Meow Like a Pirate Day & 3BT

Well I missed Meow Like a Pirate Day on Friday - too much going on -

Changes at work have me feeling anxious - I'm sure everything will turn out OK - it's just like I feel like an old episode of Star Trek, venturing into the unknown, I guess. 

I made some Chicken Stew tonight with some end of the summer vegetables - It really turned out delicious - I wish I'd thought to get a nice loaf of Italian bread to go with it - maybe tomorrow - there's planned left overs for tomorrow night.  I also thought it might be good over brown rice.  I'll have to see what The Shepherd would prefer.

The Seahawks are behind - Darn!  Also,k it rained cats & dogs this afternoon and today at church we talked about Gratitude.  I was grateful that I didn't have to be out in the rain, that's for sure.

 It made me remember that I have been remiss in posting about Three Beautiful Things.  - So here goes -

Peach Cobbler - probably one of my favorite desserts - I like to make it in my Pampered Chef Deep Dish Baker so I can put LOTS of peaches in there.  I just use the old recipe out of my Betty Crocker Cookbook - it never fails.  

Ah, another food item - POPCORN!  I love popcorn, and generally make up a big sack full of it and then snack on it for several days.

I got this popcorn from Amazon.com - it never ceases to amaze me what you can get from them - it comes prepackaged with popcorn, flavored coconut oil and popcorn salt.  The idea is to dump it all in the pan at the same time, but there is WAY too much salt so I have been pouring the salt into a shaker and only using part of it - YUM. 

And pretty Yarn - this yarn turned out so colorful - (I need to get back to taking pictures of the roving so I can see how it looked before being spun)  I was hoping to get to do something with it, but I sent it and a bunch of other yarn to the Bow Little Market with my friend Donna & I'll be darned it it didn't sell - but it was beautiful.  I hope the person who bought it makes something pretty with it.

Everyone have a great week out there! 

My "Tour de Fleece" projects

Ravelry puts on a "Tour d'Fleece" Spin along during the Tour d'France every year. 

I kind of "haphazardly" join along - this year I went for some of the new roving that I brought home from Black Sheep.  I love spinning such colorful roving - it's just fun. 

 When I got done with the first project, I started in on some Kathy Green Roving.  This color is called Mulberry - I think it is very pretty and the yarn that it made is soft and cushy.

Here is the yarn from the first project - it doesn't look very colorful in this picture - but get a load of the pic. below - 

It is Superwashed Marino - I think that there might be some Tencel blended in - I'll have to look - but it is very pretty, soft and lusterous. 

I love spinning! 

These yarns will be for sale at the Little Bow Market in Alger next week - my friend Donna is going to have them & 12 other skeins that I delivered to her last week at her farm booth.  I hope some of it sells. 







.

Tour de fleece remnants

 Tour de Fleece is over for 2013 - I have this bobbin of fingerling weight singles of CVM/Shetland blend - a birthday gift from our friend Yvonne   It's funny, when you just look at the bobbin, even in the light, you don't see the red or green hues, but they are very apparent in the photo.

This was some roving left over from my year's worth of Roving of the Month club.  I'm calling it "Lemon/Lime Sorbet"  

I think it will make a cute hat or some mittens.  It will go to the Farmer's Market with Donna & Tom  -  I need to get cracking and get it washed though, or the market will be done for the year! 

I have one more skein that I'm working on - pinkish lavender & lite blue with firestar (make's it sparkely)  I'll take pictures when It is done. 

I liked sitting down and spinning for a little while every evening, although I didn't get much else done.  So, I'm thinking Tues, Thurs & Saturdays - the biggest things is to be consistent, I think and build the habit.  We'll see, I guess.



.

Not really my colors, but...

 Only a couple more days left of Tour de Fleece - I've spun during Mariner Games, the Home Run Derby, The All Star Game, some golf, M*A*S*H, Antiques Road Show, and the Calgary Stampede but not Tour de France - which The Shepherd noted tonight that he wished it was over -

Oh, why? I asked - to which he mumbled something like it was a waste of time...

 Like any of the above shows weren't really? 

Anyhow, this was some Blue Faced Leicester wool that was in a raffle basket that I won.  Not really my colors (at all) - but it did ply up to an intriguing yarn. 

Maybe someday I'll feel comfortable enough with my Navajo plying skills to try it out so the colors stay together, but,  I've never wanted to "waste all that yarn" by practicing, when regular plying does make an interesting yarn.  

Oh, and when I got to the end of the singles on the top bobbin? This one foot long slip is all there was left on the second one.

That I was really pleased with. 

When art imitates life...

Fancy that...

And now for something (not so completely) different...

 Last fall at the Artisan's Faire I participated in,  our friend Lydia bought some of my yarn and asked me if I could make fingerless gloves for her (grown) daughters for Christmas presents. 

Well, I love Lydia to pieces and was only too happy to comply.  In fact, I decided to go one step farther and make little cowls for the gals to match the gloves.  
 


In this set, for the cowl, I dipped into my stash of "little balls of yarn" and used bits and pieces of left over yarns from other projects, the turquoise from the gloves, next was some yarn that had turquoise, blue and golden brown from a baby sweater I made a few years ago, (which matched the golden that I had left over from making the other set - see below), then some navy, that had a little of the gold color in it from a hat I made for my sister, plus some light turquoise (which was some of the first yarn that I ever spun!) and then finally another couple of rows of the original color.

 


I don't think the colors could have gone together any better if I had planned them to be that way. 

 For as many crochet books and magazines that I have, I ended up making up this pattern from an afghan pattern that I found - and added two silver buttons to keep it closed. 

This was a "small" version of my favorite scarf - Mosiac Scarf's Little Sister - I used some Ferndale Fiber Potluck Roving called "Golden Pear" that I got last year at our friends fiber sale.  It is not a color that she makes on a regular basis, so I was lucky to get it. 

I was spinning it at the Artisans Faire to demonstrate how yarn was made.  Lydia bought it right off the wheel!  After I made the gloves, I looked at the gold with some brown alpaca that I had spun up and decided that they were a natural together.

It made quite a pretty ensemble, don't you think?  I just put one brown wooden button on this one - The roving was fairly soft and of course, the alpaca was absolutely dreamy. 

I hope that they are enjoying their gifts as much as I enjoyed making them. 

Artisans Faire

 Last Saturday I did an Artisans Faire with my yarn and some crocheted items.  I also invited a couple of friends to bring some of their knitted and woven items because I didn't feel like I had enough to fill my table.  - my yarn and other items are on the card table on the right - the other three ladies had the table on the left, with stacking cubes. 

 
If you click on the pictures they will biggify a little and you can see all the different yarn I had to sell.

I sold 5 skeins out of 20 - well, make that 4 skeins out of 20 and the one that was on my spinning wheel...

The other artisans were pretty happy with their sales though

This lady had lotions, lip balms and scrubs. 

There were several very fine jewelery booths.

My friend Linda put together this pretty basket for a door prize from all of the artisans.

Our friend Jim was there as a featured musician with his Nyckelharpe - it is a traditional Norwegian instrument. I also had my guitar and played for about 1/2 hour.  I can't believe that I used to sing and play for three hours with only two 15 minute breaks.  That would kill me now!!!

One of the vendors was called "The Bag Lady" - Turns out she went to high school with some friends of mine -  2 degrees of separation....

At this point, I'm not sure if I will participate in the faire next year - it is a LOT of work, setting up and taking down, being there all day, etc.  - I made enough to buy some Christmas presents for my sisters, pay for Chinese take-out so I wouldn't have to make dinner -Got lots of nice compliments on my yarn, but, that doesn't pay for the fiber to spin...

More Olympic yarn -

 Here is some more yarn I spun while we were watching the Olympics -

It is a romney blend that I got from the Dawn's Custom Carding booth, from The Pines Farm.

I don't know where the yellow in this picture comes from, because you certainly can't see it in the yarn itself. 

It is about 12-13 WPI (wraps per inch) which converts to sport weight.  I think it would work well for a hat, that would be felted.  The yarn seems kind of scratchy to me - but so did the fiber - I should know better by now, don't you think? 

Stay tuned for exciting news about the fair!






.

Blueberries!

FRESH FROM THE GARDEN - 

 FRESH FROM THE SPINNING WHEEL - 

FRESH FROM THE OVEN!!!









 My sister and brother-in-law have raised blueberries in Lewis County Washington for almost 50 years, since they took over his dad's farm.  His dad had been there for many years before that, and the berry plants were well established. 

She is often asked to bring a blueberry dessert to events and came up with this easy to make cobbler recipe.  I must confess that I had never made it before, but we have had a bumper crop of berries from our 6 plants this year and The Shepherd has managed to pick them before the robins have for once.  So I finally had enough berries to make this yummy cobbler. 

So I give you:      Wisten's Blueberry Cobbler

Oven at 375-400 degrees - use a 9 x 13 inch cake pan.

Combine:
1 1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup flour
A "dash" of cinnamon and
a "trace" of salt

Pour over and toss with:
8-12 cups of fresh (or frozen) blueberries that have been mixed with
3 Tablespoons of lemon juice and
1/4 cup of melted butter

Pour your berry mixture into the 9 x 13 baking dish and put in the oven and bring to "bubbly" - about 20 minutes or so until the mixture is juicy and the berries have begun to burst.

Take your pan out of the oven and add the cobbler topping mix below:

For the topping mix:
2 cups flour
4 teaspoons baking power
2 Tablespoons of sugar
1/2 teaspoon of salt

Combine with:
1/2 cup melted butter (don't have it so hot that it "cooks" the egg mixture)
1 egg beaten in 2/3 cup milk.

DON'T ADD THE LIQUID INGREDIENTS TO DRY INGREDIENTS OF THE TOPPING UNTIL RIGHT BEFORE YOU ARE READY TO PUT IT OVER THE BERRIES.

Drop in tablespoon-fulls over the berry mixture and bake another 20 minutes or until golden brown. Serve with ice cream.

I am going to try out this cobbler recipe with peaches and maybe some tart cherries - don't you think that would be good?  Or maybe peaches AND blueberries together.  Ah, the possibilities are endless - Thanks, Wisten for your yummy recipe!  

For more blueberry recipes got to my blueberry blog Something Borrowed, Something Blueberry - (yes, I know it's been a while since I put some new recipes on it - guess I should look for some new ones - there's only so many hours in a day, however)   

 Enjoy my little video of this cobbler HOT from the oven.  Wish you had "smell-a-puter?" 

Silk blend yarn -

This is the yarn the I made from the Louet Northern Lights Handpainted Roving 12.509 Fire Moss that I got with my Christmas Cash.

It was pencil roving - I'd never spun pencil roving and thought it sounded like fun - It is certainly easy to spin nice even singles with out any effort.







Part of it I plied with the silk that I spun from the silk caps at our January spinner guild meeting.

The silk was very close in colors to the roving by very much of a coincidence.









If you click on the picture, it will biggify and you can see the subtle difference in the yarn that is 100% wool and the yarn that is 50-50 wool and silk.









The yarn has a lot of the same colors from this photo of the trunk of our river birch - don't you think?

It isn't as soft as I would like - so maybe not scarf material - but most likely a very pretty hat.

More yarn

One of my nieces has requested some brown fingerless gloves. I don't have any brown wool right now, but I have a whole bunch of this yummy brown Alpaca.

It is in a huge batt. I pulled it into roving










See what I ended up with.

It is REALLY soft!

They're on their way

These four pair of fingerless gloves went in the mail last week for a customer down in Seattle.

I hope that she liked them.

I hope they fit her friends!







I particularly loved the blue/green wool - from Blue Faced Liecster wool that I bought at Black Sheep a couple of years ago. It ended up making the coolest stripes.

The black is from Inky's Shetland roving that I bought from Michelle (not coals to Newcastle, because we don't have any true black sheep) It spun up BEAUTIFULLY and these gloves are just the softest.

I am half the way through the 12 pairs I had on order. Luckily they are pretty easy to make...

Did I mention...

This is the handsome sweater that our friend Denise knitted for The Shepherd out of all the yarn I spun from Moni's fleece.

I love how the cable goes up the front and splits & goes to the shoulders.

Next we're working on one with all our Shetland colors. Yikes!

Looking back Sunday

Well, there really wasn't much for a Caturday
report, so I'll go right into my Looking back Sunday post, to 2007 -

It SNOWED on the first of December - Brrr - and if I remember it was quite a storm.





For my newer readers, this is Mr. Neelix, and this was one of his most endearing and most enduring poses - you could tell he was a happy cat - he would sleep flat out on his back right in the middle of the living room floor. Neelix went to the Rainbow Bridge in the summer of 2008. He still leads in the number of posts I have labeled. The Mrreows have taken a bit of the sting out of his passing, but there is still a big hole in our hearts.





The bad thing when we have an "early" snow is that the girls are still in with the ram and they just have two little bitty barns to go in. As you can see by the look on her face, she is none too happy.









This was some yarn that I made in December of 2008 - I decided that everyone got homespun, hand made hats for Christmas that year. Unfortunately, I guessed wrong at sizes and most of the things I made did not fit the recipient. Bummer.

We've got snacks for church tomorrow, so I'd better hit the sack. A lot of people will be gone - traveling, etc., so I'm not baking anything special - just taking ham & cheese for sammies, vegies & dip and some fruit for dessert. That should keep 'em happy.

Oh, and I'm doing a PartyLite Catalog party - leave me a comment if you want to order anything and I'll get you the link to my party!