I've been working from stash a lot recently. It's fulfilling to create something awesome without having to buy any ingredients (and better for those of us buying fire wood and oil for the winter and paying property taxes anyway) The bronte's mitts (and matching cowl, I haven't gotten a good picture of that one yet) were spun and knit from cashmere I stashed last spring. The socks I knit next week have the potential to put an actual dent in my sock yarn stash. Over the weekend I needed something simple to knit at a knitting get together, so I started this:



Clapotis. I'm only five years late to the party. (my cell phone washed those colors out, they're much brighter in person) Mine is a small scarf-sized one. I'm using 150 yards of handspun silk - the silk top entered my stash in 2007 (? I think so anyway) and I had it spun and plyed by spring 2008. This was the silk that I first learned to navajo ply for. That was Lara's suggestion, and it was she who planted the idea that the yarn would be good for a clapotis as well. When I recently dug the yarn out of my handspun stash I realized that my idea of plying (at the time) didn't involve adding any twists to the plies, but rather just aligning them next to each other and hoping they made friends. So I started this project by running the whole skein through my spindle again adding more twist to the plies and re-setting the twist. It made the thick-and-thin nature of the yarn much more consistent and made the pure silk much shinier and less fuzzy - so that's a win for me! And this pattern really is well written and a joy to knit. It's been bus knitting the last few days in spite of how simple it is (as I said to another friend 13059 ravelers can't all be wrong)

Last night I did a little cooking from the stash too. Not from the yarn stash though. I decided I needed to cook something new, and I wanted to use a few of the 40lbs of delicata that I'd pulled from the box because they had breaks in the skin. So I invented something new (is that even possible in cooking?) Here's the recipe for "squashed rice"

2 small/medium delicata
2 cups uncooked rice
4 cups water
1/4 tsp each of curry, ginger, sage
6-8 shakes of worcestershire sauce
salt and white pepper to taste

Cut the delicata in half, scoop out the seeds and chop into bite-sized-ish pieces. I leave the skins on my delicata, they're tasty.
Put the delicata, spices, worcestershire sauce, and water into a pan and bring to a boil. Allow to boil while you finish emptying the dish washer for about 5 minutes. Turn down to a simmer and add the rice. Cook until all the water is absorbed. Add salt and pepper to taste.

That's it! I'm sure black pepper would work just as well, but I was making a point of shaking things up and using the spices that had migrated to the back of our cabinet. I'm eating some just with butter right now for lunch and it's tasty, but it could also be served as a side dish with any number of lovely fall meals.

We served this under apple cheddar bratwursts. I just browned a red onion and several brats, then added some chopped apples and apple cider, simmered until everything was cooked and squished the apples a bit with a fork. (side note, these apples are crisp and sweet and just a bit tart and hold up really well to cooking and the flesh isn't all mealy raw - and I've been collecting them out of the ditch on the side of the road ever since the wind blew them all out of the tree last weekend. The un-tended, un-pruned, un-sprayed ancient tree on the side of the road with not another apple tree within 200 feet.) I put this mess on top of the rice and grated cheddar cheese over the whole thing. I worried for a moment that I shouldn't add the cheese because there might already be too much going on, but I was wrong. As we know, everything is better with cheddar cheese on it!

My MIL didn't come up for a visit this weekend, so I ended up with a surprise! free weekend to do stuff. And yet I don't feel like I got nearly as much done as I wanted too...

I picked my dry beans and soybeans and the last harvest of green beans from the garden. And I got all those processed, either shelled and on the dehydrator, or blanched and in the freezer. But I didn't get the corn or the beets from our CSA put up (blanched and frozen is the goal for the corn while beets involve getting the pressure canner up and running)

I did get a fair amount of knitting time, but, oops, I ended up working on a brand new project. It's a new design, and it needs some tweaking, but I'm hoping to self publish it once it's done.

Oh and sewing! My local quilting store is going out of business (which makes me sad) but I picked up some nice fabrics which I'm hoping to turn into some fairly color-neutral tops to wear under my colorful handknit sweaters. But then I ended up sewing a shirt from a different piece of fabric I already had. And I didn't get the apron I said I'd make for a friend sewn either.

This shirt started the weekend as a size 4 (seriously, I think the waistband was about 20 inches around) calf length skirt. The fabric came from a friend's fabric stash (that's be the friend I'm making an apron for, in exchange for this fabric and a few other pieces) It's rayon, and the pieces were all cut on the bias which gives them quite a bit more drape then woven fabric otherwise has, and makes it just a touch stretchier. For the shape of the pieces I started with the mock ups I made of a princess seamed blouse I'd taken apart to duplicate more then 2 years ago. But this top has no darts, different lengths, widths, sleeves, and a different neckline. So pretty much all I duplicated was the armscye shaping...


With the bias stretch I could make the top fairly fitted without needing any buttons or zippers. The waist is exactly my bust measurement, but it doesn't feel tight at all when putting it on.


I wanted a button closure on the back in case the neckline was too narrow, I needn't have worried, it fits over my head even with the button done. The whole thing was done in an afternoon. It's just 4 pieces (front, back, and two sleeves) sewn together with no fancy bits. The hardest part was putting the facing on the neckline, and trying to find ribbon for a button loop that matched the fabric. Surprisingly I had a perfect, olive colored button so that part was easy.

While I had a great weekend I'm left feeling like I have so much to do. My list for this evening includes blanching because the corn really can't sit any longer. I'm trying to convince myself to put canning off to next weekend. The beets will be fine. I'd like to make some bread, if I get home in time to start it before the dogs' walk. And I need to do laundry, the underwear situation is getting desperate.

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.

Over the weekend it got chilly, and it was 41 when I woke up this morning!  The weather people promise it will warm up again, but I don't really mind the crispness in the air - I like autumn.  Last night I made bread again:

I love when it comes out this perfectly (hint: it doesn't always - last time was tasty but it was also only half this size and a bit dense)  I used the aramanth again - the flavor is wonderful.

I also made a delicious dish that I'm calling (from now on) VT harvest curry.  The original recipe is called Country Captain in the newer Joy of Cooking model, and while I'm sure that version is quite tasty I've never made it.  The recipe calls for a lot of different ingredients and spices (raisins, onion, garlic, tomatoes, nutmeg, cloves, brown sugar, etc...)  Which all get simmered together.  Reading through the list I realized that everything except the tomatoes was already in a jar of my chutney.  So rather then all that crazy chopping, simmering, and stirring my version goes something along the lines of "Brown chicken, dump in jar of chutney and chopped tomatoes (fresh or canned) simmer just until soft"  It's so quick and so delicious.  The original recipe also doesn't have apples in it, which is a huge oversight in my opinion, because my way is great!  We ate it too quickly for me to take a picture.

I "finished" Neil's sweater a second time.  And for a second time I got to the end and realized I'd screwed up the neck shaping.  Last time I didn't decrease enough, this time I decreased too much, too quickly.  I'm going to have to rip it out again.  I'm trying to resist the urge to stuff it back into the closet.  I know Neil really wants to actually wear it this season...

Well, the Sterling College reunion isn't until next weekend.  We didn't figure that out until Saturday morning either!  But at least we figured it out before driving out to Craftsbury.  And I'm even more excited for the reunion now that I've learned it will include a sheep shearing demo and a carding/weaving demo.  Also there will be a contra dance.  Sometimes I think I should have been a Sterling student, but then I remember they're a bit light on the science classes.  (Neil's suggested more then once that I could become a teacher there and help fix that problem, but the commute from home would be as long as my current one, and without a bus!)

So this weekend I did some summer seasonal activities.  On Saturday I went out to pick blackberries with our dogs.  We've gotten permission to pick the shrubs growing in our neighbor's sugarbush.  Sugarbush maintenence seems to encourage great blackberry brambles...  The berry picking went very well, it's only just the beginning of the season, so I think I'll go again later on.  The boys were very well behaved and never ran further then I could hear them.  By the time my bucket was full I had followed a four-wheeler trail so far into the bush I figured if I continued to follow it (it seemed to have curved and started heading downhill again) that I should come out on our road - either close to home or just past it.
But nope!  I had, without realizing, followed the path over the crest of the ridge and down to the road in the next valley over.  From there I decided to walk home and ended up doing a 2 mile walk alongside the road (after what had to be about 2 miles in the woods)  It wasn't a bad little hike except that I was wearing heavy pants (to protect my legs in the brambles) and hiking on an 85 degree day for 3 hours With No Water.  The boys were very well behaved, even off leash, on the road-hike back.  I think they'd exhausted themselves in the sugarbush and then I made them hike another 2 miles.  At least they could swim in all the little streams to cool off!  After it all I ended up with 2.5lbs of blackberries and a mental note to bring a nalgene the next time I go berry picking.

Sunday I cleared some of the scrub in the front yard, worked on some knitting (I should have another finished sweater soon), and put up a lot of veggies.  Corn, more green beans, broccoli, and shredded zuchinni all went into the freezer.  The blackberries are in the fridge - I'm going to make wine and pie this evening!

And for some of us (Neil) it's the end of summer.  He has his first classes at Johnson State tomorrow, and he's back at work at Laraway this week as well.

Just busy!

Last weekend (I keep doing this, it's friday again already?!)  One of my good friends came up for a visit.  It was lots of fun, we had knitting time (one of my favorite kinds of time) and boating time, and swimming time, and pretty much had a very relaxing weekend.  She took lots of pretty pictures of vermont (another thing I love to do!)  Although some of my favorite photos were of the immature loon and its parent:



Although the photo of the mama hen who somehow managed to get her baby up on the pearch are pretty fabulous too:



That pearch is over 4ft off the ground, there are some in between things for jumping on, but I had no idea a baby chicken could jump 2 or more feet at a time and land on a perch!

This weekend there's a sterling college reunion (which I'm really looking forward too!)  and a LOT of veggies to put up.  I picked 16 ears of corn from my garden yesterday (some are a bit small, but with the beginning of the growing season the way it was the plants are small too) and we've got 2 or 3 quarts of beens to freeze between the purple beans in my garden and the green and yellow ones from the CSA.  We got a lot of brocolli this week too which I might freeze, my fridge barely shuts properly right now there's so many veggies stuffed in it - and the corn and big summer squashes are living on the counter!

Oh and yarn:

I have more!  This lovely batch is from Knitpicks (the green in front is gloss sock, the mossy green/dark brown in back are classic wool of the andes worsted, and the tan/chocolate brown on the side are stroll sport) and they're all destined for new designs!  I'm quite excited!  I love knitpicks - their yarns are very nice and very reasonably priced.  The Gloss has lovely sheen and is very smooth - wonderful to knit with!  I'm also really excited about their stroll (used to be essential) coming in other sizes then just plain sock yarn - the socks I've made with it in the past have held up really well to wear and tear - which is really important in a sock!

I also made bread Wednesday evening.  It was the one evening of the week when it cooled off below 60 - I'm glad I grabbed the chance to bake while I had it!  Anyway, I added some aramanth flour to the dough and it was delicious!  I picked it up because I wanted to try something new and the bag said it added a nice malty flavor to bread - and I like malty flavors!
I've slowly grown to baking bread by feel.  I used to follow the recipe exactly, then I started changing or substituting 1 or 2 things, now I don't even bother pulling out the recipe book.  Making bread goes something like this:
Mix some yeast in warm water with a touch of sugar in my bread bowl.  Is it foaming? check.
Ingredient checklist (in my head) fat? flour? liquid? salt?  Mix it together and start kneeding until it feels right.
For a single sandwich sized loaf I generally start with 2ish tsp yeast in 1/4c of water.  Generally I want at least 1 but not more then 5 Tbsp oil (yes, it is that flexible, depending on how rustic/soft you want your bread)  Then I add the flour - 2 heaping handfuls of flour and 1 of something else.  Each handful being somwhere between 1/2 and 1C flour and something else can be almost anything - rolled oats, oat flour, rice flour, cornmeal, sunflower/flax/sesame seeds, strange grains flour, etc...  And the bulk of the bread needs to be between 2/3 and 3/4 real flour when I'm all done (for the gluten!)
Once the fat and flour are in (sometimes I add an egg with the fat, if i feel like it) I'll sprinkle in some salt (I really can't say how much, and under-salting things is one error I still make regularly)  The poor yeast cells should always be buffered from the salt addition by flour/oil/egg/something.
Then I add some more liquid - milk, whey if I've made cheese recently, beer, water if I have nothing else.  Then I just keep adding flour until it's bread-like.  I suspect I end up with somewhere between 4-5 cups of flour and enough liquid for it to stick together the way bread dough should.  It takes a bit to get it right, but I really enjoy just throwing together some bread based on my whims!

Oh, and now that I finally have pictures up feel free to go back and see a photo of me trying to eat a smore half the size of my head - it's pretty funny...

I hate making decisions about what's for dinner.  But I love cooking.  Yesterday leaving work I had no clue what I was making for dinner.  But when I got home there were many squash blossoms in the garden.  I'd heard about stuffed squash blossoms on NPR awhile back, and from a co-worker more recently.  I've been thinking I should try it, so when the opportunity presented itself, how could I resist?  I let nature decide what I was making for dinner!


The squash blossom stuffing contains: couscous, raisins, sunflower seeds, basil, cilantro, garlic and a little egg.  Then I rolled them in egg and flour and cooked them in a frying pan with just enough butter to keep them from sticking.  The veggie medley next to it is new red potatoes, green onion, swiss chard, sugar snap peas, and the remainder of the couscous stuffing.

This is a classic example of how I cook.  Everything in that dinner comes to the house with little help from me.  Eggs from the chickens, all the veggies, herbs and the potatoes are from the CSA.  The only ingredients I bought at a normal store are the flour and raisins, and I feel my cupboards are bare if I don't have basic baking supplies on hand.  Oh and the couscous.  If you're looking for a snack in my house you're pretty much out of luck.  My cupboards are full - but it all needs preparing.  I have jars of rice, pasta, couscous, corn meal (fine and coarse) oats and oat flour (I just put the oats through the food processor) wheat flour, barley, dried beans, lentils, you get the idea.  Same for condiments (vinegar: apple cider, white, balsamic or champagne?  or the apple cider with herbs steeped in it that I'm starting to make) same for spices.  I go to the store once a week and pick up cheese, some starch, and a specialty item or two.  Doing this every week lets me build up an awesome supply of things for cooking, without spending a ton of money (ok, without spending a ton of money all at once).  And I never have to run out to the store for "X"  I either have it on hand, or substitute.  Or I pick another recipe.  (This is especially key when the nearest good grocery store is 20 minutes each way)  In the winter veggies and milk will get added to the weekly list.  When we can afford it we buy meat from the local market or from my parents.  But it's not like we don't eat well without it!


For a snack, I'm much more likely to have sliced tomato, basil, mozzarella and a little balsamic vinegar then "chips" or "cookies'  (except when I make cookies!)  The most normal snack food in my house is bulk popcorn (and a whirly-pop).  Neil made crispy kale chips the other day - does that count?  Oh and pickles, pickles make a great snack and in the summer I'm always pickling something.  I buy local whenever possible, and bulk and/or organic when local isn't available.  I find this is the best balance for my budget, my conscious, and my stomach.

But most importantly, I don't have to decide what to eat - I let what's available both in season and in my kitchen guide my cooking.

In an effort not to be bored I was crazily productive over the weekend. I made some feta (needs to age for 2 weeks), baked some bread (note to self, flour is important for gluten), started a new batch of wine (apple/tart cherry) I finally have all the perennials IN the ground and not just sitting on top of it. I put stakes in for my tomatoes and sugar snap peas (I used some of the millions of shoots the hardwood stumps are sending out, thanks for the idea Mom!) I took all the animals to the vets. I was very productive!

I finished the other two skirts. These are the three skirts that I picked up fabric for at the quilting store last week. The major lesson with these skirts is: If I don't know exactly what I'm doing I should pick up 3/4 to 1 yard of fabric, not 1/2 to 3/4 yards.
The brown gradient on in the center would've fit perfectly if the waistband was 1-2 inches wide instead of 2-3 since I only had 3/4 of a yard. But I'm still really proud of it. I like how the waistband fades from lightest in the front to darkest in the back. And I like my solution for not having the seams stand out in a bad way.
The blue one with the lace is a 12 gore skirt (meaning it's made of 12 wedges that are narrow at the waist and get wider) gored skirts can flair out a lot, but I kept this one more tame as it's meant to be an office skirt. The lace at the bottom and the white ribbon that I turned into a waistband are from my stash (why yes, I have a sewing stash as well as a knitting stash. Is there a problem with that?) I ended up picking up an extra 1/4 of a yard to make this fit nicely (so 3/4 of a yard total). Luckily no one had decided to use all the bolt of fabric for the backing of a quilt or anything.
The last one makes me feel like I'm wearing a chocolate layer cake - in a good way. I knew I wanted it tiered with elastic at the top. But I didn't want to buy yet more fabric and I only had a 1/2 yard of this brown. And then I realized I had some perfect light pink floaty fabric in my stash that matched the tiny pink dots in the pattern of the brown fabric. One of the trickiest things for me (in sewing) is having randomly, but evenly bunched fabric. I'm much better and even, spaced, pleats. I think I did pretty well on these layers and I LOVE this skirt (it may be my favorite).


All in all three really pretty skirts that are exactly what I wanted. And I spent $17.98 total, for three skirts - I win! If I'd had to buy zippers and elastic and lace trim it would have been more, but probably not more then $25 total. Now I just need it to be warm enough to wear my cute skirts and not my nice clean sweaters.

Oh yes, I also did some mending and washing of the woolens. You can probably imagine this is no small task in my house. Usually mending and washing happens when I put them away for the summer, but this year I did the mending and washing and I'm still wearing them, but it was time.

It's like a where's waldo in my living room. But I'm not sure if you're looking for all the woolens or looking for the living room beneath them... I washed 5 sweaters, 4 hats, 3 vests, 3 scarves, 2 mittens, and 1 jacket (not hand knit, but still 100% wool) Not pictured is Neil's india sweater which needed major reconstructive surgery on the cuffs.

I had a reason behind doing this all at once. My awesome front loading washing machine has a spin-only option. So after hand washing all these things I can just put them in the machine and it wrings 90% of the water out. WONDERFUL. But the machine is smart and carefully balances the load by tumbling it a bit first, so it doesn't walk away (or break) during the high spin speeds. We've tried putting just 1 thing in the machine once. It spend 30 minutes before it (somehow, I don't know how) got the item balanced against the door so it was mostly centered with itself for the spin. The machine may be smarter then me. Now I make sure it has enough in it to balance easily before spinning the water out.

My arms are so sore.  I spent most of this weekend reverse gardening - digging stuff out instead of putting stuff in.  It's been so rainy all those perennials are perfectly happy sitting on top of the soil.  Which has allowed me to do a thorough job of preparing the garden bed I want them in.  I've been threatening to remove all the non-blooming orange day lilies (ok, there was a handful of blooms last year, that's how I know what color they are)  When I went into the bed with a shovel I realized there were more day lily bulbs then dirt.  After a weekend of fun filled digging (and pruning dead willow shrubs, and pulling ferns and weeds) I have a nice, bare patch of soil where I can put all my new plants - just as soon as the rain lets up.  I also had this:

That's the back end of a full sized subaru - filled almost to the roof with day lilies.  Nothing else.  Just lilies.  I threw them all into the dtich on our property along the edge of the road.  This variety of lily usually grows well in such places - and hopefully they'll have space to actually bloom.

It takes a lot to keep going at a project like that all weekend.  So for breakfast on Sunday I made:

Ginger pancakes, fresh CSA strawberries, and home made whipped cream - with the cream scooped off the top of fresh milk from our neighbors and some honey.  Who cares if the whipped cream was a little runny, it was delicious.  I practically HAD to garden all weekend to work off the calories from eating a pint of whipped heavy cream though...

And in chicken-y news I think the babies are officially teenager birds now.  Well, it's not what I think so much as what mama chicken thinks.  Saturday night she and the babies bedded down in their little shelter, sunday morning she led them out into the world.  But on Sunday afternoon I spotted her nonchalantly picking bugs out of the front lawn with the babies no where to be seen.  I admit to panicking a bit.  But when I brought out some tasty grain and called all the chickens the babies came running just as quickly as the adults - just from a different corner of the yard.
At bedtime mama chicken went up on the roost with the other adult birds, and when one of the babies followed her she actually jumped down again, walked back to the little shelter with it, ducked inside.  And ran off again as soon as the clingy baby had settled down.  (we called him/her the failure to launch bird all evening)
This morning (it's raining) the babies didn't seem inclined to run outside with mom still ignoring them.  And in an unusual move Looney (our rooster) hung out inside with them.  He usually doesn't mind rain, so I wonder if he's figured out he's got a confused batch of new birds to keep an eye on.

A potato mystery that is...


On the outside it looks like a standard, russet potato.  On the inside it looks like maybe the standard russet potato got crossed with one of those red or purple flesh potatoes.  It came from a bag of russet potatoes from the grocery store - not from a farmer's market, or anything unusual like that.  My best guess is that it's a hybrid (but aren't potatoes usually grown from little potatoes - not from seeds?)  Points for anyone who has a better reason, or can explain how a hybrid potato ended up in a bag of standard potatoes.

Oh, and I don't think it was poisonous, 'cause I ate it already.

And in completely unrelated crafty new!  I made underwear.  Why?  Mostly to prove that I can.  But also because Cast-On has been doing a series on Make do and Mend.  They talked about re-making clothes in your closet that you don't wear because of one or two little things.  Thinking through my wardrobe I realized the only things I have that I don't wear are thongs (bought years ago, I just can't handle the but-floss feeling)  Anything else I can't wear gets donated - but since you can't donate underwear, and they're in good shape I can't throw them out (or even use them for rags, stupid things are too small)  So I remade them! into underwear that covers my butt.  The funny beer saying on my new underwear is totally an added bonus.

I started with:

1 t-shirt too small for Neil
1 uncomfortable pair of underwear
1 worn out ratty bra

And I finished with:
 
Back and front!

They're really comfortable (the bra turns out to be one of the more-supportive I've ever tried)  The hard part was definitely taking the old things apart.  Salvaging the elastic was a pain, sewing the underwear took mere minutes.  Sewing the bra took a lot longer especially dissecting the old one for the underwire and hook and eye bits - but may have been worth it!

Would I do this again?  Maybe, I do have more thongs I could take apart...

It was absolutely wonderful to have a weekend at home!

The lawn clearly missed me and was beginning to send out scouts...  When the grass is tall it can be cut with the reel mower but it takes some creativity.  I figured out how two years ago.  The first pass merely flattens the grass.  Then I pull the machine back towards me across the grass and it ends up pointed directly into the mower blades.  On the third pass it is cut, hooray!  But it's a very time consuming and sweaty process. I did contemplate the weed whacker instead of the lawn mower except I was reminded how much I hate small engines.  I got out the machine, pulled the cord, and nothing happened.  I wasn't convinced I was doing it right, Neil came over and tried, he couldn't get it to start either.  Eventually we got it to the point where it'd start, sputter along for a few seconds, and die as soon as you asked the whacker part to spin.  After ten minutes fighting with the machine I realized how much lawn I could have mowed in that amount of time - and went back to the reel mower.

I also finally got my tomatoes planted!  I'm not convinced it'll stay warm though, so I'm fully prepared to cover them if the nights start getting really cold (hopefully by being prepared I won't have to actually do anything, like carrying an umbrella to keep the sun shining)
My burgundy (green) beans are doing pretty well, as is my corn:
 
If we could get some good sunshine to go with all this lovely rain it might even get to be "knee high by the 4th of July"
I tried to plant edamame (soybeans) too, and they may be the failure of the season, only 3 plants (out of two rows) have come up.  I'm wondering if it was too cold and rainy and maybe the seeds died.  If they don't come up with a few days of warmer weather I'll re-plant and see if they can do better.

And I planted sunflowers!  I've tried to grow them several times - but the chickens always get the seeds.  Or if they don't get the seeds, they like to eat the leaves of the young plants.  This year I planted them along the north edge of my garden (so they won't shade the veggies) inside the fence, why has it taken me so long to figure that out?

Did I say chickens?

They getting much bigger, and have primary feathers everywhere except their fuzzy little heads.  There was a baby chicken tragedy - but I'm not sure what kind.  All I know is I let them out one morning - and there were 7, not 8.  Our coop is pretty much predator-proof, and mama always tucks the babies away early enough I don't get to count them in the evenings, so I'd guess it probably happened the day before.  The day after we kept them inside to whatever predators there are from thinking our yard was a daily buffet.  And for several days after that mama and the babies played Jungle Chickens all day - which makes me think it might have been a flying predator...

Let see, what else?  Oh yes, the rosa rugasa bushes that Neil hacked back last year are thriving:

And completely covered in buds.  These are basic sea roses.  A single set of petals and a wonderful scent.  The hacked-back shrubs are still a foot or two taller then me...

Oh and Neil was busy this weekend as well:

He installed track lighting in our kitchen.  It's much MUCH better then the dim, 70's syle globe fixture we used to have.  And it turns out track lighting is one of those things that's really pricey to have an electrician do - but doesn't cost any more then a living room light fixture if you do it yourself.  Who knew?  Of course with that success he's now threatening to go down into the basement and change the switch on the circuit breaker that needs to be upgraded.  I suggested he call 911 first, that way the ambulance will already be on the way when he electrocutes himself.  It's not that I don't trust him - but when you're changing a light fixture you start by flipping the appropriate circuit.  I don't know how you kill the power to the entire circuit breaker box before working on it - and that makes me nervous....

I kept quite busy over the weekend although nothing was hugely exciting.
 

• Bottled wine, flavors: orange carrot and black currant.

The black currant was sweeter then I expected it to be.  Not dessert wine sweet but very nice.  Good thing too since I have a flat of frozen black currants we picked last year at the Farm Between waiting to be turned into a 5 gallon batch of this wine.  Orange carrot was drier then I expected (but still not a dry wine), nice, light, a bit tangy (that must be the orange) and I think it'll make a great summer wine.
 

• Dealt with egg eater

During late winter one chicken started eating eggs.  This is bad (clearly) and not something anyone has figured out how to fix easily.  Just as I was preparing myself the snow melted and the egg eating stopped.  Since boredom is frequently a cause of things like egg eating and cannibalism in chickens I hoped that now that the ground was bare the hen had better things to do with her time.  But after 2 or 3 weeks we started finding broken remains of eggs in the coop, and when we caught the same hen red handed (or yellow beaked as the case may be) I knew what needed to be done.  Not all parts of farming are cute baby animals and eating delicious food.

• Made cheese

This time I tried a "chevre" style cheese, but with cow milk.  The result is quite tasty, although it tastes nothing like chevre.  I'm a little suspicious that while 10 year old rennet (enzyme) seems to be fine 10 year old cultures (bacteria) are less active.  It's hard to say for certain though, since part of the chevre flavor is (of course) from the goat milk.

I'm also two half-sleeves and some finishing away from finished with a nice, bright, spring, alpaca sweater.  I'm hoping to be done with it by the 25th!

With this sweater:



( details photos, and what else I did with my weekend )

I had a great time last weekend, and I made a point to myself of wanting to share it - but somehow it's thursday and I'm just now getting around to it.  It's been a busy week at work, I'm sure that's part of it.

I can't even remember what I did on which day - but it was a weekend of late summer preserving and kitchen stuff:

( There was wine-making. )

( There was preserving )

( There was knitting. )

Neil and I also: went canoeing, spent an evening with friends, went to a bonfire, played frisbee golf and generally just hung out.  It was a good weekend.

So we've moved into this new house - and everything is wonderful. We love every aspect of this house and are sometimes blown away that it is All Ours.

Except for one thing.

Every time we use the oven, it smells like something crawled inside the vent and died. If you've ever had a dead rodent in your wall (or been to the lake dunmore house) then you know the smell I'm talking about. Except now magnify it by the hot air that comes out of an oven vent.

The oven is great, the internal temp is wonderful compared to any oven I've baked in - but I never want to bake. The stove top works great too. But if the decomposition doesn't clear out soon we might have to replace this oven when we replace the aging refrigerator and pick up a washer/dryer/dishwasher set - and I didn't really want to push my new homeowner credit that far...