My little blogging hiatus is officially over!

So, life's been pretty busy, then I was pretty lazy.... but never mind about all that, I'm back!  My little fall break from blogging is over and I'm ready to catch you up on the fun stuff I've been up to.

Leicester Harvest Fair - Sept. 17, 2011

This is my second year demonstrating along with other members of the FiberKnots at the Leicester Fair.  It being World Wide Spin In Public Day, I demonstrated spinning on my wheel Elphaba.  It's pretty cool telling people all about spinning...  all the little kids are really interested in how the spinning wheels work and often they just sit there and stare at you spinning away.  This year, in addition to demonstrating on my wheel, I entered a couple items to be judged.  I submitted some handspun I had made of the summer and a photo I had taken of a frog that came out particularly nice. While I didn't win anything for my picture I did get first place for my yarn, so that made me very happy :)  The fair is always a really fun day where I get to spend all sorts of extra time with all my knitsibs.

Tower Hill Botanical Garden - Sept. 18, 2011

The day after the Leicester Fair, my mom and I took a trip to Tower Hill Botanical Garden, which is one of our favorite places to visit.  We actually hadn't been there in a few years so it was cool to see just how much the gardens had grown in that time.  While we were there, they had some cool metal art placed in the gardens. 

They were also featuring a succulent show and sale when we were there.  The succulents tended to be very small and very interesting to look at.  There were lots of cactuses and other plants featuring very thick leaves.

While wandering through this garden and by this lovely fountain, we ran into a couple people my mom knew from work, who I knew as well, so that was a really nice surprise. 

Apple Picking - Sept. 24, 2011

 This is year.... uh.... more than two.  Right! of us going apple picking.  I'm sure it's been something like ten actually, but my brain isn't working right now.  This year we went to Stowe Farm in Millbury, MA.  We got to take a couple hay rides as the orchard we were picking from was a little ways down the road. 

I think we picked a little late this year as there were lots of apples already on the ground.  Nevertheless we gathered up our bags and set back off for the second hay ride back. 

  

I'm trying really hard to remember to take pictures of myself so I don't just document what other people are doing but actually include myself in the group.  Not always so easy, but I think I'm getting better about it.  Luckily lots of my friends are good photographers, so I can hand off my camera with confidence.

Trip to Maine - Oct. 7-10, 2011

Mom and I went to the farmer's market in Bath on a beautiful Saturday morning.  We bought lots of produce including some from the farmer that is using some of my family members' fields on the island.  It's really nice to see the farmland actually being used instead of sitting fallow.  We got my dad a giant club of brussels sprouts... yes, I know that sounds weird, but the sprouts pop out of what looks like a giant blunt force trauma weapon.  I'm bummed I forgot to take a picture of it :(  You can learn more about Tarbox farm on their website at www.squiretarboxfarm.com

That afternoon, once Brian made it to the house, we took a trip to the Sweetgrass Winery and Distillery in Union where we had a tasting for I believe just $2.50.  I tried some apple and cranberry apple wine as well as their maple cranberry smashes.  Oh my, that cranberry smash was sooooo good!  It's more of a dessert wine or a cordial that a regular wine, but it was so yummy.  I also tried their rum which pretty much knocked me on my butt, lol. 

Mom and Brian with their tasting glasses and the little of spirits to try.  Too bad one of us had to drive home!  You can check out the Sweetgrass Winery at their website www.sweetgrasswinery.com

NY Sheep and Wool Festival - Oct. 15, 2011

This was me second trip to Rhinebeck, NY.  I drove out with one of my knitsibs and her two kiddos.  It was a fun but very long day.  I got to pick up some yarn I have been itching to get my hands on for awhile and I also got to meet a couple of the podcasters that I listen to every week on my commute.  In the picture below, I'm with Melanie and Deborah of the Savvy Girls Podcast.  They are absolutely hilarious to listen to and I was really happy to get to meet them both.  Thanks ladies for making my first fangirl experience a good one! If you want to learn more about the New York Sheep and Wool Festival you can check out their website at www.sheepandwool.com

King Richard's Faire - Oct. 16, 2011

To end my adventures, Brian and I went to Kind Richard's Faire this past Sunday.  We had meant to go earlier in October but the weather would just not cooperate.  While we were only there for a few hours, we listened to some awesome pipers and drummers known as Cu Dubh as we ate very yummy turkey stew.  Afterwards Brian finally was convinced to go get his picture taken with the hawk and I picked out a new flower wreath for my hair to match my faire costumes.

We finished the day by watching the joust, which Brian had actually never seen before.  We had a lovely time, I just wish we had been able to go with our friends the day before.  Instead, someone was gallivanting with yarn and sheep in NY.  I wonder who?

Ten on Tuesday: Ten Things I Love About My Family

The Molliwog

I know this is about family, but I do have some very close friends (and animals) who I consider to be family in addition to those both biologically related or via marriage. You know who you are :-)

1) They are always there for me... whether I'm happy, sad, or indifferent. 

2) They love unconditionally despite my (many) shortcomings.

3) They put up with me constantly talking about whatever knitting, crocheting, stamping or other random project I'm working on.

4) They are extremely generous with their time.

5) They are willing to tell me things I don't want to hear, but need to hear anyway.

6) They are ready to give me an opinion and advice whenever I ask for it, or they think I need it.

7) They are excellent at encouragement and suppport me in whatever new thing I want to try.

8) They make me stop and think, not just go through my life in my own bubble, focused on my own issues and wants.

9) They hold me accountable for my actions.

10) And last but not least... they are all wonderful, hilarious, loving people and I am very blessed to have them in my life!

Happy New Year!

I hope everyone has great plans for this evening!  We are actually done celebrating as we attended a British themed New Year's party and that means we celebrated at midnight GMT, which for us was 7pm.  It's a great idea for folks with kids or who lack the desire to stay up late.  We should be up anyway, but are now safely tucked away at home.  

Asti Spumanti for the bubbly.
Way better than traditional champagne
in my opinion.

We had lots of fun and had great food and music to go with all the wonderful company. We ended up making Indian food since curry is so big in England.  It turned out to be a pretty good recipe.  You can find it on MyRecipes.com under Indian Baked Chicken Pockets.  My only suggestion is to make only half the amount of rice that the recipe requires, otherwise the curry flavor isn't particularly strong.  Now if you like things on the light side of flavor then it's fine as is.  Our household typically enjoys flavors that punch you in the face, so our change was a good one.  

The Curry Chicken Turnovers hubby and I made. 

Homemade beef pasties made by our hosts.

Our DJ for the evening - Full of Irish and Scottish folk music.

Bonus points go to these two for theme costumes :)

Counting down!

Still counting....

7pm - It is the New Year in Britain.  Huzzah!

New Year's self portraiture at it's finest.  Happy New Year Everyone!!!

Ravelympics 2010 - I have a heck of a challenge ahead of me...

Well, it's a little less ahead of me than when I originally planned to do this blog post.  I was supposed to do one on Friday before I started my first Ravelympics Project!  What are the Ravelympics?  They are basically a knitting/crocheting version of the traditional Olympics, complete with teams, events and medals.  The event runs for the length of the Winter Olympics this year, so from Feb. 12th  9pm EST to March 1st 3am EST. I am knitting the Team Never Not Knitting which is one of my favorite knitting podcasts out there. 

The whole point of the Ravelympics is to challenge yourself, so I decided to make myself a cardigan, the Bountiful Bohus Cardigan to be exact.  Since, I'm not exactly a small person, I knew this would be a real challenge for me.  Then again, I've never made any kind of sweater before either, so, this project is a double whammy. 

I'm really enjoying the knitting thus far and even attended a Opening Ceremony Cast On Party on Friday night with my new group of fiber buddies.  Here are a few pictures of my progress over the last three days.

Day 1: Opening Ceremony

I didn't get much done during the opening ceremony other than cast on the 336 stitches (ugh) and work three rounds of the cuff repeat.  Then again, I was yacking with friends and stuffing my face while watching the ceremony, so one shouldn't be surprised.
(3 rows completed)

Day 2: Cuff Central

By the end of day two I had completed all but the last repeat of the cuff.  There is a bit of cabling in the cuff and I'm not all that fast with that so I think that's why it was taking me forever. 
 (16 rows completed)

Day 3: Seam Shaping Begins

Finished the last repeat of the cuff pattern and did the first repeat of the 4 row seam shaping decreases.
(25 rows completed)

From now on, I hope to post an update every day (as I had originally planned).  Wish me luck!

On the second day of cookies...

So Saturday was our annual Cookie Day at Lars and Tara's.  Each year we get together and the girls make cookies together while the boys play on the Wii. There are certain staples that we pretty much make every year, but then we change up a few recipes every year to try out news things and try to perfect our output.  This year we made: Maple Date Bars, Sugar Cut Out Cookies, Buckeyes, Oatmeal Cookies and Ginger Cookies.

Below are Heather's Buckeyes.  They are made of graham crackers, peanut butter and butter, rolled into balls and then dipped in chocolate.  They are an every year undertaking.  Yeah, these don't leave our house...

We also make chocolate crinkles almost every year.  They are one of my absolute favorites going back to when I was a kid and mom and I made them with varying success in her very old olive green stove.

 

Isn't Lucy so cute?   She did a very good job cleaning up all the dough from the buckeyes that fell on the floor.  She's a helper! 

And Erin is looking very domestic... not to mention angelic.  Something is out of place here...

Luke slowly putting a buckeye out of it's misery.  He's so fast, all I got was a blur of him and a nice picture if Kristin.

Around 5, I headed out to my friend Jared's annual Christmas party.  No matter how hard we try, these two annual traditions seem to end up being on the same day.  But, Jared's party is for another blog post and another day.

If you are a fan of watersports.... beware!

Darth Coco called me up on Saturday morning with a clear plan in mind. We would meet behind the Concord Visitor Center at 1pm, rent a canoe and paddle our way from the south bridge to the north bridge about 1.5 miles down the river. After that, we would head to Cambridge for a late lunch at a trattoria named Gran Gusto (which has phenomenal food by the way). The plan had merit and it was good, so we set off with high hopes for our perfectly planned day.


After the slathering on sun screen, bathroom break and asking the local patriot in the visitor's center for directions, we walked down Main St. to the South Bridge Boat House. They rent canoes, kayaks (both single and double) and even off river cruises. However, traveling by canoe was not meant to be. All the canoes were taken by a group of boy scouts who arrived just before us (grrr). Rather than admit defeat, we decided to wait for one...


That didn't last long. We caved after about 15 minutes and rented two single kayaks instead. Patience is not exactly one of our best traits when we're together. We started down the river, trying to get used to the rhythm of paddling which neither of us had done probably in years. I believe we started off on the Sudbury river although I'm sure it turned into the Concord River at some point and maybe even the Assabet depending on how far we went. I know we went under several bridges, both for traffic and foot only.


The river, while busy with other small watercraft, was serene and we both felt we could have easily settled in and taken a nap. The other great thing was that despite how much we paddled and how far we went from the boathouse, we set the pace and I honestly could have continued on for quite a bit before feeling I needed to turn around. talk about a nice way to enjoy a beautiful day and get some good exercise!


So, Darth Coco and I have decided that we really enjoy kayaking. I probably drove her insane by constantly saying how awesome the trip was and how we so need to go again and SOON! So, consider yourselves warned! We will be on the waterways of Concord again. Will you be prepared if you happen to meet us there?

Apples, apples everywhere....

...and not a bite to eat! Well, ok, I lied. There was tons to eat, including this amazing apple cider donut (my favorite of all time).

This past Saturday a group of our friends including 6 adults (in physical age only), a three year old and a very cute Redbone Coonhound met at Shelburne Farm in Acton, MA for our Annual Apple Day. Unfortunately, a few of our friends weren't able to be there with us due to things like living in other states and illness, but the spirit of Apple Day was present nonetheless. We just hope they can make it next year.

The day was one of those that seems like it's going to be freezing, yet somehow you end up warm. After looking at the llama, sheep and goats and grabbing a donut, we began our trek into the orchard.

It actually took us a little while to find some good apples because many of the trees were picked clean on the portion that we could reach without a ladder. The main reason for this was that the farm was keeping certain areas of the orchard closed off so other pickers would be able to find fruit later on in the season.

We were looking primarily for Macs and Cortlands, which have turned out to be great choices for both pie baking and applesauce making over the years. After a little bit of hunting, however we did find some nice examples of appley goodness within reach and even discovered that our mini-person (blame Brian for that name) could fit under all the trees and get to all the apples we couldn't reach without breaking the branches. Luke, you definitely earned your keep on Saturday! I swear he personally filled the last 1/2 a bag himself while the rest of us just watched.

Katie the Coonhound also helped out by keeping us apprised of all the other people around us, not to mention the other dogs who came out with their respective family members. Isn't she beautiful? I always get such great pictures of her when she finds her way into my viewfinder.

After returning to the farm stand for our well earned cider and ice cream we headed back to Erin & Joel's to begin phase II of Apple Day: The Apple Peeling/Coring/Dicing Extravaganza. This process used to take ages, especially back in the day when we first started the tradition. For many years grossly overestimated how many apples we needed to make pies for each of the households and applesauce as well. So, the prep process seemed endless... especially since we did all the work by hand, but over time we gradually got better and then this year we were spot on.

We ended up getting only one bushel, which turned out to be the perfect amount to provide for all the folks present this year. We also have made the process less tedious by investing in a few apple peeler, corer/slicers. Of the two we used, mine (of course) was made of failure. Tara's, however, worked like a charm and the three of us girls had all the apples set to go in an hour or two. Edit: Correction! Mine is no longer full of fail. The cutting blade was just was set out far enough. Now that the adjustment has been made, mine works perfectly! Ha! Ok, well, except for the handle that keeps falling off...

We still have to cut the peeled apples after they go through the machine, but really this is so easy, its almost not like work at all.

At the end of the day, we would up with four pies (thanks go to Heather's mom for the recipe), a nice sized cauldron full of yummy tart applesauce we split up and 9 cups of apple butter (a newcomer to our usual recipe list). Mmmmmm... apple butter... It turns out that apple butter is really just applesauce that has been pureed and made thicker by boiling it down. You can find the recipe we used here at Cooking Light.

Lessons from She Shoots Sheep Shots

Recently, I was scouring through my Ravelry groups, looking for updates and new projects people have shared. While looking through a knitting and photography group called Project Photography, I stumbled upon a Photography for Knitters Workshop that "surprise" was in Carver, MA! (only about 1.5 hours away). The workshop description said it was "about having more control over your photos, and wanting them to look great online." SWEET!!!

So, I emailed my photo/knit buddy Tara and in the next few days we were excited, signed up and ready to shoot! The workshop was put on by Gale Zucker, aka SheShootsSheep on Ravelry. Gale is a professional photographer and accomplished knitter who rarely gets to combine those two portions of her life. She started off our workshop by showing us some of her fiber and knitting related photography in her book, Shear Spirit (more info below), and some of the techniques we should use to make our fiber projects really show their texture and come to life.

Next we talked about lighting your projects and how to BEND LIGHT TO YOUR WILL!!! Erm.... pardon, I mean.... use lighting to your advantage by reflecting light onto the subject or using a light box. For the third part of the workshop, we took our projects outside and practiced using the techniques Gale demonstrated earlier. I purposely brought to the workshop a very cool silver cowl that I had recently finished for a friend. I had a distinct feeling that this cowl would be a nightmare to photograph since it has three distinct fiber textures throughout. I am very proud of how the cowl came out, so I really wanted to capture it well. Luckily, my friend was a willing victim to my plan to shoot it on someone (thanks Tara :P).

Tara took a great pic of my Jayne Cob hat (on my own head).









Gale demonstrating that you need to get into some pretty interesting poses to get just the right shot....
















For the last part of the class we went back inside, ate cookies (we need our energy you know) and focused on how to optimize the photos we took for uploading to blogs, etc. I came out of the workshop with lots of new ideas and the rejuvenation of my desire to use my camera. So, needless to say I had a great time at Gale's workshop and would highly recommend it to anyone interested in sprucing up their fiber photos for their blog or just documenting projects on ravelry.

If you want to see Gale's work check out the following:

Gale Zucker Photography - Gale's day job and professional portfolio.

She Shoots Sheep Shots - Gale's blog: combining her love of fiber, knitting, and photography (yes, and sheep too).

Edit: Gale posted some pics she took at the workshop, links to some of the other attendees' blogs, and a nice writeup of the day on her blog. You can check out the hijinks at her post Sighted in Carver.

Shear Spirit: Ten Fiber Farms, 20 Patterns & Miles of Yarn - a link to Amazon for a book Gale collaborated on with Joan Tapper. This is filled with gorgeous shots Gale took of fiber animals, yarn, and farm life.... it's just beautiful! I highly recommend it and it makes a great coffee table book in addition to the lovely patterns. Gale was very thoughtful and personalized my copy.... complete with a WoW reference!