Bokkie en Bulle

Oh my goodness!  We're having baby fever in the Houston South African community!  As a knitter, of course, it is my duty to knit something for every new baby.  This past summer, our first friends to be blessed with a little bundle of joy were no exception.  The husband is both a huge John Deere tractor fan and, as most South African men are, a huge Springbok rugby fan.  I found the CUTEST pattern for a tractor sweater from Roo Designs.  Designer Gail Pfeifle designs just about the most adorable baby and toddler sweaters you've ever seen.  Seriously, go click that link and look at those sweaters.  If your ovaries didn't start hurting by the time you got to the owl sweater, you're a stronger woman than I am (or you just don't have ovaries).

I knit mine in Berroco Vintage, which is a super soft, washable acrylic/wool/nylon blend, and which has a great range of colors, including the perfect John Deere green and yellow:

Sorry about the shadows.

Halfway through this sweater, I realized that the "perfect John Deere green and yellow" were also the perfect Springbok green and gold.  So, of course, I had to knit a Springbok sweater.  I charted the Springbok myself, used the same Roo Designs Tractor Pullover pattern for the body, and then used a chart from the Roo Designs Number Pullover for the number on the back, which I set higher up instead of centered, and I changed up the sleeve striping to have just 2 stripes to make it more like a real little rugby jersey:

I know the Springbok is a little wonky, but I still think it's cute.  And so did the daddy-to-be.

Now we have two more South African friends who are pregnant, and both want Springbok sweaters for their upcoming babies! Luckily these things are quick to knit and lots of fun, too.  One of our friends is a big Blue Bulls fan, so he's going to be getting a Blue Bulls jersey, too!  Little does he know... =)  I made the chart today, and will probably knit it up over Christmas break.

I thought I would post the charts here in case anyone wanted them.  Note that these are NOT the patterns for the sweaters themselves, just the charts I made for the Springbok and Blue Bulls logos.  If you want to make these sweaters, hit up Roo Designs for their pattern, or design your own!  Or use them on a hat or socks or whatever you want!  Just click to embiggen, then save and enjoy.

Click to embiggen.

Ditto.

Simplicity

There's not much in my life outside of law school I can handle right now.  Basically, I can handle knitting stockinette in the round, watching Food Network, napping, and occasionally cooking.  Not a very long list!  My brain is so spongy and bruised at the end of a long day of class and reading that I just honestly cannot handle anything more complicated than staring and drooling.

Staring and drooling.

There has been knitting.  Oh yes, there has been knitting.  Again, all I can really handle is stockinette in the round right now.  I've discovered I can knit and read, but ONLY knit.   No purling, no lace, no cables, no shaping (OK, minimal shaping).  As long as I keep it simple, I can function.  And as long as I have that little "click click click" going on in my hands, I can read and study and just manage to keep myself from thinking about stabbing someone with a highlighter.

Keeping me functioning (and from committing a felony).

Comfort food is good, too.  Case in point: the Kentucky Hot Brown.  Long, long ago (1995-2001) in a land far, far away (Kentucky), I would eat the crap out of a Hot Brown for about 5-6 nights in a row once a year.  During the Lexington Junior League Horse Show, we'd stay at The Campbell House (which has now apparently been bought out) and eat Hot Browns at the restaurant almost every night all week.  A Hot Brown is a heart attack in a casserole dish.  Basically an open-faced turkey sandwich with tomato, smothered in cream sauce, topped with cheese and bacon and then broiled.

Possibly fatal in large doses.

Comfort food and stockinette.  Possibly the most perfect combination of stress relief known to man.  

Life has been complicated the past few months.  There was a family crisis, the house practically collapsing in around us, law school drama, car break-ins and theft, insurance drama, car repair drama, more law school drama...  It's getting to be a bit much. 

So here's my new plan: keep things simple.  Keep EVERYTHING simple.  How simple?

This simple.

Nigella

With all this madness going on in our house, you'd think I'd be knitting like crazy. Au contraire! For some reason, knitting, my main go-to comfort source, has not been appealing to me at all lately. Sad, considering I've got at least a dozen in-progress projects (that I'll admit to, at least) I need to finish. Maybe it's the heat. It's so blisteringly hot here that I can't really get excited about a lapful of alpaca.

Luscious though it is.

But I don't think it's the heat. I think I've been craving something more immediately gratifying. So, instead, I've been cooking. I love cooking, I really do. I slowed waaaaay down on cooking for a long time due to a combination of our ridiculously tiny kitchen, a schedule that had me working evenings, and sheer laziness. Instead of cooking 4 or more times a week, I was cooking once a week. And sometimes not even that often. I know. It's totally embarrassing. There was a lot of take-out. And a lot of frozen food. It was bad.

I'm trying to get in the habit of cooking again. I want to be able to put a good, healthy meal on the table for Hubby and me on a regular basis. I know law school is going to make this a serious challenge, but I'm going to try. And I have a secret weapon. A weapon that has provided me with a treasure trove of delicious, simple (in the a-few-fresh-ingredients-put-together-beautifully sense, not in the open-a-box-and-add-water sense), and, most importantly for my (very) soon to be cramped schedule, often very quick. "Maximum reward for minimum effort." This weapon's name? Nigella.

Photo courtesy The Sydney Morning Herald

Yes, Nigella Lawson. The British culinary maven who makes foodies worldwide drool over her food and her figure. Seriously, I so wish I knew how she makes her cardigans nip in so fetchingly under her bust. If I could figure that out, I'd probably knit and wear a lot more cardigans. I could use the extra definition in the bust department, if you know what I mean. I totally dig Nigella. She loves food, whether it's trendy or trashy (as long as it's good) and she's totally unashamed of it. And that quote above? Yeah, that's from her. She gets that a bowl of crusty bread topped with a bit of sugar and warm milk can be just as fulfilling and delicious as a Michelin-starred meal. I am totally behind this philosophy.

I've had Nigella's cookbooks for years, and remember watching "Nigella Feasts" when it first aired on Food Network back in the day, but I had never actually made anything out of them for some reason. When the Cooking Channel started airing "Nigella Feasts" and "Nigella Express" again recently, I remembered why I had bought those books in the first place, and why I want to be Nigella when I grow up. I remembered why I love cooking, too. Although I didn't need any reminding about why I love food.

I've made two of Nigella's recipes so far this week, but it looks like the state of our house means I'm done cooking for a little while. The great thing about these recipes is that when you make them, they come out looking almost exactly like the glossy pictures in the book. Except with less cilantro. I'm not a big cilantro fan, although I agree it has its place. That place is usually in the garbage (I kid, I kid! Sort of.). They are Kate-tested and Henry-approved. Seriously--he gave me a 7/10 for the pork chops (points off for it being a bit pink in the middle and for the lack of a starch in the meal) and an 8/10 for the salmon. That may not sound great, but the record is an 8.5 for my chicken cutlet with homemade mashed potatoes and asparagus. Trust me, it's high praise from him. I average around a 6.

It's turned into my "Moment of Zen." I put on my iPod, grab my recipe, and go to town. I go full out--mise en place and all. There's something satisfying about the laying out of ingredients, dosing each into its own mini-bowl or cup, the ordering, the combining, the dicing, the poking things with a spatula...maybe that's my OCD talking, but hey, it works. I just zone out and become one with the food (ha).

Despite the fact that I've had a pretty easy time getting into the habit of cooking again, I can't seem to get into the habit of taking pictures of my food. I set out my camera in the kitchen and remind myself repeatedly while cooking to take pictures, but by the time the food is ready I'm more concerned with getting it to the table hot than I am with aesthetics and documentation. So these are not my pictures. They're from the Cooking Channel website, but trust me when I say mine looked pretty much the same. Although not as well-lit. And I used boneless pork chops. And less cilantro. But let them encourage you to wander over to the site and browse some Nigella-y goodness. I don't even LIKE pork or cooked fish, but damn. These were good.

Crunchy Pork Chops with Garlicky Spinach and Tomato Salad

Sake Salmon and Rice

I'm really tempted to do some sort of "Julie and Julia"-style Nigella Lawson cooking project--trying to cook through the entirety of all her books in the next 3 years--but I won't. I may be masochistic, but I'm not suicidal. Plus "How to Be a Domestic Goddess" is all baking, and I don't think I could handle that much pastry without doing some serious damage to my hips.

Broken

We went to Corpus Christi last week for a little beach getaway before the madness of school starts up. It was great. We spent Wednesday through Saturday getting in some sun and fun--the aquarium, USS Lexington, lying on the beach (for me), jetskiing (for my hubby), and Joe's Crab Shack (who knew? It's delicious!).

The only little issue was when we were trying to fish off the breakwater. It was windy, and we didn't have weights on our lines, so we were having trouble casting. Hubby, being the manly-man he is, was determined to make it work. He jumped off the breakwater onto some large rocks in the ocean without checking them first to see if they were slippery (that's Boyscout/Hiking/Beach Rock Climbing 101, by the way). Of course, being in the OCEAN, they were slippery! He fell in between the rocks, gashing up his leg and nearly falling backwards into another rock and breaking his head open. Thank god he caught himself before that happened. He totally broke himself. Thankfully he wasn't seriously injured, but here's what happened (the squeamish should turn away now):



My husband has a death wish. When I asked him if he'd learned his lesson (after I stopped freaking out over the blood and ascertained that he was, in fact, fine), he responded that he most certainly had not and "I like scars!" Yeah. He's like that. The next day he went jetskiing while I lounged on the beach reading. Now apparently Corpus suffers from a bit of a jellyfish problem. I have no idea what kind, but there were signs at the hotel warning people to beware of jellyfish, so that usually means they're not the good kind. Hubby decided that since he had never been stung by a jellyfish, he wanted to find out what it felt like. So he picked one up. Fortunately, this one was harmless. He carried it onto shore and showed it off for awhile before returning it to its home. Yeah. He's cute, but he's dumb.

All this was a delicious appetizer before the bitter entree we have to choke down this week.

Our house was built in 1935. We love it. It has its quirks and its little faults and idiosyncrasies, but it has always treated us pretty well over the past 5 years. It was gutted and redone in the 80's, which left us with all the modern conveniences, but also with an utter mess. Everything that was done when the house was remodeled was done pretty shoddily. Strike that. VERY shoddily. Since we bought the house, we've had to replace the furnace, hot water heater, dishwasher, oven, refrigerator, recessed lighting, garage door and gate motors, most of the wiring, and the A/C. Every single repairman that came through this house told us how poor the original work was. So we knew there were issues, but none of them were dangerous, just annoying, and none of them, we thought, were structural. We knew there was some moisture under the house, but there was a sump installed, and we were told that as long as we turned on the sump and drained it after it rained, then no worries. Yeah, that didn't so much work.

About a year ago, we started noticing some bumps in our dining room floor. We jokingly dubbed them "cat speed bumps" and assumed that it was just because of the moisture under the house. Then we started to notice some dips. And some bounciness. And an increasing slant. It got to the point where if you sat at the head of the dining table, you were at about a 10 degree slant. So we had some pier and beam guys come out. The verdict: 1 beam and 5 floor joists were rotted out, 2 of which were completely rotted through. AKA GONE. To the tune of $6,000. And the floor would (obviously) need to be replaced as well. So that's another $4-5,000 for new wood (OK, laminate) in the dining room and living room.

Why is the floor so much? I'm glad you asked! It's because once they cut a hole in our dining room floor, we discovered there was NO SUB FLOOR! It had completely rotted away! So under one specific area, there were no floor joists and no there was no sub floor. So the only thing holding up our dining room table (and us) was the hardwood flooring. Yay. Safety first! Then they discovered that not 1 but 3 beams were rotted, adding almost $3,000 to the total. Yay. Check it out:



That's the underside of our house. Those two joists in front that are all broken? Yeah. Those are supposed to go all the way across. And all that soil? Shouldn't be touching the beams.

On top of fixing foundation issues and getting new flooring this week, we're also having a new cooktop installed (ours has been broken for awhile and we finally found a new one that fits) and getting new back doors (they were also rotted and one literally fell apart last week--it's held together with duct tape at the moment), and I'm trying to run around getting new glasses, contacts, and a bachelorette party outfit, getting my dress for a rehearsal dinner altered, getting all my books and materials ready for school, doing my reading, meeting up with a friend from out of town, and taking the dog to the vet all before Friday when orientation starts. Then I have orientation Friday and Saturday and class starts Monday.

Kill me. I've started smoking again from the stress. I'm a control freak, and I've totally lost control and it's too much. Everything's broken and I can't fix it.

Title

"It's all gone pear-shaped." Yes, it has. Clearly, for the last, oh, 2 years I haven't updated this thing. Life takes you on some strange paths, and you don't always end up where you thought you'd be. Two years ago, I thought I'd either have a good job or be in grad school working on my history PhD at this point in my life. Honestly, I'm 28 years old, married, and (now, at least) unemployed. And getting ready to start law school, which is something I'm still not entirely sure about, to be honest. So, yes, the neat round globe of my life plan went a little pear-shaped.

I spent the last year working at a yarn shop, and now I'm staring down the barrel of a loaded law school. And I need an outlet. Knitting is a great one, of course, and I love my husband, of course, but I need a verbal outlet that's more fluid, and, quite frankly, more selfish. When I get into that "just one more row" knitting zone, I call it "knitterbation." I just keep going and going and obsessing and obsessing and it's totally and purely selfish and masochistic and self-stroking. So this is my bloggerbation, I guess. Not the most noble of terms, but satisfying (ha) nonetheless.

Will I get my JD? Will law school get the better of me? Will I freak out and stab someone in the eye due to nicotine withdrawal (a likely possibility tonight)? Stay tuned to find out the answers to these, and many other, questions.