Linds' Life

A Blended Approach

2012-01-18T20:56:00.002-05:00

Yes, two blog posts in one day after a month off. For once, the dishes are mostly done and I'm not braindead, so I'm taking advantage. It's more baby stuff, though--sorry, fibre-y folks who aren't into the kid stuff! I haven't been doing very much exciting in the fibre arts world lately, although I've just started spinning for a Very Big Project, so one day there will be posts about that.

I think most of us are familiar with the "traditional" approach to introducing baby food--rice cereals, some single ingredient fruit/vegetable purees, then some blended purees. Really, this is a pretty modern approach to feeding babies, but it's the way most people do it today. And Evan started his food journey mostly along this path--although the first thing he ate was the banana he grabbed from my hand and shoved into his mouth. He was about 5.5 months and quite pleased with this discovery!

Shortly after that I tried introducing him to some purees (including some containing bananas, since he obviously liked that!). His reactions were mixed, as I think most babies' are. But he didn't have the same excitement he had about that first banana, and there was a lot of wrangling for control of the spoon. So once again, I did some more reading about a concept I'd been hearing tossed around but didn't know a lot about--Baby-Led Weaning.

The idea behind BLW is that babies don't need to be spoonfed, and in fact can be introduced to foods just as we eat them. There are a few caveats, of course (choking hazards are much more rare than you would assume, but there are some!), and some foods are easier to start with than others, but on the whole babies can eat almost anything the rest of us can. Strict Baby Led Weaning means that the baby doesn't eat anything he can't feed himself--so no spoonfeeding. There are lots of theories about why this approach may be better (encourages a broader palate, greater independence, reduces obesity, etc.), but they are just theories--I don't think there's extensive research into any of this.

This seemed more like Evan's approach to the banana, so we decided to try it out, starting with sharing a roast chicken dinner. As you can see, he was thrilled by the idea! He didn't actually consume much that night, or most of the nights that followed, but he had a lot of fun exploring food. And a few weeks later he started occasionally taking in a more significant amount.

Have we abandoned spoonfeeding? Well, not entirely. He LOVES pearsauce, and wants to eat lots of it very quickly--something that he can't do if he's in control of the spoon. My thinking is that if he clearly wants the food, but doesn't have the physical ability to control the spoon yet, it's OK to help him out a bit. He's very good at letting us know when he doesn't want any more, so I'm not too worried that he's being "forced" to eat things he doesn't want.

This approach seems to work fine for us--Evan is experiencing a wider variety of flavours and textures than most babies do, but he's probably eating less of it than a lot of babies his age. Some days he doesn't really eat any solids, other days he takes quite a bit. I've given up predicting what he might like, because he keeps surprising me with his adventurous spirit. A few weeks ago the big hit was dhal (Indian "curried" lentils). Today it was chili! He also loves most vegetables, especially if they're roasted. I'd love to think that this bodes well for a future of adventurous eating!

Why yes, that is a teeny tiny potty

2012-01-18T14:25:00.004-05:00

Way back when I wrote my first post about cloth diapers I promised some upcoming posts on related topics. I don't know if anyone's been waiting to hear more, but I'm finally back to tell you more anyway. :-) So yes, this post is related to pee & poop. You've been warned!

For those of you who don't have kids, I'd bet you still have opinions about how they should be raised. I know I did! And I was usually careful to keep them to myself when I was around people who were actually parents, because I knew no one wanted to hear them--but I was still mostly convinced that I was right.

Not surprisingly, since becoming a parent, I've realized a few things about these preconceived notions. Most importantly, I'm realizing that what works for one child or family doesn't necessarily work for everyone. As a result, I've found myself re-evaluating ideas that once sounded strange to me. There are a lot of parenting practices that sounded, for a lack of a better term, very "crunchy granola" when I first heard about them, and not for "normal" people. Some of these I accepted quite take quickly (cloth diapers and extended breastfeeding, for example). Others required more reading/research and some parenting experience, such as baby-led weaning (a topic for another day) and today's subject, elimination communication ("EC").

When Evan was maybe 1-2 months old I realized that I was hearing references to EC (which I personally think should be called something else, I think the name is a turn-off for a lot of people first learning about it) in lots of places. I decided it was time to stop dismissing it and to start learning more, so I picked up Diaper Free Baby by Christine Gross-Loh. It was a quick & easy read, and it made so much more sense than I expected it to.

The highlights of what EC is:
-human babies, like other species, seem to be born with a desire not to soil themselves. You know how many newborns pee/poop right when you take off their diaper? That's the instinct EC is building on. The idea is why train a baby to use a diaper, and then in a few years train them not to? Wouldn't it be better to introduce them to a potty early on?
-There are a lot of approaches to doing EC. Although the book I read (and there are many other books, too) refers to "diaper-free" babies, you don't have to skip diapers entirely, you don't have to do it full-time, etc. It is generally easier to do with cloth than disposables (easier to catch wetness right away, and in most cases the baby is also more aware of wetness).
-This isn't "early potty training", really. It's about being aware of your baby's need to eliminate and giving them a chance to do it out of a diaper (in a potty, a bowl, the grass, whatever). Many babies who are raised with EC will "graduate" from diapers earlier than their peers, but not all.

We bought 2 Baby Bjorn Little Potties (one for upstairs, one for downstairs), and started offering Evan the chance to use them. He started peeing in them that same day, so we've kept it up! He still wears diapers, but at home we leave the cover off so we can have a sense of when he goes if we "miss" it on the potty. Some days he uses the potty almost exclusively, other days barely at all.We're working on the ASL sign for potty so one day soon he may be able to communicate his need to go, but for right now we mostly offer based on timing--after he wakes up is a near guaranteed success, for example.

I do hope that the time we're spending on this now will help him to potty train easier/sooner (as I understand it, the average North American kid is close to 3.5 when they train now, and that seems old to me). If it doesn't, oh well, we've at least had a lot of fun playing with him while he sits on his tiny potty!

Review: DyakCraft Interchangeable Needles (Updated!)

2011-12-17T16:26:00.003-05:00

A few months ago, I decided I was tired of the not-infrequent problems with KnitPicks interchangeable needles--most notably the way the joins are prone to snagging or breaking. I started researching other options for a higher end set of needles that wouldn't require periodic replacements, and decided on the Darn Pretty Interchangeables from DyakCraft. I picked up a set from the fabulous Kim of indigodragonfly at the Knitters' Fair in September.Having used them for about 3 months now, I thought it was time for a review!

Overall, I really like the product and am happy with the purchase. I have a few minor issues, but they're still a significant step up in quality from KP.

Pros:
-Made in the USA
-They really are Darn Pretty! Because I didn't want to wait, I was limited to what Kim had in stock (3 sets, and I shopped before the show opened. I'm guessing she sold out in minutes!), but I love the wood and the pretty case. If you're willing to wait, you have lots of choices of wood & cases.
-The cables are pretty perfect. Not too stiff, but not too floppy (I found the cables on Kollage's square needles too flimsy). Moves smoothly through the stitches, great for Magic Loop.
-The needles are grippy but sufficiently pointy & smooth at the same time. They do seem to get smoother with use, the first time for each pair they're a bit grippier than I'd like but it wears off fast. I haven't done any serious lace knitting since I got them (somehow a baby doesn't seem conducive to lace, although I have SO MUCH lace to finish, and much more waiting to be knit!), so I can't comment on whether they're pointy enough for good amounts of lace. However, I know the company offers two point styles, and if you don't find the regular ones sharp enough apparently you can return them and have them whittled down to be pointier!
-They seem really sturdy, and I'm not worried about the cable coming loose at the join. The cable is designed to swivel in the join, which should reduce the pressure that could cause them to come apart. Plus, DyakCraft offers a lifetime guarantee (I believe KP only guarantees their needles for 1 year now, which I think tells you how well they expect them to hold up!)

Cons--or at least, areas for possible improvement?
-They tout the fact that the tips screw onto the cable without need of any tools to tighten them. However, I found that my tips were often coming unscrewed. I checked the FAQ on the DyakCraft page, and saw that this is a common enough problem to be addressed there. The solution offered is to use something like a rubber band to help you tighten them. To me this suggests that they DO need a tool to be fully tightened for many users, they just don't supply a tool with them. I've gotten a bit better at tightening mine, but they still come undone every now and then. This is not an insignificant problem, as the way I usually notice that they've come undone is when yarn snags in the join.
-The case, while pretty, isn't entirely practical. It's perfect for the tips, but there's just one compartment for cables. I've ordered some extra cables (as I think most knitters will want to--the sets only come with small-ish sizes), so this pouch is now very full. I'd love an easy way to sort them by length and keep them from getting twisted together in the pouch. But more troublesome is the pouch for the stoppers. The cable stoppers for these needles are beautiful, lovely big "plugs" of wood. The compartment for them is very small, they just fit in--and inevitably, they fall out. Of the 4 that come with the set, there's never more than 1 remaining in mine at any time. They're all over my house, and with a soon-to-be-crawling child, this concerns me.
-I'm currently having what I hope is a small and quickly resolved customer service issue. When I ordered my new cables, I emailed the Diaks (makers of the needles) to see if they had all the cables in stock, and received a quick response saying that they did. I ordered my cables, including 2 in one size. When they arrived, there was only 1 of each size I had ordered. I checked the website and the contact information listed was the email address I had originally used, so I emailed to inquire if the extra needle could be shipped out. After not hearing anything for over a week, I emailed again--I know they're a small business, and very busy, so I'm sure they get behind sometimes and miss emails. It's been several days since that second email, and still no reply. My hope is that they just mailed the cable out and didn't take the time to reply, so we'll see. I paid with PayPal, so I need to keep an eye on the timeline and will file a dispute if I don't hear anything. I will post an update when this situation is resolved. I'm sure it will be handled quickly!

UPDATE: I got an email this morning, there was a combination of issues that had delayed it--1st, the company got "Harlotted" around when I sent my original inquiry (I think it was just an offhand link on the Yarn Harlot's blog, not a full write-up...but oh, the power she wields! Their inboxes were slammed. Maybe one day my brand will be Harlotted!). Second, I forgot to note that the paypal account used to buy my needles is linked to a different email than I wrote from, so it took some extra work to track down my transaction. That part was totally my fault, and I can see how it would cause a delay, especially when you're already slammed. Anyway, the extra cable is going to be shipped ASAP, so all worked out in the end and I'm happy. :-)

I think that's it. Do you have any questions about the needles? I'm happy to try to answer them if you do!

Our cloth diapering adventure

2011-12-12T20:27:00.002-05:00

So I've been avoiding the blog because I know I'm supposed to be writing part 2 of the sock knitting post, and I really don't feel like exerting the brainpower necessary. I realized that I have a formula that usually works for *me* to figure out heels, but it wouldn't translate for everyone and every pattern, so I need to do some math & thinking about how to make it universal. And I just haven't felt able to do that lately!

But I have lots of other things I've been wanting to blog about, and I decided it was silly to put all of those on hold until I had the time & brainpower to put the sock stuff into words. Plus, Catt tells me that she got some help from post #1 anyway, so maybe post #2 isn't vitally needed by anyone right now? At any rate, it's going to take a backseat to things like baby stuff for now!

Before Evan was born, we decided we were going to do cloth diapers, and we have enough friends who were also doing it that we felt fairly confident about it. In particular, Mandy wrote a very thorough post about her experiences, and our local cloth diaper store offers workshops to learn about everything in person. So I thought I'd pass on some lessons we've learned, in case it helps anyone else out!

1. Modern cloth diapers can be confusing, because there are so many different types. If you can learn about them in person, I recommend it. There's lots of information online, but early on I found myself reading & re-reading and still not able to visualize all the types of diapers & keep them straight. If you have a local diaper store, see if they offer a workshop, and if not, at least go in and have an employee explain everything to you. Once you've done that, take some time to re-read information online and ponder what will work best for you before you make any purchases.
2. Consider trying before you buy. Lots of stores (including some online retailers) offer rental programs or other trials where you can sample a variety of diapers before you make a purchase. Different babies have different needs, so sometimes it helps to try different diapers on your baby. Additionally, a lot of babies only fit in newborn sized diapers for a few weeks (but are really too small to get a good fit with bigger diapers), so you may not want to spend a lot of money buying newborn diapers. Our store offers a newborn rental program, so we used their newborn sized diapers (and some prefolds, more about that in a minute!) for a few weeks, then made some purchases in larger sizes. If that isn't an option for you, maybe you have a friend who can loan you a few diapers to try out. Additionally, there are lots of places to buy used diapers, and discount sites you can sign up for to get new ones at a steep discount on some kinds of diapers. If you want to sample lots of kinds of diapers and can't borrow/rent them, at least either buy them used or on sale!
3. Sometimes simpler is better. There are lots of fancy diaper systems on the market, but a lot of people find some of the "old fashioned" options the best. I know a lot of people who swear by flats, which are about as old school as you can get. I haven't gotten my hands on any, so I can't speak to that, but we like the next step up the rung--prefolds--quite a bit. They offer a lot of customization (there are many ways to fold/attach them depending on your needs--we like the angel wing fold & a snappi, but that's not for everyone. They're also MUCH more affordable than the other options out there, and they're natural fibres (most frequently cotton), which offer a variety of benefits.
4. If you're a knitter/crocheter, wool covers (soakers/shorties/longies) are generally quick to make and work REALLY well. While the most common PUL-based covers on the market are a lot nicer than the old "plastic pants", they still don't breathe as well as wool, so if you don't change frequently enough your baby may be prone to rashes. And wool, if properly lanolized, really does work just as well as PUL most of the time! We use wool at night (over fitteds with doublers, generally) because we've never had a leak with wool, unlike other options, and because I know even after a long night Evan will still be cool & comfortable. My favourite pattern so far has been Sheepy Pants, but I hope to try another longies pattern in the near future, and will probably make some more soakers for spring/summer. I don't do a lot of crochet, but Mandy made us some fabulous crocheted soakers, which are nice & thick and have worked really well at night!
5. If you're interested in Elimination Communication, I'd say you definitely want to go with cloth! I find fitteds work really well with EC, but we also use our prefolds. I'll be blogging about EC & how it works for us later, so if you have no clue what I'm talking about, you can keep an eye out for that. :-)

I think that's enough information for now! I hope to do a follow-up post with reviews of some of the specific diapers we've used. But in the meantime, if I want to blog about other things, I'll go ahead and do it without waiting to write that one! :-P

Eating Seasonally: Halloween Candy made "Healthy"

2011-11-05T13:55:00.003-04:00

Oatmeal-Flax Seed-Candy Bar Muffins

One year we'll accept the fact that we don't get many Trick-or-treaters and just not buy much candy. (And of course, that year we will have 85 kids show up and have to make an emergency candy run or hide in the house with the lights off.) But since that hasn't happened yet, we inevitably spend the week after Halloween alternating between trying to be good & not overeat the leftovers and saying "maybe we should just finish it off fast, so it's out of here!" This recipe helped us finish off the candy way too fast, but also gave us a false feeling of being virtuous because it contains other ingredients that are healthy.

I did at least try to cut out a lot of the sugar & fat of a standard muffin recipe, to compensate for what's in the candy. But yeah, given how fast I can inhale one of these and how tasty they are, I'm really not doing my body any favours.

Ingredients:
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/2 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup milk
1/3 cup applesauce
2 T vegetable oil
1 t vanilla
1/4 cup ground flax seed
1/2 t salt
1/2 t baking soda
2 t baking powder
2 cups rolled oats
1 cup all purpose flour
15-20 mini candy bars, coarsely chopped

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 F and prepare 12 standard sized muffin cups (paper liners, oil, whatever works for you).
2. Mix egg, sugar, milk, applesauce, oil, & vanilla. Add dry ingredients & mix until combined, then stir in candy.
3. Divide batter between 12 muffin cups. Bake for 18-20 minutes until set and lightly browned.

Notes:
-for your body to get any of the goodness out of the flax seeds, they need to be ground. You can buy them whole & grind them yourself in a spice grinder/coffee grinder, or you can buy them already milled. If you take option #2, keep them in the freezer after you open them to prolong their shelf life.
-the first time I tried this, I tossed the candy bars into the food processor. This resulted in some big chunks and some "candy dust", which I thought would be good but I didn't like it as much as when I chopped the candy by hand.
-if you have gooey candy, like Caramilk bars, you can freeze them before chopping.
-Don't let the oozing candy goodness fool you into thinking the muffins aren't done. With my first batch, I glanced & thought the melted bits were raw batter, so I kept cooking and ended up with dried out muffins. Still tasty, but take 2 was better:

Yup, those are my feet

2011-11-04T19:45:00.002-04:00

So Catt has asked for tips on how to measure feet for knitting socks. I am by no means an expert, but I figured I'd share what works for me in hopes that it helps a bit. I mostly knit socks using the methods from Cat Bordhi's New Pathways for Sock Knitters, and have found these socks fit me and most of my family really well. So I take my measurements based on these patterns--and that means the way I do it might not translate perfectly to every other type of pattern out there. But in case you find it helpful, here it goes (apologies for subjecting you to my feet. And I didn't even get a manicure for you!):

1. Foot Length. When I first started knitting socks, I made the mistake of just measuring my foot at rest. I've since learned that it works better to measure the foot while standing, so it's weight-bearing at stretch out a bit. The best way to do this is to put your ruler or tape measure against the wall and stand right beside it, with your heel against the wall:

You'll notice that my tape measure (like most) has a little tab at the back before the measuring part starts. This means that I'll need to subtract the length of that section from my total measurement. For this reason, a ruler often works better than a tape measure for this.

2. Foot circumference. Most people's feet are not the same circumference all around. It's wider at the ball, narrows a bit, and then because of your arch it widens again. However, the knit fabric of your socks will stretch and shift a bit to conform to some of these changes, so you should figure out your circumference at a midpoint--after the ball of your foot, but before the top of the arch:

3. Other variables. For most people, and most socks, I find these 2 numbers to be enough. However, there could be special cases:
-knee socks: if the socks are going up very high, the wearer's leg likely widens and the sock will need to grow to accommodate this. I don't have a lot of experience in this area, but I'd suggest measuring the leg circumference every 2 inches or so to see how big it's getting and increase accordingly.
-ankle size: some people have skinny ankles, some people have chunkier ankles. Nothing wrong with either, but it will impact the fit of your socks. If your ankles are thinner than the width of your foot will suggest, some decreases will need to happen in the sock cuff or it won't stay up. And if your ankles are larger, increases will be necessary to be able to get the sock up.
-high or low arches: again, not my area of expertise. But if your arch height is much outside the norm (and I think you'd probably know this from experience shoe shopping?), the increases you need to do for an arch expansion will change.

4. Gauge. I'm not a big fan of swatching for socks, so often what I'll do is take a guess at how many stitches I need, cast on for a toe (I knit toe up more frequently, although not always), and start knitting. When I have about 2 inches, I measure. This way, if I have a good gauge I'm already into my sock. And if I'm off, I'm no worse off than if I'd knit a swatch anyway, really. Many people get a different gauge in the round, and a different gauge from DPNs to circs, so it really does help to swatch in the round on the type of needles you plan to use. Also, I recommend determining both stitches per inch (spi) and rows per inch (rpi).

OK, now you need to know how to USE those numbers to make your socks fit, right? Well, I'm tired, so you'll have to wait for part 2! Or you could go buy Cat Bordhi's book, I think she explains it better than I could anyway.

Adventures in Babywearing

2011-11-01T10:31:00.002-04:00

OK, here's a first stab at a "parenting" blog post. I don't think I have very much new to say, but I'm happy to share what works for us on some topics in case anyone else finds it useful.

Babywearing is a pretty ancient idea that's experiencing a bit of a resurgence. Although that doesn't stop some people from snickering at the term (understandably, I think, but I don't know of a better way to describe it!). It also doesn't stop people from saying "I wish they'd had that when my kids were babies"--yup, there were no long pieces of fabric in the world 10-20 years ago. (I understand this comment more when I'm using a structured carrier, which I'll get to in a minute--but when I've got Evan in a wrap, we're pretty much doing what mothers have been doing from the beginning of time, I think. Strollers are a relatively new invention in human history!)

So a quick overview of what we've tried & liked in babywearing so far. One of the most common ways to start with a newborn is some form of stretchy wrap--a long piece of stretchy knit cotton fabric. We got a Moby wrap and thoroughly enjoyed it in the newborn stage. Both S & I used it quite a lot when Evan was tiny. The carry we're doing there is what the Moby people call the "newborn hug hold". I think the babywearing world calls it a Pocket Wrap Cross Carry. Or something like that. Anyway, when the baby is tiny and just wants to snuggle against you all the time, this is perfect. I got to eat a hot meal pretty much every night for the first several weeks after Evan was born by putting him in the wrap like that. We also took walks, did basic household chores, etc.

Then a few months in my tiny baby had become a big, strong guy and was squirming and pushing and flailing around in there. The stretchy fabric no longer felt so secure, so we knew we needed to try something else. Our wonderful friend Catt came to our rescue by loaning us some of her collection of babywearing options so we could try them out before deciding what we wanted to invest in (another nice thing about the stretchy wraps is the lack of serious investment--I got our Moby on sale for about $25, I think. Paid for itself in peace of mind & happy baby vibes almost instantly! Other babywearing devices are pricier, although most can be located gently used and can also be used for a much longer period of time!).

She loaned us a Mei Tai style carrier (a ToddlerHawk, which apparently I didn't take any very good pictures of) and a woven wrap. The woven wrap is similar to the stretchy one, but the fabric isn't as stretchy so it's a bit more secure with a wiggly or large baby, and it's also not as hot to wear in the summer! I initially used the woven much like the Moby (look! spinning with a baby!), but ventured into other carries soon, including the Secure High Back Carry when I wanted to get stuff done. Overall we found we liked the woven wrap a lot, so we bought our own gently used one.

Since getting my own wrap, I've used it a lot for different back carries. We've settled on "DRS2S" (Double Rebozo Shoulder to Shoulder) as our favourite for now. I also use it for the Front Cross Carry, which is a great "poppable" carry--you can take the baby in & out of the wrap without having to re-tie everything (and which I apparently don't have any pictures of).

The other carrier we have purchased and really enjoy is the Ergo. This has become our go-to carrier for dog walks and errands. It's easy to get on & off compared to the wrap, and very comfortable. It's not quite as cosy as the wrap, so we don't use it as much around the house--but it's so simple to use when we're out. It can also be used for back carries, but it's recommended to not do that until the baby is 6 months so we haven't tried that yet.

So that's a bit of what's worked for us in the world of babywearing. Oh, and if you want to learn more about any of the carries I mentioned, there are lots of videos on YouTube that show how to do them! That's how we learned pretty much everything. And if you want to look for tutorials on how to get the baby onto your back, the method I use is called the "Superman Toss" (it's not as scary as it sounds). There are other options, but this works for us--Evan thinks it's great fun, and I feel safe doing it!

Easing back in

2011-10-20T14:10:00.005-04:00

OK, I'm going to try to make a return to blogging...we'll see how that goes. As most of you know, my time is now occupied by a small bundle of joy. So, before I get to the other stuff, a few words about that. For now, I'm planning to NOT blog baby pictures. I don't know if it's worth worrying about all the weirdos out there, but I do. So when relevant, I'll link to photos on my Flickr account. Most baby photos there are friends & family only, so if you follow a link and can't see it, send me a friend request. If I know who you are (or if you give me some other compelling reason), I'll probably grant it.

Also, I probably will add some parenting topics to my blogging subjects. As well as, of course, baby knits! But hopefully I'll still blog about other stuff, too.

Which gets me to the topic I'm trying to cover today...another recipe! And umm, yeah, it's a muffin, which seems to be half of the recipes I've posted in the past. But muffins are an even bigger part of my life now--there are mornings when I don't get to sit & eat breakfast right away, afternoons where I'm starving but can't always take time to make a sandwich or sit and eat real food. So having muffins on hand at all times has become almost essential! As a result, I try to pack the muffins with more healthy things than unhealthy, although of course there are moments when sugar, chocolate, etc. sneak their way in. These muffins are no exception--lots of fruit & veggies, with a bit of sugar. I did use white flour, but they're so light & moist I might be tempted to try them again with mostly whole wheat, or perhaps add some oats. Of course, local zucchini season is pretty much over now, so I'm not sure I'll make them again soon.

Another note--if you have a food processor with a shredding/grating blade, use it for the zucchini & the apple. Seriously, life is short. Use the help!

Ingredients:
3 small-medium zucchini, shredded
1/2 t salt
2 small-medium apples, shredded (I've never shredded apples for baking before. It would probably work to dice them, too, but the texture might change.)
1 egg, beaten
1/3 cup apple sauce
2 T vegetable oil
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 t vanilla
1 1/2 C all purpose flour
1 1/2 t baking powder
2 t cinnamon
1/2 t baking soda

1. Toss zucchini with salt and place in a strainer/colander to let excess liquid drain out. If possible, wait 10-15 minutes then squeeze out excess moisture before using zucchini. I didn't wait quite that long, and my muffins are OK, but bordering on too wet.
2. Combine drained zucchini, apples, applesauce, egg, oil, sugar, and vanilla. Mix well.
3. Stir in flour, baking powder, cinnamon, baking soda. (Yeah, I know, you're supposed to combine the dry ingredients in a separate bowl before you mix them together. While I am aware that this is a cardinal rule of baking, I rarely ever follow it. And 95% of the time, things work out fine. This was one of those times. If you, like me, hate to wash an extra bowl--just take the chance and use only one!)
4. Divide batter into 12 lined/greased muffin cups (mine were full almost to the top of the liners). Bake at 375 F for approximately 25 minutes, or until golden on the top. They may still be rather moist inside, but will dry/set up a bit more while cooling.

That's it! No picture of them right now, but trust me--they're delicious. Of all the muffin recipes I've improvised, this may be my new favourite. So moist, sweet without being too sweet, mostly healthy, that yummy fall flavour of apple + cinnamon--you can't beat that! I think I've eaten 4 in less than 24 hours, and that was me showing restraint.

Hey! I did it! I wrote a blog post. Maybe I can keep this up. :-)

Musings on Moussaka

2011-04-03T12:53:00.003-04:00

Oops, I didn't even blog March's fibre club! The reveal happened on Ravelry, but I forgot to post it here for everyone else. Sorry about that, folks. And I've forgotten to blog lots of other things, too. But I'm back today, mainly because I want to make notes to myself on the dinner I made last night, and I've had at least one request to share those notes!

While flipping past the Food Network yesterday, I noticed that Bobby Flay was doing a "Throwdown" with moussaka. I was intrigued enough to pause and watch, even though I rarely have moussaka that I really like--I'm fussy about eggplant and it's usually cooked badly, often the flavours in the meat mixture are off, etc. But as I watched Flay and the Greek food expert he was challenging play with the traditions of moussaka, I thought--what about giving it a potato topping, a la shepherd's pie? And what if we replaced all the eggplant with zucchini, which I much prefer? And maybe included some carrots because as spring approaches, that's one of the fall storage veggies I have in abundance? S agreed that it was intriguing, so I went for it. The results were delicious, and I will definitely be revisiting this idea!

I didn't make any notes while I was cooking, so I don't have actual quantities for most ingredients--I've tried to give approximations. Also, I didn't take a picture when it came out of the oven last night...not sure if the leftovers will take a pretty picture, either. So this isn't a real recipe post, but some notes on what I know I did. Next time I come back to it, I'll probably refine it a bit and if that happens, I'll try to come back with pictures & corrections. But in the meantime, here are some notes on what I did.

It should be noted that this recipe requires a LOT of dishes, and a fairly long list of ingredients. Despite that, I found it fairly simple--and totally worth it. At roughly 8 months pregnant, I don't appreciate recipes that keep me standing in the kitchen all night--and this really wasn't too bad! I did save the dishes for this morning, though.

Ingredients:
Meat filling:
1 T vegetable oil
1 onion, diced
2 carrots, diced
salt & pepper
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 lb. lean ground beef or lamb
2 t dried oregano
1/4 t freshly grated nutmeg
1 stick cinnamon
1 bay leaf
2 T tomato paste
1/2 cup red wine
14 oz. can plum tomatoes
several dashes hot sauce

Zucchini:
3 medium zucchinis, sliced lengthwise, 1/4-1/2 inch thick
1 T vegetable oil (or cooking spray)
salt & pepper

Potato topping:
1 lb. russet potatoes, cut into 1-2 inch chunks
salt
1 egg, beaten
4-6 T butter, melted
1/4-1/2 cup milk
1/4 t freshly grated nutmeg
1/4 cup feta, crumbled

Instructions:
I've written these for each layer, but you'll want to maximize your time by working on all three simultaneously. My suggestion--start the meat mixture, then get the potatoes boiling and the zucchini in the oven. After that, focus on the meat mixture. While it finishes cooking you can pull the zucchini out and put the finishing touches on the potatoes.

Meat Mixture:
1. Heat oil over medium heat in large skillet. Add onions and carrots, season with salt and pepper, cook until tender. Add garlic and cook about 1 minute more.
2. Add the meat, breaking up with a spoon, and cook until browned, stirring occasionally.
3. Add spices and tomato paste, cook 1-2 minutes, stirring to distribute flavours.
Add wine, cook another 1-2 minutes, then add tomatoes and hot sauce. Use spoon to break up larger pieces of tomatoes, and bring mixture to a simmer. Let cook until liquid has reduced and flavours have developed, stirring occasionally.

Zucchini:
1. Preheat oven to 350. Brush zucchini with oil or spray with cooking spray. Place on a baking sheet, season lightly with salt and pepper.
2. Bake zucchini until tender and beginning to brown, perhaps 15 minutes?

Potato topping:
1. Place potato chunks in pot and cover with water and a dash of salt. Cover and bring to a boil over high heat. Remove the lid and let potatoes continue to boil until tender, about 10-15 minutes.
2. Drain potatoes and process in a potato ricer or food mill. (You could probably do this without one of these tools, but I would be concerned that the topping would be too heavy. One of the best parts about this was the light, fluffy potatoes!)
3. Beat eggs, melted butter, and milk together. Add riced potatoes, season with nutmeg, and beat with a mixer until fluffy. Gently fold in feta.

Assembly & baking:
1. Lightly oil a 9x13 baking dish. Place baked zucchini in one layer on bottom of the pan. Top with meat mixture, then cover with potato topping. Gently smooth potatoes without compressing them, leaving some peaks/texture.
2. Bake at 350 for approximately 45 minutes, or until potatoes are set and the dish is bubbly and fragrant. For a crispy topping (so good!), turn on the broiler for a minute or two until nice and brown.
3. The hardest part: allow the dish to rest at least 5-10 minutes before slicing & serving!

Dyeing Plant Fibre

2011-02-15T14:45:00.002-05:00

Over the last year or so, I've gotten several requests to carry plant-based yarns (occasionally people do note that with a business name of "Waterloo Wools" they can understand why this isn't my focus, but usually go on to add "but it would be great if..."). The reasons for this vary, although a common one is allergies to wool or other animal fibres, and I do hate that there are people whose skin doesn't allow them to wear/work with my yarns. :(

Another common reason given is environmental, especially as people often hear about bamboo being a great renewable resource. However, some of you may have noticed that my wool/plant fibre blends are typically labelled as containing "bamboo rayon" or "bamboo viscose." This because the soft, shiny, drapey bamboo fibres many of us have come to love have been processed into a rayon. This process makes them soft & silky & desirable, but it's not an environmentally neutral process, and it negates a lot of the "green" effect of starting with a renewable resource.

However, despite this factor I was still interested in offering some plant-based yarns & fibres to my customers, so I've been checking the options with my suppliers. There aren't a huge number of options offered by the major suppliers I work with, but I bought an assortment of what they did have. I also bought a small set of fibre reactive dyes, which are the dyes required for most plant fibres. And finally, last week, I decided to take the plunge and try it all out.

The dyeing process itself is slightly more complex than the standard process I use with acid dyes, but not dramatically difficult. I measured all the ingredients carefully, erring on the side of less dye because I had read about how difficult it can be to rinse all the excess dye out of plant fibres. I also let the dyes "marinate" much longer than required for this reason. And despite these efforts, I found that every warning about how much rinsing is required was spot on!

This was the scene in my sink on what I think was the 4th rinse of this batch. Notice how the water isn't really anywhere close to running clear? And this batch was the one that rinsed faster--I think it was only 2 more rinses after the one pictured. The other batch seemed to take at least 8, maybe 10. So to me, this is another big strike against bamboo in the environmentally friendly category--dyeing it requires significantly more water than dyeing wool, and results in a lot more dye being rinsed away. The information I have is that it's not harmful to rinse the excess dye down the drain into the municipal water system, but I can't imagine it's a great thing to do in large quantities either!

The end results? Well, they're not all bad:

That's some cotton fibre that I picked up at the K-W Knitters' Fair several years ago, before I even knew that I needed different dyes to dye plant fibres. So it's languished in my stash because spinning white cotton didn't sound like much fun! Interestingly, it was VERY hard to get water to penetrate to the middle of the fibre, resulting in all those white streaks after dyeing. I'm looking forward to spinning this, but it's not something that my suppliers carry so I don't expect to get any more.

This is soy yarn. The interesting thing about soy is that although it is a plant fibre, it is also a protein fibre, meaning it can react with both types of dye. So I would consider carrying this base yarn, and dyeing it with my ordinary acid dyes--which I find actually give it a more vibrant colour anyway. It has the same sort of drape & sheen as a bamboo yarn. Right now my supplier doesn't offer it in a lot of different yarn weights, but I'm thinking of stocking this one (fingering) for now, and potentially expanding depending on interest.

This is the bamboo yarn. It turned out fine, but there's nothing remarkable about it and it certainly doesn't seem worth the effort. I think I have one more skein of it to play with, so I'll go ahead and dye that, but then I won't be buying any more of it.

Bamboo fibre. Note the rather messy state of it! That probably could have been partly controlled if I had thought about it in advance, because I know that bamboo fibres separate when they hit the water. I have some methods in mind for containment in the future which would probably result in a slightly neater fibre, but it will always be messier than a wool fibre. Fortunately, my main plans for this were to blend it with other fibres into a batt, so it will work fine for that! I do have a few more bumps of bamboo, so I will be dyeing several other colours to use up what I have--but again, I don't anticipate ordering more after that.

In conclusion...the only plant based yarns & fibres I will consider regularly stocking are ones that can be dyed with acid dyes, like soy. The only other fibre I can think of that is in a similar category is milk fibre--obviously not actually PLANT based, but not a wool/hair based fibre either, so it should be suitable for those with wool allergies. Right now I'm carrying a blend that is mostly milk, because my supplier doesn't do a 100% milk yarn--but if they add one, I'll consider that, too. Otherwise, I'll use up the dyes & fibres I have and head back to the familiar world of wool!

February 2011 Club: Damselfish

2011-02-08T10:24:00.002-05:00

It's club time again! The hint for February was "Something Fishy," which actually led to some great discussion on Ravelry and some ideas I might just have to steal for the future. But the actual inspiration came from my recent snorkeling excursion in Mexico.

The reef off the coast from Puerto Morelos is a national park in Mexico, and great efforts are now being made to preserve it. As a result, it is one of the healthier reefs in the Caribbean, so we saw lots of coral and lots of fish. Unfortunately, the underwater camera & I didn't get along very well--the biggest problem was my own fault (I forgot that it was on a low light setting from the night before, so most of the shots were quite overexposed in shallow water on a sunny day)! It also was not interested in zooming, and the one time I did try to zoom resulted in the camera shutting down and not restarting for about 45 minutes of the trip, so I missed a lot of shots.

However, I did come away with a few good pictures, and after a bit of editing they're not all bad--I can only imagine how good they would have been if I'd done everything right in the first place! Most of my best shots were of the coral formations, not the fish themselves, but I'm carrying memories around of the really colourful fish we did see, so I used one of those as inspiration. We saw quite a few yellow-tailed damselfish, but the best shot I got of one was this:

Yeah, not so great, considering it's an amazingly beautiful fish--black body with what almost look like blue-green sequins, and a yellow-orange tail. Fortunately, other photographers have had better luck than I did:

So that image was the inspiration for this month's fibre! I hope the club members enjoy it.

Just to prove that I got a few decent shots, I'll go ahead and share a few of the better ones with you, too:

January 2011 Club: Flamingos on Parade

2011-01-11T08:53:00.003-05:00

So I mentioned in the Ravelry group that this month's colourway might be more appropriate for February--but it was in my head now, so I couldn't resist! My inspiration this month was actually video, not still photography.

I recently watched portions of the BBC/Discovery program “Life,” which features some amazing nature photography. In the deleted scenes was a section about the mating habits of flamingos:

These colourful birds gather in large groups to pick a mate, and slowly begin a parade as they pair up. Eventually, they’re all moving in sync! It’s spectacular to watch. I don't think the BBC/Discovery footage is available online, but I found a clip from PBS's "Nature" on YouTube for you to get an idea:

December Fibre Club: Holiday Train

2010-12-09T13:10:00.002-05:00

Club is back! I'm doing fibre club only right now, because there weren't many takers for yarn. And actually, if you want to see fibre club continue, I need some more subscribers. So, send your friends to the sign-up page!

In the meantime, a lucky few people got in in time to be in the December club, so here's the story behind it.

Last month, I got together with a few good friends in Chicago for the weekend. Our time there happened to coincide with the holiday Parade of Lights. Instead of standing outside in the cold, we were lucky enough to have access to a perfect indoor viewing point on the 4th floor of a building across the street (and the Chicago River) from the parade route.

We got there a bit late, so I didn't have a lot of time to fiddle with my camera and get it set up right, but I quickly snapped on the telephoto lens so I could snap a few good shots of the parade. Right before I got set up, a giant Rudolph balloon went by, but with some serious mishaps. Apparently no one had considered the fact that giant balloons in the Windy City were not an ideal combination. Rudolph went over the guard rail and nearly landed in the river, and those carrying the tethers had to battle to keep him from going in. By the time I got that lens on, they had turned the corner, where he was crashing into a building:

I did catch one of the later balloons going over the guard rail:

This was a Parade of Lights, so there were a few well lit floats and light displays that rolled by. We were all puzzling over this one (it should be noted that the view from the 4th floor window made it completely unclear what this was--everyone peeked through my lens to see what the orange blob was!):

Christmas dragon? I still don't know.

The most clear and most popular light display was the one I chose as this month's club inspiration. The clue I gave was "holiday travel", and here it is:

I thought those fun, bright colours would translate well to fibre, and I think they have. Of course, as always, no spoiler photos of the actual wool here--those will wait for the members to get theirs!

Oh, and one final picture. As soon as the parade ended, fireworks were set off from a barge in the river, right below the window we were watching from. This was a great vantage point for them. Unfortunately, the telephoto lens wasn't really ideal for these shots--but the fireworks started so quickly I didn't get much time to change things around. This was the best shot I was able to get:

Eating Seasonally: Apple Spice Muffins

2010-12-01T15:43:00.003-05:00

Wow, 2 days in a row! And yes, I'm back with MORE muffins. Can you have too many muffins? I'm pretty sure you can't.

I needed to bake something today, and when I was rooting around in the kitchen I realized that I had a few apples that were past their prime. Well, past their eating prime. They were still well within their baking prime! So I went searching for a recipe for an apple muffin, but didn't find one that looked just right too me. I tinkered around with things and came up with this:

And it does taste just about as good as it looks. It's not quite perfect, so please feel free to tinker with it. I'd suggest perhaps adding another egg or a bit more oil. I was trying to make it a relatively healthy muffin, but I think a bit more fat might make it taste better. However, there's nothing wrong with it the way it is, and I feel a bit less guilty. So here you go:

2 eggs, beaten
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup apple sauce (I used apple butter, which upped the flavour a bit!)
1/4 cup maple syrup
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 t salt
1 t baking powder
1 cup white flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 t cinnamon
1/4 t fresh grated nutmeg
1/4 t cloves
2 cups apple, peeled and cut into 1/4 inch dice (3 small apples or 1-2 large ones)
4 t cinnamon sugar (I make my own and keep it on hand in a little container, but I don't have ratios for you--a pinch of cinnamon per teaspoon of sugar, I guess?)

1. Prepare a standard 12 cup muffin pan and preheat oven to 375 F.
2. Beat eggs, oil, apple sauce, and maple syrup together until well combined. Add in sugar and mix until well blended.
3. Combine dry ingredients (salt, baking powder, both flours, spices) and mix into wet ingredients.
4. Stir in apples until well distributed.
5. Divide mixture between muffin cups, filling each at least 3/4 full (these muffins will not rise much because of the apples). Sprinkle the top of each one with cinnamon sugar.
6. Bake at 375 for approximately 20 minutes, rotating the pan halfway through baking time. Allow to cool and enjoy!

Beet Dyeing Results

2010-11-30T13:23:00.002-05:00

So, I've been a busy lately and should have lots of things to blog about--but haven't been taking the time to share. But one I promised folks I would share was the results of my experiments with beet dyeing.

When I first started working with natural dyes, especially ones from common kitchen items, lots of people said "what about beets?" After all, they stain our hands and often our clothes when we're cooking, right? So I did a lot of reading, and everything said that beets only "stain" wool, they don't make a lightfast/washfast dye. And that the only colour you'd be likely to get from them was a dull gray. So I opted not to try beets.

Then, several months ago, someone on Ravelry reported that she had dyed with beets and had success! And a few others started to chime in. Initially, they were all from people who had used superwash yarn, so we speculated that that was the reason. But then others reported that they'd had luck with untreated wool. The one thing they all had in common? They had used acid (mostly vinegar) to set the colour. Most natural dyers use alum to set the colour, or other metallic mordants. It seemed that many of the "experts" hadn't thought to try vinegar, probably in the belief that it wouldn't make the colour "fast."

Well, by late September and early October we were starting to get beets regularly from our CSA, and we had more than I was likely to eat, so I decided to put some to use in an experiment.

I washed and chopped my beets. Some of the reports had used peeled beets and others hadn't, so I decided to just make my life simple and not bother peeling. I then put them in a large pot with enough water to cover and boiled for quite a while, trying to get as much of the colour out as possible. I added a few glugs of vinegar.

Meanwhile, I soaked some yarns in the usual citric acid solution that I use when working with acid dyes. When the beet bath seemed to not be getting any darker, I let it cool down and then strained out the beets. I then added some of the soaked yarns to the pot (I think I might have started with one, just in case it was a disaster), brought it back up to heat (a bit below a boil) and cooked for maybe 20 minutes?

While in the liquid, it looked like a pretty brilliant red-pink, which was pretty exciting. (I could swear I took a picture at this stage, but I can't find it. It may have been mostly steam, so perhaps I deleted it?) I did notice that when I pulled the yarn out of the pot the colour was a bit more subdued, so I knew better than to hope this brilliant colour would translate to the finished product.

Finally, the yarn cooled off enough that I could rinse it. And sure enough, the colour wasn't that intense red-pink, but it wasn't gray, either:

You'll notice there are 3 different shades there, on 3 different yarn bases. Each one took the colour a bit differently, as they do with everything. The most intense colour was on the Huron superwash merino:

Followed by the Algonquin Superwash Merino/Silk:

And finally, more subdued, the Rockland untreated merino laceweight:

I washed each yarn a few times to make sure I wasn't losing colour. There was some rinse off in the initial wash, which is to be expected, but after that the colour held up to washing. So then I covered half of each skein up and place them in direct sunlight for 2 days. When I uncovered them, there was no fading from the uncovered part to the covered part. So I think it might be safe to pronounce these wash and light fast--and therefore, the beets acted as a dye, not just a stain!

Like what you see here? Well, I'll be listing them in the ArtFire shop soon, so be sure to check it out. :-)

Gift Certificates Now Available

2010-11-04T18:23:00.003-04:00

For those of you who are working on your holiday wish lists, I have a suggestion for you--your loved ones can now buy you a Waterloo Wools gift certificate through PayPal! Pass the link on to them so they know what you want.

There are options there to buy in either USD or CAD, and to choose your dollar amount within PayPal. The gift certificates can then be redeemed in the new ArtFire shop.

Another place to shop!

2010-10-29T13:35:00.003-04:00

OK, I've been really quiet on here lately--a lot of that has been being crazy busy getting ready for the Woodstock Fleece Festival last weekend. Now I'm recovering from that, and trying out some new things for my business. One of them is opening a new shop on ArtFire!

The Etsy shop is still open and active as well, so you can shop from either one for now. Eventually, I will probably just choose one so it's simpler for everyone--but I didn't want to move over to ArtFire completely until I know it will work. So far, it seems to be a great place--there's a lot of learning to do, but as a seller it allows me to save money and brings me some great tools that aren't available on Etsy. It's not as well known as Etsy, but it is growing, and its users seem very happy with it! One other benefit to you: You can shop directly from my blog (I'm adding a tool to do that shortly, if technology cooperates), and you can shop without creating an account there.

I'll be tracking the money I save by switching to ArtFire, because it may allow me to keep prices down. Because I've learned that business insurance for indie dyers in Canada is outrageously expensive (but of course, necessary!), and because one of my suppliers has just notified me of some price increases, I have been pondering needing to raise my prices in the near future. Perhaps moving to ArtFire will allow me to keep these increases to a minimum! (Of course, if you want to avoid them altogether--SHOP NOW!)

Hopefully I'll be back here more regularly over the next little bit, maybe with some pictures of projects to show off. I know the knitting content here has been pretty sparse--I'm working on it, I promise!

Eating Seasonally: Carrots Everywhere!

2010-09-14T12:21:00.005-04:00

Two more carrot based recipes for you today. First, with the shift to fall weather happening already here, a curried carrot soup:

Curried Carrot Soup
2 T vegetable oil
1 medium onion, diced
1 t salt
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 T grated fresh ginger
1 small hot chile, chopped fine
1/2 T cumin
1 T turmeric
1 T garam masala
1/4 t cayenne
6 cups vegetable stock
1 1/2 lbs carrots, washed & chopped into roughly 1 inch pieces
1 cup plain low fat yogurt

1. Heat oil in large stockpot over medium heat. Add onion and salt, cook for about 5 minutes until tender.
2. Add garlic, ginger, and chile. Cook for about 1 minute and then add spices. Cook for another 2 minutes until fragrant.
3. Add vegetable stock, scraping up any browned bits. Add carrots. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to simmer and cover.
4. Simmer until carrots are tender. Remove from heat and blend until smooth. Stir in yogurt and serve!

No photo of the soup, because honestly soup doesn't photograph that well unless you fuss over it. And I'd rather eat my soup than fuss over it! Recipe number 2 comes with a photo, though:

Yes, another carrot muffin. A few changes from last time (by the way, the recipe from last time had some errors. I'm going back to edit it today, though!), resulting in a muffin that's probably a bit healthier but still very tasty.

Carrot Bran Muffins
1 cup bran flakes
1/2 cup milk
3/4 C low fat yogurt
2 eggs & 1 egg white, beaten
2 T melted butter
3 C shredded carrots
1 t vanilla
3/4 C brown sugar
1 t cinnamon
1/4 t allspice
2 t baking soda
1 1/2 t powder
1/2 t salt
1 C whole wheat flour
1 C all purpose flour
optional: 1 cup raisins, soaked in boiling water & drained

1. Stir milk into bran flakes and let them soak for about 5 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 350 and prepare muffin tins.
2. Mix in yogurt, eggs, butter, carrots, and vanilla. Add sugar and mix until combined.
3. Mix dry ingredients together and then stir into wet. Stir just until combined, being careful not to overmix. If using raisins, stir in.
4. Fill 12 muffin cups (fill close to the top, as these muffins don't have a lot of rise).
5. Bake 25-28 minutes until muffins are set and tops are golden brown.

I made these muffins without raisins this time (the dark spots in the picture are the purple carrots!) and would put the raisins in next time for more flavour. Otherwise, though, I'm pleased with them!

Eating Seasonally: Smoky Bacon, Cheddar, & Spinach Quiche

2010-09-08T19:20:00.002-04:00

I'm blogging this recipe mostly because I want to remember it--but then again, if it was that good, it's only fair that I share, right? As fall arrives (and it sure feels like it's here now!), some of the colder weather greens come back in season a second time--like the spinach used here. But it's also nice to have a warm, hearty dish on a cold evening, so here it is--serious quiche. Don't let that salad fool you, this is no dainty ladies-who-lunch quiche!

Crust:
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 T sugar
3/4 t table salt
10 T butter (cold, cut into pieces)
3-4 T ice water

Filling:
4 ounces double smoked bacon, chopped
1 small red onion, finely chopped
8 ounces fresh spinach, stems removed & chopped
5 eggs
1 cup table cream
3/4 C grated cheese (I used applewood smoked cheddar, which was amazing but not something I normally have on hand!)
salt & pepper to taste

1. Combine flour, sugar, & salt in food processor. Add pieces of butter and pulse repeatedly until texture resembles coarse sand. Add the first 3 T of ice water and pulse again. Check the consistency of the mixture--it should be loose, but stick together when pressed. If it doesn't, add the remaining 1 T of water and pulse.
2. Pour crust mixture into pie tin, and press from the center up the sides, as evenly as possible. Place pie tin in freezer for 30 minutes.
3. Preheat oven to 375 F. Heat a large skillet over medium heat. Add bacon and cook until the fat begins to render. Add onion and cook until bacon is crisp and onion is soft, about 5 minutes. Add spinach to pan (in bunches if necessary) and cook just until wilted. Turn off heat under pan.
4. Place frozen pie crust in oven to prebake for about 10 minutes. Meanwhile, beat eggs and cream together and add salt & pepper.
5. Remove crust from oven, put bacon, spinach & onion mixture on the bottom of the crust, spreading evenly. Put cheese over this, and then pour the egg and cream mixture over it.
6. Bake 35-40 minutes, until quiche has puffed up and the middle is just set. Remove from oven, allow to cool a few minutes, and then serve with a green salad.

Yum is all I have to say!

Eating Seasonally: Carrot-Raisin Muffins (with Pecans!)

2010-08-30T17:10:00.002-04:00

I don't think I ever thought about carrots having a "season" until last year. Carrots are just always there, and they seemed to taste the same no matter what the time of year, unlike things like strawberries that were so clearly better in season. Well, that all changed when I tried local farm-fresh carrots. It turns out carrots DO have a season, and they taste sweeter and oh-so-nice when eaten while they're still fresh. The first carrots in early summer seem to be the sweetest, but the ones coming out in abundance now are still very nice.

In the last few weeks we've been inundated with carrots from our farm share, and a bag I bought from the buying club (not knowing that we would be getting so many from the farm). I've been pondering freezing some for winter, and I still might, but I wanted something else to do with them, so I came up with this muffin recipe. I've made it twice already, so I think it's a winner!

Ingredients
Wet
-3 whole eggs, beaten
-3/4 cup plain low fat yogurt
-1/4 cup vegetable oil
-3/4 cup vegetable oil
-1 tsp vanilla extract
-3 cups shredded carrots

Dry
-1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
-1/2 cup all purpose flour
-1 1/2 tsp baking powder
-2 tsp baking soda
-1/2 tsp kosher salt
-2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
-grated fresh nutmeg, to taste

Add Ins
-1/2 cup pecans or walnuts, toasted and coarsely chopped
-1 cup raisins, soaked in boiling water for 5-10 minutes and then drained

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 350 and line muffin cups.
2. Mix wet ingredients together. Add dry ingredients and mix just until combined (overmixing will bring out gluten and make your muffins tough!).
3. Gently stir in the add-ins of your choice (I used both raisins & pecans and thought it was a great combo).
4. Scoop the batter into muffin cups, filling to the top. Bake for 22-25 minutes until golden brown and delicious! Transfer pan to wire cooling rack for 5-10 minutes, then remove muffins from pan and allow to cool on the rack. Enjoy!

Very tasty, and really not that bad for you, since I cut out most of the vegetable oil and used mostly whole wheat flour. Plus they're packed with veggies. Oh, a few notes for you:
-You could almost certainly substitute applesauce for the yogurt. I haven't tried it, but I plan to. Applesauce is normally my go-to oil substitute when baking, but this time I had a lot of yogurt in the fridge.
-Soaking the raisins is a good way to keep the muffins moist, despite the low-fat healthiness. If you skip this step, your raisins will pull moisture out of the muffin!
-I'm thinking next time I might try cutting back to 2 eggs. Most recipes I found for carrot breads, muffins, etc. used 3 or 4 so I went for 3 to start.

Peruvian Dyes in Action

2010-08-27T11:39:00.002-04:00

As promised the other day, I'm back with photos of some of the results of the Peruvian dyes. I've tried maybe half of them so far, with pretty impressive results--but still not much clue what any of them are!

This is Granate (captus) & Morado (mineral)--so Garnet (unknown? Possibly cactus?) & Purple (mineral--what kind of mineral, no one knows!)

And the same colours on fibre:

This is Amarillo (girasol) & Granate--so Yellow (Sunflower) with that same Garnet dye. The yellow is primarily super vivid, but there are a few smudges that turned out muddy. Still, a fun bright colour!

Verde Turquesa (mineral), Verde Limon (planta), & a bit of Amarillo (girasol) with Azul (mineral)--Turquoise Green (mineral), Lime Green (plant), the same sunflower with Blue (mineral). This yarn felt a bit stiff even after rinsing & washing before drying, so I wondered if one of these dyes was having an impact on the wool. This theory seemed to be confirmed by the merino wool that was dyed in the same colours:

The fiber is full of sections like this:

The fiber is very stiff and clumped together. When pulled apart, there seems to be some dye residue left in there. In fact, for anyone who has spun/seen the Targhee fiber that Koigu has been selling recently, the effect is a bit like what I saw in their fibre--but worse. I didn't enjoy spinning that Koigu, so I definitely will not be selling this wool to anyone since it does not look pleasant. I may try putting some of it through the drum carder, after fluffing it up outside to get the excess dye residue off.

Finally, the ones I'm most excited about are still on the drying rack--so I don't have great photos yet:

Not an accurate colour representation by any means, I'll have to take more pictures once they're dry. This includes some more Morado, Azul, & Verde Limon.

There are still lots of great colours in the packet of dyes, including some orange, pink, more yellows & reds, & some black, so I'll post again when I've tried the rest of them out!

A little bit more natural dyeing

2010-08-25T21:07:00.002-04:00

I've had requests from a few people to share photos from some of my recent natural dyeing efforts, so here are a few.

First, in the same vein as what I was doing before, this yarn is dyed using an avocado skin bath and a little bit of madder root that Anne's father sent me:

There was just a tiny bit of madder, but it has inspired me to dig around in the weeds around here and see if I can find more, because it did cook into a nice reddish pink dye very quickly! A few more roots and I could have had a nice deep red, I think!

Next, I bought some natural dye materials from Paradise Fibers a little while ago, so I played with those recently.

I bought some Quebracho Red, which is a dye from the Quebracho tree in Paraguay. While the notes say that it works best on plant fibers, and that it tends to give a peachy-brown colour, I tried it on some wool and got this amazing red:

I also bought some indigo crystals. Those of you that know about dyeing may know that the traditional way of dyeing with indigo is time and labour intensive. I could have grown my own indigo plants, created a bath for it to ferment in, and then dyed my wool--but I didn't. These crystals allow you to skip straight to the dyeing step! I'm still playing with saturation levels and dyeing techniques, but I'm pretty happy with the colour I got:

In the last few days I've also started dyeing with the dye powders from Peru. The results of this are all still wet, so I don't have photos for you--but I'll try to remember to post some in a few days when they are. They're amazingly vivid! I do wish I knew more about what they were--most are just labeled with the name of the colour and "plant" or "mineral". A few have an actual plant name, and there are 2 different colours both labeled as cochineal (a very common red dye made from insects--I'm not sure if there are different varieties of them that give the different colours in these packets or what!). But they seem to be dyeing well, and so far they appear fairly washfast and lightfast. I'll keep you posted.

August 2010 Club: Family Vacation

2010-08-09T12:30:00.001-04:00

Like many families, my extended family on my dad's side takes a vacation most Augusts. For years now we have gathered in the same place every year--Charlevoix, Michigan. Charlevoix is a small town, but a huge vacation destination in the summer--right on the water in Northern Michigan, it's a great place to beat the summer heat.

Inevitably we pose for our family pictures in front of the lighthouse seen below. But instead of giving you those family photos, I thought I'd give you a slightly more scenic view:

Wow, 2 weeks and no guesses? :-) Well, I'm going to head to the post office in the next hour, so here's the story on this month's club.

Like many families, my extended family on my dad's side takes a vacation most Augusts. For years now we have gathered in the same place every year--Charlevoix, Michigan. Charlevoix is a small town, but a huge vacation destination in the summer--right on the water in Northern Michigan, it's a great place to beat the summer heat.

Inevitably we pose for our family pictures in front of the lighthouse seen below. But instead of giving you those family photos, I thought I'd give you a slightly more scenic view:

I hope all of you are enjoying your summers, wherever they take you. Enjoy the yarn & fiber!

Eating Seasonally: Tips & Tricks 3 & a "recipe"

2010-07-27T11:59:00.002-04:00

Wow, you would think given that it's the height of fresh produce season I would be blogging lots of seasonal recipes--and here it's been ages. Part of this is sheer busyness on my part, but part of it is that summer food is so easy and simple that it rarely needs a recipe. Put a marinade or spice rub on some meat, throw it on the BBQ, and make a salad or grill some veggies to go with it. Easy, flavourful, and delicious!

But I realized today that there are some important summertime tips & tricks that help with eating seasonally year-round, so maybe it's time to share a few of those? The main thing, as I've mentioned before, is to preserve as much of summer's goodness as you can. July & August for me are all about canning and freezing--more freezing than canning, really.

I know I've mentioned freezing before, but today I want to tackle my freezing tips for fresh fruits and veggies. My knowledge on this topic comes from advice from others, including blogs and Alton Brown's "Good Eats", plus my Bernardin Guide to Home Preserving.

Fruit
Fruit is super-easy to freeze, especially small things like blueberries. Here's a basic primer:
1. Wash & dry fruit.
2. If necessary, peel (hint: for peaches, cut a small x on the bottom, drop them in boiling water for just a minute at the most, then remove & cool--the peel may just slip off for you), pit, and slice the fruit. This is why blueberries are so easy--you can skip this step completely!
3. Lay the fruit out in a layer on a cookie sheet. For juicy fruits like peaches, you may want to lay them on parchment or a silicone baking sheet for easier removal.
4. Place the cookie sheet in the freezer. Once the fruit is frozen, transfer to a zip-top bag for storage.

My favourite fruits to freeze? Blueberries, strawberries, & peaches. I use them year-round in smoothies, and also in baking. Last year I frozen cherries, which are wonderful for baking & smoothies--but having to pit them all is a bit of a pain, so I'm not sure I'll do that again.

Vegetables
Vegetables generally follow the same procedures as fruit, except that most of them require blanching before you freeze them. There are several reasons for blanching, including the fact that it preserves colour & flavour by stopping the action of enzymes in the veggies. Here are the basics:
1. Wash & prep vegetables (shell peas, chop/slice other veggies, etc.)
2. Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Once it's at a rolling boil, put veggies in & blanch. The Bernardin guide has times for most veggies, but on average it's 2-3 minutes. You're not trying to *cook* the veggies, just stop that enzyme action and kill and nasties that are on there.
3. While veggies are cooking, you'll want to set up your draining & chilling system. I put a colander in one part of the sink, and a large bowl of cold water with ice in the other:

4. As soon as the veggies are done, drain them and then place them in the bowl of ice water:

The ice water stops the vegetables from continuing to cook due to the residual heat. I leave them in just until the ice all melts and the water begins to warm.
5. Drain the veggies again, and shake off as much excess water as possible.
6. Spread on the cookie sheet just like the fruit:

(this is a bit more crowded than is ideal, but gives you the idea)
7. Place cookie sheet in freezer, transfer to zip-top bags once they are completely frozen.

My favourite veggies for freezing include asparagus, peas, beans, & corn. This year I'll also do some carrots and broccoli, which I haven't done before.

Recipe - Turkey & vegetable pasta in a lemon pepper cream sauce
OK, I do have something resembling a recipe to share with you today. It's my take on my friend Meredith's take on a recipe originally posted here. It's an incredibly versatile recipe, and I'll probably continue to tinker with it. I used turkey breast because that's what I had, but I would probably use chicken next time.
1 lemon, juice & zested
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
freshly ground black pepper
salt
olive oil
1 turkey breast ( 2 chicken breasts)
1 small onion
chopped/diced vegetables of choice (zucchini, carrots, asparagus, etc.)
1 C chicken broth
1/4 C white wine
1/2 C heavy cream
1/4 C grated parmesan cheese
1 lb. pasta (I used fettuccine)

1. Marinate turkey breast in fresh lemon juice, garlic, salt, pepper, & olive oil. (I only marinated for 10-15 minutes, more time would have been better for turkey but this is probably sufficient for chicken)
2. Grill the turkey breast on indirect heat (on my BBQ, this means turning on the front & back burners). If I were doing chicken, I would have used direct heat, but the turkey breast was so thick I knew it needed to cook more slowly to prevent burning the outside. When cooked, remove from grill and allow to cool. When cool enough to handle, slice.
3. Meanwhile, in a large skillet, heat 1 T olive oil. Add onion & vegetable (note: if using a more tender veggie like asparagus or peas, I would not add them until close to the end of cooking. Zucchini, carrots, etc. should go in now), season with salt & pepper, and saute until lightly browned.
4. Bring water to a boil & cook pasta while cooking vegetables.
5. Add garlic & lemon zest to the vegetables, cook about 1 minute until fragrant.
6. Add chicken broth & wine to pan, bring to a simmer and cook until reduced significantly.
7. Add cream to pan with vegetables, stir in cheese, and add turkey or chicken. Cook until slightly thickened.
8. Drain pasta & combine with vegetable, turkey, & chicken mixture.

It was really good, so this will become a regular part of my dinner rotation, I think!

Surprise in the Sky!

2010-07-11T12:56:00.003-04:00

Yesterday evening I was putting some turkey burgers on the barbecue when I heard a very loud hissing noise from the woods behind the house. My first thought was--"why is someone using a blowtorch in the woods? That seems dangerous!"

A moment later my brain kicked in & I realized that I had heard this sound once before in real life, when we were in Cesky Krumlov last fall. So I started looking through the foliage, trying to spot the hot air balloon, as the volume of the noise indicated it was quite close.

Finally, through the leaves I saw a little flash of red--at that point, the balloon was maybe one story above me, right over the trail behind our house. By the time we got the camera, it was here:

I think it went directly over our next door neighbour's house, close enough over the roof that it was a bit nerve-wracking to watch. We were close enough that we could clearly see the passenger in the basket waving, and could hear him shouting out to people across the street!

Here's another photo with our chimney in it, so you can see how low they were:

At this point it had crossed to the front of the houses, we were standing on the back deck to capture the pictures.

I did a quick Google search when I came in, and found several references from other people about the CTV balloon flying low over houses over the last few years. I don't know if they're filming from up there, and trying to fly low for a better view, or what, though!

July Club: Purple Peony

2010-07-08T16:18:00.002-04:00

July yarn & fibre are ready a few days early, so here's a sneak peek at the inspiration! This month, I took a break from using my travel photos mostly because I wanted to use a colour palette that I couldn't find in any of my photos!

I really wanted to do something in keeping with the time of year--4th of July & Canada Day--but I also was itching to do a colourway that included purple! Then I realized that fireworks come in all colours, of course, so that was the perfect image. The hint I gave in the Ravelry group was "patriotic peony," just to make everyone think a little--peony is a style of fireworks, and one of the more common ones in use.

So this month's colour is "Purple Peony", inspired by this fabulous photo from my friend Heather, taken at the fireworks display this year in Cambridge (Ontario):

My Tour de Fleece: Beginnings

2010-07-07T10:39:00.002-04:00

OK, finally a fibre related post here today! As most of you spinners know, the Tour de Fleece started on the weekend. For the non-spinners, the Tour de Fleece is the spinner's equivalent of the Tour de France--you set yourself personal challenges and try to spin every day of the 3-week race (taking off the 2 rest days that the riders get).

I picked 2 specific projects for my Tour this year, and then if I finish both of those I will spin some stash for the shop. I started with my biggest challenge--maybe not the wisest choice, but I was excited about it.

A while back I carded some batts of BFL & silk--in total, there are 6 batts, about 1.5 ounces each:

The sharp-eyed amongst you will note that there are only 5 there, that's because I had already started spinning when I took this picture.

I'm not the only one who likes these batts. Melody was keeping an eye on them for me the other day:

I divided the batts into rolags and started spinning long draw (trying to spin unsupported long draw as much as possible, although the silk is a bit "sticky" and doesn't always draft smoothly enough for this. I've also been doing a fair amount of double drafting, so I think I'm alternating between American and English long draw!) with the goal of a 2-ply laceweight in the end. My singles are super thin--I don't think this photo quite captures how thin they are, I managed to get the dime in under one of the thickest parts:

As you can imagine, this is not a quick project. Yesterday--day 4 of the Tour--I finished the first bobbin of singles and prepped all the rolags for the second:

I'm leaning towards just spinning 1 skein (3 of the batts) during the Tour, finishing it & seeing how much I have, and saving the other 3 batts for later, because I do want to get to some other spinning over the 3 weeks! Today I'm taking a little break and spinning some samples for my other project, which is merino/bamboo that will become a Tappan Zee. Next time I blog, I'll hopefully have pictures of those samples for you!

Eating Seasonally: Asian Veggie Salad

2010-07-02T11:07:00.002-04:00

Yes, more food--those looking for yarn-related posts, I'm sure I'll have something for you soon, but now that it's summer it seems like it's all about food here!

Last week I had lunch at MeMe's in New Hamburg, and I had this great salad plate with three different salads. One was an Asian salad with sugar snap peas and carrots, which was really tasty. When I picked up the snow peas in my farm share this week, I decided I wanted to try the same with them.

As usual, quantities are not exact and you can substitute for pretty much any veggie here according to your tastes & what you have on hand.

10 oz. snow peas, chopped & blanched
1 carrot, julienned & blanched
1/2 bell pepper, julienned & blanched
1/3 C cucumber, julienned
1/2 C grape tomatoes, quartered
2 T sesame seeds
2 T cilantro, chopped

Dressing: (I measured NONE of these ingredients, so you'll want to adjust to taste!)
1 T vegetable oil
1 T ginger, grated
1 clove garlic, minced/pressed
1/4 C soy sauce
3 T cider vinegar (I probably would have used rice wine vinegar if I'd had it, so feel free to sub!)
2 T vegetable oil
2 T sesame oil

1. Combine vegetables, sesame seeds, & cilantro in a large bowl.
2. In a small saucepan, heat 1 T oil over medium-low heat. Add garlic & ginger & cook until fragrant, about 1 minute.
3. Add other dressing ingredients to the saucepan, whisk to combine, and heat until warm. Make sure to taste test to be certain you like the balance.
4. Toss veggies with warm dressing. Chill the salad before eating.

Why yes, I do have a photo--but please note this photo was taken more than 24 hours after the salad was made, so some of the colours have faded (I might add some acid to the blanching water next time to avoid this, although I think most of the colour change is from the soy sauce). Also, you'll note that there's some rice in the picture. I had a bit of leftover brown rice, so I threw it into the salad--it doesn't add anything to it, so I didn't include it in the recipe.

Eating Seasonally: Lentils with Swiss Chard

2010-06-17T19:36:00.002-04:00

I tweeted about how good my dinner was tonight, and had a request for the recipe, so I'm back with a 2nd Eating Seasonally post this week! Again, I wasn't measuring, so adjust everything here according to taste. Also, I have no pictures for you tonight, since I wasn't planning to blog this.

So, I was pondering what to do with the swiss chard from the CSA box, and then I stumbled on a discussion on Ravelry about the best ways to cook beans, etc., and someone mentioned throwing chard or kale into lentils. Perfect! I had a big bag of lentils from our local bean supplier (Hillbilly Beans--highly recommend them, much better than the dried beans available in the grocery store), so I went for it.

2 T olive oil
1 large carrot, diced
2 ribs celery, diced
4-6 green onions (or a small regular onion)
4 cloves garlic, minced
salt & pepper
1 t cumin
1 1/2 C dried lentils
4 C stock/broth
3-4 sprigs fresh oregano
1 bunch swiss chard, chopped (I only used the leaves, I saved the stems with some other veggies to make stock. If I'd thought of it, I would have used the stems with the carrots, etc.)

1. Heat oil over medium heat in a large stockpot, add carrot & celery. Cook 3-4 minutes until fairly tender. Add green onions (note: if using regular onion, add it with carrot & celery), garlic, dash of salt & pepper, and cumin. Cook, stirring, about 1 minute until fragrant.
2. Add lentils, stock, oregano, & chard. Bring to a boil, cover and reduce heat to low. Simmer for 30-45 minutes until lentils are tender. Keep an eye on the liquid--I used slightly too much with mine, but it's also easy to use too little.

Serve on its own, over rice, or like I did--with roasted potatoes. Honestly, I expected the potatoes to be the stars of the meal--they were perfectly roasted, crisp on the outside and soft inside, with just a bit of garlic, salt, & pepper--but when I went back for seconds, it was the lentils that I took more of! I do think part of the credit goes to the lentils themselves. I've tried many brands & varieties of lentils in the grocery store, and I've found that almost all of them never get tender enough for me, no matter how long I cook them. These were perfectly tender, but not mushy--just right! Apparently, this may have to do with the fact that they are probably fresher than what you can typically buy in the store.

Eating Seasonally: Chicken & Spring Vegetable Stir Fry

2010-06-15T20:08:00.002-04:00

Tonight we had our first CSA pick-up of the year, and on top of the veggies I picked up at Bailey's on Friday (and then promptly left town for 48 hours), we're swimming in green stuff here. Tonight's pick up included: spinach, chard, pak choy, green onions, garlic scapes, and some herbs. Already hanging around in my fridge was some asparagus, along with a variety of greens. So clearly, dinner tonight needed to include some green vegetables! But, it was a bit late, so I wanted something fairly easy to throw together. The answer? Stir fry!

Of course, it didn't turn out quite as quick as I wanted, but that was a rice-related issue, and nothing to do with the stir fry recipe itself, which worked just fine. Too bad it had to sit and wait for the extra slow rice--you may notice in the picture that the veggies got just a tad overcooked.

Don't treat this as a recipe, but a basic set of directions that can be followed for pretty much any stir fry you want to make. Stir fries are such a great way to use whatever you have on hand, so substitute pretty much anything you want in here. Also, adjust the sauce/seasonings to taste. I normally add garlic with the ginger, but didn't have any tonight. And I will confess to not having measured anything, so take these numbers with a grain of salt.

2 t corn starch
2 T soy sauce (please use the good stuff, it really does taste better)
1 t sesame oil
2 large chicken breasts, cut into roughly 1-inch pieces
1 T vegetable oil
1 inch piece of ginger, grated
1/2 t crushed red pepper
2 T soy sauce
2 t corn starch
2 T hoisin sauce
1/2 C chicken stock
1 T vegetable oil
1 head pak choy (AKA bok choy), stems separate from leaves and both cut into small pieces
1 bunch asparagus, woody ends removed and cut into 1-inch long pieces
4 garlic scapes, ends removed and cut into 1/2 inch pieces
4-5 green onions, finely sliced

1. Mix the 2 t corn starch, 2 T soy sauce, and 1 t sesame oil in a small bowl. Add the chicken, stir to coat, and allow it to marinate while you chop the vegetables. Meanwhile, mix the ginger with 1 T vegetable oil & crushed red pepper in a small bowl and save for later. Also, mix the sauce: soy sauce, corn starch, hoisin sauce, & chicken stock.
2. Heat the vegetable oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Once the oil is shimmering, add the chicken to the pan in one layer. Allow to cook without stirring for 2-3 minutes, until nicely browned on one side. Then turn to cook the other side for another 2-3 minutes. Remove the chicken to a bowl and reserve for the end:

3. If needed, add a bit more oil to the skillet, then add the pak choy stems (reserving the leaves for later) and the asparagus. Cook for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally, until they begin to brown.
4. Add garlic scapes, green onions, and pak choy leaves. Cook 2-3 minutes until tender:

5. Push vegetables toward the edges, leaving a space in the middle of the pan. Add the ginger mixture the center and cook, stirring, for about 1 minute or until fragrant. Then stir it into the vegetables.
6. Return the cooked chicken to the pan. Stir the sauce mixture to recombine, then pour into the pan. Cook 1-2 minutes until chicken is heated through and sauce is thickened. Serve over rice.

Enjoy! :-)

And the winner is...

2010-06-14T10:19:00.002-04:00

...Heather! Congratulations! I'll be in touch with you shortly about your gift certificate! :-)

I took the simplest possible approach I could think of to fairly select a random winner--there were 13 comments with suggestions (each from a unique individual), so I went to a random number generator and entered in 1 & 13 as my parameters. Here's the result:

So, I went back to the comments & counted down to the 6th one = Heather!

Now, as far as the names go--I will definitely be using some of them for the fibres posted, and will also be using a few as inspiration for future colourways. So many of you may recognize your ideas in upcoming shop updates! :-) I really loved all the ideas, and I thank you all for participating. :-)

Name that Colour: A little Contest

2010-06-09T15:53:00.004-04:00

Contest Closing Date: Friday, June 11 at 5:00 pm EST

I get a lot of comments about the colour names I use for my yarns & fibres. A few times, people have told me that they've actually bought a yarn just because of the name! For that reason, I try to put some time and effort into thinking of new and creative names. But sometimes, my brain just doesn't want to produce good ideas.

So today, to help get my creative juices flowing, I'm going to ask y'all to help me out and offer you a little something as a reward!

I'm going to post pictures of a few new fibre colours I dyed last week and ask for your ideas for names. Post your ideas in the comments, and I'll enter you into a drawing for a $10 gift certificate for my shop. I reserve the right to exclude from the drawing any comments that don't contain serious suggestions.

The photos are fairly true to life, although as you can probably see the light wasn't ideal, so it's not 100% accurate. Still, the new camera copes pretty well with low light conditions.

Fibre A (Shetland): This one is a bit tricky because the 2 sides of the braid photographed very differently. Here are both:

Fibre B: This one is on a medium-brown base fibre (Moorit Shetland). There are a few more dark blue/purple sections here than show up in this shot:

Fibre C (Finn):

Fibre D (Merino):

OK, there you go--some food for thought! I can't wait to hear what you all come up with. Oh, if there's anything here you really love & definitely want to buy, please let me know. Some of these braids will end up in the shop, but some will be used to fill an order for a shop, so if you don't speak up you may miss your chance to buy one!

June Club: Krumlov Castle

2010-06-08T12:23:00.002-04:00

The hints for this month were "aerial view" and "St. Wenceslas." Many people thought of the Christmas carol, of course, but I had a slightly different take in mind.

The famous "Good King" Wenceslas is big throughout the Czech Republic. There are many legends about him--essentially, he is revered in Czech history as one of their best kings (as I understand it, he was technically a Duke and not a king!). The most famous legend is that when the Czech Republic is at its darkest hour, St. Wenceslas will return to save his people (the main version is that the statue of him in Prague will come to life, I think, but I gather there are variations). I think some people question how bad it's going to get, because the Czech Republic saw many dark days in the Twentieth Century and he never moved.

Given his prominence in Czech culture, it is not surprising that St. Wenceslas Day is a national holiday! In particular, it is celebrated with the St. Wenceslas Festival in the small town of Cesky Krumlov…so our pictures this month come from there. Cesky Krumlov was a thriving medieval/Renaissance era town which largely shut down by the 20th century (history buffs should note that it is in the Sudetenland. I could go on about the impact this had, and the ethnic cleansing that occurred periodically depending on who had control of the area, but I’ll spare you all the details!). When the Iron Curtain was pulled back, there was a realization that the town had been almost perfectly preserved and just needed a good cleaning to reveal original structures, a fabulous castle, and more!

We arrived at the end of Day 1 of the festival, which was probably the biggest day (I had tried to research this, but there was NO information online, so we sadly missed some stuff). As we were walking around getting oriented we looked up and noticed a hot air balloon. A few minutes later, we noticed another…and another…turns out some kind of balloon launch was part of the festival! Not knowing this, we weren’t well positioned for pictures, and started scrambling for a good vantage point:

That was by far the best shot--managed to get a balloon AND the castle tower! This shot was the primary inspiration for this month’s colour. There was also a touch of influence from all the dramatic rooftop views available around Krumlov--it seemed that every time we turned a corner, there was yet another fabulous vista. Here’s one:

So, everything felt dry when I went to check on it this morning, which means that local folks will receive their fibre and yarn tonight at the Adjudicated Show (those who can’t make it, let me know what you’d like me to do). Mail orders will hit the post office later today! Enjoy. :-)

Oh, one other thing--the base yarn & fibre have a LOT in common this month. They still don’t look identical, of course, but they did take the dye a bit more similarly than they sometimes do!

Eating Seasonally: Pizza on the BBQ

2010-05-31T16:21:00.003-04:00

OK, I've tweeted a few times recently about grilled pizza, and have had some questions from people about my methods, so I thought I would blog it. Unfortunately, my most recent pizza attempt didn't turn out as well as I wanted due to a rather bland crust recipe, but I can still share my basic methods with you all!

With any pizza, step 1 is the crust. This past time I tried a spelt crust, and I won't share the recipe since I really didn't enjoy it. I often do whole wheat, and I generally like spelt, so I was surprised this was such a failure. Part of the issue seemed to be texture--perhaps because spelt gluten is different from wheat gluten? I personally think the best grilled pizza has a thin crust, and you need to have a dough that's elastic enough to stretch thinly.

So, find your favourite crust recipe (or use a refrigerated or frozen dough if you have a good source). Or if you're in a hurry, you can "cheat" and use pita or naan bread as your base! If you are using dough, I recommend making personal sized pizzas, so divide your dough into small balls and roll/stretch it as thin as possible.

Preheat your BBQ to get it HOT. With pizza, I always start with all my burners on high and then turn them down once I get it going. Think about proper Italian wood oven pizzas--those ovens are scorching hot, and that's what you want here!

In the meantime, get together your toppings. In celebration of spring, I was using asparagus, mushrooms, basil, and prosciutto, plus some tomato sauce and mozzarella. You should pick whatever you like, of course! You want to have all your toppings ready to go, because you're going to need to work quickly here.

When the grill is hot, make sure it's clean and oiled (hint: dip a paper towel in some oil and use tongs to run it across the grate). Quickly place your stretched out dough on the grill. Some people cook both sides of their dough on the BBQ, but I don't--so as soon as the dough goes on, you should get going on your toppings (I wait and put them on once the dough goes on, because it's too hard to move the laden dough. I have succeeded with this before, but not every time!).

Quickly spread your sauce (if you're using once) and add any toppings you're using. Turn the heat down slightly, and close the lid on the BBQ (a closed BBQ functions like an oven, so you can use it for all kinds of cooking!).

If your crust is really thin, it will cook in a matter of minutes, which is what you want. If you find that the bottom of the crust is burning before the top is cooked, or before the cheese is melted, turn your heat way down. Keep careful watch, and in about 5 minutes you'll probably have perfectly done pizzas! It's so quick & easy you'll want to try it with lots of combinations.

And in related news, with the start of summer weather, I have my veggie garden mostly planted:

And look at this:

Take yesterday, in MAY--strawberries! What a warm spring it's been. I decided they needed another day or two, but I'm keeping a close watch so I can hopefully get them before the birds do.

I also have a lot of stuff growing in containers, including some salad greens:

(And if you're saying wow, look at that close-up shot--that's thanks to my new Pentax K-x camera! A very exciting weekend purchase. Really loving it right now!)

Peruvian Dyes

2010-05-14T16:20:00.002-04:00

As some of you may have heard, my father recently got back from a trip to Peru (& the Galapagos Islands!). While on that trip, he visited some local craft markets, so he brought some fun things back for me. He also took a few pictures, and sent me copies, so I have scanned a few of those in to share with you as well!

As I understand it, the market sold to local artisans as well as to tourists. These ladies are selling the various dye powders that they use to dye wools.

In addition to the market itself, there were women demonstrating dyeing and weaving. Here's some yarn being dyed:

And some finished yarn:

I'm not certain, but it may be displayed with the flowers that were used to dye it. My father's understanding was that the dyes being used were all natural (which makes sense, assuming they were practicing their crafts in a traditional way, I guess!).

These women appear to be winding a warp for their looms:

In the background here you can see some women weaving:

I think those are backstrap looms, although I confess I don't know much about them so I could have the terminology wrong!

As for what I got, there are 3 balls of yarn:

My dad was under the impression that they might be alpaca, but it feels like there's some wool content in there to me. Possibly a blend? The green is closer to laceweight, the other 2 are fingering weight.

And there was a sampler pack of dyes:

The labels on them give the colour and (I think) what it's made of, in Spanish of course. My elementary Spanish plus the help of some friends has translated most of it, but I'm still not 100% confident about what they all are. Several of them are just labeled "mineral" and I think one is labeled "plant"!

I've been hunting on Ravelry to see if anyone knows anything about them, but so far I haven't found anyone. I'm thinking if I don't hear anything soon, I'll just have to experiment for myself. I'm hoping that if I mordant some yarn with alum, most of the dyes will work well. We shall see! I promise to keep you posted. :-)

Final Report on the Frolic

2010-05-12T09:55:00.002-04:00

As promised, here are some pictures of my booth and a bit of a report on how Saturday went! First, we left around lunch time on Friday, which was a good thing--although the drive should have been no more than 90 minutes, the awful weather + Friday traffic (in which rush hour apparently starts at noon!) meant it was over 2 hours. That got us there right on time for the beginning of set-up--in fact, we were the second people to check in!

We were disappointed to learn that the dollies that had been promised for unloading did not exist (the email said there would only be a few, but since we were so early we figured we were safe--no, it turns out a few = zero). Luckily we had packaged most things in to relatively easy to carry loads, and yarn & fiber are not very dense. But even with an elevator, it was a lot of trips to and from the car before we got everything out:

I was a bit upset when I arrived, because the booth space was slightly smaller than what I was promised (by maybe about a foot in each direction). I think this is due to the unusual space that we were using--essentially, a very wide hallway, in which we had to avoid blocking doorways, etc. There probably wasn't much the organizers could have done about it, and maybe they didn't know in advance--but hopefully in the future they'll make it clear that booth sizes are approximate and depend on the location.

I didn't have a tremendous amount of merchandise (it seemed like a lot to me, of course, but not compared to some of the large yarn shops that were there!), so in the end the extra space didn't make a big difference. We were pretty well organized, but had made one last minute change in how we wanted to display things that slowed us down (I had to cut plastic ties off one of the fixtures so we could re-arrange it, and I only had regular scissors which made it a VERY slow task!). Even with that, and the very slow process of hauling everything up by hand, in a little over three hours we had this:

I love my new gridwall with the hooks--in fact, I plan to buy a few more hooks next week (there is a new supplier in Kitchener, but he doesn't have the hooks in white, so I have to get them in London!):

This is the cube structure which was so time consuming to set up (because of a change of plans):

We realized a few minutes into the show that it wasn't attracting enough attention, so we turned it an an angle to catch a few more eyes and suddenly it was mobbed! (Unfortunately, we were so busy at that point that we didn't get to take any more pictures, so you can't see it on the angle.)

On the table we put display items, baskets of handspun and naturally dyed yarns, and bins containing kits:

I will definitely be doing more types of kits in the future (both spinning samples and project kits like the mittens). A lot of shoppers were much more likely to buy if there was a pattern that they knew they could make with their yarn, so it's time to put on the design hat and see what I can come up with. I'm thinking a few new scarf patterns for fall will make the booth an even bigger hit at the Knitter's Fair!

Which reminds me...I need to get my forms in for that, and start planning my orders with my suppliers. While I was looking forward to some recovery time this week, the show went so well that I now have a lot of new work to do! I think I will soon be filling some wholesale orders for yarn shops that are now interested in carrying my goods, and the Etsy shop needs to be restocked. And since I'm almost out of undyed yarn here, I need to restock on that! Also, I need to add new yarns to the website, among other updates. No rest for the weary, but since it means success I guess I'll take it. :-)

It was nice to meet many of you at the Frolic, and a huge thanks to the knitters of the Uptown Knit Mob for test knitting several yarns and giving me samples to put out. I know your work sold several skeins and kits for me!

May Club: Fisherman's Bastion

2010-05-11T09:53:00.002-04:00

It's officially May club day, although if you've read the posts in the Ravelry group you know that this month's fiber will be late due to dyer error (but the yarn is right on time).

I will admit to being especially devious this month with my hints in the Ravelry group. I mentioned that it would be based on Catt's heritage (and everyone knows she's from Newfoundland) and a fisherman's hangout. But although Catt is indeed from Newfoundland, her heritage is Hungarian!

So this picture is of the Fisherman’s Bastion in Budapest. It’s on Castle Hill--in the middle ages, the fish market was located below the castle, and the fisherman were responsible for guarding the castle. So yes, a fisherman’s hangout--but not the kind you were probably expecting. :-) All of the structures there today are relatively modern construction--built in 1896 for the millennial celebrations in Hungary.

When we stayed in Budapest last year, our hotel was located almost directly underneath the bastion. I went back and forth on picking this month’s picture, because the view from our hotel room was in the other direction--the Hungarian Parliament--but I thought the pictures of the Castle Hill area were more striking. Here’s a few other angles:

The redyed fiber is on the drying rack, and it does have more of the dark tones now--but also still hints of green, so I think it more accurately matches this picture, whereas the yarn probably goes with the picture below:

Next month the fiber and yarn bases will be a very close match to each other, so I’m expecting the fiber and yarn colours to be a near match. We’ll see what happens! Now I just have to pick a picture. :-)

Also, for those wondering about the Frolic--it went amazingly well, and I do have a few pictures to blog. Later today or tomorrow I expect to share those with you! :-)

Reminder: Find me at the Frolic!

2010-05-06T15:13:00.002-04:00

I think most of you know by now, but just in case anyone didn’t have the relevant details--I will have a booth at the DTKC Knitter’s Frolic in Toronto this Saturday, May 8. Important information:

The Marketplace hours are 9-5 on Saturday (but the doors will actually open at 8:30 so those with 9 am workshops can shop beforehand!)
My booth will be UPSTAIRS by the classrooms. You may have to work a bit to find me, but I promise it will be worth it!
The Frolic is at the Japanese-Canadian Cultural Centre (6 Garamond Court). Admission is $5 and there is free parking.
Bring a bag, as vendors using plastic bags will be charging 5 cents for them (I will have paper bags, but of course it’s always great if you have your own bag!)
There is NOT an ATM machine on site, so come prepared. I will be set up to take credit cards (master card & visa) via a computer connection, but of course cash is always accepted. :-)

That should cover it--and if not, check the link to the Frolic for more details. I hope to see many of you there! I have a few new yarn lines that will be debuting, as well as lots and lots of fiber, so there should be something for everyone. :-)

Eating Seasonally: Double Smoked Bacon, Cheddar, & Tomato Omelette

2010-05-02T19:51:00.002-04:00

Most of you are probably familiar with Jamie Oliver's "Food Revolution" campaign to reform eating habits. Well, on Twitter last week he announced that he would be starting "Food Revolution Fridays", where he would tweet ingredients and a link to a recipe. The idea is that people will try out the recipe at some point over the weekend.

I decided I would try it out, but then realized yesterday that I had missed the Friday tweet and went to go look for it. I was surprised to see it was a plain cheese omelette--so simple! We had a very elaborate dinner last night, so I thought simple food was perfect for tonight. Of course, I had to put a few twists into it. Also, I was really pleased because all the ingredients I used were local. It's nice to have a few local items of produce available, even if they're still coming from greenhouses right now.

Here was my ingredient list (this was for 2 people)
4 slices double smoked bacon (3 might have been better, it's POTENT stuff), chopped
2 T butter
3 green onions, sliced
5 eggs (I think Jamie said 3 per person, but maybe his were smaller? 4 would have been good!)
dash salt & pepper (OK, that's not local)
handful of 7 year old cheddar (again, POTENT)
handful of grape tomatoes, chopped

As far as the recipe goes, I cooked the bacon until crispy, added in the butter & onions and cooked for 2 minutes. Then I cooked it as Jamie does, adding the tomatoes in right before folding it:

Now, my omelette was really big, so it took longer to cook through and got a bit brown (yes, my pan is bigger than Jamie's). Also, it was a bit harder to fold:

But it was still delicious! To make it a meal, we paired it with a Greek salad (all the ingredients except those in the dressing and the olives were local, too!):

A pretty nice plate of food, all around:

I'm looking forward to seeing what's on tap next Friday (although, with the Frolic on Saturday and Mother's Day on Sunday, it probably won't get cooked on the weekend here).

Club Reminder

2010-05-01T13:26:00.002-04:00

Just a quick reminder to anyone out there who was planning to sign up for the yarn or fibre club in time to get the May shipment--today is the last day to do so!

Of course, if you don't sign up today you can still join at any time--but you won't get the May colourway. Sign-ups from May 2-June 1 will all receive June as their first month of club.

In other news, I have some awesome natural dye pictures to share soon--the results of my black bean dyeing, and a bit of avocado dyeing, too. The camera is once again being a bit cranky (battery charge seems to hold for about 5 pictures!), so I'm not quite ready to post--but look for it soon.

Oh, and another reminder--next Saturday (May 8) is the Knitter's Frolic in Toronto! Please look for my booth UPSTAIRS. Also, the Frolic is subject to Toronto's plastic bag regulation, so please bring reusable bags if possible. Booths will be charging 5 cents per plastic bag. I'm hoping to have paper bags, which I understand are not subject to the bag fee, but I haven't finalized that yet. I'll remind you all about the show at the end of the week, too, just to make sure you all have all the relevant details. :-)

Following Up: Lots of Photos

2010-04-22T17:50:00.002-04:00

OK, just a quick note to follow up on some things I've shared in recent posts. First, the natural dye experiments--after posting here, I tested all the samples for lightfastness by covering half the skeins with towels and putting the yarn out in bright sunlight for a few days. After that, I unrolled the samples and compared the covered part with the uncovered part. Most of the samples looked the same on both sides, except for the turmeric samples:

On the left is the sun-exposed side, on the right is the covered side. This surprised me, because turmeric is supposed to be light-fast, whereas the other ingredients I used were not all reported to be fast. These results were exposed to VERY intense sunlight, and probably would not be normal wear and tear on much knitwear. But the results are pretty surprising!

Next, a better picture from the "Fiber really does matter" post:

Again, all three of those fibers/yarns came from the same pan with the same dyes. Still amazes me to see them next to each other!

Finally, not so much a follow-up, but an exciting note. I'm in the process of getting ready for my booth at the Toronto Knitters' Frolic on May 8 (look for me UPSTAIRS!). This past weekend I picked up a new display wall for yarns and fibers:

I've also been working with my fabulous friends Julie & Galen from Communication Visual, and they have done some amazing graphics for me, including these great new yarn labels:

Now my customers can undo a skein to look at it without having to take the label off! And I've colour coded the labels by yarn weights to keep myself more organized, too. :-)

Eating Seasonally: Tips & Tricks 2

2010-04-15T14:16:00.004-04:00

OK, the follow up Tips & Tricks post I promised a few weeks ago has arrived. Today's subject: homemade broth/stock.

Last time I showed you a shot of my freezer, which included a small zip-top bag containing some homemade chicken broth:

So, how did that broth come to be & why is it in the freezer in little baggies, you ask? OK, here are my tips & tricks for making broths & stocks at home. (A note about terminology--chefs and other experts have different definitions for broth & stock. However, there doesn't seem to be a consistent basis for these definitions so I tend to use them interchangeably.)

Broth is meant to use up leftovers, not to require you to go buy more of stuff. Save your scraps & make the broth with what you have on hand, when you can. This is especially true for vegetable broth--I save all the scraps from cooking with veggies through the week for making broth. Onion skins, carrot tops, potato peel, the woody stems from asparagus, the shells from fresh peas. Pretty much anything is fair game--here's my last pot of veggie scraps:

Whenever we eat chicken on the bone, I save the bones in a bag in my freezer for later broth making.
Sometimes you do need to go out looking for bones if you want to make chicken or beef stock. Our local buying club sells bones for this express purpose, & they are quite reasonably priced (especially the beef bones). I encourage you to ask where you buy your meat, they might even be willing to give them away. I also encourage you to be selective about where you buy your meat & what you buy, but that's a subject for another day!
In general, it's a good idea to roast your bones before using them when making a meat-based broth. Most people feel this gives more & better flavour. I can't swear I taste a difference, but it's easy enough & it smells great, so I do it!
Don't be afraid to salt heavily to bring out the flavour while cooking. Even with a liberal amount of kosher salt, your broth will likely have a lower sodium content than the "low sodium" ones at the market, and will probably taste better, too!
Once you make your broth, divide it into quantities that seem useful to you and put it in the fridge (for use within the next week or so) or the freezer (for use at a later date). I tend to do a few large batches for making soup (4-6 cups, however much I can fit in a large container), plus 1 cup lots into zip-top bags for freezing. The 1 cup amounts are great for making sauces or just adding a hint of flavor or moisture to something.

As for actually making your broth, that's super easy:
1. Assemble ingredients in a large stockpot. Onions, carrots, celery, and garlic are generally recommended for all types of broth (but scraps of all the above are fine, it doesn't have to be freshly bought!). If making a meat broth, add the roasted bones. For a vegetable broth, add in whatever other veggies you have handy.
2. Cover ingredients completely with water, and throw in some kosher salt (depending on the size of your pot & your taste--start with at least 1 T and you can always add more later). Put the pot on the burner & bring to a boil (if you can get a lid on, it will boil faster!).
3. Reduce heat to a simmer (if you volume is low enough you may be able to do this with a lid on. My pan is sometimes too full to allow this!). During the first hour with a meat broth, you will find some "scum" on the top--just skim it off with a slotted spoon & get rid of it.
4. How long it should cook varies depending on the ingredients & your tastes. Conventional wisdom is that veggie broth cooks fastest (1 hour is probably plenty), chicken next (2-3 hours?), and beef takes the longest (4-6 hours, perhaps?). You can taste it as its cooking to see if you think it has enough flavour (just be careful not to burn your tongue!).
5. Allow it to cool a bit, then strain out all the solids. I usually pick out the big pieces with tongs to avoid clogging my strainer, then pour through a colander, then through a fine mesh strainer to get the small particles. Cheesecloth is also excellent for this. If you're doing a meat-based stock and your scraps/bones were fatty, you may also want to use a fat separator to reduce the fat content of your broth.
6. Package as appropriate & chill/freeze. Use next time you make soups, sauces, for cooking rice/veggies, in the crockpot, or anywhere else you can think of!

I'm sure I left something important out, so please let me know if you have other questions or suggestions! Now I have to go strain the beef stock that's been cooking all day. It smells yummy in here!

Eating Seasonally: Spaghetti with Kale & Chickpeas

2010-04-14T21:16:00.002-04:00

This recipe is inspired by my friend Julie (Julie, you don't have a blog I can link, do you?). We were chatting recently about vegetarian food, & she mentioned a recipe she uses a lot for pasta with chickpeas & kale. I don't have her recipe, but I liked the idea so I decided to play with it tonight. I was really pleasantly surprised, & found myself going back for a 2nd plateful because it was SO yummy!

Coming out of winter, this seems like a mostly seasonal dish. Kale has oddly not been part of the local food offering I have seen here through the fall/winter, despite being a "winter green", but it is widely available and seasonal in much of North America, I think.

This recipe was largely improvised, so quantities are entirely approximate. And I definitely recommend adjusting it to your own taste!

Ingredients
1/2 box of whole grain spaghetti (I found a new-to-me brand, Primo, which was much better than most of the whole grain pastas at the store)
2 T olive oil
1 bunch kale, washed & chopped (I omitted the stems, I'll be using them for broth--but you can use them, just put them in the pan 1st so they have longer to cook)
1 can chickpeas (drained & rinsed)
3 cloves garlic, minced/pressed
1 t crushed red pepper flakes
juice of 1 lemon
1/4 cup grated Parmigianno Reggiano + more to garnish (use the good stuff here, it's a simple dish & the extra flavour is important)
salt & pepper to taste

Instructions
1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil, salting it heavily (pasta water should be salty like the sea!), and add spaghetti. Cook to al dente.
2. Meanwhile, heat a large skillet with oil over medium high heat. Add kale (you will probably have to add it in batches as it cooks down. I think I had at least 3 separate batches). Stir occasionally to expose more kale to the heat.
3. Once all kale is in the pan & wilted, add chickpeas & stir. Cook for 1-2 minutes.
4. Push kale & chickpeas to edges leaving room in the middle of the pan. Add garlic & red pepper. Stir until fragrant, then mix into the kale.
5. Squeeze lemon juice over the kale mixture.
6. Reserve some of the cooking water from the pasta, & drain it. Stir a small amount of cooking water into the kale (adding the starchy water from cooking to the sauce typically helps the pasta & sauce bind together better. The exact amount to use varies, so start small and adjust to taste). Stir parmesan into the kale, and stir in spaghetti.
7. Season to taste with salt & pepper. Serve topped with additional parmesan. Enjoy!

Kitchen Dyeing Experiments

2010-04-13T11:51:00.002-04:00

After a tiny bit of dabbling in natural dyeing last year, I seem to be taking a more serious plunge in that direction now! I have plans to grow some dedicated dye plants in my garden, and have been harvesting a few things from outdoors to dye with, too. But today I worked on some natural dyes from my kitchen, and I'm very excited about the results!

There had been a few threads on Ravelry about dyeing with kitchen spices and other common ingredients, so I decided to play with several. I was not at all scientific about my process, but I'll describe it as best I can. First, I combined the spices (in most cases, 1-2 Tablespoons of the spice) with hot water in glass jars, which I let sit for a few days. Then I strained out the solids and placed the liquids back in the jars, to which I added mordanted yarn (3 mini skeins per jar):

Oh right, mordanting! Last year when I played I used "substantive dyes" that didn't require any kind of mordant. Some of the kitchen spices may fall into this category, but I decided to try them all with mordants this time. I have plans to get larger quantities of mordants from a dyeing supplier, but for today I started with a simple alum mordant, using pickling alum (spice aisle of the grocery store) and cream of tartar. Combined this with water and heated it in a crockpot with all the sample skeins of yarn. Thus, mordanted yarn!

I let the skeins sit in the jars overnight. Some of them appeared to have really taken up a lot of colour, but others hadn't, so I decided I might need to apply some more heat this morning. For each jar, the process I followed was:

dump the liquid & yarn into small saucepan (an old one I don't use for food anymore), bring it to a simmer. Maintain the simmer for just a few minutes.
Remove 1 mini skein and put into clear water to rinse.
Remove 2nd mini skein and put into an ammonia rinse (dash of household ammonia with water). With some dyes, ammonia changes the final colours.
Leave 3rd skein in the pan, to which I added a small amount of a "rusty nail solution." Iron is a common mordant, often used after dyeing to subdue or change colours. Last week I took several old rusty nails & placed them in a jar with a glug of vinegar and some water. I gave it a good shake every day, and by yesterday I noticed a significant colour change--the water had begun to take on the iron! I had been warned that it often only takes a small amount of iron to make a change, and that large amounts can damage the yarn, so I used an eyedropper to add my solution to the dye stock. In most cases there was a change after about 1 dropped-full of solution, but not always.
Rinse the ammonia skein in water, then rinse the iron skein in water.

Here are the collected results:

Lots of different yellows and browns, plus some greens and oranges. Pretty much the range I was expecting, but there were some delightful surprises. Reds, blues, etc. are pretty much unheard of from most kitchen ingredients, as I understand it (except black beans, which I assure you I will be trying soon!). They're hard to get from most plants, actually, but there are ways to do it.

Here are some more details about the colours I achieved today (in each case, the left skein is the plain alum, the middle is the ammonia, and the right is iron):

Fennel seed! This one excited me a lot, because I hadn't read much about fennel seed, so I didn't expect much. But check out the soft yellow, the gold, and the sage green. Nice, right?

Fresh sage. I had seen some pics on Ravelry of a lovely green obtained from dried sage, which I didn't have, but I had some leftover fresh after cooking, so I decided to go for it. The results are not exciting. That may be because the small amount of fresh I had just wasn't enough. At our last house I had a huge sage plant, and I never knew what to do with that much sage, it grew SO fast. I think I'll plant sage again, knowing that I have something I can try with large quantities of it!

Dried whole cloves. Interestingly, there was a thread about this on Ravelry, too, but the results posted there by the 1 person who tried it were disappointing, so I wasn't expecting much. Imagine my delight! Straw, gold, and olive!

Black tea (orange pekoe, nothing fancy--from tea bags). I had used tea before as a substantive dye, but wanted to try it with mordants. Still just browns, but you can see that the different rinses/mordants did impact the colour a bit. And I do think they're awfully pretty browns.

Black walnuts. Again, a repeat of an experiment from the fall. I think I boiled the nuts more in the fall, this colour isn't as strong. Maybe also because the nuts have been sitting for several months, though. Traditionally, dyers use the hull of the nut fresh off the tree. I don't have a tree, I just have the nuts (in shells), so I used those.

I think this is my favourite, although it's a tough call. (oh, and somehow there were 4 skeins in this jar--so I decided to do the 4th one in iron, with an ammonia rinse.) Turmeric! The reaction of the ammonia here just fascinates me. When I dropped the skein into the ammonia solution, it turned BRIGHT orange. When I rinsed it, that faded to the lighter orange you see here. Since taking the picture, I dropped the skein back in the dye stock, and then added some more ammonia--the change is instant the moment the ammonia hits, a pretty bright red-orange. Again, it rinsed mostly off although not quite as much. I soaked it a third time in ammonia (again, instant change!). This time I just squeezed it out and set it to dry. I'll try rinsing it after it's dry & see if that makes any difference, because I LOVE the colour the ammonia gives it. I'm also just enthralled to watch the reaction between the ammonia & turmeric, I think I could repeat that process all day and not get bored with the colour change, LOL!

So I have plans for lots more natural dyeing, but am super excited about today's results. If my shipment of undyed yarn ever shows up (getting frustrated with 1 supplier, and in the other case with Canada Customs, I think!), I plan to do some naturally dyed skeins for sale at the Knitter's Frolic in Toronto next month!!

Fiber DOES Matter!

2010-04-12T17:56:00.002-04:00

OK, the pictures here aren't the best because the yarn & fiber involved are still soaking wet & the light wasn't right--but I had to write this blog post now, because I was blown away by what happened with my dyes this afternoon!

I am working with some new dyes (I found a source of Canadian-made dyes, which allows me to support a local business AND save on shipping & customs charges!), so I am still feeling out the right concentrations, etc. I'm sure that's part of what happened today. But what I want to show you is the huge difference that the type of fiber makes to the dyeing process.

Today I did several batches of oven dyeing. I often put several different yarns or fibers in one pan, and do them all in the same colourway, pouring on the same dyes. I don't necessarily get the exact same amount of each dye on each fiber base, but they all have the same colours on them. However, because different fibers take dye differently, the resulting yarns aren't identical. Normally, they're closely related--but today I had some that weren't!

First, the less dramatic illustration:

The top fiber is superwash merino/silk, the middle yarn is superwash merino laceweight (Wasaga), and the bottom fiber is Grey Swalesdale. In general, superwash fibers take more dye, and take it more rapidly, so I expected the colours to be more intense on the superwash bases. I was surprised at how dark the yarn got in this case, though!

The other thing that shows up a bit in this picture is that the colours on the Swalesdale are actually different than the colours on the superwash bases. But if you really want to see different, you should see what came out of the other pan:

I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't seen it myself! Those three fibers/yarns were all in the SAME pan with the SAME colours poured on them! The top fiber is Shetland wool, the middle yarn is a Soy/Alpaca blend, and the bottom yarn is superwash merino/cashmere/nylon.

In this set of dyeing, I was creating colours by blending turquoise with other colours (yellow, scarlet, etc.). What seems to have happened is that the reds, yellows, etc. bonded with the fiber faster than the blues. The Shetland, being untreated, wasn't able to take too much dye, so by the time the blue was ready to strike, it was fully saturated and couldn't take more colour--resulting in those pinks & yellows. The alpaca/soy blend is more subdued because both of those fibers take dye differently than wool (originally I was under the impression that soy didn't take acid dye at all, but someone recently pointed out to me that soy IS a protein fiber as well as a plant fiber!). And that superwash blend--well, remember what I said before about superwash? Supersaturated!

I promise to return with better pictures of these yarns & fibers when they're dry, so you can really see them all side-by-side and compare them. And of coure, most or all of them will be available in the shop soon! (the Swalesdale will be part of a new long wool sampler!)

Eating Seasonally: Split Pea Soup

2010-04-11T09:52:00.003-04:00

I still need to do my second "tips & tricks" post with tips for making broth/stock, but today I'm blogging a recipe for my friend Catt. I may get around to adding a few pictures to it later, but right now it's just the directions!

I don't know what your family traditions were, but one of ours was Honey Baked Ham for the holidays, followed by split pea soup from the leftover ham bone. Something I never noticed as a child was that my dad was the one in charge of making split pea soup! He had a few things he was in charge of in the food world--namely, barbecuing--but this was one of them. I don't think he ever wrote down a recipe, but I think I absorbed most of what he did, plus added what I know about cooking generally, and came up with this recipe. I think it's seasonal because ham is such an Easter tradition that many of us have ham bones around this week.

Ingredients
approximately 16 oz. dried split peas
1 T olive oil
1 onion, chopped
2 carrots, chopped
2 ribs celery, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 bay leaves
1 leftover ham bone, with some ham reserved & chopped
water to cover bone (approximately 10 cups?)

Directions
1. Put peas in large bowl, looking through to pick out any stones, and cover with water to soak. I think my dad always soaked them overnight, but I noticed that some recipes don't soak them at all, so I split it down the middle & soaked for maybe 4 hours. Drain & rinse the peas.
2. Heat oil in large soup pot or Dutch oven over medium. Add onion, carrots, & celery. Season LIGHTLY with salt (note: most ham is quite salty, so go easy on seasoning the soup!) and cook, stirring regularly, until vegetables are tender--about 5-8 minutes.
3. Add garlic and cook, stirring, for about 1 minute.
4. Add bay leaves, ham bone, and soaked peas. Add enough water to cover the ham bone (in my pot that was about 10 cups). Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to a simmer.
5. Simmer for approximately 6 hours, stirring occasionally to make sure nothing is sticking to the bottom of the pot. Exact cooking time isn't vital, but you want to cook it until the peas "burst" and begin to emulsify with the liquid, making a soup with nice, thick consistency.
6. Remove the ham bone and bay leaves. If the soup's consistency is uneven, you can blend it (I'm not sure that my dad ever did that, but I usually do) with an immersion blender. If you don't have an immersion blender, you can use a regular blender, but do it in small batches and BE CAREFUL--blending hot liquids can be a dangerous thing!
7. Stir in reserved chopped ham. Season to taste with salt & pepper, and serve with a nice piece of crusty bread!

That's it--slow cooking, but simple and oh so tasty. Yesterday we took a walk while the soup was cooking, & I smelled a lot of my neighbours grilling burgers. It smelled delicious, and I was regretting my choice of soup for dinner--until we got home & I dished the soup up. All regret was gone--that was one delicious bowl of totally amazing flavour! And lots of leftovers to get through the week, too. (However, I do think we'll be barbecuing tonight--I took some steak out of the freezer yesterday!)

April Club: Magic Carpet

2010-04-06T17:58:00.002-04:00

So the clue for April was "Semana Santa." For those of you who didn't rush off to look it up, it means "Holy Week" in Spanish--a very seasonal theme for April & Easter.

Last year at this time I was chaperoning a school service trip to Honduras. We were working at an orphanage outside the town of Comayagua. Honduras, like most of Latin America, is an intensely spiritual country where Catholicism is the dominant faith. Comayagua, the former capital of the country, is home to a cathedral and a rather special Easter tradition.

Each year during Semana Santa various groups from the city make "carpets" out of dyed sawdust (and sometimes other materials like spices and shells). Each carpet is the result of lots of planning and many hours of work to dye the sawdust:

Those are some of my students and some of the kids from the orphanage working to sift the sawdust before dyeing it. Work like this went on every night during the week leading up to Easter, and probably had been going for a while before we arrived.

Thursday before Easter the groups gather on the streets at their designated spot to create their carpets for the Good Friday processional.

The final results are truly stunning--some feature the intricate designs of woven carpets, and unless you look at them from a few inches away it's almost impossible to believe they're made of sawdust. Some feature religious designs, or a message from the group that designed them.

My inspiration for this month's colourway came from two of the carpets we saw:

We had to see the carpets early in the morning, before the processional, because we had to get to the orphanage for our day's work. My understanding is the clergy process along the "carpeted" route to the cathedral for the Good Friday services, thereby destroying the carpets. I'm kind of glad we didn't see that part, because I would have been sad to see all that hard work destroyed!

So, I hope everyone enjoys their April yarn & fiber. And if you're wondering about the future of club, please check out my new website. Club sign-ups will open on April 15 (I don't want anyone to sign up too far in advance, it makes the wait between paying & getting your goodies too long!).

Eating Seasonally: Tips & Tricks

2010-03-25T13:12:00.005-04:00

I've been sharing recipes in my Eating Seasonally posts, but it occurred to me recently that more than recipes is required to eat local, seasonal foods--there are lots of tips and tricks that you need to make this a realistic way of life. So I thought today I'd share a few of the tricks I use to eat semi-seasonally in the winter. Some of these tips could be useful even if you're not trying to eat locally--the freezing tips are a great way to prevent waste of food, no matter where it's from. Some are quick and easy, others are more time consuming--they may not all be for everyone, but I hope there is something you can take away from this.

Eating local produce in the winter takes 2 forms for me. First, there are some local products still available--primarily root vegetables (potatoes, carrots, celeriac, beets, parsnips, etc.) and some varieties of squash, which are harvested in the fall and then stored through the winter. Some local farmers have greenhouses where they can produce a few things in the winter, but that can be pricey and the flavour is generally not the same as true summer produce.

I have a cold storage room, but have found it's a bit too damp in there to effectively store root veggies for months (I won't illustrate this for you--suffice it to say, there are some squash and onions that haven't fared well!). Luckily for me, there are many local farmers who DO have good storage, so I can buy from them through the winter. Many of the recipes I've posted in the last few months have relied on these veggies. Which reminds me, when I posted the Celeriac Soup recipe I promised that I would share a photo the next time I had celeriac here. So here you go:

Ugly sucker, isn't it? But it packs a lot of flavour! And yeah, those are parsnips in behind it.

OK, root veggies are great, but realistically eating this way all winter can get boring for even the most dedicated locavore. So if you want to taste summer year round, you have to preserve food. The idea of preserving my own food was originally really daunting to me, but I've learned that not all methods of preserving are labour intensive and challenging! Canning is what we all think of first, and it is a part of my preserving methods:

As you can probably see, my canning is mostly spreads (jam & apple butter), sauces (salsa & applesauce), and pickles. Plus a few jars of peaches (and some commerically canned products, too!). I may try a few more things next year, though--but canning can be a big job. If you're going to try canning, I recommend doing some reading first to figure out what you need to do it safely. The Bernardin Guide to Home Preserving is my favourite resource right now. It has recipes for lots of jams and sauces, overviews of the safety precautions you need to take, instructions for different methods of canning, and more.

Easier than canning, and something I plan to do a LOT of this year, is freezing. Freezing vegetables is WAY easier than canning them (most veggies don't have the acid content required to can them safely in a hot water bath). Freezing fruit is also great. Of course, freezing changes the produce, so it's important to keep in mind the end use of the produce so you can freeze it appropriately. Here are some tips:

When possible, spread loose fruits/veggies (peas, kernels of corn, chopped/slice pieces, etc.) on a cookie sheet and freeze that way. Once they are completely frozen, transfer to a freezer bag. This will help keep the individual bits from sticking together so you can use them later. It's not perfect, but it's way easier than trying to separate all those peach slices that have frozen into one big blob!
Zucchini: it's a water-heavy vegetable, but I've found 2 methods that worked for freezing. First, I grated a bunch of zucchini and froze it. This is great if you want to make zucchini bread in the winter--just thaw it, strain off a bit of the liquid, and toss it in the batter! Secondly, last year I discovered 8 Ball Zucchini. I liked to slice them thickly and grill them, so I decided to freeze some slices. I've grilled them from frozen a few times (they do stick more to the grill from frozen, so use a grill pan & some oil), and also broiled some with great success!
Fruit: frozen fruit is best used in baking (muffins, pies, cakes, cobblers, breads, etc.) or in smoothies. Or you can thaw it and eat with yogurt. It really doesn't work on your cereal the way fresh fruit does, though!
Corn, peas, and green beans are really fabulous freezer veggies. In general, it is recommended to blanch veggies briefly before freezing for safety (the Bernardin book covers this, too!). They can both be quickly thrown into soups, stirred into casseroles, etc. or just cooked on their own. Last year I think I used up all my frozen local peas in October, so this year I'll be freezing huge quantities.
Garlic: Fresh garlic has so much more flavour than garlic that's been stored (or shipped around the world. The grocery store garlic here is pretty much always from China, and it makes a difference!). To preserve this flavour for use later, I press (or mince) garlic when it's fresh, put it in ice cube trays (I have some trays where the cubes hold just 1-2 teaspoons--perfect size), and freeze it (sometimes I put a dash of oil in the cube). Pop the cubes out and into a freezer bag when you're done. Just toss the frozen cube into the pan when you would normally add garlic. It will take slightly longer to cook from frozen, but I think that's often a good thing--it's so easy to burn garlic in cooking, this slows that process down a bit!
Herbs: I use the same basic method as with garlic here. Chop the herbs, put them in ice cube trays. But to hold the cubes together, you need to add a bit of liquid--broth or water work well, just a tiny bit. Throw the cubes into sauces and soups for some fresh flavour year round. You can also make pastes with herbs & other ingredients (garlic, oil, etc.) in a food processor and freeze those. Think about the flavour combinations you use a lot in cooking, and try to figure out how you can preserve those combos for use later!

The ice cube trick is something I use a lot--it's so easy to do, and so easy to use later in cooking. I also do this to prevent waste with other products, like tomato paste. You know how recipes almost always call for 1 Tablespoon, but the cans hold way more? Well, take the extra and freeze it in 1 T cubes for later use:

What is that beside the ice cube tray, you may ask? That's the other thing I wanted to talk about today, but we're running out of time so it will have to wait for a future post--all about homemade stocks and broths.

I know this was long, but hopefully the information about preserving different foods will help you plan a bit for next year. And if you have favourite methods of preservation that I didn't cover here, please share! Next week we'll talk more about making broth, and maybe some other tips and tricks to help you out.

Spoiled for Choice--Please Help!

2010-03-19T12:06:00.002-04:00

I've been lucky enough lately to find some new yarn suppliers and get some new yarn bases from existing suppliers. So lucky, in fact, that I now have way too many yarn lines to choose from! I can't realistically carry them all, so I'm trying to decide what my customer base would be most interested in using so I order the right ones.

If you'd like to vote, please take the survey to let me know your thoughts. I've given fiber content, approximate yarn weight (based on yards per pound), yardage per 4 ounce skein, and retail price so you have some information to base your vote on. You can select as many yarns as you would be interested in seeing me carry from each category.

If you can believe it, the choices there represent me already eliminating some lines that I thought weren't good value for money or were too close to other options--the choices are just that great!

I haven't yet seen or touched most of these yarns. I do have samples coming, but because I'm prepping for the Knitter's Frolic in May I will probably need to order some of them without seeing samples first. They are from suppliers I know & trust, so I'm fairly confident in their quality--I just need to know what people are looking for.

I can't wait to hear what you all think. Thanks for your help! :-)

Rebuild Curicó, Chile

2010-03-16T10:55:00.002-04:00

Those of you that follow me on Twitter have probably seen all the messages in the last few days about testing out different lace motifs for a design project. You've probably been wondering what exactly I'm working on! Well, I don't have photographs of a finished object or a pattern for you (it's lace--it'll be a little while!), but I can at least explain what I'm doing and tell you why I'm doing it.

I had some handspun set aside that was destined to be a shawl, but I really wanted it to be MY shawl--my first big lace design of my own. I was dithering about what I wanted to do for this shawl when I heard from my high school friend Sarah about the damage her town in Chile sustained in the recent earthquake. She and her family were back home in the US when the quake struck, but returned to find vast damage to much of their town:

She is now leading a fundraising and rebuilding effort for the town if Curicó, Chile. One of their primary goals is to raise enough money to buy and erect study, prefabricated homes like this:

They initially were quoted a price of $1600 (US) per home, but in the week after the quake the demand for building materials spiked and prices have now doubled! They have a goal of buying and building at least 20 homes, plus they are also providing aid to the town government and donations of food to the townspeople.

How does this relate to my shawl, you may ask? Well, I started thinking about the Ravelry "Help for Haiti" program in which designers were able to tag patterns whose sale would benefit MSF, the Red Cross, etc., and thought it would be nice to do something similar. So, when it is ready, my pattern will be for sale through Ravelry and the proceeds will all go to the Rebuild Curicó efforts. Because Curicó is in Chilean wine country, my plan is to design a Chilean wine-themed shawl.

Unfortunately, as I said, lace doesn't move quickly and I do want to get the pattern right before I put it up for sale. So if you are moved to help out Curicó in the meantime, here are some links for you:
Rebuild Curicó Facebook Group
Torres Foundation--the winery's foundation is coordinating the rebuilding efforts. You can give directly via the PayPal link on the bottom right
Ambassadors for Christ International--This faith-based group is also raising money for Curicó. 90% of your contribution will go directly to rebuilding, 10% to their administrative costs.
In the US, checks can be mailed to the NC Baptist Men, who will be giving 100% of all contributions directly to relief efforts. The address is NC Baptist Men, PO Box 1107, Cary NC 27512. Please put "Chile earthquake" in the memo line of your check.

Find me at the Frolic!

2010-03-10T10:08:00.002-05:00

Just a quick announcement to let all the GTA folks (and those interested in a road trip) know that I will have a booth at the Downtown Knit Collective's Knitter's Frolic on May 8, 2010 (the Frolic is 2 days, but the vendors are only open on Saturday the 8th)! My booth will be upstairs near the entrance to the classrooms, so please make sure you head up there to visit me! I know I have some Toronto based customers out there who have been hankering after yarn & fiber, but the shipping costs with Canada Post make it prohibitive--here's your chance to shop with no shipping costs!

I am ordering lots more stock today to make sure I can fill the booth with pretty colours. If anyone has specific yarn or fiber bases they definitely want to fondle at the Frolic, please let me know and I'll try to make sure they're available for you!

At this point, it sounds like my mother may come work the booth with me. She's thinking of retiring at the end of April, so she'll have time to come hang out with me! If that's the case, we may stay in Toronto for the weekend and so some sight-seeing on Sunday after working hard all day on Saturday. Luckily for me, she's a very experienced veteran of retail sales, so I know she'll be a huge help in the booth if she comes. Beware, she will get you to buy things you had no intention of purchasing (she does it to me every time we shop!).

March Club: Paris Nights

2010-03-09T14:49:00.002-05:00

It's club time once again! The clues I offered in the Ravelry group this month were "oh-la-la", followed by "famous landmarks." I really thought someone would guess what the photo was based on that, but no one has!

So, oh-la-la = France (OK, Francophones, try not to cringe--you try cluing France in a subtle way!). And famous landmarks in France? Well, I suppose there are a few, but I'm pretty sure this one stands out as number one:

I don't think this photo needs as much explanation as last month's! The Eiffel Tower is, after all, an icon. This photo is an old one (can you tell I had to scan it in, as it's pre-digital?), from a post-graduation trip with one of my best friends. Many memories from that trip all run together, I think in part because she was a checklist traveler--we had to see everything in the guidebook so she could check it off. I tend to have the opposite approach--although I like to plan A LOT for trips, once I'm there I'm willing to go with the flow and adapt my schedule to the circumstances. Interestingly, I think she's traveled a lot more now and probably has changed her style.

Anyway, the sunset over the Eiffel Tower is one of those things that the guidebook can't plan for you--you have to have good timing and the right weather for a view like this! We got lucky, and I think the moment was special enough that we were both able to pause and enjoy it.

This photo was an interesting challenge to capture on fiber/yarn. It's a bit different for me, but I had fun doing it!

Getting Organized

2010-03-03T09:47:00.002-05:00

Those of you who are local to me have probably seen my "studio" in various stages of disarray over the last few months as the business has grown. I'm lucky to have such a great space (it's where normal people would have their living room, but we also have a family room and don't need 2 sitting spaces), but I haven't been organized enough to take advantage of that.

This weekend, I decided it was time to change that:

That's my new "storage wall"--dyed, finished objects are in the wire cubes, things I'm working on (personal knitting projects and stash to spin/knit, mostly) are in the white bins, and supplies for dyeing, carding, etc. are in the cardboard boxes--which have inventory lists taped to them!

The only real problem with this set up is my only workspace in the room is that one little desk. Since I need space to dye, card, label, and package things, this is not enough room. I'm searching for a folding table that I can also take to shows, but in the meantime there are plans to put an old door on some sawhorses and use that. I may even head out to the shed today to see if it's dry enough out to bring the old door in!

The other side of the room is the equipment side right now--drying rack in the window, and both wheels and my loom against the wall. Generally, I do my spinning and weaving in the family room on the couch (in front of the TV), but I keep all the equipment here when not in use!

I'm hoping this organization lasts, and also that it improves my productivity. I didn't get quite as much done during the Ravelympics as I wanted, although I do have 2 medals to show for my efforts:

That one is for the spinning I did for my Oatmeal Cardigan. I still need to get a better picture of the finished skeins, but this was one of them on the bobbin:

It's Shetland, 2-ply, worsted weight. There are 3 huge 8 ounce skeins of it!

And the second one, by the skin of my teeth, was for writing my thrummed mitten pattern and test knitting a sample mitten:

That's the inside and outside of "All Thrums." The pattern is available on Ravelry and is included in some mitten kits I am dyeing. The first mitten kits will be available at London Yarns, and I may make a few available in the Etsy shop as well.

Now, back to being organized and productive--I have club yarns & fibers to dry, and custom orders to create!

Eating Seasonally: Celeriac Soup

2010-02-16T20:03:00.002-05:00

I just finished eating a bowl of this, and it was good enough that I wanted to share the recipe right away! No pictures of it, I'm afraid--but even if I did, they wouldn't be very exciting looking. White bowls full of light colored soup aren't terribly photogenic. But the flavor here is amazing!

First, a note--this recipe is a modified version of one I was given by a chef at Entertaining Elements in St. Jacobs. It's a very simple recipe, and was delicious the way she made it--I just simplified it even a bit more, I think.

Ingredients:
1 sweet onion (regular cooking onion would probably also be good), chopped
2 Tbsp butter
pinch Kosher salt
2-3 cloves garlic, minced/pressed
1 celeriac (celery root), washed, peeled, and roughly chopped
6 cups chicken broth (or vegetable broth for true vegetarian version)
1/3 cup milk (optional)

1. Melt butter in large pot over medium heat, then add onions and dash of salt. Cook until onions are soft, about 5-7 minutes.
2. Add garlic, stir, and cook 1 more minute.
3. Add celeriac and broth. Cover and bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer (covered) for about 1 hour or until celeriac is soft.
4. Turn off heat and use immersion blender to blend until smooth.
5. Depending on desired texture, add milk (or additional broth). Stir in and return to heat until soup is piping hot.
6. Serve with fresh ground black pepper, crusty bread, and a nice salad. Perfect winter food!

I'll be getting another celeriac from the local buying club next week, so I will be making this again next month. I'll try to take some pictures, especially of the celeriac itself (it's an interesting looking thing if you've never seen one!). But don't wait for that, try it now--it's delicious. And, it's healthy, simple, and seasonal. Enjoy!

Spoiler Alert: Cave Diving

2010-02-15T10:51:00.002-05:00

OK, February club is shipping today (local folks, contact me to arrange pick-up. I'm happy to bring it to Uptown Knit Mob on Thursday, but if you want it sooner let me know), so as promised, here is the inspiration photo:

That picture is from our 2009 trip to Mexico, in the Tulum area, at the entrance to the Dos Ojos cenote. Cenotes are underground bodies of water that have above ground access points, and what you see in this photo is the access point we used to enter the cave.

We snorkeled through the pool here at the entrance, and then dove down underneath a rock shelf to access a second cave, known as the "Bat Cave", where there were tons of bats on the ceiling. They're hard to make out, but I think this photo shows a few of the bats:

There were several really cool photos from this snorkeling trip, but I decided that photo at the top was my favourite, so I designed this month's colours off of it. I'm guessing that's not what most of you were picturing when I gave the "tropical" hint on Ravelry, was it? :-)

Sock Club Yarn Substitution

2010-02-14T20:07:00.002-05:00

OK, the more detailed post about club is coming tomorrow--the one with the inspiration picture and story. But, some important news for those in the Sock Yarn club, if you haven't already seen my post in the Ravelry group:

I was just reskeining all the sock club yarn (not something I had planned on doing for club, but one was a bit tangly–and once I reskeined that one, I thought I owed you all the same courtesy!), and noticed that most of the skeins seemed different than my usual Niagara base. It seemed to have a bit more of a sheen, and be a bit less sproingy.

So I checked, and sure enough, there seems to have been some miscommunication with my supplier when I ordered the base yarn. The yarn they sent me is 100% superwash merino, without the added nylon that the Niagara base has. It is also a 2-ply, whereas the Niagara base is a 3-ply. It is lovely and soft and wonderful, but it is not the same. It is a yarn with a higher retail value than Niagara, so it does meet what I initially advertised (that if there was a supplier issue, I would substitute with a yarn of equal or higher value).

If anyone was really set on the Niagara base, please let me know. There is ONE skein dyed on Niagara (leftover from a past order). I can also order more, but there will of course be a delay of several weeks before it gets here & dyed–realistically, you would get your February and March yarns at about the same time, which is a LONG wait. However, I don’t want anyone to be disappointed. Please let me know!

Having said that, I really like the yarn this month, and I hope you all will, too. I am almost done with the reskeining and will ship them tomorrow!

Oh, and fiber folks, the fiber is unaffected by this. It also looks quite pretty–and very different from the yarn, despite being an identical colourway!

Knitting? Do you still do that?

2010-01-19T13:41:00.002-05:00

OK, OK, I know it's been a long time since I blogged a completed knitting project. And I definitely am finding less knitting time since I started spinning, weaving, and dyeing! But I do occasionally sneak a few moments in there to work on something, so I thought I'd better show off the proof of that today. :-)

First, a little one skein wonder I designed to use one of my yarns:

Those are Sweetheart Fingerless Mitts, knit in Waterloo Wools Kenora (65% cashmere, 35% silk), colourway "Scandalous". They are perfect for wearing in my basement office, where my hands are always cold. AND they took less than one skein, so I have plans to write up a matching headband or similar pattern soon.

If you like the design, you can follow the link below to buy the pattern. I am participating in Ravelry's Help for Haiti fundraiser by donating all proceeds from this pattern to MSF (in addition, the Canadian government is matching donations, so each pattern is $6 going to MSF).

Next up, and also using some of my yarn, is my first pair of thrummed mittens:

That is made with my Stratford DK weight yarn and some merino roving. There is now a complete pair of them! I am putting together kits of these to sell. So far, I know that London Yarns will be carrying them, and I hope to have some elsewhere as well. They are crazy warm, but of course I finished them just in time for the mild weather to arrive, so I haven't gotten much use out of them!

And just to prove that all of us have bad days:

That is supposed to be a Baby Surprise Jacket. It's a little hard to tell in the picture, but you may have noticed that it's both narrow and long. It could perhaps be considered a "Baby Surprise Dress"?!

It has been frogged, and I have plans to start again with a different stitch count and a different gauge. Or I might just use the yarn for something else. They yarn, by the way, is lovely. It's my handspun, from Southern Cross Fiber club colourway Equinox. Really beautiful fiber in my favourite colours. Perhaps the error was a message that it should become something for me, not a baby?!

That isn't ALL the knitting I've been up to lately, but it's a lot of it. There's a sock in the works from the new Cat Bordhi book, another sock for Stephen that is languishing due to possible fit issues, and a sweater for me that got boring (mindless stockinette) so it's sitting. Oh, and 2 or 3 lace projects that don't make good TV or social knitting, so they're just not getting done!)

Introducing Fiber & Yarn Clubs!

2010-01-14T14:20:00.006-05:00

**Club sign-ups are now closed, so I am taking down the PayPal links. If you missed out, please let me know and I'll see if there's still space for you. And if there isn't, please come back in April and look for information on round 2 of the club!**

OK, as promised last week I have fiber & yarn clubs for you to join. We're going to start with two clubs--a sock yarn club and a spinning fiber club. Both will run 3 months for now, and hopefully will continue beyond that, too!

For the first three month cycle, I've picked a theme: "Seeing the World". Each month's colorway will be inspired by a photo from my personal travels (not necessarily one of the ones above!). I'll share the photo each month on the blog so you can see where the inspiration came from!

For the sock yarn club, all three months will be dyed on my Niagara sock yarn base (80% superwash merino/20% nylon). If there are supplier issues with this base, I'll substitute something of equal or greater value. One subscription gets you one 4 ounce skein (420 yards) each month.

For the fiber club, each month will be a different base fiber, all either wool or wool blend. I will only dye things I like to spin myself, and fibers will range from medium to super soft! One subscription gets you 4 ounces of fiber each month.

Both clubs will run from February to April 2010. Clubs will ship between the 10th and 15th of each month. Sign-ups are open until January 25!

I have created 3 options for each club: including shipping to the US, including shipping to the UK or in Canada, and local pick-up. If you need shipping to another location, please let me know and I can quote you a price and arrange that. Please note, local pick-up is NOT a delivery service. If you choose this, you must pick up your loot from me each month!

I've put a lot of thought into the best way to set up subscriptions, and I hope what I have done works for you. Instead of asking you to pay up front, I have set up recurring subscriptions for each option. These payments will come from your Paypal account (by whatever method you choose) each month on the same date. So if you sign up on January 18th, you will be billed on the 18th of each month for three months.

I can't set up this kind of subscription on Etsy--doing it there would require you to pay all three months in advance. So you'll have to use the buttons below to sign up for your subscription!

Questions? Leave a comment, tweet me (@WaterlooWools), Ravmail me (lligett), or convo me on Etsy!

Fiber Club (US Shipping), $18 USD per month

Fiber Club (Canadian or UK Shipping), $20 USD per month

Fiber Club (local pick-up), $13 CAD per month

Sock Yarn Club (US Shipping), $20 USD per month

Sock Yarn Club (Canadian & UK Shipping), $22 USD per month

Sock Yarn Club (local pick-up), $15 CAD per month

Pushing past my comfort zone!

2010-01-13T16:19:00.002-05:00

Those of you who frequent my Etsy shop will probably have noticed that I tend toward certain colours in my dyeing--namely blue-greens and orange-reds. Even when I try to push myself in new directions, I always end up being lured back to these:

and this...

Well, this week I have been pushing past that a little bit in my dye pots! Here's a sneak peek at some roving in "Citrus Splash":

Now that's QUITE a change for me. Bright, yes? I'm not sure how often I'll do this colourway, but it's nice to know I CAN if people want it!

In the corner there you also see some yarn in the same colourway. Yesterday my new electric skein winder arrived, so I reskeined that yarn and grabbed a photo of it next to a non-reskeined version of the same dyelot (although on a different yarn base). Here you are:

Also in a fairly new colour development, I've been trying out some more pastel shades. For an example, we have "Unicorns":

OK, I know, that features some hints of blue-green. But it's a much less saturated colour than my norm, so I think it still counts as being out of my comfort zone.

I will confess that while dyeing these, I didn't completely branch out into new territory. There are still plenty of blue-greens and orange-reds leaving my dyepot, so those who are fans of the "traditional" colourways have no reason to fear.

And to those of you saying "I love these new colours, where can I get them?" Well, they are all part of an order that is being delivered this week to Shall We Knit. So go pay Karen & Lynne a visit next week and I'm sure they'll gladly help you find what you need!

Survey: Yarn & Fiber Club

2010-01-05T13:15:00.003-05:00

OK, just a quick note for today--I'm still recovering from holiday madness & a cold, so a longer, photo-laden post will have to wait!

So, I have tossed around the idea of starting a yarn or fiber club in the past. However, for it to be a sustainable enterprise, I need to have some idea of how many customers I might have. Running a club may require me to open an account with a new supplier, among other possible expenses, so I need to test the waters before jumping in.

To that end, if you are interested in the possibility of joining a yarn or fiber club from Waterloo Wools, I'd appreciate it if you could take this survey for me to let me know your thoughts!

Please note the price options the survey include shipping charges to the US/Canada. There would probably be a supplement for any buyers overseas, and there would certainly be a discount to those of you local enough to pick up your yarn or fiber in person, so keep that in mind.

If you have questions or need more information, please feel free to leave me a comment asking. My cold medicine-addled brain may not be performing at peak form today!

Edit: Oops! I knew I forgot to say something. :-) I meant to explain that the questions about price are to help me decide what base yarns/fibers could be included in the club. All will be nice, of course, but more variety and/or luxury is available at a higher price point!

Also, I should have added that for fiber club, we'd be talking about 4 oz. rovings, and for yarn clubs we'd be talking about approximately 4 oz. skeins of whatever weight yarn. So, for sock or laceweight, it would be enough for a project.

Phat Fiber Goodness

2009-12-16T14:29:00.002-05:00

Several months ago I heard about this interesting idea called Phat Fiber. The idea is that indie dyers, spinners, and other artists contribute samples of their work each month. The samples are sold in boxes once a month. As an artist, it's neat because it gets your work into many hands at once. As a consumer, it's fun because you get to try lots of new artists' work without committing to a big purchase. You can buy from the ones you like, and if there are some that don't catch your fancy you're not really out much!

Anyway, I've found that quite a few people aren't familiar with Phat, so I wanted to take a few minutes today to showcase it. As a contributor, I get a "mixed box" each month (assuming I meet the minimum number of samples)--it's a combination of yarn AND fiber. As a customer, you can choose if you want one or the other, or a mixed box. Here's a shot of my mixed box from November:

Now, for a bit more detail:

Those are the yarns I got. My hope later is to come back with some links & details on them.

And those are the fibers. Again, details later, I hope!

Those are the goodies & other items in my box. Some months this includes patterns, orifice hooks, soap, tea, and other fun stuff. This month there was a lovely Christmas card from the family behind Phat Fiber, as well as stitch markers, a button, and some coupons.

The December boxes go on sale VERY soon. (To get the exact details, you have to sign up for the emails. This month's email has already been sent out, but I bet if you're extra nice to the fabulous people at Phat, they might be willing to pass it on to you!) I sent in 3 types of samples for December:

Hand-dyed yarn, "Golden Nebula"

Handspun yarn, "Star Formation"

Hand-dyed fiber, "Jupiter Storm." I have to say, this is one of my favorite colors. I have dyed some up for myself, and I also have 2 braids that are about to appear in the shop!

OK, I could probably drone on a bit more, but that's enough for you to get the idea, I think. I hope I've enticed a few new folks to go check it out!

Eating Seasonally: Chicken, White Bean, & Sweet Potato Stew

2009-12-04T16:55:00.002-05:00

Here's the recipe I promised the other day. I'll try to be as specific as possible, but let me know if you have questions. Oh, and I didn't snap any pictures--so it's just text today. :-)

Ingredients:
olive oil, salt, pepper to taste
2 slices bacon, chopped
4 chicken thighs (bone-in, skin on)
1 small onion, diced
2-3 carrots, diced
2 large cloves garlic, minced
1/4 C white wine
3-4 sprigs of thyme
1 C dried white beans (soaked in advance)
2 C chicken stock
14 oz. canned diced tomatoes
1 sweet potato, diced
2 T fresh parsley, chopped

1. Heat a drizzle of oil in dutch oven over medium. Brown the bacon and remove with a slotted spoon.
2. Season chicken with salt & pepper, and place, skin-side down, in dutch oven. Cook until golden brown, then flip and cook 2-3 minutes more. Remove from pan. When cool to the touch, remove skin.
3. Meanwhile, add onion & carrot to pan. Season lightly with salt and pepper and cook until tender. Stir in garlic and cook another minute.
4. Deglaze the pan by pouring in white wine and using wooden spoon to scrap up brown bits.
5. Add thyme, beans, broth, tomatoes, and sweet potato. Return the skinned chicken pieces to the pot. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and summer (covered) for 30-40 minutes.
6. Remove the chicken pieces and continue simmering the stew for another 15-20 minutes (until beans are tender). When the chicken is cool to the touch, remove the meat from the bones, shred it, and return it to the pot.
7. Ensure that chicken is hot and veggies are tender. Stir in parsley, remove from heat, and serve. Sprinkle the bacon on top of the bowls full of stew.

Notes:
-I imagine this would taste good with any part(s) of chicken, I just had thighs on hand.
-I understand if you're skeptical about the sweet potato. I was! But next time I actually might add 2 of them, it worked SO well with the dish.
-Of course, the cold weather makes this a great seasonal dish. In addition, all the vegetables & herbs in this dish were things I had on hand, fresh, from local sources because they store so well (dried beans and root veggies). Eating locally at this time of year is certainly harder, but not impossible. I think the only thing in my stew that was not local was the tomatoes (I didn't can my own this year, as tomatoes came in season SO late this summer. I'm hoping to do that next year!), salt, pepper, and olive oil. Oh, and this bottle of wine might not have been local--but there's certainly local options.
-Oh, and once again--this is great with fresh bread. A full, hearty meal to keep you going on a cold day!

Dyeing Follow up (and some food!)

2009-12-02T16:54:00.002-05:00

OK, first the picture of the finished roving I blogged about last week:

This particular roving won't be in the shop, as it was for a wholesale order. But if you want some similarly purple yarn or fiber, let me know as I am happy to take custom orders! :-)

A few other words about the dyeing process, which I didn't cover last time:
1. Care should be taken in the mixing & handling of acid dyes. Read the directions that come with them and take appropriate precautions. These may include wearing a mask when mixing the dye powders and wearing gloves when dyeing.
2. Any vessel that you're using dyes in should NOT also be used for food. If you review my dyeing post and my older post on apple butter, you will see in the pictures that I have a separate crockpot for food. This also goes for other forms of dyeing with acid dyes--microwaves, pots, etc., should be either for food OR for dye.
3. I don't dye exclusively in crockpots. The other method I use most frequently is really well explained in this post by Diane Mulholland. This method is really great for handpaints where I don't want as much blending of the colours as I get in the crockpot.

There's probably more, but I can't think what. So if you still have any questions after my posts, let me know!

In a not-really-related note, my hands looked like this earlier this week:

Nope, that wasn't the result of forgetting gloves when dyeing (although it could be, so take my advice from above, please!). That was the result of peeling a bunch of beets to make this tasty borscht:

The recipe was from Tyler Florence, and I didn't make too many modifications. We enjoyed it quite a bit, despite the complaints from some reviewers that it wasn't "authentically Russian." To them, I say a) Russia is a big country and not everyone cooks the same and b) borscht is a general term from much of Eastern Europe, and doesn't mean the same thing everywhere. So get over yourselves and enjoy this tasty dish!

We served it with some homemade bread and a cabbage & carrot salad (OK, yeah, that's basically fancy coleslaw).

Oh, for best-ever bread, check out Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day (and the new version, Healthy Bread in 5 Minutes). If you don't think you have time to bake good bread, these books might just change your mind.

I've been busy in the kitchen this week, because my next blog post will probably also be food--a recipe I created last night for a chicken, white bean, and sweet potato stew. Different, but SO good. Hopefully I'll have time to write that up tomorrow.

Dyeing Process

2009-11-23T15:03:00.002-05:00

I've had a few how-to questions about my dyeing process, so I thought I would try to document it today. It's neither very scientific nor very exciting, but here it goes!

First, the building blocks. For today's example, I photographed some merino top, but the process works about the same with yarns, too. I start with:

8 ounces of combed merino top, as it comes from my supplier. Sometimes I subdivide into 4 oz. lots to dye separately, but usually I dye 8 oz. at once.

and...

My dye stocks. I use acid dyes (there are several different brands out there. Right now I'm using both Jacquard & Country Classics). I pre-mix the powder with water in those bottles, so it's ready to go when I am. Quantities depend on the dye and the colour you want--but 1 tsp of powder per bottle for the Jacquards, and maybe closer to 2 for the Country Classics. (their label recommends a higher concentration, but I don't find it necessary--in fact, I think that's too much.)

Next, the fiber prep. The wool soaks in my laundry sink with a few tablespoons of white vinegar and a lot of water. This picture has the 8 oz. plus a few skeins of yarn, too. Soaking time varies a lot--some fibers need longer than others to get thoroughly wet. One hour is good for most. After that, I pull what I want out, wring out most of the excess water (gently!), and place it in my crockpot. I douse it with a bit more white vinegar:

Now the fun part--color! So, I have premixed stocks in several shades of primary colours, plus a few more that I find hard to recreate by mixing. Sometimes I use these colours as they are, and sometimes I mix. Today's fiber was destined to be several shades of purple, so I mixed some of my different reds and blues in cups:

Sometimes I use that turkey baster to apply just a bit of dye, but most of the time I just pour it on. As I said, I'm very nonscientific. I keep track of what colours & blends I use to create a specific colourway, but not how much of each or where I paint them--so each time I dye, it's a one-of-a-kind creation. Today I poured my different purples on in splotches:

and then gently pressed the dye into the wool by hand (otherwise it puddles at the bottom of the pot). I do this in layers in the pot, until all the wool is in and covered:

Then the crockpot gets turned on to high, and it cooks for typically 1-3 hours. After that, I turn it off and let it cool completely in the pot before putting in back into that vinegar water for a rinse.

I'm sure you're curious about what this one looked like when it was done. So am I! It's in the cooling phase now, so I won't have photos for you until it's rinsed and dry--but I promise I'll put them up here!

Not Just a Day at the Beach

2009-11-18T10:56:00.003-05:00

Jenny Weekend, 2009. What, you may ask, is Jenny weekend? It's a weekend for the friends of Jenny Chang to honor her memory and celebrate the wonderful, but short life that touched so many of us. A big part of Jenny's legacy was her amazing ability to find the best people around her and instantly connect with them. We often say that Jenny collected friends--and it was an honor to be part of that collection, especially when you meet the other amazing people she picked up along her journey!

While she was alive, Jenny helped to organize gatherings and parties that brought together these diverse collections of people. We all loved meeting each other so much that we have decided to continue to gather every year around her birthday. This year was the 4th annual event, and 6 of us gathered in Dewey Beach, Delaware.

Unfortunately for us, Delaware happened to be finishing its date with the remnants of Hurricane Ida when we arrived. The main road through town was closed due to flooding--but the good news was it was closed 1 block based the beach house we had rented!

(and yeah, that's me in the rearview mirror there!)

It was a very short weekend, and with the rainy weather we didn't really spend time at the beach. However, another of Jenny's talents was bargain shopping, so it seemed fitting to spend much of Saturday at the outlet malls (tax free in Delaware!). I had forgotten the shoes I planned to wear to dinner that night, so I was obliged to pick up these:

Cute, AND they're Dr. Scholls, so they're actually pretty comfy. :-)

We then had a fabulous dinner in Rehoboth Beach at Eden Restaurant. Delicious, definitely would recommend it to anyone headed that way.

Sunday morning before heading out we wandered over to the beach to check it out. The sun didn't come out until after we got in the car, but the rain had stopped, at least! There were quite a few people out, including 2 surfers trying (without much luck) to catch these waves:

And then we all headed home amidst discussion about where to have next year's Jenny weekend. No clue yet where we'll head, but there will definitely be good times and good company, just the way Jenny would have wanted it.

Eating Seasonally: Maple Cinnamon Apple Butter

2009-11-11T11:31:00.003-05:00

On Sunday, we had a birthday party for Catt at my house. She brought some homemade bread (yum!), so I pulled out some of my apple butter to go with it. It was well-received, so I decided that when I made another batch this week I would actually write down the recipe to share with people. It's super easy, but the peeling and chopping is time consuming.

It's not an exact science, and the ingredients can be varied according to what you have on hand or your personal preferences, but here's what I did:

5-6 pounds apples (enough to fill the crockpot within an inch of the lid. I used about half Ambrosias and half McIntoshes. I think it's always a good idea to use more than one type, but experiment with whatever you have on hand.)
3-4 T maple syrup (depending on how sweet you like things)
3-4 t cinnamon
dash salt, cloves, nutmeg (again, vary the spices as you wish)

1. Peel & chop apples. The past few times I have just roughly chopped after peeling, but this time I tossed them in the food processor. I think the finer dice may have sped up the cooking process. Toss the chopped apples in the crockpot.

2. Stir in syrup & seasonings.
3. Put crockpot on high heat for the longest time you can, and stir occasionally. Mine maxes out at 6 hours on high, so I had to go back and turn it back to high for a total cooking time of about 8-9 hours. You'll know it's done when it has all turned a lovely dark brown caramel color and the apples are basically melted. Last time, I actually left it on overnight. The crockpot reverted to the "keep warm" mode at some point, and I woke up to some really caramelized--but delicious apple butter. Oh, it should be noted that your house will smell insanely delicious for this entire time.
4. Remove the lid on the crockpot and allow any excess liquid to cook out (maybe 30 minutes more on high)

(Note how much it has reduced in volume!)
5. You can either leave it as is, or use an immersion blender to smooth it out.
6. Package it for immediate use (tupperware in the fridge) or can it and process in boiling water about 10 minutes for long term storage.

Yield: varies by how much you allow it to cook down, but I usually get 2-3 500 mL jars. Yup, 5-6 pounds of apples reduces A LOT!

Usage: well, straight up is pretty good. On bread/toast, of course. But I also like it a lot on oatmeal or mixed in with some plain yogurt. Really, what doesn't taste good with maple and apple?

More about Melody

2009-11-06T14:34:00.002-05:00

So when I posted the teaser picture of our new dog (Melody), I think I promised to tell you a little more--and to share a few more photos of Her Cuteness. Because my brain isn't feeling up to a technical fiber-related post right now, I'm going to do that today!

Some background: our last dog (Magic) was a Samoyed. He was my family dog and then became my dog, and was a total sweetheart. We had him for 13 or 14 years until he couldn't walk anymore--that was a bit over 3 years ago. This was mostly before we owned a digital camera, so the only electronic photo I have of him is this one:

Yeah, that's us curled up on the couch, both sound asleep, with the moving boxes stacked in the background.

After some time passed, we knew we would want another dog (probably another Sammie), and wanted to go through a rescue group to get one. A fenced yard was a requirement, though, and at the time our next door neighbors' houses were still under construction so it wasn't a great time to put up the fence. We finally got a fence put up, and then we realized that we were probably going to be moving soon--so another delay.

And that was wise, because for a while we were living in 2 different cities with lots of commuting back and forth, and even when I moved to Waterloo we were in a condo and both gone long hours. Would not have been a nice life for a dog. Anyway, we finally got into the house this summer, and had a fence put up soon after--and before that was even done, I started scouring rescue sites to see if I could find a good fit for us.

The Sammie rescue group in Michigan had a few dogs, one of which sounded like a good fit, so we agreed that while I was down there visiting my mom I would also go meet Melody. Here's a picture from that first meeting:

She was a bit shy and stressed, I think, but was clearly very sweet. We were able to learn a bit about her--she's 5 years old, and (along with her "brother", Mozart) was surrendered to a shelter in Kentucky. We don't know why the family gave them up--they both seemed well cared for, and had been with this family for their whole lives, so we are assuming it was some kind of hard times. So sad--I can't imagine having to give up my dog because of money or a move, it would be heart breaking. Anyway, I went home so we could talk it over, and we agreed that we would like to adopt her. We had a big trip planned, so we agreed that we would pick her up when we returned. And the rest is history.

But, just so you can share my joy, here are a few more photos! :-)

When we first brought her home, she made this face every time the camera came out:

She still makes that face sometimes, but we're finding her a bit more relaxed, so eventually we started to get some photos with her ears up where they belong!

Like this one, hanging on the couch with my mom.

And this is her on the loveseat that she has claimed as hers:

We get the big couch, and she gets the little one. Sometimes she curls up really tiny on it, and other times she sprawls out like this. Beware--if you come to visit and are wearing black, don't sit on the loveseat. Really, coming to my house wearing black is dangerous no matter where you sit, though. The fur sticks to everything!

A Tough Nut to Crack

2009-11-02T09:21:00.002-05:00

Anyone have much experience with black walnuts? I'm pretty certain that until this week, I had only experienced them in chopped form in some desserts, although I can't swear to that right now. I really didn't know much about them at all when they appeared on the list for the buying club. I knew I wanted to get some local nuts to try this fall, and walnuts are a favorite, so I decided to go for it. There was a caution on the order form that heartnuts would be hard to crack, so I assumed that everything else on the list could be cracked with a nutcracker.

Well, that was wrong! Several attempts and some very sore hands later, we decided to search for more information on how best to crack them. One method that was mentioned repeatedly was to boil them, so we moved on to that:

On the left, before boiling, and on the right after

After boiling, they still couldn't be cracked with a nutcracker. It did make them slightly easier to smash with a hammer, but this is a messy process. And the result was not a lot of nut:

And yes, apparently those small pieces are normal. The meats of black walnuts are quite soft, so they don't stay together well.

However, I did notice one thing after boiling--I had a pot full of lovely dark brown liquid. So I grabbed my dyeing books and discovered that walnut is a substantive dye. This means it's among the few natural dyes that becomes fast without any other chemical additives (known as mordants in the dyeing world, these additives are usually various metals). Well, you know what I did then, of course:

See that lovely dark liquid in the middle? Pretty, no?

And the after:

It's a lovely light brown! Of course, this got me searching for other substantive dyes that could be easily obtained. I haven't played with any yet, but may soon try various barks, teas, lichens, onion skins, etc. It seems that most will give colors in the brown family, but you can sometimes get oranges, pinks, etc.--so I will have to play and see what I can do.

And as for the walnuts? Well, I'm thinking I'll try to see how many times you can boil them before you get all the color out. Perhaps repeated boiling will improve cracking, but I'm not counting on it--so maybe the squirrels will want them? And next month, I'm ordering Persian walnuts from the buying club! (having now learned that Persian walnuts are what I know as English walnuts, and are generally crackable!)

Going Batty

2009-10-27T16:03:00.003-04:00

As I mentioned before, I left the Spinning Loft with more than just all my fun & funky sample yarn. Of course, I scarfed up some fabulous fibers (There was some to-die-for black merino, among others). But I also came home with some new toys.

This one I was pretty sure I was going to get before I got there:

Schacht Ladybug wheel! No regrets at all so far, I'm really loving her. Interestingly, I had expected that my Symphony would still be my "workhorse" wheel, better for laceweights and high yardage. But the Ladybug can churn out some pretty fine yarns at a pretty high speed. And its smaller footprint works well in our smaller family room, especially now that we have the dog. (Oops, first blog mention of the dog? OK, picture time!)

That's Melody, 65 pounds of beautiful Samoyed from the Michigan rescue group. I certainly have plenty more to say about her, but I'm trying to stay on topic today.

And that's the other toy, there--my new Strauch Petite Carder. I'd been pondering a drum carder for a little while, especially since seeing what some people have done when they "batterized" some hand dyed fibers from Spunky Eclectic and elsewhere. So I brought home this new toy, too.

It's had a bit of a learning curve to it, but I think I'm getting the hang of it. Something clicked a few days ago, and I started cranking out lots of batts:

Some of these will be among my upcoming Phat Fiber samples. And one set will be listed in my shop by the end of the day today as my first for-sale batts:

Those are 2 batts in "Dreamsicle" that will be sold as a set. I'm off to weigh & measure now so that I get the vital stats right, then they will be for sale. They are very thoroughly blended and super soft, and I think any spinner would enjoy them.

Eating Seasonally: Squash Muffins

2009-10-26T14:38:00.003-04:00

A while back I had written about my quest to find more local food sources. While this was a surprisingly big struggle when I lived in the country, it's easier now here in Waterloo. This area has an incredible concentration of local food sources, including many CSAs, farmers' markets, and (possibly my favourite) a local buying club, Bailey's. What I love about Bailey's is that it makes it possible to find local sources of things that aren't commonly available from the market or a CSA--flour, nuts, crackers, you name it.

Anyway, now that I have access to an abundance of local foods, I'm making a more concerted effort to eat what's in season (with some attempts at preservation for the winter, of course). And I know I'm not the only person around trying to do that. So I thought I'd make some time once in a while to write up some recipes and ideas I have in my quest to eat mostly local, seasonal food. (It should be noted--I am not eating 100% local, or any strict percentage. I still love coffee, chocolate, olive oil, citrus, etc. So my recipes won't necessarily be "100 mile", but they will always include local ingredients.)

First up--the squash muffins I made yesterday. My inspiration was a pumpkin bread recipe from Alton Brown, which I made a few weeks ago. It was delicious, but it didn't really seem healthy enough for breakfast. I felt like I could up the healthiness while still preserving flavor--and using a different gourd. Here's what I came up with:

1 C Brown Sugar
3/4 C Pear Sauce (or Apple Sauce. I had pear sauce cooking anyway, so I used that!)
3 eggs
1 t vanilla
2 T maple syrup
4 C shredded squash (I used 2 acorn squashes & 1 sweet dumpling. Shredding them by hand is a bit of a pain--I peeled them with a veggie peeler and then shredded in my food processor)
1 C whole wheat flour
1 C white flour
2 t cinnamon
1 t baking soda
1/2 t baking powder
1/2 t salt
pinch freshly grated nutmeg

1. Preheat oven to 325 F and prep your muffin tin
2. Beat brown sugar, pear (apple) sauce, eggs, vanilla, and maple syrup until smooth. Stir in squash.
3. Gradually stir in dry ingredients until just combined. (proper bakers would sift them all together. I never do. Do as you like!)
4. Fill muffin cups about 3/4 full and make 25-30 minutes, until golden brown on top. Move to a cooling rack and let rest until cool to the touch.

A few notes:
* This made 21 muffins for me, and not huge ones. However, my baking powder and baking soda are old (I learned yesterday that they start to lose effectiveness after 6 months and really become ineffective after 10. This was news to me!). If you have fresh, you'll probably get better rise.
* I took my muffins out close to 30 minutes into baking, and they were still quite soft. I think this is because of the pear sauce--the interior of the muffin has an almost custardy texture. I think it's delicious, but felt you should know.

Here's another look--as you can see, they didn't rise much:

All I Need to Know...

2009-10-23T16:46:00.004-04:00

...I learned from Amy King. For those of you not completely immersed in the world of spinning, Amy King is the woman behind Spunky Eclectic, a fabulous fiber store in Maine (and online)! She is also the author of Spin Control, and in September she was a guest teacher at the Spinning Loft in Michigan.

Even though it was the weekend of the Knitters' Fair in Kitchener, I signed up for both the Friday & Saturday classes and am very glad I did. I feel like I've known Amy for a while from Ravelry, but this was my first time meeting her in person. She's just as funny--and wise--in person as online. She taught us several of the techniques in the book, and at the end of the weekend I left with these sample skeins:

OK, you can't see much of what's going on there, so let me show you two of my favorites. First, the bobble yarn:

Is that not cool?? OK, you wouldn't want to knit a whole big project with it (and if you did, it would take a LOT of fiber!), but it's so much fun. The only problem was that the bobbles were too big to easily slide through the orifice on my wheel--or on most other people's. But I have plans to deal with that!

And the marled yarn:

which knits up like this:

The marled yarn seems practical AND fun to me, so I'm working on perfecting that so I can start selling some in the shop. Two I've tried this week:

Cranberry-Orange

Boy or Girl?

Excuse the bad photos on a few of these, the sun hasn't been out much lately. That's all for today, but in my next installment--look out for what else I left the Spinning Loft with! :-)

Back in the Blogging Game

2009-10-22T17:14:00.002-04:00

I think the blog has largely been replaced in my life by various other social media (Ravelry for my fiber friends, Twitter for shop news, and Facebook for my other friends and family). But I think there is something to be said for trying to write regularly (and not being limited to 140 characters!). I've been inspired by Catt to try to get back in the blogging game.

I have a few ideas for posts in the next few days, but they all depend on my camera cooperating. At the moment there are some pictures trapped in there that I need access to if I'm going to write about them. So stay tuned for further news! :-)

So much news, so little time

2009-06-29T16:39:00.002-04:00

So we did successfully move into the new house (if by successful you mean that ourselves and our possessions are in the building. If unpacking and getting organized are required to achieve success--give me another month!). And I survived the end of school year stuff, although it was quite a slog to the finish. Oh, and I feel like I spent all of June on the road--visiting Michigan, Denver, and working a few extra days in London. I'm sure some other stuff happened too, but by now it would be old news!

So what's the plan for the summer? Three main goals, in any order:
1) Develop the etsy shop more: Expand the stock, promote the shop, consider selling wholesale, etc.
2) Fix up the house: Finish the unpacking, organize the wool & office space, fix up the outside space to enjoy this summer (deck needs to be stripped & refinished, we need a new BBQ, etc.!)
3) Seriously consider the next step career-wise. I'm thinking of taking my Principal's Qualification courses, because there were things about administration that I enjoyed. But I'm also considering other ideas, and still harboring the dream that Waterloo Wools will just take off! :-)

And for some photo content today, it's back to goal #1. I have decided to have regular shop updates every Tuesday (and if it's a busy week, maybe other days too--but we'll start with Tuesday). I have created a flickr set for my first regular update, which will happen tomorrow. I tried to create colourways that relate to Ontario tourist attractions. I had grand ideas in my head about how they should look--some turned out better than others. My surprise favourite is:

Monarch Migration in Falklands.

Stop by the flickr set, or visit the shop for the update tomorrow and let me know your favourite item!

Building Business

2009-05-22T14:02:00.003-04:00

In anticipation of the "expansion" of my etsy shop when I get dye space in the new house (1 week away!! Woot!), I've been spending some time lately working on ways to promote the shop a bit more. I think it's a hard time of year to be selling yarn, wool, and wool products--but if I can build a base now, I might be in good shape when fall comes around.

To that end, today I discovered the Stone Soup Challenge, which is a really neat idea. Everyone who signs up pledges to spend a certain amount of their etsy (or other craft site) profits on fellow artists. This is basically what I do anyways, since at this point my shop is about feeding my craft habit, not about making a real profit. In fact, most months I spend in excess of what I'm taking in--hopefully the ability to dye things myself will start to change that, though! I am looking forward to using this challenge to find some new etsy stores to shop from, though--and when I do, I pledge to mention them here for a bit more promotion.

I'm also working on a bit of advertising, and just in general trying to increase my visibility so people can find the shop. Oh, and this summer I have plans to start selling some of my yarns through a few brick-and-mortar shops. I think there are a few places in ON I can sell them, and I have at least one interested store in the US, so that's super exciting! I'm not sure I can produce fast enough to sustain a lot of LYS business, but I'll take it slow and see how it goes.

Of course, all of this promoting is taking away time from the creating. Maybe I'll get back to that this afternoon!

Getting Creative

2009-05-18T12:43:00.002-04:00

This week has been all about getting inspired by other people, and putting those inspirations into my own designs. Just a bit of creativity peeking out!

First, last weekend's big weaving project--not quite in its finished state, but as close as it gets right now:

It's a woven bag. Warp & handles are MiddleEarthKnitters sock yarn in "The Ents", and the weft is Hello Yarn Club combed top in "Peat." It was woven in one piece, and I've done some rough seaming to assemble it. My inspiration was a woven pillow that I saw on Ravelry made out of HY roving, and then a bag design from Handwoven. It needs a lining to make it a bit more sturdy, but my sewing machine is in storage for another 2 weeks, so I can't do too much more with it. But it is SO SOFT!!

Then yesterday I got very inspired by a question on one of the Rav forums. A few years ago I tried to find some patterns for UNC dishcloths, but didn't find one. I made a few of my own, and kept some notes, but never organized them. After a request from someone on Rav for this type of pattern, I dug my notes back out. Today I made the Tarheel version:

I've written up the pattern and hope to be uploading it to Ravelry soon in case anyone else wants to make one! I'm also hoping to get around to a design for one with the interlocking NC logo, so we'll see how that goes.

And finally, there is the sock design I'm working on. Not much to show off right now:

But it's growing fast, so I'll have the first one done soon. I'm combining bits and pieces from 3 sources here--a stitch pattern I found on Ravelry, a heel from Cat Bordhi, and pedicure/flip-flop toes from another pattern. We'll see how it all works out!

Oh, and guess what? Next weekend the K-W Knitters Guild is hosting Cat Bordhi. I'll be going to her Sunday workshop, which is "Dancing Along New Pathways"--apparently we get to play around with Cat and come up with new ways to make socks. Sounds exciting, and I'm thinking it will only further fuel my creativity!

Fun with Fringe

2009-05-04T12:51:00.003-04:00

One of the frustrating things I have found about weaving is figuring out how to best finish a project off. I understand there are entire books of finishing techniques for weaving, and it's probably about time that I look them up and learn some new ideas. At my weaving class, we learned to do twisted fringe, as seen here:

Our instructor had a neat little gizmo for twisting the fringe, but it isn't terrible hard to do my hand, so I've finished a lot of my scarves that way.

Even easier is just doing simple knots:

I could swear that I once just left the fringe completely "as is" with no knotting or twisting, but I can't find any photos that show that, so maybe I made that up.

However, I will admit that these options left me wanting more. I thought there must be more ways to finish a scarf, but for the life of me I couldn't figure out what they would be. Then I saw a picture of someone else's finished work on Ravelry, in which she had tied a cool pattern of knots into the fringe. I knew right away that I wanted to do it, so I proceeded to Google. Lo and behold, I found this fabulous reference.

And now I have this cool triple-knotted fringe:

I have to say, this left me very excited, and I am now in search of even more ways to finish my fringe. Got an idea for me? Please let me know!

New in Stock!

2009-04-24T15:24:00.002-04:00

I've added a new section to my Etsy shop this week, featuring handwoven items. I'm discovering that a Rigid Heddle loom means that I will rapidly end up with more scarves than I can wear or gift, so I might as well try to sell a few.

I expect that I will mainly feature scarves made from my handspun yarns, although one of the two I listed today is from a commercial yarn. I may also branch out into other handwoven items, not just scarves...we'll see where it goes!

More pictures are on the site, but these are the 2 scarves currently available:

A few tastes of Honduras

2009-04-24T13:03:00.003-04:00

So my camera did turn up, and I've managed to get the photos uploaded. Unfortunately, I didn't get that many great shots (most were taken from the window of the bus!), but I can share a few.

We took a LONG drive in which we crossed almost the entire country, so I got a few snapshots of the varying terrain we passed:

Our home base was the city of Comayagua, which has a lovely central square with a cathedral:

On Good Friday, there is a procession from the Cathedral. Groups of people prepare "carpets" on the streets for this the night before. The carpets are usually made out of dyed sawdust, and portray a variety of images--typically Biblical, but not always. We were at the orphanage when the actual procession occurred, but we did take an early morning walk to see the carpets as they were being finished. I have a ton of pictures of these, the colours and detail work were amazing. It's hard to pick just a few to show off!

This one was made by the family that owned our hotel, a church group from Minnesota, and the children from the orphanage:

Check out the detail in this one:

We took a group of children to the Mayan ruins at Copan. We only had about an hour or so to see the ruins, but it was a very impressive site. Seemed much better preserved than what I saw at Tulum in Mexico:

Check out the intricacy of the carvings in the stonework:

Everytime this cart passed us in the village, I tried to get a photo, but he moved so fast I usually didn't even get my camera out in time. This day he was driving through the yard of the school, which slowed him down enough to get this:

However, one day he actually stopped and let one of the other volunteers take a photo of me SITTING on the cart! She's still at the orphanage, but I'm hoping she emails me the photo when she gets home in a few weeks.

Most of the rest of my photos are of kids at the orphanage or of my students working on projects, which I won't be sharing here. I wish I had taken more photos, and I wish I had been able to really get out and see more while we were there. Perhaps a return visit is in order!

I'm back...

2009-04-21T10:01:00.002-04:00

So I arrived back from Honduras at about 4 am on Saturday, and the movers showed up at our house around 8:00. I managed to survive the packing and loading with only minor issues--I did somehow let them pack up my one-cup coffee maker--normally kept on my desk at school and only brought home so I could have coffee during the move, so the next 6 weeks without that could be interesting. I also apparently wasn't looking when they packed up the bathroom, and have had to go buy a new toothbrush, hairbrush, and a few other small necessities. But all in all, that's not so bad, right?

Sunday we cleaned, and Monday we signed the papers and turned in the keys. (oh, and collected a nice cheque, so it's hard to complain about that!)

Fortunately school is closed today (Baha'i holy day), so I have a little bit of time to unwind and catch up on life before going to work tomorrow. I have bags and boxes and suitcases to unpack, mail to catch up on, and probably quite a few phone calls and emails to return. And I would love some time to process my trip, but am not sure how that's going to go. If I'm really lucky I'll take an hour and sit down at my spinning wheel and see if I remember how it works after 3 weeks away from it!

Photos from Honduras...I didn't take a lot of good ones, but there were some. However, I'm not sure where my camera is now. It might be in my car, or Stephen's car, or a box, or...we'll see. Most of the best photos were taken by others, though, so I'm hoping they share them soon. I'll post again when I have something to share!

Now it's time to get to work, I think...

And in other news

2009-03-19T19:40:00.002-04:00

This is more of an update post, no fiber arts here. Just in case there are some non-knitting friends & family out there checking in to see what's going on!

First up, I received quite the BIG birthday present yesterday...we bought a house! We'd been looking for a few weeks and had seen some good properties, but we lucked into finding a really great place this week and reached an agreement on it last night. The market here seems to really be heating up--a lot of the properties we looked at sold at or above asking price, and some went to multiple offers. We feel really lucky to have been able to get our offer in before anyone else started bidding for it, because there was a lot of activity on the house it's first day on the market.

I haven't taken any pictures myself yet, but I think this link will get you to the pictures in the listing. If it doesn't work, maybe I'll get some pictures myself next week!

We don't move in until the end of May, so we'll be stuck living condo life for 2+ months still. But I think I can take it, knowing the end is in sight--and knowing that we have such a great house to go to! I especially love the outdoor space--the wooded lot, the deck, the patio, the fact that it backs onto a trail (that's not a road in the pictures, it's a walking trail!). There's just a small front yard to mow, but plenty of space for planting out back, and maybe a container veggie garden on the deck where there will be lots of sun. Of course, the St. Jacobs farmers market is a short walk from the house, so I don't really NEED to grow my own veggies!

In other news...I just learned today that I'm going to be chaperoning a school trip to Honduras in 2 weeks! We send our grade 11 students every year on a service trip to an orphanage there, but this year one of the regular chaperones had to pull out for medical reasons. (She's OK, but her doctors have suggested that she shouldn't be heading to the third world right now.) She asked me to fill in for her, so I'm scrambling to get ready for that now. (vaccinations, etc.) It should be a really great experience, I've actually thought before how great it would be to go--although the timing isn't great. I'll get back 2 days before the closing date on the house we're moving out of! Under the circumstances, we plan to pay movers to do as much of the work as possible (including packing).

OK, I think that's all the big stuff. I'm on "vacation" for a bit longer, although still doing some telecommuting. Plus, most of my time off now will go to planning for the move and the trip. But I'm still squeezing in some craft time, and might have more pictures before I flee the country. Watch this space! :-)

Fireside Frenzy

2009-03-19T14:14:00.002-04:00

I'm focusing this post on some finished knitting today, and will be posting another "big news" post separately! So here's what I'm showing off today...excuse the bad photography:

Fireside Footies in my handspun Spunky Eclectic club fiber (December colourway--Champagne, domestic wool blend).

This pair is for Stephen. I've been talking about knitting him some slippers for ages, and was thinking of something in grey--so when I finished this yarn I knew that was its destiny! BTW, the yarn looked like this:

Worsted weight singles--about 225 yards. This was shorter than what the pattern called for (240 yards), so I was a bit nervous. In fact, I decided to knit a test pair for myself out of some Patons Classic Wool Merino just to be sure I would have enough handspun:

There was leftover yarn from this pair, so I proceeded with Stephen's and also had quite a lot of yarn leftover. I would say that (depending on the exact yarn, how much it felts, and the finished size) you could easily make a pair of these out of 200 yards of worsted weight.

Now just a note about the pattern...it's not the clearest set of directions I've ever encountered. First, and this is a small complaint, in the directions for the heel flap it says "work R 1&2 for 12 rows". I'm quite certain this is a typo and that the author meant 12 REPEATS--a total of 24 rows. 12 rows would be way to shallow of a heel. From looking at other people's work, I think pretty much everyone has figured this out.

The bigger problem I encountered was in working the heel turn. The directions as given do not work out--you wouldn't be able to work 7 rows of the heel turn pattern, and you would end up with more than 14 stitches left. For my pair, I muddled through and came up with my own modified version:
R1: S1 P12 P2tog P1
Turn
R2: S1 K3 K2tog K1
Turn
R3: S1 P to one stitch before the break (the last turn) P2tog, P1
Turn
R3: S1 K to one stitch before the break (the last turn) K2tog, K1
work rows 3 & 4 for 7 more rows (until no st remain to be worked)
(14 st should remain)

This gives you the right number of rows & stitches, but does make a pretty narrow heel. It actually worked well for my foot, though.

But after working that option out, I received a message from a Ravelry user with a link to her own corrected version. After reading it, I think that she has figured out what the designer actually meant. So I used this version to make Stephen's pair, and it seems to have worked out quite well.

OK, so that's what I've turned out in knitting lately. More life news to come shortly, and maybe a spinning post as well...

February Lady

2009-03-08T12:25:00.002-04:00

I have another finished object, and this one was a bigger one--so it was a nice feeling of accomplishment!

February Lady Sweater, in Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride Worsted. (well, I think that's what it is--it was yarn given to me from a sweater my aunt frogged. The ball bands were gone, so no clue which colour. Luckily there was plenty there to make this project!) Started this in the fall, and it was a quick knit, but it sat around for most of December and January untouched. Picked it back up in early February and finished it before we left on vacation.

The buttons are from a local artisan, and I love them. There was one leftover from the set, maybe I'll use it as the closure on a purse? Not sure.

There's also been plenty of spinning this week. 2 new yarns in the shop:

A second skein of Sumac BFL sock yarn.

Wensleydale worsted in "Joshua Tree". This has a great sheen about it. The yardage is a bit short (120), which apparently is common for this fiber. However, there's plenty for a hat or some mitts, and it would be nice and warm!

And now I'm spinning for me:

These batts were from the Spunky Eclectic group batt swap on Ravelry. Corriedale/Colonial wool, with just a bit of glitz. It's my first time spinning with sparkles, actually! One is all done, and I'll tackle the other later today while watching the Duke-UNC game, I think.

Back from Mexico

2009-03-02T11:03:00.003-05:00

I can't believe February went by without a single post here. My excuse will have to be my Mexican vacation, I guess...even though we were only gone for 1 week. We returned this past Friday from a fabulous week of sunshine in the Mayan Riviera. It was the first time we've done a real sun vacation like this, and I can understand the appeal. It was so nice to just sit and relax and get WARM!

I won't post all the photos here, they are up on my Facebook though, if anyone is dying to see them. (And if you're not on Facebook and are still dying to see them, I can email you the link if you want!)

I've added a few new yarns to the etsy shop lately. I'm particularly proud of this singles yarn, Mandy:

And also in BFL, Sumac:

Both are soft and delicious! :-)

Oh, and the Hello Yarn "Buckland" chain-ply featured in January did NOT go to the shop...it became this hat:

I love the way the colours worked out in this, and it's SO soft. I can't believe it's Finn, the last Finn I spun wasn't nearly this soft. The pattern (Ravelry link) was perfect for handspun with long colour changes like this, and was a really quick finish. Just what I needed to get my knitting game back!

Now it's time to get back to real work...I think in a week away from school I have some email to catch up on, before I report back in person tomorrow. Plus all the housework, laundry, etc. that pile up after a vacation!

Waterloo Wools now open!

2009-01-30T17:14:00.004-05:00

After months of talking about it, I finally got around to opening my etsy shop today! For right now I am just selling handspun yarns. I hope to add hand-dyed fiber, but given the limitations of the condo I think I'll wait until I'm in a space more conducive to the mess of dyeing.

I've just listed a few items right now, but within minutes of listing I had sold the first 2 yarns! I can't quite believe it...WHY did I wait this long?? Now I need to get spinning so I can restock the shop.

I've also realized I need to keep better notes when I spin. It took a long time to get some of these items listed because I hadn't written down all the details when I first spun the yarns. Hopefully the process will be faster if I list items as I spin them from now on.

I finished 2 other yarns recently that aren't in the shop:

Hello Yarn November club fiber in Buckland, Finn wool, n-plied, worsted weight, 150 yards. I like this a lot, but I also think it's sellable, so I might list it.

Spunky Eclectic Merino/Bamboo in Sangria. 2-ply, fingering weight, about 430 yards. I'm also debating about using this myself or listing it for sale. We shall see!

Found: 1 camera & the joy of weaving!

2009-01-13T16:09:00.004-05:00

I think I know where the other missing items are, too--there's a Rubbermaid storage bin that didn't make the move, apparently! I'm curious about what all is in it, actually, since I've only noticed a few items missing. But I'll be back at the house tomorrow, so I guess I'll find out then.

In the meantime, my camera turned up. Which is good news, because I spent 4 days at my mother's house and we wove three scarves. I took photos of 2 of them, so I can share those now:

That one's from handspun, merino/tussah, dyed by me. Just plain weave, but I love the way the colours came out. CLose-up:

That scarf was finished much faster than I expected for a few reasons. One, my mother got me the stand for my loom as a Christmas present, and that makes SUCH a huge difference. Much easier and more comfortable to sit and weave! Second, my cousins' daughters (both 11 years old) came over for a sleepover at my mom's house, and they teamed up to weave at least 1/3 of the scarf! They developed a 4-handed system of passing the shuttle and raising/lowering the heddle, and they flew through it. They were pretty proud of themselves, as they should be!

Anyway, since the scarf was finished just halfway through my visit, we decided to scrounge through my mom's yarns and put something else on the loom. She had some yarn she'd picked up on sale and we played with that. I didn't get a picture of it, but it worked up really fast--pretty thick yarn, and a skinny scarf (really fast warp!). I did pretty much the whole thing while sitting beside my mother and helping her learn to use iTunes and her new ipod!

So we warped the loom one more time, this time with some Kidsilk Haze and a Louisa Harding yarn (Jasmine, I think?). And I decided to use my new pick-up sticks to try to create a pattern. I didn't have any books with me, but a bit of searching turned up this Waffle Weave pattern. So I wove mostly plan weave with panels of this. The final result:

The loom is now empty, and may actually stay that way for a few days--tomorrow I head back to London for my 2 days of work, so I'll probably wait to warp it until I return. I'll also be bringing my wheel back here with me Thursday night, which is exciting. I now have 3 spindles on the go, but I really want to get back to the wheel and churn out some new yarns.

Oh, and while at my mom's I got around to showing her Ravelry! We put her name on the waiting list--it said it was a 2 day wait, but it's been 2 days and they're still showing 950 people ahead of her, so I think they've slowed down the adding a bit. Anyway, she'll be there soon, so that will be interesting. I'll have to be a bit more sneaky with my gifty knitting and things now. :-)

Missing...

2009-01-08T16:27:00.002-05:00

...one camera, 3 UFOs (most especially my half-finished February Lady Sweater), a box of oddment yarn, and one hat. I've pretty much finished going through the boxes and bags that made it to the apartment, and I believe those are the items I remember packing but can't find.

Last time I moved I was super-organized and made a list for each box of what was in it, numbered the boxes, etc. Of course, last time I moved I was moving the whole house at once, and we were using movers. This time it was us throwing stuff in the car and making multiple trips, so it was a rather different system!

So I don't know if there's a box/bag that got left at the house, or if there's something hiding here that hasn't been unpacked, or what. I'll go by the house sometime next week, so I guess we'll find out then! There's a chance most of the knitting items are in a box that might have stayed in the basement, but the camera is a mystery. Plus, it's annoying, as I've actually had time today that could have been used for taking pictures of projects, new fibers, etc. Oh well!

Oh, and in other news...I wasn't actually able to cut the cord with school after all! Starting next week I will be taking on a part-time position as "Acting Vice Principal." I'll be at the school 2 days/week (consecutive days, so I'll just make the round trip drive once a week), and then working from home occasionally beyond that. It's a bit of an experiment--first, if being part-time will allow me to keep up with the responsibilities; second, if someone with no training or qualifications should be a VP; and third, if some of the work of a VP can be done virtually! But the current VP (who is full time) is leaving at the end of January, and they really wanted me to take over. It's flattering to have earned that level of trust, and I had wanted to stay involved at the school somehow--so I'm going to give it a try.

Well, since I have no photos, I won't bore you by describing current projects or anything. Maybe the camera will turn up tonight and I'll get around to showing off some other goodies! Oh, that reminds me...the camera was packed up with its printer dock, which I also haven't found. But that's a clue, so it's time to start hunting. :-)

The "big" move

2009-01-04T18:43:00.003-05:00

It's not really a big move, either in distance or in quantity of stuff that's going with me. After all, we have a furnished apartment, so most of the big stuff is staying in the house until it sells. We just fit one load into Stephen's car for him to take back tonight, and I'll pack the Jeep to the gills tomorrow or Tuesday, and then there will just be a few things left to come get, I think.

Of course, we still did most of those usual pre-move things...the purging of old stuff, the sorting and boxing, the cleaning. The house is officially on the market now, and there will probably be an agent's open house on Wednesday, so it needs to be left in good shape! Plus there was the insane amount of time spent on transferring all our telecom services to the new place. Stephen and I have collectively spent at least 6 hours on the phone dealing with that...and I'm not confident that it will be done right, despite all that.

Needless to say, this hasn't left much room for fiber arts! I did finish a sock this week, but I had dreamed of finishing the whole pair by Thursday and that's not looking likely now! However, at the beginning of break I took photos of a few fibery projects, so I can share those here now.

Plain-weave scarf from handspun. The warp is Spunky Eclectic BFL in "Thermograph" and the weft is Spunky Corriepaca in "Tahiti." There are some decorative floats every few inches, this photo has a close-up of one:

In-progress shot of a honeycomb scarf. Green sock yarn for warp, the weft is mostly Spunky Lame Duck Mallard with some KnitPicks Wool of the Andes as the contrast. This is finished now, but the camera is already packed up, and the scarf needs to be ironed, I think--wet finishing left it a bit raggedy.

Currently on my wheel: Spunky merino/bamboo in Sangria. Finished the first bobbin ages ago, and the wheel has been sitting idle since...umm, I don't want to think about how long. Maybe I'll take it out for an hour of relaxing tonight to prepare for the madness of tomorrow!

OK, next post may not be for a while...immediately after the move I'll go see my mother for a week, and then will begin putting together this new life! Wish me luck.

A Plug for Nadine

2008-12-18T22:28:00.002-05:00

I still have lots to say that has remained unsaid because of the insanity of the last month, so bear with me over the coming weeks as I get caught up. Today was my last day at school--a long, emotionally draining day--so I'm too tired to get into much right now.

But I can make a quick plug for Nadine, who is featured on Boogie's blog this week. Boogie is running a contest for creative ideas for recycling newspapers, and Nadine made a very awesome Christmas tree out of her magazines. Best part is, Nadine's tree is apparently super fast to make (I might just try it out tomorrow, who knows?), which in my life is always a bonus. So why else should you go to the blog and vote for Nadine's creation? Well, there is a prize for one lucky voter as well as for the winning idea!

I was supposed to be off to NC tomorrow, but I have postponed for a day because apparently the snowstorm headed our way is part of "Snowmageddon." Northwest let me change my ticket to Saturday FOR FREE, so you know they're expecting chaos tomorrow. Airlines don't let you do anything for free without a pretty serious reason, I'm thinking. I don't enjoy the drive to Detroit in the best of weather, so I wasn't looking forward to it tomorrow. Should be OK by Saturday, though...wish me luck! And in late December or early January I might just be back for real, with photos and all kinds of fun stuff.

A bit of news!

2008-11-20T18:33:00.002-05:00

There should be lots to say, but I won't take the time tonight to get you caught up on everything from the last 6 weeks or so. However, I will tell you my big news:

Stephen and I have decided about the next step in our lives! The temporary position he had taken in Kitchener is working well, and he plans to stay there permanently (or at least as permanently as anything in our lives has ever been!). After nearly 3 months of living in separate cities, I have decided that I have had enough and cannot keep doing this for the rest of the school year, so I will be moving to Waterloo to join him in January.

There are lots of little details and decisions that go along with this, but that's the main news! We will be getting the house ready to sell and it will hopefully be on the market early in the new year. Stephen has temporary furnished digs in Waterloo where we'll stay while we settle that stuff.

I won't be looking for work immediately. Stephen needs some help getting billing and other things in order, so I'll do a bit of that for him. I'll also have a lot more time to play with fiber, so I think this means I will actually open the much talked about etsy store. In fact, I'm thinking the new location suggests a name...Waterloo Wools? Hopefully opening in mid-January, I'll let you know when it's for real.

And from there...well, we'll see where things take me. I'm struggling a bit with the idea that I will actually have the luxury of taking my time and deciding what I really WANT to do. My income is no longer vital for our survival, so if I want to take time to look for the right job, or go back to school, or experiment with some new career, or "just" be a homemaker for a little while...I can. That's a freedom not many people have, I know, and I really do appreciate how lucky I am.

Obviously I'm pretty happy about this decision. There are a lot of potential upsides to it. I'm not thrilled about picking up and moving again, but I knew it was inevitable, really. I will really miss a lot of things about my school, especially the people. Working there has really changed how I feel about teaching, and I would have a hard time teaching in a more traditional environment now. I feel pretty bad about leaving the kids mid-year, but I've also seen myself get more and more stressed by everything in life lately, and I know I'm not teaching as well as I could be if I were happy. So I think it's the right decision, even thought it's been a hard one.

Well, that's all for now. As I promised last time, there has been some knitting and spinning and even some weaving going on, but I have no photos right now. Next time I'm home when the sun is out, I need to do a big photo shoot!

Shop Ideas?

2008-10-02T14:27:00.002-04:00

A while ago I blogged about possibly starting an Etsy shop. I've still been playing with the idea in my head...it would be fun to try to make a few pennies from fiber arts, and the risk of monetary loss with an etsy shop is pretty low, so if I'm going to start a "business", it's a good way to begin. Plus there's the fact that the chances of my moving soon are ever-increasing, and when I do move I probably won't have work right away, so this seems like a good way to occupy my time.

The drawbacks, as I see them, are small but real: Mainly, I'm not sure my work is really good enough to sell. I've produced a few things recently that I feel confident about, but other times things just don't go right. I'd hate to sell someone something and have them be disappointed by it. Beyond that, there's my fear that I'll become overwhelmed by life and not be as on top of things as a good etsy seller should be.

That being said, I'm leaning towards taking the plunge. But I'm a bit stuck on naming my shop. I played with the idea of continuing sports-themed colours like I did in the summer, and being the "Sporting Spinner" or some such. But sometimes I dye a colour that I just can't connect to sports. And I'm also considering selling fiber, not just handspun, so maybe I don't want spinner in the name?

Then I thought about picking out some local geographic name and going with that. But given how unsettled I am, location-wise, that doesn't seem like a good choice. I mean, if we move to K-W, I could be "Waterloo Wools" or something. But that's not a definite, still!

So...I'm open to ideas and feedback if you have any!

Also, I'm going to share a few of my recent creations:

"Football Season", Targhee 2-ply, about 550 yds to 4 oz. It's heavy laceweight/light fingering. The fiber would make yummy socks, but the thinner parts of the yarn might not be the greatest for socks.

"School Spirit", 2 oz. of Superwash wool dyed in my high school colours!

"Girl Thing", 4 oz. of merino-tussah in purples, pinks, and blues

"Seattle", 4 oz. of alpaca, fingering weight. This was my handspun for the Spunky Eclectic swap. The fiber was not dyed by me, but from a Michigan dyer/alpaca breeder. It was one of the yarns I've been most proud of in my spinning so far, though!

Spinning Update

2008-09-28T09:50:00.002-04:00

As promised, I'm going to show off a few items today so that there's something interesting to look at around here! :-) I have been doing much more spinning than knitting lately, so I'll give you a few of my yarns to look at, plus a few new fiber acquisitions (who am I kidding. A lot of new fiber!).

First, I joined the Spunky Eclectic fiber club in July, and I spun the first shipment, 4 oz. of Romney in Eclipse:

Worsted-bulky singles. I love it, and wish I had had a double dose of it. I thought I had tracked down a second lot of it from another club member, but the deal seems to have fallen through. Waiting to see if I can still snag some before I decide what it's becoming!

I was so impressed with how much fun it was to spin that first Spunky fiber that I started in on some more Spunky goodness....merino-tencel in Toronto:

Fingering-sport weight, 2-ply.

Last month I finished off a spinning project started during the Tour de Fleece, my laceweight blue merino. It sat a while waiting to be skeined, because it was fine and rather tangly, but the job is finally done:

It is super sproingy and squishy, I can't wait to knit something with it. And there is plenty to knit with....if I did the math right, there's over 700 yds of it, so I should be able to do a shawl or something similar.

Now, for the fiber. I'm not sure if I should unveil it all at once...it's rather a lot. Remember, I haven't really blogged in almost 2 months, so there's been a lot of stash acquisition that's gone unshared. I guess I'll start with the early stuff and see how far I get before I run out of steam!

In August I visited my mother, and had lots of fun doing fibery things with family. My cousin's youngest daughter (she's....11, I think??) came over for the day and I let her spin on my wheel (she was a natural!), and then we dyed some fiber. I let her pick all the colours, and just helped her with the process. This is what she came up with:

Merino/tussah silk.

Brown Sheep Superwash wool.

Didn't she do a fabulous job picking out colours? I think she has a future career as a dyer if she wants it! Perhaps we can go into business together....

There's lots more fiber, quite a bit of it from Spunky Eclectic. In fact, I'm realizing that I haven't even photographed my last order. So I'll hold off on that for later. But one last little bit of fibery goodness to share today....from the Spunky Swap! My swap package from my amazing partner, Patty, came yesterday, and I have been truly spoiled:

There is delicious handspun Falkland from Patty, plus the most luscious fiber....optim fiber, a processed merino that has a silky lustre and the softness of cashmere! And several other goodies....a wpi tool, some stitch markers, a PVC niddy noddy, and some firestar. Lots of fun will be had by me!

Hoping for a Calm October

2008-09-23T21:47:00.002-04:00

As expected, things have been extremely hectic lately. I don't have time for a full update now--I have lots of pictures of all kinds of things to share, but tonight isn't the night for it. We're leaving tomorrow morning for a 3 day "middle school retreat" at an outdoor education center. It should be a good trip, but it means I really need my sleep tonight! :-)

But I keep putting off blogging until I have time to do a "proper" post, and at that rate I'll never post at all. So here's a quick update on life. We haven't made any permanent decisions about where we're going, but Stephen has taken a temporary position in Kitchener. This could turn into a longer time position if things work out the way he thinks they will. However, it's not certain yet, so I'm staying put in the meantime. I'm still really enjoying my job (most days!), so I'm not in a hurry to head someplace else just yet.

I've been doing some spinning, but not that much knitting lately. I am signing up to take a beginning weaving course offered by the London Spinners and Weavers Guild starting in 2 weeks, so I'm excited to give that a try.

What else is there? Well, lots of little things, but I can't think of anything else you just have to know right now. Hopefully next time I'm here I'll post some pictures of a few things or maybe even say something insightful. Who knows! :-) As for when that will be....well, although I'm hopeful for October, I'm not confident. We will probably go ahead and finish getting the house ready to go on the market, plus there are a lot of field trips, a group of students visiting our school for the whole month, Thanksgiving, and the commuter marriage that I'm currently living in! Add in yoga & weaving classes, everyday life, and some time for spinning and knitting, and the blog falls pretty far down the list. So I'll see you when I see you!

A quick word before I vanish again....

2008-08-07T12:13:00.004-04:00

I'm headed to Michigan tomorrow for the week, and then will be going to Barrie for a few days, and then back to WORK (staff retreat first, then actual at-school time!). So blogging will probably be headed back to the back burner for a little while....

Umm, what can I report? Oh, I have an FO:

That's Checky from "Wee Knits 3" by Mission Falls, in Misti Pima Cotton. It's the 6 mo. size, although my gauge was tight, so it's a good bit smaller than the pattern says. However, it still seems big to me for a 6 mo. baby, and I'm giving it to a 1 mo. baby, so no worries there....plenty of room for her to grow into it, I think. Here's another photo...the colour was truer in the first one, but this one shows off the pattern better, I think:

Spinning has been slower this week, but I'm taking my wheel to Michigan (where apparently I am giving lessons to the ladies at an LYS there, plus my aunt and her friends?? Don't know if I'm up for that!!). I did dye some fiber, but some of it is for my Spunky swap partner, so I'm not posting pics right now. Oh, speaking of surprises, I'm also working on a little surprise knitting project. It's working up super-fast, so I hope to mail it to someone in the next day or so, and then maybe I'll be able to share the pics. I think I can safely share this little tiny taste of it, so I'll do that:

That's probably about it for now. When next I appear, I hope to have lots to show off....we'll see if I can do it!

Surrounded by Goodness!

2008-08-02T17:35:00.002-04:00

I am surrounded by goodness in many forms today, and just want to rave about them all. I hope this continues to be the theme of my weekend....week.....month!

First, as a follow-up to my post about the dearth of local produce....today I drove home from visiting Stephen in Kitchener, where he's been working this week. I took the "back way" home, and one of the reasons for this was so I could keep an eye out for roadside farms stands. As it's a Saturday, there were quite a few--mostly selling corn, but with some other goodies. I also found a farm market outside of St. Mary's that had lots of yummies. So now I have tons of fresh veggies, plus local goat's cheese, honey, homemade bread, and pastured beef. Oh, and Saskatoonberry jam! Mmmm....just had some of that fresh bread with the goat's cheese and honey, and I can't tell you how good that was.

The other reason I took the back way home is that this allowed me to go through New Hamburg, where Shall We Knit was having a sale. This was my first visit there, but will very definitely not be my last! I was really amazed by their selection....like the nice yarn stores I find when I go visit other parts of the world, but don't see much of around here. Of course, the downside of this kind of selection was that I wanted EVERYTHING. Especially anything that I can't easily find in London. I managed to narrow down my selection, and bought yarn for 2 specific projects, plus 1 skein of Kureyon sock, and some Coopworth fiber to spin. I also bought a bunch of acrylic yarns for the kids at school--nothing too amazing, but a bit of variety for the school stash.

Then I came home and found the last 2 fiber orders I had placed had arrived! Pictures of one of them (the other is all undyed fiber, plus a few new colours of dyes to play with), from Spunky Eclectic:

On the left is some Galaxy BFL in Mercury, on top is the July club fiber (Romney in Eclipse), and bottom right is merino/tencel in Toronto.

Oh, and I did my Thursday learn a new thing....and I did work on worsted v. woolen. I used the tutorials from Spin-Off to try this out. I'm beginning to think that the way I have been spinning is some strange unclassified hybrid--the more I read, the less my technique seems to match anything anyone is doing anywhere. However, I really enjoyed this exercise, especially trying woolen spinning for the first time. I had some difficulty at first, mostly with keeping my hands far enough apart, and keeping my forward hand inactive (my regular spinning method seems to involve an almost equal amount of movement/drafting from each hand!). Once I got the hang of it (sort of), I enjoyed this, and I really like the soft, airy yarn I produced:

Now....I'm off to enjoy the bountiful goodness around me. Time to spin, knit, and eat. Can't get a much better recipe for a pleasant evening, can you? :-)

Well....it sort of counts

2008-07-31T09:42:00.002-04:00

So I didn't exactly meet my goal yesterday, but I did try something new at the wheel, so I think it still counts. I didn't spend any time at the wheel yesterday, then at night after I turned off the computer, I realized I hadn't tackled my spinning challenge. I didn't feel like turning the computer back on to look anything up, though, so I just went back to playing with my alpaca.

I decided to spin a 3rd sample of fiber that I predrafted a fair amount. No picture, it doesn't really look any different than yesterday's 2, but it does seem to be the softest of the three. Maybe it's just that I managed to put less twist in it and it has nothing to do with the predrafting....I don't know.

Then for some reason I decided to switch my hands. I started spinning with my left hand in front when I first got my wheel, and it seemed to work, so I never tried it the other way. Until last night! Lo and behold, it worked quite well with my right hand in front. Possibly it even worked better. When I'm pinching with my left hand, I usually find a fair amount of twist still enters the draft zone, which is a pain. This seemed to happen less when I pinched with my right hand instead. I shall try it some more and see if this is really true, or just a figment of my late-night imagination....but at the very least, it seems I can comfortably spin with either hand in front, which seems like a good thing.

Instead of spinning, I spent yesterday's fiber time shopping at London Yarns and then starting a new knitting project. It was Wednesday sale day, and this week they were discounting sock yarn. While not an amazing steal, it was a good excuse to pick up some sock yarns I haven't tried before:

Estelle Arequipa (superwash wool/alpaca/nylon). It's actually slightly darker than pictured, more deep burgundy/wine colours than bright reds.

Plymouth Happy Feet (superwash merino/nylon). I had a really hard time choosing colours on this one--there were lots of lovely brights. But I finally decided a tamer colour was what I wanted. (there was a gorgeous green shade, but only 1 50 g skein, so I passed). Sorry it's so blurry, I'm really struggling to get good yarn photos lately.

And then I got totally temped by some scrumptious Misti Pima Cotton. I decided this would make the softest baby clothes ever, and so I bought some for a co-worker who just had a little girl and started knitting:

The pattern is Checky, from Mission Falls "Wee Knits 3." It's quite straightforward knitting and is going pretty fast, although it seems to me like it's pretty big.....but she'll grow into it, right?

I'm not setting a new spinning goal today, but maybe I'll get around to tackling yesterday's. I think I'm headed to K-W this afternoon for 2-3 days (Stephen is working there this week), so I'll be away from my wheel and computer until Saturday or Sunday....

Day Two - Check!

2008-07-30T08:10:00.003-04:00

OK, so far, so good. Yesterday I did indeed do spinning from the fold. I decided my baby alpaca would be a good candidate, since it was a fiber I was nervous about spinning. (Although I am STILL nervous that I am going to ruin/waste such a lovely fiber by playing around with it....but what good does it do me, sitting there staring at me? I have to try something with it, right?)

I read quite a few different online tutorials, and I don't want to recommend one here at this point, because I'm not sure any of them was a standout on its own. In fact, a few of them recommended quite different methods, and I haven't played around enough to know if one is better than the other....I may try more of this method today.

So, here is my short segment of alpaca fiber:

Same segment of fibre, folded over with a bit drafted out to join my leader:

I have no while spinning pics, as I had no one to hold the camera. It's hard enough as it is to take pictures of your right hand when you're right-handed. My left hand is not very good at holding the camera AND pressing the button!

I realized after I started spinning that I wanted to try a few methods out to see what worked with this fiber, so I did start creating some samples. I have a large length of single spun up last night, but also these two plied samples (plied using Andean, of course!):

Not much difference between them. On the left is one I spun "regularly", with no predrafting (just split this incredibly airy and beautiful top in half). On the right is one from the fold. The one on the right is maybe a bit softer--the one on the left feels just a tad tight, although it seems balanced. Both were spun after I switched the wheel back to double drive, which revealed a big dilemma to me. I found it much easier to get the take-up I wanted on double-drive....I had started the alpaca in Scotch tension, and kept having to tighten it a bit more to get it to take up before it got WAY overtwisted. This was not an issue in double drive. However, the bobbin rattles like CRAZY in double, and not at all in Scotch. I already have some yarn on the spindle to keep it quiet, but it was a ridiculous racket. So I'm not sure what to do now....

I'm also not sure what technique I'm going to try today, although I'm thinking I need to try out worsted v. woolen to see that difference. Wish me luck!

Training Day 1

2008-07-29T11:01:00.002-04:00

So I accomplished yesterday's goal, with the help of Diane's great Andean Plying tutorial.

I spun 2 leftover singles, 1 superwash merino and 1 silk. Here are my hands all wound up with the Andean bracelets:

And

(the piles in the background are evidence that I am tackling this week's other project, organizing my 7 years worth of lesson plans. The problem is I keep stopping to search out new lesson ideas, so the organizing of the old stuff is rather slow going....)

I tried wearing the bracelet on both hands, as I wasn't quite sure which would be better when working at the wheel. In the end, I settled on the left hand, as shown here:

For some reason I haven't taken photos of the 2 yarns that this created, but I'll create mini-skeins of them later (neither one was very long, as they were leftover singles) and probably do photos then.

I'm having a harder time choosing my next challenge. A lot of the things I want to learn and try require equipment or fiber that I don't have at the moment. I'd love to learn all about preparing fiber in its many forms, but don't have carders, combs, or the other tools of the trade yet. I'm thinking I should find a class somewhere that would let me try out fiber prep before I invest in any equipment....but we'll see.

I also would like to try spinning from batts, but so far I don't have any. I should have bought some in one of my recent fiber orders, which I'm hoping will be delivered this week, but I didn't. So that will have to wait until next time I buy some fiber....

I'm thinking maybe spinning from the fold next....although I'm wishing I hadn't spun up all my silk top the other day, since apparently that's in ideal fiber for this technique. But I'm sure I can scrounge up something to try this on....

I'm also thinking I need to get a better understanding of worsted v. woolen and short v. long draw. So that should keep me busy today and tomorrow, right?

After that....well, I'm open to ideas if anyone has technique suggestions. Otherwise I'll be browsing the Ravelry forums for ideas...

P.S. Just an update on my earlier post on the big tangled mess of yarn. I got almost everything untangled, and then I sorted the yarn and created "project bags" with coordinating colours, and labeled them with ideas for needle size and type of project. I'm hoping this encourages the kids to be more adventurous...oh and no, I'm not coming to untangle any of your yarn messes. I've done my quota of yarn untangling for a while, I think! :-)

The Sporting Spinner

2008-07-28T13:09:00.002-04:00

When I came back from vacation, I started slowly re-immersing myself in the online fibre world. One of the things I found a bit late on Ravelry was the Tour de Fleece--a spinning "competition" that runs during the Tour de France. The idea was to spin every day that the bikers rode--you could take off the Monday rest days, just like they did. I was rather late to the party, but everyone graciously welcomed be anyways, so I started my daily spinning right around the halfway point of the tour--I think my first day was stage 12 of 21?

Some of the spinners in the group were way more productive than I was, but I'm still pretty happy with my output over the 10 days or so I was spinning:

Starting top left in the 4 skeins, that's 3.9 oz/115 yds of merino in "Breakfast at Wimbledon", 4 oz/218 yds of superwash merino in "Tobacco Road", 3.9 oz/128 yds of merino in "The Peloton", and 1.7 oz/102 yds of a wool/silk blend called "In the Rough." Beneath that, on the left bobbin is the first laceweight single of "To Hate Like this is to Love Forever" (merino, will be about 3.9 oz when done....yardage unknown), the right bobbin is leftover singles plied together, and in front is a bit of silk single that's still leftover after going into 2 other yarns.

You may notice that the names of my colourways are a bit unusual! Tobacco Road I take no credit for, that's the name that one came with. But the others are ones I dyed myself, and was struggling to name. I realized while spinning them that I do a lot of my spinning in front of sports on the TV--in this case, mainly the Tour, but also some British Open golf, a bit of Rogers Cup tennis, and bits and pieces of other things. In the fall there will be football followed by, of course, the joys of college basketball....anyway, I thought from now on I will try to come up with sports-themed names for my handspun colourways whenever I can. If I do one day decide to launch that etsy shop, perhaps this will be my niche.....we shall see.

In other spinning news, now that the Tour is over and the Ravelympics haven't begun, I have decided to spend a bit of time in "training". One thing I have realized while watching other spinners post pics of their beautiful yarns is that I have a LOT to learn about the "sport" of spinning. There are so many fibres I haven't used, so many techniques I haven't tried! So this week my goal is going to be to read about or try a new technique or idea every day. I'm just starting to make a list of what those techniques and ideas are, and am combing the web and Ravelry for some thoughts. Today my goal is to try Andean plying on my wheel....I did it on my spindle sometime last year, but haven't tried it since, and never on the wheel. I have a few leftover bits of singles that would be good to practice on, and there are lots of great tutorials out there, so this should be an easy beginning. Wish me luck!

Where has all the produce gone?

2008-07-27T14:10:00.002-04:00

I have several things I've been thinking of blogging about for the last week, but I haven't taken the time to sit down at the computer and do it. Hopefully I'll also get to touch on my spinning exploits here....but first, I want to write about my quest for local produce.

I love to eat, and I love good food. There's been so much written recently about the importance of eating local food, and of course we all know we should eat lots of fruits and veggies (my recent read on the subject was Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food, which I enjoyed and recommend). For much of the year in Ontario, these pieces of advice seem to contradict each other--in January, it's hard to find a lot of local fresh produce, and realistically most of us aren't canning and preserving huge amounts of it. However, now it is the height of summer, the best time to eat local produce. And I live in a small town surrounded by farms, so there should be easy access to such foods, right?

Think again. One thing I have been searching for is a local CSA (Community Supported Agriculture, I believe)--a farm in which you can buy a "share" and then get a weekly box all season of their produce. There are tons of them in the Toronto area, but none within about a 30 minute drive of me, apparently. And driving 30 minutes or more to pick up your veggies every week doesn't seem like a good environmental practice to me.

Our town has a weekly farmer's market, and I've been a few times this summer. This year there seem to be dramatically fewer farmers than in the past, and they're selling fewer fruits and veggies. In fact, yesterday, I don't think there was ANY fruit....no blueberries, no peaches, nothing, despite the fact that they are most definitely in season. We did find some lovely beans, and fresh garlic, and there were a few other veggies around. But not the plenty that one would expect. I'm not sure of the reason for it, although my guess is that it's a combination of lack of demand--despite all the talk about eating local, I don't think there is a big move here yet to do so--and big business farming, which has driven most farmers to plant all their acres with corn and soybeans.

We did head to the larger "farmer's market" in town, which isn't really a farmer's market at all. It's open year-round, and most of the year sells non-local produce, along with a lot of junk, and some local meat. The good news is that right now they do have mostly local produce (although I was made skeptical of some of these claims by the large display of oranges whose price was actually displayed on a Ontario produce sign. Really. Oranges!). So we stocked up there. Sadly, because they are only open Friday & Saturday, and I will probably be out of town those days next week, I will likely have to rely on imported grocery store goods for a little bit....like the Chinese garlic they always have on hand!

Oh, and yes, I know I'm capable of growing my own for many of these products. In fact, I have several packets of seeds of various unusual and heirloom veggies waiting to be planted. But since in the spring I thought we would be long gone from this house by now, I have refrained from putting very much in the ground, focusing on the established herbs and a few potted annual herbs. The good news is that my tomatoes self-seeded last year when a few of them were left to rot on the vine, to I do have a few tomato plants to look forward to....although it may be September before I get anything off of them. But I dream of a day when I have a big, huge vegetable garden and can enjoy all kinds of abundant goodies.

I could rant on and on about this (while I've been writing I've thought about my other foodie quests--pastured meat, a good fishmonger, etc.--which have all borne no fruit so far), but I'll stop here. And maybe later I'll post a more cheery message about my latest spinning exploits during the "Tour de Fleece"!

Oh What a Tangled Web

2008-07-15T12:39:00.002-04:00

Doesn't that look like fun? One of my summer projects is reorganizing all the yarn from school so it's ready to be knit next year. This pile is probably the worst of it. There were lots of little ends (like 1-2 yards of things) mixed in with a couple large hanks. The red one I've been working on for the last hour or so, and I'm dreading the grey one, which is next.

There's still this box to go:

But a lot of that looks neatly wound, at least on top, so we'll see.

Then there's all the knitted that needs finishing from school. I know I've posted before about how proud I am of how far my kids have come with their knitting. But let me show you what they have made this year. Correction: between about February and May, really--not much knitting happened in June, and we made a charity donation in late January:

That's mostly scarves, although a few kids got brave and did slippers and hats. There are a few items in there that were donated by others in the community, but it's almost all from NCCI kids. Most of it is ready to be donated (although I need to find a new recipient for a lot of it, the charity I was working with hasn't responded to my last couple of attempts to donate), but there are some ends that need sewing in, etc.

And then there's the squares:

Those are destined to be baby blankets, but I have to line them all up and sew them together.

And people think teachers have it easy in the summer! :-)

P.S. Flickr is struggling with my photos at the moment. Forgive me if they're not showing up for you....hopefully they will be soon!