Spinning Wheel any info would be wonderful!

My sister inherited this spinning wheel from our Uncle.  It came from a family friend of his and we know it is from the 1700s. Any information would be wonderful.

Holiday Time . . . I can taste it!

A random photo essay of springtime here on the tundra, closing my full-time teaching career, food, and getting ready for HOLIDAY time!

One of my goals is to work on art, painting, and drawing and let's face I can use all the help I can get.  I have never had any formal art and hardly any art in school.  Which we all know is just not right!  Thus I am going to work on developing this skill!

Food: I have always been interested in eating good food.  I also have very little willpower!  As I have aged this willpower has increased as I have not eaten wheat for years now.  I am eating far better than ever.  I recently bought into the Food Revolution Summit but John and Ocean Robbins.  I have enjoyed learning about their approach to food and healthy living.  They have an organization that is set up to educate us all about eating better.  Basically, it is organic, plant-based diet no meat or very little.  My summer experiment will be exploring this lifestyle of eating more veggies, fruit (this is easy), beans, far smaller quantities of meat.  Above are the boxes of produce that are flown into the village from Alaska Food Network.  You can choose a mixed or organic and non-organic and produce from Alaska.  As you can see a lot of us out here order food from them weekly.

Here is a bit of spring from last week.  Nice and dreary wet snow just dumping!  Mud and grit my least favorite ground coverage with 8 dog paws!

My mom sporting her new gardening hat.  She loves her yard work on any level.

One of the early tundra flowers I will find the name of this early spring flower.

Last night dinner arrived!  Two of these beauties were brought to us by our wonderful neighbor. He always shares some of his families subsistence lifestyle with us.  Brown King Crabs—so yummy you hardly need to dip the meat in butter!

I love grilled veggies! I have recently started to roast chickpeas to add to salads and they are wonderful! These grilled veggies were served on a bed of steamed kale.

I tried a new chocolate chip cookie recipe from Bob’s Red Mill and they came out great! Almond flour, maple syrup, egg whites really helped this recipe.

An early morning dog walk just before 5 a.m. looking north across Norton Sound towards Blueberry Hills.

Haha my Miss Sadie with a tail LOL!

The inside of the produce box oh so yummy!

Evening dog walk on the beach which is looking nice and clean for this time of the year.

This is the plant known locally as Ayuu.  In the rest of the world, it is known as Labrador Tea.

Snow saying goodbye here . . . looking south to the Nulato Hills.  The Yukon River is on the other side of those hills.

Flowers what a treat! Soon I will be back in the land of flowers and color.

Tough day here in dog land by the looks of snuggle time.

Classroom art . . . The last few weeks of school have been relaxed with no pressure of testing and data farming just kids and me having fun!

On & Off The Knitting Needles (old post that needed photos 4/27/18)

This post was started April 27, 2018, and I am updating it NOW!

I bought an iPad and I am trying to see how to make blogger and iPad be friends and communicate with each other one word: CHALLENGING! Ok, let’s see if this will work!

Knitting! Let's talk about knitting for a bit.  Although I have been the crazy ski coach of rural Alaska, I have been knitting while traveling Back and forth to ski races.  I am working on a pair of socks that I should have gone down a needle size for, but of course, I  didn't.  I am not in love with the floppy feel of the gauge or the yarn as I know it will pill up.  I am hoping once I toss the finished socks into the dryer the yarn will blossom and snug up a bit.

Socks in Malabrigo sock yarn.

The next knitted item off the needles is another hat for my sister.  I had some superwash German yarn in a bright pink.  I know she will enjoy the color and hat style.  I knitted a favorite hat design of mine the Coming Home Hat.  I have knitted a few of these hats and enjoy the texture and design elements.  The Coming Home Hat is designed by Aimee Alexander of PDS Sheep.  Her patterns are tested knitted, have a nice layout that allows for easy reading and space for notes if you like to jot down ideas/notes as you work.

Flying to ski races on our school district plane!

The finished hat which came out great and my sister loves it as well!

I am test knitting another of Aimee's designs.  I will update this once the pattern is published.  Let me say it would be a great design/pattern for a beginner cable knitter.

Loch Lomond Hat

Next but not last is Solstice which has been tucked away once the Iditarod and Spring Break rolled into my life, followed by ski racing.  This is my major work for the winter.  I am working on the neck area. I really need to get this figured out pronto! Then, I can finish the colorwork on the upper sleeves.

This is Eleanor. All JAZZED UP!

This is Eleanor my next sweater which is now off the needles.

The sweater is done! 
This is what I call a barn sweater: functional, durable, wearable in many conditions, useful, a workhorse sweater that will be used for hiking and outdoor activities.
Knitted in Jamieson's of Shetland Chunky Weight.

Provisional cast-on, as I am not sure if I will have enough yarn for the sleeve and body ribbing. I did have enough yarn but opted for a hem on sleeves and body. I will use a crochet cast-on for this technique as it can be pulled easier.  Think grain bag of feed and this will make sense to those of you who know about grain bags.

Eleanor is a story in the making and yet Eleanor's story has been lived, is still being lived, and drawing towards a close.  Eleanor is my mother who always went as Betty and NOT Eleanor all my life.  As I was knitting the first sleeve and looking at the colors of the yarn a story started to form.  The name of the sweater, the colors, the mystic of a person's life all came together.

                         

I am not sure others knit like this or in this fashion.  I must have some connection to either place, yarn, design there is something that pulls me to knit an item with a certain yarn that will eventually become a story. This sweater, yarn, and location will meld itself together into Eleanor my mother and her story through my eyes, fingers, needles, and yarn.

I leave tomorrow for a rather long air flight to New Jersey.  For the amount of time, it will take me to travel I could be going to Scotland to walk in the Lake district or the Shetland Isles.  I will fly from the village I live in on the Bering Sea to Anchorage about 400 miles away if the weather allows a plane to land and take off.  Once in Anchorage, I will meet up with some ski friends and head to a dinner.  I will come back to the airport and wait for my 12:33 a.m. departure to Seattle.  I believe I arrive in Seattle close to 5:00 a.m.  I will be off for some good coffee and a nice walk around the airport to get the blood flowing.  I will board another plane and take off for Philadelphia about 8:00 a.m.  Fly non-stop to Philly and land around 4:30 p.m.  My sister will pick me up and hustle me to my mother's home.  

There I will find an aging Eleanor who is struggling with growing old and its limitations.  For me it will be a look into the future will I age like this, will I have the same ailments, the same struggles, will I be alone, will I what?  What will I find? What will I see? What will Mom be like?  Shorter, almost deaf, aging . . . we all age and we all will struggle some more than others. 

                                 

The sweater is coming with me for several reasons!  I need to knit on such a long flight, I need to have something to do once I am at my mom's house.  She can talk and tell her stories I can knit and listen. Those stories will be knitted into my Eleanor that I will wear for years to come.  Like Eleanor the yarn is strong and sturdy it is Shetland chunky weight yarn with depth. Three strands spun together a dark grey, a light grey, and a slate blue-grey.

The soccer champ and his coach/dad.

This is the Jazz part of Eleanor as well this yarn needed a burst of life!  A nice Briggs and Little Regal 100% wool yarn to give this sweater a bit of JAZZ!

Briggs and Little Yarn Regal from Schoolhouse Press.

Eleanor doing one of the things she loves which is working in her yard and garden.  This is one of the things aging is causing issues with for her. 

Eleanor all Jazzed up!