Helmet: magenta and yellow

After a tornado hit downtown Minneapolis (you didn't hear about it because weather-related news about the eastern states always eclipses weather-related news about the midwest), we had a couple days of flood rains followed by some cold weather. In Minnesota, it's hard not to feel a little depressed by the feelings of doom brought about by cold weather in August. Winter will be here sooner than we'd like, and those are nine long, cold months in this part of the country. Our cold-weather preview motivated me to knit a winter hat.

I am driven to knit hats with earflaps. Absolutely driven. Yesterday I came up with this woolly helmet with a giant button. It's magenta and yellow! And as I began to knit it up, I soon realized that this had is destined to belong to my friend Andrea, who lives in a cold part of the world herself and who is quite charming in a helmet.

Duke of zuke

Other summers, in other towns, Ben and I have had gardens bursting with more zucchini than we could shake a bottle of olive oil at. For whatever reason, our garden here in Minneapolis never* yields more than four or five zucchini (above: the largest of the summer... we didn't notice it until it was already bigger than we like our zukes to get**). But we make up for it by picking hundreds of perfect, tender green beans in July and August.

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* "Never" only spans two gardening seasons, but we're pretty sure this is just How It's Going To Be with this particular plot of dirt. Who knows why?
** As you might know, the bigger they get, the less flavorful zukes are. This one was great for baking; I made four batches of zucchini bread, including chocolate chip and chocolate-walnut. Much of it got frozen in muffin form for later inclusion in bentos.

A short summer

I have some time off before returning to MCAD next week,
and I'm spending it cleaning the house, cooking stuff to
pack in bentos once school-related madness resumes, riding
my pink bike, picking green beans and zukes, and trying to
become brilliant at watercolor (which I'm growing more and
more sure will never happen).

Ben and I have also spent some time at my favorite art
museum and passed an evening with an old college chum
of mine whom I hadn't seen for about a decade.

Reward for spending my last day of vacation scrubbing the floors with a sponge and a bucket of water:

It's a blueberry-banana smoothie! Mmmmm.

Scary knitting

I'm on vacation until my summer courses begin, and am
patrolling the interwebs for knitting ideas. Anything to
keep me busy, and oh my god, check out this terrifying
thing you can knit! Pattern available here, for free... if
you dare.

A good man with a good book

Here's a picture of how Ben, like the rest of us layabouts, passed much of our dreamy, low-key, nothing-to-do-but-unwind vacation.

Blog cabin

A week spent at a sweet little cabin "up north" has rested and revitalized me, and now I kind of understand those "I'd rather be at the cabin" bumper stickers.

Oh, it was fun! Ben and his parents and I (and our dog, and theirs) spent the week canoeing, reading, and relaxing.* No e-mail! No Facebook! No uploading photos to Blogger! There were cell phones, but we turned them off.

One morning, I made pancakes with the wild blueberries we picked.

My sweet father-in-law brought his copies of Pullman's Golden Compass series, on which novels Ben and I were instantly hooked. I'm nearly finished with the second book, and Ben is occupied with the third. I also re-read The Turn of the Screw over the course of a couple of cool northern evenings, and relished having the bejesus pleasantly scared outta me. Honestly, that novel chills me to the marrow. Are you familiar with the tale? A most elegant ghost story. Personally, I love to think it was all in the governess' head, which is obviously the most terrifying interpretation, and therefore the most satisfying.

In addition to the landlubberly pursuits of reading, knitting, sleeping, cooking, and listening to NPR (we are civilized folk, after all), we also, some of us, canoed and splashed about in something called Rose Lake. (I'd convinced Ben to pack his swimming trucks, but was not able to induce him to put them on and go in the water.)

I didn't take many photos, and most of the ones I did take are of interesting fabric patterns discovered in our little log cabin. There was a beautiful handmade quilt, for example, with the loveliest combination of colors! And the sweetest little Scandinavian curtains (just visible in blueberry pancake batter photo).

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* Us. Not the dogs. Well, one dog did go on a reluctant turnabout in the canoe.