winter walk

We got out of the city and drove up to the farm yesterday for my mom's birthday. My mom and I went out to the woods for a long walk along the snowy trails. We took our cameras in an attempt to test them out and see what kind of photos we could get. As you can see we found a lot of scenes to snap images of.

The sheep came out of the barn and allowed me to capture their growing bellies and fleeces. Come March we'll have a flock of baby lambs and piles and piles of soft wool.

Later on that night family came over and we celebrated with a prime rib, fried fresh fish and German chocolate cake dinner. Frosted pumpkin cookies and pad thai popcorn were also on the menu. I think my favorite part of yesterday was the quiet walk in the forest with my mother.

alchemy

Guess what my Christmas present was this year? You guessed right if you said a new camera. (Thanks Mom and Jenny for the graduation money.) I can't believe how hard I was working before just to get a clear picture. My new camera, which I have a lot to learn about, takes fast, sharp pictures. I'm in love.

My mom got back some yarn she had spun from her sheep. It's an ivory sock weight yarn that I couldn't wait to get in the dye pot--though it would be beautiful in the raw too.

Ashely and I dyed it this weekend on our girls day. I ran out of regular vinegar, so I had to use a dash of apple cider vinegar to set the color. Boy oh boy was that fresh. I soaked the fiber with some mild shampoo before I spun it out to get away the odor and now it smells like "herbal essence."

It's fun to knit with, too. I think the second image of my sock-in-process shows how its starting to get a green stripe. I don't know how it will turn out (this is all an experiment, you know) but I hope the pattern continues. You can find the pattern here. I modified my sock to just twist all the way around and left out the snazzy cables up the side. I've made them that way before, but with my distracted mind I needed the easier the better.

We've been making some pretty fun winter salads around here with mandarin oranges and purple radicchio. Hope you're finding some holiday cheer and spending time with loved ones.

sharing

The boy is away, so the girls will play. This weekend my husband went to play poker so my cousin Ashley came over and we settled in for a long weekend of knitting and movies with a nice bottle of wine to share. You just can't beat a Christmas tree with twinkle lights to keep you cheerful on an icy and dreary weekend.

I finished up one of the felted clutches that I've been working on from scrap yarn. The images above show before and after shots of this work in progress. I couldn't remember if some of the yarns that I knit with were "felt-able" but I got lucky there. It shrunk up nicely.

The socks above are knit from some of our hand-dyed CVM Romeldale yarn from Crosby Hill farm. This is a product of Ashley's imagination. You can find the pattern here. It's a fun, easy knit. I think she's calling this colorway Sugar Plums Dancing. It's in its beta phase, so it will be a little while before we get some product in our shop.  Maybe we'll find some time to work over the holidays.

odds and ends

It's been a brilliant weekend. We stayed home. We caught up on sleep, did a little cleaning, watched a few movies and I spent a lot of time in my cozy little room under the eaves and watched the snow falling out the window.

I'm working on some Christmas presents. A couple of felted clutches using the odds and ends of yarn I've collected over the past eight years. I didn't know I had so many colors stashed in the corners of my closet.

It's going to look something like this when I'm finished.

I made this over four years ago and I love it. Besides my favorite knit cap, it's probably my most used knitted object.

I pulled on my dusty snow boots and stepped outside early this evening to snap some shots of the snow. This is the first significant snow we've had in Minnesota in over a year. It's really putting me in the holiday spirit.

We got our tree up last weekend. I love to see the lights twinkling through the window.

what's for dinner

Leg of lamb with potatoes, carrots and herbs from the garden. The perfect meal for a cold fall day. This comes from my parent's farm, of course. We are quite spoiled at our house when it comes to lamb chops, steak and farm-raised meat.

Here's some fiber that's slotted next on the spinning wheel. We call this colorway Frost on the Window and I'm going to try to spin it soft and fluffy, so that I can use it on a baby hat and baby booties.

my winter den

I finally took on the upstairs bedroom last week. Organized, dusted, vacuumed and rearranged the furniture to turn it into my own creative winter den. I found this framed bulletin board out in the garage, carried it inside and started to pin up my collection of magazine clippings and other images that give me inspiration.

Some of these images are pretty old. Post cards from museums I visited in Europe a decade ago.  Bits and pieces that were pinned up before in old apartments, taken down, stored and now re-emerge reminding of ideas I had in the past and new ideas I have for the future.

I've been knitting. Here's a baby cap made from Jitterbug sock yarn. I've had this yarn for years. I intended to make a pair of socks, but was holding off until I could get another skein of the same colorway . . . that never happened, so I guess I'll get a few baby hats out of it.

A boy or a girl could easily wear this.

Here's another project long in the making: my Barn Raising blanket. I'm making my 4 x 4 squares. I think this will be the perfect size to wrap up a baby. And it's washable, made from extra sock yarn.

I've also dug out my watercolors to use in my new work space. There's just so many ideas that I want to illustrate and share. Watercolor is a very happy medium for me.

And finally we've uploaded some more dyed to our Crosby Hill Farm shop. This colorway is called Turkey Feathers.

I'm spinning this for myself.

early morning spinning

I woke up early this morning (even though I had the chance to sleep in) and plied together this yarn.  This colorway is called Barn Raising at Crosby Hill Farm. Now it's on to other weekend projects.