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

I am a woman obsessed

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I am obsessed with many things, all habit forming, but with good intentions. My latest kick is geomagnetic storms and the number of near asteroid collisions every day as reported on Spaceweather.com. For instance, “On December 2, 2011 there were 1272 potentially hazardous asteroids”! There was a 40% chance we could see the aurora borealis earlier this week but no luck. But I guess that’s OK since we didn’t get annihilated by an asteroid either. So I photograph clouds instead.

Not Northern Lights

I’ve reassembled my new loom and started my first project yesterday. Through the kindness of a weaving friend, I was gifted an essential tool and some lovely yarn. I’ve decided to use my world as a warping board, where the yarn is stretched out in preparation of putting it on the loom. We have a long railing upstairs so with 2 C-clamps and pegs, I organized enough yarn for 2 scarves. Plus I am counting the process as exercise since I had to walk the 10 yards from one peg to the other.

My world is a warping board

As with religion, the cross is a holy symbol in weaving. It’s how one keeps the yarn from getting all twisted around itself. This ingenious peg board made it “too easy”. Note the cross formed between the middle pegs.

The cross

And after a mere 3 hours, here it is, my first project, 2-3 inches complete. Easy peasy, just put the yarn on the loom, try to prevent it from becoming a tangled curly mess, put it through the right heddles and dents, tie it onto two beams, and tie up the treadles. I even learned how to repair broken warp threads and why the method I used is not the best way to warp “sticky” yarn.

First draft

Now that the days are getting shorter, I have more of a chance of catching the sunrise colors. We don’t actually see the sun rise because it’s behind a mountain but we get the indirect effect.

Sunrise clouds

Thanksgiving

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I turned my kitchen into a disaster zone today in preparation for the holidays. While I chopped, boiled, stuffed, fermented, steamed and tasted I was thankful for family and friends. This is our first Thanksgiving in the United States in two years so tonight we are having Pad Thai. Our bigger celebration will be on Saturday to accommodate travel schedules and a multitude of commitments. Our guests will be turkeyed out but not us, we’re pacing ourselves.

I am thankful I developed a passion for fiber arts: knitting, spinning, weaving, dyeing and quilting and have met interesting women around the world with shared interests.

I am thankful I was able to put my loom together without any leftover pieces. I even understand how it works. Now I just have to DO IT!

I am thankful I finished this runner in time to grace the Thanksgiving table.

Biannual winter

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The weather cooperated with the forecast, about 7 inches of snow overnight and today. Our first snow in almost two years since we went from US fall to Australian Spring and Summer back to US Spring, Fall… The first snow is a novelty. Especially since I didn’t do any shoveling. My elbow still remembers the snow of February 2010 when I got tennis, or snow shoveling, elbow. It’s all better now and I intend to keep it that way.

I was able to put together the floor loom with no extra pieces and finish one weaving from my rigid heddle loom. Photos tomorrow. I finally got outside before the sun set, barely.

The mighty Boquet is quiet today, too frozen to flow under the bridge it knocked out in August.

Fiber frenzy

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Let the games begin. How will I ever accomplish all the projects I have in mind, especially since I just brought home (but haven’t reassembled yet) a floor loom? Is it materialistic when you acquire objects for the sole pupose of making other objects? I count a full set of knitting and crochet needles, 2 sewing machines (including a vintage Singer Featherweight), one spinning wheel, three drop spindles, a rigid heddle loom and now a 4 harness floor loom.

Now I have a backlog of projects people have requested or I have in my mind. I see myself jumping from one project to another in a fiber fantasy frenzy. What fun!

This weekend alone I knit two cowls and three earwarmers. An earflap hat is on the needles and a shawl and leggings are in progress. A table runner is on the loom and a quilt is pinned and I have more fabric for the next one. I need elves.

During my trip south I found a moment to see the Fire Island Lighthouse, my old neighbor.
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Santa Claus flies planes not reindeers

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I spent a few days in Washington, DC visiting my daughter and friends. I enjoyed walking the streets and looking at the buildings and sculptures. I saw this on my first day. It drew me in from across the street by the sheer anguish. I now know it is Andrew Sakharov, a Russian physicist who worked to develop a nuclear bomb and later became a human rights activist exiled in Russia awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

What a day!

I walked the alphabet streets from T-U and saw this along my way.

Lawn art

Loads of people were riding these bikes. They are available for rent at over 100 sites around Washington, DC. They are in metered bike racks and after signing up, you can use them for 30 minutes for free and then there’s a charge after that. What a great system. The bikes even have a cute little basket in front.

Capital bikeshare

After several days in the city, I was ready to get back to my sanctuary in the North Country where my town doesn’t even have a traffic light. As much as I like the energy and all that a city offers, I grow tired of the need to protect my “space”. I’m that bumbling tourist who doesn’t understand the metro system and who stops to look up at the buildings. On my flight home, I had a chance to observe the kindness of strangers. An elderly woman in a wheel chair was brought on board what became a full flight. Late in the boarding, a large, white haired and bearded man came aboard and took the middle seat next to her telling her, “Don’t worry young lady, you don’t have to get up”. I heard him tell her before we took off that although he was a retired fighter pilot, he now enjoyed working as Santa Claus during the holidays. When the flight attendants gave their safety talk about the oxygen masks, he told her not to worry because if anything happened to the plane during the flight, he would take care of her. I shed a tear in the seat behind them.

Exterior decorator

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Travel makes me appreciate home. I am heading out this week and next to visit my kids in DC and Brooklyn. Both trips include mini reunions with friends from elementary school.

We embellished our house plaque with a skull I found on the property. It probably lost it’s horns but I made replacements from birch bark.

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