Zoe doesn’t like kibble. I think she was raised on canned food, or maybe lower quality kibble with strong artificial flavors. She hasn’t liked any brand I’ve tried, and between samples and bags I think we’re over up to seven or eight different kinds. In less than three months.

I finally gave in and started giving her some canned food mixed with kibble.. I ran out of cans, though, and gave her just kibble today. She won’t touch it. She ate one or two pieces, left the rest, and stared at me pitifully all evening.

While I was getting ready for bed, I didn’t notice that she was out of my sight. I thought she was napping. I heard rustling in the kitchen, and discovered that Zoe had pulled a bag of onions out of a lower cabinet that I had left open, and tried to eat them through the mesh. She had managed to gnaw a nice chunk off one onion. (Onions are poisonous to dogs, but she doesn’t care.)

She’s always interested in human food, but it’s worse when she’s this hungry. And she’s ravenous because her horrible mean human won’t give her the food she wants.

Brat.

Me: Zoe likes to chase cats. But she’ll learn her lesson.

AJ: That’s right. Cats have pointy ends.

Me: Five of them.

AJ: Exactly.

Me: You know that if they could, they’d evolve spikes on their tails. Like dinosaurs.

AJ: They’d also want to fly. And shoot fire out of their mouths.

I don’t know whether it was because of Retin-A or good old-fashioned aging, but my skin became incredibly oily about five years ago. I tried just about everything within a grad student budget to fight it: cleansers, moisturizers, astringents, face masks…

The most effective thing was a simple tube of green clay that I bought at Monoprix in France while studying abroad. (I rationed it carefully, but ran out. I’ve never found another face mask as good as that simple €2 tube of clay.) So I was stuck, until I gave up and tried the Oil Cleansing Method. Along with switching to powder foundation, it saved my skin from perpetual ickiness.

OCM is based on the idea that certain kinds of oils, applied to a dirty face full of dirt, dead skin, and skin oils, will yank the dirt out of your pores without stripping out the oils that are supposed to be there. At first glance, it sounds like a bunch of homeopathic nonsense, but it works. And indeed, there are a lot of oil-based skin cleansers out there. You can find them at Sephora. They just cost a whole lot more than a few bottles of oil do. That’s the beauty of it.

I currently use a mixture of 75% castor oil to 25% grapeseed oil, and I have brought my cleanses down to once or twice a week. I try to do it more often in the summer, since my pores don’t understand hot weather. I used the advice on this page, and there are other places online where people can discuss their blends and other fine points, but there’s not much more to it than that.

So, yes, Consumerist readers. I do make my own facial cleanser at home.

I’m moving. I’m letting my roommates take the loveseat from the living room to their new place, because I’m tired of it and they need furniture. So I poked around in the cushions to see if I had dropped anything interesting in there in the 4 years this has been my primary couch.

This is what I found in the cushions and crevices.

• 1 size 11 double-pointed knitting needle
• 2 (knitting) stitch holders
• 1 plastic top to a marshmallow Peeps lollipop
• 1 set toenail clippers (??!)
• 3 yarn labels
• 1 pay stub
• 2 barrettes
• 1 bobby pin
• 1 highlighter
• 1 mechanical pencil
• 1 pen
• 3 balls scrap yarn
• handful of hamster kibble
• 38 cents

Naomi invited me out on a day of shopping and general fun in eastern Massachusetts this weekend, and I happily accepted because I like shopping, day trips, and Naomi. Oh, and our other traveling companion: her lovely mutt and my doggodson, Bandit.

Having Bandit limited some of what we could do, but not by much. For some stores and a coffee shop, we took turns hanging out with Bandit outside. I think he liked being included.

We visited the Grafton Peace Pagoda (it’s a lovely spot, and was on our route), and made shopping stops in Williamstown, Lenox, and Stockbridge. I didn’t find anything I needed or that fit at any of the thrift or consignment stores that were our main goal, and one store we were interested in was temporarily closed (Noooo!) but I did hit Colorful Stitches a little hard.

Williamstown is lovely but brought back bad memories of the time I spent imprisoned in Clinton.

In which Mo Rocca gets called out by Ravelry and does penance for his sins against knitterkind.

When faced with a donation bin that says “Clothes and Shoes only: No Dumping,” what do you do?

a) Place unwanted clothing and shoes inside the bin
b) Place unwanted clothing and shoes outside of the bin, defying the instructions
c) Just throw everything you want to get rid of outside of the bin, figuring, “they’re a charity, they’ll take care of it.”

At least one person stopped by the bins at Latham Farms (a local suburban strip mall and my personal vision of hell) and did c).

I was driving the ridiculous intra-mall roads from one craft store to another on a yarn bender when something on the side of the road caught my attention. There was a huge pile of unidentifialble stuff in front of the clothing donation bins on one of the grass islands, and a family hauling more bags of stuff out of their SUV and dumping it in front of the bins. What caught my attention were a few identifiable items: some computer monitors, various electronics stuff, and oh yeah: two Bondi blue iMacs.

Look, I realize that it’s hard to drive the extra, I don’t know, five miles to the nearest Goodwill or Salvation Army which will actually accept electronics. And maybe the person who dumped the computers meant well. They know that they’re not supposed to throw things away, but don’t understand what to do with them. Or are just too cheap to pay for computer recycling.

I think it’s more likely that their trash hauler won’t accept huge quantities of computers. Maybe some other Mac-head will drive past the bins and give them a good home. If nothing else, I bet they’d make a fine pair of MacQuaria.

I love pasta salad, but I can’t stand olives. This means that I can’t eat pasta salad in most restaurants or delis, at least that I’ve tried. I pretty much gave up until I found one salad that worked for me in the deli at the Honest Weight Food Co-op in Albany, and devised my own recipe based on what I liked about theirs.

It’s nothing special or complex, but it’s inexpensive to make and one of my summer meal staples. I make it weekly during the summer, and pretty often during the rest of the year too.

Ingredients

• 4 cups pasta (cooked) – I like rotini, or Barilla’s new mini penne. Elbow macaroni works well, too.
• 1 large red pepper, chopped
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 4-6 ounces feta cheese, crumbled
• 1 can dark red kidney beans
• 1/2 cup Italian or other vinaigrette-type salad dressing
• Other spices to taste–think red pepper flakes, black pepper, a little minced garlic, basil,

This should be pretty self-explanatory from here.

Cook and drain the pasta. Rinse the beans. Throw everything in a bowl and mix it up. Let chill for an hour or two before you try eating it.

AJ helped me to set up my display at Uncommon Grounds Saratoga. I’m still not super excited about it. I didn’t bring the best fabrics with me, and I think I could have made much better use of the space with something drapier. Not sure what else I have in my fabric stash that I could use, though. Presentation has never been one of my gifts. Making things, yes: making them inviting…not so much.

In honor of the exhibit, I set up more of a store site at HamsterdamHandknits.com instead of having it just redirect to the Etsy store. Of course, there’s hardly anything in the Etsy store right now, since the whole coffee sleeve inventory that hasn’t been spoken for or shipped is sitting right there in the window!

Behold: my first ever completed pair of adult-size socks. I’ve made one pair of baby socks, but this was more ambitious. I think they turned out acceptable. I wouldn’t inflict them on anyone else, but I will wear them with pride and snuggles.

For the knitters in the crowd: this is all Lion Wool-Ease worsted (80% acrylic/20% wool), from the Blueberry Waffle Socks pattern.