Edging into July--Cookies and Knitting and Such

Summertime means catching up on all those appointments I don't have time for during the school year--doctors, dentists, eye exam, etc.  So each week there seem to be some of these for me or my family.

I've also started going to a tai chi class once or twice a week, whatever I can fit in, and going to the Studio Ghibli movies (these are Japanese--you may know Spirited Away or Totoro) that are running here on the weekends.

In between these obligations and sweet pleasures, I've had time to make almond and anisette cantucci (known more commonly here as biscotti).  When I lived in Italy, I did not live in a region that had these kind of cookies--though I love them.  I am going to make another batch of them with pine nuts and rosemary.  I love them dipped in my morning coffee, though traditionally they are dipped in sweet wine.

Cut from the log shape, cookies are ready to go in the oven for 6 more minutes to get crispy.

 I have also been knitting--learning cables!  I made this hat (which was a happy, quick-make relief after my oh-so-brown mega-sweater project: hat pattern here), and thrilled with cables and patterns from tincanknits I am now working on some cabled boot toppers (also a quick-make project: boot topper pattern).  I also delved into a kit I bought back in December.  The written pattern was just not clear enough for my overcrowded mind at the time, but I've figured it out now and it is zinging along surprisingly fast.

Lovely wool, but a little too grape colored in the end. 

Look at that thready ball of glittery something and alpaca.  Lordy, what a big o' ball!

And yesterday was the 4th, so we got together with family and friends and grilled up a bunch of vegetables and weenies and etc. and talked about snakes and Prague and dogs and the fall of the Berlin Wall and men who sit beside unaccompanied young girls in movies and many other things until it was time for the youngsters to ramble on to their pyro-technic plans and the older ones to go home and guard their trees and roofs from pyro-technic plans gone awry.