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!

Those Granola Bars

I make mostly homemade lunches for my kids...aside from the granola bars.  A while back, I tried making homemade granola bars and our twins really didn't dig them, no matter what.  (The professor and I can vouch that the homemade ones were delicious, we ate two whole pans of them and probably gained a lot of weight during that experiment!)

As a result, I just buy a big box of granola bars with chocolate chips but no nuts from the grocery store and I carry them around as extra snacks, especially for doctors' appointments or during vacation periods.  It's safe to say I've thought WAY too much about these granola bars.

Two things happened.  Today, my opinion piece about the granola bars ran on the CBC-Manitoba website:
Mom's emergency granola bar is there when you need it-no matter who you are

Second thing...
My kids' school is having a program this week called "The litterless lunch."  They want to reduce lunch time waste and trash by asking kids to bring homemade foods, packaged in reusable containers, so that everything in the lunch can be reused, recycled or composted.

Turns out that my twins were already in second place in the classroom when it came to bringing lunches with no trash.  What made them second place?  The granola bar wrappers!

Today, one of my guys decided to help me make homemade granola bars again.  We mostly made the recipe up, but each bar has oats, sunflower seeds, cut up pieces of dry fruit, chocolate chips, a little whole wheat flour...all mushed together with condensed milk.  We baked it for a half hour, and then cooled it down fast using a Winnipeg solution: by leaving it outside in the snow on the back deck for a few minutes.  The quick cool down in snow isn't the recipe, of course!

We produced enough bars for school lunches this week, plus enough to taste test.  Turns out that now, both twins think these are darn good.  Have their tastes changed?  Are they proud of their mom's litterless lunches?  Who knows.

Now we have more granola bars (in wrappers) to give away this week, too.  It's all good.

--This photo's from the article, link above.  I'm not that hip looking!

PS: When the kids first mentioned the litterless lunch, I couldn't figure it out.  I thought they were talking about 'the literal lunch.'  And I was like, what kind of crazy elementary school program is this?  Who packs a figurative or metaphoric lunch!?  (Joke's on me, of course. Maybe I took too many literature courses at Cornell.)

Making knitting needles

When I went with my family and friends to that Arts Center in Alexandra, VA in May (the one that does art with recycled materials)  I scored something unusual.  They had a jar of unfinished knitting needles in rare woods in all sorts of sizes.  This used to be someone's business, I think she was turning knitting needles on a lathe in ebony, rosewood, etc. but then she retired...and donated her leftovers.  I got 2 sets of straight needles at $3 a piece.  I could have bought a ton, but in truth, I don't really need more needles.  I do use size #6 and 7 (4 mm and 4.5mm) pretty often though.  None of the needles were marked, and none had ends yet.  So, I eyeballed, bought two, and flew home to Winnipeg.

I have a weird collection of beads in many sizes.  I always thought I might get into beading, although honestly, it has never been my thing.  I've made beaded yarns, knitted beads into garments, and in the end, I find it a bit too fiddly and the end result was too girly for my personal taste.  However, I just happened to have some wooden beads...that would work well on these needles.

I did this in a low tech way.  I grabbed some of my kids' glue, some newspaper, and set things up on the front porch.  I didn't measure or get overly particular about details.  I put glue inside the beads, slid them onto the ends of the needles, and left it to dry.

Once dry, the needles look good to go.  I have knit on straight or double pointed needles without anything on the end, and while I can manage it in a pinch, I like a firm cap on the end so stitches don't fall off when I race off to chase a dog or kid.  These will fit the bill.  If for some reason the glue does not stick, I have more wooden beads and I can use fancier glue later.  I started with easily accessible non-toxic glue from the kids' art shelf.

If you are handy, you can easily sharpen dowels and make knitting needles.  I have also knit with pencils in a pinch.  Sometimes you need to knit and supplies aren't close at hand.  If you're not into sharpening dowels, consider visiting some thrift shops and secondhand stores to get needles affordably.  This is how I built up my big collection of needles when I first got married and moved away from my mom's stash of needles.  This also helps you learn to knit with a variety of needles.  I learned not to be overly picky about wood/metal/plastic but to enjoy knitting with tools that were well-loved by those knitters who came before me.