Orange curd

I made orange curd tonight! This recipe is a little fussier than my mother-in-law's recipe for lemon curd, but it's very nice. I was surprised it called for a little lemon juice (for zing) and half a stick of butter (for... butteriness?). I think the real genius step is to reduce the orange juice before starting so it's more concentrated.

Best answer EVER

Ring, ring! Meg gave me her cell phone to answer.
"Who is it?" I asked.
"Jesus," she says matter-of-factly. So I talk to Jesus on Meg's phone.

YES!!!

So she likes gifs and Youtube

This is the funniest thing Meg's seen in... maybe forever.

Just now she was fiddling around behind my chair. I said, "Do I want to know what you're doing back there?"

She answered, "Hiding!"

Not knit till now

There are tons of cute knitted projects around that I really, really want to try. There are ginormous knit blankets, cable-knit sweaters, and patterns of all varieties. Joann's even had a pattern card for fair-isle socks (!) in the yarn aisle. That's like, like, putting recipes in the meat row. I've done some crocheted projects this winter, but it's not the same, and I don't think I can get the look I'm going for with a crochet stitch.

I do not have knitting needles, never having knit, and I'm not going to rush out and buy a pair just like that. So my question to the all-knowing internet today was, "Can I knit using chopsticks as knitting needles?" The internet said yes, with reservations. I have moved one step towards a larger universe.

(P.S. Jonathan and I are re-watching Empire Strikes Back. Those movies are just full of quotes. It's as bad as Shakespeare.)

Cold

The winter cold is striking again. Not outside... more through the nose. I am intentionally doing nothing useful today, beyond eating and dire necessities. It's kind of hard not to feel guilty about it, because dag-nab-it, if you're a housewife you've GOT to be busy or you fail at life (apparently?), but I call my Kleenex pile to witness: I HAVE A COLD. I think it's okay.

Adventurous

We've had an adventuresome day. By noon, I'd sewn a skirt,* checked out a historical mill in Aldie, driven to Middleburg for the first time, locked my keys in the car, had a nice policeman come get my keys out of the car, visited a new library, discovered a town I'd never even heard of before, verified that Business 7 through Purcellville really does turn into Dry Mill Road in Leesburg, and heard from my mom that a friend of a friend who'd been kidnapped in Africa had just been rescued by Navy Seals! PRAISE GOD! Obviously, my day was not as adventurous as hers.

...I like Middleburg. It's very old-school and full of cute shops, apparently cute restaurants, and horses. But Meg's favorite movie right now is Ratatouille, and all her board books are full of the Eiffel Tower, and one of my pinterest friends is putting together a Paris board. I need to go to Paris now, please.


*Simplest skirt ever. I cut off an old shrunken sweater of Jonathan's, sewed one-seam pocket around the top, and threaded elastic through. Took 20 minutes, mostly threading elastic.

Dinogad's Smock

Heavenfield linked me to this rather neat piece of historical detective work. "Dinogad's Smock" is an old Welsh lullaby that got incorporated into the Y Gododdin, and linguists dated the lullaby to the 500s AD.

The poem specifies Dinogad's father went fishing in "Rhaeadr Derwennydd," or the Derwent Waterfall. There are several Derwents on the Isles, but only one with a waterfall. There's also a "Hog's Earth" woods nearby suitable for bringing back "a roe-buck, a boar, a stag," and a Castle Crag just uphill from the falls with a post-Roman settlement of suitable age. Bing!

My new friend

Meet my new friend.
This is a bust of Otto von Bismarck back when he was, um, something before he was made a prince in 1871. We got it at a white elephant exchange last night from a guy who got it from a history professor who'd had it for years, who'd gotten it from somebody who'd had it for many years before that. There's speculation the bust is actually from before 1871, since it's not of Bismarck with his later title.

Or history professors just like "snapshot" busts.

Either way, I needed Bismarck. I've been kind of wanting a bust for a while, and I took a fancy to him and his peeling gold paint. And his mustache. At first we couldn't read his label properly and thought he was a Nazi friend of Himmler's, and I liked him then. I mean, I could always paint him and give him silly hats. But after the gentleman who brought the bust explained he was Bismarck, I was really glad I'd stolen him from Nathan Curby. Would you believe, no one tried to steal the bust away from me? Bismarck is awesome. It's not like he was a singing Justin Bieber toothbrush (true story).

Since my camera charger is still MIA, you get this photo courtesy of my cell phone.

New projects!

Since Meg is urgently in need of bigger clothes, and I've been on a sewing kick lately, I had a good excuse to go buy fabric today. :-) I got an orange butterfly print, yellow polka dots, giant brown and white polka dots, and some multicolored stripes. I want to make a couple skirts and maybe a sundress or two, that she can wear with leggings and onesies now and as a single layer when it gets warmer. The fabric's in the washer right now. I'm pretty excited.

I haven't quite managed to post about my previous projects because my camera is totally out of juice and I have to track down the power cord, the camera, and connect them. This may take a while. But I've made a purple skirt for myself, lace-trimmed legwarmers for under boots, and a cardboard shelf for Meg's stuffed animals. It's very temporary, which is Totally Good Enough.

Wrong, wrong, wrong

Some people tend to get all twitchy when pictures hang crooked. For me, it's when bloggers use the wrong homonym. That tells me they don't understand what they're writing. Which is bad. This is especially distressing in metaphors like

"guild the lily" (should be GILD the lily, as in put gold on it, not put it into committees)

and

"give it free reign" (which at least makes sense, kind of, but it's actually REIN. Like, horses. Horses have reins, not kingdoms).

I also saw someone write "walla" for "voila." Today. Twitch, twitch.

Those are true stories from this week, but I didn't link them to protect the guilty. Thank you. You may now return to your previously scheduled life.