On the Sticks, In the Sticks

It's Spring!

Ah! Spring has finally come to our mountain! It's still early spring, mind you, but it's here. I can take a little more of the chilly weather knowing that we are definitely through the winter. The snow is finally gone from our yard. The snowdrops have come and almost gone (I was so ecstatic to see them peeking out form under the piles of snow!) and the crocuses are in full bloom.

When we bought this place almost three years ago, we inherited a huge, but overgrown red raspberry patch. What a treasure! The original owners planted it and from what I hear, they used to sell raspberries in the summer. But the people we bought the property from weren't into gardening, so it got a bit overgrown in the 8 years they were here. I've been wanting to reclaim the patch, so that we can actually walk through it and get to the back to harvest the berries we haven't been able to get to. So every chance I get, I've been down there clearing out the old canes and pruning back the new.

Morgan, my youngest, loves to come down and help. He doesn't do the raspberries - too prickery- but one day he was cutting back old stalks of Japanese knotweed  - a great job for a kid, because they're so easy to cut with a pair of clippers. The other night a big, old, rotten birch came crashing down at one end of the patch. While I was out there raspberrying on Sunday afternoon, he was carry pieces of broken birch away! He's great company and a great big help!

In knitting, I finally finished and forgot to post last Friday for

this sweater I've been making for Winter!
I was so excited to finish it. And the best compliment is how much she loves to wear it. She wore it to church on Easter Sunday, too.
It was made form a Sirdar pattern, using KnitPicks CotLin yarn in Desert Turquoise, size 4 and 6 US needles. It was an enjoyable pattern, well written, and not at all difficult. I loved learning how to do the Thumb Cast-on and how to make the loops at the bottom edges of the pieces - just a matter of casting on stitches, then casting off some and knitting some in the following row, then casting on more for the sweater in the third row.

I've also been working on some felted bowls. I found a pattern in One Skein by Leigh Radford and have had such fun knitting up these three bowls below. They only take about an hour to knit up. It's been really interesting to see the differences in felting each of them, both with time and texture.

The bowl on the right is the first bowl I did. It's knit in Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride Bulky in "Oregano". The bowl on the left is knit in Berroco's Peruvia yarn, a worsted weight, knit holding two strands together. All of these bowls were knit up on size 15 US dpn's.

 This third bowl is knit with two strands of Morehouse Merino variegated worsted weight I had in my stash. I love the colors! This bowl took wayyyy longer to felt than the other two, however. I did one other bowl, with Lion Wool Landscapes which also took a lot longer to felt.

With the knitted eggs I made last spring (free pattern from Julie at little cotton rabbits).

Hello there!

Well, hello there! It's been a while, eh?
We've been so busy with things lately, I've gotten quite sidetracked!
But in spite of all that I've definitely been getting a lot of knitting done...just no FO's to share yet.

It was my birthday Friday...

Morgan wanted to bring over the cake. He's was so cute!
I had made a Boston Creme Pie (yes, I made my own cake!). Of course,  there's pudding in the middle, and as he approached the landing zone in front of me, I looked and saw the top slowly starting to slide! Luckily he made it in time and I just discreetly pushed the top back into place. All was well. I managed to blow out all the candles (see evidence below) and the cake has now since been devoured in record time, along with the leftover pudding! Whew!

(in case you're wondering about the half-glazed cake...an adjustment for those in the family that don't like chocolate much...

        And preferred the idea of whipped cream instead!                   

                                                     

Happy Birthday to all my friends who have a birthday within days of mine (those I don't know, and the several whom I do!) It's really cool to know you all and share a February Piscean birthday with you!

Knit a little, shovel a lot!

Wouldn't you know... 4 days to Christmas and now I'm coming up with all these great little things I want to knit for everybody! I can think of several people I'd love to make Snowflake Star ornaments for, including our neighbors and Billy's aunt Eileen. Now, I could probably manage that...but then there's the fun fur scarf and this cute little bag my daughter would probably love, and the balaclavas for the kids (they've been sharing Dad's...see previous post for a pic).

Now the balaclavas I can make anytime, starting now...especially if the snow keeps up like this! We got ten inches Friday. It was flurrying all day yesterday, but it didn't amount to much more...maybe another inch or two...hard to tell. The kids were out in it at least four times yesterday. They'd go out for an hour, come in for a while, then go back out again...the last time being in the dark, by the light of the front and back porch spotlights.

Today we're expecting another storm that will give us maybe another 10 inches when all is said and done. Don't get me wrong...I absolutely love snow, and I actually love shoveling snow too ( I know, call me crazy!) But...hubby has not been able to get the snowblower going yet. Yep...I was out there Friday evening a couple times shoveling, just to keep up with the snow. And our driveway is maybe 100 ft or so long. So, while I loved every bit of the shoveling I did Friday night and yesterday, I'm just not sure how much I'm going to love a repeat of same today :) We'll see! Hopefully hubby will have better luck today getting that thing roaring to life!

In the meantime, I'm sitting in the warm cozy house (still feeling so grateful for power and heat!) knitting away.

These are some cute mini stockings I made from leftover sock yarn. They're all about 2 1/2 to 3 inches tall.

And this is one of about half a dozen or so baby hats I made to sell at our church. We have a table at the back where people can sell things they've made. We sell them and donate a portion of the money to the church. It's a nice way to support the church and each other and it's wonderful to see people's various talents. Who knew?

I just finished reading two good knitting books. Well, fiction books with knitting characters in them (don't you love how knitting is spreading to the world of novels too?!) ...the first was The Knitting Circle by Ann Hood. Can't recommend it highly enough. It's about a woman who loses her young daughter to a severe form of meningitis. It's about her grieving process and coming back to herself after such a heartbreaking loss. In the process she learns to knit, joins a knitting circle, and you get to meet all these wonderful other women from the knitting circle and hear their own stories of healing too. They all have had their own tragedies and their own healing and triumphs. And even though it's about a grieving process it's definitely not all sad...it's healing and triumphant too.  The other one I just finished last night is Casting Spells by Barbara Bretton. That was a fun, magickal romance.

 

The kids were burying each other in the snow last night. Kind of like being buried in the sand at the beach...only colder!

So good to be home!

Along with so many thousands of other people, we were without power for the better part of the past week from the ice storm that came barreling through New England last Thursday/Friday. We have electric heat, no woodstove yet, so there was no staying in our house for long. My Mom lives about 45 minutes from here and had not lost power at all, so stayed with her until Wednesday when the power came back on.

We had such a great time! We all camped out upstairs in what used to be my younger sisters' room. We ate dinners together, hung out in the evening, and went out during the day to do our usual activities. My youngest sister even came over and spent two nights there. Slumber party at Mom's!

I know I haven't been online much lately, but I've been knitting like crazy. Here's just one of the things I've finished in the last several weeks...

Hubby is modeling his Antifreeze Hat. I started this for him towards the end of last winter, but ran out of yarn on the last few rows...and by that point it was almost spring. So finally, as the weather started turning colder again this fall, I ordered another ball of KnitPicks Swish in Black and finished it off.

Now it's just in time for the BIG snowfall that's supposed to start this morning...and he can't get the snowblower started! Well, it'll be good for when we're shoveling the driveway, too!

And a picture from the ice storm.
This big branch that landed on the wires going to our house landed perpendicular to the house, but around midnight when it fell, it had me out of bed in a heartbeat, because as it was coming down it actually sounded like it was falling toward the house and just brushing up against it...next to my bedroom window! Ack!

Many, many thanks go out to all the town, tree, and power company folks who worked so hard to get everything resotred again!

Summer Storms

Yesterday morning, it must have been around 4am, I woke to the sound of rolling thunder and pouring rain. I love thunderstorms, and I love waking to them during the night and just lying there and listening. This one was wild. When I woke it was pretty close, and the lightning was flashing almost constantly. The thunder would start rolling near our house, but then you could hear it keep rolling and rolling off into the distance. I pictured it rolling it's way in a line from our house, down the valley, and bumping into other mountains along the way...it just kept rolling. Sometimes it even sounded like it started far away and kept right on rolling up this way!

Now, I have to be honest... there came the point when the storm must have been right overhead and I started to make myself a little nervous...picturing a tree falling on our house. I sent out a little prayer to the universe to just keep us safe. No sooner had I thought it, when it was like someone had turned down the volume. The rain, which had been pounding suddenly quieted, you could hear it happen. And the thunder, while still close by, sounded like someone had muted it, so I could go back to enjoying it again. Really!

It was a day of thunderstorms, as it turns out. One in the afternoon brought hubby home from work early. Another, after dinner, had him going out to check on the new gutters he just started putting up over the weekend. Well, that gave the kids a great idea. They came tearing through the house all excited, and came charging back out a  couple minutes later, busted out the back door and started jumping around in the rain in sheer delight! Is there anything better than playing in your swimsuits in the warm summer rain?!

Now how's that for happy?!

Saturday, Shane finished up Little League for the summer. He's going to go to a one week baseball  day camp in town starting at the end of this week. He can't wait! Here he is at the awards ceremony.

In knitting news, I still keep procrastinating on finishing up the Birthday Socks for Mom. A touch of Second Sock Syndrome I'd say. What usually works is setting a goal of knitting maybe 10 rounds a day. i need to remind my brain how simple it is. Then my mind thinks, "Oh yeah. That's not so much! We can do that!" And at that rate, with 10 rows being about 1", my mind realizes that it really wouldn't take that long to finish up these beautiful socks ( and get to move on to something else new and exciting!)

Or old and exciting. I was reading yesterday about the UFOlympics challenge. That link'll take you to the ravelry group. The challenge is to finish some of those UFO's you have hanging around. Between Aug 8 when the Summer Olympics start and Aug 24 when the flame goes out. The rules are all there. I'm in! Now...what to finish?!

The Choosing Ritual

Here's a fun thing to try. It came in The Daily Groove, which is a daily email newsletter from a new site I just found  yesterday called EnjoyParenting.com. There was an interview with Scott Noelle in the most recent issue of Home Education Magazine which arrived the other day.  (BTW - Home Ed Magazine is a great resource for anyone who is homeschooling or even thinking about it - chock full of great ideas and other people's experiences about all things homeschooling).

Anyway, here's what I found in my inbox this morning, and i wanted to share it with you. Great reminder about perspective and choosing yours.

THE DAILY GROOVE ~ by Scott Noelle
www.enjoyparenting.com/dailygroove

:: The Choosing Ritual ::

1. Get two sheets of notebook paper and cut
    each one into 8 pieces.

2. On each of the first 8 pieces, write a brief
    description of something you *appreciate* about
    your child and/or being a parent.  Fold them in
    half and place them in a small container (bowl,
    jar, plastic tub, etc.). Label the container
    with a plus sign or a smiley face.

3. On each of the second 8 pieces, describe
    something you find *annoying* or *frustrating*
    about your child and/or being a parent.
    Fold and place them in a second container
    marked with a minus sign or a frowning face.

4. (Optional) Decorate each container more
    extensively with symbols and colors that
    emphasize the positive/negative contrast.

5. Complete your "altar" for the ritual by placing
    the two containers side by side in a location
    where you'll notice them often (or use a
    kitchen timer to remind you every hour).

Now let the ritual begin:  Every time you see this
"altar" (or the timer goes off), you must reach into
ONE of the two containers, pull out a note, and read
it. In other words...

    You must CHOOSE whether to focus on the
    positive or the negative.

As you choose, notice that you *are* choosing, and
feel the enormous power you wield in that choice.
You literally *create* your experience through your
choice.

Beware the trap of thinking you "should" choose one or
the other; choose whichever one you *feel* like
choosing. It's your choice!

http://dailygroove.net/choosing

Feel free to forward this message to your friends!
(Please include this paragraph and everything above.)
Copyright (c) 2008 by Scott Noelle

Have a great day!

Good Weather and Recipes

I woke up this morning and could see most of our yard! Most of the snow melted overnight.

The temp was up to 55 yesterday, and 50 again today. What a change from -3 and 7 above last week!

The kids and I took a nice long walk this morning and trekked through every bit of mud and puddles we could find.

We played Clue, and with the Leap Frog globe, and had a ball with some really tricky questions on a BrainQuest newsletter I downloaded from brainquest.com. I was wishing they had more, but there seem to be only two or three. I was looking for an ongoing newsletter from them. I'll poke around some more and let you know if I find anything.

I made Veggie Burritos and Quesadillas for dinner tonight. They are very simple and not spicy, but could be as spicy as you like, really.

Here's my recipe...

I saute up a bunch of vegetables in butter or olive oil. I usually use...

1 onion chopped

lots of mushrooms sliced or chopped ('cause we love 'em)

1-2 carrots grated

1/2-1 small zucchini chopped small or grated

chopped broccoli (maybe a head or so, chopped small)

soy sauce (I just sprinkle it on until I think there's enough to flavor it, but now overwhelm)

Melt about 2 T butter in a frying pan. Add onions and mushrooms and let cook until starting to soften, then add the other ingredients. Saute until tender. Add soy sauce and let cook just a little longer to evaporate (the soy sauce also helps steam the broccoli if it's not tender enough).

For burritos, I put some grated cheddar in the center of a flour tortilla, then some veggies, and a little more cheese, fold the sides in, fold the ends, and place folded side down on a plate or in a baking pan. For quickies, I pop them in the microwave, about 20secs per burrito. In the oven, cook them at 400 degrees for 15-20 min. You can also brush them with a little salsa before putting them in the oven. Yum!

For quesadillas, butter one side of two tortillas. Lay one, butter side down in a preheated fry pan (just like making grilled cheese). Sprinkle tortlla with grated cheddar, then veggies, then a little more cheddar to make it stick together, then add the buttered top. Cook on medium heat until ready to flip (starting to turn golden on the bottom). Cook other side till golden. Slice in triangles and serve.

To spice them up you can add chili powder or cumin (or both).

Enjoy!

Sometimes I also make some quick and delicious refried beans to put in the burritos...

Saute 1/2 and onion and fresh garlic, 1-2 cloves, in olive oil. Add 3/4t salt, 1t cumin and black pepper to taste.

When transparent put into a bowl with 1 can of black or white beans (drained and rinsed). Mash together and eat or use in burritos. Delicious!

It's been windy most of the day, and very windy out there tonight. I hear it's blowing in some colder weather again.

I'll have WIP pictures soon. Must get more batteries for the camera.

Snow Play and Traveling the Globe

I love spring in the middle of winter! It reached 50 here today. It was great to be outside! The melting snow (of which we still had about a foot!) was perfect for making a family of snowmen, just like us! Cute, eh?

The birds even sounded like spring.  I told the trees not to be fooled though, this isn't the end of winter yet.

One of the presents the kids got Saturday from Aunt Eileen was a talking globe. It's got all sorts of fun things you can do...point to countries and it will name them, their capital, their population, their national anthem, some of the country's music, etc. It also has some challenge games on there.

So the boys spent lots of time this morning pointing to different countries to here their music, dancing, and having parades. Then again this afternoon...and this time Winter joined them. Really cute to listen to. And I was thinking to myself they're learning plenty of stuff at the same time...names of different countries, many of them new to the kids, how to pronounce them, where they are, a taste of the different music styles. Thanks Eileen!

Ahhh

Ahhh! The kids are in bed. The house is quiet.

Today was one of those days.  Just one of those where no matter how much tap dancing and quick thinking you try to do, the kids aren't getting along, and they keep going in and out of not getting along. All of it ended in a major meltdown from  #1 child late this afternoon. I mean, major. And in hindsight I can see what she might have needed (hindsight's great, ain't it?!) but in the moment, it's so hard to figure out sometimes! So we both ended up in the middle of this major meltdown. I called a friend near the end of it, just to give myself a break from it. That helped it to pass, and me to get my sanity back.  And less than an hour later, Winter and I had a good talk. I said what I needed to say. She said what she needed to say and we started our day over.

I'm always struck by how kids can just move on. I was feeling so bad for how things had gone, even though I was doing my best, and a little while later she came out of her room in much better spirits. The storm had passed.  That's when we talked amd started over.

One of the hardest things about homeschooling is not the "schooling" part of it. The kids learn so much on their own. They're so curious. It's the being together so much of the time. It's like any other family, sometimes you get along great and sometimes you get really crabby with each other.

A little knitting, a little reading in bed, and I'm off to sleep. Tomorrow's another day.

It's Snow Fun!

The snow only lasted until about 2pm. We just got another 4" or so.  Got some cute pics of the boys playing in it.

Morgan with tired legs after lots of sledding.

Shane snowboarding on his sled. Anybody else remember doing this? I do!

Snow dog! He's in his element.