Yesterday I wasn't feeling very well so I took a sick day.  It was pretty productive as sick days go, though.  I sat on the couch with my book (Omnivore's Dilemma - highly recommended)  and my knitting.


Chapeau Marnier from Knitty.  I knit it out of the handspun I was spinning during the Tour de Fleece.  It's perfect for handspun, it's pretty, but not too complicated.  I have 30 or 40 yards left too, enough for either a very small project like wrist warmers, or maybe a few squares in the never-ending sock yarn blanket.  The yarn is an alpaca/bamboo blend, so it's drape-y more then stretchy, but for a fitted hat this doesn't matter too much - and it means that this hat has exactly zero itch!


I really love how the ribbon finishes the project so nicely.  I kinda wanted a chocolate brown ribbon, but the burgundy one was already in my ribbon stash and it matches the yarn so well!

In the afternoon I was feeling a little better.  Also I had just finished reading about an experiment done on two blackberry patches grown in the same soil and sunlight one with conventional growing practices and one with organic growing practices.  Turns out the organic blackberries had more micronutrients (flavonoids etc...) then the conventional ones.  The people who did the study were still looking into exactly why.

Anyway, all this reminded me that I had a quart of wild blackberries that had gotten shoved to the back of the fridge a week and a half ago.  (bad sign, right?  blackberries really don't last that long) but when I pulled the container out I discovered only a handful of moldy berries.  Some more were soft, but for pie, who cares?  So I made pie.


I even baked the crust first, because the berries were very juicy.


And I made a lattice work pie.  Usually I just cheat and mix the dough right in the pie dish, and squish it down into the dish rather then rolling it out.  But this time I decided to roll out the crust, and since I was doing that anyway, why not really do it up fancy?  This pie has a touch of ginger in it.  Cinnamon is common for fruit pies but I find ginger once in awhile keeps things interesting.


And I had extra crust, so I made some raisin custardy tartlets.  I had a recipe in mind, but pretty much just made these up.  A handful of raisins in each, then I mixed an egg, a handful of sugar, a dollop of molasses, a squirt of lemon juice, and pinch of cinnamon.  They worked out perfectly, I ate two as soon as they cooled and only barely held off on eating the third so Neil could try it.

Oh, and our best mama blackbeard has been rescued from the woods (rescued is my term, she was quite cranky to be removed from her carefully secluded nest)  This time she hatched ELEVEN (that's 11) baby chickens.  I tried to take pictures with the good camera, but somehow the files went corrupt.  No kidding.  The pictures I took before (pie pictures) worked out and the pictures I took after (hat pictures) all worked.  But the chicken pictures didn't just come out blurry, but the computer couldn't read the files.  And then I put the chip in the camera, and it can't read them either.  And then I tried to take a picture with my camera phone this morning, and that died while I was trying.  So now i'm formulating a claim about mama blackbeard being impossible to photo like some kind of mythical chicken-beast.  It's the only logical explanation, right?

And I am feeling better today, so that's nice.  Hopefully Neil and I can find a nice place to camp this weekend.