C'MON now

so, i'm tapping away productively at my computer at work and i glance outside hoping to catch a glimpse of the sandhill cranes during their spring migration (I work right smack next to a migratory bird refuge)...and this is what i see:

ummm...snow? actually, i just saw the snow. i made katya go stand out in it so i could take the picture.

for crying out loud, people, it's MAY. enough already. give us summer.

i'm going home to knit. sheesh!

Boreal Hat Trick

this is an unbeatable combo: wild cranberries, wild blueberries, and raspberries from the yard. a half-gallon each, a little sugar and some pectin...

...a bit of cooking time...

...and you have the Boreal Hat Trick (as named by Cob)! Dea wanted to know how to make jam and i had some extra berries in the freezer from last summer, so we gave ourselves a little reminder of one of summer's biggest treats.

That's Dea doing the sign for berries - we hope to see that one A LOT this summer! :)

two firsts

two amazing things happened last week. (truth be told, in a house with a 5 month old, amazing things happen all the time, but these two deserve particular mention...)

On Tuesday, Teresa finished her FIRST knitted project. this after a looooooong spell of her claiming that she wasn't interested in knitting, didn't have the patience, was too much of a perfectionist, blah, blah, blah. i patiently waited through these excuses, never once putting any pressure on her, until she came into the fold on her own.

her first project, a beautiful and happy sweater for a lucky little girl! Garter stitch, shaping, two kinds of seaming, button loops - Teresa learned a lot! i think she's hooked - she's got another sweater and two hats on the needles already. here it is in detail:

the other is something i've also been patiently waiting for the right moment ... there's an old knitter's tale that predicts whether a child will grow up a knitter or not, based on whether they grab a set of needles when first presented them. now, babyG's a visual guy and he's the child of two knitters, but you never can tell what a kiddo will do, so i've been worried about this (yes, knitters worry about whether their kids will knit...). so, on the auspicious day of Teresa's first completed project, i decided to peer into the future just a wee bit, to see what might happen. and this is what happened:

and a close-up...now babyG's been working on holding things, but he's never encountered two thin sticks as a challenge to his grasp. i think he did marvelously!

here he is on his own with the needles. i don't know what you see, but i see a little child dreaming of the wonderous things that will one day spring off these needles.

it warms a mama's and friend's heart to see such accomplishments.

lucky

this is where i sit most days, alternating between sleeping baby and eating baby. if you've talked to me on the phone in the last month, i was likely sitting right here.

motherhood (and cute sleeping babies) takes a toll on getting out and about.

especially at -20F when even inter-species differences are erased in favor of a wood burning stove...

lucky for baby galen, people come here to visit. at 3 weeks, his Bimpy (maternal grandma), who came all the way from the east coast to oogle over him:

then, his auntie Malia, who taught him to smile:

and his Apa, who takes naps with him.

so lucky, this boy.

14 friends, 16 blocks of love

yesterday, kat asked me and Cob to meet her for lunch. there was a small group of folks who wanted to give us "something." i wasn't allowed to know what it was, or even who constituted the group. i dutifully showed up, snarfed down a pizza while knitter after knitter joined our group and Kat leaned casually against a large-ish box. all of these women are good friends of mine and had apparently been conspiring since May (since MAY, people!) to produce what has to be the most beautiful baby blanket ever made.

14 friends, 16 blocks of love. all individually knitted by women of amazing skill by themselves, much less joined in force to produce Baby's first blanket.

there is no way i could detail every square, but here is a sample of their collective handiwork.

by Maria, felted slipper knitter extraordinaire:

by Dorte Dissing, who's been knitting since she was a kid and (gasp!) can do it without a pattern:

by Kat, who i think i taught to knit about 8 years ago, and whom i now call when i have questions:

by Hope, who taught ME to knit 12 or 13 years ago (and whose method of teaching i still use when i teach now):

and the whole thing -- already doing its job keeping Baby warm and wrapped in stitched love.

a huge purple thanks to Cara, Dorte, Barton, Dea, Kat, Nicole, Maria, Theresa, Ruth, Normie, Charms, Kalin, Hope, and Lynn. i would say that such a project means more than i can say, but i'm guessing that each and every one of you know just EXACTLY what this means to me.

thank you.

here comes the sun

every year, i try to grow an experimental crop in the garden to see what i can nuture into this world. usually these experiments fail. Cob never misses an opportunity to remind me of the Okra Year, when i told myself that i could convince a plant that has never felt a cool dry summer to produce in sub-arctic Fairbanks. i admit that i fell short of my visions of cases upon cases of pickled okra, one of my favorite things in the world, but i consider it a success that my little plants produced one, very perfect okra. it was good.

this year, you might say i'm trying two experimentals - my sunflowers and you can figure the other one out from this picture.

but check out that sunflower! i'm 5'7" for reference - this thing is a behemoth and its siblings are no slouches either. here's the close-up:

can you imagine a thing of more beauty? it delights me to no end that this was a simple seed in my hand last April. now it greets me out the kitchen window every morning. oh, and the bumble bees like it too. growing sunflowers made me realize why bumblebees are colored the way they are.

some might say that growing sunflowers in the land of the midnight sun is hardly experimental, but it is for me. i don't think the point is to introduce an exotic (like okra?) so much as to do something new, even if it's only new to you.

fingers crossed that my other experimental turns out just as lovely, just as wondrous, just as surprising (but maybe a little less tall and attractive to bees)...

the other white meat

it's that time of year again...early summer in Fairbanks when the wild roses bloom,

...and the irises unfurl their delicate, ephemeral petals...

...and the pig gets roasted!

The Hollingsworths and friends host an annual pig roast in honor of Jamie's birthday (that's him on the left and that's his pig roaster in action) every mid-June to the delight of a fairly motley group, including me and Cob.

this is Teresa, nothing motley about her - oh no! wife of said birthday boy and hellcat extraordinaire. this belt buckle was actually made for her by one of her grad students - what kind of advisor do you have to be to get THIS as a gift???

the annual pig roast is a true Alaskan event with all the expected trimmings: large quantities of meat, potluck fare, outside with the mosquitoes, lots of kids, and of course, a blue tarp.

me and the birthday boy - with his new flaming suspenders. The Big Guy (what we like to call him) has more suspenders than you can shake a stick at - he even offered me some for when my pants start falling down in a few months! what a guy!

masterpieces

sometimes, you just have a good week, and no matter what else drags you down, stresses you out, or what have you. 3 excellent things came into my life this week, only one of which did i have anything to do with. regardless of what else is happening, it's important to stop and give these things their due. they are, after all, what makes life worth while.

first, i give you the most excellent pizza pie ever created by a 5 year old boy, my friend Owen. he and his mom, Theresa, came over for pizza the other night, and he showed us how it's done. a little pesto, a little red sauce, a circle of pepperoni, a smaller circle of black olives, finished with a mushroom in the middle.

second, a baby sweater for a friend who gave birth a few months ago. i was woefully behind on this...

...but i think it turned out ok. it is, after all, purple. a nice retro, off-center closure, sure to look dashing on the strawberry blond babe it's headed for.

and finally, after much waiting, my new niece, Marin. she came a little early but not without much fanfare and excitement. welcome, little thing - can't wait to meet you!

masterpieces, i think, all 3.

purling on the porch

spring has been slow to come to the north land and as most of you know, i'm somewhat loathe to tempt the gods of warm weather when they first show their sunny faces. they seem like ground hogs sometimes, hiding again if you make too big a deal over their early appearances.

so it takes more than a few warm days around here to get me talking about spring. but today, i heard my first sandhill cranes and we hit about 50F at the height of the day, so i'm sure we can't turn back now.

to celebrate, Dea and i spent a chunk of the afternoon purling on the porch, enjoying the warm sun and melting snow.

who cares if the rest of the country has green grass and cheery flowers by now? we work hard for our spring in these parts and sitting on the deck knitting, while watching the snow recede from the yard as cranes fly overhead might just be the best way to spend an afternoon.

masterpiece

it starts like this:

Scharfenberger chocolate and butter mixed with eggs, sugar, pecan flour, and vanilla. that's it.

after that's all baked and cooled, you pour a spreadable ganache (this time Scharfenberger chocolate, cream, and butter) over the cake to make a glaze.

a few chopped pecans pressed into the sides, a garnish of white chocolate designed with a toothpick, and a ring of fresh raspberries...

and you have a birthday cake! Happy Birthday Cara, and many, many more...

recovery

I've been down for a week now with a nasty chest cold that has kept me on the couch with Kleenex and cough drops. but today, armored with a bit more energy and inspired by freshly falling snow, i ventured out for a short walk with Nuchie who has been patiently waiting for my recovery.

we started out on a foot trail near our house. I like these little trails where i don't have to worry about snow machines or 4-wheelers and where Nuch and i can romp without ruining ski tracks.

it was slow going. 5 solid days of hacking has left me feeling like someone was squeezing the bottom 2/3 of my lungs, leaving me with little breathing capacity for a hilly trail that really required snowshoes.

but going slow provides other opportunities. stopping to gasp gave me time to look around and see the trail i might have otherwise looked past.

a peeling birch. i mean, how cool is this tree? pretty and good fire starter, not to mention its importance to Athabascan cultures in making birch bark baskets.

the promise of summer in frozen high bush cranberries leftover from last year. these little guys grace many Fairbanks tables in the form of syrup, jelly, and wine every fall. they are part of the bounty we try to keep up with during our short summer months.

i finally made it back home, thanks to the unflagging support of Nuchie, my trusty bad dog. even though it was a short walk, it was good to get outside again and see some of the world's details.

99 bottles of beer on the counter

i live with a beer brewer. he'd be the first person to say that he's not a "real" brewer (whatever that means), but then he'll break out the 'original gravity' and 'protein break'. if you're not a real brewer, you won't know what those things are. but i digress.

beer has been brewing in my house for the last 11 days. it's happened before and though i get the basics of yeast and grains from my bread-baking days, i don't get beer. it's a mystery to me.

so, for the uninitiated, i watched the process carefully and came up with these easy steps for making homebrew.

1. drink beer. (apparently, brewing begins with drinking. it seems like we're getting a little close to a chicken and egg dilemma, but this is what they did...oh! and you have to look reflective while you're doing this step. very important.)

2. next comes the malt. (I think some grains slipped into that pot while i wasn't looking, but no matter. malt provides the 'body of the beer' - still not sure what this means, but that's what they said...and food for the yeast to make alcohol. this is an important step.)

3. more malt. (because of the importance of this step, i got involved to make sure alcohol happened. you can't leave these things to chance, you know.)

4. drink more. (this actually happened a lot more than portrayed here, but i'm trying to keep these guys looking respectable.)

5. get hoppy. (hops are actually a flower that account for the aromatic bitterness of beer and help prevent it from spoiling. at one point, Cob exclaimed, '14.2% alpha acids, my ass!' which has something to do with the bitterness index of these particular hops. either way, i refer back to my point about not being a "real" brewer.)

6. fermentation in the carboy (notice the vodka bottle...brewing beer requires some obsessive sterilization procedures to avoid creating off-tastes in the beer. this is one that i think may just be to continue with the whole drinking theme. Here, Cob is "sterilizing" his mouth before creating a suction in the tube to the carboy.)

7. [10 days later] bottling. (this is the only part i really understand. beer goes in bottle. cap goes on bottle. clean up kitchen.)

8. naming the beer.

i give you Cold Snap Ale, an IPY IPA (for the non-Arctic types: International Polar Year India Pale Ale).