Weekend of Preserving

Seth and I spent almost the entire weekend canning! We have an apple tree in our backyard that has been dropping apples for the last several weeks. I admit, we've been lazy about picking them up off the ground (or at least I have), but on Thursday Seth picked them up and bagged up the ones that were suitable for cooking with. We ended up with a big paper grocery bag full of apples. 

Saturday, we cut up apples and threw some in the dehydrator and made applesauce out of the rest. Okay, I peeled the apples with our Apple Peeler Corer Slicer, and Seth sliced them. The apples are too soft for the Apple Peeler Corer Slicer to actually do the slicing, so we just used it to peel the apples. I definitely had the easy job!

We made 3 batches of applesauce and ended up with 6 quarts. I looked at a bunch of recipes ended up just kind of winging it. Basically, we used apples, a little bit of water and cinnamon. It was plenty sweet without any added sugar (at least Seth thought so). 

There were tons of left over apple peels:

Seth wanted to do something with them, so I put a bunch of them on a baking sheet, sprinkled sugar and cinnamon on them, and baked them in the oven. 

On Sunday we picked blackberries from the side of one of the trails nearby. Unfortunately, the blackberry bushes are full of thorns and it was difficult to reach many of the ripe berries. We still have tons of strawberries in the freezer from earlier in the summer, so we combined the berries to make Strawberry-Blackberry Jam, and then used the remaining blackberries from Blackberry Preserves. 

Check out all that canned goodness:

Poor little half jar of Blackberry Preserves!

We were on a roll with the cooking this weekend. Last night we made a whole roast chicken with green beans, radishes, carrots and onions. There were also mashed potatoes. Everything except the carrots and onion was from the Corvallis Farmer's Market. The chicken was from Afton Field Farm in Corvallis. All of their animals are pasture raised and grass fed. We've bought quite a few things from them this summer, and it has all been delicious. 

On the knitting front, I'm hoping to finish my Mom's Tea Leaves cardigan by Tuesday. It's going to be rainy today and possibly tomorrow, so I'm planning on watching movies and knitting until it's done. Then, the goal is to finish the sweater for Seth's Dad by sometime mid-October. 

Hope your last few days/weeks at camp are going well!

Love,

liz

Paddle, Paddle, Paddle

Yesterday we went paddling with our neighbors on the Salmon River and almost (but not quite) into the Pacific Ocean. It's their favorite place to paddle, and I can see why!

Photo credits go to Seth, by the way. As soon as we put the boats in, a cute seal popped his head up and was swimming around! Unfortunately he was too quick and we weren't able to get a picture of him.

We paddled about 1/2 mile down the river (although, since the tide was coming in it was like paddling up river!), pulled our boats up on the sand, and saw this:

Gorgeous, huh?

We walked up and down the beach for a while collecting cool rocks and even found some sea glass and a starfish:

Seth found lots of sand dollars. Don't worry. We brought them all home. :)

We had lunch on the beach and then paddled back up the river, which involved a lot more sitting than paddling since the tide was still coming in!

Don't I look like a pro?

Here's our neighbors in their tandem kayak doing a little bird watching:

We ended up having perfect weather. The weather at the coast can be unpredictable, at best. Most of the time it's cloudy/foggy and cold. We ended up with 60 degree weather and sun! The water, however, was freezing. Colder than the Atlantic in Maine, by quite a bit. BRRR! I was a little surprised to see a bunch of little kids swimming in the ocean! It was too cold to do anything but dip your toes in.

No knitting to share today....but I did make a pretty fantastic dinner with cherry tomatoes from our garden. I meant to take a picture...but it didn't last long on the plate! It was just roasted cherry tomatoes with garlic, olive oil, and basil tossed with pasta. Oh, and some parmesan cheese. Yum. It was delish. I'm also trying my hand at dehydrating apples. We have an apple tree in our back yard, and have more apples than I know what to do with. I'll definitely be making some applesauce, but I need to get some new cans first.

I'll leave you with one last parting shot of gorgeous Oregon:

Love,
liz

This must be some sort of record....

2 blog posts in ONE DAY! Unheard of here in the land of Charlotte and Liz :)

I wanted to post this separately from the last post so it didn't get lost amongst the knitting, running, and ocean!

I'm not sure that Charlotte or I have ever posted about how we met and became friends, and I think it's high time one of us explains it (this has a point...really, it does!).

In 2002, I applied for a job at a very special summer camp called the Double H Ranch. Double H is part of a larger organization founded by Paul Newman; the Hole in the Wall Association. All of the camps in the HITW Association cater to children with special health care needs, and Double H is no exception.

I ended up working as a lifeguard at HH in both 2002 and 2003 and had the pleasure of meeting some amazing people, including Charlotte. After my first summer, I was hooked. After the first summer, Seth and I started volunteering for family weekends and the Adaptive Ski program that runs at Double H in the winter. The family weekends are especially fun because you have the opportunity to work with a smaller group of people and really get to know the kids and families. I think it was during these weekends when Charlotte and I became especially close friends. :)

Camps like these change peoples lives (this sounds totally cliche, but it's true...). Charlotte also worked at Victory Junction (also part of HITW) and the Center for Courageous Kids (not part of HITW, but also serves children with special health care needs). It's hard to put into words how working at camp changes you. But it does. I think everyone who experiences camp comes away with new lifelong friends and about a million amazing memories.

Well, apparently my nonstop talk about camp inspired a friend of mine to raise money for Double H (hence the real reason for this post!). My friend Eric will be riding in a 100K bike ride on September 12th to raise money for the Ranch. It was incredibly humbling to find out that I (and my many stories about camp) had inspired him to do this.

He is only $5 away from his goal of $250, and word on the street is that he's going to up his goal to $500.

So, if you'd like to help him reach his goal please check out Eric's Team Hole in the Wall page! (psst, check out his adorable baby on that page, too!)

Okay....I'm seriously going to go be productive now (although, one could argue that blog postings about charities is productive!).

liz :)

Phew.

Well, apparently I've been on a blog hiatus! Now that we're done having visitors for a while, I'll have plenty of time to get back to cooking, blogging, knitting, and sewing.

First, I don't think you made a crazy decision. I think you made the right decision for you, and someone will be very lucky to have you as their employee. :)

How cute is baby C in her new birthday dress???? It looks adorable on her!

Since my last post Kaitlin has come to visit, Seth ran a 100K, and I've gotten a wee bit of knitting done.

When Kaitlin was here we took a trip up the northern part of the coast to the Tillamook Cheese Factory, and stopped at some places along the coast.

We all dipped our toes in the Pacific Ocean (and dang, it was chilly!):

We also hit up the outlets, Corvallis farmer's market and the Oregon Gardens while she was here.

This weekend Seth ran the Where's Waldo 100K, his longest race so far. He finished in about 17 1/2 hours. The race ran through parts of the Pacific Crest Trail and to the top of 5 mountains.

I'll spare you the picture of the gigantic blister between Seth's toes, but here's one of him running at mile 44:

Our neighbor joined him at mile 44 and ran the last 18 miles with him. The weather was perfect for running - about 45 degrees in the morning and high 50s during the day. The start and finish temperatures were a perfect excuse to wear some hand knits :)

Seth's been trying to lay low the last few days because his ankle is bothering him and pretty swollen. But, you know Seth...."sitting still" is not really in his vocabulary.

I haven't done as much knitting as I'd like, but I did manage to knit up a Purl Ridge Scarf on Sunday and Monday.

Pattern: Purl Ridge Scarf by Steven West

Yarn: MadelineTosh Pashmina in Mansfield Garden Party

Needles: size 7

Modifications: I used sport weight yarn instead of worsted, so I cast on 50 extra stitches to make sure it would be long enough. 

By the way, it is a terrible idea to try and take self portraits of hand knits when it is 90+ degrees out. Terrible, terrible idea.  I need to learn to just wait until Seth is home to take pictures for me.

Because, when I try and do it myself I end up with out of focus beauties like this one:

Somehow I managed focused pictures of the scarf, but after trying 3 or 4 with the hat I was starting to sweat profusely!

Well, I really need to work on cutting fabric for more box bags for the Southern Adirondack Fiber Festival....

I'll post again soon....I PROMISE!

Love,

liz

in limbo

so i have one or maybe two weeks left of my job.  the house is almost completely cleaned out- i have 3 bags of clothes to be deposited at the goodwill today and i'm tired.  tired of feeling like i made a crazy decision.

tell me it's not a crazy decision.

in other news- not having tv or a whole lot of responsibility, i've been knitting like a crazy woman... i started drew's vest, the same i'm making for my dad, but a smaller version... i just finished my first ball of yarn, which took a while, but you are right, you get used to the pattern and pretty much all i have to do now is keep track of where i am in the middle section and trot on from there...

i also have photos of the munchkin in her birthday dress :) which fit so perfectly and she was so darn cute in it!!!

front...

 and back!

I'm also going to make one more of those cute baby boy bumps for another friend who just adopted a little man who they named george :)  sooooo cute!!!!  and he will be so much more delicious in a precious sweater from me :)  Mom also bought me some gorgeous fingerweight yarn from webs- i have to look up what it is- for me to make a shawl... it was on sale in their super summer sale and is like 900 yards!!  F was a trooper and helped me wind it by hand.. and then asked if there was a machine that could do this... haha.

But backtracking a bit now...  the move was fast and the visit home was super short.  Drove wed to ohio, dropped the stuff at the G parents and then to VT with the dog on thursday.  Home friday for the day, to mass for the baby birthday sat and sunday (we stayed in the dorm with the family, ha!) and then back to VT sunday night, home for the day monday and back to ohio on tuesday.  stayed the night in cleveland and took a short detour to get wings on our way at the official home of buffalo wings and a few beers, cause let's be honest, that was one hell of a long drive... once we were in cleveland, we went to an old market- which was amazing.  they had isles and isles of vendors and michael symon's pick for "best thing i ever ate" - beef jerkey.  seriously.  it was amazing.  

speaking of michael symon- we went to his restaurant Lolita for a treat for dinner that night.  it was amaaaazing.  we started with beet and feta salad and bruchetta for an appetizer... then i had the salmon special and f got the hanger steak.  it was all so good, i was so stuffed!!  But of course we had dessert- i had the vanilla gelato and f had the lemon panna cotta.  Our waiter was amazing- he was very informative and funny- giving interesting tidbits about the restaurant and food we were eating. a great experience!

then we drove to Nashville and stayed there (no bed in the house didn't sound like fun for two nights).  We ended up going to the Chihuly exhibit at the Frist and F totally loved it.  They had a video that explained everything about the process of making the sculptures, which was fascinating- totally collaborative!  We also at out quite a bit and walked a little bit too :)

Then i dropped him off at the airport on Saturday pm and drove home to start the big cleanup in Kentucky.  It's a good feeling to be almost finished, but as I mentioned before.  I'm teetering on terrified at not having a job...

off to do a bit more work :)  talk soon?

Happy Birthday Charlotte!

Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to Charlotte, Happy Birthday to you!

Hope you had a wonderful birthday and that moving/road trip with F is going well!

I feel like my posts have been a little devoid of fibery things lately, so I'm going to rectify that today!

First up....large pile of wool:

One of the nurses at the Peds clinic Seth works at has a daughter who is in 4-H. She raised a sheep this summer for the fair, and apparently when they shear them before the fair they THROW AWAY THE WOOL! Can you believe that?!?!?! I told them that if they kept the wool I would process it, spin it, and knit up a hat or mittens for her so she'd have a little souvenir from her sheep.

Seth brought it home this weekend and we worked on picking out all the hay on a small portion of it. It was really, really dirty. And Sailor loved it.

We only cleaned out about 1/3 of it, because I'm not sure how great it will be for spinning. The fibers are really short, and despite washing it 3 times, it still seems kind of dirty.

I did some more dyeing today! I really want to make these for a friend's baby and couldn't find any solid yellow sock yarn anywhere....soooo, I dyed my own!

I also had some grey shetland/angora handspun yarn that I wanted to dye a different color. There was a little bit of yellow left in the pot after I dyed the sock yarn and I added a purple mixture to it and got this:

I had a mini skein of the same yarn, but decided to leave it undyed:

I also have an almost finished knitting project to show you! I bought the fabulous "New England Knits" book from Purl Diva when I was in Maine a few weeks ago. She was kind enough to hang on to it and have the authors (Cecily Glowick McDonald and Melissa LaBarre) sign it while they were doing a book signing at her shop. When it arrived in my mailbox, I immediately wound up some yarn and cast on for the Brattleboro Hat. It only took me 2 nights to do and I LOVE it! However, I ordered some buttons online and it looks a little silly without them, so a detail shot is all you get for now:

I've already decided what my next project will be from the "New England Knits" book, the Salem Hooded Jacket. And of course, I've already picked out yarn (while at Purl Diva) and ribbon (also from Purl Diva):

I've also started a quilt. Yikes. Seth and I stopped at Fabric Depot and I bought some fabric rolls to make this quilt. There are 80 squares total in the quilt. I think I have 14 done....it's going to be a long term project :)

I also started a new sweater for Seth's dad and had to rip out an entire sleeve on my Mom's Tea Leaves. Ugh.

Well, it's homemade pizza night....so that's it for now!

Safe travels :)

Love,
liz

Road Trip with the Parents

My plan was to blog while my parents were here....however, we were so busy I didn't really have time. I picked my parents up from Portland last Saturday (they flew in Friday night and spent the night) and while Seth ran 30 miles on the Portland trails we toured around. We started out at the Portland Farmers Market, then headed to Powell's, Knit Purl, and VooDoo Donuts. Though, after realizing that it was a 45-60 minute wait to get into VooDoo Donuts, we decided to get out of line. After Seth was done running, we met him at the Japanese Gardens, which were really beautiful.

There were all these cool little "houses", waterfalls, ponds and a sand and stone garden:

Sunday we took a drive up Mary's Peak and took the 1 1/2 mile (round-trip) Summit Trail. Sailor came along and posed for a photo with my parents:

On Monday we headed to Crater Lake National Park, which was breathtakingly beautiful.

The lake is 31 miles around the outside, and there is a road that runs all the way around the rim. We drove around the entire lake and stopped lots to take pictures and take in the views.

We stayed in Medford, OR Monday night and on Tuesday headed south to California.

We took a drive through the Avenue of the Giants and explored the Redwood Forest.

(how tiny do my parents look?!)

My Dad was a lumberjack in his former life and is able to pick up Redwoods while people stand on them:

The Redwood Forest was beautiful and the trees are gigantic. Gigantic enough to drive through:

Tuesday night we stayed in Crescent City, CA and then headed up the Oregon coast on Wednesday. It's amazing how foggy and cold it is out there all summer!

The Oregon coast isn't like any other coast line. There are huge rocks sticking straight out of the ocean as well as huge sand dunes.

Here's my dad climbing a huge rock:

And here he is a little farther up:

It did clear up a little while we were driving, but it was only about 55 degrees out!

A little bit north of Florence, OR there is a tourist trap called the "Sea Lion Caves". Obviously we had to stop. An elevator takes you 200 feet down into a cave and you can look out and see the Sea Lions hanging out on the rocks.

There is also another gorgeous lookout onto the coastline.

We were pretty exhausted from 3 full days of driving, so Thursday I took my parents around Corvallis and Friday Mom and I went yarn shopping while Dad went golfing. Seth and I dropped them at the airport yesterday morning and then we stopped at the Fabric Depot, which was slightly overwhelming. I didn't end up buying any fabric for knitting bags, but did end up with some fabric for a quilt. We also stopped at the Farmer's Market for lunch and there was a Iranian Festival happening, so we ended up eating Mediterranean food....yumm!!!

I do have some fibery things to share, but I think I'll wait to post those!

Hope your last few weeks of camp are going well!

Love,
liz