Check out this vest crocheted by cheryl (ravelry). She says in her Ravelry project page, “I love the looks I get from those who remember what this is.”

I’ve been loving Twitter lately. Many months ago, my brother (my arbiter of all things geeky-cool) got me to sign up, but I went a long time without understanding why he liked it. Then, when the number of people I was “following” reached critical mass, it clicked. Twitter became a fun part of my day online, but not in an obtrusive or time-consuming way.

What is Twitter? It’s another darn Web 2.0 social networking thingy. Basically, it’s “micro-blogging.” People write up to 140 characters about what’s happening or what they’re thinking right now. So, it’s current, it doesn’t take planning or effort, and you don’t have to do it if you don’t have anything to say. A post on Twitter is called a “tweet.” Also, you can respond to something someone else has said, creating a micro-conversation.

Who sees your tweets? Unless you specify that you want them to be private, tweets are like a blog. If you go to my Twitter page, you see not only my status, but the status of anyone I’m “following.” If you’re following someone that you’ve subscribed to, you’re alerted when they’ve posted a new tweet. Here’s where things start to get interesting. Within a social circle, you’ll find that many people are all following each other, so when someone tweets, others tweet back, and you can observe the interaction. It’s almost like a chat room. If people’s profiles are public, you see not only what they are tweeting, you also see whom they are following. The twitter API or engine is available for developers to play with, and they’ve come up with some fun applications. You can use TwitterTroll to see whom your friends are following and get suggestions on new people to follow. You can use TweetWheel to see a visual graphic of how your friends are connected.

So, you still might be wondering, why is this cool? What’s in it for me? I like it because it’s simple and quick. There are no pictures, and no big time investment. You can do it from your phone, your Blackberry or your computer browser. You can tweet when your kid says something funny or when you see something particularly aggravating in an online article. As my brother says, “Of all the forms of publication that have been invented, Twitter takes the least time and effort.” It’s amazing, because unlike this blog post, which is taking me over an hour to compose, a tweet takes seconds.

We’ve had four dry days here–and a little sun each day, which has been a wonderful change from the previous several weeks. Yesterday was particularly glorious–people really appreciate the sun here. Selma’s third grade teacher made sure the kids had extra time outside canceling science class in favor of an hour on the playground. People everywhere were out walking and hiking and boating and berry picking. I should have been berry picking but I was mostly working. James and the ship left yesterday for Hawaii, and I was catching up since we had spent the weekend doing family stuff.

Today was my drop-in class at The Net Loft–I spend two hours a week there just helping whoever comes in. I had a full table today and taught spinning, crochet and sock knitting in the space of two hours.

Tonight was the Berry Festival sponsored by the Copper River Watershed Project, a non profit whose mission is to protect the environment and encourage responsible land use in the area. The “festival” is a potluck dinner, silent jam auction, and raffle. We like potlucks here because there are few restaurants and no professional caterers to handle fund-raising events. I like them because there are a lot of great cooks in town and its fun to see what people will make. This time, all potluck items (even the savory ones) were to include local berries, and the items were automatically entered into a contest and the best in each category won prizes. (I don’t know what the prizes were). My dessert didn’t win (and even Selma preferred the winning desert to mine; she said mine was second best), but I thought mine was pretty yummy, so you get to have the recipe. A few of the ingredients are indigenous to this area, and I’ll note substitutions.

Fireweed-Nagoon-Pear-Custard Bars

For Crust:

1 c. flour

1/2 c. margarine (non-hydrogenated like Earth Balance)

1/2 c. fireweed honey (substitute 1 c sugar or 1/2 c agave syrup or honey)

Mix flour, honey and margarine until combined. Press into parchment lined 8×8″ baking pan and bake @ 350F until edges are slightly golden (about 15-20 minutes).

Filling:

2 ripe pears, thinly sliced

1/4 c. fireweed honey

3 T Nagoon berry jam (substitute raspberry or blackberry)

1/3 c. flour

1/2 t. baking powder

1/4 t. salt

juice of 1 small lemon

Combine flour, baking powder, lemon, honey, salt, and jam. Gently toss pears in filling mixture. Remove pears and arrange evenly on top of the crust. Pour the extra filling over the pears. Bake @ 375F for about 20 minutes or until the filling is puffy and no longer jiggly.

Allow to cool slightly before slicing into small squares.

Back in May, just before leaving Maryland, I was asked to record some instructional crochet videos for a small startup company called Monkey See that’s making how-to videos and posting them online. The videos are finally up, and although I have a hard time watching myself, you may find some of them useful. A Tangled Skein graciously agreed to be our hosts for the filming; I love the backdrop of all the yarn. Emily came along and was a big help with setting up and crocheting little “step out” pieces.

Here’s the Introduction:

There are videos on:

Crocheting a chainless foundation

Crocheting linked stitches

Crocheting ribbing and attaching single crocheted ribbing (great for folks who are making the Sombrero tea cozy).

Making post stitch ribbing

Crocheting crossed stitches in my favorite method.

Crocheting V Stitches

And three clips on crocheting in the round:

Starting with a chain

Starting with an adjustable ring

Increasing in the round

I’m looking forward to referring folks to the videos in my patterns since it’s sometimes challenging to succinctly describe a new concept with just words.

Last week I taught the first of a two-part beginning crochet class at The Net Loft, our local yarn store.

They were quick learners and lots of fun to work with. When I suggested that we make a baby hat the following week, they asked if we could make a tea cozy instead. I had been thinking I’d like a tea cozy too, so I agreed. When I started working on it, Selma said it looked like a sombrero. Hence the name.

I finished just in time to jot down a rough pattern and run off to class. They’ve all started it and I have a some testers trying out the pattern too, so it I’ll make it  available here soon.

I’ve now lived in 8 states. It turns out different regions of the country have different ways of describing the weather. In upstate New York, where I grew up, we were rather pessimistic about the weather. Throw a bunch of clouds up, and you’re apt to hear that it’s overcast. What in Utica, NY would be called “partly cloudy,” however, would be called “partly sunny” in Seattle. Seattlites are inherently optimistic. On a mostly cloudy day, you’ll often hear weather announcers talking about “sun breaks,” actually announcing little moments when the sun will be peaking around the clouds. Up here in Cordova, they have a different name for sun breaks. They call them “sucker holes.”

Today, after two full weeks of no sun, we had a little right in the middle of my walk to town, and sucker hole or not, it was enough to brighten my day.

Catching Up

Today was a day of catching up–my studio/office is finally set up and a nice comfortable place to work.

I spent the morning formatting some patterns that have been finished since June–so the pattern store should have an update later this week.

A while ago, when I was still buried in boxes and not blogging, I got a lovely package from Emily. Before I left Maryland, she offered to make me some socks. So we went to A Tangled Skein and I bought a skein of Neighborhood Fiber Company sock yarn (hand dyed by local DC dyer Karida) in the Logan’s Circle colorway. The other day, they came.

I love the simple garter rib pattern; it lets the hand-dye really shine, and the socks are a perfect fit. Thanks Emily!

Selma loves soup, and I find it a great way to sneak in healthy things that kids aren’t always excited about eating like beans and greens. We get a wonderful box of produce each week from a CSA farm in Washington State. The box is heavy on the fruit, which is great, I don’t have to work hard to get the kids to eat everything up. This week, Selma requested beets in the box, and they came with big beautiful greens attached. (So did the carrots, actually, but after a little research, I decided they weren’t worth cooking–anyone feel otherwise?). I didn’t want to waste the beet greens, so I made a bisque to make use of them and to warm us up in what continues to be a very rainy September.

The soup turned out to be a big hit (except with Jay–I haven’t convinced him to like soup yet), so I thought I’d share the recipe.

Beans and Greens Bisque

Beet greens, when raw, have a bit of a bitter flavor, but in this soup they seem to add depth and a piquant edge to what would otherwise be a pretty standard bean soup.

2 T olive oil
1 med onion, diced
2 c carrots, sliced
8 oz mushrooms, sliced
1 T thyme
1 t oregano
1 clove garlic, minced
1 cube veg bullion
4 c water
2 cans white beans, drained
1 big bunch beet greens
1 T brown rice vinegar
salt
pepper

Sauté onion in olive oil until translucent. Add carrots and garlic. Add mushrooms, thyme and oregano. When mushrooms are soft, add bullion and water. Bring to a simmer. Add beet greens and white beans. When the carrots and greens are tender, purée the soup. (I use an immersion blender to avoid pouring hot soup into a food processor). Add vinegar. Add salt and pepper to taste.

It’s rained for about seven straight days here. Not just sprinkles, but hard, driving rain. Even the long-time locals are complaining, saying this is the wettest, coldest summer they can remember. Yesterday, I couldn’t even see across the lake to the mountain. Today, it’s a silent, barely visible ghost. The waves and whitecaps on the lake make it look like an ocean.

A few days ago, when the rain had slowed for a few hours to a fine mist, I grabbed my friend Pam (who’s also new in town) to go berry picking. I figured it was our last chance to get salmon berries. I really want to make jam, and all previous attempts at berry picking have just ended as berry eating expeditions. This time was more fruitful. We went to a road I had seen on my way to the little fabric store outside of town. The road came with its own dog to keep away bears which was convenient. We each ended up with almost four quarts. Combined with the few cups I’ve frozen over the last few weeks, I think I’m ready to go.

Since the Fall Interweave Crochet preview is now out, I can finally post my own pictures. I grabbed these snapshots in a hurry as I rushed to get this sweater mailed in under the wire this spring.

Kim, who does not love having her picture taken (but who was the only neighbor home and a PERFECT fit for the sweater!) agreed to let me take them. Thank you, Kim!

The sweater is crocheted in Lorna’s Laces Green Line DK. It’s a hand-dyed organic merino, and I would call it a chubby dk as it is really almost worsted. It was wonderful to work with–both I and Carol, my star crocheter on this project liked working with it too, I think. This is one sweater I’ve had to part with that I will very likely make again for myself. I’m considering teaching it as a follow-up class to the beginning crochet I’ll be teaching at The Net Loft over the next couple of weeks.

Last week, the small town of Cordova was obsessed with mushrooms. It’s prime mushroom hunting season, and the annual festival was held. Mycologists from all over the country made the trek and we had a “mycoblitz” to try and identify as many local mushrooms as possible. But the mushroom hunting wasn’t just about eating. One of the experts who visited was Dorothy Beebee, famed mushroom dyeing expert and illustrator of the new book Mushrooms for Dyes, Paper, Pigments and Myco-Styx. Dorothy flew in to teach a workshop on mushroom dyeing. In the days leading up to the workshop, those of us who had registered went on mushroom forays. Here’s a bit of what we found.

It turns out Cordova is the home to lots of color-producing mushrooms. We learned on our hikes that certain mushrooms need the right light, heat and plants around them–for instance, where blueberries and dogwood grow under spruce, you’re likely to find the mushroom (above) that makes a salmon colored dye. There’s a lichen that makes a great coppery brown and a shelf-mushroom that makes a cool yellow-y green.

On Sunday we all gathered for the workshop. We were divided into groups and went to work cooking our dyebaths. It was pretty much as simple as chopping up the mushrooms and putting them in some water. All of our fiber samples (we had wool and silk) had been pre-mordanted (i.e. treated with a metal solution that helps the dye adhere) with alum or iron. Lichens actually have mordants built in, so they don’t require it in the fibers.

The fiber samples stayed in the dye bath for 30-60 minutes. Meanwhile we snacked on mushroom pizza

Here are a few of the samples.

After dyeing the samples we did a second round of dyeing with yarn we had pre-mordanted with Alum. I haven’t photographed my yarn yet, but I’ll post it here soon. The colors in the yarn are more subtle since they were dyed second.

You can see all my pictures from the week on flickr.

UPDATE: Theresa of the Bagatell blog has a great post about her own mushroom dyeing class with detailed samples–she was collecting many of the same mushrooms that we were.