Day 1: What was your first finished project?

My first project... I would say that was a long time ago (and in some ways it was), but it was February/March of 2011. Yes, I've been knitting for just under two years.

This project was originally for my mom. She loved it, used it, and then I inherited it back when she passed away two months later. So this is both a happy project (Yay! First project done!) and a sad project (referring to why I received it back).

It's simple and completely garter stitch, but I am slightly impressed that I did a color change in my first project. I still wear it a lot and it makes me think of my mom every time I do.

30 Days of Knitting Challenge

I stole this from Katie when she put it on Tumblr and I'm going to try to keep up. Don't worry, there will still be food porn, but there will be knitting and yarn too.

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Day 1: What was your first finished project?
Day 2: What is currently on your needles?
Day 3: Do you have any other WIPs (works in progress)?
Day 4: How did you learn how to knit?
Day 5: How long did it take from the time your learned how to knit, to finish your first project?
Day 6: What is your favorite piece that you’ve knit?
Day 7: Your least favorite?
Day 8: What’s your most challenging project?
Day 9: What fiber or yarn do you love working with?
Day 10: Do you have a favorite pattern or designer?
Day 11: Do you have a “Knitter Hero” or someone that is just way too awesome for their own good? Do share!
Day 12: Where do you keep your stash? Post pictures!
Day 13: Do you have yarn that you love but can’t find a project for?
Day 14: What’s the worst yarn/fiber that you’ve worked with and why?
Day 15: What was your least favorite pattern and why?
Day 16: Have you ever had a knitting related injury?
Day 17: Have you ever had a project that you loved become ruined? What’s the story behind it?
Day 18: Do you knit English or Continental?
Day 19: Do you watch movies and/or listen to podcasts while knitting? What are your favorite things to knit to?
Day 20: Do you knit in public? Was anyone offended/incredibly happy/curious that you were doing so?
Day 21: Do you knit gifts for friends and family for the holidays or birthdays?
Day 22: Have you ever stricken someone off your to-knit-for list because they didn’t appreciate/take care of your last knitted gift to them?
Day 23: If you had the supplies (and patience) for it, what project would you start today?
Day 24: Have you ever made your own pattern or dyed your own yarn? How did it turn out?
Day 25: Do you have a knitting book or a place where you keep patterns, ideas, size measurements? Post a picture of it!
Day 26: Have you ever been a part, or wanted to be a part of a knit-a-long? What was it? If not, why?
Day 27: How do you acquire most of yarn? Online retailers, local yarn shops, swaps, or large chain craft stores? What’s your favorite?
Day 28: Do you do any other crafts besides knitting? What are they, and did learning to knit come before or after learning these other crafts?
Day 29: Do you have any tips, or things that you’ve learned from knitting?
Day 30: What’s your name on Ravelry? If you don’t have a Ravelry account, why?

Cookies!

Today is my day off with absolutely nowhere to be. What does that mean? Laundry and cooking. This week cooking is actually baking. I've been in a baking mood for the last week or so and I've been craving something pumpkin for a while. Killing two birds with one stone here, I am making Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies.

This is the first recipe in a while I've actually followed the instructions exactly (well...nearly). I am unfamiliar with using pumpkin puree and so only used what was called for. Except ground cloves. Ground cloves are expensive so I used allspice instead. The only other difference in the recipe is that I chilled it for an hour before baking. Cold dough tends not to spread as much and you get thick and chewy cookies. Oh, and I used dark chocolate chips instead of milk chocolate. Love me some dark chocolate.

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Ingredients
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup white sugar
1 cup light brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup canned pumpkin puree
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves (I used allspice because cloves are expensive)
2 cups (12-ounce bag) milk chocolate chips, not semisweet (I used dark chocolate)
Nonstick cooking spray or parchment paper

Heat the oven to 350 degrees F. Spray cookie sheets with nonstick spray or line them with parchment paper.

Using a mixer, beat the butter until smooth. Beat in the white and brown sugars, a little at a time, until the mixture is light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs 1 at a time, then mix in the vanilla and pumpkin puree. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and cloves. Slowly beat the flour mixture into the batter in thirds. Stir in the chips. Scoop the cookie dough by heaping tablespoons onto the prepared cookie sheets and bake for 15 to 20 minutes, or until the cookies are browned around the edges. Remove the cookie sheets from the oven and let them rest for 2 minutes. Take the cookies off with a spatula and cool them on wire racks.

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Batter finished and going in the fridge to chill. Side note: if the finished product is anywhere as delicious as this batter, I will be a very happy baker. (No, I won't die happy. Dying would mean I don't get to make Deep Dark Chocolate Cookies.)

Ready to go in the oven! Josie (my landlady/housemate) happens to have a 2 tsp scoop that works wonderfully for scooping cookie dough.



First batch done! Might have to eat one... you know, for quality testing...oh goodness...have...to...have...self control. Soft and warm, they remind me of pumpkin bread with chocolate chips. I suppose that's what these are, really, but I have to resist eating them all. I promised I would share.

     


All finished and neatly stacked on a plate. Two dozen have been set aside to share. One for knitting tomorrow morning and the other for work on Wednesday.

Also portioned out a bunch and stuck them in the freezer so I can have cookies whenever I want. Even after (maybe especially after) a long day at work.

Also seen are two tubs of Chicken Enchilada Soup
and a bag of Spinach Lasagna Rolls.

Hemlock Rings

No, not actual hemlock rings. A Hemlock Ring Blanket. I knit this lovely thing up for a friend's present before she goes on a trip coming up soon.

I don't have any pictures of in in progress though I wish I did - it was a monster on my needles. It became its own project bag eventually. I knit it on US 10 dpns and 40" circular needles using nearly four balls (close to 858 yards total) Cascade 220 Superwash in Mocha. Most people at the yarn shop I bought the yarn from agree it looks better knitted up than in a ball.

Finished pre-blocking. It takes up 2/3 of the width of my full sized mattress.

I soaked in the bathtub with Eucalan for 15 min before blocking it.

Blocked out and drying. Finished blocking it out at 11:30 Sunday night. It wasn't dry until Tuesday morning. That's 16 square feet of blocking board it is on. I probably used close to 300 pins.

Post-Blocking. It's a bit lopsided from my pinning but it is still pretty.













The blanket is currently (October 2-9) on display at Black Sheep at Orenco in Hillsboro, Oregon. It is my favorite lys and I have so much fun when I'm there (typically 2-3 days a week: 2 open knit days on Tuesday mornings and Thursday nights and a Chardoknitting on the second Friday of the month). The blanket is due to be sent next Thursday (after work on the 11th) and so I am letting Tina display it for a week. When I pick it up, it will be wrapped and ready to send off, where it will hopefully be used and not just displayed.

Mini Lasagna Food Porn

This is for all my food loving friends. Which is many of you.

I saw this recipe for Petite Lasagnas on Pintrest and in person when my friend Jaclyn made it. She made it without the turkey though. She thought something was missing, so I set about to see if I could find that missing thing. If you've ever cooked with me, you know I don't stick to recipes very well most of the time. This time was no exception. Some of my measurements aren't exact; I tend not to measure spices and what not.

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Petite Lasagnas
recipe adapted from Can You Stay for Dinner?

¼ tsp salt, divided
¼ tsp pepper
½ cup chopped onion (I'm not a huge fan of onion)
½ cup chopped mushrooms
¼ cup chopped zucchini
½ cup chopped green bell pepper
½ cup chopped spinich
2 cloves garlic, minced
14.5 oz can crushed tomatoes, or tomato sauce
Dried oregano, basil, rosemary, sage, and Italian Seasoning
~I don't know how much of each I actually used. I eyeballed it until it tasted good.
1 ½ cups part skim ricotta cheese (I used 1-15 oz container)
24 small square wonton wrappers
1 1/2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese

Preheat oven to 375ºF. Heat a large skillet over medium heat. Add the onions, mushrooms, zucchini, bell pepper, salt, and pepper. Saute until onions are translucent or nearly so and everything is nice and soft. Add the garlic and stir constantly for 30 seconds.

Add the crushed tomatoes, spinach, and herbs. Bring the pan to a gentle boil. Reduce the heat to low and simmer for 10 minutes. Remove from heat and set aside.

In a bowl, combine the ricotta, a pinch of salt and pepper, and more herbs. Stir to mix well. Set aside.

Coat a 12-cup muffin tin with nonstick cooking spray. Place 1 wonton wrapper into each of the 12 cups, pressing firmly in the bottom of the cup and up the sides.

Using half of the ricotta mixture, divide it among the 12 muffin cups. Next, using half of the tomato sauce, spoon it evenly over each of the ricotta filled cups. Sprinkle with mozzarella.

Gently press another wonton wrapper on top of the mozzarella layer.

Repeat the process by distributing the remaining ricotta, then the remaining tomato sauce, and finally the rest of the shredded mozzarella.

Bake for 10 minutes, or until the cheese has melted.

Let the cups cool, remove them from the pan, and serve!

Fresh out of the oven and 
topped with cheesy goodness.

They didn't come out of the pan as pretty as I would have
liked, but they tasted good, so who cares.

A Typical Day

A typical day for me (if you can have one working with monkeys). This is a day working in Shelters. My schedule has recently changed and I'm getting ready to start training part of every week in the Harem building with the Japanese Macaques in an obesity study.

• 5:30 AM: Wake up! Yes, I know way too early for most people (and that includes me most days).
• 6:00 AM: Breakfast. Usually cereal, but I have been known to make pancakes or eggs and sausage or bacon if I feel awake enough.
• 6:30 AM: Leave for work if taking the MAX (Metropolitan Area Express - Portland's train system; got to love me some public transportation)
• 6:45 AM: Leave for work if driving. Catch MAX from Hatfield Government Center to Willow Creek Transit Center.
• 7:10 AM: Arrive at work either way.
• 7:15 AM: (If by car) change into scrubs and hang out in the break room until time to clock in.
• 7:25 AM: (If by MAX) change into scrubs and walk to the break room. It takes me a bit to walk all the way across campus from where the shuttle drops me off at the VGTI (Vaccine and Gene Therapy Institute).
• 7:30 AM: Clock in and move to Colony Building for morning meeting.
• 7:40 AM; Morning Meeting. No, it doesn't take 10 minutes to walk from the break room to the meeting, but we're given 10 minutes if we don't want to change into scrubs until after clock in. This is where we're told anything important for the day, if it is a lixit/eyewash day, who is doing produce cutting (if needed), and who is in what areas. 
• 7:50-9:30 AM: Out in shelters either feeding or starting washing.
• If feeding: Each shelter gets between 3/4 and 1 bin of their designated chow (1 gets special 5045 chow that is high protein, three get special 5040 chow that has higher levels of vitamins and minerals, and the rest get regular chow). Takes about 30 minutes depending on the golf cart being used. (The older one dies a lot.) Shift to washing when finished. I can wash between 2 and 3 shelters after feeding.
• If washing: The number of shelters I can was in a day depends on one major factor. If it's supposed to be a hot day (above 84 degrees), we will fill pools as we wash. Filling pools takes 5-10 minutes. In that amount of time I can wash half to all of one room, depending on the room and the condition the monkeys left it in from the night before. Straight washing, not filling pools, I can clean 4 shelters. With filling pools, I can generally get 3 1/3 shelters done. I mean 1/3 because our shelters (at least the ones inside the giant Jurassic fences) are split into three sections each. The front and back rooms are identical and the middle has the doors by which you enter the area
• 9:30 AM: First break. We get ~15 minutes to relax and chill out before going back. For most of us, it's snack time.
• 9:45 AM - 12:00 PM: Washing or Produce Prep.
• If washing: Repeat morning routine
• If on produce: Depending on the produce for the day, this could be really easy or really frustrating. Easy treats: Melons, bananas, apples, zucchini, cabbage, pretty much anything other than oranges. Oranges are a mess. Most things (cabbage, melons, and usually bananas excluded) go through this big old commercial slicer. Usually it's fairly clean, no huge mess to clean up. Oranges are a different story. We get orange juice all over the floor, up and down the wall, all over us, pooled under the blade. It royally sucks to clean up and the containers are really heavy to have to lift into the golf cart. Everything except the melons and the cabbage go in tubs for shelters (Melons get smashed in the shelters and cabbage is already diced). We have 3 25-gallon tubs, 2 10-gallon tubs, and 4 or 5 2-gallon bags. The largest tubs all go to shelters. One of the 10-gallon tubs goes to Harem and the J-macs. The other tub and two bags goes to the Colony building and it's assortment of Rhesus and cynomolgus macaques (aka cynos). The other two bags go to the monkeys in South Annex and the Kroc quarantine building.
• 12:00-12:30 PM: Lunch! Some days (most days) we seem to get to this point so fast that I can't believe the day is already half over. It's nice to just sit, eat, chat, and relax.
• 12:30-2:30 PM: Washing (if any left), enrichment, and afternoon feeding.
• Enrichment depends on the day. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday are fresh things. Monday and Friday are usually fresh fruit or the occasional veggie. Wednesdays are cabbage or bok choy. Tuesdays are some kind of grain (brown rice, oats, actual grain + trail mix stuff called Monkey Morsels). Thursdays are either frozen treats (Koolaid and trail mix frozen in cubes or yogurt containers) or jello boards. Yes, I said jello boards. Basically peg boards filled with frozen or mostly frozen jello. The monkeys love it.
• A few shelters get more food than we have bins, so they get food at 2 pm and at 3 pm. Right now there are only 3 shelters that get this (3/4 which is actually 2 shelters with the slides pulled to make it one, shelter 20, and shelter 25).
• 2:30 PM: Break number 2. Probably the hardest break of the day knowing we only have an hour or so until we are done for the day.
• 2:45-3:45 PM: Final feeding, refill pools if needed, water bamboo again, clean chow room, check locks and slides, general maintenance and chores.
• 3:45 PM: Lock the gates and head out! We are done! Time to change back to street clothes and chill until 4 o'clock.
• 4:00 PM: Clock out and head home!
• 4:15 PM: (If by car) Home already or very nearly in good traffic. (If by MAX) Board MAX Blue Line for Hillsboro.
• 4:45 PM: (If by MAX) Home!
• 4:50 PM: Into the shower! Do not want to go to bed smelling like monkey poo, chow, and sweat.
• 6:30 PM: Or somewhere there abouts. Dinner time! Afterwards I'm usually knitting, reading, watching tv, on my computer, or some combination.
• 9:30 PM: In bed or on my way. Seems really early for me to be in bed after the midnight-1 AM sleep times of college.

Questions? Comments? Let me know!

Oh, and just for your viewing pleasure...

Rhesus Macaques - This is actually in our corrals!
The picture was taken in the Spring of 2008.
Picture from http://dft.ba/-onprcpics

Japanese Macaques or Snow Monkeys -
Also from our corrals! The picture was taken in the Spring of 2008.
Picture from http://dft.ba/-onprcpics2

Working...Finally

For those of you who don't know, I have finally got a job. I am a Lab Animal Tech at Oregon Health and Sciences University/Oregon National Primate Reasearch Center. It isn't as fancy or lab oriented as it sounds. I am a glorified pooper-scooper. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy what I do, but that's what it is.

I work in the Sheltered Housing area of the Colony section of the Division of Comparative Medicine (DCM). Our monkeys are all Rhesus Macaques, all 650 or so of them. They are part of the largest specific pathogen free (spf) Rhesus colony in the country. They are a joy to be around, even (maybe especially) when it is hot and miserable. I have recently discovered the joys of monkeys with pools of water. No running and no diving rules don't exist here. It is a time of big splashes and huge cooldowns.

The people I have met are simply amazing. My friend Jaclyn, another tech that started the same time as me, pointed out that it is almost impossible to be miserable working with these people. Even if you want to be miserable and grouchy because it is 85+ degrees and you're wearing long sleeves and layers and your feet hurt, it is hard. Whenever we are together, whether at a morning meeting, on break, or just down in shelters shifting food, there is usually laughter to be heard - especially when Mr. Shannon is around.

Now I say Mr. Shannon because we have Shannon McAllister, the manager lady in Colony, and Shannon DeCota, one of the trainers in Shelters. We also have Kirsten (Kearsten) - she's like the go between with us and Shannon - and Kirsten (Kursten) - who is a temp like me but recently transfered to spend most of the time inside - (I hope the names made at least some sense). It was confusing for a while. We also have Elsa, Pete, Michael, Amanda, Len, and Olga. Then there are Katie and Greg from BSU (that's the Behavioral Studies Unit). And there's Doug, who is like the all around guy that transports big cages and equipment to and from cage wash and brings us pallets of monkey chow once a week or so. And that's just the people I work with directly.

And then there are the monkeys. It's mostly the alpha males that have names and I only know a few of them right now. Like Isaac in shelter 10 - he isn't a huge fan of people and you have to shift him to do enrichment. Timothy in 24 and Harris in 14 like to play games and not shift for washing; I usually have to play with the slides and bribe them with bamboo. And then Spock likes to carry around one of the babies and Mellow is very mellow. Sid is Bonkers and Popeye likes to people watch. Our two newest males are Hobbit and Smeagol.

I still have a lot to learn but right now it is all washing cages, filling pools, and giving enrichment (the best part of the day!)