are we all merry-ed out?

Hope you all had a merry time! Our Christmas tree is deflating as I write. Yes, there are inflatable Christmas trees! We just couldn't gather the enthusiasm to unpack our great collection of ornaments and decorate the real thing. But I don't think we fell down on the present-making department.

My plan is always to do as much merry making as possible---for holiday gifts. What we can't bake or make, we shop for online away from the retail mob scene.

Though Christmas is over officially I'm still gift-making.
My favorite gift to make this year was/is a slipper pattern to knit and then felt from FrenchPressKnits. It's a quick knit, lots of sewing and more fun in the washing machine. And look how cute they look with buttonshow buttons! Soon yours (those of you who traced your feet know who you are) will arrive by post or personal delivery! I know, the surprise is blown for the most part---all but the color and the buttons...

I started a pair of socks the day before Christmas, never thinking I would finishthem in time to be wrapped and under the inflatable tree. One sock might be finished for New Years Day, but don't hold your breath, dear. Their destiny may be as the first-day-of-the-Spring-semester Socks. (For those of you not on the semester system, that would be sometime towards the end of January 2010!)

That wraps up my gift making ambitions for Christmas 2009! Is it better late than never? I think so.

post big snow

OK! As the official photographer of snow in our household I have these shots of the blizzard dump. I perhaps spent too much time in photoshop trying to figure out how to fill the empty spot, but the official photoshop user is busy shoveling my car out of the driveway.



Don't know what the news is saying but it looks like we got 20 inches or so easily. I like the big drifts coming off front gable---

big snow

I took before pictures of the pre-blizzard conditions here on Long Island at the 2:45 dog walk this afternoon. Things weren't looking bad at all, though the neighbors inflatable snowman was wavering in the wind.

But the 9:50pm dog walk was much different. Shivering dog under one arm and shovel under the other to create a pee path through the 10 inches of snow! That was fun.

We'll see what the conditions are tomorrow morning for the post blizzard pictures!

Is that better Sarah?

it needs pink bark, right?

All through with the oven drama, for the time being, but keep in mind that Christmas is just a few short weeks away and anything is likely with my tempermental appliances!



So this little 3-legged stool is now the object of my attention. Until a couple of days ago I was going to toss it. I changed my mind about it's potential and here it is being admired by my camera. I love how you can tell it was made by someone's hand, however crudely, to serve a purpose. A milking stool? To put a plant on or one foot. I'll never know what place it held in someone's house or barn or...





It has character. It's paint job has acquired that desirable crackly patina. And probably the maker of this stool would never have imagined it needed a pink bark slip cover, not in a million years. That's where I come in. I know it needs a pink bark slipcover.

The fabric that inspired pink bark, the Joel Dewberry wood grain fabric at the lower left hand corner of the first shot, is taking it's turn in the dryer after being pre-shrunk. It'll make a nice inner lining, though I'm not just sure how I will construct the slipcover yet, it might be visible. Or it might just have to be a secret thing that few will be aware of, like the intimate details of the little 3 legged stool once it too is obscured by shirred pink cotton.



It's now underway and it's definitely going to be a colorful addition to the natural palette of the other bark textile pieces in my etsy store, Sewfaux.

Ha, Ha stupid oven! Or how I managed to make Thanksgiving dinner this year

I hope you have all had a delightful Thanksgiving day!

Eventually we did too...though the potential for not having a pleasant and tasty meal was hanging in the balance for the last 36 hours.

I hesitate to chronicle Thankgiving 2009 at our house, 'cause I've read many a blog with appliance rants, but I might as well go ahead.

We moved into this house 16 years ago and worked hard to finish remodeling the kitchen so we could invite friends from upstate NY to join us for our first Thanksgiving back on the East Coast. The new GE range arrived in November. I planned a sort of southwest menu, did the grocery shopping, cleaned and organized our small house. Masses of turkey enchiladas were readied, as our upstate guests were making their way across the bridges from the Bronx.

Our guests arrived with their dishes, fortunately, because the enchiladas never cooked in the erratic GE oven. (Did I mention it was a GE?) We celebrated with the dishes that didn't need the oven. A memorable, though embarrassing holiday. This was the start of the era of unreliable oven karma.

Fast forward to 2003. I'm working part-time at Williams Sonoma surrounded by upscale cookware which causes me to dream of a professional stove with a grand price tag. Days before Thanksgiving, the GE range, the replacement for the earlier unwilling GE model, dies. There's not enough time to purchase a range (in or out of our price range) and get it before Thanksgiving. Chalk up another turkey day meal thwarted by GE.

I decide or am dazzled by a Kitchenaid Superba model, which once installed looked more like the front end of a Ford Explorer---huge, black enamel and stainless steel. The imposing Ford Explorer impersonator Kitchenaid range has not functioned in a dazzling manner and has required regular visits from the appliance repair guy since it's arrival. Last December unreliable oven karma, predictably sets in a few days before Christmas with no possibility of repair until after the holiday. Christmas baking was foiled as well as a traditional oven roasted Christmas dinner.

This year I took a peremptory approach to the problem and had the appliance repair guy come to replace the broiler ignition just before Halloween. But this was not enough to stop the holiday tradition of not having a working oven. Oh no!

Unaware of impending doom, I went ahead and did my planning and my shopping over the last week, confident that my Halloween trick was the solution. All systems were GO, right? Small turkey dinner for two, not a problem, until Tuesday evening.

It goes like this, you turn the oven on, it reaches temperature, you put the fish in, you turn on the front burner of the stove and an indicator thingie buzzes? The clock goes off and an error code is displayed on the control panel. No amount of touching or pounding the display panel changes the display. (Did I mention this is a Kitchenaid?) The oven has shut down and doesn't intend to come back on. I whispered to the oven in an unthanksgivingly manner "I hate you".

Googling the error code reveals it's either the control panel or the bake assembly ignition which I replaced last Christmas. The Kitchenaid helpline operator tells me the warranty is up on the control panel. Thank you very much. Wednesday morning I call the repair guy and he confirms its an expensive control panel issue. I've had it with this range, it is dead to me. But my plans for Thanksgiving aren't.

Plan B. What a surprise! There are no roaster ovens available on the shelves of local retailers on Thanksgiving eve. OK, OK let's not panic. This stinkin' appliance (did I mention it's a Kitchenaid Superba?) is not going to ruin the $30, 12 pound, butterflied Bell & Evans turkey in my refrigerator.

Ah ha! Plan C. It can all be braised in some assembly of my Le Creuset cookware on top of the stove! I made my adjustments to the ingredients and proceeded to make a Thanksgiving dinner. Though we had to eliminate a few (most) of the usual side dishes and baked items, the braised turkey breast was delicious! Ha, ha stupid oven!



We will be shopping for a replacement in the next few days. Hopefully there's a model of some kind out there that can overcome unreliable oven karma. I have no idea what oven I mistreated to deserve this, but what are the chances.....

Come support a birdy cause!

Next Saturday, if you live on the East End of LI, there will be a Holiday Bazaar in Greenport at the Audobon Society's Red House Nature Center to raise funds to improve the facilities. I'm going to be there with a little table of my hand-embroidered silk sachets, and lavender kits to make your own beauteous holiday gifts. Last time ever for my lavender!

Support a worthy cause---

2nd Annual Holiday Bazaar
Location: Red House Nature Center at Inlet Pond County Park, Rt 48, Greenport, NY
Saturday, November 14, 2009, 10:00am

yarning oversaturation

Yesterday I drove 3 hours to Hartford CT to see what the knitting show, Stitches, was all about. Like the last yarn-filled weekend in Rhinebeck wasn't enough. Just had to find out for myself.

I set out from my house early Saturday morning where the leaves on my trees looked like this.
Every year I'm amazed at how they fill my windows with yellow leaf glow and I take pictures of it.

Connecticut's leaves are still glowing too. I'm happy to be driving through the Fall landscape passing towns with names like Beacon Falls and
Plainville...as I try to describe by name the colors that whisk by.

Around 11 I arrive in the parking garage at the Hartford Convention Center. I'm armed with copies of sweater patterns that I think I might need to knit.

It's a convention center like many, you could be anywhere, and the booths are set up like any tradeshow. After the first aisle although I like what I see in the String Theory booth by the end of that aisle I've forgotten all about their lovely yarns, because there's lots of yarn and lots of people. In the third aisle I think maybe I better get a shot of something. So I hold my camera up over my head and click the button to shoot the busy aisle.



By the time I get to the end of Aisle 300 there's an announcement over the PA system about ....some unauthorized photography. What? I take it personally, close my camera and shove it back into my purse. Though I'm a visual person I've apparently missed the big signage at the entry warning the attendees that there's to be no unauthorized photography, because apparently there's something classified going on here.

I've now lost track of what I'm doing here and temporarily lost the will to buy yarn too. I'm also wondering if I can go home before seeing every booth, but I'm also not ready to sit in the car for another 3 hours. It's beginning to look to me like every yarn store within 70 miles has decided to sign up for a booth and brought all their stock with them.

I spot the Tutto Isager booth ---these people know how to display yarn and knitted samples and the urge to buy something wooley comes back to me. I do that, but apparently I wasn't at the right end of the line (what line?) to make my purchase. At least they didn't announce that on the PA system.

One kind lady manning a large booth from another state, a patient state, took the time to show me all the needle felting options. Handles that secure multiple dangerous needles for poking wool---maybe this is what I'm not supposed to take pictures of. Anyway, I buy the one she says she likes the best, the cheapest one.

The Habu booth is filled with baskets of little skeins of intriguing fibers. I buy pineapple twine, it looks like, in two colors and plan to bring it home to add to my collection of unused skeins of wonderous Habu fibers. Oh yes and there was that skein of Possum Lace I bought from the discontinued yarn booth because... I don't know why. Was that a good thing to do for the possum community or not?

In one vendor's booth I was encouraged to knit with triangular knitting needles, but preferred his flat needles. Though he is good at making weird shaped knitting needles in his workshop, his wife has suggested he learn to knit. Good idea.

I'm real tired and I don't remember what aisle I'm shopping in or not shopping in. It's a blur of yarn store cubbies. I've yet to pull out my sweater pattern reference. After all, my current sweater knitting isn't going all that well. I've started 2 different sweaters and a scarf all from the blue yarn I purchased to make one sweater. Sweaters involve things like fitting and knitting to gauge, things I'm not interested in. It takes a long time to do make all those parts and then you also have to be willing to wear the sweater once you've knit it. But that's not Stitches East fault, they probably have a class to deal with this problem, I just didn't READ their information.

I see every last booth or think I do in spite of my hunger and thirst, make one last purchase of Moving Mud glass buttons (for what? a sweater?) and head for my car. Four harrowing hours later I'm home having driven through the pouring rain to safely conclude my weekend knitting or "yarning" adventure. (In my household, "yarning" refers to any activity related to knitting or dyeing yarn or looking at yarn online or receiving it in the mail, now also including taking off for the day or part of the day to do any of the above).

Perhaps no more Stitches for me. It just made me think a yarn crawl of the yarn stores and any independent yarn artists studios within 70 miles of the Convention Center would be a more interesting thing to do. That way you get to stop in towns like Plainville or Beacon Falls, maybe, and be inspired by their leaves, have lunch at a local restaurant, meet a yarn store owner and buy yarn from their brick and mortar establishment and/or meet a creative yarn-dyer in her studio and appreciate the work that goes into that skein of hand-dyed yarn.

Or maybe I've just hit my yarning capacity for the month and I need to turn my attention to scrubbing my stove.