decrease for crown -
*K8, K2tog; rep from * to end of round
K1 round
*K7, K2tog; rep from * to end of round
K1 round
*K6, K2tog; rep from * to end of round
K1 round
*K5, K2tog; rep from * to end of round
K1 round
*K4, K2tog; rep from * to end of round
K1 round
*K3, K2tog; rep from * to end of round
*K2, K2tog; rep from * to end of round
*K1, K2tog; rep from * to end of round
*K2tog; rep from * to end of round

Cut the yarn, leaving a 6 inch tail, thread it onto a blunt darning needle, run the needle through all the stitches clockwise, pull up, take the needle down through the centre and knot off on the inside.

Now using the second colour, go to your cast on edge and pick up 90 stitches all around. This is done by inserting the tip of the circular needle under the two strands of the cast on, wrapping the yarn around and proceeding as if to knit. Make sure you go into every stitch (with hindsight, it might be better to knit with the lighter coloured yarn first to make it easier to pick up for the second half of the hat).

Continue to knit all stitches until you have 5 inches in the second colour. Then decrease for the crown exactly as before and fasten off. Hide the yarn tail inside.

This is a great way to make a warm hat which is neatly finished, as the yarn tails and wrong side of your work are completely hidden!

Knit flat baby hat

I grabbed some leftover yarn and made this little Knit Flat Baby Hat (preemie/newborn size). I used cream TLC Cotton Plus (a worsted weight cotton/acrylic) and Red Heart Tiki (a skinny yarn with little "flags" of colour) held together and knitted on #10US needles. I thought I would share this hat formula with you, as it's really simple and you don't need to knit a gauge swatch before you start. It's knitted on straight needles in garter stitch, so no fiddling with double pointeds if you're nervous about using them!

Cast on (with the long tail cast on, leaving enough to seam up the hat later) about the amount you think is right for the depth of the hat, in other words the straight section from bottom edge to crown shaping. Best to err on the side of too many stitches, because you can turn up the brim later. Knit every row until you have an even number of rows that, when slightly stretched, give you the head circumference of the intended wearer.

Then, with the right side facing you and your cast on tail hanging off the right bottom corner of your work, cast off but DO NOT fasten off the last loop. Leave it on the right hand needle, then turn the corner and pick up and knit a stitch into the end of each garter ridge all the way back to your cast on edge. You will now be working at right angles to your original piece of knitting.

Knit back along the row and you will be ready for decreasing for the crown, starting with the right side of your work facing you. Count your stitches.

Here's where you're going to have to do a bit of math. Decide how many decreases you want around the hat. An odd number is good. I used 7. I had 44 stitches, 7 goes into 44 six times with two left over, which is good because those extra two will leave me a little border at the end where I'll be seaming the hat. Now remember that number six? On your first decrease row, you will have to decrease one stitch for every group of 6 stitches, so you will do it this way:
*Knit 4, SSK, repeat from * across the row, knit 2
SSK means to slip the next 2 stitches knitwise separately, put the tip of your left needle into the front of the stitches and knit them together

Now knit one plain row without decreasing.

Remember that those numbers were my personal numbers for that particular hat and every hat will be different. However, once you have figured out the decreases for that first row, all you have to do on subsequent rows is knit one less stitch before the decrease. So I would Knit 3, SSK; knit 1 row; Knit 2, SSK; knit 1 row; Knit 1, SSK; knit 1 row; SSK across.

At this point, after my row of SSKs, I had 8 stitches left. Still too many, so I knitted another row and did another lot of SSKs to bring the count to 4. Then I transferred those stitches to a double pointed needle and knitted enough i-cord to be able to make a little knot.

Sew up the side seam with the tail left from your cast on, and you're done.

Water Bottle Holder

This (not very attractive) project is a water bottle carrier. It's made with the Mission Falls 1824 cotton that I bought a little while ago. It was made to fit a small 500ml bottle, but I have carried a one litre bottle in it - it's quite stretchy. Wear it diagonally across your body and keep your hands free while hiking.

I used 4.5mm dpns and cast on 40 stitches and worked one row knit, one row purl, one row knit, one row purl (which is how you get garter stitch in the round). After those four rows, I tried something different to get a truly random stripe pattern. I took a die and numbered my yarns from 1 to 5. I had a coin at the ready so I could flip it for heads or tails. Then at the beginning of each round, I tossed the die for the colour and the coin for the stitch (heads = knit, tails = purl).

I got in a right tangle, had to regularly straighten out my yarns, and I had WAY more purl rows than I would have liked, but I didn't cheat! When I was totally sick of fighting with the different colours, I just continued with one for the bottom part. At 7 inches long, I did one more purl row to make a ridge for the base, and then decreased like so:
K6, K2tog around
K5, K2tog around
K4, K2tog around
K3, K2tog around
K2, K2tog around
K1, K2tog around
K2tog around, use a darning needle to take the yarn through the last 6 stitches, gather them up and fasten off.

I knew if I knitted the handle as a flat strip or i-cord, I'd be at it for hours, so I cheated. A 16mm crochet hook, 5 strands of yarn (one of each colour) and 50 chain stitches had me a carrying strap in a couple of minutes! Knot it on either side and Bob's your uncle! (Sorry, British expression, don't know where the meaning of that originated.)

Easy Fingerless Mitts

These Easy Fingerless Mitts were based on my Marble Lace version - I left out the pattern on the back of the hand.

I used another colourway of James C Brett Marble and 3.75mm double pointed needles.
This yarn is a light worsted weight. My gauge is 6 stitches to the inch. Cast on 44 stitches, distribute over three needles, join and work K2, P2 rib for three inches (about 22 rounds).

Continue in stockinette (all knit in the round) for another 2.5 inches (about 22 rounds), ending at the end of a round (you don't need a marker, just look at where your yarn tail is hanging). Take some waste yarn in a contrasting colour and knit the next 9 stitches with it, then slip those stitches back onto your right needle and reknit them with the main yarn. Leave the waste yarn tails hanging at the back of your work. Continue in stockinette to desired length (I did 14 more rounds).

It's a good idea to keep track of how many rounds you knit on each section so you can make the second one the same! Having no fancy pattern on the back of the hand means you can make both mitts the same...no right or left to worry about.

Switch back to K2 P2 rib for half an inch and bind off in rib.

Use a thinner dpn or cable needle to pick up the stitches that are being held by the waste yarn. Rather than pull out the yarn, I prefer to pick up a leg of each stitch first, so they don't unravel on me. I picked up 9 stitches across the bottom of the opening and 10 across the top, transferring them onto three 3.75mm dpns, then removed the waste yarn. I knitted a round, decreasing by knitting 2 together across one of the ends of the hole. Work K1 P1 rib on these 18 stitches for an inch and a half (about 10 rounds). Bind off ribwise.

Weave in your loose ends, using one tail to tighten up any holes at the base of the thumb.

These are easily made in 2 evenings, or one day if you have the motivation and the time!