Walk With Me

My new favorite group: Walk With Me.

And here's my walk on a sunny November afternoon... Have a wonderful weekend, all.

What I'm Making :: Wednesday

Little hats for produce! What a great idea!

I couldn't find a newborn to photograph the sweet little pilot cap on so I brought the cap to the coop with me and found the proper sized head. I tried to wait until there was no one else in the produce aisle but that didn't work out. By the end of the little photo shoot, I had had help choosing between this acorn squash and a pumpkin and I also had a promise from a staff member that if I really started knitting cozies for all the vegetables and I was still doing it in March -- when it would be clear that I was not just knitting because I love to but because I had gone off the deep end -- that they would get me some help. It's that kind of place. You can be quirky, you can be eccentric, but they're watching your back. Seriously.

Anyway, this little hat is for a new little baby named Ursa who lives far away now but will be moving to the neighborhood soon...


I found this pattern through this lovely lady.

Bench Monday :: November

We found ourselves outside of a garden surrounded by a beautiful stone wall. We had permission to go inside and see it. The little miss got to the gate before I did and she exclaimed, "Look! There's a BENCH in there! Let's do a Bench Monday!" Ahhh, how flickr has infiltrated our lives...


The garden did not have just one bench. It had a bench lip sticking out of each corner. We tried them all.


The rest of the property where the garden was, in southern Vermont, had no shortage of Bench Monday possibilities. There were stones to stand on everywhere. And since I have been known to cheat on Bench Monday, and cheat badly, each and every stone was fair game...


Be careful up there, cookie, said I. You know, part of Bench Monday is that you should be wearing something pretty. Well. She's wearing the ever-so-beautiful borrowed sweater, a flannel hand-me-down dress, and underneath? Her pajamas. It was too cold when she got up to change out of them so they stayed on. And then the winter boots. Maybe not a "pretty" outfit but a sensible one. And we're all about sensible outfits on Mackville Road.


Then there was a real sort of bench set into a wall near the front door. I wondered if the owner's of the house had any idea what a treasure trove of benches they had for this particular purpose but I didn't ask them. Imagine explaining Bench Monday to people who had never heard of it. And whom you had just met. Who knew next to nothing about you at all. See, there's this group? On flickr? And there's these pools? I didn't mention it...


This is the bench and the picture I chose to add to the pool today. It is a proper bench. There are other things that don't fit the guidelines but I'm working on it, I swear. Some day soon there will be a proper Bench Monday pic from me. It will be me on a proper bench wearing something pretty.

And yes, her boots are on the wrong feet. And if you ask her she will tell you that she likes them that way.

New Hats

I signed up to take a class at my Local Yarn Store. A color work class. But not enough people signed up and so it was canceled but I already had the yarn on hand. So I sat down with Elizabeth Zimmermann on DVD and she walked me through making the hat. Well, sort of. I could have used a lot more hand-holding and explanation but that's not really her style. So anyway, I made her the hat and she loved it. She was wearing it every day. She would say, "Oh THANK YOU for making me such a pretty little hat! THANK YOU!" and it was really quite sweet and I felt like a good and proper mother...

And then someone gave her this hat:


Well, she told me that I could share the knitted hat with her now. Because THIS hat, this BEAUTIFUL TEA HAT is now her favorite. Because it is so PINK. And because it has JEWELS on the flower petals. And because it keeps the snow off her head better than any other hat she's ever, ever had. Ever.

*sigh*

Actually, I think this hat is a pretty good antidote to the bluster that is November.

In the Larder...

This weekend I was given a mess of horseradish. So I ground it up and mixed it with vinegar and cried my eyes out. And then we planted some down in the garden. My question for you is this: what do you do with horseradish? How do you like to eat it? Do tell.


Here, my friends, is the pantry lest you think all we eat is pork and chicken given the post about the freezer the other day. You know, here's the pantry if you want to see it. (Otherwise, wait until tomorrow and I'll stop talking about the food in the house...)

In here you will find: two five gallon buckets of carrots, three boxes of onions, a big box of potatoes that appear to be unaffected by the blight so far, beer someone brought over that we don't drink, bags of dried nettles and oatstraw for my daily tea, big bags of flour, big bags of pasta, little bags of sugar and popcorn and adzuki beans. And lots of cookbooks that are the second string -- the ones I use all the time are in the kitchen proper. If you click on the picture, you can read the notes I left on there. Can you spy the mouse trap?

Things are looking good in here, too: lots of food on hand. Trouble is, this room freezes. As soon as the temperature goes down and stops coming up, this room gets really, really cold. It's part of the kitchen and the kitchen doesn't have anything underneath it: no basement, no insulation, just dirt. So at some point in the next couple of months, I'll have to move all the vegetable matter upstairs to the bedroom over the kitchen which is where our root cellar is. Root Room on the Second Floor. Up there, it's quite cold but it doesn't freeze like the pantry does.

So... what do you like to do with horseradish?

What I'm Making :: Wednesday

I was almost in tears when I started this vest for Lucian and realized that I might really have bitten off more than I could possibly chew. But you know what? It's no harder than turning a heel. I wrote really long post about turning a heel and you could substitute "cable" for "turning a heel" and it would be the same story.

I got very good advice before I began to make sure and put markers in for each section of the pattern. I am so glad that I did that.

This is so fun to knit. And who knew about the cables? They are so easy! I was completely under the impression that cables were only for the really really really good knitter.

Bah!

I can cable! You can cable! Anyone can cable, cable!


And here is lovely close-up, with all sorts of processing, to demonstrate the beauty of the cabled vest. So far so good.

Now. If everyone could just stop having babies for a few minutes I might be able to STOP making baby things and FINISH Lucian's vest. Thanks.

Filling the Freezer (Vegetarians, please skip this one...)

It's been a big few weekends for Lucian and his side charcuterie business. Last weekend I knitted quietly on the couch while the kitchen churned out chops and ribs and parts to go for smoking and finally, the sausage stuffing commenced at the end. But this weekend, we all went to a friend's house and helped with their pigs. In other years, Bea has been too little to be left to her own devices so I've always read books or set her up with projects but didn't have to get involved myself. This year though? Bea can entertain herself. I was thinking I was going to have to really try to make myself useful.


Now the boy, he has no trouble making himself useful. He's been helping Lucian plus he's been tagging along with one of his friends to other places where the fall farm business has been going on. So he just jumps right in and knows what to do.

Yours truly, not so much. As it turned out, though, there was enough help that I didn't need to insert my amateur self much. I carried roasts and bacon sides to the brine bucket outside (those things go into a brine first and then get smoked.) And I did a lot of dishes. And cut my finger on a knife. Not using it for anything, no, just missed it in the soapy water and then, well, I found it. I was good in the dish sink -- I'm well-versed in dish doing.

Yesterday I made up thirty pounds of sausage: half Italian and half chorizo. The Italian has fennel seeds, garlic, salt and pepper, a little nutmeg, and cayenne. The chorizo has chili powder, salt, oregano, cumin, cinnamon, and vinegar. I put them in little one and two pound packages and into the freezer. I have to say I was giddy putting those delicious things away for eating over the winter. The long. cold. very long. winter.


There's something incredibly satisfying and comforting in filling up the freezer. Now it is full of sausage, roasts, and when it is all nicely smoked, there will be bacon. Not long ago the chickens went in there, too. Big roasting chickens and bags of thighs and other parts and bags full of bones and other items to make stock with. Plus the tomato sauce I froze, the basil and olive oil frozen hockey puck type things to throw into stews and soups. And the blueberries, don't forget the blueberries. It's good. Very, very good.

*In other good news: yesterday it was SEVENTY DEGREES here!! Above!! Fantastic. *