A hat for Liam

A month ago, my sister sent an adorable picture of my nephew in a knitted hat with two large pompoms on it. (There's one in the back)

Totally adorable. My sister suggested that if I wanted to knit him something I should knit another one just like it.

Why?

Because then his shadow looks just like Mickey's.

Well who am I to argue with that? 

What colors? - I texted. 

Red and Purple came the response. 

Wish Granted: 

I'm rather proud of those pompoms.

However, when I tried it on? It didn't look exactly like Mickey's Shadow.

More like Sid from Ice Age's shadow.

I'm going to send it along anyway. If the "ears" need to be adjusted I'm also sending extra thread so that they can be tacked further up along the crown of the head. 

I mean, how picky can a 3-year-old be? 

;) haha - stay tuned. 

Welcome to the world baby girl!

My niece was born yesterday!
Jesmyn Aoife
7.6lbs 20"

No bees - but bottled Metheglin!

 So sad. No bees after all this weekend. No one's fault except Mother Nature or - Global Climate Change - take your pick of philosophies.

My Bee Guy drives down to Georgia to get our bee packages. It's a long and complicated story but anyway... then he drives them back up to Pennsylvania. Normally this is no problem, but this particular weekend (as opposed to last weekend when we were "supposed" to have a blizzard), this weekend it was about a bazillion degrees on the east coast. By the time they reached home, most of the bees where dead due to the heat. :( It was really sad. There was a notice on the website about trouble. I went up anyway. Unfortunately, while there were worker bees, the queens had been compromised. I have assurances that as soon as there are new queens I can come back up and pick up the ordered packages. I feel so bad for my Bee Guy. He was stuck between a rock and a hard place. He was already a week late delivering bees, the weather forecast wasn't accurate (let's face it - it was super warm here on Saturday), and he clearly wanted to get us our bees!


I am prepared at any rate. I spent a good deal of time on Friday cleaning out the hive boxes. Both had not made it and I'm pretty sure I know why. When I cleaned out the dead bees, I found varroa mites all over them - including still live mites! Uch, I was so upset. Especially since I treated the bees at the end of the season with the correct acid. Clearly, it didn't work. However, I am ready for this year's bees. This also gives me a bit more time to prepare the frames that go into the boxes.

In other news:
I continued to edition Luminary:

Three more, half done. 

I also finished a pair of socks for a good friend. SY moved to Buffalo with her family a little over a year ago and she is freezing. There is nothing better for freezing than very warm socks. 

I am really happy with these and I hope she likes them. 

And I bottled the Metheglin!

A few days ago it stopped furiously fizzing. I knew it was time to bottle it, but still had to plan that somehow.

On Saturday I stopped at the Philly Homebrew Outlet because they also have beekeeping supplies. I spied some things I might need to bottle the metheglin, and this morning I thought, what the heck, I'll go get some things. 

Of course, the bottles I'm going to use will be the cobalt. 

 I also invested in a siphon. This is a nifty piece of equipment that makes transferring liquid a piece of cake. Basically you create a vacuum and let gravity work it's magic. As long as the bottle that is receiving the liquid is lower that the original, the liquid will continue to flow.

This was a relatively easy process except I should have put the bottles into a bowl! That way, when I wasn't quick enough to pinch the tube to shut off the flow, the extra liquid would overflow into that and not onto the floor. It was all good though - it inspired a fit of long overdue cleaning to mop up the floor. 

I also added the rest of the ingredients: raisins, cinnamon, and lemon. I used Persian raisins (12 per bottle), real cinnamon, the flaky kind, and the rind of a lemon. Not much of that though, kind of a 1cm wide sliver, the pith removed. 

 As I mentioned before, I plan on letting these sit for a while. The first opportunity to sample will be when former tenants come back to town for graduation. One will earn his PhD. I think that will be the perfect time to uncork one of these and see how it turned out.

Metheglin, Luminary, and 50 Card Project

Metheglin Update: 

Well, something's happening. I left the metheglin in the kitchen overnight and when I came in the next morning, it was alive. It was foaming so much I took it into the bathroom and put it into the shower. That way if it exploded at least it would be easier to clean up! I was also so shocked by the drama I forgot to take pictures until a few days later. 

Here is an image of the foaming still happening, although much subdued. This was probably last Wednesday. 

By this morning the bubbles have slowed considerably and the liquid has cleared. It is quite the lovely caramel color. Dare I sample some? 

I opened the cork and sniffed. It doesn't smell bad. I went and got a straw and did the old, dip and pull method because I didn't want to disturb the sediment at the bottom. And what does it taste like?... beer. 

blech. 

Okay Okay, I'm not a beer drinker, but I can manage a pale ale and that's what this tastes like at the moment. A very pale, light, ginger beer. I still have to add the cinnamon, lemon, and raisins. That might change the flavor a little. But as soon as I have another bottle, I'm making straight mead. I've got to see what the difference is. Project for this weekend? Figure out how to bottle this up. I'm planning on letting it sit for longer than the "fortnight" suggested by Mrs. W's book. 

In related news,  I have great news on the bee front. I will pick up my bees tomorrow! This was not guaranteed because I was a real ding-a-ling about ordering them. I sent my check and application well before the deadline. We're talkin' weeks here. I really wanted my bees early so they could get a head start on everything and I might get a summer harvest of honey. 

I forgot to put a stamp on the envelope. 

It came back after the notice was put up on the website that there was only a waiting list for bee packages this weekend. I was so bummed. I stuck the entire envelope in a new envelope and wrote a pitiful message on it pointing out that technically I did mail it before the deadline. I also mentioned that if someone didn't show up for their order, I would be more than happy to drop everything and come pick them up. My bee man is the best and put me on this weekends list. I am very excited! That's what I will be doing for most of today... reviewing my notes and remembering what to do for this whole bee thing. 

Luminary

Last weekend, I got lost in the studio to edition my book Luminary. 

 It was accepted into the Guild of Bookworkers traveling exhibition, Formation. I only had the one copy and before it leaves me for two years, I really needed to make another for reference.

There are 15 pages and my goal is 10 books. They are all sunprints which is quite an ambitious project let me tell you! The sun and clouds are not exactly ideal studio mates. It's taken almost two years just to print the spreads. And of course, I already have to print more due to stupid mistakes.

I got three put together last weekend. And before I forget what I did, I want to finish as many others as possible.

 The wonderful Silhouette Cameo cutter Ann gave me for Christmas a year ago, is an absolute life saver.  It took some fiddling, but it is cutting a perfect circle in all of my spreads exactly where they should be. Big sigh of relief.


50 Card Project
I received a wonderful surprise in the mail this week. In response to the election last year, my friend Melanie did this project. 

It was a monumental undertaking funded by Kickstarter.  In spite of so much misery for the past year, she managed to find quotes and responses to the madness that were positive and uplifting. More information about the project can be found here: http://melaniemowinski.com/the-50-card-project/

You can find (and purchase!) your own copy here: http://melaniemowinski.com/product/printed-book/ 

Congratulations Melanie! It is really fabulous!

Happy Rejuvenation!

Yes, I am still here.
Happy Easter, Happy Passover, and mostly happy Spring! Life returns. Which is the perfect time to restart this blog.
Full disclosure, my New Year's resolution was to return to blogging, but well... that didn't happen.
I have no excuses... just explanations - this past year really sucked politically. And since it was so crazy it was all I could do to meet my obligations and then go home and pull the covers over my head. I have high hopes for this November though. Something's gotta give.
There is much to catch up on and report. Last year my blog came in very handy as a diary of things that have happened, including a "neighbor" who wanted to re-zone his property inappropriately. I was able to go back and document the baloney he had pulled on us. Super motivation to keep this little project up! But with what?
Well, the one idea I've wanted to do is post more of my recipes. This year at work I've started leaving historical recipes in my "out-of-office" reply email. I've had some very fun responses. The last one was Martha Washington's Metheglin recipe.

This is from Karen Hess' fabulous transcription.  If you have any interest in historical cooking, this is a Must Purchase. The introduction and appendixes alone are worth the price. (It's still in print!)

I've wanted to make mead for a long time. We went to a mead tasting a few years ago at the Wyck house and I was converted. Mead is not just thick, super-sweet, syrupy alcohol, it can be light, bubbly, and pear tasting. Now that I have a surplus of honey, time to try this out. But looking online is a little intimidating. There is all this crap about chemistry and ph, and managing the yeast and blah blah blah. Finally last week I stumbled on a blog post that basically said, hey - people 400 years ago didn't know or monitor any of this stuff. They just put things together and watched what happened. That gave me courage. Onward Ho! and I have forged ahead. 

A quart of honey is about 3lbs of honey. Yep - I've got that. I gathered the rest of the ingredients and got started. 

The honey. 

The water.

I forgot to take a picture of the three races (hands) of ginger. Not quite used to this blogging thing again I guess. The thing I remember is how good it smelled! Fresh peeled ginger. Hmmmmm. 

Combined it all in my "vegetarian" pot and measured the liquid so I could be sure to boil away exactly 1/3. 

5 1/8 inches or 13cm. Well, one third less of 5 1/8inches is 3 7/16inches. OR, one third less of 13cm is 8.7cm. Much easier. Stupid Imperial system. 

When the liquid was reduced by 1/3, about and hour and 15 minutes later, I turned the heat off and allowed it to cool before adding the yeast along with a yeast nutrient the shop owner convinced me I needed. It was $1.50 so heck, why not? 

While it was cooling I prepped my containers. 

I've been buying my olive oil in bulk from the International Food and Spices shop in West Philly. And yes, I'll admit, I was sold on the bottles! ;) 

Unfortunately the bottles don't stand up to much heat.

The first one I poured boiling water into burst at the base! Thank goodness I was holding it over the sink at the time. 

I was a little concerned that I didn't have enough space after that, even though the label on the bottle states 101oz. 

Hm. Yet there are 64oz in a gallon. 

Somethin' don't add up here. 

I didn't have much choice. I don't have anything else i can put the overflow into. I bottled as much as I could with a bit of ginger and we'll see what happens next! 

Now I let it sit for three days and then I'm supposed to add the cinnamon, lemon and raisins.