Knitting Update

I finished a sweater this weekend.
Honesty from the Rowan book A Yorkshire Fable.
This is destined for a lovely woman who goes to my church.
We had an auction at the end of Spring to benefit the church and the choir and she won my labor to make a sweater.
With the exception of my school-clothes-making frenzy I have been working on this steadily since the 2nd of August, according to my Ravelry notebook, and it is finally finished.
It has been officially fall for a week now and the weather is cooperating today with chilly, windy weather. Perfect sweater weather, I must say.
I guess I got this sweater finished just in time.

Lame

Sorry web folks, I lamed out on color week. I didn't have any photos of anything plum-colored in my archives and I think my camera needs to see the doctor so no new photos either.

Thanks for all the nice comments about the cookies, the recipe for the cookies is from here (with non-dairy substitutes) and I used the filling recipe from the chocolate whoopie pies that I made the other day which is 3/4 cup each of butter (I used vegan buttery sticks), marshmallow creme and powdered sugar with a tsp of vanilla.

The pumpkin cookies are also quite tasty on their own or with the glaze in the recipe.

Have a great weekend!
Jess

Chestnut Brown

The battery in my camera is dead, so here are some more from the files.
Tomorrow is Plum (I may have some trouble with this one...)

Somebody Stop Me

In an effort to use up some leftovers this afternoon, I made some pumpkin whoopie pies.
They were really tasty, but too easy to just keep popping one more...
I had to pack up the bulk of them and take them out of my mouth, I mean house.

O.K. New Rule -
No more marshmallow cream in the house.

goldenrod

Tomorrow Chestnut Brown

Burnt Sienna

In looking through my archived pictures today I found these examples of burnt sienna.
A baby orangutan and donuts.
Tomorrow is Goldenrod.

Fall Color Week

Meg at Elsie Marley is hosting a color week this week and today is brick red.

I have been working on this piece for some time, and some parts still kick my butt (pianistically speaking)
Tomorrow - Burnt Sienna (the theme is crayolas)

Pie

We're not great gardeners.
In the spring and early summer we're pretty gung-ho with the planning and the digging and the plant purchasing, but we always stall out mid-August or so.
This leaves the garden to do what it will, and this year, for the first time ever, we got a pumpkin.
It never grew very big, and it ripened a little earlier than I anticipated.
Too early to be a Jack-o-Lantern, but really too small to be one anyway.
The Elder Hug-a-Bug requested some pumpkin pie this morning so that's what we did.
It was delicious. Thanks Garden.

blink

It's not my fault

I put the blame solely on Meg from Elsie Marley.
Here I was, minding my own business, reading blogs and I came across her photo of homemade oreo cookies.
Well, what could I possibly do but make some too?
I couldn't find the recipe I had used in the past for whoopie pies, but Google never lets a girl down, and I found one I could use in a pinch.
The secret to the deliciousness of this confection is the filling, which is a blend of shortening (If I could eat dairy I would use butter, but as it is I used vegan buttery sticks) sugar, vanilla and marshmallow fluff.

Mmmm. These are deadly.
I will try to freeze some of them, otherwise I will eat them all.

I forgot

The vinyl-coated cotton in the lunch bag and accoutrements came from Treadle Yard Goods in Saint Paul, where I work.

Found

She came home with her lunch bag today! It had been left over the weekend in her locker.
A little gross to clean out the 3-day-old leftover applesauce, but what a relief to get it back.
I can still remember the smell of my thermos after I forgot to clean out the orange juice from the day before. I wonder where the Elder Hug-a-Bug gets her forgetful ways...

In response to Jessica's question, the sandwich wrap is from Sewing Green.
The lunch bag is from that book too.
What a terrific book, just let me say, I want to make about 5 more projects from it.

The snack bag was just a left-over piece of the lining for the lunch bag. It was a square and I folded it in half, wrong sides together, sewed around, turned it right side out and put on some velcro to close it.
It works great for crackers or chips or cookies.
I bet it would work well for grapes too.
The fabric for this and the sandwich wrap is vinyl-coated cotton.
This stuff is great to work with, it sews like a dream, there is minimal finishing (none if you don't mind the look of a straight edge) and it comes in fun prints.

I may bore you all soon with before and after pictures of my bathroom, we're remodeling this week and probably the next couple of weeks too.

Lost

Well, here we are on the third day of school and we can't find the Elder's lunch bag.
She brought it home on Friday (I think) but today it's missing.
So it's a good thing that I used to collect lunch boxes.
I made a reusable sandwich wrap and a reusable snack bag to reduce our lunch waste,

("it has been estimated that on average a school-age child using a disposable lunch generates 67 pounds of waste per school year. That equates to 18,760 pounds of lunch waste for just one average-size elementary school." from http://www.wastefreelunches.org/)

and those are in the lunch bag too, so today she'll have to use a baggie or two.

Here's hoping that she finds her lunch bag on the bus or in her locker today.
While she's gone I'll do a top to bottom search of the house.

I still have leftover supplies for the lunch bag and sandwich wrap, so if our searches come up empty I can still get her what she needs for school.

The Elder's response to the loss was - That's o.k., I have a lunch tag and I can buy lunch at school!
I don't think we want to go down that road, so by the end of the week she'll have a lunch bag whether it's her old one or a new one.

Anyone have any recommendations for a down-time plan for a new-to-full-time-school little lady?

First Day, part 2

Thanks for the nice comments everyone!
She had a great first day, she even made a friend.
Kind of cool this morning, time to bake some bread.

First Day of School

A Finished Project

I started this quilt in July of 2008.
I am a little shocked that it took me this long to finish, but there it is.
Treadle Yard Goods, where I work, carries supplies for fabric books from time to time and I am a total sucker for preprinted panels, so when we got a best of Beatrix Potter panel I had to get it.
Instead of a book, I decided to make a quilt.
So, 14 months later, here it is finished.
I might have to sew down the inner border, it flips up and looks kind of funny.
When I started it I thought it would be for the family, but the Elder Hug-a-Bug saw it and said "Ooh! A Peter Rabbit quilt for me?!?" so it'll be for her.
Only 3 more days until she starts full-day kindergarten.
I am excited for her, and worried, and happy, and full of anxiety.
This week might be a tough one.

Last Night

I have said it before, and I'll say it again, my neighborhood and my neighbors are the best around.
As longtime readers will remember, I am a member of a neighborhood crafting group.
We have sewn together, made soap together, soldered together, knit together, at Christmas one of the Mama's asked her carpenter husband to help us do some woodworking, and last night we welded.
Now, when I say "we" welded, it was actually a fantastically talented neighbor, Shelly, who did the actual welding. She has an amazing house that she and her partner have redesigned and filled with art that the both of them have made. In her workshop she has bins all over filled with scrap that she has collected and we were able to search through them and design a piece of sculpture.
Once we had all the pieces assembled Shelly welded them together.
My friends both made amazing pieces, I think I'll sneak over to their houses later to take some pictures.
I wish I would have thought to bring my camera last night, the welding was so fascinating to watch.
Honestly, when faced with the task of designing a piece of sculpture, I was stymied on what exactly to do.
It took me at least 30 minutes playing with the different pieces of metal to get inspired.
Finally, I found a piece of squared-off tubing that had a slight bend in it, and I asked Shelly to help attach it to a base piece. The upright is hollow and Shelly had a post that we attached to the square base so the whole piece can rotate.
Then I had an idea of hanging a small tight spiral from one side and a large open angular spiral from the other side, but it looked like an 8th-grader made it in shop and got a C.
Then Shelly pulled out a big pile of rings that she had left-over from building her own fence and I made this.
Shelly was such a wonderful guide in making our pieces.
She asked me if I would add anything to the top of the balance beam and I could see immediately that there needed to be some rings on the top to balance out the dangling ones.
I think I have to pull out the bush that is behind the sculpture in this picture, this place by the front stairs is out of the way of running children and I think I like it there.

The End of the Summer

Yesterday we made what might be our last trip to the beach before school.While we were there we saw a flock of birds doing some training missions.They were fascinating to watch.

Together Time

The Elder Hug-a-Bug was invited to go fishing with her grandparents yesterday by herself, the Younger Hug-a-Bug isn't old enough to go on a boat yet.
This left us alone for the day, so I made the logical conclusion that we must spend our together time at the Fair!