Roast vegs for the new year, crochet scarf as part of organizing studio

The freezing weather continues, cold enough for windchills registering in way below zero F, cold enough that the snow squeaks when you walk on it.  Just sayin. We do get cold here in central NJ, but we make sure to whine about it when it comes.

And to roast vegetables as a defense mechanism.  

Here are sweet potatoes, microwaved tender, peeled and added in to Granny Smith apple rings, with all the spices you see in the foreground. Turmeric, mustard seeds, kosher salt, fennel seeds, Bill Veach's #2 curry powder. And one Italian sausage, divided into little chunks shared with both dishes.  I like the orange sweet potatoes for this dish. The white ones are sort of meh. 

30 minutes at 410F, would have been 400F but my hand slipped.  This is enough for several meals, one big dish into the freezer.   I really like fennel seeds in this mix.  Not a fan of fennel in its vegetable form, oddly, but the seeds are fine.  Finocchio!  introduced to it by an Italian American, long ago.  And the apple rings I prepped days ago and froze ready for whenever I felt like cooking them.  I eat much better this way than if I had to start the prep from scratch in order to cook.  Learned this from Lidia.

And the other defense mechanism is to crochet a scarf.  

The crocheting keeps your hands warm, and the openwork of double crochet is really good for trapping warm air when you wear it wrapped around a time or two.  When I do the double crochet for this kind of thing, I send the hook through the opening below, not through a stitch, to start each double crochet. That way the fabric is very flexible. The yarn is part of what I saved when I was winnowing the other day, through my supplies.  

It's beautiful, handspun llama yarn, in variegated natural colors, made in Bolivia by a women's collective, and I paid fair trade price for it.  It has lots of vegetable matter, i.e. Bolivian bits of grass, in it, easy to pick out, but I like very much that they're there. 

Oddly enough, I didn't design the dark to lighter effect so neatly. It just came out that way as I worked.  This scarf will take up both large cakes of yarn, which is fine. I originally got it for a tapestry I was doing, and other fiberarts, but still had quite a bit to use.  I will probably join the two ends, turning it over once, to make another Moebius cowl.

So that's the Keeping Warm Scheme around here. Oh, and speaking of keeping warm, I finally got all my WarmUp America blanket pieces shipped off a while back, and a lovely postcard of thanks came today!  Never expected any acknowledgment, actually, figuring they're busy people, but the postcard design is a montage of blanket parts, people knitting, people holding up finished blankets, etc, very heartwarming. And if you want to take part, go here and see what's what.

Tomorrow my second washing machine arrives, I seem to be in the habit of buying washing machines, and today required moving stuff out of the way.  Including a giant bookcase on the bottom of the staircase, around which they have to maneuver the old machine down and the new one up.  

Hoping that Handsome Son is coming for dinner tomorrow night, because he can be recruited to put back the bookcase and help me replace all the stuff on it.  Largely shoes, since it's out of the way, but I can sit on the stairs to pull boots on.

It needs to go back up one step and turn.  Easier to get it down, for me operating solo, well, there was an exciting moment when I thought it was going to fall on me and trap me in the kitchen doorway, but moving right along.. 

And he can help lug all the bags and boxes of stuff to my car for the thriftie, currently two floors up, in the studio.  Nice stuff which has outlived its time in my life. Ready to move on.  He doesn't know any of this yet, but after a nice dinner, he'll be mellow about it.

Shortbread and welcome blankets

Sudden need for shortbread, today, and since it's hot and the ac is on it's not too wild to bake.  So after studying my Big Australian Baking Book, and Martha Stewart's Cookies, and noting the lengths both go to to make a simple project into an olympic feat, I fell back on the old simple Sunset book.  Same results, basically, with many fewer fiddly steps.  I added some lemon zest into the mix, like that subtle taste.

So the beloved castiron baking pan came into play, and afternoon tea included a couple of squares of shortbread, plain, unpretentious. Next time Handsome Son shows up for a cup of tea, there will be a little something for him to go with it. He loves shortbread.  Well, he dives into any food I offer him, but some items he likes more than others.

And my blanket project, knitting sections for Warm Up America, has now been swept into the successor to the Pussyhat Project, the Welcome Blanket project to be exhibited then donated to incoming refugees, as a token of welcome and warmth.  Some knitters are getting into this with significant icons and colors, and I'm mainly knitting my stash.  

There will be a pocket containing a note of welcome, though.  And I'm using acrylic, so as not to add to the burden of people coming through such an ordeal.  Acrylic washes easily, no worries.  No hand washing, nor blocking. So I refrained from using my handspun.

I knitted one section today, and I think I can do one a day without busting up my hands.  They're hoping to start receiving in July, blankets, not people, that is.  I'm heartened by the number of refugees who have been quietly welcomed throughout all the blustering of politicians trying to stop them, and would like to add my bit. I will be doing my own joining up, though, not just sending a stack of sections.

And I got a reward this afternoon, when I looked up and saw a hummingbird browsing busily among the lantana, flying between the stems, backwards, too.