Have you heard? They made a movie. If you go see it, you should take a lot of tissues. Knowing the story, I think I will probably cry from the opening credits all the way to the end.

Have you seen The Lives of Others? I actually watched it a while ago, but it is still with me. I highly recommend it.

That's all I've got for you right now, maybe I'll be more interesting by this weekend. On a lighter note, Craftzine linked to the post about my Ginger Pear Upside Down Cake. You know, the one where I talked about barfing for seven hours. It's so great that several hundred people who have probably never read my blog came to read about a delicious cake, but then had to read that. Sorry new visitors! I hope you'll come back anyway.

Today's blog, in list format:

1. Sally often lurks around the back door, peering inside like a nosy neighbor who wants to be invited in for the latest gossip and a cup of tea. Sometimes we let her come in the kitchen for a visit. The cats are fascinated and terrified at the same time. Here they are investigating a little goose poop.
2. Soup season is here to stay, it seems, and I have three recipes in regular rotation right now: Kale and Sausage Soup (I doubled the amount of stock and added a little cream at the end, delicious!); Albondigas (I will have to share my recipe for this one, we've already made this four times in the last month); Italian Sausage, pasta, bean and vegetables (I don't have a proper name for this one, but I've been making it a long time). What are your favorite soups?
3. I've been holding steady with my 25 lbs. lost this year, but haven't lost any more over the last couple months. Starting this past Monday I joined a weight loss pool with 15 or so (mostly male) co-workers. Everyone put in $20, and the one with the highest percentage of weight loss gets the whole pot. So I'm back on the losing-weight track, and I'm competitive, so I'm working hard to win. I need some new pants, most of mine are on the large side, and any loss will mean that I need to go down a size. So I need to win so I can buy some new pants. Extra motivation! 
4. Here is my weight loss tip of the day: I try to designate one day a week as a Free Day, and I don't worry too much about what I eat that day. I don't track the calories, I don't measure portions, I just eat what I want. Sometimes it ends up being just one meal, sometimes it's all three meals on the chosen day. I don't see it as a binging, free-for-all kind of thing, just a, 'I've been craving a cheeseburger and fries all week, so I'm going to Wendy's and having one' sort of day.
5. I've made a lot of progress cleaning out my studio. I hope to be able to paint it later this month, which will make a huge difference. I consolidated various boxes of photos and letters and cards into one bin, so if we have to evacuate due to a fire, they will all be in one place, and I can grab it quickly. I bought a nice Martha Stewart photo album at Michael's, so I'll gradually put all my pictures in there, but I'm at a loss what to do with all the letters and cards. What do you do? I have a couple friends that have been wonderful letter writers, so I know I want to keep a lot of them. I also found all the letters I wrote home when I was in college. I haven't read any of them, and I'm pretty sure they are mostly requests for more money and complaints about roommate, but at least some of them might be worth saving. 
6. Also, as part of my cleaning, I've listed some rubber stamps on ebay. So if you need to  add to your rubber stamp collection, there are a few good deals to be had.

I had some of these, and so I made this:


And it was just as good as you might imagine a ginger pear upside-down cake would be.

I used the recipe I found at this link, and I will be making it again, for sure.

This cake is the sum total of my accomplishments for this week, including the weekend. Actually, I made a very delicious dinner on Saturday night. I took pictures and everything. Sadly, I will never be able to make that meal again, nor will I be able to share those pictures, because just an hour or two after eating my dinner, I became suddenly, horrendously nauseous and then I threw it all  up. And then I threw up every hour for the next seven hours. And spent the entire next day laying pitifully on the couch, with painfully aching joints. I managed to sit up now and then and sip some Pedialyte and gnaw on some toast, and then lay down again to shiver uncontrollably under my blanket.

That sure was a fun weekend. It wasn't until Wednesday that I managed to feel somewhat normal again. I don't know if it was food poisoning or the flu. Either way, Mr. Heylucy got very lucky, because he works some odd hours and was sleeping when I made my dinner, so I had planned to make his when he woke up. Once I realized how sick I was I made him throw the rest out, and he was fine.

So sorry my blog has been so boring this week, I had to take a few sick days. But that cake sure was good.

No, I'm not trying to imply that I think I am a fox in my socks, that was just my favorite Dr. Suess book that I never owned. I remember checking it out of the elementary school library multiple times, along with a book of jokes and an origami book. It was so popular that you had to get on the waiting list to check it out.

I actually forgot that I had this tasty yarn, hand dyed by Yarnchef. I'm trying not to have a yarn stash, so I figured I'd better cast on a new pair of socks, and use it up. I'm knitting the Go with the Flow socks from Favorite Socks, but I think the pattern might be too busy for the yarn. It's a lacy rib, but maybe I should just do a plain ribbed sock to show off the beautiful colors. What do you think?

I was playing with my macro filters again.
They are kind of fun, and much less expensive than buying an actual macro lens. Here's the exact one I bought:

Digital Concepts +1 +2 +4 +10 Close-Up Macro Filter Set with Pouch (52mm)

If you happen to order it by using that link, I think I'll get a little kickback. I haven't tried this Amazon Associates thing before, so I'm going to give it a shot and see what happens.

I also did a little Fall decorating this week. Please note Petey perched on the windowsill. He ate my orchids from last week. I'd like to see him try to mess with my pumpkins.

I got my first ever unfriendly comment today. At least I think it was unfriendly, because it was in ALL CAPS and the commenter seemed to be accusing me of hypocrisy because I have chickens, and I eat chicken, but I only eat chickens I don't know and that are killed by someone else. Interesting. I might delete it, but I might leave it there, just so I can feel like a real blogger, stirring up controversy.

I was goofing around this morning and tried to take some self-portraits. Apparently the sight of myself in the mirror results in uncontrollable trembling.

I curled my hair for fun and wanted there to be a record of this rare occurrence.

I'm tired of that apple pie post, so it's time for something new. Unfortunately it's almost 10 p.m. and I'm tired, so I'm going to write a short post about fungi. I like mushrooms, but I don't know much about them. Interestingly, we have quite a unique specimen growing on one of our oak trees. We know it is interesting because one day we found a note on our front gate from a gentleman who was making a documentary about mushrooms and he asked if he could return to film our Chicken of the Woods mushroom for his movie. We called him to let him know we were happy for our fungi to have it's 15 minutes of fame, but sadly, his funding fell through and the compelling drama of the world of fungi has yet to be made.

Our tree has since died, but we left the massive trunk standing, and the Chicken of the Woods are still growing.

Last week, Jamie Oliver made Wild Mushroom and Venison Stroganoff and he used a chicken of the woods mushroom. I'm not sure if my culinary skills are up to something so exotic. I've never cooked venison and don't know any hunters, but it did look pretty good.

I also got some macro filters for my camera last week and took some extreme closeups.

For those of you not fond of fungi, I'll leave you with a little Winston shmoopie love.

How can you not love that little furry face?

Growing up you could get red apples and green apples at the grocery store. We always had red delicious apples, oranges or bananas in our lunches and in the fruit bowl. I was never really a fan of that fruit trifecta. I’ve long thought of myself as a vegetable person, but with my determination to eat healthier this year, I decided to eat more fruit. You can probably guess what happened. I now love fruit, and regularly get cravings for it. Now that there are more varieties of apples to choose from, I find myself eating them more and more often. I think the apple love really started when I began thinly slicing apple quarters to feed Sally and the chickens (and the dogs, who think they should get everything the chickens get), and would eat a slice or two while handing them out to the poultry frenzy. Fujis are my absolute favorite, and they seem to be tasting even better now that apple season is in full swing.

I’ve also never been a huge pie fan. When it comes to desserts I’m more of an ice cream and cookies kind of girl. Cake is good too, but pie is a little more risky, what with the crust, which can be too doughy or too burnt, or too soggy. And then the filling-too sweet, too runny, too sour. There are just a lot of variables that all have to work together, and if one falls short, the whole thing is ruined. Of course I can never say never, I mean Thanksgiving would just be off without pumpkin pie, but that’s just once a year. And then I also just saw this. Sour Cream Apple Pie, it’s just too tempting, isn’t it? Well, it was too much for me, so I made it yesterday.

Making a pie is a lot of work, but this was worth every bit of it.

I think you should go make one now, because this one is almost gone.

I made a very small bit of progress on pincushions and chicks, but I spent most of the weekend cleaning junk out of  my workshop/guesthouse/studio/sewing room. I need to decide what to call it and stick to one name for it. Anyway, I’m trying to do the Fall Apartment Therapy Cure on my room, so I’ll have a functional, useful space. I can work out there now, but it does require frequent moving of piles and leaning at precarious angles to reach things. Also, the previous owners got creative with paint, and the walls are a patchwork of really bad colors, so I’m also planning to finally, finally paint over all of it. If you’re interested in following my progress, I have a set of pictures on flickr. Of course there are just before pictures so far, and they are actually quite old, but you’ll get the idea. They’re so ugly I don’t want to post them on my blog. I made a style tray with a few ideas for the finished space:

I’m planning on painting it all white, and then adding bits of bright color. I think it will be a nice place to work.

My legs are killing me from all the bending and crouching, specifically the muscles up the backs of my thighs. I need to find out what exercises to do for those muscles. The last five weeks at work our department has done a stair challange-no riding the elevator at all! I may have gotten a little competitive at the end, when I did 100 flights of stairs on the last day. So I thought my legs were pretty strong, but apparently stair-climbing does not work the back of the thigh.  I guess stretching exercises should be done before any extreme cleaning.