I'm on Etsy!

I've been very busy working on my new business and my new Etsy shop the last couple months. I'm very excited to announce the launch of Mystic Farms! I make all natural lotion bars, liquid soaps, and other household products.



As part of my New Year's Resolution, as you may remember, I chose to no longer buy products that contained ingredients I could not pronounce. As a result, I started experimenting making my own liquid soap and lotion bars. In my research, I quickly realized that not a lot of people make liquid soap, and I LOVED making it. Using my family as guinea pigs, I've spent the last few months refining my recipes and coming up with a product I'm thrilled to offer in my shop. I also plan to offer vegetable wash and bug repellent stick and spray, as well as a garden insecticide spray.


I've even created a facebook page for my shop. I've resisted facebook for years, even though it seems like "everyone" is there. If you become a fan, you'll be notified of any local events I participate in as well as updates to my Etsy shop.

My products are 100% natural and contain no synthetic colors, fragrance, preservatives, or petroleum products. I hope you'll take a minute to browse my shop. I'd appreciate your support.

Starting a Revolution

I just finished watching the first episode of Jamie Oliver's new show, Food Revolution. I've been following his Ministry of Food campaign for the last couple years, and watched the success he has had reforming the meals in the UK school system. This man gets it. He has such passion for what he does, and truly believes he can make a difference. I honestly hope he does. The USDA school lunch program is a sorry excuse for nutrition, and the preservatives they stuff down our kids' throats are not doing them any favors. I hope I have set an example of better food choices for my child, although it was only in the last 2 years that I've been aware of how important those choices are.

Obesity and diet-related diseases such as diabetes and heart disease are killing us. The American lifespan is actually DECREASING! Statistically, our children are going to live 10 years LESS than we will. This is appalling and something has to change. Eating fresh, local ingredients and cooking from raw (rather than processed) are SO important to maintaining a healthy lifestyle, and it really so much easier than most people realize. If you're timid about putting a fresh, from scratch meal on your dinner table 5 days a week, I encourage to check out Jamie's books or his website.

Please, sign the petition to save cooking skills and improve school food.


"I've been to South Africa, in the townships, and they're getting better food than your American kids. Now if I were you, I'd be really pissed off." - Jamie Oliver


The above statements are purely personal opinion and in no way sanctioned or endorsed by Jamie Oliver or his representatives. I am simply a fan and wholeheartedly agree with his campaigns.

Olympic Gold!

The Olympics are over and everyone has gone home. Being relatively close to Vancouver, there was a bit Olympic Fever here and I decided to compete in the Ravelympics Sock Hockey and Single Skein Speed Skate.


The Challenge: Knit a pair of socks, casting on no earlier than the opening ceremonies, and binding off no later than the end of the closing ceremonies.

The pattern I chose was Twisted Tulip Socks from Interweave Knits Spring 2008.

The yarn I chose was Pagewood Farms Yukon in Turquoise color.

Mods I made included a short 2 x 2 cuff and eliminating the cabled pattern on the foot.

I attended the Cast-On Party at Knot Just Yarn and I was off and running. By the end of the first weekend, I had this:


I didn't feel like this was a very encouraging start, but I wasn't going to give up! A friend & I were headed off for a fiber-filled weekend with lots of knitting time, and I knew if I could turn the heel by the half-way point, I still had a chance. By the time I headed home on Sunday, I had this:


I finished the heel flap that evening, and turned the heels the following morning. I was in the home stretch!

I finished the socks with about 36 hours to spare. Not only did I finish an awesome pair of socks, I proved that it doesn't take me an entire year to knit socks!









A big thank you to the volunteers at Ravelry who organized the event, and to Becky, Laura, and my Knot Just Yarn friends for the encouragement and the laughs.

Quote of the Day

Here's a quote that caught my attention yesterday. I've read it many times, but for some reason yesterday it struck a chord.

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I cam to die, discover that I had not lived."

- Henry David Thoreau

Toys and Tools

For Christmas I received a couple of foodie-type gifts that I thought I'd share.

Cliff's sister sent us a Shiitake mushroom growing kit. We started it right after Christmas and have already harvested the first flush. We got 4-5 BIG mushrooms on the first flush and they were SO good. I sauteed them in butter and served them on steaks.
Here's what the kit looks like while the mushrooms are growing:


The white block is sawdust inoculated with the shiitake spores. The biggest mushroom on the bottom eventually got to be about 4 inches in diameter. We'll try another round next week.

This kit did seem to be rather labor intensive. While I love the idea of fresh organic mushrooms on demand, it was a little too much work for me. Eventually, if we have the space, I'd like to try inoculating a stump or log and grow mushrooms outdoors.

Cliff bought me this cast iron dutch oven that I've been coveting for a couple years now.


It is 5 quarts, which is plenty big enough for us, and a beautiful blue color. It is made by Lodge but enameled like a Le Creuset for a fraction of the price. I'm making chicken stock in it right now.

Last but not least... we've been playing with some winter gardening and we've had success with lettuce. Cliff bought a set of LED grow lights and set them up on his workbench over a couple of 5-gallon buckets. We put lettuce in one and beets in the other. We ate this lettuce yesterday in our chicken wraps:


A couple things we learned:
1. The grow lights need to be very close (12 inches or so) to the pots when the seeds are germinating.
2. Don't use chlorinated water; it retards the growth. Use filtered water or rain water.
3. Talk to your plants. This is REAL. It isn't actually talking to them that perks them up, but the carbon dioxide you exhale as you speak. Once I remembered my junior-high biology, it all made sense. Plants absorb carbon dioxide for photosynthesis... people exhale carbon dioxide... as soon as we started "breathing/talking" to our lettuce, it totally flourished! You can have tasty, homegrown lettuce in January. Who knew?

Resolutions

Yes, it is that time again... Resolutions for the new year. Did you make any for 2009? Do you plan to make any for 2010?

I went back and looked at my New Year's Eve entry from 2008. Funny, I don't remember making a resolution about exercise. However, I did conquer knitting lace with my Northern Lights Shawl:


I started an adult-size sweater for me, a February Lady, but it was slow going... I'm almost done with the yoke.

In 2010 I plan to learn to spin yarn on a wheel, relax a bit with my son's schooling, use my camera more, and finish that February Lady.

My biggest resolution for 2010 is to be more conscious of the ingredients in the products we buy. I plan to stop buying anything that contains high fructose corn syrup, MSG or MSG components, or anything I cannot pronounce. We've been slowly working our way up to this throughout the year, but I still find myself grabbing something like hamburger buns because I'm too lazy to make them, only to find their full of modified something-or-other, or have HFCS. For us, this doesn't apply to just food, but any consumable product like shampoo, soap, or cleaning supplies (harder to know because they don't list ingredients). I get a great deal of satisfaction in making things myself, and I feel better about knowing what is going into or being applied to be bodies of my loved ones. I'm sure I'll be sharing some of the recipes or tricks I discover along the way.

Thank you for visiting my blog over the past year. If you enjoyed a particular entry, please share it with a like-minded friend. I hope you all had a wonderful 2009 and wish you all the best in 2010. See you next year!

Happy Holidays!

I hope everyone had a great Christmas and are looking forward to 2010.

I've been pretty quiet this holiday season. I didn't get a chance to share any of my holiday baking experiences, mostly because I did all of my holiday baking on Christmas Eve. I was so focused on my holiday knitting/sewing/crocheting that I couldn't even think about baking until I was finished. But I did finish! My final project was a crocheted afghan for Emma and I finished it at about 5:00 pm on December 23.


I knit a scarf, of my own design, for Ethan. It was made from yarn he picked out when we visited Diva Yarns in Port Townsend in August.


I made 2 pair of felted slippers, one for Cliff and one for my step-dad. They each
already had a pair, but Cliff completely wore his out.


I sewed 3 aprons... one for each of my nieces and one for Ethan. I found some great "Cars" fabric a couple months ago, and he'd been asking for a new apron just for the kitchen. Here is my oldest niece holding up her apron:


I also made 8 sets of potholders to give to other family members. I gave most of them away and forgot to take photos first, but here are two sets that I have left:


I also made 3 more ornaments for the kids, a piece of ribbon candy, a pair of mini mittens, and a Christmas light bulb. Cliff kept talking about coal in stockings so, this year he got some! Meet Grumpy the lump of coal:


And with that, I managed to complete 55 items for the 52 craft challenge! However, my New Year's Resolution for 2009 was to knit an adult-sized sweater, for me. I did start the sweater, and had hoped to have it done by Christmas, but had some issues with it. It is still a work in progress... I haven't abandoned it and hopefully I'll have it finished before the weather turns warm.

One of the gifts I received from my mom was 2 ounces of Merino Top from Nestucca Bay Yarns in a beautiful colorway called Riverstone. Its SOOO pretty, I almost don't want to try spinning it. My Christmas present to myself is a SPINNING WHEEL!!!!! My wonderful friend Deb has decided she prefers spinning on drop spindles to a wheel and has offered to sell me her wheel for a wonderful price, I just couldn't pass it up! I don't have it yet, but it is an Ashford Traveller and I can't wait to get it in my hot little hands and teach myself to spin on a wheel.

That pretty much wraps up the fiber-related holiday goodness around here. I found some amazing new recipes for holiday baking and I'll update you on the happenings in my kitchen in another post.