Embrace [em-breys] -verb: to take or receive gladly or eagerly

I’ve moved on from mourning the lack of winter around here and am currently embracing Spring…

Dew

I found several gray hairs this morning, and I’m embracing those, too. C’s been telling me of their existence for years, but I never had visual confirmation of my own. For the first time in forever, my bangs were long enough to pin to the side this morning, and lo! – there they were. I think I will enjoy them…they have character and are thicker and more quirky than my usual thin, fly-away strands, and if they’re coming in the form of a fashionable skunk-streak, all the better!

These gray hairs and I are embracing the grass…

…and the hills, before they turn brown for the summer…

…and special rocks required careful transport, embraced in a small hand…

…and when the lion roared fiercely, I stood right-side-up again, and guess what? I embraced him.

What/who are you embracing today?

Five Senses Friday and a Friendly Reminder

The root: Adopted from Abby’s blog…a reflection…would you like to play along? Leave a comment or link to your own blog…

Hearing: Tanya Donelly. And some whacked-out stories by the Boy…these gnomes, for instance, think it’s perfectly safe to throw the baby in the trunk for the car ride.

Touching: Sand at the park and wishing it were sand at the beach.

Tasting: The best gluten-free yeast-free pizza crust I’ve made so far…my usual baking mix (combo of white and brown rice flours, potato and tapioca starch, xantham gum) plus thyme, basil, fresh garlic, butter worked into the dry and then some goat’s milk. Excellent.

Smelling: Spring Spring Spring Spring Spring

Seeing: Fearlessness in the form of the Boy ripping down a concrete slide on a piece of cardboard. And not even glancing over to see if I’m watching. He doesn’t get that from me.

The Friendly Reminder: I am a Knit One One tomorrow from 10am-4pm for this. Come!

*yawn*

Pleasant Distractions

Weekends are precious now that C is working “regular” hours. They also slip away too quickly. Saturday is always a mad errand-dash, and Sunday is a day for gardening, cooking and preparing for the week ahead.

This weekend followed the formula, except for an incident Saturday evening involving that frozen granola I mentioned in the previous post…let’s just say I have an emergency dental visit scheduled for tomorrow morning. To distract myself from my oral discomfort today, I set about to busy myself. There were stockpots and dyepots, yarn spun and dinner made. In between, I stamped. A lot.

I also thought about what we might do on Baking Day with this awesome score from a local thrift store:

“Prehistoric Monster” cookie cutters. I loved them so much I spent 50 whole cents on them. I told the Boy I had a surprise for him when we left the store. His eyes grew big with anticipation and when I handed over the box of cookie cutters for inspection, he promptly asked if he could have a different surprise. Perhaps he was expecting…a laser? A rocket ship? A laser-equipped rocket ship?

Well, anyway, he’s excited about them now. Biscuits, cookies, tea sandwiches. The world of dino-shaped foods is wide open to us and we will explore it.

I rotated things on the rack…

Have I mentioned I snagged a last-minute opening at the Knit One One March Madness Craft Sale this coming Saturday, March 6th?  Mark your calendar and come check it out if you’re East Bay/Berkeley local. I won’t be debuting Crewel and Unusual at this show as I’m waiting on some finishing supplies, but expect to see it at Craft Happy on March 20th. I will, however, have LOTS of new felt and a moderate quantity of yarn this coming Saturday.

And now to try and sleep with this aching jaw…I cannot wait to see Dr. L in the morning.

Five Senses Friday…

Adopted from Abby’s blog…would you like to play along? Leave a comment or link to your own blog…

Seeing: Cuteness. Observe:

Raveled.

Hearing: Arabian Nights (as told by Jim Weiss). On repeat.

Touching: Dye. And now I have blue fingers. I only wish the Berry Compote hadn’t turned out to be Berries and Cream. Still lovely, but not what I was going for. Gotta get my dye legs back.

Smelling: Vinegar. See above.

Tasting: The granola. Over and over. And the chocolate-peanut butter version? Really, really good eaten frozen. For serious.

Feeling It.

All of it.

Every midnight felting session. Every decent hike. Every not-so-decent hike. Every hour I should be sleeping but am instead taking advantage of these precious few moments to do…anything.

It hits me the next day like a freight train. I am blogging at midnight and tomorrow, bleary-eyed, I will regret it. Exactly when did I crawl into this older than I feel body? I’m that crumbly, disintegrating old rubber band you find in the back of a drawer who used to be fresh, taught and snappy…and useful.

Yeah, so anyway, I’m going to start climbing again. I know it’s been eight years, but it’s the only part of my pre-C life that I want back. Just acknowledging it awakens the muscle memory and the desire to really get back into my body and push my physical limits. It was such a well-suited sport for me in so many ways, the perfect balance of mental/physical exertion and spiritual connection with the earth. I loved everything about it and then I gave it up for the sake of plunging every bit of myself into a shiny new romance. I left a four-year relationship with the climber boyfriend for a man I married within three months. And C prefers to jump from rock to rock through a creek bed rather than to scale them vertically. The passion for granite just slipped slowly away…

…or so I thought. It’s really just been hanging about in a dormant state waiting for me to come back around. And there’s a place only a short bike ride away where I can train…I used to teach Performance Indoor Cycling there,  ha ha.

Perhaps it will help me gain the five pounds (of muscle, she says hopefully) I need in order to give blood this year. I’ve never been able to and it’s a wee goal of mine to make it happen at least once.

Another Rain Day tomorrow. I think we’ll make tissue paper butterflies.

Rockin’ the Rain Day

My boy is in pajamas and a helmet, a knight in the night, dutifully putting away the things of a rainy day. Books and a log cabin, his uncle’s old game of Mousetrap. I will tend to the dripping raingear later…this afternoon he tried to dig a hole in the mud large enough to make a lake for his boats, but it wasn’t raining hard enough to fill it. Maybe tomorrow…

A good day, slow and gray, and now that it’s just about story time, I can cuddle up with the Fuzzy Beast:

Laura, Mary, Ma and baby Carrie are waiting out the blizzard for Pa to come home, with icy snow blowing into the house and onto their bedcovers…while the Boy and I are snug, he with his story wax in hand, me with my knitting and C’s soothing voice in our ears. We are two chapters away from finishing book four, btw…and after reading the third, Farmer Boy, which I enjoyed immensely, I find the trials of the Ingalls family almost unbearable. And how, tell me please, did they not die of malnutrition eating corn mush and white bread all winter long???

Speaking of fooooooood, today was Baking Day. Since our Pa’s the workin’ man now, we’ve been trying to think up healthy snacks to make for him to grab on his way out the door in the mornings. Inspired by this granola bar recipe, we imagined up our own variations.

The only failure was in that the above picture should be showing you a slice of a granola BAR. Instead, we ended up with just plain awesome granola.

Basically, we followed the recipe, but with our own flavor variations. I’m not a fan of corn syrup, so I chose to replace it with honey or maple syrup. Perhaps it is the “glue” ingredient that prevents the bars from falling apart?

Flavors we invented: Cashew Orange…for the 2-3 cups fruit/nuts we used 1 1/2 cups cashews, 1 cup sesame seeds and 1 cup currants. We added orange peel (2 oranges) extract instead of vanilla and used a combo of butter/honey and our homemade pecan butter.

Pecan Coconut…1 1/2 cups pecans, 1 cup coconut, 1/2 cup currants. For this one we used a combination of butter and coconut oil and used maple syrup instead of honey and our homemade pecan butter.

Peanut Butter Chocolate…(we doubled this recipe) 2 cups currants, 1/2 cup sunflower seeds, 1 cup almonds, 1 cup coconut, 1/2 cup pecans, 1/2 cup sesame seeds. Butter/coconut oil/honey for the liquid ingredients plus 2 chopped up semisweet chocolate bars.

I realize now that we forgot to toast the dry ingredients first…we were a little too excited about our project! I’m sure that would have improved the flavor slightly, but it’s hard to say as these are all Wicked Awesome.

I will leave you with a Perfect Sky, since ours will be dark and dripping tomorrow:

xoxoxo

Getting Ready…

Spring? Are you here? Oh…hello!

Every morning I wake up expecting (hoping) to be greeted by a chilly white landscape. Glittering snow, a biting wind…

Instead, I have this:

And C is filling his weekends doing this:

No, this ain’t New England. I feel like I’ve missed out on something huge. Winter was half the year in southern VT…it was something I could count on, a force that tested me and fostered a deep respect for the circle game of the seasons. All the warm months were spent in preparation of it’s coming, and all the cold months in making plans for the season of sowing, swimming and wet, sticky summer air and how to make the most of it. I know the Boy misses the Snow As Playground…he built his first snowman, his first igloo and put on his first pair of skis all during our last winter there. And now I struggle to fill our days with adventure in a seemingly unchanging climate. Wow, it is so ridiculously easy to romanticize, eh? I wasn’t the one changing a flat tire at 4am on the way to work in -20F. I shoveled when I wanted to. I spun yarn by the woodstove. I pulled my Boy on a sled. We ate snowflakes. C had to muck around in it, work in it, unfreeze equipment constantly and slide around on black ice. He has zero romantic attachments to the “real” winter experience.

So, anyway, yeah…we’re apparently ready to start some seeds now and I’m having a difficult time getting into the mood.

Feeling homesick.

Five Senses Friday

Adopted from Abby’s blog…would you like to play along? Leave a comment or link to your own blog…

Touching: Fuzzy wuzzy mohair. Constantly. I can’t get enough of knitting this sweater. I’m not even sure what’s so magical about it…certainly not the shape. The style is very old-fashioned and boxy. Perhaps it’s the rhythm and ease of the cable pattern, very meditative.

Tasting: The first asparagus of the season…perfect, slender spears of goodness. We sauteed them up for breakfast…*insert contented sigh here*

Smelling: Plasti-Dip. Okay, that’s more like huffing. Making sure the kiddo doesn’t slip in his Elf Shoes!

Hearing: Zombie sounds. And: “I’m a zombie! And zombies eat persons! And you’re a person!” More zombie sounds. From whence does this come???

Seeing: Blooms, blooms everywhere I look. I know, I know…shut up about Spring. I can’t help it, though…being back on the west coast it’s totally in my face and increasing exponentially by the day. It’s as if I’d spent a lifetime in Vermont, rather than just a few years, so enchanting this is. And in February, of all months! Observe:

Happy weekend!

I interrupt these Olympic Games to bring you…

…Fireball Bowling.

The Knights seem a wee tense…

It’s just a little dragon’s fire, boys…and that girl in pink? She’s a Princess. And she’s counting on you.

She doesn’t look very confident. You won’t let her down, right fellas?

Oh. Well…

Nevermind.

Nerd Alert

I’m so thrilled with this project and the fact that it’s actually, finally finished…can you tell? I rarely smile for the camera on purpose, but I couldn’t wait for C to snap a photo of this one. I spent two years on it, mainly because knitting with cotton is a terrible thing to do to one’s hands. Oh, the appreciation I have now for the elasticity and gentle kindness of working with wool. My solution was to take the project out of storage and, for the last few months, knit only a few rows each night as C read the Boy his bedtime story. Eventually, the few rows here and there added up to a completed project!

The pattern = totally enjoyable. It would have knit up quickly in wool, so my grand plan is to work this up again, but with long sleeves, a cowl neck and in some sort of burgundy/rusty colored plied wool yarn.

I did, however, start up an insane knitting project that I will have to finish first. It will be my first sweater that must be seamed and it’s…mohair. And…cabled. I will get through it because the yarn is the prettiest green ever. Truly. I spent more time than I care to admit converting the pattern into a top-down knit, but ultimately decided that I should just suck it up and learn how to seam. So, yeah…more on that later.

Oh, and I bring you my first ever Bathroom-Mirror-Self-Portrait. We all have to do it sometime…right?

I missed out on the opportunity to have C photograph some new scarves for the shop. I will attempt some fun with a tripod this week because he landed a job and will no longer be around 24/7 to swap parenting duties and take pictures of me wearing things. I will miss him during the week, but oh, how we’ve needed this to happen. Tomorrow is his first day, and he is adorably nervous.

Check these out in the meantime, while I figure out the tripod thing:

These were all submitted for the book I was vaguely telling you about in a previous post…and are now available and up in the shop.

The top right piece was created using the last of the organic merino wool I dyed with acorns from the 400+ year old oak tree in the backyard.

Happy Monday!