January Green

Today we have snow (or at least it snowed last night and now it's melting), but yesterday, while I was trying to take pictures of the three little black lambs (who would not cooperate and behave like little dervishes and always run away at the very first sight of me), I noticed there is green grass amidst the mud outside the barn.

And by the driveway where Smart Duck likes to relax is more green grass. A rather anemic green, but nevertheless it's definitely green grass in January.

I am drawn to the color green, and bought these fibers last Saturday at the St. Distaff Day Spin-Off. I bought the lavender and mint green silks (the shiny fibers on top) from Barbara Seeler, which will be my first experience with silk spinning, and the Autumn Vineyard blend is a color mix I have been obsessively fantasizing about, but not actually dyeing myself. I also brought home some natural-colored black llama that is phenomenally soft, and from Alice Lake's llama, Joey that I met when I visited her. I hardly ever buy fiber, with my own sheep producing a consistent fiber supply for me, but I just couldn't resist any of these, and I am so excited to spin them.

Kiwis are one of the very few foods on my 'I don't eat it' list. Not that I don't like them, but my allergy reaction to them is strong enough I studiously avoid them, unlike the bajillion other foods that I allergy test positive to, but tolerate. Nevertheless, I have not been able to stop thinking about a kiwi jam a woman named Karen, who was from Hawaii, gave to my husband, when they worked in a lab together in Portland right after we'd graduated from college (yes, that long ago). I thought it was so incredibly pretty and exotic at the time. I read recently that kiwis, like pineapple, contain an enzyme many people react to (this is different than an allergy), that is denatured by cooking. Maybe it's the enzyme thing and not the allergy thing? Maybe cooked kiwis are different than fresh kiwis?

The only way to deal with my kiwi jam fixation was to make some. In between the recent complications of Life (a teen who hasn't learned to drive a manual shift + the car with the automatic transmission has a cracked head + classes at three different locations), I made this jam a few nights ago using the kiwi jam recipe from cooks.com (click here), 9 California kiwis bought at the grocery store, and a packet of Certo I had in the back of the cupboard. This morning I ate some of the kiwi jam on my toast (it is both the enzyme thing and the allergy thing with kiwis and me). I liked the jam well enough, but I was not WOWed by the flavor -I think adding some lime juice and/or crushed pineapple, using homemade pectin and better quality fruit would be an improvement. And I still think it makes a very pretty jam.

At Peace When Spinning

"I recognized that food was central to life, not for reasons of hedonism or sustenance, but because it was a link to everyone that had gone before me. It was a link to the land, a link to friends and family around a shared table, and a link to future generations to come. In a fragile, unstable world of change, food is constant." -Georgeanne Brennan, A Pig in Provence

Barbara Seeler recently shared with me her own personal perspective of food in the French countryside, where she and her husband Keith often travel to and spend time. "It's very different there -very little imported or processed foods are available- no one has the income or money to buy them. The food is really grown, made, and served locally. The bread is really made, as well as baked, in the store where its sold, whereas here the dough is often trucked in from somewhere else."

Barb plied for our guild's Sheep to Shawl Event in September, and I featured her as the VSG newsletter's Calendar Girl this month. Barb teaches spinning classes at Village Yarn and Tea, -she has for several years- and also attends spin night there. She describes the VYT shop as having a nice cossetting, cozy feel. I have friends who usually go to VYT's Friday knit night, and I asked her about it. She observes the Sabbath on Friday nights, so isn't able to attend. Family is central in observing the Sabbath, and family is very important to Barb -especially being a grandmother. "I can think of nothing more fun than spinning and knitting with my two grand kids." And she spends lots of time with them. Of her own grandmother, she remembers during the war, the men were all gone, and her maternal grandmother had all her grandchildren (all eight of them!), and their mothers, living with her. "My grandmother always kept kosher, but I remember us all roasting hot dogs on coat hangers over a fire in the backyard. It was lots of fun, living with her, and with us all being together."

"My daughter, in the early 90's, bought me a wheel and lessons for a gift. She said she remembered me saying, when she was a child, that I really wanted some day to have a spinning wheel and learn to spin. I don't remember that at all!" Barb embraced the craft wholeheartedly, and was very active in the guilds while living in LA. Today, she is a treasure trove of spinning, dyeing, and knitting, knowledge and experience, which she is always willing to share, and she is incredibly gracious while doing so. She loves to teach, and started dyeing to have fiber for teaching spinning. She has a background in chemistry (she spent twenty years working as a lab scientist at UCLA), so dyeing fiber was a natural step. She sells her dyed fiber, BJS Fiber Creations, at local fiber events and sales, including the Valley Spinners Guild's two sale meetings (one is next week- November 11th!), Cascade Community Church's Christmas Sale, the Whidbey Island Fiber Festival, St. Distaff's Day, and at Village Yarn and Tea.



Barb says, "There is something very comforting about knitting and spinning. Whenever I have a problem, I spin, and the answer will come to me. Our lives are so cluttered, so much information is pounding us, and spinning lets all that drop off. I am at peace when spinning."