Nora & Elena bring deelish breakfast & nostalgia for Taste Our Goods – Selma Cafe

Nora & Elena bring deelish breakfast & nostalgia for Taste Our Goods – Selma Cafe:

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This is such a great place for breakfast.  I may have to try my hand at the french toast sammies with roasted sweet potatoes and farm fresh cheese.  Yum!!  Such good ideas for breakfast from Selma Cafe.  But even better to just go enjoy them already prepared for you!!

German Short Row Technique

Ravelry: Ask a Knitter:

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Haiku for Holly

HOLLY BELLE

          The dog is quite old

          Her eyes still send messages

          Food? Water? Scratch my neck?

                   

         

Ravelry Widgets

Since we visited (and enabled, I might add) Luann last weekend, I have been adding a few more things to Groovy Spinning.  Luann helped me figure out how to add a Ravelry button to my project page and then I extrapolated that to a Ravelry widget for a link to a pattern I'm currently working on.  I suspect you have to be a Ravelry member to get to these pages.  If you are not a Ravelry member, please try them and give me some feed back.  I may have to put "login required" underneath as a caption.  I hope not.  You can find some really cute ravelry widgets by just googling "ravelry widget".  Too much fun!

Meet Lydia

I've been lusting after a new spinning wheel for several months now.  One in particular - the Schacht Sidekick.  Its not like I don't have...let's see...6 or 7 already.  Its like the old lady in the shoe- I have so many spinning wheels I can't even remember their names sometimes.  Time to get rid of one or two.  That will take some thought.  In the meantime, I have been bonding with Lydia since I bought her at Deer Camp from Carol (River"s Edge Fiber Arts).  I named her Lydia because I was listening to the first episode of the Craftlit podcast on my way home on Monday and Pride and Prejudice was the book being read.  She's amazingly stable and spins like a dream for such a little lady.  Take a peak.....

Deer Camp is a reference to the fall circular sock knitting machine retreat held in Coleman, MI about the time that deer hunting season opens.  Melissa, Edie and I stayed at our favorite B&B in Beaverton, the Nestle Inn.  We had an amazing visit and even though things didn't go quite perfectly at the CSM retreat (meaning I didn't finish 4 pairs of mittens and 8 pairs of socks). It was a great get-a-way.

Shaelyn Shawl from hand spun

I just finished spinning and knitting a shawl in a record 10 days.  I used my sport weight 2 ply hand spun.  The wool breed was Bond and it was in its natural dark brown color.  The pattern was easy and memorizable.  It was a very fast knit.  I knitted an extra repeat.

Recipe Rename - Lemon Herb Pear Jam | Canning homemade!

Recipe Rename - Lemon Herb Pear Jam | Canning homemade!:

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Sophie Madeleine Cover Song #04 - Pure Imagination - Willy Wonka & The C...

How To Make A Sandwich Wrap (Sandwiches)

How To Make A Sandwich Wrap (Sandwiches):

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I made a turkey wrap today with deli turkey, miracle whip, dijon mustard, baby spinach and apple slices.  It was too big to wrap.  But it tasted pretty good.  So I went looking for a sandwich wrap tutorial.  This guy's was pretty good.  I'll give it another try tomorrow.

Lovin' Every Stitch: Freezing Corn on the Cob

Lovin' Every Stitch: Freezing Corn on the Cob: Hello corn lovers!!! I feel I must share this super easy way to freeze corn on the cob... I have to give all the credit to my husbands co-w...

Fruity Drinks By The Pool

From Spunky Eclectic Fiber Club:  Merino Bamboo Viscose 60/40.  The January 2011 selection.  I didn't really enjoy spinning this. Its slippery and the fibers were quite short.  4 oz, about 165 yards.

tomato salad with crushed croutons | smitten kitchen

tomato salad with crushed croutons | smitten kitchen

Mordor

Corriedale from February Spunky Eclectic Club

The Pizza Lab: How To Make New England Greek-style Pizza At Home | Slice Pizza Blog

This looks just like Anthony's Pizza here in Ann Arbor.  I think I might give it a try.
The Pizza Lab: How To Make New England Greek-style Pizza At Home | Slice Pizza Blog

Pinterest / Home

Pinterest / Home

Inherited roving from Jeanie

When I bought my sister-in-law's Lendrum from her, there was a bag with some roving that came along with it.  The tag that was in the vicinity said "Kandinsky; 100% blue faced leicester wool" by Happy Fuzzy Yarn.  I asked Riin if this looked familiar to her.  She said she recognized it and now she's going to try to recreate the colorway for me.  Of course, it will look a little different but I will be happy if it comes close.  This batch of roving yielded about 150 yards of two ply sport wt yarn.

Yarn from Jacob fleece

Finally got back to spinning.  This was from a Jacob  fleece that I made a poor decision when buying.  It was the tail end of a fleece and I didn't check closely enough to see that quite a bit of it really wasn't going to be usable.  I blame myself entirely.  I ended up with about 150 yards of sport weight.  Its really quite beautiful so maybe I can use it in a project with some different yarn.  I used my Fancy Kitty drum carder to prepare the roving and it did a good job.

   

Episodes | The Splendid Table | from American Public Media

Episodes | The Splendid Table | from American Public Media

Jeni Britton Bauer from Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams interviewed about her ice cream and new book for making ice cream at home. Also, recipe for frozen lemon yogurt in the recipe section.

Checking Another One Off

Luke's Sweater (Acheron) almost done

I'm knitting a sweater for my friend Adrienne's baby Lucas.  I purchased the pattern on Ravelry.  Its called Acheron.  I thought it was rather difficult myself.  Probably because I had trouble interpreting the directions.  The other knitters who knit this pattern thought it was easy.  Go figure.  I still love the results.  Its a 12 month size but it blocked a little larger and has room to block even larger than that so hopefully it will fit the little dude this winter.  I just have to sew in the sleeves and attach the i-cord to the back of the waistline.

Michael Thompson

Michael Thompson - my nephew makes the most beautiful music. Must have gotten from me. Nice, Mike.

CSA

Picked up my CSA box at farmers market. Then we had Indian and Thai for dinner.

Cheryl's Visit and Marble Coconut Bread

Cousin Cheryl visited this afternoon.  We had coffee and marbled coconut bread fresh out of the oven.  We worked on our blogs and I worked on charting the Estonian lace stitch patterns.  Heading to Westside Farmer's Market to pick up my CSA box.

Estonian Lace Study: 213 preliminary chart

Estonian Lace Study: 213 preliminary chart: "Well, I did a trial run using a charting program called Stitchmastery Knitting Chart Editor. The chart has a few bugs in it, like a few ext..."

Estonian Lace Study: Let the charting begin

Estonian Lace Study: Let the charting begin: "I'm studying shawl and lace design with an awesome teacher right now. Her name is Sharon Winsauer . I'm going to base my shawl design arou..."

The Girls

Visiting, Fiber Fairs, Fleeces, Bottle Trees, Racing and Chickens

So just to recap my visit to Charlevoix:  my cousin, Cheryl, came along with me to visit our Aunt Marge and cousins who live in Charlevoix.  We stayed at the Bellaire Bed and Breakfast- See pictures below- which we love.  We shopped in Alden and Elk Rapids on Thursday.  The yarn store in Elk Rapids had closed early because it was "too hot".  I'd say more than half of the businesses didn't have AC up there and it was in the 90's.
Thursday night we ate at Moka in Bellaire (great).  Friday we met Aunt Marge and cousin Ellie at Garfield's in Petosky.  We had a great visit before Ellie had to head off to work.  She loved her gloves (see pictures below).  Cheryl and I took Aunt Marge home and stayed to visit for awhile.  Couldn't reach the other cousins so we went back to Bellaire, walked downtown (sneaked across a bridge under construction that we probably weren't supposed to be on) and had dinner at Lulu's.  Saturday we headed off to the Fiber Fair at Castle Farms.  Really nice selection of vendors.  Lots of rug hooking and wool fabric (Jeanie).  I bought an 8 lb black Bond fleece from Big Hand Farm.  A real beauty.  We decided to try to get it to Zeilenger's for processing on the way home.  While we were racing to Frankenmuth, we saw a yard with two huge bottle trees in it which reminded me of the ones in Karen's book, Act of Grace.  We rode into Frankenmuth on gas fumes, only to be slowed down at the last minute by an Amish-looking carriage carrying tourists.  As we maneuvered around the carriage, an American Indian in full buckskin wearing a headband with a feather in the back also crossed our path.  Shouldn't that be some kind of omen?  The lady at Zeilinger's agreed the fleece was beautiful but thought I paid a lot at $10/lb.  Oh, well.  I love it anyway.  They are really backed up and the fleece won't be ready for at least 3 months.  They have a great reputation so that doesn't bother me. I probably won't be ready to spin it til then so I'm just glad I'm not processing an 8 lb fleece myself!! Had a big chicken dinner at Zehnders.  Listened to a couple of Cast-On podcasts on the way home.  One with the Free Mending Library guy on.  Reap What You Sew.  That was a great episode.  Glad to be home

Relaxing in Bellaire

Ellie's Gloves Finished

Well, the gloves are finally finished.  I had to redo the fingers but I think they came out pretty good.  They are more sage green than the picture shows.  The pictures looks a lot more yellow than they really are.  How do you get the color right when photographing some of these yarns?  I can't figure it out.  Hopefully Ellie will like them and they will fit her.  Now onto some more IOUs.

Ellie's Gloves!!!

....minus a few fingers

Glove Frenzy

I am totally hooked on glove knitting now. I've been making a pair for my cousin, Ellie. There is a really pretty pattern by Joanna Ryan called the Plum Blossom Gloves. Here is the link:

http://theraineysisters.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/plum_gloves1.pdf



I'm using Ann Budd's method to knit the fingers but I'm going to try Meg Swanson's icord technique next pair.
I-cord gloves technique

Thrumming Demo At Spinners Flock

Well, ok, we did the thrumming demo. Not so sure how well it went from my standpoint but Jeanie was great and the handout was really good, I think. Public speaking pretty much does me in. I think I will knit and snooze this afternoon.

Saturday morning

Jeanie, Judy and I are on our way to the Spinner's Flock meeting today. Jeanie and I are doing a thrumming demo. Will post later.

Quote for today

My friend, Karen Simpson, author of Act of Grace, posted this quote from Louisa May Alcott the other day and I really, really love it so I'm re-posting it.
       
          I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship.

-                                          Louisa May Alcott

JCCFS and more fancy circular knitting

I just got home from spending a week at John C Campbell Folk School learning to do fancy stitches on my circular knitting machine.  You'll notice I didn't say "circular sock knitting machine" because I've found out that you can knit many more things that just socks on this machine (thank goodness because I'm having a LITTLE trouble with the socks.)  Lucy Best and Eric Wolff put a ton of work into this course and I learned more than I ever thought I would - including - maybe the NZAK might not be the perfect machine for me.  Hmmmm.  

Sock Alert!

I've been at Woodsock the last couple of days. Woodsock is the spring retreat in Coleman, MI for circular sock machine enthusiasts. I completed my first sock (this is a big deal), have two more completed on the machine and hope to finish the fouth today. I'm staying at this awesome b&b in Beaverton. I have to check the link but I'll post it. It's called the Nestle Inn. Luann is awesome and it is just so cozy and comfy. A perfect spot to relax.
http://www.nestleinnbb.com