Eye Candy Friday

Rose Hips

Holly

Drumroll please.....

Congratulations to Trek of Trek Casts On for winning the food for fiber contest.

By the way, I had a good birthday yesterday, did absolutly nothing but knit some socks for me, so relaxing.

Holly

Walking...Running

I signed up for runagogo walk 100 miles by April first (the button is somewhere over there to the right). I proudly walked 3.5 miles in the first week, then stopped. In my defence winter decided to decend upon us and I couldn't get warm for a week (I usually walk outside, even in winter). So today I got in the car and drove over to the mall where I walked 3 more miles, for a whopping grand total of 6.5 miles, woohoo. I think I will continue to walk in the mall until my body gets used to the frigid temps that are Michigan in winter.
Holly

Eye Candy Friday

More from Matthaei Botanical Gardens in Ann Arborn Michigan.
Holly

Fingerless Mitts

Woo hoo, I finally have written the pattern. I've been working on this for months. The mitt is knit with Smart by Sandnesgarn. To purchase the pattern hop on over to sheeptosweater.com and look under knitting.

Holly

Tasty Tuesday - Roasted Contest

Today is kind of a hodge-podge kind of day. I feel like I haven't posted in a long time. I've feel like I've been too busy to breathe. First off...

Tasty Tuesday

There are no pictures but I did roast a chicken for my family last night. It took way longer than I thought it would, but was very tasty

Contest - Prizes

Drum roll please..... The fiber prizes are a handpainted roving, a "this 'n that batt", and a hand painted silk cap. Yarn prizes are 3 small skeins Louet Merino, 2 skeins Louet Merlin, and 1 skein handspun (alpaca, wool, angora blend).

So head on over to the food for fiber contest leave your favorite recipe, and it doesn't have to be an original recipe, in the comments and be in the running for these great prizes.

From slippery (and that is all I will say on the weather) Michigan,

Holly

Tasty Tuesday Turkey Tetrazinni

I found this recipe in the Bowman Landes Cookbook. Bowman Landes is a company very close to where I grew up in Ohio. They have the absolute best turkey jerky, ever, but I digress.
I'm not going to put the recipe in its entirety on this post, because I don't know if I am breaking some sort of copyright law. If you do want the recipe in its entirety e-mail me or contact Bowman Landes and ask if they still print the cookbook Turkey Treats Entree's and Encores. It is recipe #1. The ingredients are: noodles, cream of mushroom soup, milk, water, Cheddar cheese (I uses smoked Cheddar cheese), turkey, frozen peas & carrots, seasoned bread crumbs, Parmesan cheese (I used Pecorino Ramano, a hard sheep cheese similar to Parmesan). I omitted from the recipie parsley and piminto. Basically you make a cheese sauce (I am very excited about this accomplishment as I have never made a cheese sauce that did not involve powdered cheese), add everything but the Parmesan and breadcrumbs, throw it in a baking dish top with the cheese and bread crumbs and bake.
The family reviews were unanimous, everyone thought it was very tasty and I should, and probably will make this dish again.
Fiber Content
There isn't much to report. I am still spinning like mad (in every sense). I am in the process of picking Prizes for the fabulous food for fiber contest. So leave those recipes!!
Holly

Spinning, Spinning, Spinning

and spinning some more. Well, the holidays are over and today I plunge back into my way too busy life, but no teaching just quite yet due to a bout of strep throat, yuck! I spent the entire weekend spinning. Next weekend is guild weekend and I have contractual spinning to complete on top of a yarn swap. The cool picture is of 320 yards of handspun in 16, 20 yard skeins. You may have noticed the color and may have thought "for someone who claims to not like pink, she sure does a lot of pink." The reason for this is I have 15 POUNDS of this particular roving, which is perfectly good, in fact very lovely medium weight wool, that came back from the mill pink and purple instead of red and purple. The over dying will be starting soon. I am looking on this as a learning experience. The really good thing about the yarn exchange is that I get to trade pink yarn for non-pink yarn.
Holly

Eye Candy Friday

At the Matthaei Botanical Gardens, Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Holly

Am I a compulsive joiner?

Probably. I did actually give some thought to this, though, I want to make sure that all of the things that I do are deliberate and fall in with my new focus. The first thing that I joined was Runagogo . My hope is that the goal and encouragement (which is really awesome, go on, look at blog, you'll see what I mean), will be enough to get my butt off the couch and out the door. This is definitely in line with "live with less" (less butt hopefully). Thanks to Carole for also being a joiner, then writing about it 'cause that's where I saw this one.

The second thing I joined was holiday headstart , who sadly, doesn't have a button. This KAL is all about getting ready for Christmas way, way ahead of time. I haven't really knit things for Christmas, mostly, because it gets to be November and I realize Christmas is just around the corner and I haven't even thought about gifts. This also falls in with "live with less" especially if I knit out of my stash. Thanks to Abigail who showed me the way to this particular KAL.

The third thing I joined was The Organized Elf, (again, no button). Ok, we are going to have a very crafty Christmas next year, and hopefully a less expensive one too. This really speaks to both of my goals. Using up what I have and being more organized so I don't go out and buy stuff I already have, or don't need.
Wow, all this joining makes me feel invigorated, I think I'll go for a walk (2 miles down, 98 to go.)

Holly

Fast Knitting

Last week the community education brochure came in the mail. I teach knitting for them so it wasn't a big surprise to see my classes listed. The surprise was that they had actually listed them correctly (they did not in the fall), including the line "if you would like to see pictures of these projects please click on my website." My immediate reaction was run to the yarn room (yes my stash is that big) to find some socks and the bag that I knit last year for these classes to quickly photograph them and upload them up on the website. Socks: no problem, bag: nowhere to be found. So I rushed out bought a skein of wool-ease (because that room of yarn is mostly handspun, which new knitters find intimidating), and oh so quickly knit a bag, which incidentally is much, much better than the former bag.

Here are the pictures

Holly

Tasty Tuesday and a contest

The venison gave me courage. So I decided to experiment with beef. My husband bought a huge roast (4 meals worth of meat). I cut into bite sized pieces, and threw it into the pan added a couple of squirts of Worcestershire sauce, a dash of ginger and a bit of garlic. I served it with green beans. It was delicious if I do say so myself

Contest...Contest....Contest

My birthday is coming up January 24. So I thought that I would have a contest, stuff for me, stuff for you, it's all good. I threw around some ideas about what to do and this is what I came up with: food for fiber. Leave a comment on this blog entry giving me your favorite recipe, it can be anything from snacks to the main course to dessert, anything. I 'll pick out the three I think sound the tastiest and they will receive fiber (yarn or roving the winner's choice) . The contest closes at midnight on the 22nd. I will announce the winners on the 24th.
Holly

New Year :: New Life

In past years I've made resolutions. Don't you know I can't think of a one, other than the ubiquitous "I'm going to lose weight" which has happened, several times, but not usually at the new year. So this year I've decided to come up with 2 (therefore easy to remember) goals for life change. By setting goals instead of resolving to do a particular thing it's ok if I don't do it perfectly, it gives me a change to persevere and not get discouraged if I fail. So here they are:
1. Live with less. - This means less weight, less stuff (this may involve some hard stash decisions), less stress
2. Take care of what I have better. - Make healthier decisions, get a hold of my household chores, be a better steward of my money.
I feel that I am starting out in a positive way.
My wish for you is to have a happy, healthy and prosperous new year.
Holly