eat! craft! live!

:: photo friday :: give thanks

I hope that if you celebrate Thanksgiving, you had a lovely one. We were thankful for time with family and some delicious food!

June socks

Could it be? Am I really blogging about knitting? Shocking, I know... Well, these socks are from June. Yes, June. They were finished on time and everything but June in Texas is, well, warmish and I couldn't bear to drag myself outside to photograph wool socks when it was 100 degrees. So now that I've actually been wearing them to keep my little tootsies warm in the cool New England autumn, I have no excuses! And thus, June's delightful socks.

They were a pleasure to knit. I used Malabrigo sock yarn for the first time and it is so luscious and soft and richly colored that I couldn't get enough. The softness made me wonder how it would wear, long term, and so far they are holding up OK, though a bit fuzzy. And they have, much to my disappointment, faded somewhat but I'm not entirely surprised given the initial color. They are still some of my favorites - soft and warm and nicely fitting. I used the River Rapids Socks pattern for the pattern part of the sock, but I knit them both at once, toe-up, which meant that I didn't use the pattern for the actual construction of the sock - know what I mean? I found them to be a pretty quick, easy knit, good for bus rides and morning commutes.

The deets:
Pattern: River Rapids Socks by Sockbug
Yarn: Malabrigo Sock in Cote d'Azure
Needles: US 1½ / 2.5 mm
See mine, on Ravelry

loving November

When November rolls around, my mind always turns to thoughts of...food. I am a huge fan of Thanksgiving food - turkey, potatoes, gravy, pies, apple cider, cranberry sauce and, most of all, stuffing. (Or dressing, if you insist.) I mean, I love being thankful and all that but...stuffing. I swoon. There may have, in fact, been a few years in college where I subsisted almost entirely on brightly packaged Stove Top and bags of Pepperidge Farm. And here is where I admit that I have never made stuffing from scratch despite my DIY tendencies. I grew up on Pepperidge Farm and have such a warm place in my heart for it that I can't imagine how it could be any better. (Or, ahem, easier.) I'm always open to suggestions, so if you've got a relatively simple delicious homemade stuffing recipe, lay it on me!

Another favorite part of Thanksgiving food - canned cranberry sauce. No...the jellied kind. I know. I know.

During the time I lived in Oregon, I spent Thanksgiving every year with some very dear friends. One of them had a tradition that she called "thankful corn." It went like this - we would take a little ear of that decorative dried Indian corn and go around the table each plucking a kernel of corn and stating what we were thankful for. I have a love/hate relationship with this tradition. I think it is wonderful and sweet and a good reminder of why we should be thankful. But I'm not a sharer. It kind of makes me feel all nervous and squidgy inside. All the same, I love it. And I miss those dear friends, whom I haven't seen since I moved away.

But back to the (edible) food! One of my very favorite Thanksgiving traditions is baking an apple pie. If I do say so myself, I make a darn good apple pie. One former roommate once remarked that it was "so good!" and "better than my mom's!" but not to tell her mom! One memorable Thanksgiving involved me speeding along the interstate to a new boyfriend's family's house in an unfamiliar city with a perfect apple pie perched precariously on the passenger seat. The pie and I both made it safely, though in hindsight the pie was probably more well received that I was...

One of my new November loves - and I suspect it will remain for some time - is remembering how lovely it is to be able to pull out all the handknits I've been knitting on all year and how good it feels to actually get some use out of them! Texas was notoriously uncooperative on that account but Maine is proving much more obliging. I've already been wearing my lovely wool socks and would be wearing more items if I could just locate them in the mass of confusion that surrounds most of our personal possessions at the moment... (A side note - the pair-of-socks-a-month thing hit a brick wall with the onset of morning sickness, extreme fatigue and a cross-country move. With any luck, September's socks will be done by the end of November!)

What about you? What do you love about November?

:: photo friday :: Happy (almost) Halloween!

wow

Wow. It's been so long, I don't even know what to say anymore! How is everybody enjoying October? *ahem* Well, I never intended to be absent from my blog for as long as I have been, so now it's time to play a little catch up! As you may already know, the main reason for my absence was our big move across the country. But we've been in Maine for about a month now, so why the prolonged silence? Many reasons, most of which I'll share with you now. Our life was turned upside down by the move and we still haven't fully recovered. We're staying with some very dear and generous friends, but most of our worldly possessions are in storage and not easily accessible. It's very hard to be productive when you don't have any of your "stuff" you need to be productive! No yarn dyeing, no Etsy shop to look after, no books to read... It's strangely freeing and yet horribly limiting at the same time. And odd to think of the entire material content of our lives being housed in an 8x10 storage unit.

But that in itself probably wouldn't have limited me as much as it has if I weren't nearly 17 weeks pregnant. That's right - we're adding a crafty baby to the crafty household! I won't lie - it's been a tougher road so far than I'd imagined it would be. I've caught several colds, which is very unlike me, and they've been hard to shake. I've also suffered from "morning" (ha, morning, as if it didn't last most of the day) sickness and am still struggling with that, though thankfully not as much as before. Most of all has been the creeping sense of lethargy and a desire to sleep nearly as much as the cats. The wee babe has stolen my knitting mojo, my cooking prowess (and my appetite as well!) and basically my desire to do, well, anything. I'm hoping the little rascal will surrender my motivation soon and I'll be able to get back to normal life!

Despite everything, it is good to be back in the north again. Autumn has been gorgeous and cool and I'm loving the chance to wear all my handknit socks finally!

:: photo friday :: Common Ground Fair

Nearly as soon as we arrived in Maine, we went for a weekend of camping and fair-going! We're just starting to feel settled in (for the moment!) so I will soon be updating you all on our adventures since the last time I checked in. (Has it really been a whole month? Wow!)

shop hiatus

Just a quick post to let you know that the shop will be closed for an indefinite amount of time, starting Sept. 15, so that we can travel across the country and get settled (at least a little!) up north. So if you've had your eye on anything, better grab it while you can! I expect to be closed for at least a few weeks while we get our new life in order. Wish us luck - we are super excited!

I love September.

I will love September even more when we're in Maine in a few short weeks! This month's love is not clickable, linkable or purchasable. It just is.

I love:

• autumn
• Maine
• apple cider
• warm sweaters
• colored leaves

Hope everybody is having a good start to their fall!

:: photo friday :: Maine in medium format

I love film...and I love Maine! I'm so glad we're moving back north soon...happy Friday everyone!

big changes!

Excuse the long absence...there's been a lot going on at the crafty house lately. After much discussion and, finally, the decision to just do it, we're going to be eating, crafting and, most importantly, living somewhere new! That's right folks, we're moving! To Maine! It's been a dream of mine for a long, long time to finally get back to my home state and with our current (and pending) employment situations, it seems like there's no time like the present to get started on our new northern life. So out of the south we come, away from the most brutal of Texas summers, and into the north! Exciting times!