Wooooooooooh!

Happy Halloween Everybody!

Brett and I just finished carving our pumpkins. And they look MAHVelous.

Next we're going to roast the seeds.


I seem to remember trying this long ago and not being impressed with the results. Let's hope that either technique or tastebuds have changed enough to make a difference.

I redeemed myself after the polenta disaster with a very nice (from scratch) white cake. I made two layers, but we're going to freeze one so we can have homemade cake on a work night.

So I was wondering how making polenta would go? The answer is not well.

When I'm not playing with wool, I'm playing with my food

One of my favorite things to do with my days off is cook.

Right after missing the people I worked with, the thing I miss most about the 1900 farm was having the chance to cook a great big meal every day and have it enjoyed and critiqued. Working with simple ingredients, basic tools like a wood burning stove, and poorly written instructions from hundred year old cook books taught me more about cooking than anything else I've done. Even more than my food guru Alton Brown. It was stressful at times, but incredibly rewarding.

I still love to cook, but it's hard to motivate yourself to cook something wonderful after a day of work. On my days off, then, I can put out a serious spread. Tonight we had a fall dinner. Brett seared us up a lovely appetizer of little bay scallops. We had a pork loin, seared in a little butter along with a couple Honeycrisp apples and a shallot, flavored with sage, thyme and bay, then braised in chicken stock. I turned the baked apples into a savory applesauce, and reduced the braising liquid into a gravy. I trimmed up a stalk of brussel sprouts from the farmer's market and made a sauce for them from chicken stock and cream. And I finally got to used a box of spaetzle Aunt Karen gave me for Christmas either last year or the year before. Now we're eating chocolate pudding. Yumm!

Of course, cooking big meals means lots of left overs. I'm seeing pork loin sandwiches and spaetzle n' cheese in our future.

But it'll have to be for lunch tomorrow, cause tomorrow night (if we're not watching game 7 Yankees vs Angels in NY. Brett got tickets through the Hall) we're going to have creamy polenta and bolognese sauce. I've never made polenta before, so we'll see how that goes. We're also probably going to carve our pumpkins, so there will be pumpkin seeds to roast. And maybe some creme brulee for after dinner?

I love days off!

Rhinebeck!

It was a fiber fiend's dream come true! Oh my goodness. Yesterday was a wonderful and very full day.

Brett and I left the house around 8:00 and took a beautiful scenic route to the fair. Brett took care of mapping our route and I'm so glad he did because a huge part of the fun of the day was the drive out. We drove through the hometown of Rip Van Winkle, and along a very steep mountain road with a pretty intense drop off to the right.
the drop to the right here was scary! snow on the mountaintops

The colors were awesome and Brett saw a black bear in the road! At exactly the same moment he saw the bear we were driving past a barn that had a big weathervane in the shape of a black bear, so while Brett was shouting, "Look at that big black bear!" and I was saying, "yeah, that's really neat" we weren't at all on the same page and I missed the real wild bear because I was impressed with a weathervane!

Once we got to the fair, we hit the bathrooms and stopped to check out the arena. We were just in time to catch the leaping lamas competition.

we identified an early favorite leaping lama



but had to cheer hardest for the hometown heroine, Lynn, our neighbor from down the street and her little guy. He was the last alpaca standing in the competition. Way to go Lynn!



We saw the community college students launch pumpkins with homemade trebuchet. It took them a long time to reset everything between launches.
but when they launched it was impressive.



I was most entertained by the dorky non-knitting husbands who spent a lot of time talking amongst themselves about the engineering behind the rigs and episodes of Mythbusters that may or may not have proved one thing or another about the trebuchet's effectiveness as a weapon of war.

We also watched a sheepdog at work and frisbee dog demonstration. These two pups were fast dogs.



There was a ton of fun stuff besides the fiber,


but if it hadn't been for the yarn, we'd have been hanging out at home yesterday not eating awesome gyros and cheese fries. Oh my goodness there was a ton of the fluffy stuff. Brett got a ton of pictures of me walking around with my mouth hanging open and my eyes slightly glazed. And a few were I look like the kind of person who might knock you down and steal your wool if you don't tell me where I can buy it.



(note the one mitten approach to maximize warmth, manual dexterity, and yarn fondling capacities.)




I had a really really nice day.



Also, I came home with sweet loot.






In that mix, I've got some Socks that Rock sock yarn that reminded me of the colors we saw on the trip out, a copy of "The New Stranded Colorwork" signed by the compleately charming Mary Scott Huff (there is a pattern in it called "Norwegian Blue" inspired by the Monty Python dead parrott sketch), some steel grey merino lace for my sweater, a skein of creme colored sportweight that Brett grabbed of his own accord and said, "if you knit me a hat out of this, I would wear it," a skein of solar seawater dyed pearly grey also intended for a Brett knit, and a bump of lovely merino top to spin.

To top it off, on the way home a box magically appeared out of Brett's jacket pocket containing a glorious set of glass knitting needles.

I feel like the Cinderella of knitting! So I need to stop blogging for goodness sake and get to work.

Baaaa

Tomorrow is Rhinebeck!

Budget is set. Brett's handling all the details. All I have to do is go and take as many pictures as possible.

Say it with me now...

RHINEBECK!

Pressure

Last night I had a terrible migraine. I don't often get them, so I've noticed some patterns. Usually they have one of three causes: dehydration, caffeine, or air pressure.

Knowing that if it was caffeine related, there wasn't anything to do, I drank a bunch of water, took a couple Excedrin and went to bed. When I woke up this morning and there was a blanket of snow on the ground I wasn't exactly surprised.


First snow of winter '09-'10: Friday October 16th!

Last winter just about this time, there was a horrible early snow storm that trapped Brett alone in the just moved into house on Donlon without heat, phone, cable, internet, or snowshoes. Can't wait!

Bummer

So, I didn't get the job. I am, as is to be expected, devastated.

I got the call around 1:00 which made for a hard afternoon at the bakery, but Brett came by and gave me a hug and stocked up on tasty goodies. So now instead of asking people how I can help them, all I have to do is sit on the couch and eat the Ben and Jerry's my future husband wisely invested in.

I was told that I was one of the final two candidates. That should make me feel good, and in another week, it probably will. And they liked my presentation so much, they offered me a different position working part time as a museum teacher. If I saw that position posted I would have been just as excited about it as I was about the one I actually interviewed for. Right now, though, it feels like a big time silver medal when I was sure I had earned gold. I will (future tense) be happy about it, I'm sure, but I guess I need some time to grieve.

RHINEBECK!!! couldn't be more longed for or necessary at the moment. As every knitter knows, wool heals all wounds. Ben and Jerry's and love doesn't hurt either.

patience is a virtue

It's Monday. Logically, I know I won't hear about the job at the Hall for "about a week and a half" so, conservatively, Wednesday.

It's killing me. I've been checking my e-mail constantly, hoping that maybe, just maybe, they made a decision early and (joy of joys!) it's me and I can have the job and an office and teach again. It would be very good.

Last Monday I thought that the wait wouldn't be so bad, because I'd be at work and the time would just fly. But it's been impossible not to think about it every minute. I imagine Brett is very tired of me saying, "I really want that job" over and over again. While I know I gave a great interview and I clicked with the staff and my resume is strong, I've been thinking about all the other people who could have interviewed who could be so much more qualified. Grumble grumble.

In the mean time, I'm knitting but I can't show you because it's Christmas Knits. Bwahahahahaha!

POV

I went for a nearly pain free run today and I'm pretty psyched about it. I bought a new pair of running shoes last night at the Sneaker Store in New Hartford and it was a good idea. The knowledgeable staff looked at my feet and my ankles, listened to my price range and found me a lovely pair of stability shoes that let me run 50% longer than I usually do with minimal shin pain. It's going to take a while for them to work their magic, but they feel good today.

Next weekend is the uber awesome New York Sheep and Wool Festival in Rhinebeck, NY. Since I've wanted to go since first hearing about it, I will be dragging Brett and making the pilgrimage down to see the sheep and commune with the People of the Wool. There will be lamb tacos and pumpkin chunking and frisbee dogs and lots and lots and lots of wool. I've decided I need to have a project or two in mind to buy for or I'll probably buy too much.

Project A:
The Featherweight Cardigan needs about 1200 yards of laceweight yarn. It calls for Malabrigo Lace, which would be fantastic, but I bet I can find something as awesome and much more unusual at Rhinebeck. I need something with close to a 470 yd/50 g weight. I want this to be a celebration purchase for when the Hall of Fame offers me the job (cough cough) so I want a nice flexible color I can wear to the office. Pearl grey, or oatmeal, or go bold with a cherry red or maybe even the chartuese in the pictures I first was attracted to.

Project B:
A great pair of socks. It's easy to buy sock yarn, and I knit more socks than anything else.

I'm also giving myself budget room to buy skeins that I fall in love with, provided I buy enough to make a matching hat and mitten set.

I've been super good about not buying yarn for the stash this year and last and Rhinebeck is a once a year event so I'm ok with indulging this year.

I've decided to make Saturdays a new weekly ritual where I take a picture of my view. I love reading blogs with lots of pictures. So every Saturday I'm going to point the camera out the window and show you a shot of the weather, the scenery, the whatever. Today it's the fall colors across the street and the pumpkin on the front step. Enjoy!

Leaf Peepers

I have absolutely no good reason for not posting before now, other than I don't have much of interest to report.

We're still unpacking boxes, more slowly now than in the beginning, but now we're down to knick knacks and whatnots instead of clothes and cooking utensils. That's nice.

Our new rental is extremely awkwardly set up for furniture placement. It's a beautiful house architecturally, but it's an old house, so there's quite a few big windows that conflict with putting things against walls. The second story is a well finished attic, so the ceilings pitch down very abruptly. Again, a ton of non-functional space. We are left with rather a lot of furniture that doesn't fit well in the house making things feel odd and uncomfortable. We're set up for optimal usage of the space, in that things make sense where they are, but they don't feel or look like they're in the right spot. Hard to explain.

Cooperstown is drop dead beautiful right now. Rather a lot of golden fall sunshine on dramatic hills. Lots of pretty colors in the trees. We live right next to a cider mill now so when I get home from the bakery I'm greeted by the smell of apple cider and pie and woodsmoke. Not bad, all around.

Other good news:
Brett and I got a joint membership at the local gym. It was more expensive than it would have been anywhere else, but it's still affordable and a really good idea for us both. The heated indoor flat track is a lot more enjoyable to run on than the cold, rainy, unlit hilly roads. We can also cross train in the pool or on the climbing wall, or use the bowling alley, or whatever, so that's great.

I interviewed for a position at the Baseball Hall of Fame on Monday. I really really really really really want the job, so I hope they think I'm as perfect for the position as I think the position is for me. I'll update with either shouts of jubilation or gnashing of teeth and rending of garments sometime next week.

In crappy news I have a horrible head cold that won't go away and I feel like ugh.