Solstice greetings

I know, I missed it by a day or so, but I like acknowledging that the shortest day has come and gone. There are many, many holidays around this time of year, but I like the solstice best.  I hope you are enjoying/have enjoyed/will enjoy your choice of holidays, and that whatever else goes on you find some time to rest and have some peace with people you love.  And some yarn in your hands.

We've had the last Yarnworks of the year, which we celebrated with cookies (thanks Jean!) and sparkling juice (thanks Andree!) and yarn, of course.  Looking forward to 2016!  I have been unusually amply rewarded for my efforts in the yarn department this year, so I am looking for some way to share that.  I ordered 4 magazines, 2 for knitting and 2 for crochet to share with the group (which for some reason earned me a copy of Kung Fu Panda from Amazon, although I have no idea why they think this is a good idea).  Some will go to buy yarn for future projects, but being frugal is ingrained by now, so I still shop the sales.  Maybe I'll invest in more needles of all sizes to make sure we have whatever is needed.  But I'll check eBay before paying full price...

Do you like untangling yarn?  Probably not, but I actually do, and apparently there is a whole community of people who like it so much they will do it for others.  Check out this article.  There is a group on Ravelry called Knot a Problem who specialize and glory in untangling yarn.

Making cookies at this time of year seems to be mandatory, but since I have been avoiding sugar to keep my heartburn under control, I had put it off.  Finally I made an old recipe for soft orange cookies with orange cream cheese icing, using a commercial gluten-free flour mix.  So I ended up with puffy, biscuity cookies instead of flat, cakey cookies, but they still work to convey the icing to my mouth.  I will suffer, but once a year I'll break my sugar fast.  And spritz cookies!  Sugar, egg yolks, butter, vanilla, and brown rice flour, squashed through a cookie press.  But that leaves egg whites, you say.  Yes, and chocolate meringue cookies need egg whites!  So forgive me stomach and esophagus, I have sinned, but I'll stop soon.  As soon as all of the orange cream cheese icing is gone.

At the other end of the food spectrum, the organic farm from my CSA is selling the excess produce that this warm weather has allowed them to grow, so I'll balance the cookies with some kale and salad greens.

I have finished all of my Christmas gift knitting and crocheting, so now I have choices.  I'm working on the Hue Shift afghan, a boring ribbed hat for myself in alpaca, and I could sew together the finished summer sweater and put on the crocheted edging.  But that seems too self-focused.  I do have some Star Wars figures that were requested, but that won't take long.  So I started going through the projects I looked at but didn't make for this year.  I made a list of what yarn each needed, then went to the Yarn.com year-end blowout sale and started ordering.  Now I'm looking forward to that bag, and have a list to start on.  That's more like it!

I hear cookies calling me, but I'm ignoring them.  It's a fast day until dinner (homemade spaghetti sauce with sausage and chicken).  Take that, sugar.

Warm and Fuzzy

The Warm and Fuzzy fundraiser for 2015 is history now, and very successful!  People had fun (several commented that it was their favorite event at work), $3763 was raised, and all of the items found new homes.  I calculated that 56% of the final total was from bids on my work - the rest was from the bake sale, items donated by other people, and people just giving me more than they owed.  Several people won a bidding war only to turn around and gift the item to someone else who had been bidding.  Top bids were $150 for a painting, a copy of a Monet, by a fellow scientist who also flies his own plane and plays violins in orchestras, a real Renaissance man, and also $150 for the Island Playset (below).  Next was $120 for homebrewed beer (20 bottles of 22 oz of the brew of choice).

When I set up the tables, I couldn't find the zombie, but I had his picture on the bid sheet so he found a home, and eventually I found him under my bed by trying to think like a cat who had found it: where would it end up?  Bed it was.  The Star Wars figures were popular, of course, as were the baby items.  As usual it was impossible to predict what would get the fiercest bidding.  And 4 lots of homemade pierogies got bids of $70 - $80.

Yes, I already started something for next year, because that box of yarn was taunting me.  But I still have Christmas items to make, so I try not to let it hog all of my free time.

I visited my parents in Florida, and worked on a hat, finished a sweater, and did most of a headband during the trip.  The sweater pieces have been blocked and are ready to sew together once Christmas stuff is done, but I have a lot of leftover yarn from it.  It's lovely smooth shiny Cascade Ultra Pima fine, about 500 yards in tan, which is probably enough to make a baby blanket, but tan?  Who makes a tan baby blanket?  I like this pattern, which I have made before with Ultra Pima, but I'm not sure if I have enough yarn or enough interest to do it again.

This is the Gluten-Free Yarn Nerd, and a shout-out to some incredible bread is due.  GF bread basically is miserable stuff texture-wise, and I can pretty much never get through a sandwich without the bread crumbling before I finish, but lo!  Behold the best GF bread ever: Schar (imagine an umlaut over the a) gluten free Artisan Baker Multigrain Bread!  It sits on the store shelf at room temperature.  It's soft and flexible and chewy and non-crumbly when you first open the package, and wonder of wonders, it's still like that several days later at room temperature!  I have been reveling in sandwiches all week.  I almost never eat them because the bread is not worth it, but I nearly swooned with delight eating a grilled sandwich tonight.  You don't even have to toast this bread to make it edible.  Schar, you win the gluten-free universe.  Now if only you could make GF saltines...