SpiderWomanKnits

whirlwind to the shore

Jorn and I went down to New Jersey on Saturday for a family gathering. It was a wonderful whirlwind and we even managed to squeeze in a trip to the shore before we headed back on Sunday morning. It was two hours very well spent. I just love the sea. Everyone was gone, it was like we had the whole place to ourselves. We wandered the shoreline, under the docks, around the amusement park and gathered treasures, of course. When we arrived back in Vermont we still had sand between our toes. What a delight for mountain dwellers. And, what a delight for a mother of three to have that time with my first born. The best treasure of all. 

these woods

{through fields with barns}

{into the deep}

{on top of the world}

I've been more active lately, physically. It's sort of funny to say that considering the fact that I have three small children, a good deal of animals and three large gardens. Farm, garden and family always keep me moving but at a pace I can never quite determine for myself. For one reason or another it's taken me some time to really decide to carve out some peaceful time for my self, time when I can move as fast or as slow as I'd like or not even move at all.

One of my greatest joys this summer has been getting familiar with and hiking the trails right behind my house. Only once have I brought my phone along to take some images of what I have grown to deeply appreciate, desire and now, treasure. I wanted to share a few of my deep breaths with you. Vermont is so beautiful, a perfect balance between the wild and the tamed. The trails I hike are a mixture of those two elements. That's just where I am at right now, lingering somewhere in between the wild and the tamed. 

{blue jay and the sky}

{goldenrod's reminder to savor the summer}

i like to color

I don't get to do this too often but we had a snow day today, out of sheer desperation to go through the motions of winter eventhough there hasn't been one to speak of in Southern Vermont this year, so I took advantage of the situation to just be still for a while. 

I love Dover Coloring Books. This one is from Trolls, Elves and Fairies by Jan Sovak. We have quite the collection of these and everyone enjoys working on them. I love the way Simonne interprets these drawings. I have to take some pictures of her work too. These pictures aren't the best. They were taken with my iPod and filtered through Instagram but you can get the idea of how detailed the work is. It's so relaxing. My alter-ego fantasy career would be to be a comic book colorist or tattoo artist :) 

(breakfast) obsession

Have I mentioned that I love Pinterest? I'm telling you. You'd think that it would suck time and that you'd end up spending more time pinning than doing but for me it has been an incredible motivator on so many levels. It's one thing to be inspired by blogs and magazines etc. but when you have that motivation scattered all over the place or in unmanageable bookmarks or nooks of your home it's very difficult for those images and feelings to really take focus. I've found it incredibly revealing and helpful to watch my personal boards, and boards of friends develop.I see now that I really do have a "taste" and, for better or worse, I find myself embracing that more as a result of my pinning. Boy, could this lingo be getting any weirder?

Anyhoo, this gem of a recipe was a result of sharing on Pinterest. It's a keeper, for it's simplicity and it's taste. After the first time I made it the recipe was committed to memory. To make it gluten free I just sub Bob's Red Mill AP mix. It's perfect for my family right now since we are experiencing an egg laying slow down, getting just a handful a day from our 35 plus bird flock. I hope you make it and enjoy it too! 

family portrait

I think this is one of the only pictures we have of all of us together! I can't believe it. I took it last week when we went to Magic Wings. I vow to take more family portraits from now on because that is not right! 

We used to take Jorn to Magic Wings all the time when he was a baby and we lived in Massachusetts. It's about an hour and a half drive from us now so during Spring Break last week we took a little road trip. In the past we usually go in February. It's 80 degrees inside, always sunny, so green and tropical. You really need a dose of that when you live in New England in February and it's much cheaper than flying somewhere. It's such a great place to visit. Really, it's truly magical to be in such a lush environment with butterflies flying around you everywhere!

You can also watch butterflies hatch before your very eyes in the nursery. And, I have to say that they had the most impressive/gross exotic (?) bug collection I have seen anywhere. I am not squeamish but they had one bug there that I couldn't even photograph or even think about now because it still gives me the hebegebes. A Scorpion Spider. Here is someone else's picture of it because as I said I could hardly look at the thing. Click if you dare.

I took lots of other pictures (of not gross things) and put some of those on Flickr.

Kitties Behaving Badly

Would you look at all the naughty in this photo? You really have to click on it and make it bigger to get the full effect. I heard such a ruckus in the dining room last night and walked in to find this! First, Trixie and Kimba are on the table. Naughty. Then, Trixie is taking her siesta in my hand knits to hand wash bin. Really Naughty. What Kimba is up to goes without saying. He had the whole chandelier swinging.  Super Duper Naughty. And this was after all the kids went to bed and I thought I could sit down and just relax...

i'm back and feeling better than ever

{lots and lots of laughter, margaritas, great food, crafting, bananagram-ing, jelly beans, girl talk, sleeping, antiquing, strolling and even some goat cheese making}

Oh my gosh, my weekend was amazing! Really, I am still on Cloud 9. To say I needed this time would be an understatement and to say that the time I spent with my friends was just what I needed would also be an understatement. It was so much more than that. I just love these women so much, I feel blessed to call them friends and that my kids call their kids friends and that our husbands all made this trip possible.

The trip was months in the making and I honestly don't think a single one of us let out a breath until we were all in the car and on our way. The week before there was lots of sickness, some pretty crappy weather and anyone who has a family knows the 1,000,000 little things that could possible crop up that would keep a mama at home. So, even as the days approached and we started figuring out who was driving, who was bringing what food, what crafty projects we'd bring along and how long we'd actually let each other sleep it didn't really feel 'real' until we sunk into those bucket seats of my friends Alexa's and Michelle's cars and hit the road. (By the way, it turns out that none of us could really sleep in, years of motherhood have really re-programmed our bodies.)

But man, oh, man. I don't think there was even five minutes of 'decompression time'! As soon as we hit that road it was our road. And that made the weekend spectacular. My friend's are all blogless, so no linking, but they are all amazingly talented, sweet, funny, honest and stupendous mama's so I wish you could peek into their lives a bit.

The photos are all mine but that cheese in the making and margarita credit goes to Amy who made some goat cheese for us to snack on and served up margaritas (thank you!) during our games of Bananagrams, which I am now addicted to (the Bananagrams not the margaritas, don't worry).  Laura is responsible for that beautiful cupcake which I took over 35 pictures of. She is also a very talented quilter and a local bib maker extraordinaire. If your baby is wearing a handmade, quilted bib in our area (and even other areas) chances are she made it. I keep singing the praises of Etsy to Laura but honestly her bibs and quilts sell just about as fast as she can make them so the best place to check out her stuff is on her Facebook page. Alexa takes the credit for the fajitas in the making. Eventhough I can't take a picture of it Michelle has to take the credit (although I know she won't) for keeping us all grounded in a way that is immensely comforting, perhaps even more than she can know. And we are all collectively responsible for the unreasonable amount of jelly beans that were consumed over the course of two days.

These women all make me a better person and a better mom and it was a huge gift to get to spend this type of uninterrupted time together. We are already talking about doing it again.

On a totally different note, I am completely back-blogged (?) when it comes to my knitting posts! I am so excited to share them. I hope soon. In the meantime, it's starting to get spring-y around here and for me that means chicks! Over the next few months people start and add to their chicken flocks. If you are thinking about doing either make sure you check out the link in my sidebar (top right) which will take you to my Brooding 101 post that covers all the basics you need to know if you are thinking of keeping chickens. I hope you find it helpful!

Our Family 2010

Family Album 2010 by The Connors Clan | Make Your Own Book

Oh what a year it has been! Lots of ups, a few downs but so much fun!

We made this Blurb Book to gift to our family for the holidays this year and it is so special to have. If I don't take the time to do this sort of project all of my photos remain in the digital world.

It's so nice to be able to sit and look through an album. Since I can't have everyone over to knit and talk chickens and alpacas with me while we flip through the book together (which I would prefer) let's just pretend that we are. I'll go grab a cup of coffee and wait for you to get yours :)That little box in the right corner with the four arrows makes the book go full screen which I highly recommend. There is one picture of Simonne and me in there that requires the 'full effect'. You'll know it when you come to it.

I have a lot of desires for this new year coming up. 2010 was a year of us settling into our larger family size and all that that entails, just finding a rhythm and also emerging from a preceding year of unemployment. Now, I feel like we can really get down to business. First up, is a huge organizing and de-cluttering project. I know that seems so cliche but it is something I am looking forward to. You have to clear the path for new adventures right?!

HAPPY NEW YEAR! I wish everyone a magical and joyful New Year filled with dreams fulfilled, projects realized, family joy, well being and much, much happiness. See you 'next year'!

xxoo,

Spidey

15 Minutes Before Jorn's Guitar Lesson

Some side notes (honestly no pun intended)

Simonne wears her Kimba Hat all the time. All. the. time.

She also thinks that we are supposed to be in every catalog that arrives at our house since 99% of my non bill mail is knitting related and there are Berroco Remix ads in most of them somewhere. In that top picture she's looking for one of us in a holiday catalog that arrived today :)

Jorn loves playing the guitar.

and

I'm still not so great at using the self timer.

A few seconds after we snapped these frames we had to rush out the door to get to Jorn's lesson. The light in the living room was so nice today after a few gray days here in Vermont and that light is a precious commodity in the Northeast during these darker months. I really thought that we didn't have any time to take some pictures before we left for the lesson. We had just arrived home from picking up Jorn at school and were only stopping in to get a snack and his guitar but I got the camera out anyway. It took maybe three minutes to take these shots then we quickly packed up and left.

While Jorn has his 1/2 hour lesson each week Simonne, Vaughn and I hit the local health food store and the Goodwill which are just right across the street. Sometimes I cram a few other errands into that precious time and it's typically a hectic afternoon of rushing around with three kids in tow. These pictures seem so calm to me though looking at them now, not necessarily a true representation of how I was feeling this afternoon. But they are a true representation of a choice we made to claim this bit of time as our own.

It's getting to be that busy-holiday time of the year already and looking at these pictures is a reminder for me to make sure that we pause and just relax for a minute. Even if it seems like we don't have the time, we'll make it.

not mine

Remember this mosaic I put together a while ago? Dahlia just reminded me about it (thanks Dahlia!). Well, I have a certain obsession with Airstreams. I happen to also have an 'Airstream Sensor'. If there is an old Airstream in a field somewhere and I am driving by it won't go unnoticed. I can feel them behind sheds, tucked away behind barns, or in the case above behind a pile of junk cars. This summer Greg and I decided to stop and inquire about this particular Airstream, we are in no position to buy one but it never hurts to ask because you just never know. It turns out the guy who runs the junk yard/repair shop was just storing it for someone. I asked him if we could take some pictures of it and he said, "Sure, I don't mind. But I don't know what all the fuss is about with those. 20 people must stop every week to ask me if that metal can is for sale. I wish I had one to sell them!" I do too, Mister. I do too.