After finishing up the Chevron Scarf and Rosedale, I have been obsessed with knitting. I’m trying my best to work on projects that make use of my embarrassingly large yarn stash (seriously, it’s bad. Even my mother, a fellow knitter/sewer laughed at it.). This means I’ll be knitting a lot of little projects, like this cute felted bowl I made last weekend. It’s a perfect container for some of Claire’s precious pinecones.

Normally, I enjoy sinking my teeth into a nice, big project that will take me months and months of work. Having one thing to focus on for a long time is good for me. I don’t like switching gears frequently. Even though it doesn’t fit that criteria, the bowl was great fun to make. Perhaps I’ll make several more and give them to special people as holiday presents

The jack-be-little pumpkin is one of the many we harvested from our garden. Isn’t it cute?

I also cast-on recently for Juliet, which seems like a great way to use up a few skeins of Rowan Cork. I LOVE that yarn and am so sad that it has been discontinued. It makes the most lovely, squishy fabric.

I hope I don’t look to dorky in what’s obviously a youthful design. We shall see!

Earlier this summer, I had heard about the Seattle Suzuki Institute’s fantastic musical programs for very young children. I wanted to sign up my daughter for one of the classes, since she loves singing and doodling around on the piano. Unfortunately, the Institute’s classes are very popular and there was a lot of competition for the few spaces available. Claire didn’t win a spot through the lottery held prior to each term.

I decided to take matters into my own hands. I do know how to play the piano. As a teaching assistant for a college music theory class, I’ve even taught people the basics so they could play a song they loved and one they composed. My students were adults, readily capable of grasping abstract concepts. That’s one thing. Teaching young children is an entirely different matter. I know NOTHING about teaching piano to young children. The difficulty seemed much greater since one of my kids is not yet a fluent reader.

One day, as I was bulldozing a pile of toys in my son’s room, my gaze fell on the color-coded xylophone. Inspiration hit. It would be so much easier to teach Sam and Claire how to play songs if I could just tell them to press the green key or the red key. How could I color-code my piano keyboard, short of painting the keys? Easy! I colored a set of garage sale stickers and placed them on a nice range of keys. I then marked a couple of cards with the appropriate sequence of colored dots to play two of their favorite songs: Mary Had a Little Lamb and Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.

The moment of truth arrived. Would the system make any sense to them? It did almost instantly.

Now, I have to research how to take them beyond this, so they can continually expand their repertoire. I don’t want to make it a high-pressure exercise. It has to remain fun. Discipline can come later.

I was born into a family of food snobs. The bad side of having so many foodies around meant there was always lots of calorie-rich food available. Whenever we got together, I swear I automatically gained 50 pounds.

In general, though, the familial food snobbery was a good thing. My mother, an exceptional cook, always made sure we had plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables. That, in itself, was a feat of ingenuity. Southwestern Wyoming in the seventies wasn’t exactly a mecca for good produce. She cooked wonderful meals, many of which were good old comfort food. Others were like an introduction to exotic parts of the globe. They were full of rich spices and unfamiliar ingredients. They satisfied the stomach and fired up the imagination–we wondered what it would be like to visit the places where those foods were commonplace.

My paternal grandfather, despite an allergy to wheat, ran his own bakery. That man could make the most delectable butterhorns and the tenderest, most flavorful dinner rolls I’ve ever had. I’ve tried and tried for years to replicate the treats he made for us, and while good, they never have measured up to the high standard he set.

Anyway, if you had ever asked any of the cooks in my family to try a recipe calling for cream of mushroom/celery soup or a couple of handfuls of breakfast cereal, they would have looked at you askance. Cooking with pre-packaged foods like those would most likely result in something unappetizingly gloppy or bearing a regrettable after-taste. So, it tickled my funny bone to have discovered that the secret ingredient for a long-time family favorite is corn flakes!

Now’s an especially good time to try this recipe out, since it’s apple season!

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