Fiber Fool

I just accidentally closed about 30 minutes of work on a blog post. I’m not up to re-writing it right now so I do apologize. In quick summary -

My last full day in MN my sister took the day off from work and we headed to St. Cloud via a few small town stops at quilt shops. I bought some fabrics for MacBook sleeves for DH and I as well as some for another two-toned skirt. Amber and I also picked out some fabrics to a baby quilt for one of our cousins. Mom gets a quilt made and then after the baby is born has the name and birth date embroidered on a corner for the first born of any of her nieces and nephews. Since this cousin is one whom I grew up close to we decided to pick out the fabric ourselves rather than mom’s quilter. We chose some vintage-looking prints in cream, tan, green, and yellow since we do not know the sex of the baby.

The best place we stopped was Gruber’s though. They were HUGE! And, they even had a small yarn shop inside. I restrained myself, but I did get most of the fabric I brought home from there. They will be on my stop list any time I go home and we can make it to St. Cloud.

Amber was a great help in fabric shopping even though she doesn’t have much interest in sewing. She has a great eye (she’s a much better photographer than I) and knows her color theory and such so it was good fun. At the end of the day we stopped off at a camera shop and she bought herself the same DSLR that I have.

Then, one last story from the trip because I don’t want to forget it. Gaston is my mom’s Seeing Eye Dog ™ for those who don’t know. She got him the same year we got Emma - 2003. Despite the fact that he only sees me in small bursts now and again I am family and have been from the very beginning. The day I met him I walked into the farm house while Drew was outside with Emma yet and before I knew it he was up on his back feet with one front paw on each shoulder looking me in the eye and giving me kisses. He isn’t even really a kisser and he had never seen me before that. When mom and dad meet me at baggage he has been known to sneak a kiss to my hand while he is in harness (a big no-no). He may appear a bit aloof but he’s just a big ole softie!

He likes it when I visit because it means he gets to go out and work more than on an average week and I know that, but I didn’t realize just how much until I was returning home. As usual, dad was at the airport with more than enough time for me to get through security etc. So, he decided to park in the garage and take my luggage in for me to save wear and tear on my shoulder. While we was getting out the suitcase mom got out of the minivan to give me a hug goodbye as she and my sister were going to stay in the van. I gave everyone a hug and said my goodbyes and dad and I were about to head into the airport proper and mom was telling Gaston to load up. He wouldn’t! He dug in his paws and wouldn’t budge and was facing the rear of the van looking at dad and I with the big suitcase. Now he wasn’t in harness so he wasn’t officially working so it was somewhat okay that he wasn’t obeying mom. Well, mom figured it out - he wanted his own goodbye before he got in the van! So she said, “Kristi, come say goodbye to your brother, he won’t load up without his goodbye!” So, I go give him a bunch of hugs and he gives me some kisses, I turn to head into the airport and he hops right up into the van! Mom had also said when they came to pick me up that as soon as they got to the airport Gaston sat up and was watching out the window, LOL!

Carnival is coming to an end today as tomorrow is Ash Wednesday and marks the beginning of the Lenten season. Now the purists will begin indulging in semla. I’m going to keep this short and sweet as I hope to release a FikaCast later today that talks in much more detail about this tradition, so I’ll leave you with some photos of my semla baking adventures in the past…

Oh, and can I just say how much I *love* this Swedish calendar that I got at House of Jacob’s after Christmas? It has little drawings like the semlor above on any of the special days :-) Thanks DH!

I know I said I’d announce the winner of the comment contest to celebrate the recent blog milestones, but I had some tech glitched on Friday which some of you might have encountered. Upgrading my WordPress software broke the site for some reason, but the upgrades did not break the old blog or the FikaCast site (aside from some sidebar content anyway). I’ll try again at a later date on a weekend when there isn’t so much traffic and when I have better ftp software to work with (I’m still adjusting to the Mac thing).

Firstly, I’d like to thank all of you who played. It was really good to get feedback on what elements of the blog you all most enjoy. When I was first getting ready to begin the blog in this location and open it up to a wider range of topics I know many readers were against my including topics other than knitting and spinning so I just wanted to get a check on what you all are interested in seeing over here. Those of you who went to the extra effort to put your comments into haiku - a round of applause. Most of the haiku entries were valid haikus and many were rather entertaining.

On Friday I had DH assist in the name drawing. The winner her drew was none other than my fellow Swedish American knitter - Wendy! Wendy, if you can e-mail me your mailing address to fiberfool AT gmail DOT com I’ll get your prize out to you sometime this week.

So many of you played and entertained me that I’m going to hand out a few copies of the Two Thumbs Up pattern to some of my favorite haiku posters too!

I really enjoyed Carol’s (of co.stevens.wa):
The winter diet
Eye candy from Fiber Fool
Always fills me up

For posting from the farthest away, Pikku-Kettu:
Photos to astound
Goodies from so close to home
Fiber licking good

And for clever use of my latest pattern name, Crafting Jen:
Swedish eats, fiber.
Clever knitting and photos.
I give Two Thumbs Up!

The Two Thumbs Up pattern is around 1 Mb, so if you three could e-mail me (at fiberfool AT gmail DOT com) and let me know if the e-mail address you used to leave the comment can handle a file of that size I’d appreciate it.

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Stephanie, one of my great test knitters for the Two Thumbs Up pattern has posted photos and her comments on the pattern.

As usual, don’t forget to share your DK FOs with me so others can see your interpretations of the patterns. You can e-mail me photos (fiberfool AT gmail DOT com) or send me a link to your blog post. If you’re on Flickr you can also put your photos into the DK Knitting Pool.

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If you’re looking for some ear candy to go with the eye candy, DH was busy last weekend while I was gone and did Album-a-Day. You can listen to his ~20 minute album on his web site. He’d love feedback and you don’t need to know anything about writing or recording music to leave a comment.

The first weekend of February we again did a lot of entertaining. I was responsible for the dessert for Friday night dinner and I decided upon this white cake recipe from the 1994 church cookbook. I call it Deloris Larson White Cake. She made it for every special occasion at the church and was often hired to bake the cakes for confirmations, first communions, graduations, etc. of most of the kids in the church. Believe it or not, it starts out with a cake mix! But I have to say it tastes unlike any cake made from a mix I’ve ever had. There are additions to the ingredients and changes in how you mix it. The end result is the best crumb for cake I’ve ever had. I love it! And, I discovered that if we buy the egg whites I can make a 1/2 recipe! This is a good thing as the full batch is two boxes of cake mix and results in something like 3 dozen cupcakes or four 8-in rounds which we can’t really fit into our oven all at once. Plus it means it gets eaten quickly.

That Sunday we once again had fika. This time we invited Robin, Tam, and Simmon. I made bullar as DH had been remarking how long it had been since I made it. I changed it up some in hopes of getting a better shaped final roll and I think it worked! I’ll need to try it another time or two and then I’ll feel as though I’ve tweaked things enough to share the recipe. Hopefully I’ll share the recipe as part of a new FikaCast episode now that I have the MacBook :-)

DH also made a banana cake from an old family recipe. He made up a batch of peanut butter buttercream frosting from Retro Desserts and I frosted the cake for him. I decided it needed a smattering of semi-sweet chocolate chips as a finishing touch. It was really good and met with much praise from our fika companions.