This week has been, in some ways crazy busy and in others, going at a snail’s pace.  It reminds me of a vacation and how the “going there” always seems to take sooooo long, but the “coming home” doesn’t seem half as long.  That’s sort of how I felt this week.  I thought Friday would never get here.  Now it is.  It’s the last Friday before the Daddy-Man gets home. Weee haaa

So, what did we do yesterday?  Cleaned the carpets and bathed the animals.  There is an order for it to be done to be most effective believe it or not.

First…Bear-Kat.  I figure once he does a few somersaults, back flips, and a couple scratching the eyes out moves, he’s pretty easy to handle.  He loves to be dried off, though.

Then, there’s Sarai.  She’s so docile, we get a few mews (one or two might be a tiny bit loud even) and then she just stands in tub and lets the bath take place.  A great rest after Bear-Kat and before we tackle Zippy.  She too likes the drying off part the best.

Then….Zippy.  After we dig her out from under the chair, she hisses, she meows (LOUDLY), she cries, and then we make it into the bathroom.  She tries to run away, she fights, she HATES a bath.  But finally, it’s over and the drying off starts.  Ok, so she hates that too, and will merely tolerate it.  She will not let anyone else dry her off though.  Just me.  Lucky, lucky me.

Then she gets down and throws up all over my newly cleaned carpet.  Score one for the cat!

By the time we got around to bathing the dog, everyone was too tired to take pictures.  Just imagine a very spoiled dog quite happy to take a shower inside with warm water.  Yes, the lake loving lab, can’t stand taking a bath outside even in the summer.  Put him in the tub with warm water and he’s happy happy happy.

Off The Loom

My latest scarf fresh off the loom.  Caribbean Princess.  This one follows along in the series with Verde Azul and Soledad.  All warps were painted at the same time using the same electric blue.

Hand painted (by me) cotton/rayon warp and commercially dyed rayon weft.

However you all spend your “All Hallows Eve”, I hope you will be safe and have fun.  We are headed to a Fall Festival tonight.

The kids were all gifted bowling balls recently for their Saturday league play.  All but one came with a bowling bag.  So, I have been searching for the best price online for bowling bags.  For me, nice yet affordable was the requirement.  When I stumbled across Prada Bag

It’s “regularly” priced at $2,050.00 and was on “special” at Bergdorf Goodman for $923.00.  I was blown away.  I thought 20.00 was a little too much for a bowling bag (especially if I had to buy 4 or 5 of them, ya know?)  The kids and I laughed about this for awhile and then we had a discussion……would someone who actually bought this bag really use it as a bowling bag?  Would they got to a neighbhorhood bowling alley?  What would their bowling ball look like?  Would they use said bowling ball or would they be afraid they would break a nail?  Would they instead have their butler bowl for them?  The discussion was pretty cool, pretty funny, and suddenly that $9.99 bag that I was looking at didn’t seem so bad for them.

Off The Loom

The “Shepherd Shawl”.  Using a technique taught to me this summer by Bonnie Tarses I wove the word Shepherd using the colors purple and green.  I hope the wearer likes it as much as I do

You can always tell when the weather is cooler.  Sarai burrows under the covers and sleeps all day long that way.

The lump under the cover on the left is Sarai and the cat visible on the right is Bear-Kat.  They’ve recently started sleeping on Chris’ bed during the day and he’s loving it.

In The Kitchen

This week’s recipe is rice pudding.  I recently bought an “instant” rice pudding mix for the kids to try.  They liked it.  They asked for it again.  So I found a recipe and have cooked it twice now.

Rice Pudding

• 2 1/2 cups of whole milk (I use skim and it is fine…just doesn’t thicken up quite as much)
• 1/3 cup long or short grain white rice
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1 egg
• 1/4 cup dark brown sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/3 cup raisins

In heavy sauce pan, heat milk, rice, and salt to boil over high heat.  Reduce heat and simmer for about 20 minutes or until rice is tender.  Stir often to avoid rice sticking to bottom of pan.

In separate bowl, whisk egg and brown sugar together.  Add 1/2 cup of heated rice mixture to this ONE TABLESPOON at a time to temper the egg.  Beat after each tablespoon to incorporate.

Add egg mixture back into pan to mix well.  Continue to cook on low heat for 10 minutes or until thickened.

Do not let mixture come to a boil.  Add vanilla.  Remove from heat, add cinnamon and raisins.

Makes about 3 servings.

serve hot or cold.  We’ve only tried it hot on nice cool nights.

Susie had a cute thing over on her Blog.  It’s a slogan generator.  I plugged in Woven ~N~ Spun and here are just a few that came out for me:

• With A Name Like Woven ~N~ Spun, It Has To e Good.
• 151 Countries, One Woven ~N~ Spun
• The Woven ~N~ Spun of your Life.
• If Only Everything in Life was as Reliable as Woven ~N~ Spun
• Mum’s Gone To Woven ~N~ Spun
• All You Add Is Woven ~N~ Spun

and my personal favorite

• Be Like Dad, Keep Woven ~N~ Spun.

Get your own slogan generator HERE.

On The Loom

A custom order is currently on the loom.  I love the entire weaving process from painting the threads, winding warp, threading the heddles, sleying the reed, tying on, and then the actual weave.  Let’s not even talk about the design process to begin with which, (ready Kelly???) includes math calculations.  Chris snapped a quick picture of me threading up the “Shepherd Shawl” yesterday.  More pictures when the project is off the loom.

I admit, these were not the original plan for the cloth.  Really I wanted to make a vest.  But sewing on Sunday just wasn’t in the cards for me and I messed up and just decided the best thing to do was turn my lemons into lemonade and make dish towels I needed anyway

I ended up with 5 hand towels using my own hand painted 5/2 cotton.  The pattern is just a simple 2/2 twill.  Four of them use a blue weft and the 5th uses the same weft as the warp.  I love them all and even though my original project didn’t work out, these turned out great and are in reality way more functional and needed.

You try explaining to 3 adolescent teenage boys that the Dick Butkus Award for College Football is not really the Dick Buttkissing award for college football.  Yes, there was some laughing, some kissing sounds, and a mom who simply had to leave the room to regain control of herself.

This has been a really long week.  When you don’t feel well (thankfully I think I am on the mend) and the kids are acting up, it makes for a really long week.

Today, my heart is in Ohio with my family.  My oldest niece is getting married to her high school sweetheart.  I so wanted to be there.  I remember receiving the call the day she was born and going to the hospital to see her.  I remember her pouty little face in her yellow dress when she was just a wee one.  I remember her on my wedding day, bold and proud to be handing roses to my mom and Jim’s mom as she walked down the isle before me.  I remember just last year seeing her as an amazing adult.  Meggie, I am so proud of you!  Here’s praying for a lifetime of love with Jason!

In December, the kids and I usually take a week or two off of studies to work on what I call “community projects”.  We knit, crochet, or loom knit, hats, scarves, or mittens for various people who need them.  Since school has been such a chore as we move closer to daddy coming home, I decided to move the project to the remainder of this week and next.

Josh is working on a scarf.

This is Jacob’s scarf.

Chris is working on his first knitted on circular needles hat.

The girls told me they were having a “bad hair day” and didn’t want to be on the blog.

We had to run to the store for our milk supply yesterday and found that jello has a new pumpkin spice flavor.  I picked it up along with some mini pie crusts for a quick desert last night. Kids devoured them and said they tasted pretty close to the “real thing”.

Finally showing off the recent finished spinning (and some in progress too).

If you remember from previous posts, I bought Come November from Jessie at A Piece of Vermont for my birthday in September.  It’s 4 ounces of BFL and ended up being 540 spun and plied yards.  A warp is calling it’s name.  I am sure you will see more again in the near future.

I also bought Fall from Jessie earlier this month.  Honestly, I think she needs to have a roving of the month club :).  A black warp is certainly calling it’s name.  BFL 4 ounces, 454 yards.  I didn’t spin this one as fine as Come November.

And I have a no name (other then SRLE9) on the wheel I was gifted.  It was purchased at Creatively Dyed Yarn.  This is 8 ounces of 70% wool and 30% Seacell.  Jess is calling it cotton candy, but I am open to other names.

I did get a warp wound yesterday for the loom and quite frankly, it exhausted me.  Am hoping to get it on the loom today.  We’ll see what happens.  The cold has sort of settled in my head making it all stuffy and hard to function.

Tuesday means muffins or in our case, muffin bread, for breakfast.  Muffin bread is just so much easier in this house.  I just take the same recipe for muffins and spread it in a square pan and bake, cut, and let the kids devour.  Easier clean up too

This time we tried Peanut butter & jelly muffin (bread)

Ingredients

• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 1 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1 cup milk
• 2 large eggs
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 1 cup creamy peanut butter
• 1/3 cup canola oil
• 1/2 cup jam, jelly, or preserves
• a bit of additional sugar for topping

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Stir together flour, salt, baking powder in large bowl.  Add milk, eggs, sugar, peanut butter, and oil to bowl and mix on low speed just until moistened.

Put half of the batter into muffin cups or bread pan.  Place 2 level tsp of jam, jelly, or preserves in center of each muffin or just plop some dollops on the batter if using a bread pan.

( we used strawberry preserves, apple jelly, and orange marmalade)

Pour over remaining batter and sprinkle reserved sugar on top.

Bake for 18-20 minutes or until fork (or toothpick or cake tester) comes out clean.

Cut and enjoy.

Let us know if you like our new favorite breakfast bread.

Between my cold, kids not remembering what an adjective is or how to use a dictionary (I know I know….it’s because time is drawing closer to daddy coming home and they are getting wound up) and just general fussing and fighting (I love how they fight with each other while trying to play a game called Diplomacy), I went out to paint my blues away.  I needed to dye some yarns purple and green for an upcoming weaving special order and decided to just keep on painting when those two skeins were done. It’s amazing how therapeutic painting yarn really is.

Burgundy, gold, green, and blue seemed to dominate the 10 skeins and 2 warp chains, but there was some purple, teal, and black too.  I will wash out later today or tomorrow and see where the yarn takes me over the next few weeks.  Hope you’ll stay tuned too.