And the winner is...Bitter Betty! Yay for you! You will be the recipient of something I did not make this weekend, but will make in the near future. I am excited about it.

Thanks to everyone for stopping by and saying hi--it was nice to see who is out there!

On Saturday Eva and I trekked out to Indiana with the knit night women to the Greencastle Fiber Event. It was fun, despite being a very chilly day (we ate a picnic lunch in the "hospitality tent" while it was sleeting). Most of the goings on were indoors and involved purchasing natural fibers in various phases of processing. We bought fluffy roving, hand dyed woven wool fabric, and Eva spent her allowance on gross-out silk worm cocoons that still have the rattling dried worm insde. One smart vendor had a needle felting kit out where you could try it, so we came home with one of those too. They use cookie cutters as a guide for where the wool should go. Eva has made a sheep from the kit plus a flower from a cookie cutter we had at home already. We also got to see animals, and I almost impulse bought an angora bunny or two, but then my better judgement got a hold of me.

We went to Jersey where our family lives for a week at Christmastime. It was an especially nice visit. This year both my mom and a dear old friend are relocating to the area where I grew up, where my dad and Elie's mom already live. That fact made it extra hard to leave and return to Illinois. It felt like all my people were just starting The Big Party but I had to go. It's easy to think of the great way that life could be if I lived there: there would be casual weekend lunches, and grandparents who could make it to school programs, and all those people who know the back story. And less stillness.

When Elie and I were getting ready to move out here & I was feeling apprehensive, my mother told me when her mother told her, which is that sometimes you have to get out from under your big family (Elie and I both have these) in order to let your little family grow. I think that's been very true for us, and we've grown bushels. I really do like the place I'm in now, our funny little routine, and our dear friends. It's a bona fide life. I like the stillness we have because that's when I get to do this and stitch a little that. It's a good home.

An speaking of homes, Elie did this to the kitchen today. Move over sketchy in-kitchen powder room with louvered doors, hello pantry.

Love you. Have a coffee by the beach for me!

Forget Black Friday, the start of "the season" for me is the day that the box of Florida grapefruit shows up on my porch. My dad sends me a box every year, and the last two years he's bought them from a smaller, family grove near where he lives. They are the best I've ever tasted. Really. See the lady in the orange shirt? I met her when I visited last March. She was cutting up tangelo tastes.

This year the rinds are a little thick, which makes me think that maybe I'll candy them. I saw Martha Stewart do this years ago on TV and I've wanted to try ever since, but you know somehow it just doesn't make the top of my list. I'd do orange rind too and get some dark chocolate and make orangette (or naranjitas as I am more likely to think of them).

Christmas is coming eventually. I'm making some stuff. Hanukkah is next week already. Too early. Thanksgiving is gone, but today I felt a little bit thankful to go back to work. Not sure how it happened, but Eva didn't have a proper playmate all of the last three days of the break. By the end of Sunday I had forgotten how to do anything fun. I needed to go to work and Solve Some Problems. My work is fun though. On Wednesday, someone brought in rock band and we rocked out the conference room during lunch. Today I had noontime yoga and it was so good. Problem solving, un-harshed mellow, and a little mental space--all things to be thankful for.

It's harvest time again. I didn't grow up in a farming community at all. I grew up on the Jersey Shore, so the yearly corn harvest in Illinois is still a very novel experience for me. I mean, I had no knowledge at all about farming processes before I moved out here. I was so surprised to see that there really were farmers who looked just like the farmers in picture books, complete with overalls and feed hats, and that these farmers kept their grain in actual silos. These things had seemed a little too mythic to be true.

But they are. Every year some time in September I start to see a few fields cut down, and a few trucks full of corn, and a combine or two on the local roads, and I know we've begun. Then I hear our neighboring grain elevator start up, and I come out to a fine layer of corn chaff on the car in the morning and I know we've really begun.

I learn a little more each year. Like only last year did I realize that the pile about a football field in length and a couple stories high out by the high school was a pile of corn and not gravel as I had assumed. They're building the pile again right now. Last year it stayed there until March or April when the weather began to get warm and all the fermented grain got stinky. Then they took it away. See, I know a lot of the general process now, but I still don't know very much of the "why". Like why is some corn stored on cobs and why is some of it loose? Why is that big pile of corn sitting outside? Is it experimental? Is it animal feed? Does it all get fermented? Why?

I do know that these are detasslers. They're all lined up at the farm store on Main Street. Doesn't big farm equipment look wicked? Even with mechanical detasslers, farmers still hire high school and college kids to work as manual detasslers in the summer. Our babysitter tried it this year. It's really hard work, but it pays well, and really, if you're a kid in a small town there aren't too many summer jobs to be had. Interesting detassling article here.

That's it for the Jersey Girl Farm Report '07. Even more insightfull next year, I promise.

This week I had my first-ever in-person meeting with a blogger who I didn't already know before she was a blogger. Eeee! Chara of Chara Michele and I met for lunch at a local cafe where we talked about blogging and crafting and how meeting a blogger for the first time is probably a lot like going on a date with someone you met online. Really! I even made sure I was wearing a decent outfit.

We met in the weirdest of ways. I had no idea that Chara lives right near me because her blog has no location on it, and she (unsurprisingly) had no idea where Farmer City is. Then one day she posted a photo of a very distinctive tree in town, and I knew it immediately. Now, you know we are really talking about some tree when a person can see a photo of it that could be from anywhere in the US, but feels without a doubt that it is from right next door.

Little gifties were exchanged. She brought me pretty note cards made from photos she has taken (as seen above). And I brought her this little hotpad (squirrel in donut!). Crafty fun!

It was fun. And as Chara summed it up, "Well, I am really glad that you didn't turn out to be some weirdo or anything." Same to you dear!