So Where's the Snow?

Every time I hit town, it's magically disappeared! Got in late last week and DANG IT - snow all melted! Took a taxi from the airport so Mr. Chirphomie wouldn't have to drive on dark icy roads - and all had melted all the way up to our house - foiled aGAIN!

Sure enough, dial-up is death to blogging so I have a bit of filling-in to do. Things are better on the parental home front. Did a bunch of cooking, shopping and laundry catch-up for my Mother - who had bronchitis - so she wouldn't feel overwhelmed when she got back to normal. Found out she's still ironing all my Dad's shirts. ACK! Did I mention she's in her mid-eighties? Talked her into a few changes - like sending things OUT! I knew she was feeling better when I found her bending over the stove top with me giving advice on how to cook Orange Roughy - one of our favorite fishies. Fortunately she'd given me that advice on that same type of fish years ago and I happily informed her I'd done it exactly as she would, and she could go sit down and I'd serve her with it pronto. Sadly, their kitty of 15 years "Ximena" (think Shi-mean-a) died a couple weeks before I arrived. I was so looking forward to patting up on her! They are not ready for a new cat of course, but I'm already thinking up cat names that could start with "X" since I came up with the last name (Ximena was the wife of El Cid).

One of the things I like to make other people for breakfast is baked apples. I was sifting through the apple choices at their nearby grocer's and came across a new one (to me) called Pacific Rose and thought I'd give it a try. Apparently it's available December through March from Washington State and the rest of the year from New Zealand. Geeze - when I was a kid it was just unheard of to be eating fresh fruit and produce from other countries. Yes, I'm old - I admit it. So anyway - this apple turned out to be a fabulous choice. I cored them, put them in a pie plate in the microwave and cook them for 4 minutes at a time and keep checking. At some point you can put a dab of butter and cinnamon down the hole. I don't let them get too mushy - still slightly firm is good. They dribble juice during the cooking and make their own steaming/ poaching liquid at the bottom of the pie plate (easiest thing I can find to cook them in) so you don't have to put any water in at first when you are nukeing them. When done to satisfaction - I take them out and fill the middles with cold Pina Colada yogurt by Yo Plait before serving. These Pacific Rose apples were amazing - they were about the firmness of a good apple pie apple and tasted just like you'd made them in a pie and sweetened them yourself. Easy healthy breakfast and great on a cold day with or without the yogurt. I just found them locally at QFC here in Seattle yesterday and stocked up. Geeze - QFC has 10 different types of apples. Is it because we live in Washington State? Is it because we live in the land of plenty?


I also made Mom a huge batch of chicken soup from scratch (actually - I presume the free-range chicken did all the scratching) and lots of other vegee healthy things. When we got tired of chicken soup I found a fabulous "mom and pop" Mexican restaurant down the street that does a from-scratch Albondigas soup. (I know, Albondigas has beef or pork meatballs and piggies don't scratch, they rout - but who's gonna say "from rout?") In our soup they cooked chayote squash which is a nice mild vegetable - great in soup. One of the joys of living in Southern California is fabulous Mexican food with restaurants practically on every block. Even the fast food can be fab. El Pollo Loco is an example - they grill all their chicken with a wonderful signature sauce and all their items are consistently wonderful. They have drive-through windows too! Ditto about the land of plenty. Another wonderful thing about So. Cal. from a middle-aged aches and pains point of view is that the majority of the houses are one storey. This is true for my parents' house as well, except they tried to be cute and decorative and made one step down to the livingroom and in another area the family room, and one step up to the kitchen and dining area - then a step back down to get to the bedrooms. Really a total waste since the house is a flat one-storey just like the rest of the houses. I suppose this was done to "create interest" in the house but it just makes one more thing to stumble over when your bones are getting old and tired.

Since Mom was not well, I stayed home with her while my Step Dad went to my Step Sister Leslie's memorial service. It was attended by 250 people and was beautifully done. Step Sister Susan came back to stay with us and I got to know her a lot better - which was great. We ganged up on the parental units and were obnoxious with advice on how they should change their life to be more secure and comfortable now that they are getting up there in age. I'm sure they were sad but relieved when we finally got the heck out of there, dribbling last-minute advice as we went.

There's only one knitting store in town - it's called the Knit and Stitch. If you are ever in Riverside, California it's in the Brockton Arcade on Brockton Street off of the main drag - Magnolia Street. Typical for California there is almost no wool. Lots of Plymouth "Encore" and other synthetics, but now starting to carry bamboo, 'paca and other sorta natural lightweight yarns. They did have a totally wonderful cabled preemie hat as a sample. I pleaded with them to have the author write it up and send it to me and they did! Just got to get it knit and show you and then it will be available for purchase from them. BTW - I'm on Ravelry now - under "dims." I just spent most of a day getting familiar with it (not near as complicated as I feared) and drooling through yarn and patterns. I seem to have waaaay too many books now that I've logged a bunch of my library. I should have been sitting at the computer with my current project because it's certainly a way to spend endless time drooling over knitting without getting a blessed thing done! ACK!



When back in Riverside, I always have to drive down the landmark historic avenue near my parents' house called "Victoria." It runs for miles through what used to be solid orange groves. Riverside was pretty much surrounded by orange groves in the 50's.
On cold night back then (Riverside is basically reclaimed desert) they'd turn on the smudge pots to keep the frost from settling on the trees. The smell and the black smoke were terrible and it would hang over the city like a pall for days. That's before they were outlawed and Riverside earned the reputation of one of the worst cities for smog in the nation. The way you had a view (we used to joke) was by looking through the groves down the rows of irrigation troughs.


Victoria has many species of trees and flowers that are not native tucked among the peppers, palms and eucalyptus. The peppers are not really pepper trees - they are actually related to the cashew family, but the red berries fall to the ground and smell just like a very fragrant black pepper. They are very pretty trees and their feathery branches resemble weeping willows. .
The trunks are really gnarly.

No, I mean REALLY REALLY gnarly.

The Eucalyptus trees are very old and twisted - the trunks are fascinating because the bark is a pale grey with mottled pinks and mauves and peels off in strips. Forgive the quality of my pictures this time - wasn't up to my usual snuff of editing and I was shooting against the sun. They're easier to see if you click to embigafy.


This is the base of one of the Eucalyptus.

Palm trees and I have never developed a friendly relationship. I find them singularly lacking in tree beauty - but they are everywhere in Southern Cal.


This is about as good as they ever look - most of them get to be super tall and skinny.


At least there are a few prettier kinds, but the basic type is just worthless for shade or any other good tree things since they don't plant the coconut palms here. The type below is more feathery and looks good compared to the basic style.

The trees drop tons of these shard-like frond things that look and feel like a cross between leather and wood. The streets are littered with these all year and it's hard for the city to keep up with them. Some times they just trim the trunk down as it grows.


And some times they shave it as it grows. They also do another unattractive variant of lower half shaved and upper half trimmed because they get too tall to manage easily, even with a cherry picker.



You know you've sucked one up with your car's undercarriage when you suddenly hear "KA-thwap, ka-thwap, kathwap," until they finally make their way into the car's wheel well where the tire acts as a burr grinder and they start to break up into bits. You can see around town where people have swept them up into piles to get them out of the road.

They seem like they should be good for burning or found-art sculpture because the texture is so interesting but haven't heard of either being done.

I thought my tree pix were sort of interesting when I was taking them but compared to Ryan's Cuzzin Tom's tree extravaganza pictures on his current trip to Australia - they're pretty tame!

I was so happy to catch up with all the homie blogs when I got back. If you are a dog and cat lover (and if you're not, you're on the wrong blog) there's a video over on Rachel's blog of one of her dogs playing with one of her cats that is just hysterical. Go look! It's the second one down.


I'm going to have to have Mom bring up her laptop when she comes up this summer so Mr. Chirptechie can rehabilitate it - she's missing too much blog fun. Speaking of Mr. Chirp - he seemed happy to have me back. You know how you are full of family-isms after a visit? I was telling him about a cartoon Mom and I thought was great when we were reading the Sunday funnies. You know...short for funny papers? This amused him no end and he gave me one of those patronizing pats on the head for being.....old and quaint I guess. Doesn't anyone call them the funnies? Is it an East Coast thing (where the parents grew up)?


As a last laughable welcome home present - I'd received an order from a major on-line retailer we deal with all the time. I'd ordered four 4-packs of Splenda Mini's (Splenda in pill form in a little dispenser - be advised that one pill is only one half of the normal Splenda packet). That would be 16 small dispensers in all since Mr. Chirpsweetie needs them for his travels where they don't have Splenda. Instead, I received eight boxes of 12 dispensers each - yep....96 dispensers. At least they didn't charge me for this plentitude - just for what I ordered. Lest you think I'm a bad person for not shipping them all back at my expense, this vendor is notorious for not fixing things. They don't want the mistake back - they just like you to keep it and want to resend - and then are just as likely to re-send you the mistaken amount a second time if you complain. You can't get a live body on the phone no matter how hard you try either. So.....I'm passing out Splenda dispensers every time I see a friend. The new flavored Splenda is out in the stores now and I'm here to tell you it has a wonderful taste - nothing chemical or lingering about it. That link is not where I bought the Splenda, but no matter - you can find it everywhere in the stores now - just not the mini's for some reason.


I MUST develop a less overchatty run-on sentence style here. You're probably all snoring in your cocoa about now. Non-flaming suggestions are welcome. Ericka? Embe?

A Week Away

Traveling to see my parents this week in Southern California, and attending the memorial service for my Step Sister. As they have dial-up, I'm guessing I won't be posting. See you next Wednesday!

The Goodness of Being Back

We arrived in Seattle late Friday evening after a grueling 17 or so hours of travel, hurry-up-and-wait, tell the nice Customs Person what you have, go through security, get all your bags back at another airport and recheck them, smile at the nice Customs Person, go through security, wait in line for the nice Passport Person, do it all again at a different place, and rush for your gate and flight. In Germany at one point we were told we were ready to board, went through the gate, down two steep flights of stairs carrying carry-ons (carrys-on?), outside to a bus, SRO for 3 miles to the plane, and out on the tarmac to wait with no shelter for 10 minutes in freezing rain and wind until they got the plane's dadratted door open. Then a steep flight of stairs up into the plane carrying bags. I'm so glad you rarely have to go outside and climb up to the plane in the U.S. anymore.

Ahhhh, the first cup of my favorite Assam tea. The autonomy of being able to drive yourself around when needed. The catching up on the mail. The heaven of being in your own bed. The choice of familiar comforting foods. It's all good! Then there's the freedom to get your own gas, make your own bed, cook your own food, wash your own clothes, and do your own chores. Not quite as exciting, but worth the price of giving up strangers knocking on your "bedroom" door at all hours. My efforts at food will not be nearly as impressive as having ten chutneys to choose from.

Or 15 ore more main courses. But, it will have to do.

It takes quite a while to warm up a stone cold house back to livable levels - slightly less time to turn the water back on and have the water heater generate some hot water. Fortunately, the electric kettle can heat water for the hot water bottle and warmth can be had. You know you've been sick when you normally live from hot flash to hot flash and suddenly you can't get warm for anything. But wait! Where is the Greeter Dog? No Greeter Dog! We have to call the kennel to get her out of hock before bringing her home.

Looking around our neighborhood in Seattle - it's so much cleaner than India - but kind of shaggy compared to Germany. Frankfurt was neat as a pin. Trees were trimmed, plants were pared down, no litter to be seen - not that we went everywhere around the city. They don't speak Horn at all in Frankfurt. I kind of miss Horn - even though I am not very tolerant of noise pollution. You always know where you are with Horn. Mr. Chirpcautious sends me the occasional link to news stories about people being shot in US cities for speaking Horn. It's a shame that such a commonsense language should be so misunderstood. In India, people are not leaning on their horn in an obnoxious manner but going through the subtle differences of toots and honks that signal positioning. Most of the larger trucks all have a sign on the back saying "Sound Horn" so they know you want by even if they can't see you. And size matters. The biggest always has the right of way.

Mr. Chipsnappy was in Amsterdam last April and took some fun shots of a local park with reptile sculptures. We are quite fond of reptiles.

Every so often they rearrange where the sculptures go to have fun. They must be amazingly heavy or bolted down so that no one makes off with them.

Frankfurt may be squeaky clean but they have a definite sense of humor. This is an entrance to the underground subway near the Museum of Natural History.

Now that I have stash access I can't wait to get back into some projects. Also to go to Feral Knitters!!!

Are We There Yet?

On our way back to the USA tomorrow and really looking forward to it. We've had a super-hardworking trip with no play (for Mr. Chirpgrindstone), and a lot of health issues to deal with along the way. I haven't blogged about them much because I agree with the Yarn Harlot, who put it so much better than I could have, "I've been trying not to complain, since I think personal whining on a blog is annoying and unflattering unless done really, really well...." and I would add - with a LOT of humor at personal expense. So we'll be back pretty soon and are determined to be well and rested before either of us sets out again. Since for Mr. Chirproadie that's only about two weeks, we're going to have to health him up!

We took the train back to Frankfurt day before yesterday. Mr. C was recovering from a bout of what we think is food poisoning so I went out shopping in Der Romer area again to see if I had to have anything I missed last time. Here is a picture for Dear Friend Steven. These two seiza benches were really comfortable - I tried both. They seem to be Maple or Ash. They are about 100 Euros each which at the current exchange rate is about $150. ACK! And they don't ship out of the country. They're made by a group in Munich. I found a man making benches in the US and one of his looks similar. The store these came from was a kind of generic meditation and statues of Buddha and Indian dieties. Very little stock spread out thinly with lots of bright lighting.


There are various stores of small wooden decorations. I really liked the streamlined Santas in this one.

I had to get one even tho I don't collect Christmas decorations. Ours has Santa taking his dog for a walk with a matching little red cap. Too cute!

Other Gnome-ish persons having fun.

A picture of a brass (I think) bunny for Dear Friends Michele and Evanne - bunny ladies and spinners extraordinaire.

Not sure what these are. You'd think birdhouses (but too low) or a place to put your mail? Google translation sites gave me alternately "lining house" and "fodder house."

This is the sign outside a hiking goods store that had the glorious orange shoes I drooled over.

Misc. attachments and decorations.

This is a sweet sweater in the window of a children's knitted and boiled wool clothing shop. This bunny has real bunny hair for his tail.

Lovely ironwork item with a healther basket in it to say welcome outside a restaurant.

I dearly wanted to add this creature to my beastly hens collection, but she was 59 Euros. so I had to bid her farewell. Yes, chicken bags are silly, but the chicken as a visual symbol is very homey and comforting.

These are shoes with knitted tops.

This was over a doorway.

And what's this, what's this? The Hammering Man! No, I haven't reached home yet...this is outside our hotel in Frankfurt. I didn't realize the Hammering Man is installed in nine different cities around the world.

And that's it for the overseas adventures! Just when I was getting used to swapping decimals and periods when writing out European currency too. I'll be down to a nice quiet 2-3 picture fiber blog publishing a couple-three times a week. Yippee! Thanks for hanging with me if you checked in to see the travels, and don't feel bad if you want to abandon ship for less Fibrous blogs of more interest to you.

The Fit of Amsterdam

Very few overweight people here in the city. What with biking most places, walking and climbing stairs at home and everywhere (and hopping on one foot and then another while waiting to find a place to use the restroom) - not much chance for flab to attach itself. I did notice that middle-aged people are wearing more tennies and comfort shoes, versus the high-heeled boots of the young. As for the elderly - the very few I saw were very fit and still riding their bike. I didn't mention what the men wear - it's mostly jeans or slacks, ankle boots or running shoes with a shirt and leather or wool jacket. Haven't seen those ankle boots for awhile in the US but they are going strong here.


Women are all about the boots. I would have succumbed, but as you know if you are a larger woman, once the boot leaves the ankle area, finding one that will fit a larger calf and leg is well nigh impossible.



Everything is very good quality leather - jackets as well as boots. There are still a bunch of women wearing Ugg boots. Crocs and Birkenstocks stores were both in evidence - supposedly because they had products close to Dutch clogs. I have to say though that aside from souvenir shops selling miniatures, I did not see one person wearing clogs of any sort. This was disappointing since I live in clogs most of the time and I was hoping to find the creme de la creme of clog selection here.

I was determined to find yarn stores. We struggled through bewilderingly-numbered streets (even after carefully mapping them on Google beforehand) looking for "Maglia;" a yarn store that had all types of yarn, but is now sadly and definitely gone. There is supposedly a Pinguin yarn store in Amsterdam but it was too many more convoluted blocks to navigate in the same trip. You'd think I'd have learned after India. Look up the store. CALL the store to make sure they are still in business.

We finally arrive at De Afstap - the main knitting store in Amsterdam. Mr. Chirpnavigator reaches it first.


De Afstap is basically all-Rowan all the time - with a little embroidery thrown in.

This picture is for the crochet-loving homies. Took it in front of the Kid (crack) Silk Haze wall. Nice! Wish they were out and displayed.

Who could not love the Rowan bunnies? Were they a pattern by Debbie Bliss for Rowan originally? Can't remember.

Looking at the shop entry area from the embroidery loft above.


Rowan DK everything...(except marl Rebecca!).

Another cute place on the way was EggMercantile, which has cute trendy things - homemade felted creatures like you'd find in an Etsy Shop if you were online in the USA. They caught my eye because they also carry Manos yarn. Look in the upper right of the picture below and you'll see it (barely) sitting on a shelf.

A groovy trick for finding places that Mr. Chirptechie showed me: Go to Google, click on Maps, type in the city name, press return. Now, look up above the map and below the main typing box and click on "Find Businesses." Type in the name of the business in the "what" box that comes up. Bingo - assuming the business has a site or is in a directory - it's mapped for you! This is pretty fabulous when in another country! Geeks bear with me - I know you know this already.

This restaurant had a row of electrified glass tulips on their windows.

Some Art Neaveau tiles on a building I passed.


I do love the blue and white patterns on Delftware - they're very fresh - I just prefer them on fabric. The building below is both tiled and bricked.

Street views of lovely ironwork - here in the functional house lights.


Some are ouchier than others.

We were lucky enough to come opon a grey heron on one of our walks. At first we thought it was a fake - kind of like the fake owls - it was so perfect and motionless for so long. It was standing on one of the long canalboats.

Mr. Chirpchecky thinks I should clarify that we went to various Cafes for coffee, not Coffee Shops. When you go to coffee shops in Amsterdam, it's not for coffee, but for marijuana in all its forms. All of the coffee houses say the words "coffee shop" somewhere in their name. Some of them actually serve coffee as well.

Back at the cafe - Mr. Chirpjava has a giant cuppa. This is from their "heaven and hell" series. Monks are flying around the cup doing heavenly things, whereas the saucer is strictly hellfire.

At one cafe, "Bagels and Beans" (a chain) I was amazed to see on the back of the napkin...

...part of the speech attributed to Chief Seattle. It says:

The doors in Amsterdam - just like in the UK - are all distinctive and of different colors.

In the picture below - see those holes on each side of the building's garage doors halfway up the picture with little balconies under them?

They're quite small but I'm convinced they are some type of little bird condo with its own separate balcony. What else could they be? You can actually see light inside the hole so maybe they have a window too?

Some buildings will have one or two windows where a tenant has had an "outie" balcony added on.

The older light poles are all beautified.

Perfume and smoking indoors are unfortunately still very popular in both Frankfurt and Amsterdam. Marriott Hotels are always all non-smoking in the US so it's been hard to adjust here.

I've also been having trouble with tea. I'm so used to the English Breakfast blends from the UK or the States that I couldn't figure out why it was so unsatisfying in Frankfurt and Amsterdam. A. I was drinking hotel tea - in-house brand. B. It was Ceylon tea. No matter how strong I made it - it seemed off. I'm a pretty dyed-in-the-wool Assam person, so it took me a while to read the leafy ingredients. I "just assumed" that English Breafast blend would taste similar the world over. Wikipedia says that a variety of tea types are used to make the English Breakfast blend, including Ceylon. Never Assume! I'm pining dearly for some Peets Assam Golden Tips or Taylor's of Harrowgate! The hotel does have a clever way of packaging tea bags.

That pretty much wraps up Amsterdam - I'm knackered now.