Further Adventures in Wartime Knitting
(Previous entries: Knitted Garments for All, Knitting for Little Men, Knitting Patterns from 1939, the Victory Jumper.)
On the tail end of my Vermont leaf-peeping weekend my friend and I stumbled upon the coolest antiques store EVER. Dozens of vendors each have their own little niche inside the one large room, and I definitely got the impression that this sales model results in higher-quality offerings all around. When we were checking out the owner said she'd enjoyed overhearing my enthusiastic exclamations over the past half hour or so ("Oh my God, a OUIJA BOARD! But don't let me buy it. Don't let me buy it!!!"), which, of course, made me love her treasure trove of an antiques shop all the more.
I just looked it up so I could link to it—Antiques at 27 Main in Bristol, Vermont—and I'm so sad to read they're closing at the end of the year. Why does every place I over-the-moon adore have to go out of business?!
Naturally, I was all over the vintage pattern books and notions. This picture reminds me of playing horseshoes with my grandfather and sister.
This one gives me MAD BABYLUST even though said child is almost old enough to be my grandmother.
I don't know when I'll get around to knitting out of this incredibly charming pattern book (isn't that always the way?), but I can tell you that I'm making use of the claret-colored bias binding in one of my Christmas presents (which I'll blog about in January). I was sewing quite a bit back in August and September, so I have to catch up on sharing those projects too.
Ugh. Still so bummed about that antiques shop going O-O-B!
Leaf peeping in Vermont
I went camping with a friend at Button Bay over Columbus weekend, and we passed the most gorgeous day clambering up and down Mount Abe. 
(It's only recently occurred to me that I ought to finish blogging about Uganda and Rwanda before we leave for Israel and Jordan next month. I can't believe that trip was over a year ago already...)
Harmony Homestead Dispatch #12
A piece of an old syrup bottle I found when I was digging in the garden.
Gail with her pups (Maddy, Ophelia, and Grace).
A monarch (?) caterpillar I found in the garden and moved to a milkweed plant by the greenhouse.
Back to our favorite swimming-hole on the Poultney River.
Greg Marley teaches us about sustainable foraging for wild mushrooms at SolarFest.
Shrooms!Naturally, I can't show you pictures from the very best part of my Vermont trip because I forgot to bring my camera. I went to see As You Like It with my friend Sierra—so much fun to see Shakespeare performed on the lawn of a stately old home, and it was such a treat to see my friend Tom playing Jaques—and then we stayed up late watching for shooting stars. We crammed a lot of fun (creek swimming, sloegin fizzes with dinner, Dorset farmer's market) into my last twenty-four hours.I'm home again now. Need to finish up my India blogging before we head off for Turkey in a couple weeks!
Harmony Homestead Dispatch #11
Above: the view from my tent, 6am; nasturtiums from the garden.Below: SALAMANDER!; Shannon spending some QT with Queenie; Michael, Shannon, and Jim hanging out by the campfire before Gail's birthday dinner; another piece of pottery we found in the garden (from homesteaders who worked this land in the early 20th century).
It's really good to be back!
Owls!
You know when you really like something, and then it turns out everybody else on the planet likes it too, and so its overwhelming popularity makes you like it less? That's how I felt about Kate Davies' Owls.
(My friend Emily's version, knit in Mirasol Sulka. I took this photo when she visited me in New Jersey last October.)So I was gonna knit it, and then I wasn't. And then I was again, as soon as I saw this yarn at the Merck Forest stall at the Dorset farmers' market back in June:
It called to me, and said, 'I am to be an Owls jumper.' So I bought seven hanks and that was that. (Seven was two too many, but I didn't want to run out.) I adore this yarn--it's sturdy and smooshy and gloriously wooly, and a terrific value at $8.75 for 250 yards (even if there's a knot here and there; it's handspun). It's not the most flattering color on me, but I do like the gray Owls best.
Pattern: Owls by Kate DaviesYarn: Merck Forest 100% wool GreenspunNeedles: #9s (#8s for the ribbing)Raveled: here, with notes.
The pattern calls for chunky weight, but the good thing about five million people knitting it is the wealth of pattern notes you can learn from, and lots of people have knit this in worsted weight. (StinaK's notes were especially helpful.) After the short rows on the back of the neck I had to add two more sets of short rows to the shoulders. (I think those short rows on the back were eliminated in the latest version of the pattern because a lot of knitters didn't think it was necessary, but I was knitting from an earlier version and just decided to go with it.) Anyway, it was nice to pause in my knitting and think, 'isn't it marvelous that I have no qualms about winging it? And it's working! Hooray!'
(Of course, I had to take it off the needles and try it on every so often.)
You see why everyone is knitting this jumper?1. There are owls.2. It is the most flattering thing EVER.Did you know a group of owls is called a parliament?
And the buttons are from my grandparents' candy tin. (I really have to get back to the whole make-do-and-mend thing.)
Harmony Homestead Dispatch #10
I had such an awesome time in Vermont this summer that I just had to go back for a couple weeks in September. (The original plan was to move up there, but now I've re-caught the travel bug, so it's on the back burner for now.)The summer was definitely over and all my dear WWOOFers had gone, so the mood on the farm wasn't festive like it had been, but it was wonderful to be back with Gail and Paul and of course I made new friends--especially Hank, who could always be relied upon for interesting philosophical conversation and who brought me pie when I was having a bad day. Harmony Homestead attracts such kind and thoughtful people because that's just the sort of people Paul and Gail are.
I spent more time with the animals on this visit, and it felt GREAT to be harvesting and eating all the stuff I'd planted from seed back in June and July--polebeans, bush beans, carrots, romaine and magenta lettuce, onions, beets, kohlrabi, acorn squash...
The pumpkin patch is taking over.
This is kohlrabi, though you'd be forgiven for thinking it only grows on Mars.
...and I got to press apples for cider! Gail and Paul are coming down for my launch party this weekend and they're bringing a gallon we made last week. HOORAY!
Harmony Homestead Dispatch #9
On my last day in Vermont, Paul and Niki and I met Michael (otherwise known as 'the boy with the long red hair') at his shop for lunch. He restores pianos in this spooky factory space built in 1904:
Niki played this gorgeous piano dating from 1890, and nearly had a heart attack when I told her later that it costs $36,000!
After lunch at Wicksticker's (where, like I said, we had beer and peppermint schnapps on the house), Michael took me back to the shop for a little while, but it was too nice an afternoon to work. So we went for a swim.
It was a perfect last day--at the end of it Gail made her sublimely delicious enchiladas, and we had this for dessert:
(This holy mother of all fruit tarts is from a bakery in Middlebury, but she makes amazing desserts too. Gail is one of those enviable people who can, seemingly without effort, turn a random pile of raw ingredients into edible gold.)I'm going back to Vermont in a week or so, so I'll have more photos to post then!
Harmony Homestead Dispatch #8
The polebeans really took off once we got the teepees set up.
Cattle crossing at the Larsons' farm. Oh, rural life.
Here we are (Niki, Nick, Gail, and Paul) at our favorite snack stand, chowing down on the BEST sweet potato fries ever. Mr. Wicksticker's is set up in the owner's own front yard, and it's right down the road from our favorite swimming spot. Because we have gotten to be such frequent customers, Mark (a.k.a. Mr. Wicksticker--he also makes candles) has taken to giving us free stuff. That day we got a jug of his very own maple syrup (and we gave him some beer), and the day before I left he gave us beer and peppermint schnapps. (Yes, peppermint schnapps, at two in the afternoon.)
Paul and Niki with Queenie, and Avalon peeking out from behind. I'd intended to take many more pictures of the animals, which I'll do when I get back in September.Kate and I are leaving for Peru today and I wasn't organized enough to autoblog this time, so the blog is going to be pretty quiet for the rest of this month. There'll be plenty to blog about when I get back!
Harmony Homestead Dispatch #7
This isn't going to be a useful post or anything--just some photos of us all having too much fun.
Paul makin' the bacon. (Yes, that is a mohawk'd Nick in the background. Ben had shaved his head the night before.)
Ginevra and Niki were the pancake queens: blueberries and raspberries (from the garden), banana, and banana with chocolate chips! I'm not much for pancakes, but I think I ate more than anybody else that morning. They used pumpkin pie spice, which made them that much tastier.
He's got pizzazz even while he's washing the dishes.More tomorrow!
Harmony Homestead Dispatch #6
Well, I'm back in New Jersey for a few more days until we leave for Peru, and I'm missing Harmony Homestead terribly. Seven weeks passed in a blink!Whether we were working or playing, every minute was fun.
We stopped for ice cream after an afternoon at the Manchester farmers' market (where Paul was playing) and a good long browse at Northshire Books (where Linsey picked up a blank book entitled The Wit and Wisdom of Sarah Palin. Bwahahahaha.) From left: Jasmin, Gail, Paul, Nick, Linsey, Niki, Sal, and on the bottom, Geneviève with Grace and Luna. If you look closely you can see that Sal isn't wearing any shoes. That's because his only pair got smelly beyond any possibility of continued wearing, so after ice cream we went to a shoe store, where they had JUST locked the door (it was about 7pm by then). The woman looked down at his feet, unlocked the door again, and ushered him inside. The rest of us sat in the car and laughed and laughed.
A few days later (July 17th, to be exact), we went for a ton of interesting sustainability workshops, good food, awesome live music and contra dancing at Solarfest. Above, Leslie is leading us on a 'weed walk,' where we learned a lot about the medicinal uses of wildflowers like yarrow and stinging nettle.And of course, we spent most of each day in the garden:
You will notice that we were way behind in the planting, and there's a very unfortunate reason for that. At any rate, everything got put in the ground eventually and we're hoping for the best.
This is why they're called polebeans. Paul showed us how to lash, and then Birch Bark Jim (he's the best, I wish I'd gotten a picture of him) helped us construct the tee-pees. That was the most fun I've had in the garden so far.More photos soon!
Harmony Homestead Dispatch #5
Sorry if I've been a deadbeat blogger lately--between farm life and all the fun stuff we do in between, there isn't much time left for puttering around on the internet (which, if I'm being honest, is what I'm always doing at home). Anyway, here's what we got up to last Thursday evening:
Circus Smirkus is a circus run and performed by children and teenagers. I can't tell you how amazing they are--it's like a professional show, so much so that you keep regretting your wasted youth (dude, I was watching Gilligan's Island all summer) even as you are continually delighted by the spectacle. If you ever get a chance to see one of their shows, don't miss it.
Clown noses come with your ticket. Me and my new little bro Nick.
Harmony Homestead Dispatch #4
Lavender and nasturtiums for sale at the Sunday farmers' market in Dorset.Shots from the garden: the polebeans I planted my second day here (much taller since I took this pic); tomatoes; rhubarb (Gail makes the most amazing rhubarb peach crisp--I'm going to blog the recipe!); zucchini (hoping to make fritters out of the flowers, I'll let you know how that goes).
Harmony Homestead Dispatch #3
The sunset edition! Took this one on the ride home from swimming on the Poultney River last week.
And these were taken tonight:
Harmony Homestead Dispatch #2
As promised: puppypalooza! (I neglected to mention that they are Vizslas.) Most of them are going home with their new families tomorrow. It's going to be awfully quiet around here.
Grace (she's the pup Gail and Paul are keeping) and Lilypads (so named for her extra digits) have a tussle in the puppy pen.
Harmony Homestead Dispatch #1
The last week and a half has felt like an age in the very best way; I hardly recognize myself. I am sunburned, bruised, covered in midge bites, I haven't bathed since Thursday--and I couldn't be happier.
Planting bush beans.
A fragment of china, found in the garden, that may have belonged to the very first homesteaders here--a hundred and fifty years ago, Paul guesses. (It might be early 20th century, but it's so much more romantic to imagine it's that much older.)
I play with nine puppies every day. This is Bean. (All but one of the nine are spoken for, and they'll be going to their new homes this weekend. One of the new owners rechristened their puppy 'Uncle Peter,' which I found hilariously inappropriate.)
I had a feeling it would be this way, but I can now say for certain that manual labor has an amazing effect on one's creativity. I've gotten so many great ideas while gardening or doing dishes; I haven't been at the computer much, and yet I've been worlds more productive than I ever was at the library. I've made space in my head, and a lot of really good things are showing up.I have so much more to say about Gail and Paul and all their interesting friends, but it's getting late and I want to post this. More puppy photos in dispatch #2!
Another Adventure
Aaaaaand that's about all I got. Happy Sunday!