gray and pink

  

I'm loving these colors together lately and am still fawning over the yarn I got at the festival last weekend. It's handspun from WindSong Fibers Farm. I'm thinking I should make something striped--maybe a cowl or shawlette. Any ideas for a little more than 300 yards of light worsted-weight yarn?

sugarbush

  

  

We braved the mud over the weekend to get our maple syrup fix. The Maple Syrup Festival did not disappoint. I drank maple syrup tea, which they make by ladling out hot sap from the evaporator and steeping black tea in it. And I stuffed myself with waffles covered in fresh syrup and topped with vanilla ice cream and whipped cream. It's such a decadent breakfast, but I'm already dreaming of re-creating it at home.

After filling up on a sweet, syrupy meal we rambled around the festival. Or I should say, others in our group rambled around. Me? I made a beeline to the handspun yarn booth, where I spent all my festival time gawking over yarn and talking to Kate, the shepherdess, spinner, dyer, and knitter in charge of the whole operation.

I came away with a couple of handspun skeins, a year's supply of syrup, and the smell of woodsmoke on my clothes. It was a good day.

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I hope you all had a good weekend too!

P.S. If you're near the Southern Indiana area, you've got another chance to visit the festival this weekend.

before the thaw

Like so many other places, we've been hit with snow and ice and snow again. Snow doesn't usually stay on the ground for long in Kentucky, but this winter we've had it for weeks, long enough to get sick of it. Oh yes, I've had my fill of snow. I've also had my fill of being cooped up in the house. Jude and I kept ourselves as entertained as we could with piles of books and toys, and of course I've been squeezing in some knitting (a Milo for next fall). I've been keeping warm in the kitchen and filling our bellies with potato soup and hot chocolate with homemade marshmallows, the perfect things to help us through the gray winter days.

Things have been thawing out over the past few days. The snow and ice disappeared, and the ground turned to squelchy mud. We've been out for walks and done some porch sitting with bare arms. We've actually seen our neighbors! Everyone seems so happy to be out. Jude is enjoying his newfound mobility and finding ways to maneuver where he wants to go. He started pointing at things this week and saying what we interpret to be, "What's that?" I'm excited to get outdoors and explore with him.

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I am looking forward to the Sugarbush Maple Syrup Festival this weekend. I'm excited to eat waffles with lots of syrup and drink maple syrup tea! Check it out if you're in the area. It's my favorite festival of the year.

finding time

Hello there. I'm glad you found your way here. Last month I felt ready to take on some freelance work, and I've been lucky to have steady work since then, but I haven't quite figured out a rhythm to fit in everything I want to do each day. I need more time, always.

The clock is ticking now for sure. It's nap time, so time feels more finite than ever. I try to stretch it out, or at least use it wisely, by slowing myself down with tea and a few stitches knitted. I'm sipping on a cup of genmaicha, which is green tea with toasted rice. That toasted flavor comes through in the brewed tea and tastes warm and cozy. Today I'm working on a newly cast on Milo vest for Jude that I hope will fit him this spring. It's a risky thing, knitting for a baby to wear something now. It's very possible that he's growing faster than I can knit!

At night before bed I've been reading a few pages of The Living by Annie Dillard. It's a novel set in the Pacific Northwest in the late nineteenth century. I've read plenty of Dillard's essays, but never any of her fiction. This novel features the stunning descriptions of the natural world that I've come to expect, but I find the narrative hard to get into so far. I haven't made up my mind about this one yet.

I'm off now to work or knit or clean or cook. Oh, I need more time!

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I'm participating in Ginny's yarn along today.

to keep her warm

{ta-da moment}

{quilting}

{handsewing the binding}

{taking it for a test run while I do some knitting. yep, the quilt works just fine.}

 {finished. hooray!}

Finally, I can show you what I was working on for my mom's birthday. A quilt! My sister and I made this together. It was fun to collaborate on it (and to have someone help with all that ironing and pinning!).

I was so excited to give this quilt to Mom. It may have been the most excited I've ever been to give a gift. She loved it! And I love knowing that she's keeping the winter cold at bay by snuggling under a handmade quilt.

Although the quilt is far from perfect, I have good memories of making it with my sister, and I learned so much about quilting from the process. Mom and I made a couple of baby quilts together before Jude was born, but she did the bulk of the finishing on those. This was the first quilt I took the lead on and actually felt like I kind of knew what to do. There was lots of Googling, of course!

Our brick quilt was inspired by Alicia's rectangle quilt. We cut our fabric into 6-inch by 3.5-inch rectangles and used 1/4-inch seams throughout. We backed it with vintage pink flannel and used an antique-rose-colored fabric for the binding. I've heard people say that handsewing the binding is their favorite part (perhaps there's something meditative about it?), but I didn't find that to be true for me. It took a lot of chocolate to get me through that sewing, and at the end I had to scrub chocolate out of the quilt (oops!). I forgot to measure the completed quilt, but it's lap-sized.

I'm already looking forward to the next quilt I make! You can find my sewing inspiration here.

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Stay warm, friends!

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yarn along: sleeve and spinning

That's a sleeve you see there. And not just any sleeve: a second sleeve. That's right, I'm on track to finish my Larch cardigan within a year of starting it, which is pretty much my regular sweater-knitting speed. I am a slow knitter in general and an even slower sweater knitter. I can finally see this one coming together though, and I'm antsy to wear it this winter. With all the snow we've been having, a new red sweater would go a long way in warming me up.

I've been reading just a tad about spinning before bed recently. I can muster only a few pages before my eyes close and the book falls out of my hands. I bought a simple top-whorl drop spindle, and I picked up some fiber on my yarn adventure over the weekend (more on that later). All that remains is for me to get up the guts to actually try to spin. I keep making excuses (e.g., I'll just read another chapter and watch one more spinning video) because I know I'm going to make some fat, dense yarn to start out, and I hate being a beginner. Soon, though. I'm going to spin soon. I'm brave this year, you know.

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I'm joining in with Ginny this week for the Yarn Along.

snoflinga + links

Hello. It's Friday morning, which always feels good. The weekend is within reach, right? The baby is asleep, and here I am at the computer. I keep glancing out the window next to me to watch the snow fall--just flurries, which I can barely make out against the pale gray sky. I have to look hard at the trunks of the tall oak trees down the street to see the tiny snowflakes. We've got a scant inch of snow on the ground, but even that little bit brightens the whole house. I'm drinking blueberry tea and breathing deeply. I've been slathering on coconut oil and a few drops of peppermint essential oil every morning to wake myself up. The scent invigorates me all day. It's been a week of good days.

I've got my crafty nose to the grindstone this week, working hard on a top-secret present for my mom's birthday next Tuesday. Ah, deadlines. I wouldn't have it any other way though. I work best under deadlines. The structure helps me prioritize and get things done. And so I can't really talk about what I've been making this week, but I can show you a finished object.

I've been wearing my Snoflinga hat every day since I made it. I love everything about it: the yarn (Brooklyn Tweed Shelter, so woolly, but soft after a good soak), the color (Camper, which may be my perfect shade of pink. It has great depth of color and is feminine without being too girly.), the bobbles, the slouchiness, and that little loop at the top, which I forgot to make and had to go back and add. I've never had a slouchy hat before and wore this hat around the house for two days before I had the nerve to wear it out in public. So silly!

The Snoflinga was a joy to knit. First off, I was glad that the yarn was rustic because softer yarns have a tendency to catch on my rough winter hands. Shelter felt good in my hands! And the pattern was easy to follow and kept my interest with those garter rows and bobbles. The beauty of the design is its simplicity and restraint. I loved knitting it so much that I want to cast on another one, even though I rarely knit the same pattern twice.

Well, I better get back to that grindstone. I'll leave you with some of my favorite things from the Internet this week.

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I had a chocolate emergency yesterday. Luckily this brownie in a mug came to the rescue. (And thank goodness I have a weekend of birthday cake and Nord's doughnuts coming up.)

I wish this color-saturated quilt were on my bed right now.

At the risk of sounding like a fangirl, I'm pretty enchanted with Carrie's Dessau Cowl.

I loved reading Molly's take on feeding her kid.

Are you joining in Vibeke's color swap? I think it will be so much fun!

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Have a good weekend, friends! I'm going on a yarn adventure, so I'm excited about mine!