'Twas the Night Before Christmas...

Wishing you a wonderful holiday filled with lots of peace, joy, and love. 

-Erica-

On Solstice...

Over the past couple of weeks I have been trying to be mindful to take advantage of the darkness instead of wish it away.  There have been slide shows with my grandfathers slides, turning into bed early with a bowl of popcorn and a movie, and lots and lots of candlelight.  It's really been quite nice...though I also find the fact that today is the turning point towards more light quite nice too. :)

Happy Solstice!

Long, Cold Winter Kicking Bag

Just another summer knit that never made it to the blog or Ravelry...this was made on a whim in August when things were more than a bit stressful with buying the house...all of the mindless stockinette was exactly what I needed.  I chose to switch out the cables for a 2x2 rib and added an i-cord. 

Rav details here.

Darkness and Light

I haven't been handling all the darkness as gracefully as I would like this year.  I'm leaving for work in the dark and coming home in the dark.  I feel like I'm missing out on so much living.

This week especially feeling bogged down by endless to-do lists at work and home, migraines, and everything that seems to be breaking and needing money to be fixed (dishwasher, car, cat), I was teetering on the edge of a breakdown.

So tonight I went out in the yard, on the edge of the river bank and sat.  Just sat.  I practiced listening to all of the sounds of the river, first upstream, then downstream, the water swirling around the big rock, the high pitched chuckle and the deep, soothing swoosh.   I looked at the bark on the old sugar maple next to me.  I watched the moon rise over the hill.  I took deep breaths of the cool, damp air.  And with that everything felt just a bit more manageable. 

Tonight I'm going to finish the Christmas cards and plant those narcissus I've been meaning to plant for a week now...and tomorrow who knows...I'll worry about that when the time comes.

A Little Off the Ends

It's a big adjustment.  My hair hasn't been this short since I was three years old when it grew out from baby hair....but, I think I like it.  I think I like it a lot actually...a reaction I wasn't anticipating having.  I grew it so long and cut it to try to do a little good in the world, but selfishly gained a sense of lightness and freedom.  I recently saw a quote that I can't seem to find now that said something along the lines of "Doing something good for someone else is the fastest way to make yourself feel good."  I wish I remembered this more.

October Snow

Over the weekend we got the biggest October snowstorm I  can remember.  We ended up with a foot of heavy, wet snow.  Luckily we didn't lose power, though we did lose two big branches off one of our Norway Maples.

I was so excited for this snow.  I don't know that I'll ever be one of those people who dreads the snow.  For me, the snow holds some sort of magic and I can't help but be completely entranced when it starts to fall.  Much of the snow has melted, only a few inches remain...and as much as I love it, I am hoping it will all melt off, I still have tulip bulbs to plant!  After they're in the ground it can snow all the way through April as far as I'm concerned!

I'm curious if there is anyone out there reading from the Northeast, how much snow did you end up with in your neck of the woods?

Happy Halloween

Oh boy, we got a snowstorm alright...and I couldn't be more excited!  We're spending our first Halloween as homeowners passing out candy and continuing to work on our mini kitchen renovation.  I'm finding that being a homeowner and doing all the things homeowners do (like handing out candy on Halloween and doing renovations) adds a new level of feeling like a "grown up"...I think I like it.

More on the storm tomorrow.  I hope you all have a fabulous Halloween!!!

Our Forecast...

WINTER STORM WARNING NOW IN EFFECT FROM 4 PM THIS AFTERNOON TO 8 AM EDT SUNDAY...

* HAZARD TYPES... HEAVY WET SNOW.
* ACCUMULATIONS... 6 TO 10 INCHES OF SNOW. 12 INCHES OF SNOW IN SOME HIGHER ELEVATIONS.
* TIMING... A MIXTURE OF RAIN AND SNOW WILL OVERSPREAD THE REGION FROM SOUTHWEST TO NORTHEAST FROM THIS AFTERNOON. THE PRECIPITATION WILL CHANGE TO HEAVY WET SNOW BY THIS EVENING. SNOW WILL FALL HEAVY AT TIMES TONIGHT. 1 TO 2 INCH PER HOUR SNOWFALL RATES ARE POSSIBLE AT TIMES SATURDAY NIGHT.
* IMPACTS... HEAVY WET SNOW WILL RESULT IN TREE DAMAGE AND SCATTERED POWER OUTAGES. THE DAMAGE COULD BE QUITE EXTENSIVE WITH THE POTENTIAL FOR AN AREA OF WIDESPREAD POWER OUTAGES. UNTREATED ROADWAYS WILL BECOME SNOW COVERED AND SLIPPERY.
* WINDS... NORTH 10 TO 20 MPH WITH GUSTS UP TO 50 MPH.
* TEMPERATURES... IN THE LOWER 30S.
* VISIBILITIES... ONE QUARTER TO ONE HALF MILE AT TIMES

We better go buy a shovel......

{this moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

If you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see.

To Keep the Vampires Away...

Garlic is a big deal in my family.  We savor the scapes, pickle the cloves, and put it in almost all of our cooking.  We pretty much inhale it.  So not even 24 hours after my garden was tilled this weekend, we got to planting the garlic.  My dad (the unofficial local garlic go-to man) had saved me some of his garlic from this past year to plant and walked me through the steps.  We planted 127 cloves of German White garlic, which next summer should become 127 heads (my dad plants close to 400!!).  His red garlic didn't do as well this year as it has in the past, so we decided against propagating undesirable bulbs, but I plan on ordering some red next year as I like the slightly spicier/stronger flavor.  I'd love suggestions of other types of garlic to try if you have them!

Itty Bitty Nest and Eggs

Oh man, what a day its been...I meant to get to this space earlier, but from 3-7 am I was very unsuccessfully bat hunting in our bedroom, then work where I got an email from the hubby that a mouse was casually chilling in our bedroom this morning when he got out of the shower and it was in fact a terrified mouse screech not a bat screech that we were hearing, then this afternoon I went to the hardware store to continue the mouse hunt tonight, this time with the correct tools.  I can only imagine that poor mouse must have been thinking about me coming at him with a pointy stick from a cat toy and a towel at 3am dressed in my rain boots, garden gloves and with my sweatshirt hood scrunched so only my eyes peeped out...I hope we'll have better luck tonight.

Anyways, I found this little abandoned nest over the weekend.  It had two itty bitty blue eggs inside, both broken.  I originally thought it could be a hummingbird because I have never seen a nest or eggs so small and we have a huge hummingbird population at this house, but a google search proved that this nest is FAR too big for a hummingbird and their eggs are white not blue.  So I'm stumped...I'm thinking it is probably a bird around the size of a chickadee, but don't know any that size that lay blue eggs...any ideas?

Fall Outtakes

I'm feeling quiet today after a weekend of so much goodness.  Happy Monday! :)

{this moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

We Went to Camp

Almost two months ago I mentioned heading up to the North Woods of Maine to my husbands family camp and never got around to sharing it here.  The camp was built by my husbands great grandfather (who my husband is named for) in the late 1800's and finished in 1901.  He was worked in the lumber industry and shipped timbers from his home on the Maine coast to the deep, Northern woods where he built his camp on the edge of a lake.  Throughout the years the camp has stayed in the family, and is now owned by my father-in-law's cousins.  For the past decade the family has wanted to get up there, but schedules and the chaos of life always got in the way, until this August. 

It was my first trip to camp.  Stories over the years had built it up in my head as an amazing place, so I thought I knew what to expect, but it was so much more.  It was magical.  I have never felt so strongly attached to a place so quickly as I did here.  It was everything a camp should be.  There was yard games, wild blueberry picking, a picnic by the lake, and the most well-fed ducks in New England.  There was a cozy night by the fireplace playing bingo, card games, and ping pong by lantern light.  There were old photo albums to explore and camp registers to read [every.single.trip. to camp from the time the first timber was put into place up to our trip had been documented, it was pretty amazing.  There were the names of the people and animals attending, references to dances held with the neighboring house, number and size of fish caught in the lake, animals seen, all types of weather imaginable (hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards, hail), national news, family anecdotes, its all there...writing in the log was so daunting to me, knowing that those words would stay with that house forever and could be read a hundred years from now.]  There was fishing and an early morning canoe trip on a fog filled lake where the silence was only broken by the chilling call of loons surrounding us.  Oh, the loons.  I had never been so close to loons before or heard their call in the wild.  That morning, sitting still as a statue in the canoe watching the loons, listening to their call, and seeing them dive down under the water, I will never forget it.  I didn't have my camera at that moment, but I'm almost glad...I was so conscious and involved in that moment that I think a camera would have taken away from it.

Our trip was cut short by Hurricane Irene, but now that we've made it up there, we're making it a priority and hope to be back next year.  I hope so.  That place is in my bones now.

Cranberry Bog Booties

My knitting tends to ebb and flow with the seasons, but there was some knitting this summer.  It tended to be mostly of the baby variety, not because I have any news to share (not for awhile anyways), but because baby knits are so stinkin' quick and cute and can be made from leftovers in the stash.  I also am a planner by nature and am thinking ahead to the day when there will be a baby on the way and there are 10,000 things I want to make and only time enough to make 5 of them.

So, that brings us to these booties.  They are just about the cutest thing I've ever seen and were whipped up within a matter of a few hours of work spread throughout a week.  I loved the construction of these. While knitting I couldn't figure out how the pattern could come together and possibly make a bootie, but it did and it's brilliant.  My absolute favorite thing about these has to be the color of the yarn, it is beautifully rich and reminds me of cranberry bogs in the fall and my great grandmother's homemade cranberry sauce on the Thanksgiving table. Anything that can be tied up in nostalgia is fabulous in my book.

Ravelry details here.

Autumn in My Favorite Corner

Rounding out the seasons in my favorite corner of Vermont.  The first picture was taken on the side of the road next to my great grandmothers house.  I get to live in one of the most beautiful places in the world.  Sometimes I feel like I need to pinch myself.

See this place in winter, spring, and summer.