Sidecar Saturday

Enough said! Well, it would be if I wasn't an inebriated loudmouth. I was inspired today by The Bon on Twitter today, when she said she was drinking a sidecar. Brazen copycat-slash-boozehound that I am, I immediately set to whipping up a batch for myself. Et voila!

For inquiring minds:

Classic Sidecar

* 8 parts Cognac or brandy
* 2 parts Cointreau
* 1 part lemon juice

Shake with ice and strain into a sugar-rimmed stemmed cocktail glass; garnish with lemon slice.

I'm outta Cointreau, so I subbed Grand Marnier to good effect. Salud!

New Beginnings

For those playing along at home, you'll be aware of our recently-dodged housing bullet: we received our 60-day notice just before Thanksgiving that the house we rent was to be put on the market, requiring us to move. But fate, in the form of our next-door-neighbor Jeanne, intervened - she bought the house!

Escrow closed this past Thursday, and today we paid our first month's rent to her, serendipitously on the 4-year anniversary of our living here. We are officially her tenants now, and in the 5 days she's owned the house has done more to upgrade the place than the previous owners did in the entire 4 years we lived here, and possibly before. Let's just say maintenance wasn't high on their list and there's no love lost between us, at least on my part.

For instance, this is one of the three spruce seedlings Jeanne planted in our side yard between our two lots. Then Saturday Jeanne took Cole to Miller Farms Nursery in McKinleyville for a presentation on pruning and some tree shopping. They came home with 3 saplings: a Satsuma plum, a dwarf Asian pear, and a tart yellow plum. Sunday we planted them in the front yard, one each in the three sections of lawn. Doesn't Cole look adorable wielding tools? I think so.

1. Cole planting our pear tree, 2. Pear sapling,
3. Jeanne & Cole, 4. Cole with our new plum tree

Needless to say, we're damned happy with the way things turned out. I'll leave you with photo that I shot in front of our house about a week ago. Hugs from our own little pot o' gold from us to you.

Tags: planting, trees

A Typical Day at COLORBOMB Creations HQ

Ever wonder what it's like to be a self-employed spinner? What the hell do I do around here, you ask? Walk a day in my (colorful) shoes with me, as I conduct a day's worth of COLORBOMB Creations business.

• Up at the crack of 9:30, and by 'up', I mean snuggling with the C-man in bed while watching a Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List re-run;

• Om nom nom, coffee #1 and oatmeal, courtesy of sweet Cole;

• Check email - no sales during the night = sad Velma;

• Hmm, there's a request for a custom spinning order! Labradoodle yarn? I can do that! Research, draft estimate, pop off email to potential new customer;

• Read & answer the rest of the night's emails;

• Coffee #2;

• Check VWorld site stats, write a Tweet, send a DM to @ravelrystatus to update my profile, read Ravelry PMs & Flickr messages, reply to blog comments - discover 2 new technology sites I *must* try out: Picnik and Haloscan;

• Edit photo from yesterday's blog post using the Picnik photo editor on Flickr to test it out - love! Upload to my Flickr photostream;

• Send thank you note to Xao_T for her offer to send me vintage 70s embroidery transfers - thx again, Tina!!;

• Start drafting this brilliant blog post (no *way* I'll remember all this by the time I'd actually sit down to write it);

• Resist urge to walk across the street and bitch slap the (presumably) pinky-dicked neighbor who *insists* on gunning the engine *every time* he backs out of the drive;

• Compulsively check VWorld stats again, then mull (for the thousandth time) what distinguishes a high-traffic day from, oh, say today - decide I need to exploit the buttload of referrals I get from the Google search "penis knitting" (where I turn up #1 in the search results!) by writing a pattern for one;

• Take a call from a friend who visited one of the new yarn stores in Eureka (YARN) & wanted to make sure I'm on it about getting my yarns in there (I am) - love friends who have my back - thank you Lisa!;

• Check email again & learn that, oh crap!, I'm behind again, & that my December Ravelry ads bill is due - doh!;

• Read & answer new emails;

• Realize it's 3pm & I haven't done any spinning at all!;

• Unpack & reassemble Harry (my main wheel) and sit down with the merino singles I started yesterday at the spin-in, destined to become a LoopyDoopy coils yarn;

• SPIN! got in a solid hour of spinning;

• Ooh, quick-quick like bunny: suck-up-the-last-of-the-natural-daylight photoshoot so I'll have a pic for Monday's blog post - got one;

• Yummy treat from Cole, back from his errands in town: last of the Co-op's winter mandarins from Orinda;

• Download pics from camera, upload to Flickr, edit with Picnik, add to blog post;

• Write Monday's post &, well, post it;

• Soak the WoolyBear singles that has been resting on the skeinwinder - damn, almost out of FiberMaster, & they don't make it anymore;

• Check in on Ravelry;
  

• Get in another hour of spinning, finishing up the merino singles - woo hoo!;

• 7pm dinner break: mmm, burgers & fries take-out from HumBrews, courtesy of a Par Infinity raffle prize gift certificate;

• Tried to install Haloscan comments, but crapola, they've been acquired by JS-Kit, which I think is ugly, so I can't - heavy disappointment;

• Cocktail time and blogsurfing;

• 8:15 - calling it a day!
  

Didn't get to everything on my list, but who ever does? It was a fairly productive day, all in all.

After finishing, I grabbed needle, thread, & thimble and sewed this patch on my spinning bag. It's the logo for a band that, although I don't much care for their sound, I love their name! I've had it forever, & have been meaning to mark my wheel bag territory with it for awhile. (But I've gotta say: sewing needles and tequila do not mix!) This is what it looks like now.

When I finished, I picked up my StonerJaywalkers and knit a few more rows before turning in with Michael Pollan's The Botany of Desire, which I am really enjoying; I'm in the tulip section.

Tags: Monday, COLORBOMB Creations