People eat a lot: producing more and bigger

It's easy to grow some food, and growing your own makes a big impact on your diet, since you can grow the most delectable and interesting parts of your diet; summer tomatoes, basil, cilantro, green beans. Once you go beyond the glamous stars, and start producing the everyday and mundane, and filling in more of the background, every day, every month, then producing your own food means producing volume, storing, and much more cooking. Maybe I'm a gardener first, but I find producing the food is the fun part, while storing and cooking it is a lot of sorting dirty roots, peeling and chopping, standing over a hot canner of boiling water, and cleaning up the mess. And I don't even want to start on how unpleasant it is to "harvest" chickens.

Coming as I do from a normal backgroud, a fairly small family of light eaters, we'd cook meals that would produce leftovers but still quite modest quantities. I imagine familiies with 5 or more childen or teenage boys would have a very different perspective! One of my challenges has been to "think big". For example, my chili recipe made enough for two meals. But it's not that much more work to double it. Last time I ended up making 3 gallons of chili, which was perhaps a little over the top; 11 people barely ate half of it. But it freezes fine, and it's so nice to have some quarts of chili handy. It was a lot of peeling tomatoes, but with so much it's worth it to get the food processor out for the onions and peppers, and the kitchen only had to be cleaned up once.

The same is true of canning. Much of the work of canning is dealing with the hot water bath. I used to end up canning only a couple of quarts of sauce or quarters, a few pints of salsa. But it's much more efficient in kitchen work to can a full canner load (7-9 jars), or two loads. We got the larger 9-quart size canning kettle this year.

Getting more serious about producing food is the other part (the part that comes first, really). You need to have enough reliable if not exciting producers. I most enjoy growing interesting and exotic heirloom tomatoes, but the interesting colors, odd shapes and shy production just don't work as well for processing. It's been a road to learn to grow a bunch of dull but productive plants to get serious tomatoes, enough to make gallons of chili and gallons of salsa. Giving up growing a few of the intesting ones - but how many interesting tomatoes can you really eat? I'm more of a graze-on-cherry-toms-right-from-plant person, myself. The interesting tomatoes go into tomato juice which seems to even things out, I can even put a few green-when-ripe in there.


Lisa’s Vegetarian Chili

2 tablespoons oil
1 large onion, chopped
1 large red or green pepper, chopped
1 lb.Tofu, frozen, thawed, and crumbled
4 cloves garlic, mashed
15oz can tomato sauce
1 lb. Can whole or diced tomatoes
1 teaspoon salt
black pepper
1 tablespoon ground cumin
2 tablespoons chili powder, or more to taste
A little cayenne flakes, if desired
1 can corn
1 can black beans

Squeeze water out of thawed, crumbled tofu, and mix with part of the chili powder. Add a little liquid from the canned tomatoes and mix well, squeezing to let the spice color the tofu.

Fry onions and peppers in oil until soft and just starting to brown. Add tofu and garlic and cook a few minutes. Add other ingredients and cook for at least an hour, longer is better, until it looks like chili.

Serve over cornbread or rice and garnished with shredded cheese, chopped onions, and chopped jalapenos.

Notes:
- all quantities are general and I use fresh instead of canned when possible.
- Cook beans before adding, and peel and quarter tomatoes, but everything else can go in fresh.
- Using all fresh tomatoes increases cooking time.
- It's important to freeze and thaw the tofu before using, to get the right texture.
- I usually use a lot more chili powder but it depends on the quality of the chili powder you have.

Late in the non-lull of summer

Usually I have a lull in summer, between the time the garden is in and the tomatoes start to ripen. This year that didn't happen; I think knowing there's a lull it gets overcommitted before it starts.

It's mostly been animal activities that took up the slack. We had a batch of meat chickens, scheduled to be full size in the early august part of the summer lull. And they were. We're getting better at butchering, but it's still a lot of work and energy, never mind trying to cram them into the freezer. We were didn't feed them too much, so they ran out and had to wait for morning and evening feed; perhaps as a result, they grew large without any deaths, coming out in the 5.5+ pound range. There are still three left, along with the poor turkey.

We also acquired a ram from Eagle Point, three sheep from Phoenix, and a young buck from another place in Phoenix. Then one of the sheep and the ram turned up with health issues we had to deal with. Calla's been dropping off milk production, worryingly, but Lily did turn out to be pregnant and produced a kid a few days ago.

It was such a late wet spring and cool summer that the tomatoes are still not ripening; usually by this time we're up to our eyeballs... but we just get an occasional one. Very worrying. The peppers also look good but aren't ripe yet. It has been a stellar year for green beans, though; and the spring planted kale is nice looking, which is something I'm not used to in August. The basil that looked so bad in spring is looking fine now... the secret is to plant a lot, since only about a third of the plants survived. I've been better than most years about starting seeds in flats for fall crops; but it's been difficult to find time to plant the seedlings. And the cabbage worms really are hard on tiny little seedlings.

The yellow plums were late, but we got too busy (camping trip!) and missed most of them (the chickens liked them). There are more plums to come, and the apple trees are loaded. The peaches are just gone by, not as many as last year, but Jay and Lindsey enjoyed them a lot (I can't abide the fuzz, myself).

More on wheat

The winter wheat is harvested, and the spring wheat is nearly so. The differences between them are so great I am just fascinated - it's like that time some years ago when I realized that tomatoes were not boring red round bland mushy things but had flavors and colors and complexity. The differences between these two wheats are as big as between Brandywine and Green Grape! Well, maybe not, but that's the idea.

Since on closer look both wheats have awns, I've been calling the shorter many tillered one "East" and the taller, greener one "West". The East was ready first,
and threshed out (with great difficulty, a lot of straw to the amount of grain) to about 4 or so pounds, but the hulls are staying on the grains, so it's likely to go to the animals. The West wheat was/is MUCH easier to thresh; I expect yields will be similar, but we took a big clump for decorative purposes.

Side note: I think the spring wheat is much prettier for display than the West wheat. The spring wheat has a nice light tan color and is nice and fat, while West wheat has darker or blueish tones. The grain head pattern is similar for the spring wheat and the West wheat, with sticking-out awns instead of ones that lay flat; but besides color, the Spring has shorter stalks, and the heads are a fatter. Haven't counted the tillers.

Threshing hasn't become easier; the rubber trug on the porch, and pounding with a 2x4, sift out the straw, wind-winnow the grain, handpick the bits of stem. With the East wheat I did a lot of hand twisting and folding, but the West wheat's awns are too stiff for that, it hurts.

Back to awns; when I grew these wheats out the first time 2-3 years ago, I do remember one of them not having awns. So what happened? I can't believe they cross-pollinated, since each type has been very consistent within the patch. Perhaps a mislabeled jar? I must grow test plots of the originals too!

I've got another grain, presumably one I planted, growing in the circle beds, but I don't know what it is - maybe barley? It looks like something I planted, but I don't remember anything. It has truely naked seeds, not like the wheat that has an easily broken off covering. It could also be kamut, or even rye...

And the oats were harvested and threshed by rubbing in my hands, some work but no stabbing awns... came out pretty clean. It's a long way from dry, though.

On other notes, garlic is all harvested, cabbages are harvested, a new one for us, what fun! and the first tomatoes have ripened (polar baby, of course). Beet seed is ready for harvest, and there could be enough basil for pesto. I'm still fighting the squash bugs and cucumber beetles, but the green beans are already ahead of us. The chickens in the orchard are getting larger by the day, and the freezers are still full so we won't have anyplace to put them. Two more chicks hatched out, and unlike the first three these are very friendly and come running when they see us, which adds greatly to their cuteness factor. The dog had foxtail in her paw, one surgery at the vet, two weeks of swollen paw, another surgery by Lisa to remove the last foxtail, and she's finally better and can get the skunk-smell-removal shampoo that's been waiting for her.

Bountifulness

Hummus might not be what most people want for Sunday dinner, but I didn't have enough energy after a full day moving greenhouses, etc. to make falafel, my orginal plan (I'm haven't got a good recipe or techinque, but I keep trying). But to go along with it I made a salad, a kind of spring-variant greek salad, and it was something special about going out and harvesting for this.

There's fresh garlic (chinese pink, a very early garlic) for the hummus, but most of the rest of that was purchased. I did soak the chickpeas and cook them in the sun oven.

For the salad, I picked snap peas, broccoli, a few carrots, a walla walla onion and some romaine type lettuce. It was a special pleasure to walk around the garden and put this and that into the harvest bucket! After so long when it seems like more goes in than comes out... although we did just eat the last of last year's potatoes for lunch today, so I guess I shouldn't complain. For the salad, the harder vegetables got steamed a bit, and then some cider vinger and olive oil. We stuffed all in homemade pitas, and the flavors really were wonderful.

There's bounty all year in the garden or from the garden, if you plan ahead and accept the differences that the seasons bring. There's a special sense of bountifulness in fall, when the vegetables are root cellared, or dried, frozen, canned; or waiting patiently in the garden for harvest. And even in early spring, the bounty of salad greens and delectable green shoots and leaves. But the bounty of summer, the abunance of plants growing passionately with the all the different varieties of textures and flavors and shapes, well, it's hard to beat. For me as well, this is a time where the abundance does not come with directly-related pressure. We eat peas, broccoli, and sweet onions only fresh, lettuce we don't save, and carrots and garlic can wait much longer before being dealt with - there's no looming chore of putting-by, just picking and eating.

Not that I'm not hugely busy - trying to save the squash and beans from the quintuple threat of striped cucumber beetles, earwigs, slugs, spotted cucumber beetles and squash bugs. But more on that later.

Wheat

I usually grow a little plot of wheat. You can get 10# of wheat berries from a 5x20 plot, it's not enough to live on, but that is a few loaves of bread, and it's quite fulfilling. I also try different kinds of wheat (winter wheat, spring wheat, kamut, stone age, etc.) and different ways of growing it (plug trays, broadcast).

The kinds I grow are fairly easy to tresh and winnow, although it's hard to get all the bits of stem out of the grain. I suppose it adds fiber... We use an electric grain mill to make flour and from that bake bread. It's perfectly nice bread, perhaps a bit dark and heavy, even using 100% home grown wheat. But we like dark interesting breads.


Tall, non-awned wheat

I believe it is SS 791 from Bountiful Gardens. This from saved seed that I grew out from 2005-2006 (I think). It germinated slower than the other.



And this is the shorter, awned wheat. This, I believe, Hard Red Winter from Bountiful Gardens. (I could have these backwards).
You can see a little of the tall wheat to the left.

The last time I grew these varities, I don't remember a differnence in the plots, but the non-awned was a little easier to thresh, the grains were a little larger, but the yield was a little less than the awned.

This year, the difference is dramatic. Both were planted in the same bed, same number of plants (transplanted from 244-plug trays), at the same time with the same spacing, and treated the same (i.e. ignored). The awned wheat is been yellow and unhappy, while the non-awned grows tall and green. I counted tillers (stalks with seed heads) on a particularly healthy looking plant of each; the non-awned one had about 20 tillers, while the anwed one had almost 80! If I'd heavily fertilized the awned wheat, it could have really gone to town with production.

I think this is the heart of the "green revolution", both the good and the bad. Yes, the right variety when treated optimally will give you a much better yield. But equally, if you can't give it all the fertilizer it craves and demands, perhaps the old traditional varieties have a use. It's too soon to see how they will yield.

And I would never have though two types of winter wheat would be so different. I wonder if they taste different?

Weather

The weather has been very weird this year. We had an unusually cold spell in spring (20 degrees in late March), and unusally hot spell in mid-May (broke 100). And this week totally unexpected heavy rain - the official tallies are too far away to apply, but we've had at least 2" of rain in the past week. We probably had half an inch today only - never thought I'd be digging drainage ditches on May 31.

Usually I have good luck with Feburary or March planted carrots, but I checked today and many of them are bolting. Well, who can blame them - it's been cold and hot enough to fool a vegetables (I'm confused too). There were a couple of ones almost big enough to eat - there is nothing like fresh garden carrots!

The reason for the ditches is for the tomatoes - tomatoes can get root rot in waterlogged soil. A few plants aren't looking very good after a week of downpour. Hopefully the new ditches will let the soil water level sink fast enough that they can recover. And a few dry days would help a lot.

Sitting inside (it was raining too hard even for gore-tex) I found a great site,
http://organictobe.org/. Who knew that Gene Logsdon had a blog? He wrote the Gardener's Guide to soil that my Dad gave me so many years ago, and the Small Scale Grains book (and many other books). And Roselind Creasy and several others who's names I'm not familar with.

Back to the garden - it's almost all planted now, the peppers went in today in between the rain showers, under shade cloth to keep them warmer. We got more of the flimsy little tomato cages - while silly for tomatoes, they work great for peppers, and support the shade cloth. The only starts left to plant are a two more tomatatillos, a couple of squash (maybe one's a cucumber), and a bunch of basils. And the upper beds got de-grassed and sheetmulched borders, so the invading grasses should be easier to eliminate. I might have time to move the broody hens to another coop, rig some nest boxes, and see if they can set some eggs decently. They are doing a very poor job in the regular coop.

Cooking fat and rendering lard

One of the problems of trying to produce all your own food is cooking fat. We do a lot of saute and stir fry; it seems like every thing I cook starts with saute an onion in olive oil. While I have two little olive trees, which have produced a few olives, I was baffled when I picked the olives to figure out where this olive oil might be. The olives produced a bit of whitish juice that did not much resemble olive oil. When the trees are larger perhaps with many more olives it will make some sense.

There are directions online for making a seed press from a hydraulic jack doing some welding.
http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel_library/oilpress.html.
You grind up your sunflower seeds, hull and all, and press. It would take a lot of sunflowers, though; a few plants yield a rather piddly amount of seeds. In a few years perhaps nuts will be a source.

We can make butter from the goat's milk, but it's not abundant (goat's milk is naturally homogenized so you don't get much) and we'd eat it up as butter rather than waste it on cooking.

I've rendered chicken (and turkey) fat but it has a sticky mouthfeel and a chicken flavor. It's not impossible, just distracting. Lamb fat isn't nice looking at all and doesn't smell nice. I don't even like it for soap making, the smell lingers.

But lard may be a good solution. This weekend I pulled out 10 or 15 pounds of pork fat trimmings that the butcher returned with our half-pig (not all from our half; apparently most people just let the fat be thrown away). I ground it up to extract the fat, lard. I'm quite impressed with how friendly this fat is; it's barely solid at refridgerator temperature, has little flavor, no stickiness. I got several gallons and froze much of it. I hear you can make the best piecrusts from lard. I heard that about chicken fat too, but I couldn't picture an apple pie with chicken-flavored crust. The lard might actually work.

I tried continuing the rendering process to make cracklings. This resulted in lard with a carmellized fragrance, a nice flavor for savory food but not for piecrust. It also resulted in a lot of unpleasant fatty cracklings. Perhaps I'm not doing it right but it wasn't worth it.

While it's hard to imagine us raising regular pigs (mature pigs grow to over 1000lbs), there is a endangered heritage breed of pig that says pretty small (topping out about 250lbs) and are more adaptable to pasture. Traditional pigs put on a lot of fat, since the lard was a very desireable yield back before Crisco. Modern pigs are bred to be leaner (and per "Animals in Translation" lean pigs are also nervous and poor breeders"). So an old breed, bred to be fat and peaceful and easy to keep, and smaller, bred for the old-fashioned multi-purpose farm.... it might be perfect again for the New Peasant.

Earth Day

Our Local Earth Day event is a big deal for the permaculture group. It's a fair held on the saturday closest to Earth Day. The permaculture group has a table and passes out brochures and we talk to lots of people about permaculture, and it's fun to see lots of people we know, there's an especially get to see a lot of people we know from other sustainability groups. Unfortunately, many years it's cold, windy and miserable outside and a exercise in endurance to spend the entire day there. This year was predicted to be worse than ever, colder and rainier; but as it turned out, the sun was out and wind wasn't too bad, although it was rather chilly. The predicted storm held off until just after the event; by 5:30 it was snowing fairly hard (for late April, even a little snow counts as extremely hard), and we woke up to a snowy view on Sunday.

The local seed saver's exchange idea is getting more and more concrete. Everyone I've talked to thinks it's a great idea... I got a domain (they were on sale for 8.95) so the draft is up at www.seedsave78.org. There are still a few people I'd like to talk to about it, and I need to do some legwork to collect information. Once spring is a little less intense, this should come together and we'll have a kickoff party.

On the real Earth Day (the 22nd, Tuesday), I traditionally plant a tree. There are at least a dozen trees in pots behind the greenhouse... I wonder if they will ever all get planted. It's like those odd items in the bottom of the laundry bin that never seem to get washed.

Spring is slowly, slowly arriving

The tomatos and peppers starts are in full swing. I had a horrible accident yesterday, dropping an entire tray of 50 starts; of many different varieities. The plants were fine, but all the labels are mixed! Horrors! There were 17 different types on that tray! The good news is that for the most part, these can come out of spares; only for one, Taxi, was every single start on that tray. And it's not entirely too late to start more, we have 6 weeks before target date.

The no-mow project moved onto phase 2 yesterday also; the new fence is halfway across the back yard, with lots of new lush grass. The sheep are thrilled, voracious things. Turns out sheep are quite interested in tree leaves and flowers, they nibbled the flowering plum flowers they could reach and starting on what I think are elderberry leaves as soon as they got into the phase 2 area. I called the butcher today. The last thing we need is more meat in the freezer (anyone wanna buy half a sheep?) but the wethers are getting to that size and age... we still have't quite given up on Macy and Little Bo having lambs, but it's not looking good.

Chickens are off the garden, paths raked and mulched. Peas are coming up, the garlic and winter wheat look great; seeded the spring wheat, some onions are in, and the first broccolis. The early seeds in the uppper beds are up too.

Earth day is fast approaching, so there are a set of tasks to get ready for that. Plus I have decided that we should have a local seed exchange, a la Seed Savers Exchange. This idea has been well received by everyone I've talked too, perhaps this is a meaningful sustainability project that will work for me.

Eating in spring

We had a houseful of guests for the Easter weekend, a timing coincidence due to spring break. While I love having guests, I'm a little distracted this time of year and can't give guests 100% attention; hopefully they are tolerant.

Having to feed a crowd is tricky, this time of year, especially with non-meat eaters. The freezers are full of meat and we have an abundance of eggs and milk, but there isn't a whole lot of vegetables available. We smoked a turkey, the other one of the two older Narragansett males we got before the racoons did. I managed to salvage a bit of one potimarron squash that wasn't moldy, but this is it; the winter squash are gone. The potatoes are still doing okay, they have tiny sprouts that can be ignored, and there are onions and garlic. Of the overwintered in the ground roots, we ate the last parsnip, a huge beet and some very small carrots. There was small new kale leaves and sun dried tomatoes for a quiche. And there are green beans still in the freezer, and we made dessert from berries we froze last summer.

It was a great meal, but a lot of worry. Usually there's some vegetable we have in abundance but this time of year it's the somewhat bedraggled remains of last year and the scanty new stuff.

I did see some new and beautiful broccoli side shoots out there, on last falls's plants. And there are a few asparagus spears peeking out. Now that most of the guests have left there will be some interesting variety, enough for two if not for ten...

Tomato Obsession

I've been so busy that tomato starting season has sort of crept up unnoticed. But yesterday the seed starting began, and some email followup with people who haven't got specifics yet. I mentioned it to the librarians when I volunteer; telling them about the seed starting and the varieties, I got almost too excited to work. After settling down they would ask me questions like "what's the best tasting red tomato" and it would start me off again. I don't know why tomatoes are so exciting! But they are! And I've planted over 200 seeds and many more to go :-) Now my problem is going to be collecting enough coffee cups to distribute them all in.

And I don't know the best tasting red tomato. Sungold, Ananas Noire, Purple Cherokee all come to mind when I think of best tasting - none of them plain red. Red tomatoes don't tend to stand out in my memory, they all sort of look the same in retrospect. This means we need to do more careful research...

Project No-Mow

We have four grass-hungry sheep, some empty spaces between gardens and house where the grass grows raggedly, and one guy who hates weedwhacking. Permaculture has a principle "the problem is the solution"... so, this weekend we rigged up chicken wire with t-posts and rebar, and closed off half the yard, and the sheep attacked the grass like ravenous wild beasts. Assuming that 3' of dainty mesh keeps them in that area and out of the garden, we'd like to protect the small trees in the rest of the yard, and let the sheep really take over mowing duty.

(The sheep have no business being quite that hungry, by the way. They are fat enough that they jiggle when they run; real sheep people tell us the girls need to be on a strict diet).

Season is moving on

How does time fly by so fast? Whooosh and it's been a month.

Tree planting season almost slipped by, but tree orders should be arriving this month and a few of the potted ones have been planted - the two pears that I got last year, very late, and didn't get planted. Those are in the back of the orchard, where we have to protect them from the neighbor's goat. There's an 8 foot fence going up on the north side of the property, which act as a trellis; the hardy kiwis will finally get planted, along with a grape or two. But enough of future plans...

Some starts got planted out under a tarp in the upper beds, and some in the lower beds without protection. The ones in the lower beds don't look so good, they look dry - it's been dry and cold mostly, lately. Seeds planted a few weeks ago haven't come up yet. The kale is putting out small new leaves which are yummy, I eat those whenever we can! There are still beets and carrots in the garden, and one parsnip. And we still have onions, garlic, and potatoes. Dunno if any of the squash is unrotted; the test ones in the SB root cellar have spots but aren't totally gone. I'm giving a talk on seed saving on March 19, for the permaculture group; I'm excited out it, trying to prepare well. There's a lot of talk about seed saving but I hope I can get past both the mystique that intimidates people, but clarify the long term genetic issues so people know where they are going.

The turkey adventure is over; something (most likely a racoon) ate or scared away one male and both females. So we butchered the last two males. The narragansetts are smaller (about 20# live weight at 9mo) and with less breast then the BBB but we smoked him, it was still a very satisfactory turkey. Better a 20# live weight turkey than a 50# or 60#! We'll try again this year, trading tomato plants for poults or eggs.

I just ordered potatoes - forgot to separate and mark the seed potatoes after harvest last year, and I can't handle not knowing if I'm planing yukon gold or carola. I still need asparagus - new aspargus bed in the orchard is dug. And sweet potatoes, going to try again this year. I've received orders for nearly 200 tomato and pepper plants already, I'll start the seed starting this weekend. And we're still milking Lily; Calla and the sheep are due this month. The grass isn't really growing strongly yet in the pastures but the sheep need to come off the hayfield this weekend - we're trying to fence off the side yard so the sheep can act as lawn mowers.

Snow

I don't like snow all that much; yeah it's pretty, okay, but it's inconvenient, cold and wet. Sunday we got a lot, and today it was snowing off and on all day. Going out to milk the goat today was so hard to do, it's such a struggle to make myself leave the warm dry house. Especially when the wind's from the north so it blows into the carport where I'm milking, and the snow and mud and puddles on the way to the goat area is sticky and chicken-poop smelly (thank goodness for muck boots!) At least Lily seems happy and willing - in spite of the snow, she comes right out and finds her way to the carport in spite of snow and drainpipes and stuff in the way, and eagerly if awkwardly hops up on the stanchion for her lunch. It's not quite so bad a chore if someone is enjoying it! And the milk is tasting good, the feta and chevre had a good sweet flavor. I've run out of rennet for cheesemaking; one more thing to remember to order.

Sophie loves the snow and bounds around happily, it does add some cheer to the bleak outside world. I wish for warmth and sunshine and vegetables, I'm really missing greens, the ones in the garden all look so ratty (and now of course they are covered by snow). I'm not really a meat and potatoes person.

I've started on a rag rug, a small practice rug for Sophie's kennel. It's a bit raggedly looking, which isn't surprising. Not sure this type of weaving is my cup of tea, but she needs a new rug and there's lots of fabric around - these are some old poly cotton sheets from Jim's stuff.

Of pigs and winter

For the first time, we ordered a half a pig from a local farm, Will-o-witt ranch, up in the hills outside town. Pork is so much tastier than other meat... and boy have I been eager to eat, and make, sausages... lamb and poultry just don't make sausages with that zing. Also my old recipe for vietnamese chao gio... ummm. Alas, we managed to miss butchering day, so much of the useful bits ended up who-knows-where. The butchers are great at letting you have livers and hearts and whatever you like, but you have to be there, they don't bother to save these things otherwise. One part we missed is the feet, and I see lots of recipes for pig's feet, which make me curious. Although chicken feet are supposed to be good for chicken soup and frankly all I have to do is look at a chicken foot and I give up. But it seems a terrible waste to not use the entire pig, that gave it's life for us to eat.

Already we've have had sausage patties, (with fried potatoes and baked squash), and pork chile verde (in burittos with saute'd vegetables and peach salsa). Both came out great... after years of ignoring any recipe that used pork, I've got a new thing to figure out how to use.

We had a whole lot of snow today, the weather is terrible, so I'm staying inside. Jay and Sophie had fun playing outside... I finished the first sock in cascade fixation, which was so fun to knit; it fits very well, which it'd better after knitting one ankle three times, but it's a little rough on the sole. There's just a bit to go on the other sock, so I need to order more yarn; I really liked knitting with this stuff. I can't figure out what is going on with the dark green sweater that got stuck sometime in fall; I need to redo some math and take more notes and maybe do a little reknitting. It also looks like it's going to be huge, I guess that's better than being too small.

The plaid came off the loom on Friday evening. That last towel had more tension problems, the tie-on to the back wasn't very good, so finishing was a real struggle. The results look okay, overall, but I enjoyed earlier projects more than this. Now I'm not sure if I should warp on more towels or start on a rag rug or what. Towels are so much fun to weave, but how many kitchen towels can anyone use?