The 15-minute blog post

Let's start with some yumminess.The above was a gift from a family I dogsit for. This dog doesn't require much ... I open the front door for her to come in, then she and Bandit spend the rest of her stay either sleeping, riding in the car, or taking one another's sleeping positions.  With a little bit of 'when is my family coming back' thrown in.  The shiny spot on one muffin is a QUARTER.

Counterpane update! I reached 40 squares and am taking a counterpane break to knit a stole for myself.

Yarn for stole

I've decided to use the Print O' The Wave pattern, from Sharon Miller's Heirloom Knitting.  The problem is I have just ONE skein - and I'm going to live dangerously and work the edging last.  Worst case scenario, I have to frog a whole lot of edging and back up a repeat or few.  Really bad worst case scenario is that I have to do it twice because I calculated wrong during the first frogging.  I've about 1.2 repeats (out of 3-4 dozen) done. 

I've also submitted a design for the next issue of Cast On, and it's been accepted, and the yarn arrived today.  So the stole isn't going to grow particularly fast.  Oh, and I had a test knit last week too.  And SysAdminning has been busy.

So I've needed a bit of balance in my life, beautifully achieved by riding 20-30 miles on my bike a few times a week.  Except this morning, when I had a flat tire.  A rock embedded in the tread was the culprit.  And my spare tube was spare because it had made a lovely hissing sound from the valve once upon a time, and was only still around because I hadn't been able to figure out WHY is was making that noise, once it was off the bike.  I put in on, and voila -- hissing noise and decreasing PSI.  No bike ride this morning.  So I picked tomatoes.  A lot of tomatoes.  How a lot?  Enough so that my stock pot couldn't handle all the product of the food mill, and I had fresh tomato soup  for lunch.  I think the stock pot is going to be simmering for another 3 hours or so to get down to 'half'. 

Oh, and it POURED rain about 90 minutes after my ride was deemed cancelled.  So much for TWO weather apps telling me I had 4 hours before the rain was supposed to arrive.  The frowning providence of a flat tire produces quarts of tomato sauce AND the lack of a drenching. 

I still have a lovely harp -- with two things that need fixing (move a lever, move a string).   Are things really shifting around on it, or did I manage not to notice, for four or five months, that one C lever was not aligned with the string?  And that the D next to it isn't equidistant from the C and E strings?

15 minute buzzer went off.  Should I save the story of the last photo for the next blog post?  It'll give me something to write about!