Ordinary Time

I had people asking for the doughnut recipe I used yesterday, so here it is. This has been in my recipe book for decades and I have absolutely no idea where I got it from. As much as I would love to attribute it, I can't. I will give you the recipe as it was written which makes twelve doughnuts. Twelve! Ha!! I triple it when I make it. I know I triple it when I make it because at some point in the past, I wrote out the correct amounts for the tripled recipe. Now when I open the recipe book, I see that marked in and think,"Oh, I must triple this," so I do. I often leave myself little notes like this. I never actually remember having done so when I come across them again, but am thankful for earlier me's foresight in knowing I wouldn't remember whatever little note I made. But on to the recipe. 2-1/2 cups all-purpose flour 2/3 cup sugar 1 tsp ground cinnamon 1 tsp ground nutmeg 1/4 tsp salt 2 eggs 1/3 cup apple cider 4 TBSP butter, melted Vegetable oil for frying [I...

TM turns 20 in a couple of days and all he ever really wants for a celebration is for me to make him apple cider donuts. We had planned that this morning would be the apple cider donut making morning. TM came over last night and spent the night so he would be here when they were ready. I triple the recipe so that it makes at least three dozen, so it takes a few eggs. If you look carefully, you can see that the baby chickens's eggs are still a bit on the small side. Cutting them out. And the donuts and donut holes all ready to eat.  Well, actually, they're ready to eat once you put the apple cider glaze on them. After eating donuts, we gave TM the birthday gift I had for him. Low key is what he wants, so that's what we do. But don't you think that twenty years old sounds not quite right? He was just my little boy the other day, wasn't he?

As I mentioned yesterday, it's been a pretty calm and uneventful week, so we'll see how much I come up with. I guess the biggest news this week is something that didn't happen. For the past six years, October has been a significantly difficult month in terms of R.'s regulation. One year saw us in the hospital twice during October and other years have seen me sitting on the couch for days at a time helping her to stay regulated. One October was so bad I stepped away from nearly all my volunteer activities. This year? There was a brief blip at the very beginning of the month, but that has been it, otherwise it has been totally like any other month. When R. has gotten upset, she and I have been able to talk about what she is feeling, worked through those feelings, and she has moved on. If this is the only thing I come up with tonight, that alone is pretty darn significant. Despite the weather being all over the place this month, this autumn has been absolutely beautiful. W...

Things are fine, but life has been pretty uneventful. Calm does not make for interesting reading, though that is it's only downside. And tonight, even if I could dredge up something of interest to write about, I'm always a little done in by an entire day at our co-op and teaching three classes. So you get... not much. But I did want to post something because I also know I have more than one family member who gets concerned if there are a couple of days without posting.  Actually, I can share a couple of pictures. I was looking through old pictures for something specific. I didn't find that particular thing, but how cute are these of A. and B. (plus J. in one) at their cousin's wedding?

Christmas catalogs have begun arriving in the mail. (It's just wrong, I tell you, this Christmas anything before Thanksgiving.) While I tend to ignore them, the younger people in the house happily grab them and examine them carefully. Today L. was looking at one and announced she had found a t-shirt that she thinks would be perfect for her. The t-shirt said: Art Attack The overwhelming feeling of having so many creative ideas at once and not enough time to do them all. I agree that it is a very appropriate t-shirt for her. At least as she gets older the overwhelming feelings have been a bit more manageable. Usually. But I'll also be honest and say I completely understand. 

I'm just about done with my dyeing experiment of dyeing 100 grams of fleece with each of the twelve dye colors I have (eleven actually because I wasn't planning on black). You want to hear something that filled me with great satisfaction? When I got down to measuring out the fleece for the last two colors, I realized that I had exactly enough fleece for it all to come out perfectly even. Here is everything minus the two that are still drying. What is missing is brown and emerald. These last two colors were interesting because the dyes each broke quite a bit. (Broke meaning that they separated into their component parts when I started heating the dye pot.) This also means these colors are the least uniform of everything. I will be curious to see what they end up looking like when I spin them. Here's brown: As you can see the black used to make it separated quite a bit which is why you see black patches. And emerald: In this the blue broke leaving blue patches. Blue is also t...

Take a look at this. You see some trees, you see our little trailer we take on trips, you see some leaves... The point is kind of what you do not see. Remember that trailer of W.'s that he was going to turn into a tiny house, then it had a leak so got moved off to the side, finally a straight line wind came in June 2021 and flipped the entire thing upside dow n?  That was where the trailer lived, upside down for over a year. And now it is not there!! Hip Hip Hooray!! Here is all that is left of it, and that will probably go next week. And what is behind this near miraculous occurrence? Miraculous because of the people we contacted about removing it who actually would consider it, the smallest price we were quoted was $2000. If I had that much money lying around I'd be buying a larger loom, not paying to have junk taken away. Since we didn't have that money lying around I do not have a larger loom and the trailer sat there like a bug on its back. A bug is more attractive. An...

We'll jump right in. No blog post yesterday because J. arrived home from being gone most of the week. He was at a higher education conference in Florida. The photo is from the resort where he was staying. Tough life, huh? The weather has been all over the place this week. On Tuesday there was a little snow but today we reached 80. How does that even make sense?  I've had several children walking around the house complaining about the weather. No, not the snow, but the 80 degrees. They want fall weather. Me? I'm going to enjoy the warmer weather as much as I can because before I know it I'll be hauling buckets of water out to the barn in sub-zero weather. L. has announced she is currently in an abstract art phase.  I cannot keep enough painting canvas in stock. See the previous item. TM dropped by this afternoon and stayed for dinner. He does this every so often and I love it. Last week there were two different stores with chicken breast on sale for $0.99/pound. It has b...

Yesterday was my riding lesson. I've written a bit before about how I've spent the summer completely changing how I've been riding, slowly working my way down my body. We're to hips, legs, and heels now, so I'm hopeful we're nearly done. The ugly riding, frustration, and hard work are paying off, though, because riding now is so much easier in so many ways. One thing I particularly noticed yesterday that I wanted to share with you. I promise it's not just about horseback riding but has wider implications. I'm not in horrible shape, but riding in my lesson always knocked me out. I would need to stop and come down to a walk to catch my breath I was so winded. I was baffled because I truly hadn't been riding for very long before this point when it would happen. My trainer first realized I wasn't breathing as much or as deeply as I should be, so we worked on that. Breathing is always good, but this alone wasn't solving the problem. As I started m...

I have something to write, I just don't have the energy to write it. Then I was going to do that thing where I link to past posts that my newer readers might have missed. Nope, no energy for that, either. What I do have some energy for is to point out some features that you can use to find old posts. First, across the top, right underneath where it says "Life at Bittersweet Farm" there are some links that will take you to pages where I have gathered a lot of older posts on a certain topic. You can also choose "The Swooping Eagle" which is the story L. wrote when she was ten. Then, if you click on the three horizontal bars at the top left of the page you will have even more options. If you choose "Archives" you can choose the month and year of your choice. TM came home in 2006, K. came home in 2008, G. and L. were born in 2009, H. came home in 2012, R. and Y. came home in 2016, and we moved in 2017 if you are looking for years with plenty of blog fodder...

L. is still without more clay, a fact of which I am informed almost as often as I am informed that she wants a puppy, which makes it about every hour. (I hear she wants a puppy about every half hour.) So, in lieu of creating something new, she had to make due with finishing something she already had. A while back when I shared her latest batch of sculptures I mentioned that there was also a dragon I was not allowed to share yet. Well, here it is. This is in her crafting nook. I thought you might like to see the artist's creative space. Because I used the flash, you don't get to see exactly how cave like it really is. A closer look at the left side... and the right. I like the gold around the eye on this side.  And this isn't disturbing at all is it? We'll give points for realism I guess, because it does seem pretty close to the bone structure if the dragon's head was actually cut off. Welcome to my world.

Well, it's October and I'm knitting a sock, but whether or not that translates into an actual finished pair by the end of the month seems very, very unlikely. Here is how far I've gotten. To remind you, this is made from the raw fleece I got for Christmas last year. Both colors came from the same sheep. I'm pretty sure I'm not going to have enough to make a pair, despite what I thought was careful measuring.Definitely the heels and toes will need to be in a different yarn if not the entire foot portion. I am really happy with my color work at the top, though. My spinning class is really starting to get the hang of things and have been spinning up a storm. This is great! It also means that it is a little more work to keep them in fiber than I had anticipated. Here is the next batch of fleece I dyed for them. I decided to go with a Halloween theme this time. I've also continued to work on my dye project. I finished the spruce and sun yellow colors, and I have turq...

H.'s birthday was actually on Friday, but it was tonight that everyone could come for a party. It started off kind of dramatically with a bonfire.  It looked impressive, but not trees caught on fire.  At one point, everyone was here except D. (TM had taken a break from work and made a quick stop.) So we called him on the phone so he could join in, too. For dinner, H. chose a green curry with chicken and green beans, rice, and dumplings, then opted for chocolate mayonnaise cake for dessert. Y. made it, and it was very good. H. also got quite a few nice presents which she liked, including a calligraphy kit from Grammy. Happy, happy birthday, H.! We love you!!

We took a little field trip today. I had seen that the Viking ship which is housed in Geneva was having an open day, so decided we needed to go back and revisit it. We are doing the Middle Ages after all, which is when the Vikings were at the height of their exploring and invading. This was one of the first local field trips we too k the first year we were here about 4 1/2 years ago. Some of the younger people knew we had gone, but didn't really remember it. Plus, I knew that J. would enjoy seeing it. Walking along one side of the ship. A better view of the rudder. Looking down on the deck and where the mast would go. Some things hadn't changed at all, which I wouldn't expect them to. But there were two pieces of exciting new. When we were there last time, the Friends of the Viking Ship were raising money to create a permanent home for the ship. As you can see it is currently housed under a fabric Quonset hut. It seems that they have now been able to put an offer on some p...

There's not going to be much here, I'm afraid. It just doesn't seem to have been a terribly eventful week. I'm not complaining; I needed some calm. Calm is not always terribly interesting to write about, though. Today is H.'s 20th birthday. Yes, you read that correctly. We are all a bit undone by that. It doesn't seem quite right. She had her chosen birthday breakfast of cereal (Fruit Loops in particular is what she wanted), but we'll celebrate with the family on Sunday.  K. and Y. are off spending the night at B.'s tonight.  I had an exciting box arrive today. My mother had cross-stitched a wall hanging for me a while back and when I was there last spring, we went and chose the framing for it. Well, the framed piece arrived today! Here it is in my reading nook. Here is a better picture of the actual cross-stitching. (A better picture, not a great picture. Glass makes it difficult to photograph things.) Since J. was hanging things for me, we decided to h...

and another silent phone. There is a part of me that is the eternal optimist. Or it could be I have an over-sized imagination that I let loose a bit too often. For instance, every day when I go to the mailbox to collect the mail, there is a part of me that thinks, "There is going to be a large, unexpected check inside." There have been the very rare occasions when an unexpected check did arrive, so it just feeds the flame. Usually it is just ads... or bills... or on a banner day, both ads and bills. Does that stop me from secretly hoping for the large check the next day? No, not at all. Which brings us to the title. You may have heard the the MacArthur Genius Grants were announced this week. I was not given one. This comes as no surprise to anyone, I know. Still, like the mail, there is always a very small part of me that thinks, "Maybe this year..."  For what it would be awarded to me, I have no idea. I'm pretty sure consistent blogging is not what they are loo...

Remember all those apples that were weighing heavily on my mind? Well, I cancelled school this morning and we all pitched in to do something with them. Step one was to sort through all the apples we had already picked to see what shape they were in. The really good ones went in the apple pie filling group and the ones which were more marginal went into the applesauce pile because we could cut out the bad spots. I'm happy (and relieved) to report that we only had to pitch a couple of apples. While we were doing this, L. had gone out with the picker to see how many apples she could get off the trees. There were quite a few. Then Y., K., and H. did a huge amount of work to get the apple pie filling apples cored and peeled and sliced. We ended up with ten pints of caramel apple pie filling. One didn't seal, so we had apple crisp for dessert to use it up. We then paused for a late lunch where I treated everyone with fast food in payment for their hard work. The afternoon was applesa...

A trailer for the new television show called Three Pines has been released. For the Louise Penny fans here, you know immediately what Three Pines refers to. If you have not had the opportunity to read Louise Penny's Inspector Gamache books, you do not. Three Pines is the (sadly) fictional town where many of the books of the series takes place. I adore these books... the characters, the stories, and yes, the town of Three Pines. This is also why I won't be watching the TV series. Anne of the Green Gables is one of my favorite books of all time. I have lost track of how many times I have read it. Yet, I have never watched any of the adaptations for the screen that have been made. There is no way that the creators of these adaptations could ever recreate exactly how I picture the book in my head. If I were to watch them, then my own creation will be replaced by something else. I am unwilling to let that happen.  Some books, while I enjoyed them, I'm okay with also seeing a scr...

My weaving class last week was wonderful. It was such a gift to be able to spend three entire days doing nothing but hanging out with creative people and making things. I don't tend to transition well, and moving from that back to real life was a little difficult. Here's what I made. This is a sampler of different combinations of huck lace. I discovered that it is very difficult to take a good picture of huck lace which really gives you an accurate representation of it. This next picture is of the sampler under tension on the loom and the one underneath it is the sampler off the loom and washed. You can see how the floats open up and make it look more lace like.  While there is still a significant amount of information I'm still trying to wrap my head around regarding weaving, I did end up understanding this structure more than I thought I would on the first day of class. This is also a weave structure I cannot weave on my little loom I have here at home. That loom just doe...