bridge to nowhere

epic ride through the lost world from last weekend, then we got caught in some hardcore rain. it was awesome. we finally found some tasty pizza here, too! maybe i'll talk db into going again this weekend...

chunky fig jam!

ok, it's official, i like making food. who would have ever guessed that would happen? not me. or db. or my mom i bet.

so db and my friend bart has some monstrous fig trees in his backyard and he invited us over to help pick them. there were so many it was insane! we came close to filling a gallon bucket off of two trees. we had serious fig feast over the weekend and monday i christened my new food in jars cookbook, which was an early christmas gift from my mom (she loves gifting books), by making this chunky fig jam.

it was really fun and pretty easy. i can't say really easy because i did stand in the kitchen staring at a pot of boiling figs for long enough to go to the freezer and take a "i'm getting too antsy for this shit!" shot of rumple minze. i guess that's par for the course though, and if i'd have planned ahead i would have probably been discretely guzzling wine the whole time like a real adult. HA! but really, nothing went wrong and the excitement of hearing those six little lids pop was so cool. db even found me a little canning kit at wegman's that had a jar lifter, wide mouthed funnel and some other neat things that kept me from making a boiling water/stickiest jam ever mess. hell yeah. also, label making? so fun. i love using those avery sheets of sticker paper for fun stuff like this. i used it to make custom stickers for the kids at school last year and to make heart stickers for our wedding favors, which just happened to be 1/4 pints of strawberry jam. totally cute, most well received favors ever. i even made a portuguese jam label for my vavó.

let me just say, this book is awesome. i read basically the whole thing just for fun before making this jam and it took a lot of the deep seated fear about canning out of me. there are so many recipes i want to try too, like the pickled green tomatoes, apple pumpkin butter, quince jelly, basic pickled jalapeño peppers, and the sour cherry jam. finally! after over a year of reading the food in jars blog i actually legit canned something! also, just as a note, i wasn't asked to review this book or anything, i just legit think it's awesome.
like my canning passport?

tomato

picking these while listening to crickets is really the best thing about late summer.

good aim

if i ever need to catch a cat i know where to start. no wonder cats domesticated themselves on farms, this looks like the shit.

pic

a tide pool

sometimes i have very mixed feelings about art. i believe beauty is one of the most important and magical things we can experience in life and that artists are doing something selfless in creating beauty to share with the world. but then on the other hand, what can any human possibly create that could be more beautiful than the things we see in nature? nothing. it's impossible. it's almost to the point of "why bother making art?"

it's sad that art isn't appreciated in our time. we've done a pretty good job of ignoring and destroying the beauty around us in nature for quite a while, we are losing the magic of our environment and the human experience by letting it happen. art is more important now than it's been in thousands of years because we need to make up for the beauty lost in the ruining of our gorgeous planet. spreading beauty is hugely important, that is why we should bother making art. we may not be able to as individuals save the things in nature we love or be the next DaVinci, but we can as individuals take little steps to add what beauty we're capable of making into the world around us. dress colorfully, write a note on a bench, tie a bow to something on the street instead of throwing your scraps of yarn away. it doesn't take a lot.

beauty is something free that everyone on earth should value and have access to, it's becoming a sad place here that so few can see that. i'm not saying only the tallest mountain or most famous fresco should count, i just wish everyone could smile as they watch a shadow change or look at a tide pool and see the most beautiful painting ever created.

dirty doz: wool capelet!

it may not really feel like it here in philly, but fall is coming, it has to be. so what better time to start my capelet, right? i nabbed this sweet wool at dorr woolen mills in nh over fourth of july weekend knowing this would have to be the year i'd find the perfect cape pattern. lucky for me i was right, when i saw this amazing children's pattern it was instantly the one. well, after i figured out the metric to standard fabric measurements and confirmed i actually bought enough wool for it. the pattern is new look 6028 and was made in the uk, pretty fancy. i've never used a new look pattern before, hopefully it's good. i wonder if the directions will say "this will look charming over trousers, now get sewing you wanker!"

so there it is. i have cat shorts and a wool capelet to work on, i'll never be bored again! i should totally wear the two together, it will be hideous fabulous. i HAVE to finish the dirty dozen, and the sooner the better, the holidays are quickly approaching and holidays = zero time to work on anything except holidays. time to start actually sewing things since i swore off buying shitty, low quality new clothing. reading about the horrible labor conditions in bangladesh and blasting through my 3rd $5 tank top of the summer really sealed the deal. only small designer, handmade by me or vintage clothing from here on out. honestly, i don't think it will be that hard. i bet it will be fun and i'll feel better knowing i'm not supporting an abusive system and my clothes will also last longer than 5 seconds. win win win.

the trifecta

i feel like the music from the theme of 2001: a space odyssey should accompany this pic. these colors are pretty epic, from left to right they're set in stones, lilacism and play date. currently set in stones is 100% non-chipped even after a hair washing and a bunch of dishes. pretty tough for glitter, i'm totally into it. the two on the ends were way worth paying in quarters while carrying uzo into cvs on two separate occasions. db nabbed me the middle one. oh he knows the way to a lady's heart; a nail polish and a shot of peppermint schnapps.

sneaky pretty things

there are some pretty things about living in a city, even if they are different than flowers and trees and birds singing. i really like watching this shadow change slowly through the afternoon, it's like a sundial that covers the whole side of our house. this city is full of surprises, too. i heard a lawn mower yesterday and realized immediately not only that i hadn't heard that sound in months but also that someone is holding out a lawn on me! where is it?!

dirty doz: something red for rhinebeck

meet future rad fox, not red fox. i bought the pattern for him a few weeks ago because i'd always wanted to make him and had to buy something for $5 to push my order over the minimum for free shipping. the plan hadn't really been to make him right away, but i went to a knitting circle/group/night/whatevs last week and every year for the Dutchess County Sheep and Wool Festival in Rhinebeck they vote on a house color and knit something to wear in that color for the festival. it's a pretty fun idea, and although i don't know if i can even make it to the show why not join the fun right? only problem was i actively hate the color red. don't ask me why, i like every other color.

enter mini fox friend, a happy red solution. knitting a red fox quickly turned into "but i want to buy that cupcake color for the tail..." and red fox, now RAD fox, will have dark pink ears and legs and a cupcake colored tail. i've even already got some pretty sweet mint colored buttons for eyes. i hope he's fun to knit, i can kind of see knitting like five of him and connecting them together into one of those gross but intriguing multi-animal stoles.

chain surfinggg

why? because we're adults and we can do whatever we want.

my brother came to visit this weekend and while we did some pretty cool actual adventures like going to the mütter museum and riding our bikes everywhere and getting rained on, somehow chain surfing was the pastime of choice. we went to this chain more than once every day he was here. take uzo for a walk... past the chain, walk home from the bar... past the chain, going to miss your train... let's go to the chain first anyways. we even had team chain surfing. only one serious digger (it was me of course, and i made it look good apparently) and by yesterday we'd gotten pretty good.

there's going to be a lot more freestyle aggressive chain surfing in our future, there's already been talk about how to build our own haha. knarlyyy!

pepper!

"because no self respecting portuguese person can have a garden without something to eat in it." -my dad

my dad has a green thumb like crazy. he taught me all sorts of crazy things about animals and plants and nature when i was growing up and my parents have the best most massive and rad gardens ever. when they came to visit they brought parsley and this pepper plant for our deck garden and now it has this giant (to me anyways) pepper! this bodes well for my dreams of having a enormous garden full of delicious food. i wonder how big this pepper will get, hopefully huge!

labor day weekend

this weekend we decided to not go camping and to instead have smaller adventures each day. day one we decided to have our one beach day of the summer at the jersey shore...

it completely sucked, it was almost comically bad. no waves at all, the water was only transparent until it was 3 inches deep and even that was visibly dirty and it was a million degrees with no sea breeze. rhode island, apparently your beaches are way above average. we drove 3 hours to get to this place, which was without any sort of question the worst beach either db or i had ever been to. instead of pouting about it we sat and ate the soggiest more gross domino's pizza we'd ever had (which probably means it was also the worst pizza ever) and stared at the brown water we were too grossed out by to even consider swimming in and started planning how to save the day once we got back home. of course, the answer was beer. the answer is ALWAYS beer. we were seriously at Worst Beach Ever for less than 20 minutes... jersey shore, you are dead to me. the beer and a Guatemalan restaurant we tried saved the day for sure, we played checkers at the table and saw a huge cockroach outside while listening to Jay Z at made in america fest a few miles down the road. we even drunkenly took uzo to the dog park at like 10:30pm and drank more beers there. lots of beer = lots of fun.

our next mini-adventure was a 27 mile bike ride db planned through the city to wissahickon park and up forbidden drive towards a brew pub someone told him was good (see? always beer)

it was awesome. forbidden drive was gravel which was pretty epic and it was just legit huge jungle on either side for miles. i even rode up the longest hill of my life with minimal bitching. the bar we hunted down ended up being way hoity toity and we were sweaty and wearing cycling shoes, so basically everyone in there was jealous of how cool and stylish we were. when we were getting ready to leave we looked out the window and it was pouring. yay! it's getting dark, we had no lights and now it's raining! it was hilarious and we experienced something we hadn't felt since before we moved here, the feeling of being cold. short lived but novel. db even snapped a pic of me riding, i'm the black thing surrounded by other black things haha. it ended up being really really awesome, even with my almost immediate flat thanks to a huge piece of glass jamming it's way into my supposedly hardcore tire. as i was fixing it some guy walking by stopped and stared for a second and then made some comment about being surprised a girl knew how to fix a flat. yes sir, us females also have two hands and they can do more than cook you dinner. db pumped it though, i'm pretty sure he thinks i'll tear the valve stem off if i ever do it.

please db, make that face every time i take a picture of you.