I couldn’t resist finally posting a Temptress Yarn update to Handmade. I just added three skeins (two were previously only over at etsy, but are now in both places). I’m especially happy with this corespun yarn from wool, sparkle, recycled denim cotton, flax, ingeo and bits of two synthetic novelty yarns. It’s on a cotton/linen core, and named “When It Sizzles”. Here’s a pic before I took it off the bobbin to set the twist and skein up. Enjoy the update…lots of yarn available right now in the pre-summer lull!

A visit to one of my favorite events in NYC, the Union Square Greenmarket yesterday yielded some gorgeous reds and leafy greens in the form of these photos that I couldn’t resist taking. There’s nothing like fresh, locally grown produce and other goodies, is there? Too bad we had hands full with the two kids, had taken the train and really had no way to carry much home (though we do get our CSA share of produce from Golden Earthworm this Tuesday and we have fresh lettuce, arrugula, peas and a few other things in our own garden, so we really don’t need much until I see what we get).

We had a few fresh baked things and we managed to procure about a pound of tiny roasting potatoes (the size of your big toe and smaller, yum), Craig and little A bought some of those cherries you’ll see below, and I couldn’t resist locally grown shiitake mushrooms to cook up with our home grown snow peas though they barely survived being squished in the diaper bag all day. And something fibery to add–I ‘ordered’ a gorgeous border leicester fleece from one of the sheep farmers that was there…couldn’t resist it was so soft and beautiful brownish black.

Anyhow, enjoy the produce and the alluring alliteration:

Super strawberries sitting scrumptiously.

Cheery cherries!

Lazily languishing lettuces.

Ravishing, round rosy red radishes.

Perfectly purply and pinkish peonies

Pecks of perfectly piled petit pois

Craig’s truck made some nasty noises last week on his trip back from working at Brian’shouse, and it was labeled ‘condemned’ when he dropped it at the shop–too many things wrong and rusting to drop more money into. Digging through for the title, I found the original window sticker. The old F150 cost us $14,000 and lasted 14 years for us, and I am sure we got our money’s worth from her.

We donated her to The Mothers Center today. The guy came to get the title this morning, and a salvage place picked it up later in the day, complete with the perfect background music blasting out the flatbed tow truck windows: Willie Nelson, singing “You were always on my mind”:

“Maybe I didn’t love you
Quite as often as I could have
Maybe I didn’t treat you
Quite as good as I should have…”

It was a melancholy but bearable goodbye until little A, standing on her chair at the front door began yelling/crying “I don’t want Daddy’s truck to go away like this.” Then we all got weepy. Craig caught the sad goodbye on video to share with the world:

It’s the end of an era for us, the last piece of equipment that belonged to our long-dissolved landscape company. Old truck, I could hear you coming down the road, transmission whining, from a mile away. In recent days, you often smelled of spilled coffee, fish and bait. In your heyday you hauled tons of stone and mulch and compost, plants and tools to many a landscape job. You transported half of our belongings from upstate NY to Long Island over several (usually rainy) trips. You picked up many a tag sale treasure and curbside trash for our collections. You were scratched, your upholstery was ripping, your radio tuner was broken and had to be tuned with a golf tee that stuck out of the dashboard. Your second gas tank couldn’t be filled any more because it leaked. But you were our first purchase of something major, “new”, together, way back then. Little did we know that just two weeks ago, when you hauled that load of debris to the dump on Shelter Island that it would be your last. Now we say good bye as you ride off to be recycled, going to some salvage yard to sit and be pulled apart into useful remnants to keep other old trucks running for years to come.

Saying goodbye was bittersweet. Rest in pieces, old friend.

A rant on how artificiallly colored mulch is now yet another symptom of a failing, sick society. Two recent mulch ‘incidents’:

1. Craig went to Home Depot to buy some bags of soil amendments and mulch. After much searching, he discovers that the only bagged mulch they sell is all DYED. Choices being Ronald McDonald Red and Black. They no longer offer natural brown or natural reddish-brown cedar mulch.

2. A friend who is an organically minded, natural living enthusiast purchased 3 yards of mulch, bulk, delivered to her house this week. Her goal was to mulch her gardens without the waste produced by all those bags. She consulted with me a few times–here’s a loose interpretation of one of our conversations:
S: They said it’s triple ground
me: that’s good, that means it won’t have a lot of stringy bits in it.
S: They’re delivering it today
me:fast service–good, what kind of mulch is it?
S: I don’t know, they said it’s black
me: natural black or is it dyed?
S: OH NO! (click, hangs up phone)
S: (calling back 3 minutes later) It’s dyed black aargh!
Of course, the mulch company had already charged her credit card, loaded the truck and were on their way to her house, so she spread it around, probably grumbling quietly to herself the whole time.

My point in this post is this: What the heck is wrong with society that we need to add color to mulch? What is the source of the pigment? Is it water based or will it leach out and eventually poison the groundwater some more and kill all the plants around it with yet more petro chemicals? Are we so vain that we need ‘designer’ mulches to match our designer lifestyles? What is so wrong with the plants being the important element in our gardens? Mulch is meant for weed suppression and moisture conservation. It is not ‘makeup’ designed to dress up lost cause landscaping. If your yard looks that bad, I promise you that orange mulch isn’t the answer to your problems, really.

IMNSHO, this is yet another symptom of a society that is really, really ill. I realize that nobody’s perfect. We all have things that we do/buy/wear/eat that are maybe not the best for us and the earth in different ways. Some of this stuff is just part of living in this society, some is unavoidable, some of it can be chalked up to the choices we make as individuals for whatever reasons. For example, I understand if you want to wear purple. It happens to be my favorite color. It takes dyes to make clothing in colors, and without some color, life would be boring. There is a long standing tradition of dyeing cloth. Food coloring is another example. My family chooses not to ingest this poison, but I realize that it is an old product that people find difficult to eliminate, or are so used to thinking is benign that they don’t realize it’s a petroleum product (yeah, really–makes you think twice, doesn’t it?). What I don’t get is why NEW products that are perfect the way they come (from nature) are adding to the list of pollutants and chemicals in a day when the effects of this stuff is so brutally obvious…terrible allergies and asthma, rampant cancer rates, global warming, trash piling up all over the planet. Honestly folks, why can’t we just put natural stuff in and on our yards? If you need something exciting, plant something that actually BLOOMS in your garden, instead of that buttload of ugly evergreen shrubs sheared into pompoms and gumdrops and cubes. And keep your nasty chemical dyes the hell out of the mulch. It really burns my britches, my eyes, and the earth. Can you just give nature a chance this one time? I beg you.

We took off last weekend for a much needed recharge/getaway. Drove off on Saturday morning early (well, around 8:30 which is early for us!) and headed to Vernon CT for the CT Sheep Breeders Association’s ‘Sheep, Wool and Fiber Festival’. It was a nice, smallish fiber fair–just perfect for a few hours of fun. There were plenty of animals…sheep being sheared, a sheep dog (Border Collies) demonstration, a few Alpacas, and some Angora Rabbits. Oh the bunnies…thank goodness we didn’t come home with another one this time around. Me to Craig “…yes that one is cute, now put him down and step away from the rabbits, dear.” You’d think the 4yo girl would be the bunny collector, but no siree, it’s her Dad who is the one I have to keep an eye on when shopping the fiber fairs! Whew, narrow escape…. Of course, he attended an hour long demo on German Angoras and learned a lot. I think eventually that’s the breed we’ll end up with. The woman who did the demo has 30 of them, she shears them 4x a year and gets around a POUND of fiber off them each time, Wow!!! That’s a lot of bunny hair (with the going rate being about $5 an ounce!)

The fair also had a nice assortment of vendors, mostly with naturally colored fleeces and rovings, some lovely handmade fibery things, sheep and goat milk soaps, fibery tools (though no lendrum wheels or ashford country spinners there for me to try out, waaaaaah!), sheep cheese and yogurt, a cool sheep to shawl contest and more. I only ended up buying about 3 pounds of fiber…not shabby but not ridiculous overkill. I got some lovely prepared roving to spin, a pound of short fibered ‘felting’ roving, and an alpaca fleece that was going for ridiculously cheap prices at the end of the fair. Hopefully it’s in as good shape as I think it is. Anyhow it’ll keep me busy (as if I didn’t have enough fiber to last my lifetime already, heh). Overall the fair was just right. Full but not overcrowded and a little fix to keep me going until Rhinebeck this Fall!!

We spent the night in a nice hotel and on Sunday we drove to West Hartford and shopped at the Whole Foods for some things I needed and some lunch stuff for a picnic, then headed to the Children’s Museum there so little A could have some fun that was all her speed. It was a great museum with just enough to keep her interested for a few hours–more animals, lots of space info, a bubble machine and tons of hands-on kid science–Very nice! Then we drove around a state park trying to find an entrance. We could see the picnic area but all the gates were closed and there was no way in but to park on the road and hike in quite a distance, which wasn’t going to work with our hungry bellies and two kids to schlep and not even a backpack in the car. We gave up and finally ended up eating lunch at an empty baseball field on the bleachers, well after the sun went in and the temperature dropped quickly…ya win some, ya lose some, right?

Regardless, it was a relaxing weekend that we needed…fresh air, sunshine, a relaxing drive in the country. Just right. Now back to your regular (busy) schedule.

I have to post this as it’s the cause of much inspiration for me. I often head over to the60-Odd gallery for inspiration and a deep breath of beauty. For 2007, the International Freeform Artists have been up to it again, this time unveiling two web-based crochet shows that every aspiring fiber artist should check out:

Tree of Life, Tree of Peace
and
Earth Air Fire Water (love this exhibit!)

Off to Shelter Island for a hopefully warm weekend for painting, cleaning and yard work to get the house ready to rent…have a great Spring weekend everyone!

Sorry to bore everyone with the non-fibery posts all the time, but I have finally got some finished objects to post and here’s the first, hooray! Of course, my photos suck and I didn’t realize it until after I gave it away. This scarf was knit in celebration of a young friend making her passage into womanhood. I wanted to commemorate the event with something special for a special young woman, hence it’s in her favorite colors purple and green, with some complimentary colors and just a hint of red thrown in to mark this extra special time in her life. I hope she enjoys it as much as I enjoyed making it!

The chunky yarn is my own handspun singles, spun bulky from a batt I carded including merino, silk, silk noil and sparkle. I knit it with alternating chunks of a thinner commercial mostly mohair blend. (Can’t find the label but I’ll post it when I do locate it.) I knit the handspun before setting the twist, in lopsided rows totaling 5 yarn overs in each double row, which makes for a real loose open look that I think shows off the handspun nicely (if that doesn’t make sense, feel free to ask for details, not sure I can explain without writing a pattern, which I have absolutely NO idea how to do!!). I had a lot of fun with this project. The fringe is uneven and wild on purpose for an extra fun touch. Here’s another lousy pic of the scarf on our fence–really gotta get a dress form or mannequin.

More eye candy coming soon…check in someday to see what I’m up to, please.

I’m reading the most amazing book, borrowed from good friend-mentor-mama-midwifeSusan–her SIGNED copy (what faith she must have in me to allow me to borrow it, yes??). Joan Dye Gussow’s “This Organic Life, Confessions of a Suburban Homesteader”. This passage put a smile on my face and a tear in my eye:

“A week after Halloween this year, I went out and picked raspberries to put on morning cereal, an act that seems nothing short of erotic in November. I have remarked to friends more than once over the years that I am often trapped between personal happiness and existential grief. I mourn for the rapid decline of the natural world–to which I am deeply bound. At the same time, I experience irrepressible joy in tending to and eating from that part of the natural world to which I have bound myself.”

After reading this book (not finished yet), I vow that we will do our best to fill the veggie garden beds this year. We have neglected our front yard (to the disgust of the neighbors, I’m sure). We’ve slowly worked on shrub and perennial borders on the East edge of our 50×184 foot plot in the back, with some success. But our vegetable garden was painstakingly designed, laid out carefully and built from the very beginning of owning this house. It is a fantastic part of the yard that can only be improved upon by fully utilizing the space therein–something we have failde to do in recent years. Two years ago, good friends Dan and Cindy sent us a packet of Soybeans (edamame) which I still have sitting here. I failed to plant them, thinking that I couldn’t devote enough room in my suburban plot to the crop to make it worth planting, especially in beds that I already had plans for. We then proceeded to leave nearly half of our raised beds fallow for that season, a fact that made me feel guilty on so many levels.

So spring of 2007 is coming. We proceed with garden plans, purchase seeds, decide what plants to buy from the local garden center, what to start from scratch, and order blueberry plants to fill in our last edge space in the ‘produce’ area. In the 2006 fall/winter that was unseasonably warm (one that most of us believe was caused by the climate change that allows raspberries to be eaten in NY in November), Craig made excellent progress preparing all the beds with fresh compost that will be ready to turn in when the time comes, so we are ahead of the game. It will be my job to get things planted, as he promised to help weed and harvest this year. With our desire for locally grown, organic food, and newfound knowledge and interest, we push ahead.

Wish us luck. Now go buy some seeds, join a CSA (www.localharvest.org), go to your farmer’s market, and support LOCAL food. It’s critical to the sustenance of the earth.

On a recent busy day (aren’t they all busy days?), my tasks at hand made me chuckle to myself while repeating this classic line from the 80’s in my head over and over (if you’re too young to recognize it, you’re on your own).

Task #1: In the bathroom sink I had two wool diaper covers soaking to lanolize. That’s the process where you dissolve a bit of lanolin into hot water and soak the wool covers, making them extremely water resistant. You can watch a great video clip about lanolizing diaper covers here if you’re interested.

Task #2: In the kitchen I was working on a Navajo-Churro fleece that I recently purchased from Flint Run Farm in OH. Part of the fleece was soaking in detergent, trying to remove the lanolin and dirt from it. If you’re interested in a great tutorial on this process, check HJS Studio out.

As you can imagine (if you’re into both washing raw wool and cloth diapering, which probably eliminates most people I know, heh heh), I couldn’t help thinking that I should be able to integrate this process somehow, so I could do both things at once. Wash the fleece, then soak the diaper covers in the resulting greasy, lanolin-filled water. Of course, the result of that process would probably mean that my little baby’s bum would smell like a wet, dirty sheep, so I think I’ll pass this time around. Really, the title of this should be “grease on….grease off”, shouldn’t it?

As you can see in the photo above, the fleece that I finished washing turned out beautifully. It was shorn from a sheep named Faith, and it’s really gorgeous, virtually free of vegetation and much softer than I had envisioned for the breed. This is my first time working with a Navajo-Churro fleece, I bought it sight unseen (somewhat of a risky proposition) and I’m thrilled with how the cleaned/dyed fiber is looking and feeling. In the pic is shown about a pound: half of it I left white and the rest is dyed in rose and purply tones. Just gorgeous–I can’t wait to card it and spin it up!

I lovelovelove this song and can’t get it outta my head lately, especially this part:

“…blessed are the ones who make peace,
blessed are the ones who scrape by.
Blessed are those living holy lives,
And here’s to the rest of us who try.”

from “Jesus Shaves” by Paranoid Larry and his imaginary band. You should be able to listen to it here.

OK, can anybody explain to me how adding one member to the family (from 3 of us to 4) makes the amount of laundry that needs to be done multiply by about 3? I am now doing at least one load of laundry per day, some days 2-3 loads. And yes, I am doing cloth diapers for the babe (mostly), but even before I finally got my arse in gear and got that going, the amount of laundry was just insane.

And I don’t even do Craig’s laundry–he does his own (thanks honey, I love that you do your own laundry, btw).
This is just crazy. Talk amongst yourselves and somebody please get back to me with an answer to this crazy cosmic question, OK?

Sorry to all who wrote comments lately. My email notices stopped coming to the right place, so I had a pile up of spam and some great comments just sitting around waiting to be approved and/or deleted. They’re all posted now, thanks for the blogging love everybody!

Owen Alexander was born on Monday December 4, 2006 at 3:47am
11 pounds, 5 ounces, 23 inches tall
Here he is at about 12 days:

My long and arduous birth story will follow when I have time to write it all out.
Thanks to all of our friends and family for your love, friendship, support, visits, gifts, meals, phone calls and messages of joy for us during this exciting time! 
Love, Carrie, Craig, Audrey and Owen

OK…countdown begins. I’m officially at 37 weeks as of today, and my midwife assures me that I am ‘allowed’ to have this baby any time now with a minimum of medical intervention, provided that he gets (and keeps) his little head down in the right position, and no weird stuff develops to throw us off the path.

I grant that we are officially not ready for this baby to arrive. One big thing is that he has NO NAME yet. It was so easy to pick a girl name and this boy name stuff is just so hard, aargh. We want to be a bit non-traditional and nothing seems to fit. I am hoping it will just fall into place. Meanwhile, Craig’s choice of ‘Zeus’ just isn’t going to fly with me–sorry dear. Aside from the name trouble, mentally, I think I’m ready for this to happen. The house, however, is NOT ready for our new addition. I bought a handful of onesies and some warm clothes for him today, but have much to work on. Granted, if he arrives, it’ll be tough luck and we’ll survive–babies have been brought into this world in far worse conditions than disorganized homes with parents who have too much on their plates daily, but I’d like to get a few last minute things ready, just the same.

Still some last minute things to tie up that I’d like to finish–maybe it’ll help me if I post them here:
–making doubly sure I have backup with friends so A can be out of here if need be while I labor at home
–getting the upstairs uncluttered and bed ready so my Sister can stay here and take care of A until we come home with her new baby brother.
–getting extra clean blankets and pillows ready, keeping the living room and bedroom clean, etc. so I can labor at home in relative comfort for us and for our Midwife and Doula (until we transfer to the hospital at the last possible minute).
–setting the crib up in our room, which involves getting junk out of A’s closet so we can move a dresser out of our room/in there for the baby, and then have room for the crib in our room. I really wanted a new co-sleeper, but it just doesn’t fit with the shape and size of our room and/or bed height at all, so that’s out.
–pulling out the newborn stuff from A, to see if any of her stuff is gender neutral and go through my stash of cloth diapers to see if I need to supplement them much. I think we’ll have enough to get by for a few weeks. Washing the old and new clothes and diapers and getting them into that dresser…
–writing our birth plan, visual imagery for relaxation and anything else that we need to finish up…gotta do this tonight!
–packing my bag for hospital…also a gotta that I can’t leave undone!

On the other hand…I’d throw much of that ‘readiness’ out the window to make sure we don’t go too far post dates, please! Sooooo with that in mind, send positive vibes along for a successful (and fast, if you can throw that in there) VBAC birth, and most of all, for a happy and healthy baby and Momma when it’s all through.

It’s time…despite the gorgeous, warm weather today, winter is coming. Clocks have been turned back, days are shortening. The garden, which was overtaken by the late summer burst of weeds two months ago, has begun to succum to the cold. The last remaining beauties unfold, to be overcome by the browns of winter in no time. Here is a short photo essay that will have to carry my mind through the winter.

From September, in my parents garden. A dark chocolatey sunflower that I picked and put a bit of Ampelopsis (porcelainberry vine) with, for the contrast of those wacky blue berries with the unbelievable dark brown velvet of the sunflower:

Late blooming dahlias…a gorgeous pinky mauve color–hubby’s plants:

Real fall-blooming Saffron Crocus from our herb ‘circle’. I picked the stamens once to use in a dish, but it was so much work. Now I understand why saffron is so expensive!

An Anise catterpillar, eating a piece of bronze fennel. They turn into a type of swallowtail butterfly. A few weeks ago they were here, fattening up. A few days later they were gone. Such wonderful colors. I name them Luigi, as I always think of Anise/Fennel as an Italian herb, and Luigi just seems right.

One Freaking Fig–had this plant for 4 long seasons now and I got to eat this one tiny, pathetic, nearly ripe fig from it this fall. It’s finally got a decent fruit set this year, that will never ripen now–too late, too cold. So much for buying ‘hardy’ Russian fig varieties, right? I’ll give you one more season, silly fig, then we’ll decide your fate.

And I leave you with this stunning beauty, the last Chicago Peace Rose in bloom.