The Van, Cookies, and Spinning

This weekend was suppose to be a camping adventure, however fate was a fickle mistress.

Ben and I packed up the car in record time on Thursday and headed out for some camping and dirt biking goodness (I feel so cool now that I'm learning how to ride a motorcycle). We were about 40 miles from the campsite when we blew out a tire on the van. We pulled over but because there was so little space on the side of the freeway Ben backed up the on ramp that we pulled over in and parked us next to a lettuce field.

Well we had a spare tire, granted it was a slightly smaller spare then the rest of the tires, but we had a spare. Then after a search of the car we find we don't have a jack or a tire iron. Epic fail. Ben and I were both in the scouts for years and one of the mottos is be prepared. I have my nice spare, jack and tire iron in my Honda's hidey-hole and Ben, who tinkers with cars, has tons of them in the garage, so I found it kind of ironic that we did not have one in the van. Luckily I found out that we were about a mile from an auto parts store and Ben took one of the motorcycles to get what we needed to change the tire.

My only complaint the entire time was that there were a number of cars that passed us and no one stopped. I was taught as a child that if you see someone on the side of the road you stop and offer any assistance they might need. It ranks up there with helping little old ladies with heavy groceries and lost children. This will be the end of the rant, but please, next time you see someone broken down on the side of the road please help them. Sometimes they just might need help changing a tire, or they might need a cell phone to call a tow truck.

Okay, lets get back on track. Ben and I changed the tire, loaded back up the van, but because the tire was not the right size Ben did not want to go camping since the last 5 miles to the campsite was unpaved and he was worried about blowing another tire. We headed home and proceeded to completely waste the weekend.

Friday kind of disappeared in a frenzy of cleaning up the house and knitting (I can't even tell you what I knit). Saturday I spent hours working on my reunion cowl thinking I was nearing the end to only check the directions and find that there was 1 more repeat of 25 rows. (25 rows for another repeat + 10 more rows to finish the current repeat + 12 rows for the edging) x 430 stitches per row = 20,210 stitches to finish it or a quick trip to the project closet to get something else to work on. I came out of the project closet with my vine yoke cardi (which I'm not even sure if can still be called that as I've messed with the stitch count so much its something completely different now) and the rest of some batting I needed to finish to spin for a Christmas gift.

But to take the edge off of it all I ended up baking Ben and me cookies. He found me poking around in the cupboards checking to see if I had the things for Healthy Peanut Butter Freezer Cookies and found that I needed dried fruit and I was nearly out of peanut butter.  We got to thinking and he funded a trip to the store for cookie dough for him and the supplies I needed for my cookies.

I added a fruit bits mix, 1/4 of mini chocolate chips and cut
them in to bars

Then today I decided to try and make chocolate chip cookies while watching Hot Fuzz, which is something I have not done in years. I usually add too much vanilla, or the cookies came out as hard as rocks.

I love mini chips

Turns out that I still can't make the thick, gooey chocolate chip cookies I strive for. Though they have a soft chewy center, they're as thin as pancakes and crunch on the outside. 

Wonderful kits and yummy cookies with milk!

But at least I made a sale today and I got the rest of my spinning done witch is part of a larger project soon to be unveiled!