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Dan and I went to dinner last night at Cafe Athena in Pacific Beach and had the best time.

It was a short drive from home, parking was easy, and the atmosphere there is just right — comfortable and casual, but not sloppy. We sat at a little table in the window. The staff was great, especially our server. We started off with an appetizer of Yalandji, which was stuffed grape leaves with a filling of rice, fresh tomato, red pepper, onion, mint and pomegranate molasses. The flavor was amazing — tangy and fresh and zingy and just fabulous. Next time I might make a dinner of Yalandji alone!

Then we had soup — tomato basil for Dan, and avgolemono for me. Yummy. Then Dan had the beef kabob and I had Papoutsakia, which was Italian eggplant filled with seasoned ground leg of lamb, onion and pine nuts. Topped with tomato sauce, fresh basil and Feta cheese and wrapped in a slab of pita bread. It tasted very good, though I would have preferred a higher veggie-to-meat ratio ;-) And by that time I was pretty full of appetizers and soup so I brought most of it home for lunch today. Looking forward to it. YUM.

The restaurant wasn’t too crowded so we felt like we could relax and take our time, and we had a lovely long slow dinner with lots of fun conversation. It was a great evening!

I’m working on two main knitting projects for the fair this year. The delivery deadline is May 25th, so it’s time to get cracking!

Thing One is another striped Chroma vest like the one I designed and made for Mom, but with a few refinements to the pattern and some adjustments to fit me. I reached the underarms today, which means it’s time to plan out the steeks and the whole thing gets much narrower and moves along even faster, so I’m well over halfway finished with the main knitting. After that it’s just steeks and ribbing. Woohoo!

Ravelry page here (no login required): http://ravel.me/kayray/cv2

(Actual green is more mossy, less minty. Actual red is less orange, more a dull tomato red)

Thing Two is a “Nerderdel” lace tired skirt. Just started it today as a reward for making such great progress on the vest. The yarn is knitpicks “cotlin” (cotton/linen blend).

Ravelry page here (no login required): http://ravel.me/kayray/nlts

I might also enter a striped scarf that I’m making, which is pretty and would be fun to show off, but it’s not very special. Also it’s SO BORING and SLOW to knit and it’s only half-done…

Ravelry page here (no login required): http://ravel.me/kayray/cs

I designed and made this vest for Mom’s 66th birthday, which was in January, but she’s used to getting late handmade presents. Yesterday it was officially finished, and I gave it to her and took photos:

So cute! Both vest and Mom :) (more photos on flickr)

It’s made of Knitpicks’ “Chroma” and “Wool of the Andes” yarn. I worked it bottom-up and steeked the armholes so the stripes would be consistent. Crocheted steeks are MUCH more fun than sewn ones!

You can read all about its construction and see more photos on its Ravelry page (no login required):
http://www.ravelry.com/projects/kayray/chroma-vest

I took it along to the North Coast Knitters Guild Knit-at-Night on Wednesday and it was much admired! I love love love the Knit-at-Night. Everyone is so friendly and encouraging and warm. I really look forward to going every month.

First: let’s keep helping Japan to recover and rebuild. Here’s a great way to double your donation: http://www.crowdrise.com/handsforjapan/

The Ogawa Family, together with the Red Cross, is challenging donors to donate for Japan disaster relief. Every tax deductible dollar you donate, the Ogawa family will match equally in contributions to the Red Cross up to $500,000. Together we can donate One Million Dollars to the Red Cross.

They were only at 14% of the goal when we donated on Monday, and now they’re almost halfway there with 17 more days remaining. Please give what you can!

And now back to your regularly scheduled blog post.

Henry just spent a week on Santa Catalina Island doing a marine biology camping program with some of his schoolmates. Last Sunday afternoon (the 20th) Henry and I drove to Long Beach (it’s about 2.5 hours away, depending on traffic) in a terrible rainstorm and spent the night in a very nice hotel that Dan chose for us so that we could get Henry to the dock by 8:30 the next morning without the stress of leaving home at 5:30am and still being nearly late like we were last year. We got some dinner at Ruby’s and then had a relaxing time in our hotel and watched season 7 of Peep Show together while I knit a warm hat for him. (To quote Super Hans, I was knitting like an electric Nan.)

Here’s a view of the storm from our 4th floor hotel room. A HUGE eucalyptus branch blew down into that intersection a little while later!

Got Henry to the dock on time the next morning and he got on the ferry boat and sailed away.

And then I drove up to Long Beach yesterday (Friday) to fetch him. I left at 11am, though I didn’t need to be there until 2:45, because last year I left at noon and was an hour late because of traffic. But traffic was easy yesterday and I got there at 1pm, so I found a free parking lot and knitted while I waited. It was so wonderful to see him again! We never go a whole day without talking or emailing or texting, so five days felt like an eternity to me :) While we drove, he told me about all the fun stuff he did all week — nighttime snorkeling, a 15-mile hike, a visit to an old mine, kayaking, etc. I’m so glad he had such a great time! What a wonderful opportunity!

Here’s the Birthday Vest for Mom that I’ve been working on:

Still need to add pockets but then it’s done! You can read about it on the Ravelry page (no log-in required): http://ravel.me/kayray/cv

(note: I struggled to write this post because all I can think about is Japan. But this concert allowed me to think about something else for a few hours, so I can at least share that pleasure with you.)

Last night Mom, Chloe, Henry, and I went to UCSD to hear a concert. It was Bach’s Sonata in G Minor for Viola da Gamba and Harpsichord (played on modern viola), and Stravinsky’s “L’Histoire du Soldat” and it was just marvelous from beginning to end.

Embarrassing as it is to say, I haven’t been to a proper classical music concert in years, I guess… I’d forgotten how amazing it is to hear real live musicians. The viola and harpsichord piece was just as lovely as you might imagine. The viola was rich and velvety, and the harpsichord had none of that nasally sound they can sometimes get. And it was Bach. What more do I need to say? The audience loved it and wouldn’t stop clapping so the musicians had to come back for three curtain calls! Also, no one clapped during the movements, thank goodness. I’m always nervous about that. But the audience was mostly old people and university music students so I guess they knew how to behave.

The harpsichord:

Then there was intermission, and the crew whisked away the harpsichord and brought in the chairs and stands for the Stravinsky piece.

“L’Histoire du Soldat” is an interesting and unusual piece (written in 1918, I think) and is played by a septet of woodwinds, strings, brass, and percussion, with a story which is read by a Narrator, a Soldier, and the Devil. The conductor was excellent. I love to watch a good conductor. The part of the Narrator was read by a dapper Englishman in evening dress, the Soldier was read by Seth Lerer (more about him further down), and the Devil was read by a dark-haired woman who reminded me of Lily Tomlin’s “Edith Ann” character. All three were perfect. Marvelous piece!!! My favorite bit is the second little piece, the “Airs by a Stream”, but it’s all fantastic.

The bass player broke a string about five minutes in, so he ran away to find a new string, and then they started the whole thing over. I’ve never seen that happen before.

Oh, yeah, Seth Lerer! I’ve been listening to his lecture series on “The History of the English Language” for years, and I recently got his “Life and Writings of Geoffrey Chaucer” which is as good as it sounds. I also have his book “Inventing English” and I’m looking for a hardback copy of his “Children’s Literature: A Reader’s History from Aesop to Harry Potter”.

His voice is like the voice of an old friend, so seeing and hearing him perform live was amazing! It turns out he’s the Dean of Arts and Humanities at UCSD. I had no idea! After the concert we found the door to the backstage area and I bravely marched in and found him, and asked if he’d sign my copy of “Inventing English”! He was very sweet and friendly, and signed my book “To Kara – Warmest wishes – Seth”. Squeal!

I guess I’m a linguistics fangirl. Hilarious.

I scanned the whole “Santa’s Christmas Village” book yesterday. The book is a lot larger than the scanner bed in both dimensions, so it took quite a while to make sure I’d scanned all the parts of all the buildings. Most of the buildings will need to be printed in several parts on 8.5×11 paper, so I need to do a lot of work on the images to make sure there is enough overlap for gluing the pieces together, and that it’s clear which roof goes with which house, etc. I printed out a test lady on Dan’s nice photo paper and she looks great!

Does anyone know how much margin I should leave on each page so that the average printer will be able to print the whole image without reducing it?

Update December 7, 2011: Want to make your own Christmas Village? You can download my scans here: http://www.archive.org/details/SantasChristmasVillage !

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When I was six (1975) I had this wonderful book, “Santa’s Christmas Village”, which contained a punch-out-and-assemble Christmas village. It made a huge impression on me and I’ve never forgotten it — the bright, shiny colors; the feel of the heavy, glossy paper; the embossed details; the faces of the little cone-shaped women; the fun of slotting the little buildings together… But what I did forget was the actual title and publisher.

When The Internet arrived, I remembered my little Christmas Village one day and started searching to see if it still existed, perhaps in a retro-reprint or something. I wasn’t unhealthily obsessed or anything — I mean, I would maybe remember and have a little search once a year or so. Since I didn’t know the title, I searched on strings like “cut-and-make christmas town” or “papercraft christmas village” and never had any luck at all. Last week it occurred to me that it might have been a PUNCH-OUT-and-make town, not cut-and-make. That gave me some new results, and somehow I found what sounded like my book mentioned on an antique site somewhere. “Santa’s Christmas Village” (Published by Whitman in 1975.) So I started searching on THAT string, and found an original edition for sale on etsy for $4 including shipping. (I’m sure that link will break pretty soon.) The seller had posted enough photos that I was 99% sure that it was my book. UN-freaking-believable. So I bought it, and chewed my nails waiting for it to arrive.

It showed up in the mail a couple days ago. It’s my book. It really is. The book I’ve remembered since 1975. My little Christmas Village that I haven’t seen in 36 years! Here’s the cover:

I’m going to scan it and print on heavy paper so I can make my little Christmas Village next December without spoiling the original book. I asked my little sister if she remembered it (we each had a copy so we wouldn’t fight), and she does, even though she must have been only four at the time! So I’ll print a copy for her, too. She says my internet-fu is strong!

Oh, internet. Thank you. And thank you, Etsy seller AdaJane!

I wanted to knit Mom something very special for her birthday (it was in January, heheh) so together we planned a vest. It’ll be long, v-neck, button up, and striped.

I’m using Knitpicks’ gorgeous new Chroma Worsted in the “Midwinter” colorway, with stripes of black Wool of the Andes. The Chroma is SOFT. Soft, soft, soft. And beautiful! But it seems very delicate; although it does have 20% nylon mixed in for strength, it has almost no twist at all, so it’s almost like knitting with a strand of unspun fleece. I wouldn’t recommend it for socks, but for anything else worn next to the skin it would be perfect.

The color here is fairly accurate:

I’m inventing the pattern of course, and working bottom-up for a change because I wanted to establish the stripes before I had to deal with armholes and neck shaping. I’m working from all three balls of Chroma at once (two rows from each, then six rows of black), having first evened them out so that they were all at the same point in the color transitions.

Last night I knit through the waist section and started bust increases and neck decreases! (color here is wildly inaccurate):

You can get more details on the Ravelry page, no log-in required: http://www.ravelry.com/projects/kayray/chroma-vest

I’m planning to steek the armholes, if I can get up the courage and if I’m POSITIVE the fit is correct.

Henry is already feeling a lot better, hooray! His fever is gone and he has a lot more energy. Still coughing but not so much. It’s so wonderful to see him smile again. I felt really tired today so I hope I’m not getting it! We’ll see. I’ve stayed as far away from him as I can and have been washing my hands like crazy.

Oh, my laptop went to Apple for repairs for the 7248th time (it has an intermittent screen flicker), and it came back this morning. So far, so good – not a single flicker all day. Time will tell… This is its second new motherboard! It has also had a new display, a new optical drive (for a problem unrelated to the flickering issue), and I think a couple of other new things. I kinda lost track. Oh, a new battery also, because its original battery swelled up.

Note: when Apple sends you that postage-paid Fed-Ex box so you can ship your computer to them for repairs, make sure you remove the original shipping label to reveal the label underneath, the one addressed to Apple. I forgot that part the first time, and my laptop went from the Fed-Ex drop-off right back to me. D’OH! ;-)

I felt quite good today and it was sunny and warmer so I worked in my little garden in the morning. I weeded the peas-and-lettuce bed and thinned out the lettuce seedlings, and then I planted tomato seeds in a pot. It’s still pretty cold at night, and most days, so I sliced the bottom off of translucent plastic jug and popped it over the seeds as a little greenhouse. Oh, I also planted thyme and oregano in a pot.

Peas in their fluffy, weed-free bed:

Poor Henry is very sick, sicker than usual with a fever and a very bad cough, so I took him to the doctor and she said it’s probably bronchitis. She ordered a chest x-ray to be sure it wasn’t anything serious, and it came back clear, so that’s good. So he’s on antibiotics now. She also prescribed some cough syrup but he hates it because he still has the urge to cough but he can’t. I read Lord of the Rings to him for ages tonight to help him get to sleep. Poor boy! I hope you feel better soon, sweetie!

Invented a simple tuna casserole last night. Dan gave it a big YUM and had two helpings!

1. Fix a box of Trader Joe’s mac-n-cheese, but also chop up a couple stalks of celery and drop into the boiling water after the mac has cooked a minute or two.
2. Mix prepared mac-n-cheese-n-celery with two cans of tuna fish (drained) and a glug of cream.
3. Stick into a buttered casserole dish and top with a sprinkle of garlic powder and some grated cheese (I used sliced colby-jack, which I chopped into ribbons).
4. Bake 20 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit or until the cheese is melted and the whole thing is nice and hot.

It would be great with a salad and buttered french bread, if you have some. I didn’t, so we just ate casserole.

A couple of weeks ago, Elli found a cute little picture-book biography of J.S. Bach on Project Gutenberg. She showed it to me, and then we noticed that the same author, Thomas Tapper, had written a number of these little biographies, and that Gutenberg has ten of them. So I made them into a collection and recorded them all. Elli did the administrative stuff and the proof-listening. And here they are!

http://librivox.org/stories-of-great-composers-for-children-by-thomas-tapper/

There are links on that catalog page to each little book online, so you can look at the pictures while you listen :)

If you find an online source for any of the other little composer biographies, let me know. I think there around ten more that Gutenberg doesn’t have yet, and I’d be delighted to do a second volume.

Henry has no school this week, so we went down to Balboa Park this afternoon for a treat. I love Balboa Park. My parents used to take us there sometimes, and we’d spend the whole day wandering around, looking at the gardens and visiting a museum or two. It’s a very happy, special place for me.

Today the Aerospace and Automotive museums were open for free! I love looking at the beautiful old cars. Here I am with an International Harvester Model A Auto-Wagon, which has bolt-in back seats so it can be used for hauling things around the farm or to take the family to church:

And here’s Henry with the DeLorean:

When we were finished drooling over the cars, we went through the Aerospace Museum. I like the WWI gallery best, and the spacecraft of course! Here’s Henry with the Apollo 9 Command Module:

So much fun!

I’ve been having a ton of fun with Hipstamatic, an app for iPhone that “brings back the look, feel, unpredictable beauty, and fun of plastic toy cameras from the past.” http://hipstamaticapp.com/

I bought it a while back when it was on sale and had fun with it then, but a recent update has made it way more useable, since it will now allow you to take up to nine photos in quick succession and eliminate your unloved films and lenses from shuffle mode. I kinda went nuts the last couple of days.

When you upload photos to flickr from within the app, it tags them with the film, lens, and flash you used so you can easily recreate your favorite combinations. Handy!

Every time I want to make a custom alarm for my iPhone, I need to google the process all over again. So, just thought I’d note it down here to make it easier next time. Of course, the same process makes alarms and ringtones.

Here’s the link I always use:
http://www.ehow.com/how_2160460_custom-iphone-ringtones-free.html

Here’s a quick version to remind myself:

iTunes preferences -> CD import settings -> AAC
Convert mp3 snippet to AAC
drag AAC version to desktop (or somewhere), throw away mp3 version, throw away AAC copy still in iTunes (if there is one)
rename from .m4a to .m4r
double-click

The alarm I just made is the “Somebody loves the MONARCH! Monarch speaking… WHAT?!??!” soundbite from The Venture Brothers. Cracks me up every time I hear it. Grab it if you want it. It’s only 7 seconds long. http://ge.tt/3yvpkMq

I had a really fun dream early this morning, just before my alarm went off. I was singing with a friend… a man with a baby daughter. I’m not sure which friend it was. Could have been Hugh, pthree, or even my cousin Jon — all three have baby girls. We were singing “I Ride an Old Paint” (I like the Almanac Singers version with Woody Guthrie on lead vocals):

The guy (whoever it was) was singing lead, and I was harmonizing. In my dream the notes were crystal-clear. The verses were easy to harmonize with, but I had a little trouble finding harmony to fit the chorus; however, by the end of the dream I found notes that fit beautifully. And although sometimes I wake up with really awful songs in my head, that’s a lovely one so it made a good start to the day.

In unrelated news, I weighed myself last night: 112.8 pounds! That’s up from my usual 109, and even if the home scale isn’t as accurate as a doctor’s office scale, I must still have gained a pound or two. Yay me!

(I’m almost 5’8″, so 109 is wayyyyyyy too thin. 112 is, too, but it’s better, anyway.)

Last Monday I had to spend a few hours at the hospital having a scheduled heart catheterization done, so my doctor could check on my primary pulmonary hypertension (caused by heart defect). It had been seven years since the last time I had this procedure done. I’ve been feeling considerably worse over the last couple of months, so I was quite worried, but my doctor says that the pressures have worsened but not drastically so, and he’s just going to double one of my prescriptions and see if that helps me feel a bit better.

Also, he thinks that my constant cough, which is not caused by allergies, asthma, or freaky diseases, must be a rare symptom of my PPH, and that it might get better on this new dose of medication. That’d be nice. I’m really tired of coughing all the time.

I have a problem with never being hungry, so not eating enough. I decided in January to try to eat some kind of lunch every day, and I’ve stuck to that. I keep a few small leftover dinner portions in the freezer, as well as some of Trader Joe’s frozen cheese tamales, and I have something nutritious, if only something small, every afternoon whether I’m hungry or not.

For the past couple of weeks I’ve also been eating breakfast. I have a fried egg on whole wheat toast every morning (where morning is sometime before noon), and I find that, paradoxically, I am much more likely to be hungry for lunch when I’ve had my egg in the morning. It’s quick to make, tastes nice, and isn’t too much food. I’m not a big egg fan — don’t like them scrambled or omeletted — but a fried egg is pleasant.

Lately I notice myself getting hungry by 11 if I haven’t had my egg yet. Yay! So, it’s time to go make my egg and eat it on the lawn in the sunshine. We’ve had some beautifully sunny days lately, which is a nice change from the unusual amounts of rain and gloom we’ve had this winter.

So, almost a month late and I’m finally writing about our lovely family Christmas!

My dear Aunt Susan and Uncle Jack flew into town from New York a few days before Christmas, and my sister Kirsten and her husband Marcos drove down from San Francisco, visited with his family in LA for Christmas eve, and then came to us on Christmas day.

(Here is Kirsten trying out Angry Birds on Dan’s iPad on Christmas night)

We had, of course, several sessions of wonderful Christmas Carol playing/singing! Mom borrowed a couple of cellos for Kirsten and Susan to play, Chloe and Sal and I all played the piano in various combinations, Bob played the guitar, and Marcos borrowed Henry’s electric bass.

Just before Christmas Dan helped me to rearrange the furniture so we could get the piano out of the dark, crowded corner of the dining room and into the living room. We just pulled the sliding doors shut between dining and living rooms, put the piano against them, and now we pretend it’s a real wall. Though it is a bit crowded, especially with 12 people in the room, it’s much more cheerful.

We had gray rainy weather most of the week, but one day right after Christmas it was beautifully sunny, so we all took a walk at Mission Bay. I need to walk rather slowly, but Bob stuck with me the whole time so I didn’t get lonely. Very sweet :) (Dan was asleep at home that morning, or he would have walked slowly with me too!)

We had dinner one night at En Fuego, and lunch another day at the Studio Diner — that meal was Grandma’s Christmas present to us all. She sent some money so we could all do something special together.

I have the BEST family.

Next time I’ll tell you about Christmas knitting and presents!

More Grammar-Land! Sorry, I forgot to update this since November, but this post will catch you up with the podcast feed and we’ll all be in the same place again.

01 Mr. Noun – 00:10:47
02 Little Article – 00:06:56
03 Mr. Pronoun – 00:11:18
04 Serjeant Parsing’s Visit to Schoolroom-shire
05 Mr. Adjective – 00:10:03
06 Mr. Adjective Tried for Stealing – 00:11:24