moonfrog

I couldn’t put this down until after 3 in the morning! After seeing so many beautiful scarves being knit for the International Scarf Exchange, I couldn’t help casting one on myself. This is the My So Called Scarf done in some buttery soft merino wool that Dani sent me for the Felted Secret Pal Swap. Here’s a close-up of the colors and the herringbone stitch pattern.

This is giving me the same relaxed excitement that knitting a dishcloth does. The pattern is easy to memorize with just two rows, and the stitch is different and quite fun to do. I have two balls of this yarn, so I hope to get some blue-gray Manos wool that will give me enough for a hat with a matching brim. I rarely make scarves and keep them even less often because of our mild climate, but this one is going to be a keeper! Besides I’m expecting a long, cold winter this year. It’s kind of a feeling like an animal instinct. If I were a squirrel, I’d gather up extra nuts. Ha! Guess that sounds a bit nuts, huh?

And now that I’ve had a bit of time to sit and knit… I’ve finally started The Time Traveler’s Wife, September’s book for Knit the Classics. What? It’s almost October? How did that happen? I’m enjoying the book, it causes me to think too much — kind of twists my brain with all the time-warping stuff. I don’t know if I’ll have time to knit a project, but there’s a twisted idea rattling around in my head, so we’ll see what happens.
Now for the big question. What were Mark Twain and I reading in the September 23rd post? Three people guessed correctly. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The random number generator picked out Rebecca’s number, so she will get a book on tape, a romantic, historical mystery novel set during the American Revolution called Hearts and Bones. Check out Rebecca’s blog and help her decide which sweater to make for her pup.
The other two winners also won prizes in my big contest, so they will have a book included in their prize package. KnitNana will be getting Knit Along with Debbie Macomber: A Good Yarn and Adrienne will get a book by Neil Gaiman and Terry Prachett called Good Omens. (Let me know if you have read these and I will switch them with something else.) Thanks again for playing!

In honor of the ISE, leave a comment and let me know what scarf patterns you have made or which one is your favorite. I’m off to run errands so we can leave town one-more-time tomorrow. I am so ready to hibernate in a warm nest of yarn!

Fall has arrived with its cold mornings. The apples are ripe, and it is time to make applesauce and pies. Today I picked half the apples from our family’s trees. There are still yellow delicious to pick later. A friend has also asked us to pick his apples and that will take place tomorrow.

Then it is time to cook them. Applesauce is on the list, as well as a pie or two. I’m thinking about canning some sliced apples to use in pies later. Got any good recipes or ideas for these beauties? I’d like to try something new. I’ve done lots of canning and baking and I’m a bit worn out on the old standards.

Here’s the little girl who helped me pick the apples. She ran around chasing apples, pulling my clothes, and biting my toes. Now she’s tuckered out. She belongs to a friend who was helping with the yardwork.

So I’ve had some fresh air, exercise, and a good puppy fix. Much better than yesterday, when I felt ill all day. I think we ate something disagreeable on our way home from Reno. Yuck!

Enough of that –it is finally time to announce some winners! I’ll start with the Moving/Anniversary Party prizes today. The guesses on the reading contest will be posted sometime Thursday.

First, I want to thank you all for helping me celebrate this move and my first year of blogging. It has been great fun for me, even if I was running around the countryside most of the time. My apologies to the people who posted in the last two days. My hotel would not let me email out and I wasn’t able to reply to many comments. I really did appreciate all your comments and well-wishes. Thanks!

Now…for the prizes. There are eight of them, so I drew eight names. The first winner whose name was drawn will pick the prize that suits her best. Each one after that will choose in order. That means it will take a while, but I would rather have someone choose something that would be useful than just assign prizes willy-nilly.

Winner #1 is Sallee of KnitNana! Congratulations! She will have first pick. After that, in order: Karen S. of Tangles, Ariel of Stariel Knits, Chris of Stumbling Over Chaos, Lorinda of Redhead Ramblings, Lori of Starz Above, Marji of Fiber Arts Afloat, and Adrienne, aka Pixie Girl.

I wish there were prizes for everyone, but these are the lucky ones this time around. I will be emailing each one of you after the one before you makes her choice. I hope to be done by Thursday since I’ll be out of town one last weekend. If you don’t hear from me, I’ll catch up to you early next week. Thanks so much to all of you for playing!

Leave me your secret (or not so secret) apple-cooking tips and check back on Thursday for the Mark Twain Reading contest winner.

We are having a great time in Reno. I’m trying to stay away from the slot machines — they sure gobble up money fast! We listen to a different band every night. We saw Commander Cody who did Hot Rod Lincoln and he put on a really fun show full of boogie-woogie music. There’s a huge variety of foods. We’re heading out to a Vietnamese restaurant with a Cambodian friend for lunch.
On one of our motorcycle rides I saw these gorgeous rosehips. They are the size of cherry tomatoes. Back in the 70s I used to make rosehip jelly. I had the mistaken notion that it would be full of vitamin C, but I’m sure the heat of cooking killed all the vitamins it contained. It was sure good tasting jelly anyway!

Here’s another little contest for you. This great statue of Mark Twain was in Tahoe Junction in a gas station . You know, one of our cultural stops.

Leave a comment with your guess of what Twain and I are reading in the photo. Tell me what you are reading, too. The winner will receive a bookish prize, to be determined when I get back home. Thanks for playing!

We are heading home tomorrow. Look for prize winners next week sometime. Have a great weekend!

As DH and I load up the motorcycle this morning and head to Street Vibrations in Reno, I want to share a little about last weekend’s adventure. Every year we volunteer to work at Earth Dance, an international peace and music festival. DH transports people and equipment while I dispatch drivers. We camp out with a group of old friends in the dust on a ranch between our home and San Francisco.

Sometimes the music is too loud and not to my taste, but there is always something interesting happening. One year there was a huge drum circle. This year there were elders from all over the world, including a Grandmother’s Council on Sunday.

We worked Friday and Saturday, then left to attend the California Wool & Fiber Festival at the Mendocino County Fair in Booneville in the afternoon. Only one of my pictures came out, but you can see the sheep shearer on the festival website. We watched her shear a Navajo Churro and toured the animal barns. A friend of mine who is a spinner checked out the fleeces, looking for one she bought that is winning awards at all the local fairs. The festival building was filled with vendors, with their wares, who were all spinning on various wheels and spindles.
One vendor raised angora rabbits and sheep and was selling roving. It was soft enough to convince anyone to spin. It has been 30 years since I owned a spinning wheel, but I have been looking at buying one for a couple months now. Here’s what I bought instead…

Not Kermit, just the roving and the drop spindle. I’m enjoying the feel of the angora blend and the process is coming back fairly quickly. I’ve never been real fond of spinning with a drop spindle, but this is a good fix for now. It’s also somethng that I can do anywhere with a very small investment.
I really enjoyed this small fair, and it was a great break from the dust and noise.

And right on the heels of Earth Dance is the International Day of Peace . Thursday, September 21, is the day set aside by the United Nations in 1981 to encourage world peace. There are many events happening all over the world on this day and the weeks around it. The simplest one is to pause for a Minute of Silence at Noon. Peace to us all.

Looking for the Contest and Party Post? It’s right below this one.

I’m so glad you are here. This is an exciting move for me. I finally am putting my old domain to use — and most of my older archives are back! You can even travel back to my very first post to see how this blog started out.

On Sept. 24th this blog will be one year old, and to celebrate new friends and a new home, I am giving out prizes. The downside of moving a blog is that many friendly readers are lost in the process. I don’t want that to happen. So…
Everyone who subscribes to my new blog will be entered in a drawing. (There’s a button in the sidebar that will help you subscribe.) This is one way to say a big Thank You! to all my faithful readers for visiting my blog from time to time. You can also be entered in the drawing by leaving a comment or linking.

Looking back over my first few posts, I found some familiar faces who have been encouraging my knitting and blogging efforts from the beginning — and still stop by to say hello once in a while. I want to give a shout out to some of them: Mandy (who commented on my very first post!), Sue, Nessie Noodle, Tosh, and so many others including a Mystery Knitter who has disappeared now. There are newer readers who are much appreciated also: my wonderful Caps for a Cure knitters, the Knit the Classics crew, Swapper Pals, KAL pals and many more — too many to mention by name. I appreciate you all. I hope you will stick around for another year of knitting adventures.

And what about the prizes? Of course, I’ll show you!

There’s a cute little booklet of knit and crochet dishcloth patterns called Kitchen Kolors, Lily Chin’s Knit and Crochet with Beads and Iris Scheier’s Modular Knits.

There’s a skein of Montana dyeable wool that would make lovely handpainted socks and a huge skein of Egyptian cotton that would make a beautiful shawl. (The cotton was a prize from Knit the Classics, and it is shiny and very silky.)
I’m also giving away the project that won this beautiful cotton yarn, a back scrubber and washcloth combo in very bright colors. There are also 2 balls of Dolcetto yarn, a very soft wool blend that I use for chemo caps.

     

And the final prize is a kit from the Socks that Rock Club, complete with pattern, yarn and and matching emergency sock yarn key ring.This is the Fairgrounds colorway, which I believe is only available in the sock club kits. I love this yarn and I love the socks I made with the Rainforest Jasper colorway. I still have one more skein to knit besides the Fairgrounds and another one will be coming soon, so I figured I could share the love. (Have you seen how long it takes me to knit a pair of socks? Just saying, a lifetime supply for me is a lot less than for some of the speedy sock-knitters I’ve seen.)

After September 24th there will be a drawing to determine the winners of these prizes –
* If you subscribe to this blog’s feed, drop me an email with your ID and the details and I’ll put your name in the drawing.

* If you leave a comment on one of the posts between now and the 24th, I will put your name in the drawing.

* If you link to this party on your blog, I’ll drop your name in the drawing. (Let me know if you do.)
So many ways to win! I will be traveling quite a bit in the next two weeks, but I will try to be here often to keep this party hopping! Thanks for being here!

Ferg at Redumbrella asked me personally, so I figured I’d play along with this meme. These are foods I’d suggest everyone try at least once in a lifetime. I’m sure there are others I’ve forgotten, but these are some of my favorites.
Five Things to Eat Before You Die
Chocolate-covered licorice
. . . or was it Licorice-covered chocolate? I don’t remember, but a long time ago our town had an import store called Globe Imports. They had a food section that carried some candy from far, far away. It looked like M&Ms. It had a hard outer candy shell, probably brown or orange. Inside was a soft chocolate and inside that was a licorice center. I think that’s the general idea. Sounds weird, huh? I loved those things…. If anyone knows what I’m talking about, point me to a place where I can buy these lovlies. Okay?
Abalone
For years, my dad and his friend would go skin-diving once or twice a year to harvest abalone, a large footed shellfish much like a scallop or a sea snail. Dad would put on heavy weights and dive down and pry the big shells off the rocks. We still have some of the shells. They have beautiful rainbow colored insides.
Mom would take the abalone and beat the living daylights out of it to tenderize it, then bread it and fry it. It was the only food we told visitors (or family) that if they didn’t really like it, they couldn’t have any. It was like gold, not to be wasted. Dad’s too old to skin-dive anymore, it’s very dangerous, although he does still fish on the ocean, even alone. I don’t know where you can get some good abalone, but I miss it.
Moose Tracks Ice Cream
My mom mail-ordered me a T-shirt with this flavor on it. I used to eat a lot of it. *blush* I’ll let you read about it. Suffice it to say that my second favorite ice cream flavor, peanut butter cup, is part of the Moose Tracks recipe.
Lemon Meringue Pie
This is my specialty. I try to convince my family that this delicacy is reserved for my son’s birthday and maybe one other VIP occasion each year. They still pester me to make it more often. I rarely give in to their pleas. I make it myself, but am not above eating a commercial pie once in a while. Mine is better, of course.
Broccoli Soup
Now, this is a dish my DH cooks for me. (He actually does most of the cooking, but that is not such a good thing, as my digital, very accurate, scale will verify.) I have to ask for this delicious concoction, and eventually he will whip it up. Of course, I know where the recipe is and could make it myself, but that’s no fun, now is it? This is a variation of a recipe** that calls for dill, but DH uses cilantro since I don’t care so much for dill. Cilantro! It makes me happy just to think about it. If there was ever a personal aphrodisiac, this one is mine. It doesn’t make me lust after DH, though, just after cilantro, which may be why he isn’t quicker to make it for me. Here’s the recipe.

Creamless Broccoli Soup

Place oil onions, celery, garlic and salt in soup pot. Cover and cook for 10 minutes on medium heat, stirring often. Chop broccoli, using mostly tops with some stem. Set aside about a cup of broccoli tops. When onions are tender, add 4 cups of stock or broth and the broccoli, except for the cup of florets that were set aside. Cover and bring to boil. Simmer for 5 minutes. Add the oatmeal and simmer for 5 minutes, stirring often. When broccoli is tender, remove from heat and stir in lemon juice and cilantro. Puree in a blender until smooth. Cook broccoli florets that were set aside in boiling water until tender, about 5 minutes. Add to soup with cooking water.
Yields: 7 to 8 cups
Nutrition per 10-ounce serving: 109 calories, 5.8 g protein,
3.4 g fat, 16.8 g carbs, 0 cholesterol, 239 mg sodium, 5.4 g fiber.
**Adapted from a recipe in
Moosewood Restaurant Daily Special

  It’s time for the second Knitters Tea Swap. I had a great time with the last one, trying many new teas that became favorites. I’ve already started gathering new teas to try.

I am even getting in the mood with my knitting. This is the Vine Lace Tea Cozy made in Paton’s Classic Wool. I used natural so it could be dyed to any color I want. This knit up pretty quickly with doubled strands and size 11 needles. I’m not used to knitting with such big needles! It was a fun lacey pattern. I never really thought I’d make a tea cozy, but this was very enjoyable.
Suzie, our tea party hostess, doubled the number of participants allowed this round. Still, she is closing sign ups early because of the overwhelming response. Almost 200 tea drinkers have signed up so far! Monday at noon is the new deadline.
I needed a jumpstart to get me knitting again and the tea cozy and another dishcloth were just right. This is a second Three and One Checked Cloth that was the mid-August KAL for my Monthly Dishcloth KAL. I tried this one in two solid colors and like how it turned out. After two satisfying knits, I am ready to get back to the Shedir cap and DH’s socks. I have four knitting days until our next trip out of town, so wish me luck!

The Sundial Bridge in Redding, California has been on my list of Things-to-See since it was built two years ago. It’s actually a huge sundial and the bridge walkway is made of thick glass. We went back at night to see it all lit up, and it was awesome.
There was an added bonus to seeing the bridge, too. The variety of dogs that people walked over the bridge was impressive. We saw a pair of Russian wolfhounds, a sheep dog, an afghan, an English Bull Terrier, and lots more. I was able to get my fix of puppy love.

Here’s a picture of the English Bull Terrier I met. He’s quite the celebrity. Buddy is a full-fledged member of a Harley group which requires that the motorcycle rider has a doggie ride-along partner. Buddy rides in a hard-shell trunk on the back of the bike. There’s a hole cut out for his head to poke through. He has a helmet, a do-rag, and a leather vest. He also has a very laid-back, no-emotions, no tail-wagging biker attitude, but if you rub his ears just right, he turns to Jello. He has a Dachshund friend who wears a denim jacket with biker patches.

One of the activities during the California State HOG Rally was a special parade to Shasta Dam. The dam has been closed to public access since 9/11. Special arrangements were made to allow rally participants to ride to the dam and line up across it. There were 425 bikes on the dam all at once. There was a helicopter that flew over for about an hour and took picures. While we waited in the line to get on the dam, I took a photo of our friend’s shirt. Sometimes it crosses my mind that I am too old to be doing this sort of thing, but I’m having too much fun to worry about it too much. I do miss my knitting, though. I’m hoping to work on my Shedir cap this week.

I started the Shedir cap. It’s going well so far. I can’t wait until I get far enough to see if the pattern is actually turning out right. I have a lifeline just after the ribbing and markers showing each repeat to help me count. This will be another hat for Caps for a Cure, where we just started knitting for a new treatment center in Illinois. I thought we would have a small number of hats donated for the busy summer months, but imagine my suprise when we ended up with over 60 hats! What a great group of knitters!

I’ve also been working on the Trekking toe-up socks for DH. I was stressing over the holes made by the gusset increases. Now that I have more done, it doesn’t look so bad. A little farther and I will get to turn the heel.

I was making these with the pattern from the Six Sock KAL called Color Blox, which is based on the Queen Kahuna method. It got too confusing, so I went straight to the book, which I had tried to use before with little success. After reading carefully and sorting out the pertinent information, I am moving along with a basic pattern. I plan to do a basic ribbing for the cuff — whenever I get there! I’m picking them up each day to do a few rows so they will eventually get done.

Oh, we are out of town again and will be gone off and on all month. This trip — another motorcycle jaunt — is only a few hours away from home. We are have quite a busy time riding and swimming and playing. Happily, we are staying at a motel and I have my laptop with me. But there is no knitting this trip.
We are visiting a couple of really interesting places and I can’t wait to tell you all about them. I’ll be back in a few days. Until then… knit a few rows for me!