Wool on a wednesday...

Yes I know it is Thursday, but this is what I did yesterday.  Mom and I wanted to go up to Spry Whimsy, mostly to see Peter and Ingrid, but also to get some wool and see Peter's latest creations.  He is an amazing felting artist, She is a spinner and being with them is calming and inspiring and energizing all at once. Ingrid was not in the shop yesterday but it was nice to see Peter. Mom and I had been talking about going for awhile, Dad who is still recovering from surgery was not really listening to us.  He arrived at my house thinking we were spending the day planning for our businesses and the kids 4H projects and maybe running to the Woodcraft store. He did think it was a little weird I want them here at 8! Spry Whimsy is a bit more than an hour away and I had to be back in time to pick kids up from school. Boy was Daddy surprised!

 I bought this wool (above two photos) to be plied against the the skein below.  Once I got it home I am not so sure, but it sure is lovely. Merino and silk blend. I am going to spin it up really fine and them make a decision.

 I want to play with the color wheel so I got these, that is three ounces of each.

More color play but this time a continuous blending experiment like in the current issue of Spin Off magazine.

We have a lovely day and Dad even got to go to Woodcraft but after we got the kids. They were given popcorn and sat quietly and quite contently munching while we shopped.  Mom helped my make dinner and Daddy took a nap in my chair with granddaughters giving him pillows and blankets and stuffies to cuddle. Then they made off with his hat and coat and played pretend to be Grandpa.

Hope you are having a wool... wonderful... week!~ Julia

Come have lunch with me

In the interest of feeling better, losing a bit of weight, and generally eating better I have decided the make lunch a bit more important of a meal.  I normally grab something, either from my own kitchen or out while doing errands - though I must admit I sometimes invent errands to do the two Chicago style dogs for $3 special down the street...shh!  I am then hungry and crabby later. I have been seeing these yummy looking recipes over at Farmish Momma and I wanted to try them, but thinking about the hard time my children would give me kept me hesitating. While at the grocery store this week I thought, I could just make some for me... Brilliant! So lunch is on! 

This is the yellow split pea soup she posted in her real food/real budgets series. I made a few changes, my husband was eating too and doesn't like blended soups so I skipped that step, I think it may have been necessary.  I cooked this much longer than she says, and the peas have a disagreeable - to me - texture that likely gets fixed by the blending.  It tastes amazing though, next time I will just cook it longer. I did not have any bacon grease handy so I fried up two slices and added them to the bowl of soup at the time of serving. I also added red pepper flakes because I add that to everything. 

 On the topic of bacon... I made these for Valentine's day.  Pretty but I prefer my bacon non-floral. No one in the family complained however!

For some crafting bits, I switched to cloth pads for that time of the month.  I bought some Glad rags brand and wowsa was that expensive, but rather than have something plastic-y paper-y rubbing against me all that week I have flannel. Much, much better. I did cloth diapers for my kids and thought about this a lot then. I have only had issue with them moving a bit during wear no leaks. So I am trying to make a few that are similar to what I bought but slightly differently shaped, hopefully these changes are comfy. I made a few before and they worked just as well as those I bought.  These are extra pieces of flannel from various kid projects and cotton batting leftover from quilts.  I have discovered a love hate relationship with grommet snaps, I love them when I line everything up, hate them when that is not happening. You might notice that the horse pad has two snaps set into one flap, that is not a design feature!

hope your plans are going according to plan! ~ Julia

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

Ancient treadmill found

 This is the great wheel Dad restored for Garfield Farm Museum. (my photos might be odd for a while as the white balance on my camera is misbehaving - I even got out the manual!)   I demonstrated spinning on it this Sunday at their Harvest Days event.  Don't let the chair fool you there is a reason they call these walking wheels.  I had a lovely drive down - about 2 hours - and got there with plenty of time to set up and chat before getting into costume.  I also spun some more on it as I had only worked on it for about an hour after Dad finished it.

 This is the view from my perspective, across the lane from me was a woman discussing tanning and Joseph (on staff at the Museum) demonstrating blacksmithing. He is working on a chain link fence to use in future demonstrations. I was using some East Friesan wool that I processed myself and dyed with staghorn sumac - which smells lovely during the dye making process - and I ended up with 3 skeins of yarn. The yarn is varied lace to fingerling weight and I am very happy with it.

 I got Joseph to take my picture. That is the Tavern Museum behind me. The bag by the chair was given to me by a friend and fellow volunteer, it contains afghan hound fur she collect from her dogs.  I also had drop spindles to demonstrate on and have people try to spin.  It was a very pleasant day!

 My breakfast table Monday morning. The yarn is wound on the bobbins there, winding was the only time a sat on Sunday's Demo, a Great wheel is all about walking aback and forth and one guest described it as the treadmill of the 1840's.  Mouse is eating breakfast in the background and we have star anise & cinnamon apple butter and apple jelly in the jars.

My knitting.  I am learning to knit from a chart and doing lace patterns.  So I thought the great wheel yarn would be perfect. I am loving the knitting. This will be a lace neck shawl thing from Jane Austin Knits summer 2012 edition.

I hope your projects are bringing you joy!~ Julia

Apples, apples, everywhere.

This is how the day started!

I did not move the apples from the below picture onto the table. There are just that many apples.  I worked on apple related projects for the entire workday.

I am waiting for the last batch in the canner to finish so I can go to bed now.  I stopped work at 5 to take Beaver to his dad's for the weekend and visited with my parents - we meet at the halfway point which works out to be near my parents house. 
 

My Dad was helping me to restore a great wheel that Garfield Farm Museum had stored in a barn.  They want to fix them (there are three) up to have volunteers demonstrate spinning on a great wheel. They have the Garfield family wheel in the museum, these were donated at some point. Dad got it working and it looks great. We spent some time working on tension and spinning with it tonight. I need to do some research on better cord splicing methods... but that is another post this one is suppose to be about apples not spinning. It sneaks it's way into all parts of my life.

While I was working on apples today I made up these loaves of bread, which I just pulled out of the oven. I used only the yeast left in the bottom of the carboy after bottling a batch of pear cider. It is a sour dough like bread with a faintly pear cidery taste.

left to right apple butter, apple butter in cool anniversary blue glass jars that makes the food look different, and spiced apple rings.

I did up apples for jelly - I have near a half gallon of juice.  Most people dump the fruit after making juice for jelly, I don't I mill it and make apple butter. I got 5.5 pints tonight and it smells so good.  I cut and froze apple slice for pie, I am also going to try making pie filling - this is not how I make my pies normally but experimentation is fun, right? I also did spiced apple rings with cinnamon and star anise. This is a new recipe for me and they were so yummy it took serious willpower to not just eat all of them.  I have 9 half pints - side note doesn't hay-pint sound better, like a hay penny - and a half gallon of syrup I will use to make more.

Oh and the apples are still everywhere... I seriously doubt anyone but me could tell any got used - unless I made you carry the compost out - and the trees have at least that much again on their branches. Hoping you kitchen smells as good as mine ~ Julia

Buried under a mountain

Family beach day with my parents, sister and brother in law.

Part of a current quilt pattern that will be a Christmas present for Butterfly.

Yep I am still alive here, but I have been busy. Good busy. Exhausting busy. Racing around from one project to the next like a chicken without a head busy. So here is what has been going on...

No, too long, let me sum up....

Okay, even that would likely be mind numbingly too long. So the shorter version with be what I can think of right at the moment and highlights. I'll try to cover some projects I have going in more detail in the coming weeks as I am hoping to get back into the swing of this. A dear friend and I were talk last night and we decided to challenge each other to posting today instead of just thinking up post and meaning to get to it.

The big stuff:
Beaver started High school! And went out for the football team! (I am not sporty or anything so this has been a bit weird for me, but I am learning.) He is loving school - he is a okay student and a natural leader normally - but this year he is really doing well and talks engagingly about all his classes this year. Mommy happy dance. He is co-captain of his model painting team.

One of many day trips to Old World Wisconsin with family friends

Mouse was accepted to the same STEM school Butterfly is in, he took switching schools very well and seems to be flourishing at the new school. He is a very smart boy but seemed to have trouble making close friends, it is nice to see him playing with kids would seem excited to see him and have similar interested.  He is on the model team as well.

Beaver's model.

Butterfly is just that a social butterfly. She had a bit of a hard time this year as her closest friend was moved to a different class and a lot of the others moved levels, (k&1st, 2nd &3rd, and 4th&5th are grouped together in the classrooms at this school) but she has made a few new friends and is enjoying having her beloved teacher again. Her teacher announced a baby on the way and Butterfly wants to learn to quilt to make her a blanket.

Mouse's Model

Badger is in kindergarten. (I have no kids home during the day...) she is doing well and adjusted much more easily than I expected her too.  It helps that her sister's best friend was moved into her classroom, so she already knew someone.

Butterfly started painting mostly just to get to hang out with her older brothers. She did not really like it, but she did very well. Beating both of them and making the team. I told the leaders I did not think she wanted to be on the team. When I told her she won, she told me that she didn't like the painting part so much, but she loved competing so she is on the team.

and as for me I picked up a very more hobbies to fill my days - as if I needed any! I went back to brewing and wine making, I am buried under mountains of apples, I am quilting more, I opened an Etsy store, joined a spinning guild, joined the football moms club, am thinking of joining a quilting guild, am exhausted.

I decided to add a few random pictures from our blog-cation. Hoping you are making your full days and enjoying them. ~Julia

Adventures with wool

 This is the current project, teal-y green blended gently with a very small amount of Easter egg dyed green/blue/yellow mohair.

 This is the yarn I made from Easter egg dyed yarn overdyed on natural white and brown wool. It took 2nd place for bulky two ply (it is maybe worseted weight but there was only fine or bulky) the at the Spin In.  I entered 5 skeins, one first place, 3 seconds, and a third. I was very, very happy.

 This wool is sumac dyed with and iron after-bath, I thought I had gotten it clean ---- NO. I spun it with a small amount of undyed wool (for some texture.) There was too much lanolin left in the wool, too much sumac and iron too.  I was filthy after spinning.

 I ended up re-washing the yarn before plying and was delighted by the color change. I am now planning on rewashing all the yarn I have dyed. I do plan on plying this yet. The color is more right in the lower photo.