Tackling Kitchen Clutter

Today I'm joining Jules over at Pancakes and French Fries and participating in The William Morris Project.  This is my first link-up of any kind, and (obviously) my first foray into The William Morris Project.  Starting in the kitchen...

Mike and I are going to be moving this spring.  He has received orders to go to Beaufort, SC.  We think (and I stress only think, not know) he will be headed down there sometime in May.  School will not be finished for me yet, so I will be sticking around here for a bit.  However, we would like to put our house on the rental market in time for the summer renters.  What this means is that we will schedule our pack up with TMO for sometime in early May, which means it will get to where ever it is we land sometime in early June.

Since in June I will be in an entirely new clinical rotation and not anywhere near Beaufort, Mike will be tasked with the unpacking.  In an effort to move only what we love, and also to make unpacking an entire house a manageable task for one, I am making a serious effort to, for lack of a better expression, separate the wheat from the chaff, stuff-wise.  Last time we moved, they packed catalogs.  Well, they pack everything, truly.  A full service move is a wonderful thing, but it means that when you unpack you really are faced with the fact that you had two years of Eddie Bauer catalogs in the living room end table (which you know because you removed them from a box marked "living room end table.")

So I started in the most formidable room (to me).  The kitchen.

The Canned Goods Cupboard, Before.  Who would mistake this for an "after" though, really?

This cupboard has sort of become the "if we aren't sure where it goes, let's put it in here" cupboard.  We have: tea lights, a dead candle, actual tea, vitamins, dog medicine, a recipe tin (further examination here revealed an empty recipe tin), Vegetarian Times magazines, Everyday Food magazines, a calendar, owner's manuals for kitchen appliances, and a few spiral bound cookbooks (I don't like displaying the spiral bound cookbooks; they aren't "pretty" to me).

The highly organized After

So I removed the medicines and vitamins (which will make a reappearance on this blog, because they just went into the next cupboard, but that is where a third of our medicines are, so there you go), put the tea with the other tea, moved the Vegetarian Times out, organized the Everyday Food (is anyone else going to miss this magazine?), and put the like goods with their family (i.e. tomatoes with other tomato products, soup with soup).  If you have a keen eye, you might notice that the Ghirardelli dark chocolate chips are open in the second picture, and they were not in the first.  Hmmmm......

The pockets on the cupboard doors stay, and despite the fact that they don't look organized, they really are. The right hand side holds recipes for things I am going to make in the next couple of weeks, according to what we have on hand or in the freezer.  The two pockets on the left hold receipts.  Last year we started using Mint to track our expenses and needed somewhere to corral all the receipts.  The bottom pocket is the current month.  The top pocket is last month, which I will hopefully get through this weekend.

I also cleaned the candle.  I love the candles from Bath and Body Works and the jars make such nice Stuff Holders once the candle is gone.  I used to just chip away at the wax with a knife and hope that I wouldn't end up in the ED.  Not anymore.  The best way I've found to remove all that wax from the bottom of the candle jar is with boiling water.

Pour boiling water to the top of the candle jar.
You can see the layer of melted wax on top of the candle on the right.

Then you let that cool.  And by let cool, I mean get cold.  You have to let it sit for a couple of hours. But while you wait, you can enjoy the scent one last time.  (The boiling water re-heats the wax, throwing the scent.)  The wax will harden into a disk.

Wax now on top of the jar, floating on the water.

Pop the wax off the water.  It will come off really easily.  I was surprised at this. I thought the wax would cling to the sides of the jar, but nope.  I just sort of floats there.

Then clean your candle jars, which aren't really candle jars anymore.  They can be whatever you want them to be.

Clean and ready for their new job!

The bottle on the left is an old fashioned milk bottle, so that one will go in the cupboard (not the new clean one!) to await the next time I have someone over for coffee and need something more classy than a plastic two gallon jug to bring milk to the table.  (Which, honestly, has never happened.  My coffee-swilling friends go right to the fridge and grab their own milk.)  The BBW jar will probably hold buttons.

Now I'm off to make dinner, which will involve some soup that I didn't know we had and a sandwich.  Easy, cheap, and gets one more thing out of the cupboard.  Score for me!

Week Two, Check

Week two of clinicals is finished!  Whoo hoo!  And it went so much smoother than than the first week.  I'm not dreading next week, like I was this week.  Part of it is familiarity with the unit we are on, I'm sure, but some of it is learning the ropes.  There are still a lot of things to learn, but at this point there are certain things our professor can tell us to do that we can perform without questions.

We also got a bit of a reprieve this week when our cardiac test was bumped to next week.  In order to celebrate, I've been working on some cross stitch this evening.

I'm making a  biscornu for a friend as a Valentine's Day gift.  This particular pattern is from a French blog, but one need not be able to read to embroider.  Especially cross stitch.  Crosses are crosses.

On my nightstand

Last semester, I was so terrified of nursing school that I didn't think I would be able to concentrate on anything but nursing for sixteen weeks, and that all day, every day would be consumed by nursing.  While I spent quite a lot of time reading and studying nursing, I had enough free time that I managed to watch a considerable amount of bad television.

You see, because I was convinced I couldn't read anything but nursing texts, I didn't have a book on hand.  (Not quite true.  I'm a reader; I have shelves of books.  I just didn't have a book at the ready.  I need a plan.)  This semester I plan to manage my downtime a little differently.  I need to have a book to read.  I just do.  If I don't have something focused to do when I'm not studying, I end up randomly channel surfing and watching old episodes of Cold Case.

Just before Christmas, I shared the books on my nightstand.  While I didn't finish everything on it, I did read a lot, including some "extra" books not on the table.  So now I give you my nightstand today, with an updated list of then to now.

What's gone?
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak.  (My GoodReads review.)
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.  Turns out, when you only have a couple of chapters to read, it goes pretty quickly.
The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry.  Same reason as above.
Consider the Oyster.  I'm not sure why this disappeared.  I must have put it away with something else because I didn't read it.  Now I'm going to have trouble finding it, because it surely isn't where it is supposed to be.
The Best American Essays 2012.  I read a little bit of this, but it has moved to back on the shelf.  It isn't shelved, though.  It is sitting on top of its brothers.  This makes it really easy to just grab if I want a finite amount of reading, say, for the bath.  (This happens often, actually.  I will need something to fill twenty minutes and only twenty minutes.)
In the Woods.  Three stars out of five.
The Passage by Justin Cronin.  This has been moved over until spring break.  It is a doorstop of a book, and it has a sequel (which is currently available at the library-- I had to stop myself from checking it out and giving myself over to both of them).  I think it needs some undivided time, so this one will be back.

Still around:
Cloud Atlas.  Haven't started.
The Night Circus.  Haven't started.
World War Z.  I'm about 2/3 through.  I love it, but it doesn't need to be read in one sitting.  It is a series of vignettes about the Zombie War, so I can read one and put it down.  Makes me curious about the movie.
The Knitter's Almanac.  Always there.
An Everlasting Meal.  Ditto.

New:
A Big Truck Went By by Jonathan M. Katz.  About the earthquake in Haiti and the aftermath of all the "support".
Forever by Maggie Stiefvater.  This is Book 3 in her Wolves of Mercy Hill trilogy.  (Book 2, Linger, is out in the living room right now.  That's what I'm currently reading.)  It is Young Adult, but well-written yet quick.  So far I'm about halfway through Linger.  The first book, Shiver, was a bit better, but Linger is keeping me going.
Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris.  It sounded good at the library but I can't remember what it is about now.  It won an award of some sort.  (Clearly my criteria for checking books out of the library is nonexistent.)
Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon.  I find Chabon to be hit or miss.  I loved The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and Wonder Boys, but I've found some of his new stuff hard to get into.  I'm hoping that I love this; it is a big sink-into book with lots of drama (or so I hope).
Drop Dead Healthy by A. J. Jacobs.  I like this kind of "schtick lit."  A.J. Jacobs was one of the first to do it, with his The Know-It-All, which I've read, and I've read all the rest of his stuff.  Why stop now?  And, I figure, this kind of has a little bit to do with health so I can trick myself into thinking I'm not completely ignoring school.  Hah!

And because no photo shoot in this house is complete without some interference by the Fluffy Gang:

Two weeks

Wow, it has been two weeks since I've been here.  While I've composed numerous posts in my head, I haven't been able to write them (for many reasons, none of them very good).  And one of my goals this year was to get here on a more regular basis.  No time like the present to work on that!

What happened to keep me away is that school started back again.  I'm coming up on the end of the third week.  Tomorrow is the first exam of the semester, and by all rights I should be studying for it right now, since my twenty minute break ended fifteen minutes ago.

This week started our first hospital clinical experience, too.  We spent Monday and Tuesday in the hospital, assigned an actual, real, live patient who needed actual nursing care that we were expected to give.  Can you say "stressful"?  More than stressful, actually.  It was completely nerve wracking and draining in a way that I've never experienced before.

The hospital I'm at is over two hours away from where I live, so on Sunday night I drove to a classmate's apartment mid-way between here and the hospital.  So not only am I going into a new situation, I'm not even coming home to decompress between clinical days.  In the grand scheme of things, this isn't a real problem, and I feel grateful that a classmate is putting not only me but another one of us up for two days a week during the entire twelve week experience.  No one slept well on Sunday night, and we had to get up in time to leave at 5:30 am.  By Tuesday afternoon, during our debriefing, we were all so emotionally and physically drained that conversation was minimal.

When I got home on Tuesday evening--at 6 pm, almost fourteen hours after I started my day--I was so tired that all I could do for dinner was open a jar of pasta sauce and boil some spaghetti.  I didn't even add garlic to the pasta sauce.  Nothing.  I couldn't fathom chopping and onion and sauteing garlic.  Plain old Ragu served over noodles.  Like I was twenty again and didn't know how to cook.  To top it off, Tuesday was our anniversary.  Happy Anniversary, honey!

In other news, Frosty's stitches are out and he is feeling much better.  Of course, resting on a pile of three foofy blankets probably helps a bit.

That's my little F-er.  All smiles.

A Visit

My mother was here this past weekend.  She flew in Thursday night and left Monday morning, so just a quick stop.  She is both a knitter and a reader, so our first day "oot and a-boot" (Yooper slang for "out and about") involved another visit to The Salty Sheep and then down to Jacksonville for a stop at a bookstore.  She kindly enhanced both my stash and my library.

A closer look at the yarn?

This is Madelinetosh sock in "Mansfield's Garden Party."  I haven't knit with their sock yarn yet, and I'm interested to see how this knits up, especially with how many colors are in there.

Pinks, greens, and yellows.  This could be absolutely lovely.  Or not.  We'll see.  I just needed a little spring in my yarn.

We also toured Tryon Palace in New Bern.  The entire tour was interesting, but I fell in love with the Kitchen Office.  The kitchen house was separate from the main house, because the historical wealthy didn't really want to see where the magic happened, so to speak.  The kitchen house was more than just the kitchen; it was also where the seamstress worked.  There is a room set up with several looms, roving, a couple of wheels and spindles, and knitting in progress.  I wish I had pictures!  (The Historical Society does not allow taking photos and I couldn't find any online.)  It is amazing how little the tools of this craft have changed in the last three hundred years.

And since I often close with a picture of one of the Snufflepuffs, I give you a picture of my Frosty looking rather dejected.  You see, he had surgery on Friday afternoon.  Poor little guy blew out his ACL and was limping all week.  Now he is confined to his crate for the week to protect his leg.

You can see the incision on his hind leg.  Poor Frosty.

He is already so much better than he was just a few days ago.  He really wants to move around, but he tires so quickly.  Here's to a speedy recovery for the Doodlebug.

A Knitter's Revenge

I met up for lunch with a dear friend, Layne, whom I haven't seen enough of lately.  We ate at a great restaurant with an ocean view, and a view of the yarn store we both love-- The Salty Sheep in Swansboro, NC.  We talked about knitting, family, knitting for family, and scads of other things.

While we were talking about people who request knitting, we had the following conversation:

Me:  She asked me knit a hat for the baby.  Not just any hat, but a specific one that matched her nursery.
Layne:  Did you do it?
Me:  Yes, but I used acrylic.

Flower Power

Oh my goodness, where have I been?  I really, truly expected to post much more over break but somehow life got in the way.  I haven't done much.  I haven't even finished Christmas Knitting (more on that in a later post).  On more than one day, I didn't leave the house except to walk the dogs.  I've read a lot, watched an awful lot of Parenthood on Netflix (while Mike is at work), watched a lot of Burn Notice on Netflix (with Mike, when he is home), read a lot (but not everything on my nightstand; I did make it to the library), and did some cross stitch.  (More on that in a later post, too.  Almost finished!)  And did some knitting.

I'm calling it the Upsa Daisy.  Isn't she cute?

I'm showing the finished product before all the working shots because if this was a blog I had just stumbled upon, I would probably scroll to the finished object before I read the entire post.  I like to know what I'm moving towards.  As much as I would like to be spontaneous and fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants, I generally do best with predictability.  Or at least when I know the outcome of the situation.  If I know the outcome, I can go along for the ride, no problem.

Does anyone remember a set of books from the early 80s about plucky heroines, each book titled after the main character?  Titles like Caroline, Elizabeth, and others?  I was probably around ten years old when I was reading them, and they were so dreamy to me.  They were historical fiction, and the title character always had two problems.  One, she had an historically important problem of the time.  I distinctly remember one book where the girl was a Suffragette.  And her second, not quite so historically important problem, but the Biggest Problem In the World?  TWO suitors!  Who did she pick?  The (good) reader never knew until the last chapter.  Always the last chapter.  Not a "good" reader (then, as now), I usually always looked ahead to figure out which guy she ended up with.  Only then could I sit back and enjoy the show.  (For the same reason, I often watch movies more than once, and generally enjoy them more the second time around.)

Anyway, that is why I'm showing you the finished hat first.  But now I'm telling you that I had the pink part finished for a week before I could get up the mojo to knit the six white petals.  Once I did it, it took about twenty minutes, tops.

Petals at the ready

Then I had to pin all the petals to the hat.

No real science to it, just pin and go.

Then I had to use all those obnoxious tails to sew the petals to the hat.

It is amazing how many of my knitting pictures look like this, with a glass of wine in the background.

I left two long tails on the petals, one on the cast on and one on the cast off.  As I was stitching these one, I used one tail to stitch down one side, wove it in, and used the other tail to go up the other side.  I thought maybe I should just use one per petal, and weave the other tail in before pinning to the hat, but I think using the two tails gave me a bit of maneuverability with the petals.  I didn't pin them on in the exact position they ended up in; I fussed with them a bit, squinching them around to fill in the space properly.

Not exact, but perfect nonetheless.

It ended up being so sweet.  I love it, and I hope the recipient loves it.  Raveled here, if you are looking for yarn information.

And of course, the gratuitous picture of a fluffy dog.

Brett, examining the finished product.