fungi and a progress report

Fall mushrooms in our woods:


I do love the mushroom. I don't eat the ones I find out in my rambles, only the easily recognized morels I've found in Northern VA, but I used to have a neighbor in Arlington who was a great forager of various local 'shrooms. I just don't feel confident of my own ability to find edibles in the fungus family yet. Still, I love the look of them, and take every opportunity to drag P around the woods checking them out, on our hikes. He's actually starting to notice them and point them out to me, now, too, a great victory in the department of making my obsessions contagious! Anyway, fall is the time for finding mushrooms; sunny days after a lot of rain and it seems they spring up out of nowhere.

Knitting is fairly unproductive these days. I'm doing it, and nothing seems to be growing. Meh. Ariann grinds on slowly. I should call her the "minimalist cardigan" since minimal is the effort I'm putting on her right now. I'm cheating on more smalls; this time, a cowl out of some Woolarina handspun BFL from the stash. I started it last week, and knitted it nearly up, then decided it was too big around and ripped it back and re-started it on #8 needles at 75 stitches. Better fabric, and a smaller circumference. Mindless stockinette makes for pleasure, and this pretty wool needs no real technique other than knitting up. I'm all about the utilitarian garment right now.

The waking early and the walking are going okay. Ella is the dog of choice on the walks, as she lends herself to just walking; no training, no corrections, no thought whatsoever toward how she's behaving. I walk and she walks. Cricket will come along on some of these, but he requires considerably more handling, and so he's getting his own excursions that are more leisurely, and involve frisbee and off lead time, too. Getting up early is progressing, too, even though the cold, and a couple of headaches this week have threatened to derail me. I soldier on, though. I'm very challenged by going to bed early, I realize, and am totally denying myself my lifelong habit of an afternoon nap, these days, in order to facilitate the re-set of the body clock. Sad, but necessary for this project. I hope the early morning hours will be reward enough to compensate for this loss. I've been putting the walks in the normal nap time (3:00-4:00) which is helping a lot.

Did I ever blog about reading Elizabeth Gilbert's "Eat, Pray, Love" this summer? I don't think I did. My sis loaned it to me, and I'd been waiting for a couple years to read it. I'd be really interested in hearing what other folk think of this book. I struggled with it. I so loved the idea of the book; after a harrowing time in her life, a woman sets off for a year of travel and self-exploration centered around food in Italy, spirituality in India, and pursuit of pleasure in Bali. But it ran all amok in the telling, and kinda left me cold. I wanted more food, more religion and more Bali, less of the author's self-centered navelgazing. It gets touted by some as a self-help book, but few of us can afford to help ourselves to a year in Italy, India and Bali, now can we? Now there's a movie coming out about it, which really chaps my hide, because my girl Julia Roberts is starring in it, which means I'll have to go see it. And probably, it will be like "Twilight" as a movie. A movie whose book I found a bit grating, but which worked just fine as a pretty little escapist chickflick. With a good soundtrack. Gotta love that Twilight soundtrack.

Today is all about cooking up the food in my fridge. Squash casserole, black eyed peas cooked with bacon, grilled chicken. I'm also really craving some scones or muffins or some breakfasty baked good, so will peruse my recipes for some inspiration there, too. Something that will involve the craisin, the grated orange peel and use of my carefully hoarded stash of walnuts. Something that will fuel my impetus to keep getting my ass out of bed at the crack of dawn.