Slowing

After a death in the family last week, I've slowed down quite a bit. Being out of town for so long (first a craft show, then helping my mom move, then the funeral) resulted in me feeling a little scramble-y. But instead of snapping back into action, I'm taking it slow. Completing custom orders, pushing back the debut of a new line of yarn, spending some time with my new drum carder. Yarn is slowly re-appearing in the Boutique, but I'm taking my time and relaxing my demands (I'm a pretty demanding boss)
Here's how I'm slowing down:

Baking: banana bread, pumpkin bread, apple pie

Knitting: Twist & Shout (pictured above)

Sipping: Orange Dulce, Orchid Oolong

Listening to: Adele, Ray la Montaigne, Iron & Wine

Looking forward to: SAFF on Saturday, Urban Craft Uprising in December


I'll be back in full force later this week, with a new tutorial for Fiber Friday, on carding the fleece and the launch the new line on October 31st. The new line will be yarn and fiber made entirely from the first fleece I processed. I'm still looking for a good name for the line, as this is something I'd like to do every month - wash, dye, card and spin one local fleece and then offer the washed locks, dyed fiber, batts and yarn all from this one sheep. Any suggestions? I'd love to hear what you'd most like to see (locks, batts or yarn?)
How are you slowing down as the weather cools down?

5 Free Knitting Patterns for Handspun Yarn

"I just realized that I have developed kind of a collector style in my yarn buying. I don’t buy yarn for specific projects any more but more like “oh-how-beautiful-must-have-that”. This of course results me having several single skeins of this and that (and they are all soooo pretty). So what can I make with your yarn?"

That's an actual email I got from a customer and it expresses how many of us buy yarn. We see something pretty and we snatch it up. But what to DO with it as it starts to overtake our living space?

Well, after answering this question for myself, I've started collecting patterns that will show off handspun. These patterns work with the special properties of handspun yarn, not requiring an exact guage (since handspun has natural inconsistencies).
Below are 5 free patterns that (can) use a single skein of handspun - the name links directly to the pattern (sometimes a pdf), followed by the Ravelry link. I've included a suggested yarn which is the right weight and length to make the pattern (click the name of the yarn to purchase it).

1. Sherbrooke (Ravelry) - a lovely textured cowl
   


Autumn Sky




2. Lace Ribbon Scarf (Ravelry) - a very pretty, lacey scarf


Fabulous!

3. One Skein Scarf (Ravelry) - a, uh, scarf!
   


Juice



4. Foliage (Ravelry) - a pretty leaf-y hat




Lettuce



5. Caliometry (Ravelry) - a headband
   
   
   
   Preppy
   


I'm still working on my handspun sweater. What have you made with handspun yarn?

Finished Quilt

Today my very best friend is getting married.
Jamie and I have been through high school orchestra, family vacations, deaths, parental weddings and divorces, college graduations and my wedding together, as best friends.

As I sat with this quilt, her wedding gift, in my lap, I thought of all the hopes and worries and happiness we've shared. The giggle fits and camping on the beach and loud singalongs to Les Mis.

I wanted this quilt to symbolize so much: the warmth that our friendship has brought me, the years of letter writing we've engaged in, my hope that she'll enjoy husband-snuggling under a blanket as much as I do.
Making the quilt was a ritual I needed; to stitch our friendship into something tangible, to allow myself to believe in our new lives, to physically labor my prayers and happiness for her into something she could hug.

The quilt is comprised of 12 blocks that are 16 in square.

Separated by 400 miles, I purchased 4 fabrics, 1/2 yard of each while my mom did the same. We met up to exchange fabrics and buy the border. We retreated to our own homes and Mom pieced 5 blocks and I made 7; neither of us using a pattern, just throwing together the 9 fabrics however we wanted.

When I stayed with my mom during the weekend of Jamie's bridal shower, we sewed together the blocks, added the 6 inch border, purchased the batting, backing fabric and bias tape. I brought it home and handquilted the entire quilt by myself in 3 weeks.


The border is a double fold bias tape, machine-stiched on the front and hand blind-stitched to the back. I am SO proud of my handstitching - this was my very first time quilting or blind stitching anything!

I'll give it to her today, her wedding day, hoping that all of my thoughts, prayers and wishes make it out of the quilt and into her life.

Local Lunch

• Spring Salad Greens from Abingdon Organics
• Strawberries from Bishop's
  
• Farm Fresh Herbed Goat Cheese from Oak Moon Creamery
• Dried Sweet Cherries from the guy at the JC Farmer's market (no signage, no business card)

Not pictured:

• Toasted Rosemary Focaccia from Scratch
• Sumatra from Cooper Coffee Co.

PS. After searching for each of these vendor's websites, I am struck that only 1 has a website or even a small little information page! People, websites are imperative! What do you think is keeping these small businesses from embracing the technology? Lack of knowledge? Perceived cost? This is something I would really love to help other small businesses with and I wonder what the barrier to entry really is!

Inspiration Monday #10: Quilty Goodness

As I've been spending most of my weekends with quilt in hand, making tiny, tiny handquilting stitches, I'm a little woozy with the quilting bug. Here's a bit of the inspiration that led me down this rabbit hole:

• I've seen a lot of quilts made from blue jeans (in fact Crafting a Green World just posted about them), but this is my very favorite.
• Amanda makes excellent use of some old sheets.
• Jane is the reason I believed I could handquilt my very first quilt, and this post is the reason I wanted to.
• Alicia's quilt is really the first that struck me as something I both wanted to make and wanted to own.
• The insight into Lisa's quiltmaking (art making!) is remarkable.
• Malka's post on quiltiness convinced me (before I even started) to make this quilt as "quilty" as possible.

I'm 7 out of 12 blocks, and then I'll do a few rows around the border, and then it's time for the bias tape (which I hear is pretty fun).

It's time to make the...

Donuts! The following is a photolog of the making of these donuts, last Saturday afternoon:

rolling the dough (after it's risen for an hour). Note the French Press coffee maker wearing it's handknit cozy!

Cutting out the donuts, using the only round thing I had available.
You can see that I also used some square cookie cutters.

Fresh out of the oven, doughy and puffed!

After their bath of cinnamon and brown sugar! Yum!

Other Domestic Pursuits

...well, they don't always turn out as well as the yarn.

This bread, following Amanda's WHO Bread recipe, ended up a bitflat. We fed it to the birds and went without bread this weekend. When my confidence picks back up, I'll try again. Any idea why it wouldn't rise and would stay so doughy on the inside?

Last week I got a yearning for flannel pants. In full disclosure, I live in flannel pants. Everyday, after work, I come home from the office and put on a pair of flannel pants. For the last 2 years, I have had 2 pairs, gifts from my in-laws that were BRIGHT orange plaid. Not attractive, but very comfortable. The last few months had been hard on the pants and they were holey in some, uh, unholy places. Last Thursday, while packing to go out of town, I decided to sew some new pants. Out came a pattern, old flannel sheets and my scissors.
I'm pretty happy with the pants, except for one thing, barely noticable in the picture: I laid the front pattern piece down upside down and so the wrong side of the fabric is showing on the front of my pants and the right side is showing on the back. Make sense?

Yeah, me neither. But no matter: they're comfortable!

More successfully, I covered a never-used throw pillow with some on-sale Amy Butler fabric. (I got the fabric from this shop, they have a huge pile of "bolt-ends for just a dollar or two)
Finally - Success!

Sugar-Free Baking

Growing up, we gave Christmas cookies as gifts to anyone not closely related. Starting at Thanksgiving, my mom and I would start making the longer-lasting cookies (or making sugar-cookie dough and freezing it for later rolling and baking). We'd go to church the Sunday before Christmas, loaded down with tins filled with a variety of cookies, wrapped in ribbons, tagged for everyone we knew (luckily, it was a small church). As I grew older and my younger brothers and cousins were born, we started holding annual Cookie Parties: days filled 4 little boys kept busy rolling, decorating, baking and sugar rushes for all. Most of cookies from these years were best given to parents who could appreciate the 'skill' of the decorator.
Now that I live hours away from my family, I miss a house filled with cookie smells and countertops that are as piled with cookies as the sidewalks with snow. Last year Mom waited to have the Cookie Party until I was home to help, but this year the boys are older (7 & 8) and they wanted to have their friends over, so they're forging on without me.
I'm also feeling the tug to create my own memories, with my own little family. For the first time ever, Jay wanted to contribute to our Handmade gifts, so as we sat down for a 'planning meeting' last weekend. I was overjoyed that he thought cookies would be a fantastic gift for his family that we're visiting next week! I immediately started jotting down all the cookies I wanted to make (chocolate chip, decorated sugar cookies, snowballs, brownies, 7-layer cookie bars...) and then it hit us: his family is diabetic. They can have a little sugar (they love my apple pie), but a whole tin of cookies? At least some of them need to be sugar-less. This is a test of our creativity, since, as Sister Diane writes, sugar does a lot more than just sweeten the cookies.
All of my Google-skillz are being tested as I search for sugar-free cookie recipes, but I'm not happy with the quality of the recipes I'm coming up with.
Any suggestions?

Pumpkin loaf

breakfast with Stephanopoulos

The pumpkin loaf, it is DI-vine. I altered it a bit (because that's how I roll) and so this is my take on it:

INGREDIENTS
2 cups white sugar (I will be using cane sugar)
1 (15 ounce) can pumpkin puree
1/2 cup vegetable oil

1/2 cup fresh ground flax seed (it substitutes 1:1 for oil, did you know that? I didn't!)
2/3 cup water
4 eggs
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (actually, I might have forgotten the 1/2 cup, I got distracted)
1 cup wheat flour

1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon ground nutmeg
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 1/4 cups miniature semisweet chocolate chips (After I measured 1 cup, there was just a bit more left, so I tossed it all in...and really, it could have used even more!)

DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour 2 loaf pans (the original recipe said 3, but I found it just made 2, sort of flat, not filled to the brim loafs...next time I'm gonna make it in just one, so it has that puffy, super-full look)

In a large bowl, combine sugar, pumpkin, flaxseed, oil, water, and eggs. Beat until smooth. Blend in flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, baking soda, and salt. Fold in chocolate chips. Fill loaf pans 1/2 to 3/4 full.

Bake for 1 hour, or until an inserted knife comes out clean. Cool on wire racks before removing from pans. (I never wait this long, we dug in about 15 minutes after it came out of the oven)

Slice and eat. Or warm up and spread some cream cheese on top. Or some peanut butter. I like it for breakfast (the chocolate chips don't count due to the healthful benefits of canned pumpkin!)

Let me know if you make it!