Still here

I recently got an email asking me if someone could monetize my blog and post homesteading articles.  Obviously time to get back to writing on the blog!  (and --just no-- unless you consider twins and a dog on a city street homesteading?  Huh?)  

So where have I been?  I've been supervising kids' summer time play while I spin and knit.  This is destined to be a kid sweater made out of plotulopi yarn from Icelandic.  Lightweight, warm, but a little delicate to knit.  Ideal for sitting still and knitting, but not for carrying around too much, in my experience.

Kids went back to school this past week and I was tasked with making more exciting, new masks.  Unicorn, horse, octopus, and soda pop patterns seem to be a hit...we have plenty of masks, of course, but these are the fancy new "back to school" ones.  We're grateful for the mask mandate but since our kids aren't old enough yet to be vaccinated, a bit wary about how long this 'in-school' stuff will last.  Delta variant is real. Making a masks is a good way to cope with the mom worry!  

I've also been busy putting up food.  Plum apple chutney, apple chips for school lunches, applesauce, and more. Having food on the shelf in the winter is great, but I don't think it makes me a homesteader?  (Please, give me more land for gardening and some sheep, as well as access to take out food options...that would be a heck of a farm.)

I've also continued to work as I can.  Part of the reason why there have been fewer blog posts is that I decided this past year to narrow my focus.  It was very important but also a lot to manage, having my kids home to do remote schooling/home learning for 11 months.

I optimized my time...I kept writing a regular column for this Vancouver paper.  I also have had occasional pieces run in other publications.  All my knitting patterns (around 80!) are still available on Ravelry, Lovecrafts.com and Payhip.  

However, I realized that if a gig wasn't paying much, or might take a lot of time or risk exposing kids to COVID?  It just wasn't worth it. I'm considering my options now about what work will look like for me in the future. I miss the teaching I used to do, and the collegiality of editing for someone on a daily basis, too...but for now, I want to find ways to ensure I'm both available if kids need me and earning something for my writing, editing, designing and teaching.  People talk about work being satisfying (and that's important to me!) but work is also valuable.  My experience, skills and time should be worth something, too. 

In the meanwhile, we'll be exploring outside while the weather holds and eating lots of delicious stuff as we cruise through the fall holidays. That's an apple cinnamon challah I made.  It was a hit!

Recalibrating

I recently had an article run that explained more about where I've been.  As the pandemic has been a constant, (nothing's back to "normal" for us yet)  I've worked and written at night when I can, but there's been a lot of time spent on other things.  Here is a link to the article: Recalibrating our life route 

This summer is another freeform one, where twins spend a lot of time on creative play in the yard, reading, making stuff and even doing a little learning...with outings to pick berries, swim at a lake for a day trip, etc. I mostly have stayed home with Sadie the dog while the professor does the out of town offerings.  I seem to be Mom in charge of playgrounds, farmer's market, wading pools, and long dog walks.

I've done some spinning, knitting, and lots of sewing....made my own version of MC Hammer pants...and even a brand new bag, with zippers... for taking care of business on those dog walks.

I've canned some jam (natural outcome after all that berry picking!) and, despite our hot summer, managed to make a pie recently after a kind neighbour gifted us with an entire quart bag of pitted sour cherries.  She pitted them for us!  This, of course, is neighbourliness and treasure beyond measure in our household...local fresh fruit and the gift of her time!

The tricky bit? We love many of our longtime neighbours but the infill and a recent construction in our area - also more generally targeted as part of Winnipeg's densification efforts- has caused our house's walls to be damaged. The noise and construction is hard to live through.  We also live along a very busy road. The increased traffic that returns, post-pandemic, from the nearby restaurant patios and their drunk clientele, the high schoolers going out for lunch, increased bus traffic, etc. - it gets to be a lot of noise. 

Anyway, due to the disruptions near us and the third wave of the pandemic in Manitoba... (and likely, a fourth wave coming for those who aren't vaccinated...)

--this summer has been different than planned. Whew.  Now, the professor has a grant due, our kids are too young to get vaccinated yet, and we still can't see any of our relatives across the border.  (They're vaccinated, we're vaccinated, but the delta variant, the travelling, health issues, and kids too young to be vaccinated yet--make this too complicated at present.)

So, in the meanwhile, here are some lightweight organic crinkle cotton pants that I made!  Here are some jars of jam!

Here's to the summer that got away from me.  Now, like those GPS things in the car, we're recalibrating--and readjusting our summer route.

September happenings

We're slammed with produce in Manitoba in August.  In July, it's a little berry jam warm up, but then by the beginning of September, there may even be frost.  So, this year has been something of a canning frenzy.  I've been canning for sharing, so my shelves are full now.  Some of it is mundane: apple sauce, chutney, cucumber pickles...and some is a surprise.  My kids found these (extremely long in the tooth) okra in a neighbourhood schoolyard garden.  They'd never seen okra before! (haha, I have eaten so much okra during my time in Kentucky and North Carolina...) So, I quickly shoved it into a jar and soon we'll try some refrigerator pickles. 

Meanwhile, I continue to write at night and whenever I can fit it in.  Here's an opinion piece I wrote for the CBC-Manitoba website.

It's fair to say that Manitoba's back to school options have left me very stressed.  We have been offered a "go back to school in person with some safety protocols" or a "withdraw your children and homeschool them."  This isn't a fair choice--we pay for our children's public education and kids with challenges can only get special needs support in school here.  It's hard to find privately and expensive.  There's no remote schooling option.  While I used to teach and hold a Master's in Education, I know when I do not have the training to meet some of my kids' needs.  So, today we sent them back.  I've been doing a lot of cooking to comfort myself.

Stuffed grape leaves from a friend's grape arbor... and pie.  Lots of apple pie from apples we picked at a neighbour's house.

Also, the hundred year old house next door has been demolished and there is excavation taking place for a new house.  There was no architectural salvage done, the shaking has been affecting our house, and the noise and motion have worn me out.  This photo taken from our dining room window is cock-eyed, but it sort of represents how I feel.  (Yes, that digger was 18" from the window.  Maybe 2 feet.  No kidding.)  This just makes me sad.

It's noisy and dusty and dangerous to sit around outside...but this is what Sadie the dog was doing before the demolition hit.  It has made me realize how much the out of doors helped us all this summer...and now who knows how long we'll be unable to use our yard again.

In an attempt to brighten up the inside, I wove this rag mat for Sadie's water bowl.  Making things makes me feel better....and keeps the stress level down.  Perhaps that's why I've been canning, knitting, weaving, baking and more...at this frenetic pace.

Stay well!  Happy and healthy new year to all who are getting ready to celebrate 5781!

Back to school

The last few days before school starts, well, it was all a big blur.  Although someone may have taken some, it's easiest to admit...there are no photos that I took.  It was crazy.

We've been picking an older neighbour's apple tree (and tidying up underneath it) and well, it's a lot of apples.  I have an enormous shopping bag of apples left in the fridge, and that is after countless dehydrator apple chip sessions, applesauce, peach-apple jam, a couple of crumbles, and at least an apple a day for everybody.   (We have also donated a lot of apples so others might eat them.)

Then, last weekend, we went out to a U-pick vegetable farm, because I needed to make some pickles.  I thought I needed maybe 12-15 lbs of cucumbers.  I spoke with the farmer, who is also a professor at our Professor's university.  I held Sadie the dog's leash.  And before I knew it, twins and their professor dad had picked:
Over 40 lbs of cucumbers
a dozen ears of corn
a zucchini the size of a cricket bat
one bright orange winter storage squash

I stopped them right then and there.  It's been a lot of putting up since then.  I've canned 23 lbs+ of pickles.  The rest of those cucumbers also got donated.  A family can only eat so many...

While this happened, we prepared for the start of Grade 2!

And, this article ran...(and I missed it entirely, so forgive the delay in mentioning it.)
The benefits from repetition

Soon-- it will be a new year!  If you celebrate it, wishing you a very happy and healthy Jewish new year! It's 5779!  Now it's back to catching up.  Thank goodness for school. :)

Embracing Patched Jeans

Hurray!  My first piece went live yesterday on CBC-Parents!

It's in the "Learning" category.
It's live, and on a national CBC website!
Here's a link:
 Why My Kids Have Patches On Their Clothes And What That’s Taught Our Family

In other news:
Sadie the dog had a little run-in with the leftover sugar from canning yesterday.  Rather, she was annoyed that I left home (She was saying, "The nerve of that lady!  Going out for some groceries! Leaving me at home with Sally the dog, the Professor, and both twins---  All on my own!") and decided to do some investigation of our kitchen counters again.  Everyone else was upstairs, getting ready for kid bedtime. This time, Sadie's adventure involved taking a 2 kilo bag of sugar (maybe a pound or .5 kilo was left) and bringing it to the living room, ripping up the bag, and spraying sugar everywhere.  Talk about a mess...OY.  She is paying for it today with a real tummy ache.

It was a lot to clean up but it was also pretty funny.  Oh, we have a big puppy!
Note to self: Do not leave stuff out on counters!  Repeat! (Read that note, again and again.)

She'll grow and learn, but it takes training and time...and I have to train all the other family members to keep better track of her.  (Cause sometimes I do leave home to do things...crazy, huh?)

Getting their goat...

Here's my newest piece on the CBC:
Getting their goat: Manitoba Hydro could save money, energy with grazing animals

Other good news:
--My friends in Houston, mentioned in the last post, are ok.  Their home didn't flood and they are helping others whose homes have flooded.  I expect everyone in that area of the US will have some hair-raising stories to tell the rest of us.  (Perhaps more people will catch on to climate change now?  That it is a real thing?!)

--We picked some apples locally..but there weren't a lot this year because we had some bad caterpillar problems in the spring that ate many apple trees' blossoms and leaves. Thank you, Aurora Pizzeria, for letting us raid the unpicked apple trees in your patio garden!)

Yesterday, we drove out to Plum Ridge Farm, which is near Teulon, Manitoba.  (about 20 minutes from Gimli)  We came home with a lot of apples, plums, and cucumbers.  To give you an idea of how much?  Well, I've canned 14 pints of pickles (dills and bread & butter) today, about 9 lbs of cukes, but there is still maybe more than 5 lbs left.  We gave away two large bags of apples this morning, some crab apples last night and we still have so many that there is no room in the fridge for it all!  We've made some apple chips and applesauce already.  Chutney, frozen apple slices, and jams will happen too, I hope.

--Putting up food means there is more "fast food" off the shelf when it's cold this winter.  It's easy to make apple crumble, applesauce or pie when the apples are washed, cut up, and ready to go from the freezer.

--It's been hard to do any canning at all with two little boys home, but they will be starting Grade 1 at a new school on Wednesday.  Whew!  Very exciting stuff, but also, I know some guys are sort of nervous, too.  (I get that--I never slept before the first day of school either!)

--In an odd twist, I am not teaching at the Manitoba Fibre Festival this year.  I'd been scheduled to do one workshop, but not enough students signed up.  (too many spinning classes scheduled at once, perhaps?)  Anyhow, it ends up being a relief, because the Professor (aka, the twins' dad) is going to be away that week, so now I can just hang out with my guys.  I love teaching, don't get me wrong, but sometimes things just work out to make things easier, and I cannot complain about that!  Hopefully there will be other times to teach in the future...down the road.

Our air has been a bit smoky from fires burning in Northern Manitoba, and today, we've dodged a few thunderstorms, but we're all remarkably busy and cheerful, considering.  I will miss the warmth of summer but I'm also ready for little boys to be in school again. :)

It's also a little brisk...is it time to make and wear knits again soon?

 Pictured:
The Spire Smock (in Saffron)
Gigadistal (in Variegated blue/periwinkle)
Ploughed Acre Socks 

Societal Supports...and reinventing mini golf

Here's my most recent CBC opinion piece.  It's a serious one, about some of the violence we've been facing daily and where it might come from.  (and we face it both in the media and in the world...)
Avoiding the boiling point: Society must help prevent violence

That is a sharp contrast to our household August activities here, which involve a lot of unstructured play time.  Turns out we really needed time off--from camp and school.  It's a lot of hands-on parenting time for me.  I alternate between loving being outdoors and with all this creative kid energy, and feeling like I might explode from frustration and boredom...not getting to work, make dinner, do anything by myself or even get to the bathroom while managing twins.  :)  (a normal parental response, I expect!)  I am often trailing my guys while carrying my knitting or a spindle or my iPad.  It can sometimes be hard to keep up with work email while managing the finer points of play and arbitrating conflicts.

A few days ago, we were out in the yard, and the guys created their own version of mini golf.  We'd played it last December in Florida, and apparently, if my twins have a few kid gardening implements, you spill out a toy bin or two, and the front walk?  You can create a golfing course.  Who knew?

Today, my lovely professor has both guys off at a park, racing around on their new bikes with training wheels.  This is a good break and a distraction--I'm having some more interrupted sleep- 2 and 3 AM wake up sessions with little boys- and I had so hoped we were over this already!  (at about 4.5 years old, my guys finally started sleeping consistently through the night.  Except for lately.)

 I needed a bit of twin-free time.  I canned 5 pints of bread and butter pickles...and wrote this.  A fabulous chance to catch up a bit.  The refrigerator now has 4 lbs less in the way of cucumbers, and I had a moment to connect with you.  For the moment, it's all sunshine, and it's all good.

Lost: 1 worry bear, 1 week, 1 batch of jelly

This weekend, the CBC-Manitoba ran my piece, Bottling Sunshine:Canning teaches mom essential coping skills.    Aspects of that essay summarized this past few days.  To start, last weekend my crew had their first lemonade stand.  This required at least one grown-up on duty the whole time, as neither of my twins can pour a full pitcher of lemonade yet, nor make change.  (they just turned five, that's understandable!)  After I worked behind scene and made the lemonade and cut up the watermelon, I discovered that my lovely professor had been filling up the spare moments (there were a lot of them) by picking more Nanking cherries from our yard.

(We also then caught one of the twins eating the watermelon and then putting it back in the container for customers...but that is another story. :)

We pick these cherries every year from our yard.  The boys love to help.  Usually, I make them into a jam, but this year, I decided to try a jelly instead.  After an ill-fated trip to Canadian Tire to find a jelly strainer, I rigged one up with cheese cloth and a colander instead. (This piece of equipment is also called a chinois, but since that seemed terribly embarrassing --who came up with that name?! It's inherently problematic in our bilingual world... when I asked a customer service person for it--hint, she was Asian--I decided we wouldn't be calling it that anymore.  She was gracious about it, btw, as she also was frustrated that the store didn't have one.  Who comes up with these terms for kitchen tools?! Ahhh!)

By the time everyone was done picking, eating, and wearing cherry juice all over their shirts, faces and hands, we had what amounted to something like 14 quarts of cherries.  Yeah.  I know this quantity because I used the largest slow cooker to soften them, in two batches (by boiling, you can get rid of the pits more easily).  The first batch of jelly did not become jelly.  It became roughly 10 cups of cherry sauce.  Turns out our particular cherries are oddly acidic or low in pectin or something, so I re-canned them with more pectin.  It was a colossal pain to redo, but then I ended up with 9 cups of jelly...and a lot of pulp.

For the first time, I figured out how to successfully do fruit roll in our dehydrator.  It was pretty easy, actually.  Roughly 6 cups of chopped fruit/pulp, then you puree it in a blender, add honey or sweetener if you want (I did banana and honey because cherry pulp is sour!) and then you sort of paint it on parchment paper and pop it in the dehydrator.  It took 10 hours at 135F, cooking on our front porch while we slept.  Since the natural fruit roll that we usually buy is $7.50CDN a package, this struck me as a good idea.

Unfortunately?  Fortunately? I had to do more jelly the next day (all that extra picking!) so we ended up with 17 cups of jelly and two batches of fruit roll.  If I never see another cherry this year?  It will be too soon.  Getty Stewart's cookbook was a huge help, as always, in dealing with this quirky prairie fruit.  I think I am grateful for her cookbook every summer!

In other news, you may remember a certain twin's Worry Bear?  Alas, Worry bear #2--the first one pictured here--is MIA or perhaps, RIP.  The good news about the travelling day camp is that you go new and interesting places every day.  The bad news is that between the swimming pool, the parks, the hikes, other adventures and a certain pair of shallow pants' pockets, we lost this guy last week.  We did have Worry Bear #1 as back up, but he just wasn't adequate.  Not squishy enough, not comforting enough...something wasn't right.  The loss of #2 was a little traumatic.

Yup.  You guessed it, I also spent several hours knitting worry bear #3.  This one is out of Rowan Pure Wool dk, a superwash yarn, and I stuffed it with Cheviot wool, so at least it won't felt if it ends up in the washing machine and dryer...again.

My mom said I might as well memorize the pattern, which was funny, because I make it up as I go along.  No two worry bears are alike.  Hmm.  I wonder if anyone else needs a worry bear pattern?

I also produced three challahs, 1 loaf of spelt bread, 1 banana chocolate chip loaf, and numerous other things for meals and snacks last week.  This travelling camp makes people ravenous, and packing twin healthy lunches and snacks takes a lot of time.

All this foodie and textile production--doing and redoing (my life story right now)-- hopefully lines us up for a smoother time this week.  No canning scheduled right now, because there are 5 medical appointments/tests scheduled for two of us (me and one twin) this week.  Six if you count next Monday.  Luckily, the Professor will manage a twin appointment or two so I don't have to do them all.

So, nothing deeply meaningful is happening over here...I squeeze in work where I can...but at the same time, every bottle canned, every fruit roll, every new worry bear produced? In some ways, I am taking ahold of traditional age-old women's tasks, (with significant help from the Professor) and making them new and full of love for folks in my household.  I'd argue that I do it differently, in a more feminist construct, but the love is love--it's not gendered.  It's the same, every time, no matter what we call it.

Putting by

On Saturday, we spent time outside at the wading pool, but hiding in the refrigerator was an enormous bag of cucumbers!  One of the Professor's grad students...has an uncle with a farm.  The farm had a bumper crop of cucumbers..something like a shopping cart of cucumbers every day.  After delivering cucumbers to everyone in the family, this kind grad student brought some to the lab.  How much?  When the Professor took the box home at the end of the day, after others had taken what they wanted, I think there were roughly 9 or more pounds of cukes!

For those who know us, we eat a lot of cucumbers around here...but the household favorite, year round?  Pickles.  So, I had a hot (literally) date Saturday night with the canner and 8 lbs of cucumbers.  Six pints of dill pickles and six pints of sweet cornichons later, I think I'm calling it quits when it comes to canning dilly beans and pickles this year...now it is on to chutney, with perhaps a side venture to salsa if the tomatillo plants produce more.  

Meanwhile, I wrote this article, which came out on the CBC on Saturday as well:

Beating food costs with home-cooked, Canadian-grown foods

Timely, but completely coincidental...

About 10 more days until preschool starts, but who's counting?

A new year

It is time to update the blog and keep up with all the things that are happening.  The professor and I (and twins) are visiting family for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.  This is the first time we have managed a high holidays family visit in over 10 years!  It is the beginning of the school year, when professors start teaching (but the professor is not teaching this fall) and, well, the stars aligned and we flew east.  So far, the twins have seen lots of family, gone to a few playgrounds, ridden the DC Metro for the first time, and had several other big adventures.

I am taking a break with family and from trying to juggle everything in Winnipeg: toddlers, running our household and working whenever I can manage but had some things to share.

Learning to ask where our food is from just appeared in the Forward...this is a revision of what I originally wrote, but it is probably a kinder and gentler piece now!  Here's one of the photos I sent; a canning photo with more frills appeared with the piece, but this is what my apricot jam and saskatoon jams looked like this fall. (yes, I have managed some canning this summer, and I am so excited to have a full pantry again, I have not managed to can since 2010 so this is huge!)

A little while ago, this article about "helping hands" appeared in the Forward as well. I am so glad to get a chance to continue talking about the issues of helping new moms and new families--there has been a lot of quiet feedback from women of all ages about my two articles on this topic. More women struggle with these issues than you might imagine; our society needs to step up and help more! Finally, I am so pleased with recent interest in my new pattern, Slippy the cowl. It has been slowly beginning to sell, and I cannot wait to see knitters' versions as they appear on Ravelry and the blogosphere. All this seems like it is worth sharing as we begin 5774, the new year, and a brand new school year.

September--already?!

I've really enjoyed all your canning and preserving comments so I am going to keep the theme going here.

This week, I made cornichon flavored pickles. Seven pints of them. I didn't have little tiny gherkins so instead I sliced up yellow lemon cucumbers and enormous, size of your arm, killer green cucumbers and pickled those. In fact, I felt sure that if I didn't get those huge cucumbers cut up and into jars they would become the superhuman monster cucumbers that took over Winnipeg and killed us all in the middle of the night. You know, so I made more pickles. (Yes, I am scared of vegetable monsters. I think a zucchini the size of a baseball bat might come out of a closet and kill me sometime, and I don't even like zucchini all that much.)

I felt ahead. I felt calm. Then Thursday came, time to pick up more veggies as part of my farm share, and my friend said--"Oh, my in-laws gave me these apples." Right. Some apples...think two enormous shopping bags' worth. I love apples, so she gave them to me. Today I made 6 pints of spiced apple sauce, and earlier in the week I made pie with some other apples someone gave us and....I feel a little out of control. We still have a full bag and a third of these apples left, and no room in the refrigerator.

In order for this to be a knitting blog, I need to post photos of knitting. Most of the knitting I do is top secret or if not top secret, maybe just boring. However, my desk looks about how I feel right now...this is only part of my desk, too. Every surface sort of looks like this. A little disorganized, but clearly a work in progress. A clutter work in progress, perhaps?

Last night in bed, the Professor and I were talking about all this. I haven't quite calmed down yet from teaching every day, so I guess I'm on warp speed. I mean, today I baked 4 loaves of challah, canned 6 pints of apple sauce, wrote the draft of an article (1000 words), vacuumed some, walked the dogs...it's a little much still. I kept saying, in my conversation with him, how I just needed to, ummm, get things a little calmer. more organized. Like, I want to settle down soon, you know?

"I understand," he said. "Do you think that you'll feel better when everything in the house is organized into little jars on shelves in the basement?"

Funny, huh? The sad part? Yes, I just might. Unfortunately, my first concern was that we might run out of jars. Time for a long weekend, you think?

production..and acquisition

As of today, my summer teaching marathon is over. Hurray! I love teaching, but I also really missed my summer this year. Everyone here in Manitoba had their vacation time but me! The kicker is that I seem to acquire raw goods (wool, vegetables, fruit) in direct correlation to the lack of time I have to process it. That is, the more stress I'm under, the more raw wool and food seems to appear in my house. Some people might call this retail therapy. I'm more inclined to think that without a steady production stemming from my hands, I feel like I'm not accomplishing much..even while teaching grad students four days a week. So, I somehow acquire more...and more...and then there's more stress to find time that I don't really have...to cope with it all.

I realized that in order to stop myself from missing summer entirely, the Professor and I had to go outside and enjoy ourselves a bit. Over the weekend, we dodged rain clouds and went picking vegetables at grenkow's u-pick. This is the second year in a row where I've forgotten a camera, so you'll have to believe me. Roughly 8 miles out of town, there's a lot of prairie. A field with dark charcoal colored earth that stretches on and on with a layout like a big veggie garden.

We picked tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, beans, some cucumbers, a dill stalk or two and 3 pie pumpkins. All in all, we paid around $78 and picked for less than 2 hours. The produce was something in the range of $1 or $2 a pound. I'd venture a guess that we picked over 50 lbs of produce. That's a whole lot of eggplant. That's a passel of peppers. That's (more than a) bag of beans...our refrigerator is full. You get the point!

I've de-skinned and roasted tomatoes and garlic in the oven, pureed, them, and popped all that sauce in the freezer. The Professor and I cooperated on the eggplant. I chopped them in quarters, he roasted them on the gas grill outside. I chopped them up further and got them into freezer containers. Covered them with a bit of olive oil and popped them in the freezer. I sat down, plugged myself into an audio book and dealt with an enormous amount of beans, my hands moving methodically while I listened.

I sauteed some of the red and green bell peppers with garlic, coriander, vinegar, salt and great amounts of olive oil. This makes a kind of Morrocan chermoula (chermoula is a certain combination of spices, I think, the recipes vary). I put it in bottles and then put it too in the freezer. One bottle at a time, this ends up in the refrigerator, and then on sandwiches, in pasta dishes, and other treats all winter. The flavored oil is delicious for salads. The floppy marinated peppers themselves, with some cheese, make a great melty sandwich.

The oil also goes very well on homemade bread. This is a photo of some bread that came out of the oven at the height of the guest visits this summer. (That would be the Joanne's bed and breakfast crash course experience of 2010?!) I snapped a photo before everyone ate it.

The next week or two I will be transitioning back into something that looks a bit more like my regular working life. I've got some editing and some writing deadlines to meet. I've also got a date with my canner. Putting up the harvest is next on my list. It's great to help people learn and grow in the classroom. It's rewarding and satisfying and exhausting all at once.

That said, what the students gain can be intangible at times. A full freezer and a shelf full of jars? That's definitely an accomplishment that can tangibly set us up for winter...and it's a task with a beginning, middle and end. Along with all this, my loom and knitting needles await. I hope to have time for more than an exhausted and mindless few rows of a sweater sleeve at the end of the day, too.

As soon as the rain lets up a bit, I'm off to mailbox to mail off my grades to the university. Then it's back to reducing (with great glee) the great mounds of food and fiber I've acquired.

So, are you putting anything up for winter? Do tell! Descriptions are always welcome here--if comments give readers good ideas, our pantries (and families) will enjoy it together.

August Long Weekend

We had an amazing August Long Weekend here. That's a special Civic Holiday that gave us Monday off. Canadians have such a civilized number of holidays. I'm really enjoying that part of living here!

We did a lot..shopping, sightseeing, and lots of work on the home front. Here are some photos of some of the excitement. I got my warp ends retied and the loom is up and running again. I'm working on this zigzag pattern but as I only have a spare moment here and there, it isn't going too quickly.

We went out to Folklorama pavilions on both Sunday and Monday nights. Since our Resident Student is visiting from the USA, we thought it would be a good "family" excursion and so far, we've "travelled" to Serbia and French Canadian pavilions. The latter was not all that far from home, but since I've only exposed her to a small amount of Franco-Manitobaine culture, it seemed important.

On Sunday morning, the Resident Student (RS) and I got up early to do some canning. RS is fond of pickles and wanted to know how I made ours. She was a good helper and we managed to put up 12 pints of dill cucumber pickles and 2 pints of dilly beans in about 3 hours. I was incredibly happy to know that this 20 year old actually wanted to know where her food came from and how to make it again! (Score one for the Slow Food Movement at our house!)

Meanwhile, the Professor was busy, too. The weekend was both sunny and rainy. The Professor managed to dodge thunder and rain showers outdoors and did some yardwork. He also created this marvelous tranformation. See our old porch steps (dirty grayish white peeling paint and no paint) and check out our new front porch look! The dark red matches the contrasting paint on our house and it also shows a lot less dirt. I love how it looks, I love that he did all the hard work and best yet, I love how it won't show as much dirt. It's not fun mopping the front porch.

In other news...

I've started teaching my second session of "Writing for Graduate Students." This course is 4 days a week throughout August, so it's all grad student writing, all the time around here...I'm a busy bee.

I did stop to enjoy a postcard from our small friend. She is now entering grade 2 and is working on her writing skills. She asks:

"How are Harry and Sally doing?"

Harry the dog is doing just fine. He's a mere shadow of his former self! He has been dieting this summer as he gained a bit of weight last winter. He also has been "blowing coat" (losing his heavy fur coat) and I've been grooming him nearly every day. Soon I'll have enough Harry fur to spin up some yarn for warm mitts for winter--my very own fiber-producing pet! Here he is, featured in a stunning pose on the living room rug underneath the coffee table.
Sally dog is also doing well. She does not enjoy the summer thunderstorms. She finds it comforting to hide during the scary lightning parts. Here she is, with her sheep toy on her dog bed, in the Professor's study.

Last, but not least, I got a very nice email from the International Blogging Recognition Council saying that my blog was honored with a "Recognized Blog." Apparently someone who enjoys my blog referred me to them. Whoever you are, thanks very much for this honor!

nearly one year

We have been in our house in Winnipeg almost a year. I can hardly believe it. I still feel like I'm brand new here--still learning new things every day. However, I am also seeing signs of home.

About the strawberries--the season has been pretty short. I never even made it out the 8 miles out of the city to do any picking. I didn't feel well and the season was very fast this year. I did buy some berries, and here is a shelf in my basement. New jam --about 7 cups--on the left. Last year's leftovers? On the right. (a true sign I've been here a year!)

We're also joining the Winnipeg masses in having something constantly under renovation. (Winnipeg has a lot of old houses...so we're not alone in this.) This is the scaffolding that has been up on my back deck since June 28th. Yes, that's our chimney, and it will now be shorter than before, with less of a chance of it falling down and killing someone on the street. Someday, we may even have it set up with the gas fireplaces that we found. (the British ones, designed for Victorian houses, that fit in our small fireplace openings...Hurray!)

Our Nanking Cherries are ripe, so I went on a picking spree this morning. There are still plenty to pick later. When I have time, I hope to put these up in jars as jelly or maybe cherry sauce. The container here holds 6 cups, and since each cherry has a big pit, it won't make a lot on its own. Still, I harvested these from our yard and I'm proud of the homegrown crop!

In between teaching classes at the university, editing, and getting ready for houseguest #7, things have been busy. (For those who have been reading the blog a long time, the Norwegian Bachelor Biologist is driving up from his family's Minnesota cottage and coming to town! I can't wait to see him!) So busy, in fact, that I have felt a bit under the weather. However, it was nothing a little bit of antibiotics couldn't fix.

Today, I celebrated the sunshine and our elms in their fancy summer leaf costume! The light dappled through those leaves and I took the dogs on a long walk. We went past the big houses, all the way to Munson Park by the river. It was a deliciously sunny day, with two happy dogs by side. It's good to be here. It's been quite a ride since last year, when we arrived in Manitoba on July 15th, 2009.

Now it's off to grade more papers...

Edmonton without me

My camera went along to Edmonton to a Biology of Butterflies conference while I stayed home. The professor and our resident student went along to a field trip afterwards to see some of those big mountains-- Canadian Rockies. This is good, because so far our resident student has seen Winnipeg. That would be --the flat flat flat (did I say flat?) prairie around here..and a couple of beautiful rivers.

The field trip involved climbing mountains. Our resident student apparently fell several times into great mounds of snow (in early July) and got a little cold. She seems no worse the wear though, and it was definitely an adventure.


Also, the field trip was something like 35 biologists, and they did not hesitate when they saw this sign at the trail head. Apparently they all headed right down that trail. Word was they kept looking around to see if there was anyone slower nearby who they could leave as a snack to distract the bears while they ran away.

I heard all 35 biologists also came out alive at the end of the hike, so I guess the bears thought biologists were too chewy or something.



Even though cell phone access was a little dodgy and internet wasn't available for the second half of the trip, I could tell that the Professor was always thinking of us when I saw these photos. Harry and Sally, our dogs, are great fans of rabbits. In fact, at last count, we think they have caught (and eaten some or all of) three rabbits in our little Winnipeg backyard just this spring. A--not very smart-- mommy bunny seems to have nested underneath our shed and we're hoping the rest of the family moves far away really soon. The problem is that the dogs are very fast so it is hard to rescue bunnies from them. Also, I get the sense that these bunnies are top notch snacks. Like sushi for dogs. Rabbit jerky? Rabbit BBQ? Rabbit Steak? (Well, you know what I mean, with apologies to Peter Rabbit. I do feel bad about this...but there are a lot of bunnies around here...and it's about thirty seconds between an excited bark and the gulp that comes after that. Hard to stop sometimes.)

The Professor and his student saw a great many jack rabbits on the University of Alberta campus. Unlike the Manitoba variety, they weren't afraid of people and just sat there, posing for photos. Even though Harry and Sally the dogs don't really see photos all that well, the Professor just kept shooting photos of rabbits. You know, like how you'd take a photo of a really appetizing sushi platter, or some delicious barbeque? Yep. Mmmm good. (ahh, the call of the wild...)

I hope to get back to fiber arts posts in a while, but right now it's just beginning to be berry season, so along with teaching and editing, I feel some canning activity coming on...so prepare yourself for strawberry shots some day soon!