My hobbies run in cycles, and so does my awareness of this. Each year I forget about my cyclical hobbies right around mid-spring when I’m suddenly thrown into the whirlwind that is spring planting/shearing/lambing/training/etc, and each year I find myself wondering “Why don’t I knit anymore?” (because it’s seriously too hot and your hands are too rough and dirty – duh!) “Why haven’t I been baking as often?” (because your house heats up like an oven during the spring and summer, and again… dirty, rough hands.) “Why haven’t I been crafting or sewing?” (… your hands are never clean during the spring and summer, regardless of scrubbing, washing, boiling, scraping or pleading.)
Well, it’s fall now and I’ve remembered that the fall is for baking and sewing and knitting and long quiet mornings in the dark next to the wood stove. This morning I wanted to share a couple links to things that I’ve been inspired by.
The first is this absolutely beautiful Chocolate Velvet from Love and Olive Oil. I’m a huge fan of the LaOO blog, but usually it’s just a blog I read about and consider. Yesterday however I spotted this post and immediately knew that I’d be making this intensely rich and beautiful dessert. You all know about my sweet tooth, right? I have absolutely no shame in using natural ingredients to make seriously fattening, intensely sweet and sinfully rich desserts. This recipe will be especially nice because I’ll be using my own chickens’ eggs so I don’t feel I need to worry about salmonella because I know my chickens are all healthy.
The second bit of fall inspiration for me was when I stumbled across a photo on the internet of someone knitting a jumping using seed stitch. I’m consider myself an intermediate knitter. I’ve got the basic stitches down, and I’ve made socks and even cabled a couple of things, but I’ve never branched out much as far as stitch variety. After spotting this beautifully textured stitch, I’ve decided I must make a hat using seed stitch, asap! I guess Brits call this moss stitch, which I think I prefer. It sounds more squishy and forgiving than seeds.
My final dose of fall hobbying inspiration came from a friend who recently posted about shearing her sheep this fall. This spring I sheared my sheep by hand using old-fashioned metal shearers. It was slow, relaxing, and had the most wonderful “shhhhhhink shhhhhhink shhhhhink” sound to it. It was like meditating, except at the end I got a brand new Icelandic sheep fleece! Hah. I’m still a month or so from shearing here, but just thinking about it makes me incredibly excited to play around with wool again. This spring it was hot and sticky and gross, but this fall I am anticipating more comfortable sheep and more comfortable shearing, so hopefully it will be even better! (Of course, this is all ignoring the fact that the sheep got into some burrs earlier this season so I’ll be throwing out large chunks of fleece. Ah well…)
So those are the bits and piece I find inspiring me lately. I’m so happy that the weather is cool and my fall chores have slowed. Sure I still have to clean out the gardens and whatnot, and the barn could use a good fall scrubbing/mucking/etc, but all in all I am ready to have the time and hands for finer (and cleaner) hobbies again!
What fall hobbies are you excited to get back to this year?
Back to bread baking for me. This winter I will be sharpening my pencils and deciding if I can pull a business plan together for the farmers markets next year. Have spent the last two years on the road selling my pottery. Ready to stay home and garden my half acre. Next year going vertical! Building trellises this winter for sure! Looking forward to the wood stove and a dog on my feet 🙂
Spring and Summer are more about gardening and self-indulgent knitting, Fall and Winter are more baking and knitting for other people and crafting Yule stuffs (I’ll finish that cross stitch tree skirt one of these years!). I still do all these things year round, but they’re definitely focused when the seasons change.
Fyi, seed stitch is k1p1 and then the opposite on the next row – so each k has a p above it no matter what side you look at:
kpkpkp
pkpkpk
Moss stitch is similar but each k is in pairs, vertically:
kpkpkp
kpkpkp
pkpkpk
pkpkpk
Both are a lovely, squishy, warm fabric with *lots* of stretch/give.
When I first glanced at your reply I thought you were making more sheep-shearing onomatopoeia. 🙂
TIL that you can’t get burrs out of sheep shearings. Can you compost the unusable bits?
once I get my oven fixed I’m gonna be baking all season long. watch out everybody’s tummies!
I have done a knitting stitch that is k2, p2, k2, p2 etc then reverse order to get that bumpy, nubby look. I love it. Fall hobbies for me -I am looking forward to working outside and staying out there working longer when the heat and humidity finally back off and it is tolerable out there. I would also like play with embroidery (finally stop talking about it and actually DO it!)