Knitting Iris

Sweet, sweet girl

 

We're spending a lot of time keeping an eye on our Hattie and showering her with love.  She's been very sick this past week, touch-and-go the vet seems to think.  It's some sort of auto-immune issue that's hard to know what it could be caused by.  She wasn't really expected to make it through Monday night, but she's still here with us, hanging on, starting to drink water again, regaining her appetite just the tiniest bit, but certainly not out of the woods.  So unexpected, not of her anyways, with another 14 year old dog in the family.

Costumes are in the works.  I think I'm being a party-pooper this year and not dressing up, which the boys won't forgive me for.  We'll see.  There's still time to pull something together from the dress up box.  Pumpkins are being carved tonight.  Tomorrow brings another vet appointment and the usual Halloween festivities.

Yarn orders were sent out yesterday so keep your eye out for them!  Thank you all again.

Shop Update. Finally. Phew.

The fall update is in the shop! 

All of it, both sport weight and fingering weight here: 

 

Just the sport weight, 100% wool ones here:

 

Just the fingering weight, 75% wool/25% nylon ones here:

 

Here is where I did almost all my yarn dyeing this past summer, out in the woodshed on the propane camping stove.   With the proceeds from the sales of my first shop update, I picked up a second, bigger, cast-iron pot at 40% discount from a local store.  It seems there's no use looking for a used one as they go for about the same price as a new one, sometimes even more as antiques, and then they often need to be de-seasoned with a wire brush for use as a dyepot.

 

A couple of the boys' old beach buckets have been put to use for straining dyebaths, and I discovered mesh paint strainers!   (Yes, I do get excited about this kind of thing.)  After "borrowing" a 1 gallon one  from C's  shop,  I  found that they come in a 5 gallon bucket size that fits nicely over a dyepot.  They can be found hardware stores and they're basically just a big jelly strainer.   They are an absolute must for this walnut hull dyebath.  This is some pretty messy, sludgy, nasty, stinky stuff, but I was absolutely thrilled and kind of freaked at the deep, dark brown results achieved on some of the skeins (Ack!) but, wasn't so excited when it permanently stained a pair of socks and shoes that I splattered it onto.

 

Yellows (and, less so, greens and browns) are some of the most available colors from plants.  Still, it's  funny how this summer I feel like I ended up with an even more narrow than usual, yet rich, range of colors.

There were also several plants that just didn't grow or blossom much this year for some reason, such as the daisies and bee balm that usually grow rampantly in the fields around our house.  I did get one ox-eye daisy dyebath, but no bee-balm as I'd hoped.  So many others I missed out on this year as well but, just like gardening, there's always next year. 

Thanks to gas prices, the busyness of summer,  and just plain curiosity, there was some experimenting with several different yarrows, both growing in the garden and growing wild nearby, and they yielded similar shades, with only subtle variation, for the most part:

  

And then these two completely different plants, tansy ragweed and common yarrow (bottom of picture below), were gathered in the same location on a camping trip, dyed almost simultaneously in separate dyepots, and they produced very similar colors:

  

Well, I'm whooped from all this time online listing, so....time to breathe for a few minutes... then start winding new skeins.  This whole etsy business wears me right out. 

There isn't much available outside in terms of dyestuffs right now, but I've got a few ideas for alternatives to play around with for this next batch, and am planning on dyeing some different shades.

Again, if you'd like a refresher on some of my natural dyeing adventures, most of them are here.  On Flickr here.  And, so as not to repeat myself, more info is on my shop policy page  and in this post.

And, again, if anyone has a source for yarn bases for dyeing that they're willing to share, I'm always looking!

Weekend

   

   

Friday: A sauna and potluck with friends and family.  So good.

Saturday:  A friend unexpectedly swooped up the boys for the rest of the weedend at their cabin in the next valley over for a sleepover with their son.  C and I suddenly find ourselves with nearly two full kid-free days.  What to do????  Stick with the original plan of going for a hike.  Although, rather than a short, lollygagging one with the boys, we get to do a full-on, adult paced, steep hike, the kind where you actually put on your hiking boots.  We took the trail straight up and then stepped off the trail to try and follow the creek back down, only it was too thick with windfall, steep walls, and prickly devil's club.  Instead, we made our own way, meandering our back down to the trailhead through the woods.  So good to get out, stretch the legs, and get the heart rate going.

 

This guy was shot from the front step...with the camera, that is.  But, we do need room in the freezer for venison (hopefully) soon, so expect a shop update VERY soon,  Monday or Tuesday, I hope.  Yes, I keep "your" yarn safeguarded in the freezer up until a few hours before shipping, believe it or not, to prevent any chance of wool moths!

Sunday:  Opening day of hunting season and C headed out into the mountains for the day.  I slept late-late-late, baked a fruit crisp, knitted a little on the Socktoberfest Mystery Sock, watched deer wander safely through the yard  : ) , and have been glued to the computer preparing for a shop update so keep an eye out either here or there.   O.K, the boys are back and now we're off to dinner with friends and family!

Hope you all had a great weekend!

River. Walk. Cotton. Wood.

    

A belated post for the "week of paths", not that the intent isn't to continue getting out and enjoying the paths we walk.  This is the path that led us to here earlier this week.  The rich greens of those pics just didn't jibe with the yellows of these, thus here is the other part of that same afternoon. 

This is "The Riverwalk", a pathway in town that has been paved in the past few years, with placards to read along the way about the history of our town.  It's quite heavily used, and it starts right next to the animal shelter so you can "check out" a dog to take for a walk when they're open, which we haven't yet done but intend to do. 

Black Cottonwood.  This tree has grown on me, so in the years we've lived here.  I'm sure some might consider it a weed.  They're already starting to push sprouts up and cracking through the paving of the path in these pictures.  Lewis and Clark were skeptical of this tree at first, too, but came to rely heavily on them for shelter, transportation, and likely more. 

The oldest cottonwood trees, some 400 years old, are just across the border to the north of us in the Elk Valley, and extraordinarily beautiful cut through the Canadian Rockies.

 

We used to have a great big cottonwood tree growing next to the driveway, close to where we built our house.  Although I don't miss cleaning the sticky buds off of our cars, it was painful to see it have to come down.  The strongest winds came from the direction where it grew, so we would cringe at the opposite end of the house when storms came through.  I have to admit to sleeping much better once there was no longer any chance of it falling on the house or any of us.  It's long trunk lays alongside the driveway still, and a friend made a HUGE drum from the hollowed out butt end of the trunk.  It's remaining stump grows it's share of fungus each year and the boys have a rock collection going on the top of it.

The catkins of cottonwood trees I used for dyeing the yarn for this shawl, in progress here.

 

And, if you could bottle the scent of the cottonwood buds when they open in the springtime, I'd surely wear it every day.  It's not that I haven't tried.  There seem to be a number of ways to do this (looking around online), but I make a salve by gathering the buds when they start to open, steep them in olive oil for up to a year, strain, and heat the oil while adding enough beeswax to make a salve, hardening some as it cools in the jar.  We use it medicinally as an analgesic and anti-inflammatory.  Apparently the buds have been used for sore throats and whooping cough, as well, by Native Americans and First Nations. 

Personally, I use the salve as a hand cream in the winter.  Unfortunately, that sweet spring scent only lasts for a short while after applying it before fading away.

And then there is the fall color you see here...  

Cotton. Wood.  So much to like about this tree.  Even it's name.  I'd be hard pressed to pick one favorite tree (Burr oak?  Ginkgo?  Grand Fir?  Birch?  Mountain Ash?) but this one sits close to my heart.

I'd love to hear about one of your favorite trees.

p.s.  Has anyone tried this tea of douglas fir tips?

  

Larch socks

      

That last pic there was what I saw on the way to the laundry room out in the shop the other evening.  As soon a new load was tossed in I went back to the house for the camera.  Not so clear, but you get the idea.

These socks are for a new friend's birthday, and they're all about what's happening directly around us right here right now.  The larch have turned and will soon be carpeting the ground below in their yellow needles.  The deciduous trees have held out remarkably long this year but are now dropping quickly in the past few days, too.

They are knit from Schoeller Stahl Fortissima Colori Socka Color (say that 5 times fast) #2425.  I loved this colorway but kept passing it by and then finally snatched up a couple of balls of it a couple years ago at a discounted price when it was discontinued.  The heels and toes are a solid olive colored Patons Kroy sock yarn held double and only one 50 gram ball of the main yarn was used, which means there's enough for another pair!   Maybe next fall or the next, when the larch are turning again.

The sock blockers are a birthday present from some dear friends who have started making these and selling them locally, on etsy, and at their daughter Shannon's (and Emily's) shop, Twisted, in Portland, OR where they're reportedly flying out the door faster than they can keep them stocked.  They're beautifully made and are pretty in their own right even when there isn't a pair of socks on them, which is rare.  Thank you, Jay and Alma!  Here they are hung by the woodstove waiting for their next clean pair of socks:

 

Yes, it was finally time to break down and remove the pussy willows, wee birdies, and such that have been up there since early spring, change out the spring fairy for the fall one, and sew some leaves together, inspired by this, this, and a couple of other similars seen around Flickr lately. 

More on mushrooms

 

 

Thrifted:  a round puzzle that was marked as "missing pieces" but was too hard to pass up.  And, a thrifted jar that E painted this summer (his art tends to be more allusive than meticulous and representative) that for some reason has been put to work holding rechargeable batteries.

 

An assortment of thrifted ceramic and concrete mushrooms and homemade mushrooms made with thrifted bowls and logs sprouting by the front door.  The paper bag ones were made with the help of Maya*made's tutorial and Doug Rhodehamel's Spore Project tutorial here.  There are a few other ones scattered around the garden that are crumpled balls of white paperglued to bamboo skewers (puffball mushrooms).

Coincidentally, these ones also sprouted up in front of the local library in the past week or so and I've been accused of having something to do with it by a few friends.  I'll leave it to you to decide about that.  ; )  A similar picture to this one made the top, front page of the local paper under the headline "Mysterious Mushrooms", which might tell you a little bit about how exciting the area we live is.

   

Mushroom cookies appeared in our kitchen as well, served on this wee tray picked up in this nice little hip kids' clothing shop in Norway.  It's the first Cram Cream I've seen in person, and I find it kind of funny that I went all the way across the world to find it.  You just don't readily run across that kind of stuff in rural Montana.

But, you do occasionally find fabrics like this which had been on my wish/dream list over at equilter.com for awhile, except for only 2 yards/$5at  the local-ish Ben Franklin, so now I have 2/3 yards of each.  Oh, how I love Ben Franklin and am so glad they reopened again after closing down a couple of years ago here.  This kind of fabric... you know...the kind always used for those stuffed pumpkin patterns, is such a strange mix of tempting and cheesy.  It's the red mushrooms and acorns, of course, that I found irresistible in these ones.

 

Mushroom drawings:  R's top right.  E's lower right, the gelatinous orange kind of fungus, with sticker kittens playing with smiley face bubbles floating around in the air.  :0)  The others to the left were made with this tutorial found via The Crafty Crow.  (The framed painting in the upper left hand corner was a wedding gift by a friend.  I think he'd be glad to know his work is surrounded by our kids' artwork on a regular basis.)

And, lasty, it seems that fungi are popping up everywhere we look, even inside the house, but you can thank me for sparing you pictures of the moldy applesauce in the bottom of a jar in the fridge.  I was thinking of doing that moldy bread under the bed experiment, too, but didn't need to as we found some already happening in the bread drawer.  Whoops.

OK.  I promise, no more on mushrooms, at least for a little while.

Wait!  A small breakthrough:  E helped me slice up mushrooms the other night, I talked him into trying a piece fresh, and he declared it yummy! 

Oooey, gooey, eerie, icky, sticky, prickly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And yet all quite beautiful and fascinating in its own right.  Good, Octobery kinds of things, anyways.

Who needs to make oobleck when you've this kind of stuff?   (Apparently us still.)

The prettier side of fall coming up next.

Setting the record straight

 

I am not the chef in the house.  The cook, yes.  The chef, no.  Much of what I know about cooking, I've learned from C, looking in cookbooks, or from friends.

When he and I met, he was working making the daily soups, sauces, and the daily vegetarian specials at the ski area where we were living.  I was wooed with eggplant parmesan.  How did he get this job?  One day, while he was helping set up chairs for a banquet, one of the cooks didn't show up for work and so someone poked their head out of the kitchen asking if anyone knew how to cook and could fill in for the day.   He volunteered, and got the job.  Where did he learn how to cook?  At home, from his mom (Hi GB!). 

At one point while we were living in Seattle he was seriously considering going to culinary school, but then around the same time he saw a sign in a window looking for an experienced, journeyman cabinetmaker.  He walked and asked if they'd consider taking on an apprentice instead, and the rest is, as they say, history.  He's not one to shy away from new experiences, diving right in and typically doing well at anything he wants to try.  Surfing?  Snowboarding?  Crocheting?  Gardening?  You name it.  Also, he's not afraid to ask questions of the people who know how to do what he's trying to learn.

So, the cinnamon in the roast?  His idea, but he learned about it from a guy in one of the cabinet shops he worked in who put it in the rabbit roasts he cooked.

The french onion soup I mentioned?  I brought home a 25 lb bag of onions last week and he instantly thought "french onion soup".  Yesterday, he made the soup (after reading up about it online and in cookbooks) and we'll be having it tonight, although the boys likely won't eat more than a taste.  We'll see.

He's loves to turn up the music and cook when he has the time and energy, and can cook up something tasty when there's seemingly nothing in the house.

And, last night he performed a miracle, making an a yummy creamy mushroom pasta sauce (soy milk based) absolutely loaded with mushrooms, onions, and garlic, ALL things the boys profess to dislike, and yet they ate it up yum, practically licking their plates clean.  Relatively speaking, they aren't really very picky eaters.

I've been thinking a lot lately about how knitting is really the only thing that I can do both efficiently and well, thus the blog.   

Cooking and cleaning aren't exactly my fortes.  My mom has been known to ask C how he can live with such a messy house.  His response?  "I didn't marry her for her housekeeping skills."  Well, I'm glad for that on so many levels.

The pic above?  E slicing tomatoes for salsa that I canned, and that neither he nor R will eat because it's too spicy.

What's the point of all this rambling?  I don't really know.  I guess that, probably like others, we have a repertoire of things we eat, and occasionally we step outside of those tried and trues.  And, it isn't really all that uncommon that we punt and have fried egg sandwiches or pancakes, or even on rare occasion a bowl of cereal or oatmeal for dinner, when no one really feels like cooking at all.

Not tonight, though.  Gotta go stir the soup and put the bread in the oven....

Roast season

Roasts slowly cooking all afternoon, just enough to chase the chill out of the house.  School at the new kitchen bar in the mornings.  Archery practice in the evenings before dark.  Candlelight at dinner.  Potluck season.  Snow on the peaks coming, going, and soon to stay.  Trips to the library.  Leaf gathering.  Soup and bread, soup and bread.  Kite flying.  Apple cider, heated, minus the spices.  Reading chapter books with the boys before bedtime.  Deciduous trees hanging on but finishing soon.  Larch trees just getting good now.  Costumes in the works.  Stacking wood and fires in the woodstove.

Yes, the picture is blurry and the stove is a mess, as it typically is, and yes, there is a big pot roast stuffed with garlic cloves somewhere under all those veggies, ready to go in the oven.   That's cinnamon on top, the not-so-secret ingredient that gets sprinkled over the top of every roast we make.   The freezer is stocked with a dozen chickens for roasting and soup through the winter, from the Hutterite community on the other side of the mountains.

Food on the brain:  already planning Thanksgiving dinner more than a month away.  Dreaming of future meals, even while sitting at the table together eating the dinner on our plates.   Grains, meatloaf, french-onion soup, squash, lentils, potato-leek soup.....mmmmm. 

And tons of knitting, of course.  This time of year invariably has me itching to knit a plain, dark-heather-grey sweater.  

What has October brought to your days, and eves?  And, what are your favorite cold-weather meals?

The adventures of Pernie the cat. Part one?

 

It was intended to be an afternoon walk up into the woods past the neighbor's place, an impromptu follow-up to some equally impromptu homeschool study of marshes, and, with the camera in hand, I was hoping to come up with something for Shari's week of paths while we were at it.  It turned into a great adventure with and for Pernie, our  8 month old cat.

 

At first, we tried to discourage him from following, thinking it would be much too far for him to go, but eventually we gave that up and enjoyed having him along.  One of the dogs is too old now for these kinds of outings, so Hattie came along, too, leading the way.

 

 

 

Pernie tagged along behind, running to catch up when he was ready,  generally choosing to stay on the outskirts...

 

 

...only diving into the thick of things at his own pace.

 

...only diving into the thick of things at his own pace.

 

See the old homestead log structure, above left, overgrown in trees?  And Pernie at the peak of its wall, above right?)

 

We really lucked out with him.  He brings so much joy to our lives every single day.  He's not one of those skittish cats who runs and hides from people.  He makes his presence known, likes to be around people, and greets all visitors to our home.  But, he also spends a lot of time outside, both day and night, by himself, often for many hours at a time.

Well, when we were almost back to the house, our minds were so filled with the cattails (ironic, no?) we were bringing back and the prospects of hot cider and cookies that awaited us that, well, honestly, we forgot to make sure he was still following behind.  A couple hours later while I was fixing dinner and the boys were filling the critters' food bowls, I started to really worry. 

Where had we seen him last?  It was right past the neighbor's house, right?  After dinner we called them up but they hadn't seen him.  Then, we set out retracing our route between the neighbor's and our house, checking with other neighbors, and searching places he might have ended up if he had followed the path instead of cutting across the field on the way back as we had done.  Circling back to the house, there was still no sign of him, and it was nearing dusk.

I couldn't bear to think that, after such a long and fun adventure with him, we'd just forgotten and abandoned him to find his own way home, even just the last stretch.  He's a pretty savvy cat, a good hunter, and I'm quite confident he could find his way back from where we last saw him, but still....there was a lot of coyote scat in the path along the way.

So, I hopped on my bike with a headlamp and rode like crazy back up past the neighbor's house to the marsh, then beyond therer to the old homestead, trilling and calling for him all the way.  Nothing. 

Then, on the way back, he jumped out onto the path right in front of me, right about where we'd last been with him, just past the neighbor's house.  I scooped him right up, zipped him up into my hoodie, and rode him home.  I'm thinking the neighbor's dog might have scared him enough that he wouldn't pass by their house on his own.  He had peered with trepidation towards their house as we'd rode by.

Anyways, all's well that ends well.  Phew.  He's pretty whooped.  And, if I'm not mistaken, he seems a wee bit perturbed with us.