Stitches of Love

Secrets. Used to suck at keeping them. Still am sometimes. But not recently. At least about these 2 projects. But the time has come I can finally reveal them to most of the world. There are still 2 young granddaughters who need to not find out about the monkeys. So please, don't discuss the monkeys if you run into Maddie and Kate!

Several blog posts ago I told you all about my dear friend who is battling the little "c". The Lizzies have decided to not ever call it the big "C" again. Being the big "C" gave it to much credit and we are not going to let it take center stage in our lives. But darned it, if Jan, at least temporarily, isn't having to let it dominate her life. She is smack in the middle of some pretty tough chemo and heading into another round of testing to see how things are progressing. There is also a matter of another big firm place in the surgical breast. Hopefully the PET scan will reveal that it is a scar, seroma or infection and not more of the little "c".

But I knew I wanted to do something for her that would be from my heart. Something to warm her. And to be soft and comforting. And knitting is usually my avenue for that. Yes, I know she lives in South Florida. But when you are not feeling your best, have lost all your hair and are in over air conditioned doctor's offices, I knew a prayer shawl would be just the thing to keep her warm and to keep her spirits up.

This shawl is a generic Pi shawl, first discussed in length by my knitting goddess, guru, Elizabeth Zimmerman. I wish I could say I chose the yarn with the exact intent of making this shawl, at this time, for this exact person. But that is not the case. The day I decided to start, I went in my knitting/sewing room and saw 2 skeins of this wool/cashmere blend that I had bought at a fiber show back in April. I thought that it was pretty then and even prettier now cause it was just sitting there waiting to be knit into just the right thing. Trouble is, it ended up not being enough yarn and I had to order another skein. Twice. And the dye lots ended up not being the same any for either of the subsequent orders. But this shawl ended up being so organic and earthy that it worked. No overdyeing had to be done, which was something I did consider at one point.

I chose to do a simple garter stitch Pi which turned out lovely but I would probably not do again. First of all it ate up the yarn faster and didn't stretch out as far once finished. But the edging I found later on in another book worked out perfectly with it to give it just a touch of romance after all the garter stitch. I loved doing this edging using a "knitted on" technique which meant I never really had to cast off those 567 stitches that were live around the outer edge. I just used them up by doing a knit 2 together each time I got to the inside edge of a row of the lace. I am not sure I ever want to know what it is like to have to cast off that many stitches!!

The gift was very well received by Jan!! Never doubted that it wouldn't be, cause she is such a sweet heart. And I think they both are probably munching away on Cranberry Pistachio biscotti right now. Wish I had saved some of that for me!!!!

Stop the presses....I kinda forgot to take pictures of the monkey. Off to do a quick photo shoot....












This monkey was a fun knit but one pattern that you needed to read line by line and page by page. There are tons of short rows, plenty of increases and decreases and a few new techniques to learn, such as intarsia in the round. But the pattern is written spot on perfect, and is achievable by anybody who is a step above a rank beginning knitter. There are only 2 seams to worry about when the knitting is done. One short on at the crotch which is left open for stuffing and a partial whip stitch seam to fasten the bottom half of the muzzle to the lower part of the face. You do have to sew on the eyes but I found that very easy to do. The pattern does call for any weight of yarn and the appropriate size of needles to have a tight gauge when worked. I chose worsted weight, Cascade 220 Tweed to be exact. The total length is 15" not including his tail or 9" when sitting to the top of his head. The pattern pics show him knit in self striping sock yarn. I am not sure I would personally enjoy knitting him in yarn that small. Doing all that work and having a 5" tall monkey when done just doesn't grab me much. But hey, the striping effect is really cute. Here is the link to the pattern. But if you aren't on Ravelry you will have to join to be able to purchase this pattern. But hey, Ravelry is free, and oh so much fun. So go ahead and join like the entire rest of the knitting world.

I am half way done with the purple twin to Jacobus. It will be for the 2nd granddaughter. And I already have a request to do one for my walking partner's daughter for Christmas so I ordered another skein of Cascade, this time in a pretty aqua blue. I have a number of other knitting projects on the invisible list for the holidays and really need to pump up the production if I want to get most of them done. So expect some more project posts soon. None as picture heavy as this one, I am sure...

Of Beds and Birdhouses

OK-As promised, I am back again in short order. Warning-this post has lots of color!! Some of them might make your head spin and leave you feeling a bit dizzy. But seriously, I am proud of project #1. It has been in the making now for well over a year. And still, it is not really done. It needs a sashing put on around the entire outside of the quilt. Then of course, I need to peice the backing, mail it off, sell my soul on the street to pay for custom quilting, wait til it comes back in the mail, sew on binding, design a label and last of all, paint that darned wall behind the bed!! The name of the block is Rolling Stone. Ken thinks it is cause the Rolling Stones are his favorite band. But he would be wrong. I just liked the block. Oh, and never mind the pajamas on the floor. I have never been accused of being a tidy housekeeper....









Next up are little nesties to be. I had some space at the end of my row of lima beans and thought I would throw a couple bird house gourd seeds in to climb up the trellis. Those 2 seeds gave me an amazing amount of fruit. These are all I picked but there are still some out on the fence that might still be large and nice enough to make houses for wrens or other such small birdies. But I am thinking I may have 3 to 4 large enough for Purple Martins and many more for finches, nuthatches and such. They are all now into my attic to dry for the winter and then next spring I will pull them all back down and do the finishing up work on them to get them out in time for the early spring arrivals. Gee, after writing all that, I may be a bit presumtuous to think I will have them done for 2011. Maybe 2012? BTW-the moldy spots on several of the gourds do not automatically mean they should be discarded. I have it on good authority that most of those spots turn out lovely after drying and can add to the decorating possiblities..









I got silly this afternoon and tried to change the look of my blog a bit. I am not sure if I am just not a techie, but it sure wasn't easy or predictable as to how it was gonna look. I will leave it this way for awhile and try to go back and redo it later on. I still don't understand why I can't get the photo slideshow to only be of my pictures. So ignore that. I can only wish I did some of that crazy quilting!!

Be back soon. Got several more projects just about ready to show off!

Retreat 2010

Lake Logan, North Carolina, 2010.....gathering place for Lizzies far and wide. A place to come together to sew, knit, laugh, hug, cry, talk, eat, drink, walk, sit in the sun, run thru the rain and even try to get in a little restorative sleep. A time to see old friends and to finish up projects that have been sitting on the back burner, some as long as from Lake Logan 2009!!


I think this year was a bit more important to all of us than in the 2 years past. Cause this year we have had so many health scares amoung our group. It seems our ta-ta's have been misbehavin' all thru out the group. Several Lizzies have had some bad scares, that have led to biopsies. Luckily most have come back normal. But for one of us, the news came back badly, and in a big way.

One of the sweetest souls on earth found out a few months ago that she did have aggressive lobular carcinoma of the breast. And even worse, they also found tumor in her brain. So our dear Jan had both a lumpectomy and a cyberknife procedure to melt away the lesion in the brain. The rest of us have felt a bit helpless, being so geographically far away from south Florida where Jan lives. So being able to see some of the rest of the Lizzies just made me feel like I was almost able to reach out and hug Jan myself. And I am sure many of the other Lizzies felt that way also. Plus it gave us the chance to all wear our "Friends Don't Let Friends Fight Cancer Alone" t-shirts and have a group picture taken. Our catch phrase for saying our prayers is, I am going to the rock. So we found the biggest rock we could, climbed up and had a picture made. I can not take credit for this photo. My people pictures don't always seem to come out that well.


This year we had 14 of the actual Lizzies participate and 1 honorary Lizzie. I think the furthest any one travelled was Martha, all the way from Colorado Springs. But then there were lots from all up and down the east coast, several from the midwest, me from 1 state over and Debbie right there in North Carolina. Dee, the honorary Lizzie is also local. We were able to occupy the lodge at Lake Logan which had room for almost all of us to sleep and plenty of room to sit and visit. A few girls did have to stay in one of the smaller cabins but it was a whole lot closer to the dining hall!! We still sewed in Celebration Hall which is still plenty big enough for all that came. Everybody brought the cutest, sweetest little personal gifts to exchange. I brought the felted pincushions which I think everybody liked. As usual, these girls work hard while they are there. I even got alot done in my 4 days. I pretty much finished my quilt top and did alot of knitting. Alas, when I got home I realized I will still have to add a small border all the way around the quilt before I can send it off to be quilted.

All to soon, it was time to head out for home. I decided to drive south on Lake Logan road until it dead ended into the Blue Ridge Parkway. It looked on the map like it might be an easier way to go, since I can not seem to keep from getting lost going thru Waynesville!! It was a gorgous day and I was hoping to finally see some of those Smokies without all the rain that kept me from seeing them last year.

About 10 miles south of the lake, there was a gorgeous spot where the river widens and slows down a bit. The banks are rocky but very picturesque and peaceful. But somehow, big clod that I am, managed to fall down and really crack my head. I mean hard. Seeing stars and wondering if I am going to black out, hard. I actually laid there for a minute wondering if I was going to be sick to my stomach. Finally I did get up and was able to walk..stagger...back to the car. After a minute or two, I did feel alot better, albeit, with a headache. But I figured I was going to live, unless a slow bleeder in my brain got me later on. I never even noticed that I had also falled on the back of my forearm and it was bruised from wrist to elbow. So what do I do another 10 miles down the road? Get out and take a 4 mile solo hike thru the woods to a really pretty, very remote waterfall!! Oh yeah, probably well out of cell phone range. But hey, if I died, I would have been a good meal for a bear or cougar!! I did get some good pics of the south section of the Blue Ridge Parkway. When I got to where state highway 74 crosses the parkway and goes on up into the Smokies, I turned and headed home. The headache was finally winning and I just wanted to get home. Maybe next year I will finally drive thru the Smokies, and it will not rain on me!!










This is where I fell

The rest of the trip home was pretty uneventful. My sciatica didn't even get bothersome til I was less than 50 miles from home. The furbabies were of course happy to see me as well as the poor hapless hubby who just wanted some sort of home cooked meal after a week of sandwiches.

I do have several other things to post in the next few days. Pics of the almost done quilt, some pretty stuff out of the garden, several neat knitting projects and such. But for now it is time to take the doggies out for one last potty and then we are all hitting the hay. See you soon

A Bit of the Blues

I have a daily walking partner here in Tenneessee that would literally give me the shirt off her back. All I have to do is mention that the new bag she just whipped up over the weekend would go perfectly with the new little bag I am making, and it is given to me without hesitation. Constant jars of jelly and fresh veggies are being sent home with me. And she made sure that for the first time in years, that I had a freshly baked chocolate cake on my birthday, along with a gardening apron she made just for me.

So I knew I had to do something for her birthday. Something that did not involve my sewing machine. Since I guess I took my machine in for service to the most popular place ever, and the waiting list was made longer by some surgery that the service guy apparently needed to recover from, taking off a few days in the interim. And me being the only person I know, with just 1 machine.

So I knitted this lovely little pincushion. You basically knit this wool sphere, stuff it when it is almost totally done, finish off the knitting and then felt it in your washing machine. After 3 to 4 cycles thru it is this lovely shrunken ball that needs to have the fuzzies removed with a shaver. Then you use crochet cotton to sew thru the middle and make the divisons around the pin cushion which further helps the shaping. The last thing is to sew a pretty button in the middle. The one here is a pearlized glass, not antique, but pretty.

The other item that made sense to me was a needle book. She does sew a fair bit, and embroiders some too. She had admired my crazy quilt needle book, before Holly chewed it up some, and so I knew she would like it. I did not have the time to do something quite as ornate as mine but this one seemed to be a pretty compromise. The outside is green dupioni and the inside, which I forgot to take a picture of, is a green striped silk from a blouse I bought years ago at a Goodwill. When I picked out these 2 fabrics, I was not thinking at all about the wool I would need for the pages. I knew I had a few peices put away to do needlebooks but had no idea about what colors they might be. Lo and behold, when I pulled out my stash, the only 3 colors I had were a subtle but matching green, blue and a totally unstuitable orange. So the inside pages are blue and green.

I wanted to dress up the front so I thought doing her initial would be a good fast idea. Trouble is, I can't freehand anything and I only had 2 old books with any monogram ideas. The one I chose was a bit smaller than I would have liked but it still turned out OK. The beads are vintage lucite from my much smaller stash than I remembered having. Must remedy that on ebay!! The bug is a button bought years ago at a quilt show. We both garden and this little green beetle reminds me of the hideous cucumber beetles we both battle all summer long.

So when I got ready to take them down to her I thought to myself, Good job Ann. I rarely say that when I make something for anyone. Which is why I rarely do give handmade gifts. But I just knew she was going to like these. And she did. Told me they looked so professional and expensive. And that she would treasure them forever. This morning she let me know she was already obsessing over what she was going to do for my next birthday!! Let it go, girl. I was at the top of my game with these 2 things. It's all downhill from here out!!

Our Dismal Anniversary

Now, doesn't that sound ominous? Well, not really.

Our 34th anniversary was September 11th. Sharing our anniversary with that of the terrorist attacks of the same date has been hard. I want to remember what all that day brought to the world but then again, I feel like we should be able to celebrate a marriage that outlasted many others out there. Sometimes the attack wins out but this year I decided to not let that happen.

The weather was predicted to be a bit hairy on Saturday so I had two different destinations in mind. If it rained, we were heading to Cathedral Caverns outside of Huntsville Alabama. We could tour the cave in the rain with no problem. But our first choice was to head down to northwestern Alabama and hike thru Dismals Canyon. A last minute look at the weather predictions led us to beleive we had a large enough safe window for spending the day outside. Turns out it never really ended up raining at all, but that is a whole nuther story......

It took us about 2 hrs to get there, maybe a bit more. But you gotta knock off a few minutes for our wrong turns. They sure could mark some of the highway's a bit better around here. We drove thru some Alabama countryside we had not seen before. I must say it was not the prettiest scenery around and it made me have doubts about how nice the canyon could possibly be. Even up til the last few miles, it was flat, brown and dry. Not appealing at all. But a few miles from our final destination, it did get a bit hillier and greener. Still not as gorgeous as where we live, but not everywhere can be heaven I guess.

Even turning into the parking lot was not impressive. A small gift shop/registration area was at the far end of the almost empty parking lot. We went in and met the parks registrar and resident funny man!! He was a hoot!! We paid our bucks ($8.00, I think?) and went out thru the back of the store and onto a patio. Right behind was the swimming hole and deck. Also pretty unimpressive. But you go across the swimming deck, down the stairs and the first thing you see is a waterfall that comes from under the deck. There is a very old dam holding back the creek right above you that helps form the waterfall, but there would have still been one naturally if the dam had not been built to form the swimming hole. The stairs continue down quite a ways dropping you immediately into a cool, refreshing, all natural canyon with walls going up several hundred feet on each side. The whole canyon is never that wide at any point and goes straight up on each side just steps from the path. But all along the 3/4 mile trail there are huge house sized boulders with little narrow chasms and rifts. Little slot canyons between the boulders exist and may can be travelled thru if you are skinny enough and not a bit claustrophobic!! So even tho it was less than a mile to get to the far end, we probably did twice that by going into and around every single nook and cranny. There is a nice creek running thru the entire canyon and it was filled with the nicest smooth quartz pebbles, a few just had to come home with me. They were all colors from white to brown, with lots of pinks and salmons that were almost translucent. There was some really nice flora and fauna along the way, some of it nicely identified with a sign. At the end there was a bridge that the registrar had actually built himself many years ago. You cross the creek and head back to see the sights on the other side. There was a really cool place called the Dance Hall. It was a flat mega boulder that had fallen centuries ago and the ancient indians had used it for spiritual and ceremonial dances. It was very well hidden by other boulders so it would have been a very cool place for them to hold these special events. Especially at night by firelight. The registrar tells us that after you leave the dance hall area the trail either heads back across the creek or you can take the unmarked part of the trail on the far side of the creek and then come back across a swinging bridge later on. The reason they don't mark the path is because it is a secret!! You have to really look around for it and when you find it, it is a tiny crack between 2 boulders that you shimmy thru and then follow for a ways, eventually coming out at the swinging bridge. It was so much fun to go back thru a second time to see if you could remember how you went. It was not that easy!! We had to look just as hard the 2nd time. We just loved it!!

We would really like to go back and take a night tour. They guide you down into the canyon by flashlights, then turn them off when you get down there. There are thes bioluminescent buggies that glow like fireflies. They congregate in parts of the canyon and I understand it to be quite magical in nature. The peak months are April thru June so we might just have to go back and try again this next year. After all, I need some more pebbles!!

And now for a few pics. Forgive the blurry ones. That is what happens when you didn't think to bring a tripod and the natural light is a little low. But I still think they are worth a look at.

Sticky Wicket

Honey, elderberries, hummingbirds and jalapenos. What do all these have in common? They can make an incredibly sticky mess when you try and make things with them. Oh no, I am not really making anything with the hummingbirds, I promise. Just making their food!! Sorry, that did sound a bit bad up there in that prior sentence.

First off, the honey. Last weekend my darling DH comes in with 2 supers of honeycomb and plops them down and tells me I need to harvest the honey.......No time to Google and find out how best to do this for the first time.. So I grab my biggest sheet cake pan and start the task of getting honey out of the comb. I don't have an uncapping knife to help open up the cells but I find a regular sharp knife, carefully used, can open up the honey comb just fine. I throw the caps into a sieve cause I can see there is tons of honey dripping off them. Probably mistake #1. But I don't find that out for some t ime to come. I keep trying to position the supers in the pan in a way that let the most honey drain the fastest. I think the kitchen is too cool. The only day below 80 in months and that's the day we decide, well, he decides, this has to be done. So I decide to very slightly heat up the oven and put the whole shebang in there to help the honey flow faster. It works thru several brief heatings. But then, somehow, I let it heat up just a degree or two more than I should have. I hear a thud and look to see that the beeswax has now softened and the whole architecture has slumped out into the pan, on the oven floor, over the racks, ect. Lots and lots of honey to clean up. But you know, honey cleans up pretty well with lots of water and a bit of soap and patience.

I take the pan out of the oven and see this big huge conglomeration of honey with bits of comb all thru it. I for one, do not like honey comb with my honey. There are those who do, I think that is just wrong. So I dump it all into my very large mesh colander. Big mistake again. I think I am up to 3 wrongs at this point. The first sieve, the oven and the colander. But I drain over 1/2 gallon of very nice honey off the mess and I am pretty proud of myself.

Meanwhile, I Google and find that they used to just squeeze the honey out of the comb. Not a bad idea. Well, in retrospect, this becomes mistake #4 and the first dawning of where I had gone wrong. No one told me how sticky beeswax can actually be when it is liquid. When I squeezed out the honey I got about another 2 cups but when I went to wash my hands I realized that nothing wanted to take off that darned sticky goo. And it was not just on my hands but on all the equiptment used up to that point. The sieve, the colander, the oven, ect. It has taken me days to get all the stuff cleaned up and useable again. But the honey has sure been good. This year's harvest was small but they are very young hives, the supers got put on late and it has been a brutally hot and dry summer. So hopefully next year, I will learn to carefully uncap the combs, be more patient allowing the honey to drain on its own and putting whatever comb I want to drain off into a clean section of pantyhose. The combs themselves when drained of honey, can go right back into the hive which is actually a big time and energy saver for the bees. And I have no need of beeswax for candles. The light switch on the wall works fine for me!



Then the hummingbird story. Really quite simple. I mix nectar and fill 2 glass hummingbird feeders. I head out the door and drop one sending nectar all over the laundry room floor and walls. I think I have now mopped 3 times and still I find sticky places I must be missing.



On to the elderberries. Elderberries make wonderful wine. It takes a great deal of effort to find enough along side the roads and ditches to make all I would love to make each year. Stripping the berries off the stems is even more of a time suck. But I do it, cause the outcome is so worth it. But in making elderberry wine, you get this scummy stuff in your primary fermenter that should be investigated as a industrial glue!! There are lots of speculation on what the goo actually is from. My thought is that it has to be a reaction between something in the elderberries and the yeast. You don't get this scum if you just make elderberry juice. But if you then take the juice and make wine, you get the goo. But after the first step, you don't get it anymore so at least there is only one big clean up involved per batch.

Last year, I had a dicken's of a time getting the goo off. I tried everything I could think off to mechanically get it off. Really, really hot water. Soaking with dishsoap multiple times. Scrubbing til my arms ached. A Mr. Clean Magic Eraser. But to minimal avail. The primary fermenting bucket got clean enough to be used again but the stain was permanent.

Meanwhile, I discover this year that some really sticky things can be cleaned up well by applying olive oil, then after letting it sit, coat well with liquid dish detergent and rinse. Actually any vegetable oil will do. Obviously, these gluey things are fat soluble chemicals and melt into the oil which is then washed away by the dishsoap. BTW-Dawn is still the best. So when I had elderberry goo on my hands I thought, let me give the oil trick a try. It worked like magic!! So I thought I would share this great discovery with the rest of the wine making world. Well, if you Google the right words you find out all kinds of things. Like, most, but not all of the world already knew this. I am always a day late and a dollar short. But now I will still be that, but with a clean fermenting bucket!



The last but not least fiasco involves me trying to use up some surplus jalapeno's I had brought in from the garden. Jalapeno jelly was just the most sensible thing to make. I looked up a recipe and got going. I was in the process of bringing my mixture to a boil when I turned for just a second to put my jar lids into a pan of boiling water to have them ready when I needed them. Oh yeah, that's right. In just a matter of a few seconds, the mixture came to a full rolling boil and went all over my glass cooktop and quickly became carmelized jalapeno jelly cement. No amount of scrubbing has cleaned it all off. And you gotta trust me on this, I gave it all one could give. I have decided my next option is to carefully take a razor blade to the last bit of remaining spots. This is, BTW, recommended by the users manual. But the jelly did turn out very well. Ken almost licked the bowl clean that I brought to the table last night to serve on crackers with cream cheese.

This batch was made with all green peppers but I want to go ahead and push my luck this coming week and work with the red ones I still have out in the garden. I found a recipe that uses cranberry juice with red hot peppers. I think if it turns out it will be great at Christmas as gifts. But Lord, I sure need all the help I can get to not turn this into any more sticky messes!!



So yes, watch out for these sweet, innocent appearing food products. Behind each one of them lurks a heart of pure sticky evilness that may never be permanently removed from my well used kitchen.