Laurabelle’s Blog

If you're wondering how my barbecue brisket turned out, take a look at this:

The meat was falling apart; I used an electric knife so it wouldn't disintegrate completely under the blade. The Bone Suckin' Sauce I used is to the left of the meat; you can just see Jeff's cole slaw behind the jar of sauce.

The cole slaw was just a stroke of luck. I hadn't thought about sides, and we just happened to have an Eatwell cabbage to make into slaw. Jeff used a little bit of sour cream for some of the mayonnaise, cider vinegar, a handful of raisins, and some crumbled bacon. It went very well with the brisket.

For a few weeks Jeff and I have been thinking about making pemmican. Last week I rendered beef fat, which I got from our regular butcher (you want to buy beef fat? we'll give it to you for free!), and yesterday we started drying beef.

The recipe I have calls for brisket, so I bought one. Note that I didn't say some brisket; I bought quantity one (1) brisket, 10.38 lb. That's the only way the butcher would sell it to me; they didn't want to cut into it at all.

The pemmican wanted three pounds (now drying in the oven), and Jeff trimmed off a little over a pound of fat (which we also rendered). That leaves six pounds of meat, which I marinated last night and set in the slow cooker this morning to turn into barbecue brisket.

Since we needed to eat last night as well, we made chile verde (with Eatwell tomatillos, though I had to supplement with some storebought). Mmm, that stuff is good, and surprisingly easy to make.

And for the final touch on the evening, Jeff whizzed up the hot sauce he was planning with whatever was around: smoked peppers from Eatwell (sitting in our fridge since the med fly crisis last September but still good), leftover onion, and I don't know what else. I'm not sure I'll dare to touch the stuff, but Jeff is looking forward to trying it.

I was called for jury duty today. I don't know if other counties do this, but in Alameda, you "report" online to see whether you have to go in physically (after 5pm the previous day for 8:30am call, after 11am for a 1pm call). Twice in the past I haven't needed to go in; today I did.

I took the bus in (which was much more convenient than driving, since it was a quick ride, and I didn't have to park) and arrived at about 8:15am. I brought a book and knitting to keep me occupied, and I used them for a couple of hours. At maybe 9:45am, about twenty names were called out of the room.

Twenty or thirty minutes later, the roll call started again, and this time it went on and on. At least three-quarters of the room was called, I think; I was one of them. We climbed upstairs and filled a courtroom (I was one of the last in, so I got to sit in the jury box).

It turned out to be a murder trial, with multiple counts. I have to admit I was a little fascinated by the idea of being a juror at such a trial. Unfortunately, the dates didn't work for me (I have a hiking trip planned, with friends coming from the east coast), so I had to ask for a hardship excuse, which I got. The judge wished me a good trip.

So ended my brush with the jury box. I hope I get another chance.

If you’re seeing this post, my blog is now on a new server — a virtualized server of my own, in fact. In spite of a server switch and a Wordpress upgrade, I think I’ve been able to bring everything over correctly. Let me know if not…

Due to the way I migrated (servers and Wordpress versions at the same time), I couldn’t take my Wordpress database whole-hog. So some things might be a little funny, like post #6 is right after post #689. I did manage to bring over users from the original database, so let me know if they don’t work.

Having our own server is going to be interesting; we will be able to do things that we couldn’t otherwise (such as setting up our own IRC server). I’m looking forward to it. Wish us luck!

On the last weekend in July, Jeff and I went backpacking in Lassen Volcanic National Park. It was a good trip (much better than our last few), but the adventure started early this time.

I had planned everything carefully in advance; we had our wilderness permit and everything ready to go. But at the last moment, Jeff wasn't sure he could get the time off after all. This was doubly frustrating because the reason he couldn't have the time off was the same reason he needed some time away from work. It was rather poetically ironic, but irony isn't much comfort. He did end up getting a half-day off on Friday and a full day on Monday, which was enough; we didn't have to cancel the trip.

So Thursday evening we packed the car, Friday morning I drove him to the train station, and at about noon he caught a train to meet me at work in the early afternoon. Of course we had forgotten something at home, but that was just a brief stop and then we were on our way.

On I-505 (between I-80 and I-5 west of Sacramento), we saw a minivan stopped on the side of the road, with people standing behind it waving their arms at the oncoming cars. We stopped; it turned out they needed a wrench because their passenger-side front tire had more or less exploded, and they needed to put on the spare tire. They had a wrench, but it was old, and one of its corners was split so that the socket wouldn't quite grasp the nuts. Our wrench was unfortunately too small. After substantial non-progress with the old broken wrench, Jeff hopped the barbed wire and went to knock at some nearby farmhouses to see if anyone there could help. This produced a nice ex-Navy chap named Billy with a lot of tattoos, a truck, and a rugged T-wrench! Jeff and myself now having served our purpose, we got on the road again.

The rest of the drive to Lassen was uneventful. Due to our late start and delay on the road, we ate dinner on the road and arrived at Summit Lake South Campground at about 9pm. (It was not even quite dark yet.) Happily, I had reserved a campsite online, so all we had to do was find our spot and set up the tent. Squatters had their stuff at the site we got there (a big group had overflowed from a nearby campsite after the campground host told them they had too many people for one site), but they left politely when Jeff told them we had the site reserved. Apparently they had entered from the other side and hadn't seen the signpost.

Since I finished the lace shawl, I needed a new project. (Two works-in-progress aren’t enough, especially if they involve sewing-up. I dislike stitching my knitted pieces together.) Therefore, I started a steering wheel cover.

The good thing is, it’s small and will be finished pretty quickly. It’s also a cable (which I like) and an intarsia cable at that (which I had never tried before). It was fun at first, but unfortunately it became boring fairly quickly.

I made a mistake in the cable a few pattern repeats back (I twisted after 10 rows instead of 8). I spent a while thinking about whether to go back and fix it, then decided I couldn’t bear not to (now that I’d noticed it) and ripped it out. Still, I’m at least two-thirds done, and it won’t take me too much longer to finish.

A few months ago I joined Ravelry, and it has changed my knitting world. I can search for patterns and see what yarns people have used and how it looks on various body shapes. I can look up a particular yarn and see what people have done with it. And last but not least, I can record my own projects and stash.

To Jeff, late at night: But if I stay up a little bit longer, I can tick off another 5% on this project!

So what have I been knitting? Well, there's the baby blanket that I can't quite manage to finish. It's almost done, but I have trouble becoming motivated. I won't go into why, since it's a depressing story.

My other standing work-in-progress is a cabled tunic-sweater from a yarn manufacturer's free pattern. I fell in love with the design, but the pattern has a number of problems.

• The needle size suggested for the gauge is way too large for an average knitter (I generally knit exactly on gauge)
• The gauge is given for stockinette while the pattern is all cables, and different stitch patterns knit differently
• The stitch counts after decreases are wildly inaccurate for any size other than the smallest
• The pattern was revised after the first version, to add pattern repeats for some sizes, but the blocking dimensions weren't changed, and the original stitch counts seemed fine to me. None of the other problems were fixed in the second version.
• The yardages are not correct; I needed another ball of yarn to finish the sweater.

At this point I've knitted the sweater twice over, and I'm not even quite done yet. First I knitted it up with the suggested needles (#7). I did knit a gauge swatch, and it came out at the needed stitch gauge but not the row. The common wisdom is that stitch gauge matters more than row gauge, so I didn't worry about that. Unfortunately, this sweater is different because the cable pattern is a set 138 rows; the body pieces and sleeves came out too long. When the horizontal yoke also came out way too long and I ran out of yarn, I frogged the whole sweater.

I went down to #6 needles and knit up a front/back piece; still too long. At this point it had sunk into my head that row gauge is all, so I went down to #5's (now within the yarn's standard recommended gauge, #3-5) and knit the horizontal yoke. That came out to the perfect length, yay! So I frogged the #6 piece and knit it all back up on #5's.

And then I ran out of yarn before I could finish the yoke.

The good news is, Ravelry saved the day! I found the exact dye lot I need in another knitter's stash, and she's mailing me a ball. How awesome is that?

My latest project was a foray into lace. I am happy with the way it turned out, although I'm not absolutely satisfied because I made a mistake in knitting on the border. (Yes, I am a severe perfectionist!) Luckily, I don't think the mistake is something anyone else will notice. I finished blocking the shawl yesterday and mailed it off this afternoon, even though I had to wait in line at the post office for 40 minutes to do so. Boo slow post office, yay lace!

My next project is a cabled steering wheel cover!

This weekend Jeff and I tried our hike to Sky High Lakes and Summit Lake a second time. I guess the third time will have to be the charm for this one.

We drove up to Yreka on Friday and got to the ranger station in Fort Jones just in time to get our campfire permit for the year. The lady who issued our permit mentioned that there might be snow on the trail, but we weren't sure her information was accurate or relevant to us (she was reporting information given by rangers and didn't seem familiar with the trail herself). We decided to proceed with the hike regardless.

We spent the night in a motel and got on the trail by about 9am on Saturday morning.

The trail was lovely and felt easier than it had last year, both because the temperature was more comfortable and because Jeff had new boots (and therefore complained less). The streams were deeper than last year but still passable; we encountered a few snow patches at medium elevations but nothing to worry about.

I finally got some wedding photos uploaded to Flickr. They're not very high-resolution images (and how I got them is a not-yet-finished saga, which I hope will eventually have a happy ending). However, they're there for folks to look at.

I restricted access to friends and family for any photo that includes anyone besides me or Jeff. If you're a friend or family member and don't have a Flickr account, let me know; I can give you a guest pass to see all the photos (although you won't be able to add comments).

The Saga I referred to is that the wedding photographer appears to have disappeared. She took photos of the wedding and put them up on her website so we could see them; so far is fine. Admittedly I then took a long time getting an order in, which I did last October. I mailed her a check with a list of the image ID numbers I wanted. I also ordered a high-resolution CD of all the images, and she assured me in email that I had the right to upload the images to Flickr. Great.

But since then I heard nothing more from her. I emailed her multiple times, until my emails started bouncing (with a weird "Temporary error on maildir delivery" message I've never seen before). I tried phoning, but the phone number on her website goes to someone else now. We had another lead, but that didn't pan out either. I did email her again this week, and it didn't bounce, but I haven't heard anything back either.

I know she took my money; I have a copy of the cancelled check.

The photos on Flickr are scraped from her website, but I don't feel guilty because I did pay her to use the images. I'm hoping I'll get to replace them with a better version at some point, but at this point I'm really not sure how this is going to turn out.

I am not generally a spontaneous person; I like to plan things out. Jeff and I had plans for this weekend (maybe not perfect plans, but plans nonetheless). As you might guess, our plans didn't exactly work out.

We had been planning to hike the Alder Creek Fall trail (starting at Wawona near Yosemite's south entrance). I worked a slightly short day on Saturday; Jeff picked me up, and we headed straight to Yosemite. The drive was excellent — nice traffic levels, and we saw no fewer than four large gliding birds that we thought were California Condors (I could be wrong — I don't remember seeing white on the bottom of the wings although I didn't get that good a look).

The plan was to stay the night in Wawona, then start on the trail on Sunday morning. It would be a two-day hike, in-and-out, camping at Alder Creek Falls. Unfortunately, what I hadn't planned for well enough was where we would stay the night on Saturday. I had sort of figured that would work itself out, I think; I guess I figured there wouldn't be many people there in the off-season. When we got there and realized that, gee, there were people there and we didn't have campground reservations, we panicked a little and decided to start hiking with the last of the sunlight and camp somewhere on the trail. Then when Jeff tried to fill out a wilderness permit (on paper from my organizer since they were out of actual forms), he noticed that the Alder Creek Trail was closed for controlled burns. Expletive!

This made me pretty mad at the park ranger who had responded to Jeff's query about hiking in the Wawona area that weekend, since she had not mentioned any controlled burns. I'm sure they plan these things in advance, and that's important information!