Today I have an oh-so-rare day at home by myself. Everyone else is off doing their thing, and I have the day off from work. I love these pre-holiday holidays because there is nothing in particular you are supposed to do. I plan on spending the day sewing and being totally irresponsible when it comes to anything else, such as upkeep of the house. So if you don't see some sewing pics up here in the next couple days, you will know that I suffered a terrible sewing FAIL.

Elie's hives are producing. We harvested three frames of honey last night. Yum, yum, but what a mess! It filled two pickle jars and three larger jam jars, so we are pretty such swimming in the stuff. Our honey extracting process is not very efficient, as we don't own a proper (expensive) extractor. Instead we squish it in a strainer, then strain it through panty hose (one of the best uses of panty hose IMO). Our kitchen floor is done and beautiful, and as we found out last night as our sticky harvest dripped all over, it is just the color of honey.

And good weather Sunday. Man, today we had the kind of weather you wish for every summer day—warm but not humid with a good cool breeze. Eva and I enjoyed the porch this morning, I with my coffee and knitting and she with her book. Then we did some good weeding of the vegetable garden, and it was such a pleasure in the clear air. Our first year with the big garden is going along pretty well. The rabbits are ravaging the peas, but everything else is putting up a good fight. Something interesting we noted: We planted several varieties of tomatoes—some heirloom and some newer hybrids. The bunnies took the new varieties to the ground, but they didn't touch the heirlooms. It seems the new ones had their natural defensive compounds (ahem, bad flavors) bred out of them. It's one thing to read about the benefits of heirlooms, but it's another, more interesting one to see them in action.

The farmers market was so much fun on Saturday. I don't go every week because it's not exactly in my neighborhood, but I do go at least once a month to pick up my meat order. I didn't buy any produce this week as we already had lots of greens from the CSA, but I did get some yummy sheep's milk cheese from Prairie Fruits (eaten up above with Finnish gooseberries from the CSA), and our favorite goat's milk soap from Queen Anne's Lace, and I got to try the highly recommended sausage and egg sandwich on a muffin. So good. But possibly best of all, I met another craft blogger. Belle Noelle was there selling her beautiful handmade clothing. I didn't know her before Saturday, but now I do. Her things are so prettily constructed with a sweet old-fashioned/modern mix. I have my eye on the Mia jacket in blue. How nice it was to meet someone, and to make that craft connection offline.

At about 2:15 this afternoon, a colleague came into my office and suggested we just go get drunk. I was more disappointed than I ought to be that she wasn't really serious. It was a bit of a ridiculous day. So on our commute home, when Elie let me know he picked up Dead Guy while he was buying Challah, I was pretty happy. We pulled into the yard and the weekend started happening. Beer was opened, steaks were put on the grill, the lonely chicken was let out, and she followed me out into the garden where I did some casual weeding. I pulled up the very first harvest—some delicious radishes.

Now I'm listening to every version of Tiny Dancer YouTube has. The song gives me the creeping willies—it's the whole having a tiny dancer in your hand part—but it's been in my head for over a week and it keeps making cameos in my life, so it has to go. I'm pretty sure learning all the lyrics is the only way to do it.

Today was Memorial Day and not Meme-orial day, but I made the pie that Meg posted anyway, and now I'll pie-meme you too so you can go and make a delicious pie. It's a really good plan. Meg's is rhubarb custard pie with a vodka crust. I know—vodka crust. I hadn't heard of it, but it sure came out tasty. You can make a different kind of pie too and still count yourself pie-memed. Just to prove it, I made blueberry too. Or, maybe I made it for other reasons, such as, I still had frozen blueberries from last summer. They are still yummy.

For extra fun, take your pie to a friend's house, share and enjoy. :-)

My little girl had a little birthday. I won't get too sentimental (at least not now), but I will say that she is now halfway to 18. If the second half goes anywhere near as quickly as the first, I am in big trouble.

Nine is a funny age for parties. You still need some structure, but little kid party games aren't going to cut it. I asked Eva if she wanted to play Hot Potato at her party, and she almost died of embarrassment at the thought. I can't say I blame her. I mean, really? Hot Potato? And yet, Simon Says is still OK. Where is a parent to draw the line?

We did a craft—gluing eyes and beaks on to pom pom chicks and putting them in eggshells. We may have mostly done them because I wanted to make the pom poms. It's not entirely on me though, because this was supposed to be a Nature and Chicken themed party, and I did not invent the theme.

I used the party as a good opportunity to use the Martha Stewart test tube containers I got on sale post-Halloween two years ago. They are way cute filled with "magic" jelly beans. However, I did get chided by the resident scientist for buying plastic test tubes when real glass ones could have been had from the lab. Hmmm, don't know about that one.

Buying the jelly beans was even more fun that I thought it would be. I went to the mall on my lunch hour and filled a bag with all the light green and light blue Jelly Bellys that come in flavors we like. It was like a mini version of picking quilt fabrics—a little happy for the middle of the day. I also stopped at Gap kids and picked up a few summery sale things for Eva (two tops and some leggings). The jellybeans cost as much as the clothes. What does that mean?

Hope you've had a bit of goodness in your weekend, hanging out with your peeps (and cats). We got stuff done, which is always nice, and managed to have some fun too. This was my favorite conversation. It just happened & cracked me up:

Me: (I've been working on my bro-in-law's website) Elie, want to see something kind of cool?

(I show Elie the thing I've done with the internet.)

Elie: Wow. That's kinda sci-fi. Did you write that or is it some sort of applet or something?

Me: It's jQuery. Do you remember me talking about jQuery before?

Elie: Yeah, I remember you talking about jQuery, because I always think you're talking about something like jDate.

Me: ha!

Elie: Yeah, like it's a way you can ask Jewish questions, even when there are no Jews around! (Mimes typing action) What is hamentaschen?

Me: When is Passover 09?

And more giggling. So hysterical to me, the difference between a JavaScript library and a queriable online source for Jewish facts. Yup, we crack ourselves up.

Also this weekend, Eva and I made Sarah's grapefruit sorbet. So good. You might recall, I'm a grapefruit junkie, and this sweet, tasty, frozen stuff really hits the spot. It might be my choice of evening refreshment this summer.

These are Eva's contributions to the Kids ATC Swap. She really enjoyed participating--making her own art and then receiving envelopes from around the world. I'm so glad that Blair and Erin put it together. Thanks guys--900 swappers is a lot of work!

I totally expected Eva to choose collage for her medium, as she had been doing a lot of that around Christmas. Instead, she went with pencil drawing of presidents and American-ish stuff, I think highly influenced by recent subjects at school. Parents, we never know, but we are always tickled. So there you have it: Abe Lincoln, George Washington, Barak Obama, the American flag, and the Statue of Liberty.

Also related to famous historic figures, Elie and Eva made some kick-butt Hamentaschen this weekend. Mmmm-mmm. Purim is on Tuesday, and this is how we're marking the occasion. In case you're not familiar with them, Hamentaschen are cookies that are shaped like Hamen's (a wicked, wicked man) hat. The centers are filled with something tasty and sweet. Elie's favorite filling is poppyseed, so we have a lot of that, and our Hamentashen are made with bread dough and not cookie dough. You could do it either way.

If you're hoping to attract the right kind of people, then may I suggest wearing your February Lady Sweater to the Valentine's Day showing of Coraline? Eva and Elie and I went to see the movie today, accompanied by a couple other knitters, and had a lot of fun. The movie is that good, and I am a Neil Gaiman fan from back when I read Sandman in high school. I wore my February Lady and had not one, but two separate people give me a shout-out. Hey Knitta Lady! It gives me a cozy nerdy feeling—internet community extending beyond the internet. Plus as one of the knitters put it, "With so much knitting in the movie, there were bound to be a few of us here." You betcha.

Pre-movie, this lady was sweet enough to invite Beebs and I over to share in their Valentine's Day tradition—decorating cookies. Good fun and good company. Kristin and Co. decorate cookies a few times a year with a different palette for each season. I love the creative abandon within a confined set of colors. Lucky for me, the winter season includes chocqua and red.

We don't have TV or go to the movies often, but we do watch lots of netflix. This means we experience our entertainment a few months later than most. This is why we have only just recently watched There Will Be Blood, and why all three of us can't stop doing the "I drink your milkshake!" bit. (Eva did not see the movie, apart from the milkshake clip.) We are now hysterical about what pop culture was hysterical about a year ago. Elie does Daniel Day Lewis very well. Here's a SNL skit. Here's a girl who does the scene and makes me especially laugh. Elie says I now do her doing DDL, instead of doing DDL.

On the weekend we had milkshakes. With straws.

In other kitchen news: Elie and I tried to win the instructables tool contest with our custom, built-in fridge-on-the-cheap post. We did not make it, but maybe you're interested to see. It's here.

This year's grapefruit shipment from my dad in Florida. I really do enjoy it. Grapefruit is so perfect for this time of year because after a glut of rich savories and sweets, it's about the only thing that sounds right to eat. And, it's like part food and part beverage.

Any time I eat grapefruit during November and December, I think of my Grammy Lib telling my sisters and me about what a treat an orange was when she was a little girl, and how very special it was to get one because they had to come up to New England on a train. My sisters and I thought it was funny that she scraped the entire inside of a grapefruit rind clean. Being grown, I get it now, and I tell Eva about oranges on trains and about how getting all kinds of tropical fruit at the grocery all the time is a relatively new thing.

I'm still knitting, and being very thoughtful about it. I'm not the only one, check Beki and Kristin, although knitting makes that latter friend-o-mine more wordy rather than less. Different strokes, you know. February Lady is about to get moved to the back burner in favor of Holiday Knitting. It's that time of year.