Monthly Archives: February 2012

Fruit Cup …

Posted on February 26, 2012 by | Comments Off on Fruit Cup …

My creation


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Probably something you would like…

Posted on February 26, 2012 by | Comments Off on Probably something you would like…

Four new species of chameleon were recently found on Madagascar, including this tiny one.

The secret language of stamps. (via Not Martha)

Recipe: Homemade Swiss Miss Style Hot Chocolate.

I love this t-shirt! It’s for toddlers but if it came in my size I would snap it up. $24

How cute is this dollhouse? It comes fully furnished for $85. Bonus, “For added fun, there are 50 hidden animals to find in the house and accessories!”

Love this print! $30

Looking for a place to buy a Venus Fly Trap? Here you go. $19

The best time to buy anything. I am bookmarking the hell out of this chart.

This parrot really loves chocolate.

Did you know you can make your own sock forms out of wire coat hangers?

20 projects for repurposing old sweaters. Great for those sweaters you can’t bear to let go of even though they are out of date/moth-eaten/too big or small.

I am completely charmed by this chicken block print. Only $15!

What are you smitten by this week?

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Templates

Posted on February 26, 2012 by | Comments Off on Templates
farmer's wife templates

The Farmer’s Wife quilt uses a large number of templates and I’ve been hard at work carefully tracing and cutting. Most of them are used many times but for 111 blocks you still need a ginormous stack of templates. I’ve made a pretty good dent and it won’t be much longer before they are all done.

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The Many Faces of the LRB

Posted on February 26, 2012 by | Comments Off on The Many Faces of the LRB
Fourth Saturday - a smashing time here on the farm at the Little Red Barn...  Dina got here early and started the coffee, but had to slip out early...

Gay arrived and I got to deliver her JRF Golding Spindle.  She promptly fired it up and made some sweet yarn on it!  It all comes back, doesn't it, Gay?

Got to meet Patricia for the first time - what an incredible blanket she's working on - a diagonal crochet project for a friend...

Carla came by the farm for the first time.  She's very interested in fiber and felting and well, soon we'll have her knitting and spinning - right ladies?

Shareholder Katy came by with her kids Will and McKenna - Ruthie made them feel right at home.

Vanni showed Carla how to reach just the right spot on the tummy for the perfect scritch.  Amy's ready to dive into farm life!

Denise and Lisa had very interesting projects to work on.  Today was Lisa's first time to the LRB, and she fit in like an old-timer.  So enjoy her company!  And Denise went home with a Golding spindle, too.  Spin on, my friend!

The other Lisa, and Linda compared notes on some knitting issue.  Linda was remaking the sweater pattern she was wearing, this time in green.  If it ain't broke...

Karen cracked Angela up over something.  It was so great to see Angela again after a long break.  Then she went out and brushed the dogs for me.  What a lovely gift!  (The dogs love to see Angela coming...)

 Karen told us that she had to put her kitty down a couple of weeks ago.  Smokey seemed to know that she needed some feline love and affection.  Good kitty.

Barbara came and brought lots of awesome snacks today.  Sorry for the blurry picture, B, but your smile was so sweet!


Virginia bought some yarn here at the barn last Saturday and returned to day with a completed crocheted scarf/cowl thing.  Beautiful and snuggly-warm!  Way to finish your projects, Virginia!

Beth and Maryann were about the last to come, so we had some catching up to do!  Hadn't seen these ladies in quite some time.

Yep, Lisa - blocking is going to make one awesome scarf out of that - so, so pretty!

Our new friend, Chiyo, is just as cute as she can be.  Who can resist Hello Kitty and red boots?  She's working on an incredible fair isle felted bag she learned from Alissa Barton.  You go, girl.

Also, Anela and her husband Matt dropped by to ply the alpacas with carrots and win their hearts.  Bonita and her husband Dennis got the quicky tour and promised to come back soon.  Kris from the Farmstead Museum got to spend some time with us today, but somehow avoided getting her picture taken...  It was a busy, busy day at the farm - please forgive me if I forgot to mention you.  We talked about how my memory has a thick coat of Teflon on it, and I have to write everything -- I mean everything -- down nowadays...  Who did I forget?

Regardless, we had a spectacular day today.  So warm, we kept the barn door open.  And the only downside to that was...

Uninvited guests...


 Uninvited guests with an attitude...

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Sleepyhead

Posted on February 25, 2012 by | Comments Off on Sleepyhead

Back in the fall, I did some test knitting for Juniper Moon Farm -- they have three new yarn lines coming out for spring/summer, and solicited test knitters on their Ravelry group.  I was excited to be chosen to knit one of the new patterns!  

I'd never done any test knitting before, and it was a fun process -- I got to try out a not-yet-on-the-market yarn, knit a brand-new pattern, and make comments on the pattern.  It was like copyediting in knitting form: how could I NOT enjoy that?!  It's also not very often that I get to participate in something so top-secret...I felt like a knitting 007 for a while there.  (Well, maybe not quite.)

The yarn and the accompanying booklets have hit the shelves (I went to Webs last weekend and saw them with my very own eyes!) so I am finally free to share my test project!

All photos in this post copyright Joel Eagle, and used with permission of the photographer and Juniper Moon Farm.

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Pattern: Sleepyhead, designed by Pam Wynne, from the Juniper Moon Farm Yearling booklet
Yarn: Juniper Moon Farm Yearling, about 3 skeins 
Needles: US10.5/6.5mm
Time: November 16-21, 2011
Ravelry project page

This is such a cute little pattern; it's a good thing Ian has long outgrown baby bags, otherwise I might have had a hard time sending this back to the farm for its photoshoot and its future life as a trunk show model!  It's knitted in the round from the bottom up; you separate front and back once you get to the bodice and the top is knitted like a pair of overalls.  The bodice is knitted in a stretchy ribbing and there are three sets of buttonholes on the straps, so it will grow with baby.

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I have to be honest: I didn't expect to like working with this yarn.  I don't use bulky yarns often (and when I do, it's only for small projects), and I also don't particularly like cottons or cotton blends as a general rule (Yearling is 60% merino/40% cotton).  Cotton tends to hurt my wrists, and the combination of cotton + bulky seemed like it would be particularly unpleasant.  BUT.  I LOVED it!  It "read" much more like a wool than a cotton to me, and it has gorgeous drape -- it's not at all stiff like I was expecting.  

The next time I have cause to use a bulky yarn, I will definitely turn to Yearling...I wish I could have kept the leftovers from this project!  

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One caveat: if you wet-block with Yearling, make sure you leave PLENTY of time for it to dry.  A LOT of time.  This took nearly three days to dry completely -- now, granted, it was November and we keep our house quite cool, but still.  I knitted it in plenty of time, but the drying took so long I was afraid I wouldn't make the deadline for mailing the garment back to the farm!  In the end, Jim and I wound up rigging a contraption with a drying rack and a fan.  Who knows how long it would have taken to dry without that...!

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Saturday List Making

Posted on February 25, 2012 by | Comments Off on Saturday List Making

1. I have been planning a spring/summer line for the farmer’s market.
2. It involves a lot of little leaf motifs.
3. I have been swatching and knitting like crazy.
4. I find all the leaves very charming.
5. I am about to develop a leafy lacy mitten pattern for spring hand warmers.
6. Some mornings you still just need something on your hands.
7. Like this morning.
8. It’s cold out just yet.
9. I was going to repot my seedlings this morning.
10 But it’s too cold.
11. I think I’ll go knit some leaves instead.
12. And put on a sweater.

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Spiral …

Posted on February 25, 2012 by | Comments Off on Spiral …

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Cape Poge Lighthouse   -   Martha’s Vineyard


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Salad weather

Posted on February 25, 2012 by | Comments Off on Salad weather
arugula, proscuitto, pear, cheese

For some reason, I don’t like salad as a meal when it’s cold out but this has been almost a non winter. Salads are so quick and easy and this one was pretty good. It’s got arugula, lemon juice (my favorite “dressing”), pear, proscuitto, and some sort of sheep’s cheese that tasted a lot like Manchego only it was French.

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Painting Party …

Posted on February 25, 2012 by | Comments Off on Painting Party …

Recently I had a birthday – a big, scary one.   To ease the transition into a new decade I decided I’d like to spend part of the day doing something with my daughters Patty and Deb.  We rarely do anything together and so I wanted it to be something we’d all enjoy.

Last August Patty and I went to Pottery Pizazz to paint pottery and had so much fun that I decided it was what I wanted the three of us to do. (CLICK HERE)

Patty brought home made chocolate cupcakes (two had chocolate pudding in the middle…yummm) and a birthday balloon.

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Took awhile but finally we chose what we wanted to paint and then set about our task.

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Patty’s

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Deb’s

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Mine

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The pottery painting was Patty’s present to me and this is the gift card she made.

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Me and my girls.

(The above picture has been tweaked … ya think :) )

I still have one more gift to collect so stay tuned in March to find out what it is and where Deb and I are going !!!


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chicken dreams

Posted on February 24, 2012 by | Comments Off on chicken dreams

chickens are also on the agenda this spring! adding laying hens to our food-growing, bee-keeping, angora-rabbit-raising setup will make this feel like a real urban farm. but because we’re still a pair of over-achieving yuppies with delusions of a mid-century modern design aesthetic (and because we have neighbors who can see into our backyard), we’re not content to throw together some scrap wood and chicken wire into some kind of ghetto coop.

you know, there are some fantastic coop designs out there, along with amazingly talented people who designed and built them. our favorite is this one that was profiled in dwell magazine. that bit of green you can see peeking up along the roof top? that there, is a green roof. on a chicken coop. made of reclaimed cedar siding, fer pete’s sake.

Modern Chicken Coop by Mitchell Snyder in Dwell Magazine

this one is pretty great too. i love the lanterns outside the front door.

stylish chicken coop from the art of doing stuff

but as enterprising as we are, we’re sort of overwhelmed by the prospect of designing and building a chicken coop that can live up to these models (also, that second one is way too big for the three chickens (max) we’re going to have). it’s not that we couldn’t do it if we put our minds to it, it’s really more that we’d maybe rather pay someone else to do it for us so we can skip straight to the enjoying-the-chickens-in-their-fancy-already-built-home part.

and THEN, i found out that there is a brooklyn company that provides all-in-one chicken services to aspiring new york city chicken-keepers – victory chicken co. i think we’re going to go with the rosie package: a simple and modern coop sized just right for the three young hens almost ready to start laying that they also provide, and a two-month supply of chicken feed, hay, and wood shavings to keep the girls fed, clean and happy. best part – they build and install the coop, so we really can skip straight to the aforementioned enjoying-our-new-chickens part.

we’re gonna get the teal version.

farm on!


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