Here at the Underhill House we are thankful for a happy, healthy baby, a warm house, good food, good friends and a fast internet connection. And yarn, of course.
A few things - help out your economy and community. Join the local movement this year and do your shopping with small businesses as much as possible. Here is a nifty site that makes it easy to track done small businesses in YOUR area:
If your area includes Western Massachusetts come and join the fun with Artisans of WMASS - There are sales, specials and some great artists to discover!
Gah. Enough shopping stuff. If I'm being honest, this Black Friday stuff makes me shake my head and want to never buy anything ever again.
But then our cats would be hungry. Like this. Wow. He is thinking:
1. I am in a chair where food is delivered. Turkey would be nice.
2. I will now get food.
3. Otherwise you die.
4. Numbers 2 and 3 are not mutually exclusive. Timing is key.
I'm thankful my cat has not murdered us yet. How about you?
Time for the second installment of Tuesday Temptations! This past weekend I attended a great drop spindle hand-spinning course at the Webs store in Northampton, MA. Highly recommended for any New England dwellers who can make it!
Before we get to spinning fun though, let's have a moment of serious advice and warning. (disclaimer- although I am a licensed vet I am not YOUR licensed vet. This post has general advice and is not meant to diagnose or treat your pet.) All you folks with cats? Lilies are poisonous to cats! Very poisonous! Now is a good time to start thinking about this since Easter and spring are almost upon us. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE lilies. They are beautiful, elegant, and smell great. However, they also cause kidney failure in cats. It doesn't have to be a lot of lily either- chewing on a leaf, petal, or even grooming pollen off of their fur have all been shown to damage the kidneys of a cat. Some cats are more susceptible than others but it is impossible to tell how your cat will react. Which lilies cause problems? This quote is directly from a Consulting Veterinarian in Clinical Toxicology at the ASPCAAnimalPoisonControlCenter.
Tiger lilies (lilium tigrinum) can cause renal failure in cats, similar to easter lilies (lilium longiflorum), stargazer lilies (lilium orientalis stargazer), and oriental lilies (lilium orientalis).Day lilies (hemerocallis sp) can also cause renal failure in cats.
"Lilies" such as peace lily (spathiphyllum sp) and calla lily (zantedeschia sp) are not in the lilium genus, and while they do have insoluble calcium oxalate crystals in them (which cause oral/GI irritation), they do not cause renal failure.
So stay safe this Easter season and don't risk your little feline's life! Now back to your regularly scheduled spinning temptations.
1. The drop spindle. Obviously a necessary tool for spinning with a drop spindle. They can be made out of every conceivable type of material and in many different shapes, but all have a whorl (the round disc bit) and a shaft (the long part you wrap the yarn around). Here is a simple, beautiful spindle good for spinning many different weights of yarn, made using reclaimed wood from aspinnerslair. This happens to be the type of spindle I have and the folks I bought it from. Lovely!
2. Roving is the second ingredient to spinning. This is the cleaned and carded version of fiber- all the strands line up. First up is an alpaca/silk blend from bluemoonranch that just begs to be touched. The color is glorious and you even get to meet the alpaca (Sophie) in the Etsy listing. Visit their blog for a chance to WIN an alpaca fleece!
3. If wool is more your style there are quite literally endless options. Here is a vibrant example of merino roving from SpinningAwesomeGood. I really don't know whether it should be spun or just hung on the wall to admire! Ok, ok, we'll spin it...
4. Not enough fiber yet? How about spinning from bunnies?! I have heard that you can spin directly from the rabbit- someday I will try this and report back. Here we have an English Angora Rabbit named Dexter from SevenAcreWoods. He has some angora for you - how can you resist this guy?
5. This is a nostepinne. Basically it is a tool that lets you wind a center-pull ball with relative ease. Mostly I like the name. This nostepinne from WoodElements is made from Zebrawood and is striking all by itself.
6. The finished product! This is yarn that has been spun, plyed, and set... This is a beautiful DK-worsted yarn named Sea Glass. It was created by artemisiaink - my handspinning teacher!
Whew! Finally, here is my first attempt at handspinning.... kinda chunky, kinda weird, but I'm proud of it. Now what should I knit???!!! I've got about 17 yards of bulky...
'Tis that time of year... holiday cheer, sweet treats, and snowstorms on the East Coast making headlines. I thought I'd select the first and second options to talk about today (the 3rd is certainly getting talked about by plenty of other folks).
The following recipe is a family tradition. We have the original recipe torn out of a magazine and slipped into a plastic sleeve... every year there is a mini crisis while we try to find this precious piece of high gloss paper. I'm going to post it here, sharing and preserving it for years to come!
Spritz cookies is what we're talking. Remember that old aluminum press your mother or grandmother pulled out once or twice a year to make cookies? Looks like this:
They are getting hard to find... this one was actually a Christmas present from my darling mother- she found it on Etsy amongst the "vintage" items! Nowadays they all seem to have a "gun" thing going on.What does that say about society?
But I digress. Ok, so you have your press, gun shaped or old school. A stand mixer is nice though not strictly necessary, and some food dye sends these cookies over the top.
Spritz Butter Cookie Recipe
1C butter, room temperature 1/2 C sugar 1 egg 1/2 t vanilla extract 2 1/2 C flour (I usually AT LEAST double this recipe. Doubled it makes enough to fill a 3" tall 8" diameter tin with about 20 cookies left over...)
Cream butter in mixer. Add sugar and beat until light and fluffy. Add egg and vanilla extract and mix well. Gradually add in flour until dough reaches a play-doh-like consistency.
Divide dough into 3 portions and add dye. I like to do 1 part white, 1 part red, and a little more than 1 part green. Don't be afraid to use a lot of dye. I find the gel kind works better to make brighter cookies.Now the fun part. You have endless possibilities in combining colors in the press. I like to make Christmas trees, wreaths, and poinsettias (ok, they are really just swirlies, but I think they look like poinsettias). You can also add sprinkles as desired! I don't know how the gun versions work, but you'll want to screw down the cookie press until you can just see the cookie coming out from underneath the press, then lift straight up.
Cook at 350 degrees for 8-10 minutes and cool on a wire rack.
Here are a few spritz cookie tutorial photos: Plain old lovely green trees. Tri-color wreaths. Red and White Poinsettias. Yum!
Enjoy your cookies with a glass of cold milk or leave them out for Santa (if there are any left). Just don't let the bad cat get them. Cheers! (And remember the free shipping at my Etsy shop until 12/21/09!)
Happy almost Turkey Day! This should be a fun post- it will be the first with an actual veterinary story.
If you want to have lots of fun while making Thanksgiving dinner and your cat insists on helping (how thoughtful) - play the Cranberry Game!
The Set Up
Ingredients:One bag of cranberries, one cat (bagged). The brand of cranberries doesn't really matter, though did you know that many OceanSpray cranberries are grown in central Wisconsin bogs? But I digress.
Mix for hours of fun. Oh, But the fun isn't over! Next find the cranberry in all sorts of unexpectedly wonderful places! Cranberries are safe for pets... most won't actually eat them (though they may *roll* on them). Which segues nicely to the FAIL portion of this post.
Don't let your dogs get at turkey bones people. Seriously. (disclaimer- although I am a licensed vet I am not YOUR licensed vet. This post has general advice and is not meant to diagnose or treat your pet.) Our story concerns a 10 lb little white dog. Let us call him Sparky. Sparky had a GREAT Thanksgiving. He even found a way into the garbage... which contained the neck of a 25 lb turkey. Now, you may not think it possible that the little guy could actually swallow any of this, but Sparky was tenacious. He worked at it and managed to get a turkey vertebrae lodged in his esophagus half-way down his own neck. Sparky's Thanksgiving got a lot less fun. He gagged, retched, foamed at the mouth and worked hard to breathe all the way to the veterinary hospital, where he had anesthesia and endoscopic removal of the bone. This story had a happy ending, but the moral is: Dogs (and cats) are smart! They WILL get into things! Use common sense, use your human thumbs and make sure the garbage is secure. (Baby locks on cabinets work great!)
Ok, new craft and art stuff coming soon! There will be SPECIALS! And just for reading to the end of the post, CLICK HERE for a beloved family recipe using... you got it... cranberries!
