a hammer in the kitchen at 6 a.m. and things going AWOL

Why would one need a hammer in the kitchen at six in the morning? Those small hours of the day should be spent with muted sounds : socks on the hardwood floor, the clink of the coffee pot meeting up with the smooth lip of a ceramic cup, a slow, fuzzy brain humming as it comes to terms with the day ahead.

There's no need for BANG BANG BANGING!

Or is there?

Now, nothing was broken in my kitchen this morning that needed fixing. I just had a craving. A craving for frozen strawberries in a banana, avocado, apple juice and strawberry smoothie; and the berries were all frozen together in the plastic bag.

Even more satisfying was the knowledge that these particular berries came from my parents garden last summer. The best way to eat a berry is either straight off the vine in July, or nibbled off the edge of a cold hammer in the middle of February. (Don't worry folks, this hammer is for kitchen purposes only . . . like shattering strawberries or even raspberries for that matter.)

Hey! I'm from Minnesota. We have a short growing season.

Next on the docket is the realization that the mittens my mother knit me from her own hand spun have definitely gone AWOL. I didn't lose them, I merely left them on my desk here at studio and they seem to have wandered off.

This is the second time that something like this has happened. My red Koolhaas cap wandered off this past November, I knit myself a new one. But the mittens my mother knit me will not be so easy to replicate.

Here are some images of some jars of her raspberry jam. Admittedly this doesn't take a hammer to apply, but it's also a wonderful treat in the middle of February.

some people say it's valentine's day

Some people say it's Valentine's Day this coming Sunday. I won't argue with the calendar, but I will quibble with whether or not you can really say its Valentine's Day if your sweetie is out of town, or if you're single.

Hear me out. Most of the Valentine's Days of my past have been spent as a singleton, cutting out pink and red crepe paper hearts in the middle of my apartment floor with, perhaps, a sad romantic comedy to keep me company. (Sorry, Tom Hanks, it was me, not you.) Or worse yet, snuggled into the corner of my sofa with a stack of poetry books making wobbly copies of my favorite poems.


This year finds me not single (ironically) yet still alone. I fall into the 'sweetie out of town' category so I am forced to come up with substitute to the traditional Valentine's Day. Luckily, my parent's have offered me an appealing alternative to sitting home all alone or overworking myself at the studio.

They're shearing sheep this weekend.

Imagine a clean barn filled with fresh straw, piles of soft wool and freshly shorn sheep. It's always exciting for me to get my hands on this year's wool. I wonder what colors our sheep will produce this year? I know my mom's looking for a certain hue.

As you can see, I like to apply my own colors to our fiber. This roving has already been spun into a fingering weight single ply, intended to be knit into socks for my sister.

Looking ahead, we should be greeting our first lambs sometime in the beginning of March. Keep posted for pictures and stories.

hey baby

This particular sweater has been crumpled up in the bottom of my knitting bag for several months. It's amazing what a handful of red buttons and a nice sudsy soak in warm water can do for a tangle of knitted wool.

Its recipient is the very vocal four-month-old of a graduate school buddy, which a friend and I had the pleasure of babysitting a few times last week. (Let's just say it's amazing what a warm bottle and a large belch can do for the mindset of a tired infant.)

A few blissful hours of sleep for the baby, sanity for the anxious adults.

The pattern is probably familiar to more than a few of you. Elizabeth Zimmerman's February Baby Sweater. This isn't the first or the last one that I'll be knitting. I absolutely love this pattern.

barn notes : meet donkey

Happy New Year everyone!

I'm spending the weekend with my parents, and while I've been sitting near the window spinning (what seems like) miles and miles of yarn, my mother has been calculating the due dates for her tiny flock of sheep which she bred in mid October.

By her calculations, we should have lambs frolicking in the barn by mid March.

This is a busy time on the farm. A time for preparing lambing jugs (i.e. a tiny wooden pen filled with fresh straw where the mama ewe and her new lamb can bond away from the flock), scheduling our sheep's yearly shearing, and preparing ourselves mentally for the long nights ahead.

For the record, it's my mother who has to prepare herself mentally for the long nights ahead. I will be starting school again soon.

Not only do we have sheep expecting lambs, our angora goats are expecting their kids in April. And, sometime after that, no one knows exactly when, because we bought her bred, our donkey - the newest member to our barn yard - will also be giving birth. That's her picture above. My dad named her Betty. My grandma Lolly added Lou to her name. So we have a new Betty Lou.

Our grand plans placed Betty Lou as a guard donkey in our barn yard. But so far, Betty Lou is afraid of the sheep and the sheep are afraid of Betty Lou. If Betty Lou is in the barn, you can bet the sheep are out in the yard. They switch back and forth several times a day.

We're hoping they have things sorted out come spring.

Perhaps a baby donkey will serve as a peace offering between the two parties. By the way, I don't even know the correct term for a baby donkey. Guess I'd better figure that out.

For now the major question is: when is Betty Lou due?

puzzled

The holiday fun got pretty intense yesterday morning (that would have been Christmas) when we (me, my cousin, and my sister-in-law) sat down to put together a half-finished puzzle.

• 9:00 a.m. Things were still friendly. Chatting ensued as we sipped coffee with eggnog.
• 9:03 a.m. The subject of the puzzle: a dog in front of a Christmas tree. Several key pieces were discovered in short order and put in their place.
  
• 9:07 a.m. I poured myself another cup of coffee. (Ash and Traci put in several pieces behind my back.)
• 9:08 a.m. Half the puzzle is now complete. Suspect that people are hoarding pieces to put in last.
• 9:10 a.m. The Christmas tree is more challenging than we all thought, it is decorated with infuriating ornaments in the shape of dog bones.
  
• 9:15 a.m. Still trying to put together the tree.
• 9:21 a.m. 7 pieces left. Trying to act like a lady, but really want to "win" the puzzle.
• 9:21 a.m. Ponder when puzzles became a competitive event.
  
• 9:22 a.m. Suddenly all the pieces are getting shoved into place. Three openings left.
• 9:22 a.m. But only two puzzle pieces left. Three openings. Two pieces...
• 9:23 a.m. One piece missing. A mad scramble ensues as all of us dive to the floor to search for the missing piece. Nowhere to be found.
  
• 9:24 a.m. Traci finds the missing piece sitting on the puzzle edge "blending into its surroundings." Puts it in place.

If you're snowed in (like we are) consider competitive puzzles as a way to end the monotony. Setting up the edges can be a bit frustrating, but the excitement only builds after that.

Featured with the puzzle pieces above is some of my own hand-spun. The leftovers from the stocking in my last post. Made from pot-dyed CVM romeldale top.

make merry

The thing about the holidays : spending time with family, good food, wine, friendly arguments over past tiffs with siblings.

Posing for pictures after too much wine, presents that don't fit, presents that do fit (but you wished hadn't), sugar-crazed, greedy kids getting tangled up in the Christmas tree.

Gift cards to cheesy stores, games of pictionary, trivial pursuit and twister --all of these things are heightened when a winter snow storm looms on the horizon.

You had better make sure you have enough eggnog and wine and Christmas bread, especially when there is the very real possibility that all of your family (extended and immediate) could get snowed in with you for the holiday.

You'd better make sure the animals are tucked in for the night down at the barn: fresh hay, straw and water (with some apples saved from autumn tucked in their feeders as an early morning surprise.)

And so, in a time of big snow, I'd like to preview the ginormous stocking I made for this season. The pattern comes from Melanie Falick's Handknit Holidays; Sandy Cushman's "Funky Stockings." (May it not be filled with coal after everyone reads this post.)

I'm hoping someone takes the initiative to stuff it full of yarn and good books.

Make merry everyone! I'm happy to be back for the holidays.

barn notes : it's a love shack

Barn Notes have fallen to the wayside these past two months, so I thought I'd take the time this morning to describe some of the recent events on our farm.

My mom put the rams in with the ewes about three weeks ago, which means none of us can go in with them. Our two rams, Hopps and Dutch, are extremely territorial.

Breeding season means our rams are fitted with a harness that holds a block of colored wax, this tells us which ram has bred which ewe and when. My dad was out fixing a fence over the weekend. He didn't watch his back and our chocolate-colored ram, Dutch, caught him off guard. A nice way of describing this is that my dad ended up covered in red wax. Dutch hadn't mistaken him for a ewe, rather he wanted my father out of his territory.

We all chuckled about this, because my dad wasn't injured, but it reminded me that not everything about sheep is fluffy and soft.

These are real animals and sometimes we have to take caution. A ram has the potential to cause injury, so I always try to be mindful about which fence I'm jumping over and what season it is.

Breeding season is not a good time to wander into the wrong paddock.


These mittens come from a batch of yarn that I got from Sandy of Winterwind Farm. As many of you know, Sandy also raises CVM romeldale sheep. Her yarn is wonderful. My design for these mittens was an attempt to understand how cables can weave together across the top of a mitten.

I especially like the cuffs. I bet you all will recognize the cable pattern. It seems to be a favorite of mine as of late.