Taking The Long Way Home

It was Valentine's Day Eve, and not being very good at planning ahead for holidays, I had a sudden urge to crochet some hearts to share with the world. I made six of them while binge-watching MadMen (I can't explain), and a few more the next morning, with a vague plan to give them to random strangers throughout the day. Two days earlier, I had a knock at the door, and there was a total stranger, a neighbor from a block or so up the street, holding two packages of mine that I'd assumed were missing forever. This made three rather important items our new mail delivery person had dropped off at the wrong address. One was our rent deposit check. I was getting grumpy. I checked into filing an official complaint with the USPS, and then considered calling or visiting the local post office to grumble in person. And then, while working on a nice pink heart on Valentine's Day morning, it occurred to me to try being nice first. I pulled out my good thank you notes, handm...

I stopped baking when we moved to Portland. I hated my kitchen, and super hated the oven - to the extent that we brought in a toaster oven to do any bits oven-heating we needed. Our new kitchen in Seaside is small, but so much better in layout and function. Yesterday, to celebrate Valentine's Day, with good food for my sweetheart, Rick, I ended my baking hiatus. First I made pumpkin biscuits, using my own recipe for Sweet Potato Biscuits . I added a little extra sugar and some pumpkin pie spice, so they'd be sort of a muffin-scone-biscuit, worthy of a holiday breakfast. The last time I made these was in Taos, at 7,000 ft elevation, but they came out perfectly here at sea level too. I think it's easiest to roughly double the original recipe, using a whole can (15 ounce-ish) of either pumpkin or sweet potato. I used whole wheat flour, coconut oil instead of olive oil for the sweeter version, and a half cup of organic coconut sugar instead of increasing the maple syrup. Th...

Getting all caught up on my current inventory, the rest of my finished rocks are on the website today. I'm trying out some new things with photographing and editing with different apps. I'm pretty pleased with how simply I can pull together a mini portfolio for each rock, showing them off from all angles. I use my iPhone 6 as my only camera, and adjust color and cropping right on the phone. Then I use two apps, Layout and Font Candy (both free) to combine multiple pictures into one photo, and then to add text. It takes less than a minute for each step. Next I text the finished collage to myself, and open it in Messages on my MacBook, where I drag it to the desktop so I can easily drop it into place on my website, Facebook, Tumblr, and anywhere else I might want to share a photo. It doesn't get any easier, cheaper, or low-tech than this. I'll share more rocks as I make them. I can't seem to stop, and why would I want to? These are making me very happy. ...

When it's raining sideways and I can't walk on the beach, I go to the growing rock pile by my front door and bring in a few favorites to dress up. More and more of them are finding their way to my website , and they'd love for you to adopt them. They make great gifts, and can be useful or purely decorative, depending on how you feel about such things. I like to set up little groupings here and there in my house, while I wait to send them off to their new homes. What will you do with yours?