Five Minutes of Maggie

I'm not saying this will take five minutes to look at, but that this was all taken within five minutes. Round and round she goes!

What's Your Go-To Cupboard Recipe?

Someone in a group I'm in* is trying to start a recipe-sharing thread, and suggested picking recipes that are quick and easy, and don't require rare ingredients.
*Actually, now two of them seem to be going, so I'm going to have to see which is who before proceeding.

Which got me thinking about how one person's always-have-it could easily be another's rare ingredient. I mean, my comfort meal is probably tuna noodle casserole, and so I have always kept pasta and tuna and cream of chicken soup* in the cupboard, and peas in the freezer, and as long as I'm not out of milk, I'm good to go. But there are probably others who would say, cream of chicken soup? Why would I have that on hand?
*It can be cream of anything, really, but I prefer chicken.

What's always in your cupboard? Do you have a recipe that you don't need to look at the recipe to make?

Of Feet and Hair and Knitting

Feet
Yesterday, as my mother and I were preparing for a major expedition (Walmart and Aldi), I looked at a pair of sandals that Mom brought home for me shortly Before All This, that I hadn't really tried, and thought, why not wear them today and see how they do? In the last few weeks, I've gone for a walk after work a few times, which with my silly tenderfeet* has led to some soreness after, so I thought I should shop around the closet and see if I had anything better for half a mile or a mile around the neighborhood.
*As I have mentioned before.

Well. No. Emphatically no, not these. I made it through the shopping, hobbling by the end, then took them off in the car before we even got home. After getting the groceries inside, I looked in amazed dismay at the damage: large blisters on both sides of both feet. Impressive! Particularly considering that I walked around the living room in the sandals before we left and they seemed fine. Nope, nope, nope.

Sleeping without putting pressure on them was awkward, but overall the feet are doing better today, though I have to be much more aware of them and the positions I put them into, like for standing up. If you are like my mother, and can basically never think about your feet, do take a moment to be glad about that, won't you? I would love to be like that.

Hair
How's your hair doing? Assuming you don't live with a stylist, and are not one of those people who can go months or years between cuts, I assume you are, like me, starting to see the difference.

I get my hair trimmed every four weeks, usually. I have short hair that annoys me when it gets shaggy and into my eyes and tickles the back of my neck. (Fun fact, up north I went every five weeks, but it grows faster down here.) I was due a week ago yesterday, though in fact even if the salon hadn't closed down by then, I had that awful migraine and would not have been able to go. Either way, I am now at the stage where most people wouldn't notice much, but I can definitely tell it's longer than I'm used to. On Friday, it was bugging me enough that I put the headband on just to keep it out of my face.

I am fortunate that I don't color my hair, so I don't have that to worry about; things are going to get interesting, though, aren't they? (And I know, if that's the worst thing we have to think about ... but sometimes I get overwhelmed by the more serious aspects, and have to focus on things like this.)

Knitting
As a knitter, I generally try to resist the desire to start another new project: it's not that I'm monogamous, but I like to see progress, so the fewer projects active at once, the more I can see what I'm getting done. These days, though, all bets are off.

I was working along on the second seashell shawl when I started to feel the pangs of startitis for the Trianglegram shawl with the Dirty Water Dyeworks yarn I got at Ravelry, and I finally cast that on March 1. It's coming along very nicely; here's the most recent photo of it I've taken.

I put it aside to whip out the headband, but otherwise have been happily working away on it. Until Friday night, when I was seized with the desire to wind yarn and cast on something lacy. Which has gotten me to here so far (crappy picture, but you get the idea):

The yarn is the cashmere/silk that I picked up at Rhinebeck from Jo of Celtic Memory Yarn, and wow, it's been longer than I realized since I've knit lace! I seem to have gotten right out of the groove on that, but it will come back. Lovely yarn, and the pattern is a free one from Alison (hi, Alison! please don't tell me if you can see mistakes in that photo!), Marnie's Scarf.

This will not make good social knitting, at least not for a while, so it can stay by the couch, and the Trianglegram can be virtual-SnB-group knitting, since I now have two of those weekly: Mondays with my friends from up north, Thursdays with the group down here (one of whom is now back in Minnesota and another in Canada, but still dialing in). Trying to keep reaching out during isolation.

Ah, Yes

Soap. Yes, Soap

And no, this idea didn't come to me while washing my hands. :)

My mind wandered in the shower this morning, and for some reason I was remembering the old commercial with the tag line, "Safeguard, always the smallest soap in the house." (I do use Safeguard, yes.) It got me thinking of other soap commercials*, and I could remember these: 
*Look, I never promised to be profound here. I could rant about how I am so fucking tired of editing things on COVID-19 (it's so depressing) and how I hate editing in PowerPoint, and how editing on COVID-19 in PowerPoint is horrendous, and there, wouldn't you rather think about soap commercials?

• Dial: "Aren't you glad you use Dial? Don't you wish everyone did?"
• Ivory: "99 and 44/100ths percent pure" (even as a kid, I wondered what was in the rest)
• Irish Spring: "Fresh and (phonetic whistle, I don't even know what to put) clean as a whistle!"

I deliberately didn't google it; I wanted to see what I could remember, completely accurate or no. What else can you think of?

By the way, do you find that slogans set to music stick much better with you than words without? Music or rhyme are what really help me (see: the preamble to the Constitution, thanks to Schoolhouse Rock, and that silly Bonkers board game I wanted as a kid, whose commercial jingle is still using up some of my brain cells).

A Worthy Entry

In the recent category of "animals enjoying aquariums" during All This (have you seen others?), I present: kittens!



So cute.

In What Zone

I saw this on Twitter, and it's interesting. While I'm glad I'm not all the way in the Fear Zone, I'm not all the way in the Growth Zone, either, if I'm honest.

I guess I'm in the zone where I think the Growth Zone is a nice concept, but not fully attainable right now, at least for me. How about you?

Saturday Not To Plan: Mostly Terrible, But Some Very Good Spots

I didn't have a particularly detailed plan in mind for Saturday, but certainly waking up with a migraine that went from bad to worse in a hurry was nothing I wanted to happen. From about 6 until 2:30, I was: in a blur of restless motion, dozing, saying ow-ow-ow, and had a few bouts of vomiting (so much fun once you've thrown up everything in your system and your body keeps trying). Yeah, it was miserable.

At some point, after taking nausea medicine, I decided to trust my stomach to keep the headache medicine down, and after some more dozing woke up having turned the corner. Whereas an hour earlier, I had been trying to come up with something, anything, that I could stand to eat or drink, and rejecting even the simplest idea of saltines or ginger ale, I got up saying, oh, scrambled eggs, I could do that! And they were amazing, I have to say. The headache hangover isn't, of itself, a good feeling, but compared to what it follows, wow, it's amazing!

So I ate my scrambled eggs, and rejoiced in being able to bear sitting up, and then turned on the NHL Network to find they were playing, of all things, a Bruins game! It was great.

And then! The mail brought me an order I placed last week, to support an LYS and one of my favorite small dyers, Three Irish Girls:

Isn't it glorious? The colorway is called Pride (in the Name of Love).

The blanket I finished last year, that's the background for so many Maggie-lap photos, is made of Springvale Worsted, and this is the DK, which is slightly lighter weight (205 yards to 100 grams with worsted, versus 270 yards for the DK). I want to make a longer, narrower version of the same blanket, for when I want something over my shoulders while sitting on the couch, and will probably use this. One of these days.

The yarn store I ordered from, Eat Sleep Knit, has a rewards program and for my order, I earned the Wool Winder Mill level, as well as a $5 store credit. They sent me a patch!

They also sent a yarn lotto card, on which I earned another $5 store credit. (And a grape lollipop, my favorite flavor!)

And I got an email from them noting that my box was showing as delivered, that they hoped I liked it, and here, have 10% off your next order. Whew! I certainly will be ordering from them again. They have quite a wide range of brands, and excellent service.

I haven't been much more energetic today, but I've managed to do a little. The quick project I mentioned on Thursday was a headband, since it occurred to me* that without haircuts (I usually get a trim every four weeks), my bangs will be growing into my eyes soon and driving me crazy. I found the Hot Mess Headband on Ravelry, a simple pattern with a cable twist in front, and started it Thursday night during my virtual knitting group. Worked on it a bit more Friday night, and finished it up today.
*It's funny, isn't it, how the mind wanders around to find things one can do something about, in this awful mess of uncertainty.

Twenty inches long, roughly, sewed the ends together (if I make another, I might do the provisional cast-on and then kitchener the ends together, for less of a seamed look) and ta da, done.

And then back to the Trianglegram shawl. Which bunched up nicely in my lap.

Colors a little washed out from the lighting (the green is greener than that in real life), but fun all the same.