Life is just a bowl of cherries.

Or, it was.

Apparently, it’s not safe to be a cherry around me, because I bought a bag of cherries at the grocery store today–a pound of them–and this is all that’s left.

I seem to have no will-power whatsoever where cherries are concerned. But, at least, they’ve got some nutritional value. (And I should endeavor to be grateful that I resisted the bags of potato chips at the store–they’re another weakness, but one which we luckily don’t have around very often.)

  I also spent some of my afternoon doing homework–the fun kind–browsing through pattern books, looking for a lace to grab my attention.

You know, I had the best intentions of knitting a stole next, using the Zephyr that’s been in my closet since about January. But now that I’ve ordered those four colors of Chai . . . I keep thinking about them. And you know how it is . . . when the creative urge strikes, you got to go with the flow . . . or some such mixed metaphor as that. So I spent a good hour this afternoon sticking post-its next to all the laces that I thought would match my inner vision of what to do with this yarn. Next I’ll weed them out, narrow it down, and hopefully by the time the yarn arrives, I’ll know what I’m going to do with it.

I’m thinking either a triangle or a half-circle, but I haven’t decided yet. I think that will depend on the lace pattern I choose–some are more angular, some or more curvy, and I’ll want whichever shape best fits the lace I select.

In the meantime, isn’t it lovely that I have enough yarn to swatch with??

Edited to add: I’ve got it narrowed down to two possiblities, and I plan on swatching both of them to see how they look in the yarn. It’ll give me something to do while waiting for my yarn delivery (grin)

All in all, I’ve had a very nice afternoon. I took it off from work–it gave Mom a chance to get out of the house (she was kind of stressed today), and gave me some extra time to putter around. I made another pound cake to go with the strawberries I bought . . . that’s one of my favorite desserts, with whipped cream on top, and the second time I’ve made it in a month.

I’m still looking for a really good pound cake recipe, though. My dear, departed grandmother made the world’s best pound cake (or so my childhood memories insist), only I wasn’t foresighted enough to ask her for her recipe. I’ve got her layer-cake-with-chocolate-frosting recipe (which is so famous in my family, it’s simply known as “Grandma Cake”) and given a choice, that IS the one I would have. But still, I keep trying pound cake after pound cake, looking for one that will remind me of hers. I’ve tried just about every one in every cookbook I’ve got, as well as trying various magazine versions, and still . . . no luck. They’ve been perfectly decent, but not like hers.

(Okay, there was that one that was so dense that when the outside was completely baked and it tested as fully done because it was thick enough to “wipe” off the toothpick on its way out of the loaf but was in fact still raw in the middle so that it fell apart as I turned it out of the loaf pan and landed on poor Jilly although luckily it didn’t burn her but that one really didn’t come out well at all unless you count the fact that it came out of the pan so easily even if it didn’t hold together if you know what I mean but anyway that’s why I don’t make pound cake in loaf pans any more because I think they’re just too dense for that and so I use a Bundt pan instead and that works really well as well as looking pretty, you know?) (Hmmm, I need to remember to breathe when I do that!)

Anyway, afternoon at home. Beautiful weather this afternoon, in the 70s and mostly sunny. I sat out on the deck with Chappy for a while, and we even got out for a walk. Sure, sure, big deal, taking the dog out for a walk. You would think so, but with the heat, the household chaos, the passing thunderstorms, the tearing up of our neighborhood streets, it’s been two weeks since the poor boy got a walk. He’s had plenty of exercise guarding the house, and he’s had a few romps in the backyard–but the leash thing, where you leave the property? We’d almost forgotten how to do it.

My Dad’s playing in his club’s Member-Guest golf tournament this weekend, like he does every year . . . with the change, of course, that his partner is not my uncle. (You’ll remember that he passed away in April.) It’s got to be kind of sad for my Dad, but we’re glad that he’s playing. Originally, he was going to skip the tournament altogether.

Wish me luck, too. I’m getting my haircut tomorrow morning, and you know–that can be good or bad!

Tags: Baking, Family, General // 3 Comments »