Holiday Knitting Roundup

Many, many projects are on the needles, which I fully intended to have done by Solstice.  Ha!  It just wasn't going to happen.  That's what iou's are for, right?  

Luke's vest was finished long before the big day and he even let me take a few photos.  I love his style.  Handmade camo mittens {from the thrift store}, dress shirt from an old halloween costume, clip on tie, and a giant furry hat he bought for fifty cents with his own money and a rainbow.  Always rainbows.   

I'm also working on a sweater vest for Cole.  He and I dyed several skeins of superwash merino to just the right color this fall. It's a gorgeous shade of purple with some orange and green undertones. Turns out my math was way off {probably because I refuse to believe he's thirteen now and as big as me} and I'm going to be about a whole skein short.  I've color matched before, but I really don't want to attempt a huge dye project in the winter time.  The light's never quite right and anyway, he just didn't care if it became a vest.  So there.  I'm using the same pattern format as Luke's vest, but since it only goes up to Size 8, I'm kind of making it up as I go along.  It seems to be a good fit so far.  The edging will have to wait, though.  I sat on my Size 5 circular needle I was going to use and broke it right in half.  

While I'm waiting until I can get to town, {it's forty miles to any sizable town} I'm finishing the crown of Mike's 1898 Hat.  I've followed the pattern exactly, except I'm decreasing at four points using psso instead of k2tog.  I like the straight lines of the decrease to compliment the earflap construction.  

How about you?  Any holiday iou's still hanging out in your basket?

p.s.  Joining Ginny for Yarn Along

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Winter Solstice

A hike in the woods.

Fresh cut pine.

A few of our most cherished ornaments and decorations.  And a tiny strand of twinkle lights for the darkest night.

Wishing you and yours a happy winter solstice.

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Bread Baking: Week 2

This week was all about getting the right amount of moisture in the bread dough.  Each day, I successively decreased the amount of flour, a quarter cup at a time.  Just shy of two and a half cups seems to be the magic number for a nice soft loaf.  The boys have enjoyed the daily bread making, too, and once in a while I have help kneading dough.

The good:  I added a spoonful of honey to the yeast water, and it made all the difference in flavor. Mike brushed melted butter to the finished loaf on Friday, and sprinkled sea salt on top before it dried.  The best yet!

The bad:  The loaf is small and disappears in about fifteen minutes.  I'm realizing that if I want to make enough bread for us to replace store bought bread, I'm going to need to either make one larger loaf or two smaller loaves per day.  

The ugly: I forgot about Tuesday's loaf and it fell.  It didn't look pretty, but it tasted good.

Next week's goals....  Larger loaf.  Adding herbs.

{Bread Baking:  Week 1}

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Knitting Jack Pines

Knitting:  A small forest of Jack Pine Trees
Yarn:  Madelinetosh Vintage in Jade

What's on your needles right now?

{p.s.  Joining Ginny for Yarn Along.}

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Baking Bread

For as long as I can remember {or at least as long as I've had babies}, I wanted to have baking bread become a part of my daily routine.  I have to admit, I'm not very good at it, and I get easily discouraged.  So it became easier to just not do it.  Not any more.  I'm on a mission to make bread baking a part of my morning.  Each day, I'm going to bake a loaf and learn from my mistakes.  I'm going to post about it here each Thrusday, but you can follow along for daily updates over on Instagram.  Join me won't you?  Maybe we can learn to bake together.

I'm going to use a basic bread recipe and make adjustments from there. {Thanks, Tonya, for sharing!}

Here's the recipe for one loaf of Basic White Bread:
1 cup warm water {think temp of baby bath water}
2 1/2 t. yeast
Wisk them together and let stand for 5 minutes
Add 2 1/2 - 3 cups flour {for me, 3 made the best loaf}
Add 1t salt
Add 1T olive oil

Mix everything together with a wooden spoon.

Knead for 10 minutes

Shape loaf and put in oiled pan {I'm using a stoneware pan}

Let rise until double {I was confused about this part.  Only let it rise once?  Would it work?  I was always told it HAD to rise twice.  Nope.  I'm sure it has better flavor and structure with a double rise, but it's beyond my attention span at this point.}

Bake @ 350 degrees for 40 minutes or until it sounds hollow when you knock on the top of loaf.

What I did wrong...  My biggest mistake with the white loaf was that it wouldn't rise.  It turned out that my water was too hot and it killed the yeast.   Once I got that right, it was the best loaf of bread I've ever made.  Nice rise, crust and texture.  Unfortunately, it was gone before I could get a picture of it.

The photo above is made with wheat bread.  I'd like to stay away from white flour and only use natural flours instead.  This has been a challenge for me.  I used the same basic recipe, but with 100% wheat flour from Wheat Montana instead.

What I did wrong...  Dough was too dry.  I since read that wheat flour needs more liquid so I'm going to increase the water and see what happens.  The finished bread turned out tasty, but a bit on the gummy side. It couldn't have been too bad, though, it was gone in about ten minutes.  Maybe a longer rise?  Cook in the oven longer? Let it rest longer when it comes out of the oven?

I'm going to work on getting the basic wheat bread right this week, so until Thursday...

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Splitting Fire Wood

I have infinite respect for those who can wield an axe and split wood by hand.  I am not one of them. Honestly, it scares the crap out of me.  I've had nightmares about over swinging and chopping off my leg.  My oldest, he loves to split wood, but not ten or more cords of it at a time.  We need this wood chopped now, to keep us warm in the months ahead and with orders to fill for the holiday season, we just didn't have time to attempt hand splitting.  Hence, the hydraulic splitter.  Borrowed from my little brother, this beast can split ten cords in one weekend, and you can even wear your pajamas while doing it!

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Wood Shed

The wood shed is almost finished.  It's 8' wide x 24' long and holds nine cords of wood when filled to the roof.  As always, we built this almost completely out of recycled materials.  Most of the lumber came from a new neighbor down the road. He and his wife moved in this fall and when we got to talking, told us about a giant {about fifteen feet tall} pile of rubbish they were going to burn.  If we wanted any of it, we were welcome to it.  Posts, pallets {for the floor}, and decking were salvaged along with a giant pile of first cuts from an old saw mill that was on the property.  We're going to cut those up for fire wood.  The roofing was also salvaged from a company that builds airplane hangers. The plastic panels are used for hanger garage doors and while they have a few scratches and dents, they're perfect for keeping the snow off and letting in the sunlight, speeding up the drying process. I'd like to say that this shed will hold all of our fire wood, but it's not going to even come close.  We have one more section of roofing to finish, but I think we're going to have to add on next year.  It sure is nice to have dry firewood this year and also an accurate measure for how much we're using.

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Small Business Saturday

Just wanted to pop in to let you know that we're having a Small Business Saturday sale in our shop!

Take 20% off your entire order using coupon code: saturday

Thank you so much for supporting small businesses this holiday season.

p.s.  Thanks to our customer Lisa for sharing a photo of your Jack Pine Trees.

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A Vest for Luke

I'm making a vest for Luke.  This yarn has quite the history.  It was some that I dyed years ago for a garter stitch sweater I designed for Luke.  A one piece kimono style sweater that turned out to be far too much garter stitch with too much bulk and weight.  Anyway, I digress.  The yarn.  I dyed what I thought would be enough, not knowing at the time how much extra yarn you need for garter stitch and alternating skeins to avoid pooling.  I ran out.  So I dyed another skein, painstakingly matching colors as best I could.  Pure agony, I tell you. I ran out again.  One more skein dyed.  Long story short, the sweater was done and worn and loved and put into the box of woolens when it was outgrown.  Luke recently found it when we were going through things for the winter.  He desperately wanted to wear the sweater, but it was about four inches too short in every direction and he didn't seem to care.  I finally convinced him to take it off when I suggested we frog the sweater and make something new with the yarn.  A vest.  I'm using the pattern Basic Vest for Children which I found at the thrift store last week.  So far so good.  I think it will be finished tomorrow and with maybe enough yarn left over for a pair of mittens.

What's on your needles right now?  Any holiday knitting?  I'm joining Ginny for Yarn Along this week, too. 

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Herbs

The herb spiral is put to bed for the winter.  It performed the best of everything we planted this year, yet somehow I managed to not get any pictures of it in full bloom.  Mint, Oregano, Thyme, Sage and Basil were the one's we preserved for winter.  After processing, we decided to store them in these  cotton muslin bags vs canning jars.  They'll hang from hooks in the loft rafters and save precious shelf space.  I'm so happy to have garden fresh herbs for our soups, teas and soap.

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Thrift Store Finds

Tiny rural thrift stores are the best and in our neck of the woods, we have many.  One in particular, is our favorite and routinely has "fill a grocery bag for $5 day".  Let me tell you, I've gotten pretty good at making use of every square inch of that space.  I guess I'm pretty good at that in general, now. 

This week was the ultimate score.

A whole shelf full of knitting books.  Dozens of them.  Most were books for novelty yarn, but a few were must haves...

Domino Knitting

Knitting Around

Knitter's Almanac

Sweater Design in Plain English

99 Yarns and Counting

Knitting New Mittens and Gloves

Knit 2 Together

Knitting Workbook

Twinkle's Town and Country Knits

Weekend Knitting

Lopi Book 25

Fabulous Fair Isle Knitting

Rowan Magazine no. 50

Luke's been loving biography's lately, and I even managed to squeeze in a couple for him. 

What's been your favorite thrift store find, lately?

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Going Going Gone

The rain turned to wind and snow sometime around ten last night.

Big white heavy flakes.

By morning it was going, going, gone.

And with it, the last of the leaves on the trees.

I'm so grateful we had such a nice long autumn this year.  We've been desperately trying to finish a list of projects before winter, {hence the radio silence around here} and have made a pretty good go at it.  Our top of the list items are to finish the siding, build a woodshed, maybe a small workshop and general clean up.  Mike broke two fingers last week, so the well will have to wait until Spring again. He can still do a lot with the injury, but pounding a well is out of the question.  If you'd like to see more of what we've been up to,  I've been posting almost daily on Instagram.

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Corn Husk Wreath

I came across this recently and Luke asked if we could make it.  Not wanting to spend any money, we made our own straw wreath base out of our hay and twine, then raided the neighbor's field for left over corn.  A little hot glue was all it took to secure the husks in place.  The boy who rarely lets me take his photo asked if I could take one of his wreath.  Be still my heart.  Now where to hang it?

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Autumn Leaves

A leaf obsession started a few weeks ago when I found these adorable felt leaf coasters.  I made about a dozen of them out of the merino felt I dyed last year.  {You can see them here on Instagram.} 

Then I got tired of all that hand stitching {because it takes me forever} and the leaf project was done. I'm keeping some for gifts and a few will end up in the shop.

In the meantime, our woods have become the most glorious shades of autumn.  Leaves to crunch under our feet and just the right amount of crisp in the air.  It's become our morning tradition.

Leaves.  I just can't get them out of my mind.  

Into my stash I went for the perfect color of yellow. This dandelion dyed wool was just right for an autumn leaf.  I started knitting until I came up with the same shape as the felt version and wrote up the pattern.  I adore these leaves. They're increadibly fast to knit up {seriously, it took me about fifteen minutes once I got in my groove} and just the right size for a cup of coffee.   And the twine stems... Aack! Luke also came up with the idea of a bunting for the window, instead of our yearly beeswax leaves.  I suggested he get his needles out and start knitting.  We'll see.  His knitting has been pretty sporadic lately.

If you'd like to make your own set of Autumn Leaves, you can find the pattern Etsy,  Ravelry or buy now through the button below.  If you're on Instagram, you can use #knitautumnleaves to share your leaf obsession!

Autumn Leaves

$1.99

p.s.  Joining Ginny's Yarn Along

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10 Things on a Thursday

1.  Our well is coming along.  Pounding it by hand is awful and we've been avoiding it at all costs. Except when the old guy up the road comes over and asks if we need help pounding the well.  It's his polite way of saying we should get this s#*t done.  Oh, and it looks like we're going fourty feet, not twenty five.  Also, my dad keeps calling to ask if we have water yet.  

2.  Last window installed.

3.  A pair of sandhill cranes have been hanging out in our field every morning.

4.  Made an apple pie as an excuse to go visit the old guy and his wife up the road.

5.  We found Chanterelles on the forest floor.  They turned into the most delicious mushroom risotto.

6.  I need more yarn.  No, seriously.

7.  This week, I really miss a tub.

8.  Mike and I celebrated our fourteenth wedding anniversary.  I met him when I was fourteen. We've been together more than half my life.  It's crazy good.

9.  We had our first frost on Tuesday.  All my basil in the herb spiral died, because I forgot to cut it.  Sigh.

10.  The wood pile is growing by leaps and bounds.  And that's good, becasue it's October!

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One of Three

One of three hats on my needles this week.  I'm desperately trying to get patterns written up, but knitting is just so much more fun than working on the computer.  

Do you have multiple projects going on right now, too?

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Ugly Apples

Ugly apples make the best fall treats.  Especially when they're free from a tree off the side of the road.  We found a farm full of trees on the way home from mushroom hunting and stopped to ask the farmer if we could pick a few bags full.

He said, "Yep."

We came home with fifty pounds or so of free organic apples.

Apple pie filling.  Apple sauce.  Apple cider.

That's all for tonight.

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