I heart Les Schwab

Charlie's car: fixed!

Pros for visiting Les Schwab:
- they've fixed two flats for me over the years and never charged me, whether I bought the tires there or not
- they've investigated several "my brakes make this strange noise" or "my tire makes a funny whirring sound when I drive" questions, sometimes taking a half hour to jack my car up on the lift to investigate, without ever charging me
- when I did need to replace my tires, they had the best deal I could find anywhere, even at costco
- they have never once given me that 'oh you're just a girl, you don't know anything about cars' attitude

Cons for visiting Les Schwab:
- every year they have a super bizarre "buy tires get free meat" thing where they give out steaks.

So yeah, I have a little soft spot for them. Getting a flat tire or having your brakes squeal alarmingly is never fun (and often quite scary) and I never stress about getting it fixed. I have many cooking and sewing tips, but for a change this is my best car tip.

Best flat tire Ever

Charlie and Jeff have great gams, don't you think?

If you're going to get one, I recommend it go something like this:

- Go see a great movie.
- Eat loads of tasty italian food.
- Drive home on a warm summer rain-free night.
- Arrive at your flat driveway as the sun is setting, get out of the car, and hear a strange hiss.
- Have your car be the kind that has a full-sized spare tire.


While Charlie works today, I'll be taking his car to the shop to have them patch the tire. It's obvious what did the deed--- there is a huge hunk of metal sticking out of it. My theory is that it's one of the metal bolts traffic people use to nail-gun down those rubberized car counting strips that you occasionally bump over. Or maybe it was a malicious robot laying caltrops. We will never know.


The great movie? Ratatouille. I have never met a Pixar film I didn't like but this one was exceptional. Perhaps it's because I love food so much. Pixar's attention to detail is unbelievable. The main female chef character had a burn mark on the inside of her wrist in the same exact place that I get one whenever I am doing a lot of cooking with big soup pots. Those rats spend a lot of time in various degrees of dampness (they are rats, after all) and oh sweet nellie they are beautiful. Gorgeous. Each strand of fur on their bodies looks like it answered a casting call for Perfect Fur. The antagonist (food critic Anton Eg0) must have had twenty people working on his character design. Even his typewriter is fantastic.

The heavy hand of disney was visible in some places but thankfully there were no rat-colony musical numbers.

I don't even *like* ratatouille to eat but now I want to make some. I need to find something that has a ridiculous amount of prep because I'm in the mood for chopping and dicing and fussing with spices.

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Eggs laid in the coop today: 1
Eggs found in the woods today: 0
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Eggs laid in the coop Sunday: 2
Eggs found in the woods Sunday: 0
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Eggs laid in the coop Saturday: 2
Eggs found in the woods Saturday: 0

Dress, reverse-engineered

the original dress

I saw this lovely dress at pottery barn kids the other day. I'm always on the lookout for good kid clothing patterns, and this dress was exactly the kind of simple shift I have been seeking. The floating lining inside gives it a really finished look. Time to reverse-engineer it! I really didn't want to rip the thing apart and thankfully was able to figure out mostly what they had done by turning it this way and that, over and over. The seams of the dress are obvious, so making the pattern is just a matter of tracing each piece and then giving a seam allowance (I like 1/2"). The hardest part is sussing out in what order the pieces are assembled. There is one tricky bit where I end up having to hand-sew the shoulder seams because for the life of me I cannot figure out how they did it with a machine. Again, borrowing the serger made the difference. The seams just look so professional.


My first copy of the dress was for Mona, who is expecting her little girl in the fall. She got to pick out the fabric and the buttons. I approve of the snazzy contrast!



The second copy is for Calliope. The fabric is from a sun-dress I bought at t j max for $10. One of my secrets: if you see a piece of clothing that has super awesome fabric, just get the biggest size you can find and then cut it apart and use the fabric for other things. A hideous velvet skirt can cost only a few dollars at goodwill, and you can never ever find velvet by the yard that cheap. Another favorite is old bedsheets. Once they make it to the goodwill they have been washed hundreds of times. Good old fashioned cotton sheets get a fantastic smooth cool feel after many washes. In neutral colors they make perfect linings.


I consider this pattern a success! The original dress was sized 12-18 months. I need to do a little research and hopefully will learn the scaling ratios used for children's clothing so that I can make different sizes.

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Eggs laid in the coop today: 2
Eggs found in the woods today: 0

bricklayer

A couple of months ago Charlie and I had the great idea to edge part of the driveway with bricks. When the driveway was gravel, it blended in with the planting beds just fine. Having it paved created a very crisp line where the driveway edges are. Suddenly the transition from asphalt to mulch looked, well, messy. Plus the chickens have a habit of scratching around and flinging dirt in search of bugs. When Mom was here last summer she lined the outer edge of the driveway with fist-sized rocks she scavenged from our yard. It looks fantastic, but we had run out of a ready supply of rocks.We figured that a subtle natural looking edging of bricks would solve both the transition and the dirt-flinging.

you can see the line of mom's rocks in the background

Charlie helped with the first portion next to the house. We laid a straight line from the edge of the porch. We reclaimed a little triangular bit of driveway to be used as an extension of the garden bed. The straight line of bricks just looked so much better. That task still remains: to dig out the old gravel and put in a bit of dirt. Charlie even picked out a little japanese maple to plant once it's complete.


I did about a quarter of the main circle a week or so ago and then kept putting it off. Mona came over the other day and inspired me to get moving, and with her help we got the entire thing done in one day. Now I just have to order a truck load of mulch to make it look lovely.

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Since the chickens have been pretty lax about laying eggs in the coop, I had to buy some eggs for breakfast. This morning I had one of Henrietta's eggs and one from the store. The difference in appearance was amazing! When you have store eggs on their own they don't look bad at all. But put next to a fresh egg from a chicken that eats tons of greens and corn the store eggs look positively anemic.

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Eggs laid in the coop today: 2
Eggs found in the woods today: 0

Not for the skittish

You know those large-ish road message signs? The kinds that can be programmed to say various things like "right lane closed ahead" or "parade next Tuesday." There have been a few set up around town for the past week and they all say" Firework Illegal In City Limits." There must be some sort of letter limit, since Firework has always been singular.

At any rate, we do not live in the city limits. Starting around 4pm today our neighbors have gone bang crazy. It's been sounding like the revolutionary war. Right now it's 11.30pm and there are still pops and bangs and sizzles in the distance. Nothing says "I live in the country" like holiday-inspired munitions! Henry tried to sit on my lap during the movie but kept a wary ear cocked for each explosion outside and never quite relaxed.

Charlie came home from work at a civilized time this evening and we made a lovely salad and then watched a movie. When I first lived in Seattle my apartment was down on puget sound and the fourth of july was Amazing. One memorable summer the Blue Angels actually flew Right Over My Balcony. I have a photo somewhere of the plane's underbellies, writing on them crisp and clear because they were so very close. Seattlelites take their fireworks very seriously. The shows are lengthy, choreographed to music, and extravagant. Several shows compete. There are some vantage points in town where you can watch multiple shows at the same time. But now? For as much as I love fireworks, the logistics are excruciating. You and tens of thousands of your neighbors are competing for parking spots, picnic spots, even public transportation. It's a total nightmare. So our fourths now are pretty mellow. See: salad and a movie.

The movie: Blazing Saddles. I had never seen it, and it was.....unlike any movie ever. Gene Wilder is tops in my book.

The salad: from the July issue of Gourmet magazine.

Dressing:
1/4 c rice vinegar
2 t dijon mustard
2 minced garlic cloves
1/2 t sugar
1/3 c olive oil

Salad:
1 lb green beans
1 lb tiny potatoes
2 cans tuna, drained
12 oz cherry tomatoes
1/2 c kalamata olives
3 T capers
1/2 c flat leafed parsley
4 hard boiled eggs

Make dressing: whisk together vinegar, mustard, garlic, sugar, and salt and pepper to taste. Whisk in oil in a slow stream to emulsify.

Make salad: Cook beans in a pot of water until tender, transfer to a bowl of ice water to stop cooking, drain, and pat dry. Add whole potatoes to boiling water and simmer until tender. When still warm, cut into bite sized pieces. Flake tuna and toss with 1 T dressing. Toss potatoes and beans with tomatoes, olives, capers, parsley, and remaining dressing. Season with more salt and pepper and top with tuna and eggs.

An excellent meal for a warm summer night. Briny, salty, and mouth puckering. I think it can be adapted to any wild array of ingredients. Left over grilled salmon instead of tuna, perhaps some fresh corn. With a base of the tasty dressing and cooked baby potatoes you could go in almost any direction.

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Eggs laid in the coop today: 0
Eggs found in the woods today: 0
Chickens cursed for waking me up at 7am by cackling and yelling to be let out: 5

What sound does the choo choo make?

Optical illusion: two baby hands on two mother laps.

Today was a sunny Seattle stunner of a summer day. Say that five times fast! I joined Maggi, Elisa, and the boys at Remlinger Farms for some frolic. A petting barn with The World's Friendliest Goats? Check! Baby chickens? Check! Soulful-eyed sheep? Of course! Mediterranean Donkeys? Why not! We went there last year and they obviously were doing construction but it wasn't clear on what. Boy howdy have they fixed that place up. There's a little amusement park now, with a teacup ride. A tiny roller coaster. A water ride with wee canoes. We determined that it was great to have a summer birthday, because they have open-walled rooms set up for parties next to the petting barn.

The old fashioned steam train (dad, I am sure, will know the exact scale of the model) is still there and it putt putts through the woods and around exotic animal pens. The llamas were most entertaining as they loped across their pasture. Obviously they had been grazing next to the tracks and were none too entertained by the noisy visitor. The emus were unmoved, as were the donkeys. I pet a goat that had a big bushy beard and the most impressive set of goaty-manhood I've ever seen dangling.

And what is awesome? Awesome is a huge trampoline embedded in the floor of a shade-house, and then covered with about 8 inches of straw. If there had been no kids around I would have been *flying* on that thing.

not jumping, but keeping his balance just fine

On the way out I picked up a full flat (12 half-pints) of raspberries from their fields next door and made some raspberry-rum jelly. I am not a big fan of raspberry seeds but am usually too lazy to go through the extra step of slightly cooking the berries then smushing them through a fine sieve to painstakingly extract every drop of juice. You also have to use more fruit. For the same reason raspberry seeds are annoying (they are large) they also make up a lot of the volume of jam. Typically one recipe of jam takes 6 half-pints of raspberries. Tonight I reduced 9 half-pints down into four cups of juice. It ended up making 5 half-pints of jelly. But oh is it ever tasty. I used the fancy super dark rum that Charlie's friend brought back from Cayman.

new egg carton label, for eggs given to friends. I always like to know where my eggs are coming from!

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Eggs laid in the coop today: 2 (Ursula laid a huge one!)
Eggs found in the woods today: 0

astounding mobility

I always have my camera in my bag because of moments like this. Last week I was creeping down a main thoroughfare in afternoon traffic and saw a strange van with big windows on the side. There were no company logos or markings anywhere. I passed it once and thought I saw people in the back of the van sitting in chairs with computers. Perhaps some sort of strange police traffic control vehicle? Google map charting? I had seen some pictures of the new street-level mapping and those vans had a lot more cameras in them.

After another pass I realized that there *were* people in chairs....wheelchairs. They looked like heavy duty rigs for people with degenerative diseases like ALS, with the head supports and stuff and tilted flatscreens up at eye level. This was their Super Awesome transport! It was obviously a modded delivery van, and they had added those big windows to the side but loaded and unloaded from the back like a typical truck.

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Eggs laid in the coop today: 2
Eggs found in the woods today: 0
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Eggs laid in the coop Saturday: 2
Eggs found in the woods Saturday: 0