eye candy friday

The fall jamming edition:

I’m calling it cranberry applesauce, though apple cranberry sauce would be similarly appropriate. It’s got a flavor much like cranberry sauce (with undertones of apples, scotch, and various baking spices), but the texture of mostly-homogenized applesauce. I cooked it for a really long time to get the apples to cook down that much. I don’t buy cooking apples, since my main use for apples is eating them whole (well, okay, biting pieces off, but not cutting with anything other than teeth)–I just cook with the squishiest of the generally crisp apples I like to eat. This means that jamlike things take longer.

In other appley news, I’ve gone through enough of the 20-pound bag of Gold Rush that I bought a month ago that I happily signed up to get another one a week from Sunday. Mmm, apples.

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I’ve been doing a bit of fibery stuff, to try to stay sane for working a lot. The most recent spinning:

I decided I needed some plain wool to spin, of a breed I hadn’t spun before, and for which I didn’t have any particular project in mind. So I dug my Acadia out of the fiber pile (it’s a stack of bins, or it’d be spread all over the floor) and set out to spin a 3ply. The talk seems to have been right–Finn is quite nice to spin. That’s one ply all spun and the second one started.

I’ve also been knitting some; I’ve nearly finished turning the heel on that sock. Yes, it takes more than a week to turn a heel when I’m only knitting a row or half a row or something at a time. Maybe this weekend? Of course, I’m also planning to start a new pair of socks: I’ll need concert knitting, for someplace darker than World Cafe Live.

 

eye candy friday

Sunset on Tuesday.

From Madison Square Park last Wednesday (the 25th)–this was intended for last Friday’s eye candy, but I didn’t have my computer with me and thus never quite managed to borrow enough computer time to post. I got a “look, someone’s taking a picture!” comment while I was stopped to take this. I was amused.

Also from my Thanksgiving trip to New York:

We went to see the Mapping the Hudson exhibit at the public library, and stopped first in the children’s room to see the original stuffed animals that were the basis of the Winnie the Pooh stories. They’re clearly well-loved… And Piglet is a lot smaller than I’d've guessed!

I haven’t done all that much fibery stuff lately, but I knit half a sock heel at the Paul and Storm/Jonathan Coulton show last night. They turned the (rest of the) lights off after the intermission, and I couldn’t see well enough to pick up the wraps as well as the stitches, so I’ll have to finish it either at lunch or this evening. (The concert was great, though.)

 

eye candy friday

Last Sunday’s sunset, from my kitchen window.

(Check back this evening or tomorrow for a post on All The Cooking I Did Last Weekend and some weaving.)

 

eye candy friday

Whee!  It’s been a long week, with lots of frustrations.  So, sort of appropriately, here are two photos I took last Saturday, after I couldn’t do the work I’d planned on because of maintenance work in the building:

Not such a bad “silver” lining…  My big plan for tonight is to go home and spin for a handspun swap.  And then go to bed early.

 

eye candy friday

I may be in a small minority here, but I prefer Standard Time to Daylight Time, at least this week.  I am not a morning person, at all, though I can pretend to be one when I have to.  This, combined with lab schedules, means that early sunset just makes me feel better about working late–there’s no way I’ll leave before sunset, so why not stay the extra hour to finish that experiment–and I actually get some sunlight before I have to leave my house.  So, taking advantage of some of that sunlight: this is my current walk-to-work spinning, an Abbybatt in Hibiscus.  (This is 3 mornings’ spinning, so probably about an hour’s worth.)

And, though it’s not terribly attractive yet, here’s some other knitting I’ve been doing:

This is my Zombies yarn (which may need a different name…), a couple of rounds into the lace pattern of the Bird’s Nest Cowl from Elann.

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In other news, I think I’ve figured out how to convince Mel to sit in my lap: keep the heat low enough that I want to knit with a blanket on my lap.  He’s always been fond of the acrylic blanket that was the second rectangular thing I knit, but he seems okay with fleece throws, too.

 

eye candy friday

These’re a couple more photos from that trip to Valley Forge, partly because I haven’t processed my Rhinebeck photos yet, partly because there wasn’t much bright sunlight so these are prettier.

Happy Friday!

 

eye candy monday

Is it overkill to post two ECF things and more pictures today?  I hope not…

I spent yesterday afternoon walking through Valley Forge National Historical Park with Anju, though we bypassed most of the historical stuff in favor of trees and flowers and fungi and the river.  It was a pretty good walk–about 8.5 miles–and a beautiful day to be outside.  I even brought along my film camera for the expedition, and it was well worth the weight.

 

friday evening eye candy

Here’s part 2:

I got three of these lovely, lovely Abbybatts this week. The colorway’s called Jungle Love, and they’re merino/silk. Mmmmm.

 

friday afternoon eye candy

Part 1:

I’ve posted this before, I think, right after I took it–it’s from two years ago, when I went to the big neuroscience meeting in San Diego (and hung out with my friends who live/d there). It’s among my favorites, and it’s a happy-feeling shot, and I’m in a good mood after my thesis committee meeting.

Part 2 will show up later, maybe in the evening, and it’ll be fibery. But I’ve been busy this week. That whole “committee meeting” thing.

 

eye candy friday

It’s brightly colored, and I got a sunlit picture the other day, so this week’s eye candy is my current travel-spindle project, an Abby batt in Orange Blossom. I love the way it changes color between drafting and yarn.

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The fleece is all sorted, but still in S.’s spare room. And we only had a tall-kitchen trash bag or so of stuff we couldn’t or wouldn’t use.

 

eye candy friday

…the beach edition.

It had been far, far too long since I’d spent time at the beach.  Last weekend was wonderful–peaceful, relatively quiet….  (except for the end of the drive back, when there was pretty bad traffic).  I played in the waves some, sat and looked at and listened to the water some, watched the gulls and pelicans and cormorants and plovers/sandpipers, looked at the stars some (so many stars! stupid light pollution), and got to hang out with my parents.  I also got to spend a few hours driving a really nice car, since I splurged on Zipcar (for convenience) rather than trying to find a rental-car deal, and the most convenient car is/was a Mazda 3.  So nice!  (Except that its extreme zippiness evaporated when I turned on the air conditioning.) I really do love driving, when the circumstances are right.

I haven’t edited any of them, but I uploaded all fortyish of my beach pictures to flickr; click through to look at the rest of them.

 

eye candy friday

This is from the biopond garden, late last month (though I think these’re still flowering). I’m pretty sure it’s some variety of geranium.

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I’ve had a bit of a cold this week, which has not helped my energy levels at all.  Still, work is progressing, and I’ve managed to spin on most of my walks in, first some seawool from Creatively Dyed, and now some mostly-corriedale tan wool blend from Amy Boogie.  I was amazed at how much more smoothly the wool blend drafted this morning–I think that 5 ounces is going to go pretty quickly.

 

not dead, and still spinning some

First, some late-Friday eye candy:

It’s not from today–it’s been rainy and overcast, but wonderfully autumnal–it’s from my direct walk to work.  (I’ve started going to a nearby coffeeshop to write before going to lab, on days when I don’t have early-morning microscope time.)

So, yes, I’ve been putting lots of time and energy into work, but I’ve been spinning a bit to calm down in the evenings.  I got some new-wool-breed-to-me fiber recently, which I carded last weekend and have half spun now.

I had hoped it would turn out more brown than purple, but I’m not really surprised.  I might’ve added in some brown BFL or alpaca, but I wanted to spin the Falklands wool by itself.  So far, I really like it.  It seems a lot like nice Corriedale.  And I know enough people who do like purple that I think I’ll be able to find a use for this stuff.   It’s also beautifully heathered, from the colors in the handpainted fiber, which makes up for its being less than my favorite color.