bee creative

busy week

It's been a very busy week for me at work but I have a few things I've been playing with at home:

 I'm trying fermented pepper sauce for the first time.  The directions are from here. 

Dye samples.  The blues are black bean soaking water, some with copper pennies and some with out over printed fabrics.  The yellow is onion skin. The blue beneath the yellow sample was originally the yellow and then over dyed in the black bean.  It's hard to see but the brown print picked up a yellow tinge from the onion.

And the weather report:

Hoping for some sun today...

market part two

            All my examples plus a few hats for sale.


There were several of us carding and spinning yarn (drop spindle and spinning wheels), a few table looms, inkle looms and bead looms for people to see and me knitting. I also gave a lesson in crochet. 

And I finally learned how to use this loom!

The loom was given to me with this project already on it, but it wasn't all the way set up.  One of the other vendors showed me how to create the shed with this loom and then Patty, manager of the market and a weaver, showed me how to finish setting up the loom and gave me a few other pointers. 

We really couldn't figure out what kind of project the person who set up the project was trying to do as there is only about three inches of workable space.  Maybe she was just learning how to set up the loom?  I'm going to play a bit and then take it apart and then practice warping this loom. 

Thanks Mom for the top two pictures!

from the market

Yesterday I spent the afternoon carding, spinning and knitting at one of the local markets.  So much fun to share what I know and learn from others!  And I bought a few things too.  The knitting needles were even made from a local lilac tree!

Yesterday's yarn.  I used the roving and the needles I bought at the market for the most part.

Today's yarn.  I have it folded over to see if I could compare the white on the left side to the plant dyed (a mixture of apple leaf, marigold, and onion skins) yarn on the right.

The black has peacock feather's carded in.  It's from Schoonover farm.  There are pictures of my sky scarf and the market on their blog.  All of the gray in my sky scarf is from them as well.  The knitting needles were made by Alan Berry.  I don't think he has a blog or web site.  The red and teal roving is from Jonasson Farm. 

More to come!

always under a rainbow...

Finished the rainbow hat:

and went off in search of more colors...

Lunch from the Wednesday market.

Along the bay.

Stone, water, sky and waves.

Mussels, clams and barnacles.

Need to add some green for seaweed.

Maybe some purple for the sea stars.

and then to sail away...

 

 

a bit of this and a bit of that: pizza and yarn

Today was mostly spent spinning yarn, knitting and cooking.

Working on another hat.

Pizza topped with potatoes, walnuts, prosciutto, and blue cheese.

With apple slices.

Recipe for crust from "101 Cookbooks."

Definitely the best pizza I've ever made.  

monsters in the garden

Once again the garden has overwhelmed me:

Hops, bind weed (morning glory) and blackberries growing

willy-nilly.

And the grape,

But there are treasures

Harvested from the side garden tonight.  There will be more cherry tomatoes to pick tomorrow in the hoop house.

And

All but the top fabrics were dyed with plants from my garden except the top one, the red cabbage.  The rest are (descending) onion skin, marigold, hops, apple leaves and hazelnut leaves.  The colors are close but not quite true. 

And there is inspiration:

I think I will sew much of my green fabric together to make a blanket.

And it will have butterflies.

And there is room to dance:

 

This song just makes me smile.

Laura Mvula, "Green Garden."

(For this particular video I found that it's better to turn the sound down just a bit.)

 

 

local: hazelnuts from the garden and a hand spun and knit hat

Finished:

I'm going to call it "working with the blues."

And harvested:

The first of the hazelnuts I've been able to harvest from the trees I planted.  I thought I was picking on the green side (to beat the squirrels and stellar jays), but a few were just about to drop. 

And the second year I've harvested from the mystery tree that's been here since I moved into this house.  A tree most likely planted by a squirrel. 

from the garden: color, food, and medicine

 

Wheat berry salad.  Tomatoes and artichokes from my garden.  Home made cheese, olives, olive oil and vinegar.  These directions (at Nourished Kitchen) for making cheese are very similar to how I make cheese.  I usually use whatever milk I have left over at the end of the week and add vinegar until it curdles.  I've also found that if the curds are kneaded the cheese will be more mozzarella like. 

Rose currant soda.  This goes on my must make every summer list.  The currant crop was light this year, about a cup, so I decided to make a syrup with it.  I was a little short on sugar (not keeping much on hand anymore) and then I remembered the rose sugar I had made by grinding rose petals and sugar together until it was the consistency of powdered sugar.  It was perfect!

1 cup red currants, more or less

1 1/2 cup water

1/2 tea lemon juice

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup powdered sugar made by grinding 1/2 cup dried rose petals with 1/4 cup sugar in a coffee grinder (reserved for spices)  This is an approximate as I did this about a month ago.

Cook the currants, lemon juice and water together for about 15 minutes.  Strain currants to remove the pulp.  Add sugar and return to pan.  Bring to a boil and cook for 2 or 3 more minutes.  Strain again.  Let cool and store in refrigerator.

For a soda stir syrup into mineral water or seltzer.  I use about a tablespoon. I want to try this over yogurt too - as suggested here (101 Cookbooks).

I based this on a recipe in The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters, but the recipe at 101 Cookbooks is similar. 

Harvested.  My two peaches.  They were luscious. 

Hops.  I started a batch of tincture with these.  I've never tried a tincture of hops before so this is an experiment for me.

 

Color.  Red cabbage and onion skins (last years) from the farmer's market and hazelnut leaves, apple leaves and marigold flowers from the garden. 

rain then sun then stars

7:00 AM Rain.  I sat out on the porch and listened and knit...

 Big enough to cover my lap now.

6 PM Sunshine.  I picked shell beans for dinner.

Building layers. Now there are stars in the morning when I let the dogs out.

garbanzos from the garden and other round things

What I learned about growing garbanzos/chickpeas:  they are tasty but not a very productive use of space.  This is what I harvested from six plants.  Six Cannellini beans or Cranberry beans probably produce three times this amount, if not more.  I'll find a spot for a few next year but not much more than this.

Harvested today, plus a pint or two of blueberries.  Making salsa this weekend!

And tonight there is a full moon in my world.