Fiber Fool

1. Good times with friends and family are of course at the top of the list. Sharing stories and maybe a game or two or putting together a puzzle or watching a movie. I don’t care too much what we do. Just the getting together is nice.

2. Turkey! It is something I don’t often eat, other than ground in burgers or taco meat or as sliced deli meat, but I love a well roasted turkey and really look forward to having it.

3. Root vegetables! They may be startchy and full of carbs, but I love my root vegetables - rutabega, parsnips, potatoes, yams, onions, even beets. Especially when roasted in a light coating of olive oil, salt and perhaps some fresh herbs!

4. Squashes of all variety. It’s no secret I love pumpkin, but the other squashes all come in at a close second. We have a few new to us varieties this year thanks to the CSA. Anyone cooked with a Blue Banana Squash before? What is it best for?

5. Pie! I love that pie often plays such a traditional roll in Thanksgiving. Only problem is choosing which to have. I usually cave and go for a sliver of each :-)

6. Cranberries! It’s that love of tart fruit again (remember me and rhubarb). I could really eat them year around. So I do my best to make myself sick of them by the time New Years hits.

7. Pulling out the Swedish stars for our windows and lighting them to light the dark, long nights of winter!

8. Checking my 1.2 days worth of Christmas music in iTunes so it is included in my music rotation once again. Why yes, I do have a problem - I have 20 versions of Silent Night! Why do you ask? LOL!

9. I love putting up the rest of the Christmas decorations too. Having all the greenery and extra decor just makes the indoors seem warmer and cozier.

10. Dusting off all the holiday movies, including Hebrew Hammer (hey, we’re an equal opportunity holiday household here and enjoy attending a friends Hanukkah party too), White Christmas, Love Actually, The Holiday, Christmas in Connecticut (the old one, thank you) and many more.

This one was a bit bittersweet to write. This year neither of us really had the time to make the three hour drive to DH’s family gathering, nor did we have advance enough notice to arrange for kenneling for Emma and Brandon. Not to mention that making sure DH has enough vegetarian food for a meal when traveling that distance can be problematic. So this year, it will just be like any other day. The holiday may be the excuse I need to finally make enough time to make the Squash Risotto from The Poor Girl Gourmet’s cookbook again and perhaps I’ll venture to the grocery today and see about getting a small turkey breast for myself. Would it be overkill to make squash risotto and have pumpkin pie for dessert?

I hope you all here in the US get to enjoy everything on your lists and have a wonderful Thanksgiving on Thursday!

In honor of Thanksgiving this week here in the US I thought I’d share a shot from making my favorite homemade cranberry sauce. It is so quick and simple to make I can’t believe I didn’t start making it myself until about 5 years ago. I make it fairly regularly when cranberries are available in the market as I love a dallop on top of some plain Greek yogurt. I only sweetened slightly with sugar and then use the juice and zest of an orange to do so naturally a bit. Sometimes I’ll add in a bit of grated ginger too for some extra zing.

Also, don’t forget to enter the giveaway for one of five free copies of my serialized e-book, Nourishing Knits: 24 Projects to Gift and Entertain (if you don’t have a Ravelry account, go to my designer page, scroll to the bottom and click on the cover for Nourishing Knits to view the info and pattern pics, for some reason the direct link doesn’t work for non-members, but going through my designer page does).

Crafty:

• Bookbinding: How to Bind Your Own e-Books - keep in mind that this may be against the license of some e-books
• Copy Cat: Copycat Crafts - a new crafty blog specifically for how-tos to copy designer items of all types. They even have categories specifically for Anthropologie, Pottery Barn, West Elm & more.
• Handspinning: Catena Expressions is sampling Shetland - fleeces and traditional lace stitch patterns. This is a fun project to look in on and watch the evolution!
• Holiday: Nature Wreaths
• Holiday: Round Up for DIY Wreaths
• Holiday: Free Printable Holiday Card Templates & Digital Paper Pack for Photoshop/Photoshop Elements
• Jewelry: This Felted Bead Necklace is much more my style than most I’ve seen. It links to a tutorial on how to make the felt beads if you are in need. A great project for with kids.
• Knitting: JL Yarnworks’ Gift Knitting Patterns Suggestions - I’m honored to be included!
• Knitting: Spud & Chloe has a great new mindless knitting pattern for an infinity scarf that can be worn many different ways. It requires just a little over 300 yds of worsted weight yarn knit loosely on US9 needles.
• Knitting: Ideas for a Knitting Themed Party
• Knitting: FREE Reference Card Printables for Knitters and Crocheters
• Upcycling: I’m loving these ornaments made from a window blind sample book. I wish I had one!

Yummy:

• Dessert: Chocolate Cake with Molten Peanut Butter Center is something I’m going to have to try make for DH
• Dessert: Chocolate Fudge Pomegranate Cookies - I would have never thought to put pomegranate arils in cookies, but it sounds wonderful!
• Dessert: Sugarless Date Squares
• Dessert: Apple Cranberry Pie from Cook’s Illustrated (membership may be required to view)
• Gifting: The Container Store’s Holiday Recipes for Gifting
• Health: Kitchen Comfort for Cold & Flu Sufferers
• Holiday: Virtual Holiday Recipe Swap Contest, includes a recipe for Pumpkin Sugar Cookie Bars
• Sides: Roasted Sweet Potato with Goat Cheese and Pecans from Smitten Kitchen
• Sides: Quinoa, Squash and Black Bean Salad with Walnuts from Poor Girl Gourmet
• Thanksgiving: Martha Stewart’s Thanksgiving Hotline Cookbook is a free download from Sirius radio.
• Vegetarian Main: Butternut Squash Lasagna (your mouth will water if you follow this link) from Poor Girl Gourmet

Photography:

• Composition: Use Your Zoom Lens as a Compositional Aid
• Gift Ideas for Photographers: 12 Camera Bag Essentials from Adorama - there are at least a couple things on that list that are going on my wishlist plus a few that I know are out of reach for me to be gifted
• Portraits: 5 Things to Know about Catchlights

Natural Living:

• Aromatherapy: Aromatherapy is Nothing to Sniff At
• Gifting: Homemade Bath Salts for Holiday Giving - Pumpkin or Cinnamon & includes free printable tags for labeling!
• Insomnia: Fight Insomnia By Rescheduling Bed Time
• Laundry: Make Your Own Felt Fabric Softening Dryer Balls
• Moisturizing: The Magical Aloe Vera includes instruction on how to make your own aloe gel (a common base for DIY hand sanitizers)
• Moisturizing: How to Avoid Grainy Shea and Mango Butter
• Pain Relief: Exercises to Combat Tight Neck & Shoulders - most of these are more or less the same as my PT has prescribed in the past and I’ve found them quite effective when I do them
• Stress: American Stress Levels Prompts Health Warning
• Vinegar: 8 Uses for Vinegar Around the Home

I hope you all have a great week and for those with a short week due to the holiday I hope you get some quality relaxing in!

I love autumn. Not only are there great opportunities to capture wonderful colors in nature, but it is a time of year when some of my most loved flavors are available - pumpkin, acorn squash, butternut squash, cranberries and more. Yesterday I took a bit of time to enjoy my first taste of cranberries for autumn 2010-2011, laced with just a hint of orange. Yum!

Have a great weekend and do something seasonal!

The first three patterns and recipes of twelve each for Nourishing Knits are on the verge of release. In the meantime I’ve uploaded the cover image as a placeholder PDF and you can now subscribe to the e-book for only $16 (buy now, you do not need to be a Ravelry member or have a PayPal account to make the purchase).

ETA: The $16 price covers all 12 patterns and 12 recipes that will make up the book and is good until the final installment of patterns and recipes goes live on March 15th, 2011.

To celebrate this first stage I thought I’d give away some subscriptions. Sound like fun?

To Enter:

Favorite, queue, or comment on one of the patterns currently listed on Ravelry as being a part of the e-book - Guided By Love, Bourdeaux and Cornucopia. Each of those actions will assign you a number in the order in which Ravelry records the action between November 18th and 25th. On black Friday, November 26th I’ll have the random number generator at random.org select 5 winners.

For Bonus Entries:

Twitter: Tweet about the contest (limit one per day). You may use the one below or write your own. Be sure to include @fiberfool or @nourishknits in the tweet. Then leave one comment per tweet on this post with a link directly to the specific tweet and include your twitter ID.

Have you entered @fiberfool's contest to win a subscription to her new knitting e-book, Nourshing Knits? http://bit.ly/cUPf9h

Facebook: Share the contest on your Facebook page, then leave a comment on this post with a link directly to the specific posting.

Your Blog: Or post about the e-book and contest on your blog and leave a comment on this post with the direct link to your specific blog post. You have my permission to use the cover image or the pattern images in any blog posts as long as you link to the book page on Ravelry (http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/sources/nourishing-knits-24-projects-to-gift-and-entertain) or this contest post (http://blog.designedlykristi.com/?p=900).

Purchase: Can’t wait? Go ahead and buy it. I’ll still enter you in the contest and give you an extra entry for your purchase. If your random number is selected you’ll get a full refund!

Random numbers will be assigned in the following order:

• Ravelry activity from 4:00 pm (US Mountain) 11/18/2010 - 11:59 pm 11/25/2010 in the order in which it was recorded by Ravelry.
• Bonus entry comments in the order in which they were received.
• Bonus entries for purchase in the order in which they were received.

Now that I’m not getting washed out reds and oranges this shot was worth the effort of post-processing. I never did post the original of it back in January, it was just too ho-hum. Once this first milestone of NK is over, if you are interested in my solution to the washed out warm tone issue when sharing images on the web, remind me and I’ll share what I’ve learned.

1. I’m thankful for friends and family who are so supportive of Nourishing Knits. I have had so much help pulling this together - test and sample knitting, description writing and editing, pattern editing, copy editing, test cooking, taste testing, modeling, and sounding boards for the tiniest of details. Not the least of these helpful people is DH who is putting up with lots of delivery and dining out while I’m not finding time to cook as I try to wrap this first release.

2. My camera (thanks to DH a few years ago)! It is not only a huge tool in putting together NK, but it also provides a stimulating, yet rejuvenating break now and again. As does my back catalog of images to revisit as my skills grow :-)

3. NetFlix for the iPhone. Without it I wouldn’t have been able to fall asleep this last month. My mind would have been going 1000 miles an hour dwelling on all the to-dos. With it, I have just enough entertainment to stop the rat on the wheel in my head, but not so much (as long as I choose wisely) to keep me awake terribly long.

4. My various sizes and shapes of rice packs and TENS/EMS machine without which I could not have survived the crazy hours I’ve been spending on the computer the last few weeks.

There may be a theme here…

If things go smoothly today there may be a second post with some fun involved!