Monthly Archives: January 2013

making tallow for face cream!

Posted on January 6, 2013 by knitnzu | Comments Off

I have dry skin. I have always had dry skin.

When I was 17, my friend Ana and I went to the makeup counter at Jordan Marsh to find out about moisturizers and such. The clerk was gushing over Ana’s skin… “ooooh, you have such lovely skin, such peaches and cream complexion“. True enough, but the snarky part of me was thinking “huh, she’s got a forehead covered in acne“. (Ana still seems to have very lovely skin…)

And then the clerk got to me.

“Oh. My God. You are sucking up everything I put on you.“

Needless to say, I’ve used old lady moisturizer on my face for decades.

I’ve been making my own body lotion for a few years now. It’s great stuff, and cheap to make. Only three ingredients-though I often add a bit of beeswax and also some essential oils. It isn’t the best thing on my face though.

When I was in Spain, I picked up some Argan oil, and it has been great… except now that it’s winter, I need a bit more. The regular face cream I have isn’t working for me anymore. With the dysosmia, it just stinks (smokey, heavy, wet, a bit fishy), and I have to immediately wash it off.

Yesterday, a friend was talking about making face cream… from tallow! And so we went to Bisson & Sons in Topsham to get suet to make tallow (they raise grass-fed beef).

Basically, you get all the fleshy parts off, chop the suet into bits, and then heat it over a low heat for some time to get the tallow out of it. I chopped it up with a knife (some people use a food processor), and put it into the crock pot for about 6 hours. Zuzu was very interested in this…

I cooked up the meaty bits for the dogs… they licked their bowls for a long time after finishing the kibble…

I forgot to get a photo of how it looked when it was done in the crockpot, but here’s what I ended up with…

The open jar is a little cloudy as it was squeezed from the cracklings. I may cook with it.

And in the morning, it was all hardened up,

I basically used this method, though I chopped the suet more finely. Here’s another link about how to do this. Both of these links talk about using suet for cooking. I suppose I could have saved the cracklings, but I didn’t this time around.

For tallow face cream, the general proportions are 10 parts tallow to one part oil (I used olive oil). You can add some essential oils if you want.

Now before you go ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww, read this and this (though this latter link is regarding home made lard). Basically, unless you are making your own lotions and creams or using a vegan product, you are probably already slathering industrial waste from a rendering plant that renders hormone laden meat… and that would be the waste that wasn’t good enough for hot dogs, or that pink slime everybody was talking about a few months back.

The tallow face cream I made does feel really good, and yes, it does have a faintly meaty smell… even with the essential oils. After one use last night, I didn’t have the instant improvement experience that mommypotamus did, but I’ll give it a while and let you know later.

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Tagged Cooking, dogs, life in maine

Meow

Posted on January 6, 2013 by Julie | Comments Off

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Tagged cats

stuff that comes to our house… knitting the sky!

Posted on January 6, 2013 by knitnzu | Comments Off

Stuff that arrived here last week

The boy had been begging for this, and so spent some xmas $$ to get it. He says shenanigans will ensue.

DH keeps showing it to the girls, because they were (understandably) rather freaked out by it at first,

My mama clearly loves me,

Riveting book…

(not). There aren’t any pictures!

Beads for the sky shawl when I thought I was going to use only the laceweight,

They came packaged so nicely!

knitting the sky!

I joined a KAL (knit-a-long) over at LSG (Lazy, Stupid, and Godless) in Ravelry. We’re all riding a geek high knitting the Celestarium shawl. When I first saw the pattern, I thought “eh, it’s nice enough, but I dunno”, and then I saw that it is a shawl that shows the star chart of the northern hemisphere.

A star chart of the northern hemisphere!

And I knew I had to make this. I’m using that laceweight alpaca that I dyed with the black food coloring. It wasn’t working up quite how I liked with just the single strand, so I am running another strand of laceweight merino (in black) with it.

It is totally addictive. I don’t have any good pictures of it, because it droops while on the needles and it’s hard to capture the color.

The new, too small, beads (I may work these into a lacy border somehow)

Working away on the E charts (there are 4 to get around the circle). There are six charts for F…

I’m looking for a lacy border for this, something that is reminiscent of feathers (but not that feather and fan, no, no, no, not that) or a raven’s wing. I have some old pattern books… we’ll see what I find. I have some time before I’m ready for that.

The cool thing? I can recognize some of the constellations as I do this!

The funny thought? Years from now, archeologists will discover these knitted shawls and think WTF, why are people navigating from a shawl? Didn’t they have GPS and fancy technical stuff???

more maine morning mitts

I only made 2 pair of these to ship out at xmas… special request from a year ago. I still love this pattern for a mindless knit, but I haven’t made many of them this year. The green ones are from my handspun.

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Tagged creature feature, dogs, dyeing, life in maine, projects

Christmas Highlights

Posted on January 6, 2013 by knitnzu | Comments Off

I should have posted this a while back, eh?

Zuzu was sniffing around the tree early, and she discovered a toy wrapped for her. She started dragging it out, ready to open it. We said “Hey, you, we need to wait for the teenager“.

We managed a posed pic of the girls,

Zuzu has her paw in the air… it’s her “I want something” pose.

Teenager got up around 8:30.

Gravy immediately caught some excitement, ran over to the tree, and randomly grabbed some package and started opening it. “Hey, you, wait a minute, that’s not yours“. But she got to help open all the gifts, and had the best time opening Don’s.

Even though he’s 17 now, the boy still enjoys the packaging too…

And clearly loves his fleecy socks,

Don loves the hat I made him… from leftover yarn from that striped mushroom sweater. He’s goofing off here, but he does like it,

It’s the Cathedral Hat from Bill Huntington at Hope Spinnery. Project details on my Ravelry project page.

I’ve started knitting the sky, but I think that needs its own blog post!

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Tagged dogs, dyeing, Family, life in maine

28

Posted on January 5, 2013 by Marla | Comments Off

Today is the start of my New Year. Today is my birthday.

I am really excited for this year. I have plans. Big Plans. I am getting married. I am taking my first load of fiber to a mill. I am expanding my business. I am going to knit and spin a lot.

I haven’t really sorted out all of my goals and objectives into bullet points and lists yet, but don’t worry, I will. I love a good list. And bullet points. That’s a project that I am getting started today. Not that I haven’t been thinking about it non-stop for months, but today I am finally ready to sit down and start making a PLAN to do all the things. (After I eat a giant cheeseburger and gorge myself on brownies.)

I am ready for you, 28. Let’s go on an adventure.

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Tagged Almost a Business, birthday, business planning, new year, Rambling

Fickle spinner

Posted on January 5, 2013 by Julie | Comments Off

I do tend to switch back and forth between projects at the spinning wheel. With the first skein of Shale2012 plied, I’m now working on some lovely Pygora I picked up at the New England Fiber Festival last fall. It has gorgeous sheen and its quite soft. I’m planning to do a 2-ply and am curious to see how much yardage I get from an ounce.

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Tagged pygora, Spinning

Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is …

Posted on January 5, 2013 by mvobsession | Comments Off

Not me… not with THIS clock.

Maybe with this one!

Or not

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Tagged decor, Photographs

I’ve Accidentally Gone Quarterly?

Posted on January 4, 2013 by Dragan | Comments Off

What happened to all my fall posting abilities? I have no idea! Apparently even my extremely lazy (often late) once-a-month schedule was too much?

To be honest writing here starting compounding into a bigger and bigger thing to tackle for every month I missed, sitting down and writing it out is all that will fix it and so let's get down to things done!

~~~

Early in September we drove up to Ithaca for one of Vasya's friend's wedding. We used it as an opportunity to see my good friend Dana, who hosted us even with our lack of planning (and after we drove up to the wrong house - whoops! Sorry, random Ithacan). The wedding was small enough that we got to spend time talking to the bride and groom, which was really nice. We also got to meet some pretty cool people while also connecting with Vasya's friends from Ithaca. The blend of people was really fun.

In the vein of connecting with old friends, one of my classmates from Simon's Rock has moved to Cambridge, which makes it much easier to hang out with him. Vasya, for a second week in a row, came to work with me so that after work we could drive over to have dinner and drinks at a super cute restaurant in his neighborhood before heading off to a Firewater concert. While the opening band was AWFUL (despite being friends of the band) they were, true to form, fantastic.

The last weekend in September my parents came up to flip around Firewater in to Waterfire. We spent the summer trying to find a time we could all go together, but September may be the best month to go anyway. It had already cooled down enough that the sticky heat that plagued us when we went earlier was gone and because it was before the holiday weekend the crowds were down to a dull roar.

~~~

We went to our second fall wedding Columbus Day weekend. My childhood friend Roza got married in a truly Roza way. The wedding had games, SCA dancing, her husband sang her a song, she made the dress and his vest, and the whole affair was a huge potluck. It was really fun to see a wedding that so closely mirrored the two people getting married.

October brought us to the Ashfield Fair again, and we lucked out with perfect weather. Cool enough to enjoy the boy scout's cider and pumpkin doughnuts, but clear.

Much of the rest of the month was rainy which is why it was such a treat to have even better weather for the First Annual Caster's Bike Scavenger Hunt a few weeks later. We met in Lippitt Park to get our t-shirts (which of course few of us wore while actually participating) and instructions and had about two and a half hours to find and photograph a list of items around the East Side of Providence. Various items on the list had different point values and then a subset were a point-per-each found. There was a good amount of teasing competition, especially for the harder to find things and a good deal of helping each other out by default of seeing each taking photos. This is my approximate route and it took almost the whole alloted time while trying to find everything. After we all got back we picniced in front of the store while the "officials" checked our photos against our lists. Since it was the first time they'd tried doing this it took quite a while for the scoring to be finished, so they kept apologizing while the rest of us thought sitting around with all the other nuts who thought a bicycle scavenger hunt on a Sunday morning was a great thing to do.

We wrapped up October by going to the Steel Yard Iron Pour. We had been thinking about going, but the contra dance that night was also a really hot band and so we were conflicted until same said friend from above was also thinking of going. It was amaaazing. Watch the videos because there are no words for how fun it is to see people fling molten iron around for a while.

In September and October it was finally cool enough to start working on my first sweater again, and I'm almost, so almost close to done. I'm about 3/4 of the way through one sleeve and just have to finish the sleeves, block and put the buttons on (button band came before sleeves to make sure it was going to fit) and I'll have created one whole sweater! In future I think if I'm going to make more sweaters I'm going to make either children's or men's sweaters. I don't think I enjoy shaping women's sweaters, but once was interesting to try. Plus I am really happy with the way the blue buttons will look on the natural yarn.

~~~

The first weekend in November the food-fest that is the fall and winter began with a "harvest dinner" organized by two CSA members who are culinary students. The dinner was held at a planned community, outside of Providence, for artists that also hosts a new contra dance. A local band was very patient and played on an off for the whole (what became very long) event and we ate a lot of very good food almost all from the farm.

Vasya also voted for the very first time (hooray!) and we walked over to the school that is our voting location to stand in the long line (why didn't they split the alphabet differently?!), turn in our ballots to people who seemed pretty unlikely to be able to handle counting and then walked to the sandwich stop to stand in another long line for two-for-one-Tuesdays.

For Thanksgiving I made apple pie again and this year all the apples were local! Last year I used granny smiths and a variety of farmer's market apples, but this year my parents discovered Rhode Island greenings, which are a slightly less tart and a little more starchy. The best part is that the flesh turns slightly green when exposed to air, instead of brown. How cool is that? The sad thing about this pie was that either the apples were juicier than usual or I didn't add enough flour to them, or something along those lines because when I took the pie out of the oven a ton of apple juice poured out of a gap in the crust, leaving the pie mainly a pile of tasty, spicey apples in some crust. Still good, just a little less pie-y than I'd like.

I used the rest of Thanksgiving as a mini driving vacation, with the exception of heading up to the English Country dance because...I called a few dances! I let the organizers know that I'd taken the caller's seminar over the summer and that if they were going to do a community caller's night I'd like to join in. Helene Cornelius was calling in November and they knew that she likes to help new callers, so they asked her if I could try out calling with her. I had hoped to call one dance before the break and one after, but that level of detail didn't quite get organized so I called two in a row right before break. The dance right before break can sometimes be one where people fall apart because they're anticipating the snacks to come, have gotten fatigued or just need some sugar to boost them again, but I managed to keep it all going and get some practice calling a few without organizing a whole night's worth, which is great.

In November I also started working on Vasya and my sister in law's Christmas presents. My dad's aunt made our family knit stockings that all go together and while Vasya and Stephannie had stockings that looked nice with ours, I figured that while I could now knit it made sense to make them some to go with. My mom and chose yarn that looks nice with our stockings without looking like we couldn't match the yarn. Then I spent the whole of the month trying to figure out what my great-aunt had done after only having made one pair of socks before. I finished the stocking bodies on the 23rd of December (phew!) and we made the tassels a few days after Christmas. In the mean time my dad added two more shaker pegs to the mantel place, matching the stain on the ones that were already up.

Here's the whole final product. Hooray!

~~~

All fall Mystic Garland practiced for Make We Joy (go back a few Decembers), which meant many weekends I danced Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Make We Joy was about as early as it could be this year, December 2nd, which meant I was home for two full long weekends (I used the Monday after Make We Joy as my moving holiday day from Veteran's Day) in a row, which was a little bonkers, but the show was great this year. Once again I stilted for pre-show for the first show, with my dad on foot outside. We met some college students who didn't know what was going on and got to be a minor attraction for a little while, always good. I recited The Shortest Day and got several complements on my performance this year! And Mystic Garland did it's usual two dances and sword. Strike was exceptionally short this year so the whole weekend went by in a bit of a blur.

We then kicked it up a notch in the Christmas department by first going to The Revels Christmas dress rehearsal. Make We Joy was originally inspired by The Revels and I've known about it and people involved with it for many years, but hadn't actually seen it. The friends we met up with way back there in the September part of this post? Yeah, so my friend's girlfriend now works for the Revels and had comps to the dress rehearsal and needed to practice giving backstage tours, which meant we got to go! Sander's Theater is beautiful, we were pretty good at coming up with pestering questions for her to practice and the show was fun to see after so much anticipation. I was in a funny position of seeing it for the first time but being able to explain things to the others.

The next night we went with my parents to Christmas Waterfire, the second one held, and it was a much bigger affair than last year's. A ring of sponsored trees lined the basin, with a big one for santa to sit under. Many of the tress were decorated with children's paper ornaments, but some were decorated by the companies that sponsored the trees and our absolute favorite one was the Mount Hope Hardware Store which had hardware and ice scrapers hanging on it. The ice scrapers were transparent and the Christmas lights actually looked pretty nice through the different colors.

The next night we went to a friend's party with real candles on the tree, just to round off our weekend of Christmas.

~~~

Around all of this the fall semester has been very busy with a new boss and the general rush of the fall semester; we've been trying to update the way the sponsorships work for RILA and that's been a bit more of a project than I'd been planning on; I've still be running the weekly digital knit night (mostly); and we've gone to a fair number of parties, game nights and other get-togethers with people.

January has some weekends already full, but I'm looking forward to a little bit of a quieter spring.

Happy New Years!

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2013 Knitting & Designing Plans

Posted on January 4, 2013 by StephCat | Comments Off

Plans, not goals, not resolutions!

Book Deux: Last year the plan was to have it ready for Spring 2013 TNNA (at the time, there was talk of TNNA just having one big knitting orientated conference, combining Winter & Summer into Spring).

Now I’m shooting for Fall 2013 publication date. That means all the knitting should be done by Summer TNNA, and I’ll be able to put together a look book, but obviously the time line has been pushed back.

Regardless, I have more designs completed & some partially completed. Folks in my testers group have seen (and tested!) a few of the accessories.

I can say this book will be similar to CRK in many ways.

The skill level of the projects ranges from advanced beginner to intermediate plus. Projects include garments, hats, mitts, stoles, shawls, cowls & socks. Techniques include stranding (one of my favorites — and everyone who sees it –is a stranded hat done in Sunday Knits yarn), cables (lots of cables), textured stitch patterns, lace, beading, & nifty bicolored cables.

Also like CRK, the next book has a theme and related color palette. I can say, though, that architecture is not a consideration in this one. Flora, fauna, geology, and history are the subthemes.

Tempted? Teased? I hope so!

Hitch: As noted in the last post, Hitch grew. And grew. My goal is to have this in print prior to Summer 2013 TNNA, with the PDF coming out sooner. The last patterns are being tech edited (thank you KT!), some are awaiting tweaks by the designers, and then it all will go to layout.

Here’s a list of the designers:

Dani Berg, Jill Bigelow Suttell, Rebecca Blair, Brenda Castiel, Rachel Coopey, Jennette Cross, Anna Dalvi, Elizabeth Green Musselman, Kristen Hanley Cardozo, Glenna Harris, Becky Herrick, Elanor King, Nina Machlin Dayton, Triona Murphy, Carolyn Noyes, Luise O’Neill, Heather Ordover, Anne Podlesak, Stefanie Pollmeier, Nadya Stallings, Katherine Vaughan, Christina Wall, Christina Werge, Linda Wilgus, Karin Wilmoth, & of course yours truly (me)

And here’s a list of the yarns being used:

Anzula, Bijou Basin, Blue Sky Alpacas, Brooklyn Tweed, Cephalopod, Drachenwolle, Fyberspates, Harrisville, Hazel Knits, Hedgehog Fibers, Indigo Dragonfly, Knit Picks, Little Red Bicycle, Madeline Tosh, Old Maiden Aunt, Posh, Quince & Co, Shibui Knits, Sincere Sheep, Springtree Road, Socks that Rock (Blue Moon Fiber Arts), String Theory, Sunday Knits, Sweet Georgia, Tactile, Verdant Gryphon, Woolen Rabbit, Wooly Wonka, Zen Yarn Garden

I’m really excited about the collection! I’m hoping we can do some KAL & movie-a-thons. We’ll be starting a Hitch group on Ravelry specifically for KALs, etc.

Self published patterns

Right now nearly all my self published patterns are available on Ravelry. I have a few on Knit Picks not on Ravelry, and am planning an e book compilation of those to release on Ravelry & elsewhere.

I’d like to get all of those on Ravelry on Craftsy & Patternfish (sorry, no direct link for my patterns on Patternfish!). I’m also getting patterns uploaded to Deep South for wholesale (single patterns, not e books). As I’m updating formats, etc, and uploading to Deep South I’m updating the Ravelry (and Craftsy & Patternfish) listings.

I also have patterns from Sanguine Gryphon & Knitcircus that need to be reformatted & uploaded.

Okay, that’s old stuff, what about new?

I’m working on a couple cowl patterns to be used for class patterns. The goal is to design some super pretty patterns that are quite sneakily great for learning the techniques.

Otherwise, there will likely be a few more here & there, but my focus is the next book.

Teaching

I’ll be teaching at Madrona in February. I’m starting to set up more LYS & guild classes & talks, and would like to start teaching at other conferences.

If you’d like to see me teach a class at your local guild or LYS, let them know to contact me!

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Tagged Knitting & Spinning