I took the handmade pledge

Today you will notice a new badge in my sidebar, if you are visiting my actual site and not via a feed reader. I took the pledge to make or buy handmade gifts this season and ask that people do the same for me. I'll be making a slight personal exception, that being I'll probably buy a few non-handmade something or others for my husband, because it's one of the few times a year we spend a little money on eachother.

This is an easy pledge for me to keep because I've been doing this for a couple of years now anyways. I make most of my gifts and the ones that I don't I usually buy via Etsy. If any of my family or friends look at my Christmas Wishlist, they will find that most of the items are handmade, or from independent retailers/publishers.

I know that it isn't this way for everyone, but making and/or giving a handmade gift gives a little more meaning to Christmas for me. It gives me greater satisfaction as the giver, because I know that I really thought about what would be special for the receiver, instead of going to the mall, closing my eyes, grabbing something and calling it done. That - and I don't have credit card debt - HA! So there's a selfish reason too :)

No pictures today, but perhaps some finished objects by tomorrow. Stitch n' Bitch is tonight - hurray!

Oh, one more handmade pledge thing...we had to supply a quote to sign up, and I thought that this was fitting:

"Let us not wait for the world to be better, let us help to make it better." - Ruth St. Denis

100th Post

Wowza - this is my 100th post since I moved over to Blogger last year. Pretty nuts. I wish that I had time to have some fancy schmancy give-away or contest and the like, but I'm swamped right now. I have Christmas and an impending swap of doom deadline looming over me - is it really almost November?









Today was amazing! It was the perfect slightly chilly, but sunny beautiful autumn day. The wind was whipping all of the leaves off the trees (and apparently my bangs into an "attractive" side swipe in picture #1) and the air smelled like fall - and delicious food! My mom and I headed down to Applecrest Farm to enjoy the last weekend of harvest activities. I couldn't believe what a zoo it was...in a completely good way! There were so many people there, hotdogs, hamburgers, sausages, live bluegrass music, cider doughnuts, cider, ice cream, pies, apples upon apples, gourds, squash and pumpkins of seemingly a million varieties, stuff your own scarecrow, hayrides and cut your own flowers. Incredible.

We didn't partake in it all, but I did come away with some maple cream, (droollllll), cider, a gingerbread whoopie pie, some cider doughnuts and a few pears. As we were heading away from the hustle and bustle - a PRECIOUS little girl got up to sing with the band. She was so cute, bouncing along - she didn't know *ALL* of the words, but she definitely charmed the crowd. Such fun!

When we got back to my apartment we worked on Christmas gifts. I'm excited - I'm starting to feel a little inspiration! Usually I'm so stoked about starting on my presents early with a million ideas of what to make for who - but I got stuck in a rut this year. I haven't been able to think of good presents for anyone. Thank goodness a few ideas have started to pop into my head, or have been suggested to me! Less than two months - ahhhhhhhhhh.

I've also been crafting a bit for a small shop update. I have some very specific ideas concerning my Etsy shop for the future...but I'll discuss those ideas in the near future!

I'm going to be needing plenty of blogging fuel because this year I will be attempting to participate in NaBloPoMo, where you post every day for the month of November. I figured if I can do this picture a day thingy - the least I can do is post my picture, if I'm not feeling particularly witty or wise on that said day. We'll see how it goes!

Market Day/Cooking Day

Today was just one of those drizzly fall days where I couldn't be more content to stay inside and

cook



all



day



This is a butternut squash and caramelized onion galette which I based on the recipe found here. I made quite a few changes/skipped a few steps. I didn't pre-refridgerate the flour and the butter, because a) I'm impatient and b) I've made pastry dough a thousand times and have never come across the merits of doing it! I didn't use lemon juice in the dough, and I added yogurt instead of sour cream. I rolled oregano and thyme into the dough. I didn't have fresh sage - so I used ground - about 1 1/4 tablespoons - and I find the finished products slightly too sage-y for my taste, but very tasty nonetheless.

I brought so many lovely things home from the farmers market today - including this gorgeous garlic braid. I always do a walk around before I purchase anything. I was searching for a braid, such as this, but I must have missed it on my initial visual sweep. Consequently, I went a little garlic crazy because I had already purchased four heads of garlic before I picked the braid up. I think I'm pretty much set for winter in the garlic department! Maybe I should make garlic soup?

I also brought home a squash, for the galette, two shallots, thirteen (yes THIRTEEN) turnips, (they were pretty...I couldn't resist), a bunch of carrots, popcorn on the cob from Wake Robin Farm, four scones; mixed berry, raspberry, orange and orange chocolate and Italian style sausage from Kellie Brook Farm. Kellie Brook Farm makes breakfast sandwiches at their stand with croissants, cheese, farm fresh eggs and their own sausage...and let me tell you, it was the best breakfast sandwich of ALL TIME! So tasty.

I got a little soaked in the rain at the market, so it was nice to come home and have a relaxing day of visiting with one of my old dance students, cooking, a little more Christmas knitting (I'm on wrist warmer #2), and computer time! I've been thoroughly obsessed with classical music in the past week - and I love the live broadcast from WCRB. I never knew this, but on Saturday nights they broadcast live from Symphony Hall in Boston - so neat!

Tomorrow I have a super fun day planned...but I'll save that for tomorrow.

P.S. Hi to anyone popping over via 52 Projects, Glimmer and Supernaturale!

Help Rebuild Shangrila

Hey peeps - I'm posting this on behalf of Christie, an evacuee from the San Diego fires who watched her home burn down on the news. She was interviewed on the CBS Early Show, which you can watch here. Her three small children also saw the footage, and are understandably devastated.

This family needs help, and you can do something. Visit Rebuild Shangri-la. There you can find directions to make a monetary donation via PayPal. Christie has also started compiling a practical list of things that they might need. The family is also still receiving mail and the address is provided. Even if you can't afford to donate anything, consider sending an e-mail of support to Christie and her family. They are going to need all the help that they can get in the coming months.

Fall-ish Activities

This was the purpose for the whole pumpkin adventure - Black Bean and Pumpkin soup. The recipe is from Once Upon a Tart, one of the most crazy awesome cookbooks ever. Some of the recipes are a little labor intensive, but totally worth the time that you put into them. The food photography is definitely drool inducing as well. This soup was a little more black beany than pumpkiny (which I should have anticipated looking at the black bean to pumpkin proportions in the recipe) for what I was in the mood for, but very good nonetheless. I garnished it with some fresh parmesan and my roasted pumpkin seeds. Oh yum. I saw a recipe for pumpkin and pear soup somewhere, maybe I'll try that next to see if it satisfies the pumpkin craving!



Last night was Stitch n' Bitch night, so I started a new project. These will be wrist warmers to match the hat that I made for my sister-in-law. I felt a little lame just giving her a hat, since it took me like two days to make. I'm kinda winging this pattern as I go along and I'm really digging it. I love how the seed stitch looks. There is going to be ribbing at the top in the brown/white variegated yarn (which is local - yay!). It's going to end up being more loose and flopping rather than the traditional form fitting wrist warmers. We'll have to see how they end up, but I have high hopes!

Oh - and I totally forgot, with all the woe is me, I hate my job right now, moping about, etc. to link to the article that was written about my outreach work in the paper. Good job stuff here. I thought the article was great except for the part where they quoted me saying a DOUBLE NEGATIVE. Oh the little english nerd inside me cringed to read the super valley girl sentence: ""A lot of people say they can't dance," she said. "To me, that's so 'un-entirely' not true. I think everybody can dance." Like, for sure. (Silently screaming).

Excuse me while I poo myself!

Jeffrey Yamaguchi of 52 Projects featured the Year of Outfits Project on his blog.

Starstruck. Faling over.

Adventures in Pumpkin Roasting

I think that this is a sign that I have some sort of domestic illness. The principles from Animal, Vegetable, Miracle are so fresh in my mind that I can't go and buy a 99 cent can of pumpkin puree for the soup that I'm making this week. Instead I aquired two medium sized pumpkins, and proceeded to roast them. I can't tell you how awesome my kitchen smelled when I did this! My mom helped me mash the cooked flesh and I separated them into exactly six one cup portions, one of which I'll be using shortly, and the rest I'll be freezing for later.

There are many pros to roasting a pumpkin: It was not that time consuming a project, it saved me money, the pumpkin will be fresher than canned and I got a bonus...the seeds! We let them soak in salt water to clean them off and then roasted those as well, after I sprinkled cinnamon and powdered ginger on them. Bestill my heart! These pumpkin seeds are the perfect salty/spicy snack.

I've gone on a crazed local linking binge over the past few days - which you can see at my delicious page. I've pretty much discovered that New Hampshire/New England rules - and there is much bounty to be enjoyed that I was never even aware of!

In other news, let me step off of my "buy-local" soapbox, I saw an incredible production of "The Piano" today up in Portland. Unfortunately it is the closing show - so if you weren't there today, you missed it. What a great play! I'm so lucky to have a husband work in a theatre - it means I get to score tickets to all of these lovely things.

Another one of those things was a dance concert that I saw last night. It was pretty amazing and made me both happy and sad at the same time. Seeing this particular concert reminded me of what I really want to be doing in the dance world...and I think that I've lost sight of that as of late. Some of you know I had a tragic, life-changing event happen nearly two years ago, and I think that one of the consequences of that event is that I lost a lot of my nerve. I used to be way more ballsy than I am now, and this dance concert made me see that even more. This was a tiny company, but it's very similar to what I envisioned my company to be. My company no longer exists. I go into the studio and everything I do feels contrived. Work has been less than fulfilling lately, and I'm not sure what to do about it.

Wow - this pumpkin post got heavy quick! I guess that I have a few things on my mind! Another thing that I've realized in the past two years is that life is a) precious and it is b) only what you make it. I'm still young, but every day that goes by where I'm not living to the fullest feels like a day wasted. I guess that about sums up how I'm feeling. I feel like I'm wasting my time working for someone else when I would be more successful just bucking up and working for myself.

Blardy blar.

Busy...

...working on a potential etsy shop update. I need to put a little money in the bank before the end of this year!

In other news - I am sick. My husband rules - he's making tortellini for me. Tomorrow I will be in the newspaper. More news on that...tomorrow.

Blog Action Day : Utopia vs. Reality

When I first visited the Blog Action Day website I signed up to participate immediately. I've been participating in the blogging community in one form or another since 2001, and I've learned over the past six years that powerful voices can be heard through the widespread connections made via the Internet, or as some of us fondly dub it "blog-land," which is why I was all the more intrigued at the thought of thousands of people blogging about one socially relevant issue in a single day.

This issue is the environment - something I've been passionate about practically my whole life - or at least since I took up my protest sign in second grade to complain about the dolphin UN-friendly tuna that my elementary school cafeteria insisted on serving. "Eat the clam-strip sandwich today - our school's tuna kills dolphins!" (It was cute, until the cafe ran out of clamstrips and I was told to put my sign away).

In my perfect world, we'd be driving electric cars, eating everything locally, I'd have a garden in the back of my farm house that sustain my family through out the year, my husband and I would eat homecooked meals every day, I would have the skill to make all of my clothing, or make everything I own for that matter and I would never have to go to a super store for anything, or buy another goddamned drop of gasoline.

This, however, is not reality.

Does that mean that I throw my hands up in the air and wait for the apocolypse? Certainly not. I firmly believe in the power of small actions. My house is *greener* than it was a year ago, even six months ago, when we started unplugging appliances at the wall to save on our electricity bill, (Guess what? It saves you big time!). We continue, as a family, to make small changes that stick, that become habit, until we don't even think about them anymore. A few years ago I made the switch to buying Seventh Generation paper and cleaning products at the urging of my very eco-conscious hubby and to the displeasure of my grumpy budget conscious self. I resisted, at first, because the products are more expensive. However, one day I took a moment to read the side of a pack of toilet paper - and I'll give you some quotes: "If every household in the US replaced just one 4-pack of 400 sheet virgin fiber bathroom tissue with 100% recycled ones, we could save: 1,450,000 trees, 3.7 million cubic feet of landfill space, equal to over 5,500 full garbage trucks, 523 million gallons of water, a year's supply for over 4,100 families of four and avoid 89,000 pounds of chlorinated pollution." I'm willing to pay an extra dollar or two to try and attain those statistics. Small actions are powerful indeed.

So see what you can get in season from your farmer's market, buy that Christmas gift from a local artisan instead of the mall, or if you're feeling adventurous make it yourself, buy one roll of earth friendly toilet paper, let's put money into the hands of people that are socially conscious human beings and take it out from the grip of big corporations. Consume less, enjoy what you have more! Bottom-line is do what you can, and when you're ready do a little more. It is these small actions that will tally up to great results. I have faith in that.

Local Goodness

I bought these eggs from one of my dance students. I'm so enamored of the colors, I almost don't want to use them!

I've been reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle leisurely over the past few weeks, and I'm dreading that it's coming to an end. This book has definitely made me examine what I eat - and when, without being pushy, or preachy. It's a gem of a book - I would recommend it to EVERY ONE.

I went to my local farmer's market today for the first time in years, and I'm kicking myself for putting it off until the end of the season. Today I bought: pork chops, beeswax candles and lip balm, lavender and oatmeal soap, beautiful wool roving - for an upcoming project. I've also recently sought out local vendors for the aforementioned eggs, milk and goat yogurt.

I've always bought organic food in the supermarket - but like most Americans, as Kingsolver points out in her book, I'll admit I haven't paid attention whatsoever to what is actually in season. This book led me to make fabulous Google discoveries such as:

Pick Your Own: A database of pick your own farms in every state in the union.

Slow Food Seacoast Blog: A blog about local, sustainable food resources and events (potluck dinners - OH YUM) celebrating these resources.

Seacoast Eat Local: A comprehensive resource guide on food in MY area

I'll eventually put the links to those sites in my sidebar -but I'm feeling a little sleepy for now. I have a feeling that these are sites that I will be frequenting for years to come!

Crafty ADD - or "Why my house is always a mess"

I started to clean today, I really did.

My apartment is disasterous - as per usual, much to the chagrin of my very neat-ish hubby. So I thought, oh I'll be nice and pick things up a little bit so that hubby can come home to a decent looking house, instead of usual, previously mentioned pigsty.

Then I walked into the kitchen and saw this:



and this:



Plastic bags leeching the cute out of my happy homemaker existence. I don't even really use plastic bags anymore. I have re-usable ones from the grocery store. We simply hang on to these plastic baggies to re-use as trash bags, or take things to peoples houses, or stuffing for packages and such.

I took the bags down from the shelves/fridge to find we had enough of them to serve the aforementioned purposes for our lifetimes:



Insert this face here.

There was sewing to be done immediately. I used this tutorial - (you'll have to scroll down a bit) - as a guideline. I thought that 30" long would be gigantic for a plastic bag dispenser, but boy was I wrong. The massive finished project could not contain all of our plastic bags...there is still a small bagful on top of the fridge - sheesh. I'm still pleased with the results:





TA-DA!



This thing is so stuffed to the seams, I could do serious bodily injury with it. I used two of my precious Super Buzzy fabrics - the matroyshka and Russian village prints, and some scraps from my stash. Now I have to make re-usable bags for Matt to keep in his car - clearly we don't need anymore plastic in this house.

So the moral of this post is that I never get anything done around here because I get distracted and start a project, or read, or create a trail of little messes or any of those three in combination. I'm trying to improve, but hey, such is life. And now I have a cute plastic bag dispenser - so my kitchen sort of looks prettier. Maybe I should make a waterproof drape for the sink to cover up those dirty dishes...hmmm.

Christmas Prezzy #2...I'm on a roll

I finished this for one of my nieces for Christmas. She has a sister that is close in age and my next task is making a similar one for her. I tend to do similar Christmas gifts for them because I figure that sister's that close in age probably fight over stuff, so I might as well make for one what I make for the other! This is such a fun project, very easy to stitch and chat at the same time which is what I did at my mom's Stitch n' Bitch last night. The other ladies tend to stick to knitting, but I bring whatever needle craft I happen to be working on at the moment.









More pictures:

If anyone is interested in making this I put a tutorial on Flickr last year. I did change something this time around though, and it comes out much cleaner. I cut out the circles in a medium weight interfacing in the proper size and iron them onto my chosen fabrics. Then I leave about half an inch of material overhanging on the circle. As I applique them onto the scarf, I tuck my ends around - leaving a slightly puffy circle with no frayed ends. Let me know if you make one!

Cheers, S

Slightly Angered

Yesterday I followed a link on Gemma's blog to read a scathing opinion piece attacking Jane Brocket and her forthcoming book The Gentle Art of Domesticity.

My blood just about boiled when I read what this mean-spirited reporter had to say. Fine Liz, if making quince jelly is not for you, than just leave it to the rest of us that like to do those types of things!

My comments, and there were more than one, haven't appeared on the site yet, but my first was something to the effect of: I am married, working my dream job, and at night after a long day I come home and I sew and I cook, and you know what? I love it! I call my self a feminist and for me being a feminist means having the choice to create the kind of life I want to live. If that life is not for you, then fine, but from your angry tone it doesn't sound as though you're a very happy person.

As for the comment "Why should we when we can buy it. It's what craft fairs and farmers' markets are for. Some hand-knitted bed socks and a jar or two in the cupboard with a paper lid and a handwritten label can do wonders for one's domestic self-esteem." Well fine, support craft fairs! Support the farmer's market! But take a moment to realize that these things that you're throwing money at to boost your domestic self esteem were made or grown by loving hands, not sewn by some kid in a third world country chained to a desk without a pee break for 14 hours. Craftivism can be powerful, not useless - I suggest that Liz should read "The Crafter's Culture Handbook" by Amy Spencer.

I make homemade Christmas gifts to make the holidays more meaningful and step away from the capitalist bullshit that the media impresses upon us. Not because my husband is forcing me to churn out handmade muffins and goods by the hour. Grr.

I think that Jean Railla says everything I'm blabbering about in a much more coherent way in her essay Feminism and the New Domesticity.

I also wrote on my comment that I had never heard of Jane Brocket's blog/book before and I've now subscribed to her blog and will certainly be looking for her book in the bookstores. She sounds like my cup of tea, unlike Ms. Hunt.

Love it

This is my first completed Christmas 2007 present, a hat for my sister-in-law. This was a fun little knitting project and only took me a couple of days.

I'm delirious right now and am not feeling witty enough to come up with a coherent post. Here's my hat blogland, love it! HA.

That's all,

S