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My Old Hen

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One of my oldest hens Andie (after Andy Warhol with the crazy hairdo) has joined her sisters and started laying again. Her eggs are shaped like her…tall and skinny.

IMG_3299I don’t have a photo of Andie, but she’s a silver-laced Polish hen and looks like this.

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Andie is about 6 years old, which if you believe everything you read is unheard of to still be laying. She’s laying almost every day to boot. My other old hen Lulu (after Lou Reed) popped out a couple of eggs this spring, but seems to have taken a break lately. Hopefully she won’t go through her “I think I’m a rooster” phase again this year.

 

 

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Knitting through the sadness

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stripe shawlA couple of weeks ago we found out that our friend and neighbor suffered a massive stroke. He died a week later, leaving behind his wife and 3  young children. He was 41 years old.

It’s hard to describe how wonderful this family is. They are smart, funny, fun-loving and kind. They have a huge close-knit group of friends and family, which is a big comfort right now. What the family is going through is unimaginable and any attempts at help just seem so pitifully little.

It’s been hard to stop thinking about them, and while grieving their loss, I decided to knit our friend a shawl. I hope it will give her some comfort knowing that there are so many people out there who love her and want to help support her.

The pattern is called Stripe Study Shawl. It is an asymmetrical shawl that uses short rows (for any knitters who might be reading this) to make one side of the stripes wider than the other side. I’ve been wanting to make this for a while and I’m very happy with how it turned out. Here are some photos.

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Spring in the Berkshires

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There are many things we love to do when we’re up in the Berkshires. Taking hikes is at the top of the list. It is still a bit early (snow and mud on the ground) to go on the more ambitious hikes, so we decided to take a simple walk along Ice Glen road. At the end of the hike we ran into a woman walking with her puppy. We stopped to talk with her and discovered that she keeps chickens and raises or grows all her own food. She also has a flock of alpacas and spins and weaves the fiber. I mentioned that I spin and she invited us to walk over to her house, where she gave me a trash bag full of her alpaca fiber.

It was crazy how much we had in common with her. She mentioned that she has a son who’s a photographer in Brooklyn. But what put me over the edge was when she said that I could dye the white alpaca and mentioned that she picks wild mushrooms to dye her fiber. She uses turkey tail mushrooms to dye her wool blue. I’m going to have to keep my eye out for them this year.

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My new challenge is to process the fiber. I usually buy fiber that has already been washed and carded. I am going to borrow equipment from someone in my spinning group to card it. I’ll post more when I work on the fiber.

I am excited by this new challenge. It was so unexpected to meet such a nice woman and come away with gorgeous, soft alpaca fiber.

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Passover in the Berkshires

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Last week while Lindsay was on break, we went up to the Berkshires for a few days. We had a nice low-key seder complete with matzo-ball soup, brisket and macaroons. passover-3

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The next morning my father-in-law and daughter made matzo brei. Matzo brei is basically a form of scrambled eggs. You take matzo crackers, run them under warm tap water for a few seconds. Then you crumble them and add to beaten eggs. The ratio is approximately 1 cracker for every 1 1/2 large eggs. We sauté onions and asparagus first and then cook the eggs. I think last year we used mushrooms instead of asparagus.

passoverpassover-2

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Beaded Crochet

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This Saturday I took a beaded crochet class at the New York Public Library. It was a part of their free crafternoon series. The teachers were a mother-daughter team Bert and Dana Freed and they taught us the basics of adding beads to a decorative cord to make jewelry.

It was pretty basic, but fun nonetheless. It reminded me of necklaces I saw a few years ago of beads and seashells that I liked, but never really considered how they were strung. Here are a couple of things I made after the class.

IMG_3172 IMG_3173I definitely like the colored cord with glass beads better and will explore some more options with that. Hope you all had nice weekends!

 

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Spinning!

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spinning

I’m in a knitting group that meets every tuesday evening at La Casita yarn shop. It’s a fun bunch of women and they have a 2 for 1 drink special that night. What does this have to do with spinning? We have decided to do a kind of knitted secret santa exchange. We each put our names (with sizes and colors we like and don’t like) into a hat. And now we are knitting a project for the person we pulled from the hat. We are trying to keep our projects secret, so for obvious reasons we aren’t bringing them to knitting night.

La Casita is very close to my apartment, so I’ve taken to bringing my spinning wheel with me on tuesday nights. The good thing is that I’m chugging away on this gorgeous fiber. It’s an 80% merino, 20% silk from Fiber Optic Yarns. The photos do not do the colors justice. The light color is an amazing turquoise color and the dark part is a dark purply, gray. This colorway is called smoke on the water.

 

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I have two of these rolls. I am spinning each one separately into a very fine gauge and then I’ll ply the two together. The color changes are very subtle, so I think the plies will line up nicely. And when I’m done, I hope to make a gorgeous shawl like one of these.

100_4497_medium2 6970185201_208095420b_z DSC_1214_medium2Isn’t this color scheme gorgeous? I am trying not to run out and get this one as well. Especially since I’m only halfway done spinning what I have.

 

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Enjoying the Snow

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Expecting Snow

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Whenever they (has anyone ever figured out who “they” are??) predict armageddon by way of weather I get skeptical. Obviously Superstorm Sandy was an exception…

Anyhow we are hearing crazy reports of several feet of snow and things are shutting down here in anticipation of the snow. We are home with colds, so we’re pretty snug here.

When did weather become such dramatic news?

Let’s hope we have a beautiful winter wonderland. Stay warm!

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Making Butter

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Making Butter from Martha Lazar on Vimeo.

On one of Lindsay’s school field trips, they visited The Old Stone House, which was an old Dutch farmhouse here in Brooklyn. On that trip they made butter and Lindsay has mentioned from time to time that she’s wanted to make some at home. You probably know by now that this request warms my little pioneer heart.

She recently brought it up again, so while Neil was out shopping, he picked up some heavy cream for her. We placed it in a large mason jar and started shaking it. And shaking it. I think it’s funny how she can look so badass while churning butter.

Eventually (and not before she lost interest and hopped in the bath), the cream separated into butter and buttermilk. We washed the  butter in cold water and Lindsay formed it into one of her bowls.

 

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