Thanksgiving Desert Table - Chocolate Moose.

I must apologize! I have now pictures for this one. This is a bit more complicated and more so with the girls helping.

This is also from the Doubleday cookbook.

6 oz semi sweet chocolate
2 T hot water or coffee
5 eggs separated
1 1/2 t vanilla
1 1/2 cups heavy cream

Melt chocolate and water in double boiler. Beat egg yolks lightly, temper them with some of the melted chocolate, add all the eggs into chocolate mix well return to heat, and cook for two minutes. Beat heavy cream until soft peak stage, add vanilla to chocolate mixture, fold mixture into heavy cream. Beat egg white until soft peaks form. Fold mixture into eggs until no white shows, place into serving containers and refrigerate until service. A dollop of whipped cream goes well on top. Because we are eating at my sister's house almost three hours away I put it into plastic cups, and will top when we get there. I hope to snap a few pictures then!

Also, the kids demanded lunch. In my family we work straight through on special prep days, my Grandma was shocked the first time after marrying into the family that my dad asked what was for lunch went they were prepping for a party. It is sort of a family joke now, but I still do it the old way and am always a bit surprised when anyone wants lunch. My dad, btw, learned to rummage about in the fridge when hungry and grab something to eat, rather than expect a meal in the middle of prepping. My husband faces the same problem, though his solution is just to start taking up space and cooking a meal over the top of my work, though he usually makes enough of whatever to feed everyone. I can however still hear my Nonnie saying "You want lunch? But we just ate breakfast six hours ago!"

Surgery around here

What does a mom do when her children are upset? When a stuffie is in need of rescue and emergency surgery? Why this of course...

The patient, belongs to Butterfly, it's name is Flewbie. She needs a eye transplant as the colored on eye is no longer allowing her to see properly.

Her family observes the entire procedure to make certain Dr. Mom does her job correctly.

The surgery prep table with all tools and the replacement eye at the ready. Butterfly's favorite color is pink, so naturally, Flewbie has selected a pink replacement eye. The little pocket knife belonged to my Grandma and came to me after her death in an old Altoids tin with some pins, needles, and stitch markers.

Flewbie in the recovery room with her family standing by. Butterfly was very pleased that the surgery was a success and Flewbie was back to her cuddling duties by evening-time.


Hope you take the time to really enjoy all the little and big things you get to do as a parent!
~Julia

A new technique

Picture batt from California trip with Beaver, Navajo plyed!

 My guild had a program on Navajo plying. I was really interested in learning the technique but my back has been hurting like crazy, so I couldn't haul my wheel along with me to the meeting - heck I had a hard time picking up my purse when it spilled on the floor - I almost decided not to go. I am glad I went.

Basically this is a method of taking a single strand of yarn and plying it into a three ply - stronger and more round for knitting. It also allows you to play with the changes in a colorway while plying to either keep them together or to blend them in the ply.

I have practiced on two skeins now. I really like it and go way to fast. My grandma nearly despaired of ever teaching me to so because I have a lead foot, apparently it is two lead feet Grams!

hi world it's me Julia

I took a bit of a break from blogging. At least from actually sitting down and writing out a post, I written hundreds in my head. What the quiet has taught me is I take more pictures and had something to look back at a remember exactly what I was thinking at the moment rather than what I think I was feeling from the point of view of where I am at now. So I will be fitting in more time to record my thoughts.

Finally finished the hairpin lace throw I made for my Grandpa from yarn I inherited from my Grandmother's Stash. He loves it and has shown it off to all the ladies at the senior center. They are impressed with me and with my Grandma for teaching me.

I washed a lot of wool.

Did a lot of craft fairs selling my work and my Dad's these are his work - bowls, pens, crochet hooks, wine stoppers... He is amazing.

Canned a bunch of stuff - only balanced like that for the photo, I am not completely crazy - these are tomato sauce and grape jelly.

We bought property to vacation on, Grow with and eventually move too. It is on a river flowage. I love the idea of my kids running all over this land, finding nature's hidden joys and secret places. Just being in the woods, calms and brings out the kid in my husband. It has been worth the budgeting and the frustration of the search just to see the stress and care fall from his shoulders as we explored the woods. Even if I didn't love it in it's own right - which I do - I would love it for that alone.

I took up weaving and gave some of the family handwoven placemats for Christmas. I really enjoy doing this.

I started writing a novel. I hide in a local coffee shop read while I eat their yummy breakfasts and write for a while. I have about 70 pages, hand written, so I have only just begun, but it is a bit like a date with myself as I intended to be in high school.

Lots of baking, brewing - beer, wine, and cider, I tried making sausage and cheese and plan to explore that a bit more. I've also worked more on the garden this year. We'll see, I like gardening but more in the planning and harvesting and processes aspects that in the tending it aspect.

Selling, new blog, surprise.

After a long time of talking about, dreaming about, and thinking about selling my crafts, I have decided to go for it.  I set up an Etsy site and am doing all the necessary forms and such to be all ready to sell.  I am planning on participating in a local farmer's market's craft weekends. It is once a month along with the market so I thought it was a gentle way to dive into craft fair selling and hope it will be a good fit for my family. To show what I am doing I created a new blog for the Business (that sounds so big!) it is MoonBound ArtisanShip

***

Sometimes ideas run away with me.  I decided that while my husband was off on a business trip I would empty, clean, carpet shampoo, and paint our bedroom - as a surprise! So I had a week to get everything done, this was the only room we did not paint when we bought the house, typically taking care of ourselves last thinking there.  I got my Mother and friend and co-conspirator R over to help. Mom watched the kids, folded mountains of laundry and also did some canning while R and I attacked the bedroom.  I did not clean it before my husband left - no surprise there - so we just grabbed stuff and threw it about the house. Like many people I know our bedroom had become a place where I would hide stuff I did not want to deal with while cleaning other rooms! Hopefully, I am done with that.
R got her Husband to come over after work and help move the furniture either out or to the center of the room.  We all had a nice dinner together and I discovered exactly how bad of a job my vacuum had been doing! The pictures about are us (R is working the camera and we are both laughing manically) at about 1am mixing the greenish paint I bought for this when we bought the house 5 years ago and all the leftover whites and creams we could find.  I did not want to spend more than $30 on the whole project to be an extra super part of the surprise, unfortunately I misremembered the name of the paint color when I went to get a second gallon and the color they gave me was bright deep teal. Not a good surprise. So sticking to the budget (which was wasted on buying that awful color) we mixed something up.
We got the room done and put back together and I managed to clean the house within an inch of it's or maybe my life before my hubby got home. Surprise accomplished. Surprise out of hand - Oh Yeah!

Hairpin Lace afghan I am making for my Grandpa out of yarn I received from my Grandma's stash. I have five done and think I will need thirteen or so.

I am still knitting, crocheting, spinning, and sewing up a storm here, but have found out that on days I do a lot of listings or book work type stuff the crafts come a bit harder. So I am trying to get all the necessary paper stuff out of the way before lunch and then playing after.

The kids need more time outside and I am longing for spring.

Chasing my dreams and hoping you chase yours ~ Julia

Thank you Blog!

 I was just saved by the blog. I thought I should post a picture of this wool. I dyed it Sunday night after using the dye for Easter eggs with the kids and wax painting eggs. I wanted to put away the wool before people come over tonight. Out came the camera. As I took the photo I realized I needed to charge my camera. Mouse has his school music program tonight and I nearly attended with no battery charge left!  It is plugged in, now I just have to remember to put the battery back into my camera.

 Badger drawing snowmen and stick figures. I may be spring but we still have snow! They say we might see 40 this week.

These are the painting wax resistance eggs I made and in the bags are yarn eggs the younger three did in Sunday school. We are going to make an Easter tree, from sticks in the yard, when they get home and hang these eggs. The picture is My Great-Grandmother Ruth Delilah, she is holding Beaver whom she told me was a keeper. She passed on not long after this photo, it is sitting on the under the tea pot cupboard in my kitchen with my cookbooks and keeping an eye on us.

Hope you manage to remember all the little and big things you need to today! ~ Julia

Yarn along - red fall dreams

Joining in with the yarn along at Small Things.

I just finished reading Heather Graham's The Uninvited. It was a murder mystery with a bit of ghosts and romance.  Set in a revolutionary war house turned museum, of course I enjoyed the descriptions and history thrown in, but I think that the underlying message, that our heroes were people, with good intentions and human failings, is a very important thing to remember.  It is part of the Krewe of Hunters series but it is not very necessary to read the series in order. Not sure what I will be reading next, but looking for something to take up north with me this Friday.

I received the red skein on the right as a door prize at the Crafter's Retreat I went on.  It is Kraemer brand, part cotton part acrylic, a bit split-y but feels nice and looks good.  I am whipping through a scarf for my cousin's husband for Christmas.  I am beginning to doubt the skein will be enough... fingers crossed.  It is knit lengthwise alternating garter and stockinette about every 4 rows. The other project started as something to keep my hands busy at my mom's one day.  I raided her stash for a not-designated-to-a-project-yet yarn and started a shawl, it is two stranded done in yarn over knit two together eyelet.  I -of course- ran out of the yarn I snagged from mom.  My grandpa boxed a bunch of my Nonnie's yarn up and sent it to me - some whole skeins, some bits and balls. One was four tiny balls of a matching red with silver bits in it.  I am using that currently (you can sort of see on the very edge of the photo) Then we'll see what I add next. This is all acrylic and I plan to match too that at least for washablity.

I finished the green/blue baby blanket and mailed it off to my cousin.  Hopefully, they get lots of use out of it.  It really was so soft!

I look forward to seeing what everyone is working on and reading! ~ Julia

a world without

Have not written in a while, too heartbroken and angry.  I did not want to write in anger.  I did not know what to write. 

Grandma has been gone since the 25th.  Day before my birthday.  I took Mom out west for the hardest and worst trip of my life.  I got the chance to spend a lot of time getting to know my cousins better.  Nothing like being in a house filled with anger and stress to help you bond. 

I am now praying for my aunt, that she get the help she needs, counseling, medicine, clergy all three. 
I am praying for my Uncle to survive this mess as the strong gentle man I know he is. 
I am praying for their marriage. 
I am praying for my cousin who because he lives there has been my aunt's confidant in too much. 
I am praying my mother learns to take responsibility for her health care and gets organized. 

I am praying for myself to learn that the most important familial obligations are the ones who live under my roof and to learn to say no and mean it when my parents want me to do something or put me into a situation where they want everything but are unwilling to do even the most basic things to help themselves.  I love all of them, but they are grown ups and I have other people to care for and worry about that are not. I want to help my family, but they need so much and it is always so stressful and anger filled and never enough. Last time I went out west my Uncle made an offhand comment about how I am an obedient daughter.  I told him I was not, but I think he is right, I am the dutiful daughter and I realize that the stress is breaking me.  I am really having a hard time with all of this and I can feel myself slowly slide into depression.  I can not do that again.  I will not allow myself to get back to a place where I really could not see the light.  I owe my children a good and happy life.  My husband deserves my hand in his, my efforts working to our goals and family.

This time while awful has brought a lot of introspection. My children are coloring pictures to sent to my grandpa. 

I am glad I went, Grandma was sent off with a prayer shawl, the rug I knit her, a sweater in yellow she knit, a ball of whit yarn with a project on the needles, and an extra ball of soft red and needles, at the last minute grandpa slipped in her favorite sandals (grandma was always worried about getting to heaven barefoot). We included a postcard of her hometown that shows the building the entire extended family went to after her mother's and sisters' funerals. 

Now I just have to figure out how to live in a world without her. 

Phone calls

I didn't want to receive.  My aunt called last night, she could not get a hold of my parents.  The hospice my Grandma is in called and told them to come - they live in Colorado Springs,CO &  Grandma is in Cheyenne, WY - Grandma's condition had worsened.  They had just left on Sunday.  Grandma is so much worse and so we are waiting for the next call, too late to fly out for another goodbye, we wait to fly out for the final one.  I finally got a hold of my parents to find the reason the were unreachable is they were stuck in ER determining if the hospital was going to keep Mom again.  My Mom's health has been like this since I was 12, it is awful, but you learn to accept awful as normal.  Dad decided not to tell my mother as the Doctor decided to keep her at least overnight, what would be the point? Her doctor knows what is going on and is hoping to release her today.  I called my sister and told her about both.

Nothing has changed this morning, so I am cleaning house and folding laundry, packing my bags, and tucking my projects away or finishing them quickly.  Hoping to make parent teacher conferences tonight. Wishing it wasn't like this. 

Grandma was always they healthiest and strongest of all of us.  She told Mom a month or so ago, that she always hoped to go by getting really sick so she knew it was coming but having enough time to say goodbye to everyone.  Really she has gotten, that wish, in July they told us it would be days... I just want more, I always would have. We lived with her for a while when my father was in the Navy and in a lot of ways she raised my sister and me, hopefully I can be half the woman she is. 

I have decided to take the rug I was working on for her before she got sick and bind it off there and send it with her.  I am too superstitious to bind it off before she is gone, and could not work on it again without her and even if I did what would I do with it.  

The picture is the grave site of the professor Indiana Jones is supposed to be based on.  I don't seem to have Grandma's picture on my computer.