caracolina

My goal for the Tour de Fleece 2008 was to see if I could spin approx. 4 oz of merino superwash with a drop spindle while finishing as many other things as I could, and I succeeded! I mostly used my spindle on the way to and from work and occasionally at home or when an opportunity arose at other locations. I finished the singles on Thursday, took Friday off, and plied the whole thing, also on a drop spindle, yesterday. It took me most of the day and my shoulders are stiff now, but I’m elated! It should be about 380 yards. I didn’t know if I would have enough time, how it would turn out, etc. but I’m quite pleased. I also finished a knitted baby top with embroidery, did a lot of Navajo weaving, spun a 2oz of hemp single on my wheel also, and plied two skeins yarn, one wool, one hemp. Sadly, the hemp is way underplied and I didn’t notice that until I had it on the niddy noddy. Ack.

Update: Everyone who completed their goal gets to proudly display the yellow jersey badge! Yay!

Tonight we were invited for dinner at Rinku’s house. As we stepped in, everyone was, of course, surprised because they had never seen John without beard. Rinku couldn’t stop laughing of course. We watched Rinku’s engagement video, which was very well done with nice music and made me tear up just a little. Our little Rinku, engaged to be married!

Afterwards we proceeded to the dinner table for bitter melon, dal, mango pickle, kadhi, rice, and sweet mango pulp. Bitter melon isn’t very popular with young people and we teased Rinku and her brother for not liking it. Rinku’s mom was happy to see us devouring it. Bitter melon is indeed bitter, but if it is prepared well it is very tasty – or maybe we just acquired the taste for this very healthy dish. John is planning to spend some time cooking with Rinku’s mom very soon so that he can learn how to properly cook this knobbly vegetable.

Yay, about 3/4 done with my spinning! I also plied a skein of wool that I had already spun and was sitting around on bobbins. In rug news, I am about 1/2 inch away from the top of John’s rug which sets me behind my goal. Hopefully I’ll be able to finish it by Tuesday.

Today we rolled out of bed before 4 AM to drive out to Tonopah. The Farm Stand was not quite as busy as it had been – not surprisingly considering the heat and humidity. I loaded up the boxes for the CSAs right away, but it took uncharacteristically long for the local folks to come and pick them up. Exciting highlight of the morning was a puppy that someone had found on the road and left with Rob. Luckily for the doggy (and Rob who wasn’t quite ready to adopt a dog at this point), a young woman volunteered to take the pup home. After the Farm Stand closed we broke down and moved the whole thing: tents, poles, shelves, tables, chairs and all, so that work can begin on the new, more weather-resilient roof. After catching our breaths and taking a rest at the house we loaded our car with more bell peppers, tomatoes, figs, carrots, onions, squash, and beets and headed for Phoenix, stopping on the way home for lunch.

Once we were home we did not succumb to the calls of the bed but immediately went to work cutting up and pickling 7 or so quarts of peppers, blanching, slicing and freezing several pounds of carrots, and slicing, caramelizing and freezing lots of sweet onions. In between I also baked a fig newton and John made and canned fig chutney. Yum! We fell into bed, totally exhausted, around midnight.

John had been thinking about shaving off the beard for a while and decided tonight was a good time. It was very strange to see him so changed at first, as if the bottom half of his face had been switched with someone else’s.

Right after the deed we headed over to Indo Euro where Sonal’s jaw almost dropped all the way to the floor. She had a good laugh after recovering from the surprise. John has the photo of all of us on his blog.

Now we just have to wait a couple weeks for the beard to come back.

This time of the year is jackfruit season at Lee Lee, a Vietnamese grocery store in the Phoenix area. You don’t have to buy an entire fruit, the guys can chop and wrap as much as you’d like to take home. John bought me a tray full because he knows I don’t care for the canned stuff at all, but like the fresh fruit a lot. Luckily they picked the fruit for him because he said he’d never chosen the one they opened for him because it looked overripe. The fruit pieces however, are sweet and delicious and yielded half a dozen monster size seeds for balcony experiments. Another sweet and fruity treat in Summer are yellow mangos which Lee Lee imports from Mexico. I cut up a couple of dozen to freeze and ate as much as I could fresh, on granola, mixed with yogurt or just straight up with a spoon. Yum!

OK, so this is really our new freezer, but the first thing I said upon seeing it in the corner next to John’s desk was “does it hold magnets?” and of course it did. Next, I peeled off all those magnets from the side of our fridge that couldn’t fit in the front anymore and arranged them on the freezer front.

I finished 1oz (27g) of my merino superwash top, that’s not too bad considering that I had a late start and was busy with the baby top. I also managed to sneak in a couple of inches of rug weaving, yay!

I don’t remember ever catching Murphy drinking from my glass, but she really went for this one, probably because of the ice cubes. The flavor (very diluted raspberry shrub concentrate) must have been nice for her as well, because I often put ice cubes into her bowl and she doesn’t seem to care much about those.