Author: one2travelfar

Hopping along

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For those of you who have never needed crutches, I hope you stay that way. Whenever I meet someone who has already used them we are instantly bound by a common ground of resourcefulness. Everyone remembers how hard it is to carry a drink from one place to another. People have devised various bags and even carts to help them along. Ice is treacherous. I grow tired of being dependent so I am trying to do more and more on my own. I even went back to work yesterday for a day.

There’s an advantage to a small kitchen. I can cook by keeping a chair in the middle of the work area to rest ingredients or myself on, while I hop around using the counters on the perimeter as support. Oddly enough, I can’t clean up! So far I have tried two batches of mozzarella cheese, much easier than expected. The night nurse in the hospital shared his fascination with it and I found an easy recipe on the internet. Ingredients are simple: a gallon of milk; two teaspoons of citric acid; and a rennet tablet. You also need a thermometer and the whole process only takes about 90 minutes. Somehow both batches were eaten or used before I took a final picture, but the last step is magical. You heat and knead the lumpy mess a few times and it becomes silky, stretchy delicious mozzarella cheese. One gallon of milk makes about a softball size ball of cheese.

Mozzarella 1

Mozzarella 2

Mozzarella 2

My view from the house has improved because Tim’s project to remove the overhead wires was completed this week. The wires are down, we still have phone service and electricity and all went well. I have a video of a very cool piece of machinery yanking the pole out of the ground and may include it at some point.

Getting ready to take down the pole

Our unobstructed view of Jay Mountain today. I hope the birds don’t mind in the spring.

We continue to eat well and colorfully. A couple of days ago, I made a batch of mashed potatoes from blue potatoes from the farm. They were very an interesting shade of blue but not as creamy as the white ones.

Blue potatoes

Tonight I made a chicken pot pie entirely with farm ingredients. This is the way to eat.

Chicken pot pie

Pot pie minus one

I’m knitting and weaving and plan a big adventure tonight – I’m going to go downstairs for the first time in almost a month to be near the wood stove, my weaving and quilting. The temperature is going to go below 0 degrees F tonight and it should be cozy there. If it wasn’t for the kitchen, I might never come back upstairs.

What some people will do for local beer

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By including this photo, I think I prove I have no pride. That’s me, after a slip on the ice, on the shoulders of my son. I even lost my cast cozy for a moment, phew!
We made it safely into the pub and up the flight of stairs with 3 turns, where we could enjoy a wide variety of locally brewed beer. I missed hitting my head on a swinging sign and 3 walls by an inch.
The walk back to the car was much easier for me (and my son since the car was a lot closer)!

Me being hauled into the pub

Holiday happenings

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We’ve had a dusting of snow most days and enjoyed the holidays with family and friends. Visitors boosted my recovery and I knit a toasty cast cozy in mohair to match my candy cane cast. I’m getting about fine on one level in the house. There’s been ice outdoors so yesterday my son carried me, fireman style, from the parking lot to the pub! It was quite a site, especially since we had to go up a flight of stairs.

Cast cozy

We built this sweet little gingerbread house but found the small colored candies to be lethal. Tim will need a little dental work after the holidays.

Delcious Gingerbread house

The exciting news of the day is the linemen have arrived to finalize the process of burying our power lines, which we began over two months ago. Might as well wait until its 17 degrees F outside to do it. Soon we’ll have unobstructed mountain views and hopefully ongoing electrical service.

Orange men

Cheering up

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It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, everywhere I go.  Especially since my everywhere includes the bedroom, where an amarylis is growing and the living dining area, where the tree is up and decorated and my little swirling candles and chimes are up.  Tim put the tree up and hung the lights then I tossed what I could from a relatively standing position.  I put together and cleaned my little angel chimes and am always amazed at how flimsy they are. Today I tried to find a replacement but apparently it’s difficult.  The original company went out of business when the market was flooded with cheap imitations from China and now supposedly the production has moved to Turkey, but I am dubious. They are very sweet because when the air heats up from the candle flames, the angels spin around and ring the brass bells.  I bought a much more substantial version this year from Germany made of wood.  But alas there’s no sound.  There are instead, choir angels who circle around a pipe organ and it is so authentic that the sheet music is actually a traditional carol.

We’re ahead of the game this year though because I went back and read what we were doing on the Winter Solstice last year.  We were on Deal Island and had just found our tree on a day when we also saw a double rainbow!  Then I started thinking about people we met last year and went to read about the Sydney – Hobart race, which begins on Boxing Day.  We met more racers from Victoria who participated in the Tassie Trio, and they many stopped by for a barbecue and good night’s sleep before heading home to Melbourne.

As an end note, sometime over the next couple of days, there will have been 20,000 page views of this blog!  Whodda thunk?

I finished my shopping and are waiting for final gifts to arrive.  Everything else has been wrapped and we are ready to celebrate.

I like caregiving and caretaking better than care receiving

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Why is that when you take care of people you are a giver but when you take care of islands and lighthouses you are a taker?  Maybe the answer lies in the question itself?  Anyway, I am tired of being a carereceiver.  I’ve been in a cast for a week and crutches are more limiting than I imagined.  First of all, I should have done upper body exercises in the months preceding the surgery to strengthen my arms for the real work of crutching.  And practice lots of deep knee bends on only one leg.  Surprisingly, my bad leg’s hamstrings hurt the first couple of days from raising my knee and carrying my foot around like a dead weight.

I get around on one level adequately but the real trick is eating!  Well not exactly eating but getting the food to where you would like to eat it.  We received casseroles from friends and neighbors but the real challenge is getting the food to the table.  I’ve managed to make tea in a thermos with a handle and get that to my perch but a plate of food is too tricky. So I either have to eat standing up in the kitchen or ask Tim to cater to me.  And unfortunately, I’m still like a two year old–I want to do it myself.

But I am being very productive.  I shipped off my mittens and a hat yesterday, finished a pair of clogs that I plan on letting the recipient felt and am now well into another hat, a pair of legwarmers and mittens and ordered wool for an Aran sweater for my son.  Can you say, “bouncing off the walls”?

Different couch, same guards

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Couch guardsI think they may be using me as an excuse to lay around on the couches. It works for me. Neither one has come close to my cast or foot. Very strange how they seem to know. Tim’s taking good care of me but also said he’s ready (after one day) to invest in  long term care insurance for me!

My knitting is progressing. I finished the lining for the Fiddlehead mittens in the hospital and the Pinstripe Slouch hat is well underway.

Fiddleheads

Pinstripe slouch hat

Storing my acorns

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It’s all about priorities.  Mine are clearly food and fiber.  I am having minor orthopedic surgery and will be out of commission hopefully for no more than a week.  I’m getting my affairs in order.  I’ve loaded the freezer with easy meals and soup so we won’t be eating “Hungry Man”.  In a pinch we have eggs.  More importantly, I have had to think about what projects I want to work on.  There are easy projects for the pain reliever induced hazy days, mildly challenging projects to combat boredom and ones in the design process, which will come together when my mobility improves.

Today there’s chile and beef stew bubbling in the kitchen.  I’ve warped my rigid heddle loom for a simple scarf with beautiful boucle yarn from New Zealand, which will remind me of my travels while I am housebound.  I have a second lining to knit for the pair of fiddlehead mittens, which will be fairly mindless because I can copy the first one.  There are two slip stitch slouch hats I want to make and I have to finish Tim’s doubleknit mittens.  Then I am thinking about starting an overshot project on the floor loom.  Oh yes, I have to quilt my bedspread, and Christmas shop and bake cookies and….yikes!

 

A trip to the other side and lots of knitting and cooking

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Which means I don’t have a lot to say about quilting or weaving. I traveled to the other side of Lake Champlain along the eastern shore and saw a different view of the High Peaks.

High Peaks from the other side

My needles are busily clacking away. Well quietly tapping, in this case, on wooden double pointed needles working on a pair of double knit mittens. This is an old standby pattern, Reversible Twice as Warm mittens. You basically knit two layers at once, inner and outer, which traps a layer of air between them and creates great insulation for cold weather. My son found an old pair of his, which he initially thought were oven mitts when he unwrapped them. Sometimes I have a problem with gauge. Or maybe I never used to check it.

Double knit mittens

In between knitting, I’ve been stretching my cooking skills as I learn new recipes to work with the fresh ingredients we get from the local farm each week. We’re eating lots of cold weather crops: potatoes, kohlrabi, kale, beets, celeriac, cabbage and brussel sprouts to name a few. Time to shake them up a bit. A friend suggested colcannon, which is a dish comprised of mashed potatoes with other cooked veggies stirred in. I mixed it with kale and served it with venison sausage. Tasty!

Colcannon revised

Pignoli cookies are an enigma. This recipe has worked for me in the past but something changed and the cookies always fell flat. This time I added cream of tartar to stabilize the egg whites and they seemed to hold up to the test.

Pignoli cookies

I have wanted to knit these mittens for a couple of years and now my daughter and her friends (well actually my daughter, on behalf of her friends) has requested knitwear. Here’s one of two Fiddlehead mittens, knit but not blocked or lined. Great pattern. I’ve tried to design my own colorwork pieces before but didn’t pay enough attention to the details of what happened when the thumb grew or the mitten decreased. Plus I have a better idea of the right yarn for projects, DK or light worsted, my heavier handspun is homey but not as pretty. And now, I always check gauge.

Fiddlehead mittens

I cut up a whole bunch of veggies, sauteed them and made empanadas with them. It reminded me of the meat pies we ate in New Zealand and has given me lots of ideas for the long winter months ahead.

Celeriac, squash, kohlrabi medley

We had a dusting of snow the other day and carved our own celtic cross pattern on the driveway.

Driveway celtic cross