Today’s rocking hot cheap steal purchase?
A 21 quart “Maid of Honor” brand pressure canner for $15! Oh hell yeah. It just needs a new rubber gasket ring and we’re good to go. I am so all over the farmers market! I can pressure can things now. Fuck you, botulism! I can now bring food to 15 pounds pressure and process for 30 minutes! I will kill you, botulism! I will kill you in my super cheap pressure canner.
I wish to thank the good people at Steeple People Thrift Stores for not knowing the actual value of what they were selling and many thanks to Matt who saw, recognized it for what it was and called to tell me it was there. Thanks, guys! Saving almost $100 on a pressure canner is super keen!
The added benefit is that it looks like a kitschy 50’s robot thing. Very cool. I think the guy behind the counter thought I was buying it for it’s kitsch value. I did not want to take the time to explain that I’m not so big on kitsch and then find myself yelling about kitsch and camp and how angry it all makes me because when I get to that point I suddenly find a needle in my arm and people wheeling me away. I did point out that I was planning on actually canning things. I’m gonna ‘put up’ for winter!
ps if anyone else would like to join Anna and I on our SUPER CHICKEN TREK TO NORTH DAKOTA let me know. You have to bring your own chicken costume.
Food!
I’ve been commissioned to crochet food items for a little play kitchen set. This is just too much fun! It’s for a pair of twin girls who are turning 2 in November and they will be getting a play kitchen set as their birthday present. I will crochet the food to go with it. Right now I am in the planning stages, figuring out what I can make, keeping the items within certain color boundaries so as to not purchase an entire ball of yarn for just one item and determining what kinds of foods kids would actually want to play with.
I went through some cook books and magazines last night to inspire me and I realized that there is a huge difference between food that you can make in the kitchen and food that you can make with yarn (duh). As fascinating as cassoulet might be to me, you can’t really crochet it. Or more to the point, you shouldn’t crochet it for 2 year olds. They’re not going to really appreciate that blob of yarn sitting there.
On the other hand, there will be hot dogs, hamburgers, cheese, ham, bread, blobs of ketchup, mustard and mayo, clusters of grapes, pairs of cherries, slices of pie, and so on. I am particularly excited about the cupcakes because I can decorate them any way i want.
She’s also asked me to make sets of finger puppets! I am so all over that. I love making finger puppets. As we go, I’ll post photos.
If you are interested in a set for someone you know, drop me a line and we can work out a deal.
Like you buy the yarn and then instead of paying me for my time you donate to the Walk for Animals!
hooray for the dogpark
Let’s hear it, my peeps! Let us all raise our hands in the air falsely signifying that we do not care!!
We could not ask for better dog park weather, not at all. God bless the Minnesota sspringtime (when it does actually happen). Chester is getting better and better at the park. He’s getting socialized and learning to trust other dogs. He’s even engaging some in play. Interestingly, he always picks out dachshunds from a distance and goes after them. He really loves dachshunds. Also, he cannot stand pugs. Don’t know what the deal is with that.
Tonight we managed to find a couple clusters of people with smaller dogs and Chester hung tight to me for a while then slowly ventured off for farther and farther expeditions. I was very proud of him. Proud until he forgor who his owner was and decided to take off with another lady. We’ll have to work on that. He comes when called so I’m not so worried about losing him, I am just a little concerned that it does not occur to him that this person doesn’t look like me or smell like me or pay attention to him the way I do.
Maybe it does occur to him and the little bastard has no loyalty. BASTARD!
oh hey…while we’re on the topic of dogs…
Let me just remind you to donate! Seriously, I can be really persistant about this! Kidding! Donate if you can and want to, it’s a good cause.
Paging Dr Freud….
So one of the cooler side effects of the Effexor is the crazy dreams…
The other night I dreamt I was on a football field with Emmitt Smith. Emmitt was getting ready for some big game, perhaps it was the super bowl, I’m not sure. there was glitter and fanfare and all manner of football related excitement. At one point, he and I were dancing on the field, he was trying to sing ‘Baby Got Back‘ to me, but he could not remember the lyrics. I tried to prompt him, but he just wasn’t getting it.
Who doesn’t know the lyrics???
Later, he ran a play, went out of bounds and the play ended; except he decided that it shouldn’t be done. He got back on the field and ran a touchdown. The touchdown was deemed illegal and not scored. Emmitt and the referee got into a fistfight that no one wanted to break up.
I had to walk on the field, and demand that they each stand up. I poked Emmitt in the chest and told him to shut up, I grabbed the ref and told him to make a call and stick to it, dammit.
Yeah, what the hell. I also dreamed that I was renting a house from the lady who bought my house a couple years ago and she was being a dick and I was being a dick and there was a lot of swearing and name calling, then I was on the ‘Lost’ island trying to teach those yo-hos how to build a palm hut.
and and and….
Please do not forget to donate to the Walk for the Animals fund drive to memorialize Ghengis.
Trying to find the unfindable
When I was a kid I got as a present 2 children’s books. They were both very large anthologies of children’s stories. Not popular or famous stories, just kid’s stuff. Stories I’ve never seen again in any other books.
The books were large, about the size of a phone book and may an inch and a half thick, printed on cheap paper. The stories were divided by theme and each theme had its own color paper. You know, all the animal stories were in the purple section, heroes in the green, etc…
I loved those books, I read the stories over and over. I lost those books one afternoon in a fit of parental rage and it always saddened me.
Now that I’m an adult and I have the resources to replace those quirky things that made an impression I’m finding that I cannot replace those books because I can’t remember what they were called. The only details I remember are
1) A story about a little girl who finds a stray black puppy. She brings him home and puts up signs. The owner comes for the puppy and the puppy’s real name is Demitasse. This one stuck with me because I had never seen the word ‘Demitasse’ before and I had to break it down and figure out what it meant, then I had to look it up. I also expected the guy to let the girl keep the puppy but he didn’t and I came to understand that just because it’s the nice thing or the thing you want it doesn’t mean that other people won’t be affected by it. The man obviously loved the puppy too!
2) An underwater kingdom is threatened, the hero of the story has to swim through the dense seaweed of the Sargasso Sea. I’m sure he saved the day, but I don’t remember. I just remember having to look up the Sargasso Sea because I’d not heard of it before.
Anyway, yeah, sometimes even if you want something and you have the resources to get them, you just can’t have them because they don’t exist anymore. I’m sure these books were put out by some cheap fly by night printhouse and picked up on the cheap. They certainly were not of any high quality. Maybe someday I will find them.
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Fundraising for the Walk for Animals has been coming along beautifully! I’ve had to increase my goal again. I am very please about this. I even contact the Humane Society to find out exactly how to make sure that the funds donated are done in Ghengis’ memory. I am very excited about this. Thank you to everyone.