A perfect knitting day

Any day is perfect when it includes a new knitting project, cast on and gotten past its initial blah stage.

But if you add in cookies?

Yum.  I taught a small friend to make my mum's famous chocolate chip cookie recipe yesterday - secret ingredient: coffee - and they came out beautifully.  Probably the small friends who helped consume them would have too, if I'd thought to mention to the rest of the crowd about the coffee before consumption, but... meh, I was raised on these things, and I came out all right.

(don't argue, 'kay?)

Also helpful on a hot summer day when you're enjoying a lull from the usual firestorm of urgent issues?  Cold flavoured drinks.

Years ago at a family party, my uncle poured me a glass of Rose's Lime Cordial and Perrier and I was hooked.  That sounds odd because I am pretty sure the Lime Cordial, and definitely the Rose's Grenadine, are usually served as a mix with something alcoholic, so either I was a very young person at the time or I'd asked for something non-alcoholic because I had already discovered I am really lousy at alcohol.  I think I must have an allergy or something... all I have to do is taste wine, beer, or hard liquor and I'll wake up the next day with the worst hangover in the world.

This is the beauty of lime cordial, though: it creates a refreshing, fun sort of summer drink from either water or gin, pleasing any and all guests with zero effort by a party host.  Ditto grenadine, which when mixed with Perrier is essentially cream soda. If you like that sort of thing (and I do) I am pretty sure it involves fewer calories than pop, too... certainly the lime cordial is 35 calories per glass.  What's not to love?  And it's even nicer with San Pellegrino.  Fewer bubbles.

I had a fantastic meeting at the house on Friday after stopping to chat with a neighbour who offered to show me his new deck.  It is a GORGEOUS deck, and he said if Ray wants to come by and take a look for copying purposes he is more than welcome to do so.  So we are totally stealing Dave's design as far as we can, given that our lot presents different challenges.  Bonus development: the guy who will be doing our stair railings can make a custom curtain pull rod thingy, so that we can have curtains on the stairwell windows whose top is about 5' higher than my head.  The standard plastic ones run a couple of feet short for me to reach, and motorized blinds would cost many thousands of dollars, so this is a big Yay.  And Ray said he can stay on long enough to take care of some fencing for us as well as our deck, which is a huge relief because I know his other clients are getting kind of anxious for him to be done with our place so he can work on their stuff. 

And now, when I am not thinking sneakily of how to rope Ray back in long enough to do the condo's kitchen, I am thinking about next summer...

It will be so lovely to sit outside spinning or knitting and drinking cool drinks while nibbling melty chocolate enrobed in non-messy cookie dough.  And not making any more house decisions!  Or boring you guys with them.  Won't that be wonderful?  Never mind what will happen to the photos here at Hugs... because you know I have taken backdrops into consideration every step of the way.  Just in case the porch floor doesn't look as beautifully weathered for the first few years, heh.

Okay, enough dreaming, time to go get on with the day.  Hope you had a great weekend too!