Knitting and Spinning : Fair Ribbons!

Yay!  Ribbons!  While they aren't first place (far from it in some cases), I still had fun and love the idea of it.

 As always, after seeing all the beautiful knitted items in the case at the fair, I'm overwhelmed with, "I-want-to-knit-that-and-that-and-that-and-that.  Now."  This year, I didn't knit something with the specific idea of entering it in the fair.  I have all kinds of ideas for next year, though.  Already planning...

The Spinning Bee was lots of fun as always.  For those who don't know, the spinning bee is a 30 minute contest to see who can spin the longest continuous thread of yarn.

It takes place just inside the Sheep Barn:

Here we are getting ready:

Yes, we take our shoes off.  Easier to work
the treadles...

I tied for fourth place, having spun 72 yards.  In this contest, tying for fourth was also tying for LAST.  Not many people were entered...  Still, tons of fun.  And again, makes me want to spin all the wool.  Now.

Ready for the riveting video that Deirdre, the owner of The Spinning Room yarn shop took for me?:

(Did this take a long time to load on your computer? If so, I'm sorry....still new to the put-a-video-in-the-blog thing.)

The woman who won the contest spun 208 yards - almost triple my yardage!  She is an excellent spinner and here is what she has on her wheel:

So cool.  I'm sure if I had that, I would spin faster.  Or better.  Or something. (Or more).

Edited to add: 

Oh my gosh!  How could I forget?????  Paul made me this great cart so I could bring my chair and my wheel easily to the fair.  It started with this:

The he added some wood and nuts and bolts:

And now I have a most excellent cart!:

After using it, we have determined it needs bigger wheels, so a revision/start-over may be in the future.  I'm so glad I have a resourceful husband who had all this stuff hanging around.  And thanks to my friend, Lisa, for the $1 thrift store cart find!

How to Cut Up a Watermelon

I. love. Love. LOVE. WATERMELON.  I was cutting up a watermelon the other day and remembered that someone once commented to me that the way I do it seemed so fast and easy.  And me, always thinking about things to put on the blog, and always seeming to do something food related, thought I could show you how I do it.   If you have no interest in knowing something like this, you could read why I don't have anything else to blog about - because that might be interesting - and then skip the rest and wait for a more exciting post.

So, I didn't have anything else to blog about today, since:
a) I'm STILL working on my Cozy wrap.  I'm almost done.  I decided I would stop at the end of the skein I'm working on, since it is getting pretty long (57" as of last night).  So hopefully there will be a good knitting post soon...
b) I haven't finished any books to tell you about.  I am reading a really really good one though...
c) I haven't cooked anything exciting.  Just the Kale, Quinoa and Avocado salad again.  And it's yummy again.
d) Nothing exciting is happening in the garden.  Things are just growing.
e) No drag racing to tell you about.  AND I'm missing a drag racing event this Saturday (Buick Day at Lebanon Valley Dragway) in order to participate in the Spinning Bee at the Altamont Fair.  Which leads me to....
f) I haven't been practicing my spinning for the Spinning Bee so I can't show you that.

On to WATERMELON...
I can't remember when or how I learned this method.  I used to cut watermelon into triangles, then cut it off the rind and cut it into pieces.  Or just leave it in triangles and eat it that way.  Cutting it into pieces is better, I think, and more portable to put into a container.

First, get your watermelon into a wedge piece:

Buy it that way or cut it up that way.
Then, run your knife along the rind, all around the edges of the wedge:

I did it with a steak knife which is a little bit flexible and that helps with the curvey parts.  At this point, if you did it right and if you really wanted to, you could take the whole chunk out of the rind and cut it up.  But, I leave it there because it makes it easier later. (see way below...)

Then, on one side of the wedge, make 3 or 4 horizontal cuts, all the way down to the rind:

Make more cuts if you want smaller pieces.
Then, turn the wedge around and do it to the other side:

No, I didn't use two knives.  I'm trying to make a point.

Next, cut into the wedge vertically, making several cuts long the length of the wedge:

See the little grid pattern happening?

That's it!  Now you can pick up the whole wedge, and let all the pieces fall into a bowl. Perhaps your new antique Fire King mixing bowl.

THAT's why you leave it in the rind to cut it.

Empty rind:

Pretty clean, but you could spend a little time getting some more of the melon out if you want to.  I don't have the patience.

Yummy watermelon filling my new antique Fire King mixing bowl:

The other day, by accident, I got a seeded watermelon.  It was really really really hard to cut it up the way I described because there were so many seeds.  At least a million.  They were getting in the way of the knife.  I really dislike eating seeded watermelon.  Again, mostly because of my impatience.  It takes 10 years to eat one piece because you have to get all the seeds out.

How about a picture of my Watermelon Slice Socks since I'm talking about watermelon and since I entered them to be judge in the Altamont fair?:

Ok, so I didn't realize I had such a terrible picture.  There are black beads knitted into the pink part to represent seeds.  You can click on the link up there to see the official pattern picture.  If they win a prize I'll post a better picture...

Next post:  Something a little more exciting.  Hopefully.  Don't know what yet.

Ribbons!

Paul and I headed to the Altamont Fair on Wednesday night.  He is displaying his car in the "Cars Past Present and Future" building, so he wanted to check on it:

It was fine (but very dusty).  Discussion ensued about whether or not to dust it off.  He decided against it since it's just so dusty there anyway.  He'll give it a good Paul-once-over once it gets home.

And I wanted to see how my judged items did.  We got to the Wool Nook in the Sheep Barn and perused the cases:

And there is my shawl with a Fourth Place ribbon!:

And my skein of yarn with a Second Place ribbon!:

Third from the right, the skinny purple-y one.

It's so exciting to see my items on display.  WITH RIBBONS!!!!  There were so many beautiful entries.

In Other Knitting News:
As promised, pictures of the Cranberry Capelet after it was blocked:

That sideways thing is SO annoying!  At any rate, that's me wearing it. (I told Jana just to get just the capelet because I had just come from babysitting and i was tired and sweaty and my hair was a mess.)

Here's a better view on the mannequin:

Except it's sideways again.  The neck definitely relaxed, as did the rest of the ribbing and it is VERY comfy and cozy -- can't wait for the cooler weather!

I started my Watermelon Slice Socks!:

Soon come the black beads (for the watermelon seeds) but I have to check out some online tutorials for how to add the beads to my knitting....

After I got that far in the socks, I took a short break to knit the Vite Cowl:

Unblocked - blocked picture to come next post...

Made with Cascade Magnum and size 15 needles, this is a super bulky yarn which makes for a super quick knit. I made it in about 3 1/2 hours.  To give you an idea of how thick the yarn is, here is a picture of the ball of yarn with a strand of medium weight yarn next to it (which I used to make the capelet):

The tape measure reads 7 inches across.  That's fat yarn.  It's so fun to knit something so quickly.  This is knit flat and then, after blocking, I will seam it into a loop that will be doubled around the neck for a nice cozy, warm cowl.

In Gardening News:
Here is my bounty of sugar pumpkins:

We had a second crop coming (three or four more pumpkins started growing much later than these) but someone may or may not have accidentally cut the vine they were attached to when trying to clean up the other vines.  So, this is it. This weekend I will be making roasted pumpkin puree to freeze and make pumpkin bread in the fall.  Or now.  I love Love LOVE pumpkin bread.

And we have a gazillion tomatoes (ok, I weighed them and it is "only" 6 pounds worth) so I'm going to make and freeze tomato sauce this weekend.  I decided against canning since I don't have a lot of tomatoes at one time.  I guess "a lot" is relative.  Not enough for me to drag out all the canning stuff anyway.

More on my processing progress next post...

Didn't, Didn't, Didn't

We made our yearly trip to the Buick Performance Group Nationals in Hebron, Ohio this past weekend.  It was a weekend of things that just didn't go as planned.

We didn't have a terribly smooth trip out there.  When we got about here in Pennsylvania:

We heard a big BOOM! which was this:

A blown trailer tire.

Which led, of course, to this:

Thank goodness Paul is extremely organized and prepared.  Aside from having to take the ATV out of the trailer (and almost roll it into that ditch) to get to the spare tire under the floor, everything went very smoothly and we were back on the road in, no joke, about 15 minutes.  He changes tires so many times on his race car that he could do it in his sleep.  And luckily his friend Rob had a smart phone and found a tire place 5 miles away so we could get a new spare (one more reason to add to my list of 80,000 reasons why maybe someday I might think about potentially getting a smart phone).

Then Friday, the first race day, didn't go very well.  Ray (Rob's dad) and I made several trips to another tire shop to get all new tires for the trailer, since a couple of others look suspiciously like the blown one.  Paul was very distracted getting the tires off the trailer etc, and didn't do well in his races that day.  Plus it was hot.  REALLY hot.  (YES, I had my shaved ice but I had quite a scare because the usual guy/cart was not there and I had to hunt for another cart that had it....)  And then there was Rob's car...

That is Paul and Rob taking the motor out of Rob's car to give to a guy to bring back to his shop in Michigan because it ate the bearings (I think.  I got shown little tiny bits of them in the oil filter.).  So, he didn't race.  He was not happy.  On top of all this, the racing was different this year  in that the organizers decided to have some night racing.  We didn't leave the track until 10:30pm and we were exhausted.

Saturday was the last race day and it didn't get much better.  It was hotter than hot.  It was sticky, muggy, wet-air HOT. 

That is Paul trying to stay cool while waiting his turn.  The racers have to wear long pants and long sleeves as well as a helmet, so you can imagine how hot they get.  Plus the windows have to be rolled up.  AND the inside of Paul's car is all black. UGH.

In the burnout box warming up the slicks (big, fat race tires).

I took a little video of Paul's last run.  The one where he didn't win. : (

(I hope you can play this.  I've never put a video in the blog before.)

BUT, he did come in second, which came with some prize money that covered our gas bill for the trip! (Yay, a silver lining!)

The threat of storms was looming for the end of the day so the race organizers were trying to push things along to finish up early.  Because of this, we decided we would at least start back home later in the day rather than wait until Sunday morning.  So Ray and I (the ever faithful pit crew) went back to the hotel to check out and get all our stuff.  Then the races went until 6pm anyway and we didn't leave until almost 7pm.  Again, things were not going as we planned.  But wait!  There's more!

We started home, got several hours under our belt and started looking for a place to stay.  We tried a couple of places but either the area was really seedy looking or the parking lots were not big enough for two trucks and car trailers.  Soooooooo. We decided to drive through the night.

Yup, I took a picture of the night for you. 3:00am-ish.

And the sunrise at the last rest stop.

It was ok for a while.  Then it was just torture.  Tired and wanting to get home.  But we made it home at 6:30am and immediately went to sleep.  Now we are recovering.  They can't all go terrifically, so this one didn't.  We'll hope for better luck on the next one!  (I've typed "didn't" so many times in this post, it doesn't look like I'm spelling it right anymore!)

In Knitting News:

On the trip out, I worked on my Cranberry Capelet and it was coming along nicely:

Then, I didn't touch it for the rest of the weekend because it was too HOT!  Now, I'm a little nervous because there are only 7 days left to complete it and have a chance to win a prize.

Also, I got completely obsessed with these:

Watermelon Slice Socks

And had to order the kit which was waiting for me when I got home and now I really want to start them but I'm not letting myself until I am done with my capelet.  Don't they look so cute and... refreshing?

In Book News:

The lastest book I've read is Goodnight Nobody: A Novel by Jennifer Weiner.  The author and I were in the same class in high school!  She is VERY witty and has written several books including In Her Shoes  which was made into a movie.  I'm working my way through them and have liked all the ones I've read so far.  This was her first crack at a mystery and I really enjoyed it.  A stay-at-home mom, struggling to identify with the other moms in her new suburban neighborhood (after moving from NYC), discovers the dead body of one of her neighbors and then proceeds to investigate the murder.  Intertwined with the investigation is the story of her life and relationships with her husband, best friend and a lost love.  And lots of wit sprinkled in, which, in my opinion, is a specialty of Jen's.

An extra bonus for me when reading her books is the little references to the town we lived in and her life.   Jen and I had the pleasure of being part of the enchanted forest during a summer theater musical production of Peter Pan when we were on college break. (What this means is that we were trees.  Yes, trees.  We had tree costumes and had to stand like trees, allowing ourselves to "sway" our branches when our arms got too tired.  Ooh, and we also danced with the other woodland creatures.  It was so fun to be in these productions during the summer, that I really didn't mind being a tree at age 18.)  Jen referenced being a tree in Peter Pan in one of her books.  It was so funny because I was reading along, got to this part and just laughed out loud remembering.  Do I dare try to find a picture to share with you???

In Other News:
This opened up nearby:

I was excited because when we go visit Paul's brother and his family in Virginia, there is always something interesting and yummy from Trader Joe's at their house.  The last visit, it was sweet potato chips.  So yummy.  I got some today.  It was crowded since it just opened 2 days ago, but I saw some great stuff that I will go back to get. (Not terribly pricey as I had anticipated, which was a bonus!)

And on the way there, I saw this:

OMG.  He's wearing a seat belt and GOGGLES. Cutest. Thing. Ever. (the dog, that is...)