Comings and Goings

There hasn't been any time for any machine sewing for the past two days, and so I fell down on my swimming commitment today.  I didn't want you going around thinking I was an exercise saint or anything.  Besides, Sue and I will walk tomorrow, so it isn't so bad.

Tuesday was taken up swimming and then going to the grocery store.  And I just want to say that I felt really good about going swimming on Tuesday, even if the glow didn't drift through today's commitment.  As I have already told a few of you, swimming makes me feel somehow lighter on my feet and as flexible as Gumby.

(Tell me you're old enough to remember Gumby.)  And just look at what swimming does for my face and figure!  Why yes, I do wear a green sleeveless jumpsuit when I got to the grocery store.  What do you wear?

Yesterday, I got my haircut...nothing new...just usual monthly maintenance, laughable though it is.  My hairdresser is in Beaverton, and since I try to avoid the Beaverton madness as much as possible, I always have a lot of errands to run when I go to that side of town.  First up was to replace my missing embroidery hoop with a trip to JoAnn.  (Grrrrrrrr.)  I decided to buy several in different sizes since I have thus far been limited to small, medium, and large.  Now I have added small, sort-of-small and extra-medium to the bunch.  (I expect that in short order, I'll have two smalls, if you get my drift.)

While I was at JoAnn, I sidled into the fabric department to see if I could find any cat Christmas fabric.  I have on my short list of to-do's Christmas stockings for the kitties.  I'm hoping to get started on those very soon.  I was wishing I could find some cat fabric, and it was practically the first thing I laid eyes on.  So a yard of each of these came home with me.

Also, I remembered that someone gave me this gift of kitty paw ribbon in a swap last year.  This will be perfect to use for the stocking hangers.

Smitty is already getting excited about Christmas.  He wants mousies and catnip in his stocking.

I had a few other little things to do that I won't bore you with, but my other must-do mission was to go to the Asian market to pick up some rice papers to make spring rolls for dinner tonight.  If you read my post about the Thai cooking class I attended with Erik and Mae, then you'll remember that was one of the things we learned.  I think I found the exact rice papers we used in the class.  They have a sort of waffle weave texture.

The instructor told us to get the ones that have tapioca as one of the ingredients, and these do.

(And, I don't know about you, but I always like a healthy dose of tinh bot san, nuoc, gao, and muoi in my rice papers.)  She told us these were easier to use, and they were quite easy to work with.  I'm making mine with shrimp, mixed salad greens, julienned carrots, julienned jicama, and bean sprouts.  Also on the menu tonight is shrimp pad thai.  I use a recipe I found in Cooking Light that is really good and quite simple to make.  And speaking of bean sprouts...

I tried to get bean sprouts at my local grocery store, Fred Meyer, which is part of the Kroger chain.  They've always been readily available before, but the produce man informed me that Fred Meyer no longer carries bean sprouts because of the associated health hazards.  They also no longer carry alfalfa sprouts or any other kind of sprouts.  (Brussels sprouts apparently are not on the list of bad sprouts because those were available in large quantities.)  And this isn't just a temporary ban on bean sprouts.  They are no longer carrying them at all.  Ever.

Well, this got me thinking, and I suppose it is a sign of our times.  If an ingredient as common as bean sprouts is now banned from a chain as large as Kroger, then what will be next on the list of foods deemed too dangerous to eat?  It wasn't very long ago that spinach was implicated in an e coli outbreak.  Will spinach go on the list of banned foods as well?  Sheesh.  Not to get all political about this or anything, but it concerns me when something like this happens.  I found bean sprouts at the Asian market, and I also noticed that they were available at Thriftway...another of our local chains.  (I don't know how far Thriftway has penetrated the market outside Oregon.)  So I'm curious.  Are you able to find bean sprouts in your grocery store?  Inquiring minds want to know.

This morning I started on my next stitchery for my newest quilt, "A Gardener's Journal."  And just check out that shiny new embroidery hoop!

A Gardener's Journal is made up of nine pieced blocks, each with several small stitcheries.  

I've decided to do mine in block-of-the-month style.  The first block has five little stitcheries.  Today, I did the ladybug.  I'm also doing a butterfly, the potting shed, potted plants, and the weather vane.  All will be revealed to you in due course.

And with that, I really must get off the computer if I hope to get any sewing done today.  Today I'm going to start on my December doll quilt.  If all goes well, it's going to be very cute.  I think my partner is going to like it.

What's on your agenda for today?