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.

In Cordova, there’s no mail delivery to houses, so we all get our mail at the post office. Yesterday, when I picked up my mail, there was a little key with a number on it in the box and a tag that said: “Return key after using.” I took the key and went to the box indicated and pulled out a package. From Potter Craft:

An early preview copy of my book! Of course, there was no one I knew in the post office, so no one would understand why I was jumping up and down, so I kept my celebration to a minimum. I did run off to The Net Loft, our lovely local yarn store and showed Dotty, the owner, who has done a lot make me feel welcome here, but tonight is Tuesday, and if I were still in Maryland I’d be bringing it to SSK at Adega where many of the amazing hands who made the book possible by stitching the samples will be knitting. I miss you guys!

Yesterday I gathered fireweed again with my friend Shelly as well as clover blossoms to make her recipe for fireweed “Honey.” It’s a sugar syrup flavored with the fragrant blossoms. (We substituted cream of tartar for the Alum in the recipe linked to here, since I didn’t want to use Alum–the it worked great and produced a nice clear syrup).

Of course, we had to try it out, so I made pancakes for dinner (oh, if you use that recipe, you can cut the baking powder in half). It was very yummy–it is thick like honey when cool, but thin enough for a pancake syrup when warm.

On Saturday, we spent the day exploring the Copper River Delta:

We had a nice view of Scott Glacier:

and had lunch al fresco:

We saw moose tracks, coyote tracks and bear tracks, but no actual wildlife. On our way home, look what we saw in the high school parking lot:

It seems like I get to the end of each day here and I can’t believe how little I’ve gotten done. The process of settling in is slow and I have a hard time being patient. Selma has started school, so her routine is underway, and she is happy with it. Jay’s preschool doesn’t start for a couple more weeks. He’s still a bit out of sorts and asking periodically to go back to Maryland. I’m hoping once he’s in school too, I’ll get my own daily rhythm and I can get more done.

This is fireweed. It grows everywhere around town. The other day I went berry picking and we collected about 5 quarts of fireweed blossoms. Shelly, who was our guide for the day gave me recipes for Fireweed Jelly and Fireweed “Honey” which is a sugar syrup flavored with fireweed and clover.

I soaked the blossoms overnight as Shelly instructed, then I drained them, rinsed them, and boiled them in a little water and lemon juice (about half as much water as blossoms). Then I strained the juice in a mesh strainer and then through a cheese cloth. (The cheese cloth was a good idea–I strained out some dust and tiny critters that way). I froze the resulting juice and I’ll make the jelly later when I’ve accumulated some canning supplies.

We picked berries that day too, but we ate practically all of what we picked so it will take another trip if we want to can some jam or make pies.

These are Alaskan Wild Blueberries–they are a bit more astringent than regular blueberries but they have a nice fragrant flavor.

This is a Salmonberry. It is a little more tart than a raspberry, and it’s bigger and more fragrant. Also, the bushes have far fewer prickly parts. Salmonberries grow everywhere around here. The ripe ones range in color from yellow to dark red, you have to tell by plumpness an feel rather than color. Selma wants to can a batch of orange salmonberry jam if we find enough of them. Melissa is willing to climb steep banks to get the ripest berry:

Berry picking is not something folks are encouraged to do alone because the berries are bear food and you don’t want to get in between a bear and his snack. Most people find that having a gaggle of kids along with you on a hike discourages any wildlife from coming too close.

We’re still here! Just digging our way out of boxes:

It’s great to be in our house, but I can’t wait until things are put away.

As fun as it looks, even the kids are getting sick of boxes. Their rooms are unpacked; it’s a bit like Christmas finding your toys after a 1-month separation from them.

Since there’s nothing to show you yet in the interior of the house, I’ll leave you with some pics of our back yard. (You can see more on flickr).

Lost.

One of the things I love about moving is getting lost. When I’m exploring a new area, I love to wander around back roads feeling my way and learning the area. I had thought that it wouldn’t be possible to get lost in Cordova, but it turns out there’s plenty of roads to loose my way on (even though, locals say “out the road,” as if there’s only one, whenever they’re talking about things away from town), and each one seems to offer a better view of mountain or water or rainforest.

Found.

Things in Alaska are expensive, things in Cordova, are about twice that much. In the general store, a bag of potato chips regularly costs $8.99. I was relieved to find a small Salvation Army store on the main street here in town. Yesterday we found an old electric piano there that Selma bought for herself for just a few dollars, and when she was trying out the piano, the cashier said, “are you a Suzuki student?” It turns out she was two about 10 years ago, and her teacher still lives in town, but stopped teaching when she had children. We called the teacher, and she’s going to take Selma on as a student.

Our first day here we got a call from Kristy (flickr), the wife of the Engineering Officer on the ship saying that there was a gathering to plan the upcoming weekend’s Coast Guard Day picnic. It turned out to be an impromptu craft session as well with knitting and crocheting, quilting and one new friend Pam (shown here hand quilting a beautiful stained glass quilt) showed us her handmade paper collection including some made from dryer lint! (We’re all going to start saving ours asap). Kristy is the unofficial photographer of the group, and she took this shot:

Finished.

When I was planning our x-country journey, I fantasized about not having work projects to do, and using the travel time to finish up UFOs. Well, I ended up taking on work instead, but I did get to work on a couple of small projects some washcloths to give as hostess gifts, and a shawl for a friend–this is my Antique Lace Shawl worked in Malabrigo’s new silk and merino yarn.

Returned.

James was due to return with the ship this morning. (The last time we saw him was the morning of June 11th). Last night at about dinner time, I got simultaneous calls from James and the ship’s ombudsman saying that they were coming in tonight instead. The family members of the ship’s crew gathered at a point along the sound to wave to them as they passed by, then we jumped in our cars and drove to the pier to greet them.

Delivered.

Our household goods arrive tomorrow, so I may be buried in boxes and off the computer for a while. I do not like unpacking, so hopefully, I’ll power through and get it over with quickly.