photography

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

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.

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.

Transformations

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I’m still standing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s still better than sitting while my back slowly heals. I’ve spent the time causing many transformations from a vertical position. Most of the work is based upon the raw ingredients we pick up from the farm each week with a little wool thrown in.

This kohlrabi is huge, bigger than a grapefruit, smaller than a breadbox. Apparently you just carve a little off as needed. i’ve made a slaw with apples and craisins two nights and have hardly made a dent in it.

Giant winter kohlrabi

I finished knitting the second clog, felted them and gave them to their recipient, who proceeded to wear them while wet to form them to her feet. What a trooper.

Clogs before and after

Felted

For a bread variation, I made rolls to go with pulled pork. Yummmmm. I just made my basic bread recipe, formed half of it into one inch round balls and threw three in each compartment of the muffin tin. Bread flour from the farm.

Hard rolls

Rye flour became rye bread in the bread machine with both yeast and beer as the leavening. It’s a coarse bread, great with lots of butter and probably a beer. So much for the diet. It was fun while it lasted.

Rye bread

My standing knitting project and a trip to the farm

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Not “standing” like it’s the same every week or a standing order. I literally knit the entire clog while standing because I strained my back yesterday and don’t like sitting, putting on pants, putting on socks, picking things up from the floor or bending in any way. So I knit, ate breakfast, read the paper and putzed around on the computer while standing. I love this felted clog pattern. They felt and shrink down to a cozy slipper clog.

Unfelted clog

While standing before the window all day, I got to observe the sky changing over Jay and sometimes clouds obscuring the mountain. Right now it’s almost obscured by the power lines but that’s why I strained my back and am standing in the first place.

Say goodbye to wires

Tim had a rehearsal so I had to make the trip to the farm share on my own today. There were big clouds in them there hills.

Something brewing on the way to the farm

There are a variety of hay storage systems: covered or uncovered, randomly strewn around the field, stacked in a pile or lined up like ducks in a row. Esthetically, I prefer the random, uncovered bales.

Hay

The first cut is the deepest

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Well not exactly but the first cut of the 577 foot ditch needed to bury our power lines in was significant. We rented heavy equipment and used a lot of elbow and back grease. A bulldozer(?) was delivered and Tim’s brother arrived to operate it. We had to watch out for various hazards: an underground spring’s pipe, steep grades and a lost mole.

The first bite

The plan was simple, dig the ditch, glue the almost 600 foot, 6-inch wide conduit pipes together and roll them into the ditch. Not so fast. Although the ground was sandy, without rocks, there was one area with a steep grade and we found another spring, without a stop valve, where water quickly filled the last 150 feet or so. As the youngest and weakest of the crew, I was sent to Plattsburgh to get the pump to empty our new swimming ditch. It worked wonders, the pipe was laid in a dry ditch and the views along the northway were lovely.

I understand why road crews always have a few workers standing around. Earth movers are mesmerizing. I found myself standing and watching when I could. But we only had 48 hours with the heavy equipment so there wasn’t much standing around. Our job was made much easier, or at least mine was, with the help of a friend.

Boys will be boys

Potential pipeline

Moving pictures

Pretty farm

I’m a little broken tonight but hope to be able to stand up straight tomorrow. Now we just have to wait for the power and phone companies to come, take the wires off the poles (I hope the bluebirds don’t miss the wires) and run the wire through the conduit.

Brussel sprouts grow on a tree?

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I’m on a new food quest. We joined a local farm, a year round Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), two weeks ago and have embarked on new adventures in dining. Yesterday I butchered a chicken. Well not exactly, but dismembered it. I also made rye crackers from flour, which were delicious with smoked salmon. And cut the brussel sprouts off the branch so I could store them in the refrigerator. Today I julienned beets and carrots and made gnocchi, from potatoes and milk from the farm. Next I will figure out what to do with wheat berries and these brussel sprouts.

Brussel sprout tree

Falling leaves and wires

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We were spared the snow storm that affected southern New England and only saw a dusting of snow on Jay Mountain this morning. We caught the last of the season’s color on Friday before a gusty wind blew the remaining leaves off of most of our trees.

Last colorful hill

I have been up to my elbows in dog hair and don’t even have a dog. I am spinning some dog hair for a very dear friend. I am blending it with wool and think I am up to the last pile of it. I won’t be sad to see it leave the house. For some reason dog hair, which should be cleaner than sheep, alpaca or even wallaby, is less pleasant to work with. I find I always have a mild grimace on my face and try not to breathe too much through my nose, even though it’s been washed. When I was winding a large portion into a skein the other day, Tim’s head perked up, his nostrils flared and he kept swiveling around trying to figure what that smell was. A very dear friend.

A big gust blew most of the leaves off our white birch trees in one sweep. It wasn’t strong enough to knock down the wires but no worries, they are coming down anyway. Next week Tim and his brother are digging a 600 foot long ditch along our property so the power company can bury the lines which run in front of our house. I’ll be sure to take pictures. The scary part is, once they are underground, we own them, and have to be the ones to reconnect them to our house. I may be really off the grid next week.

Falling leaves and wires

Winter preparations begin

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Found all my knit hats, mittens and scarves. Chimney swept. Furniture brought in. New snow tires purchased. Yarn acquired. I’m ready for months inside but will be able to get where I need to go with my new snow tires.  I may need them to buy english muffins and cream cheese.

Frozen weeds

I’m baking again and working on english muffins. These look right but there are missing the essential nooks and crannies. I have a recipe for crumpets that makes nooks and crannies but I’m having a hard time finding crumpet rings in the north country.

We’ve finally joined the local CSA – great timing right? – just in time for lots of cabbage, squash and potatoes. But it’s all delicious and fresh and local! Tomorrow is our next pick up; time to clean out the fridge and think of a million things to do with cabbage. So far I only know of cole slaw, risotto and sauerkraut. I’ll have to get that recipe for stuffed cabbage again. I made cream cheese this morning from old yogurt. It mostly tastes like old yogurt but dry. Not all experiments are successful!

English muffins