Back to life…
Evelyn started school today, which means we now have time to work again! I can see my desk for the first time since the end of May! We are so far behind on housework, house projects, coffee roasting and work overall. It’s hard because as soon as we gain traction something always seems to happen. Someone starts calling in at work, schedules change, drama happens, a tree needs to get cut down, an animal gets sick, on and on and on. I just need a few solid weeks of normalcy to get things back together again.
Hopefully these next few months will be the time that things start falling into place!
The Homestead Garden
We are in our second year of gardening here at the new house and I feel like we are getting the hang of things!
100% adding BEES has helped us see a huge improvement in our produce yields, especially with squash plants! Even with our late start this year (Pill bugs kept attacking everything, I took care of them with some beer traps) we’re seeing a lot of growth.
I also love our raised garden beds from Vego Garden. I’m putting in a couple more next week, and hopefully we will have time soon to get the greenhouse built!
Again, if you see things you like on my page you can always check my Amazon link up top!
Working on mulching a path around the beds
Two volunteer squash plants here, cucumber and some sort of melon
We used some old coffee bags as weed blockers around the bee hives. We have two this year and I’m hoping to add about 6 more over the next few years
I’m really excited about pushing this garden out even more. With the freeze dryers we’re able to store some a lot of produce for the winter, which gives me even more of an excuse to keep growing!
What else is going on?
To say we lead a busy life is an understatement. I’m so hopeful that things will settle down a little bit, but I feel like I say that every month. However, two big schedule conflicts are now over. Iceland, and Dan participating in a reunion show for Medicated becky, his old band.
When I first met Dan, I was playing bass in Chuck Marten, he was the lead singer/guitarist for Medicated becky. I said exactly two words to him over 3 years (“That sucks”) and we orbited each other at shows for years.
A baby version of me with my beloved Ovation Magnum four
Dan in Medicated becky
Anyway, one day we did start talking. And within a few more days we moved in together and in a year we were married! Music has always been a big part of our lives but with our business, our home, work work and more work, and now our daughter, we just don’t have time to play in bands the way that we used to.
However, Dan had the opportunity to reunite with Medicated becky for one night, and it was so amazing. Seeing him on stage again, doing the lead singer thing was amazing. Here’s a little clip of the show! (PS, one of his albums is up on Spotify)
Iceland! (Again)
Just got back from the most wonderful week in Iceland. I led a knitting and riding retreat at Hestaland, the most gorgeous horse farm I’ve ever seen! We had an amazing group of ladies (and one husband who was there for the horses and not the knitting) and not only spent afternoons and evenings knitting and chatting, but rode Icelandic horses out on the trails almost daily. When we didn’t ride, we went to sheep farms, mills and shops to learn about how yarn in Iceland is made!
Here are a few pics! (And things like luggage and needles are on my Amazon page if you like them!)
Of course I had to properly sticker my suitcase.
I love interchangeable needles for trips. The chances of being able to buy yarn and cast on right away is much greater when you have multiple sizes on hand!
Plus look at the cute pandas! (they turn your circulars into straights!)
I use cubes to squish in yarn for the trip. Since I was teaching classes I had to take a lot!
Obligatory cat in bag picture
Once we arrived at Hestaland owner Gudmar gave us a demonstration and overview of the Icelandic horse. It’s completely fascinating. No other horse can come into Iceland and once an Icelandic horse leaves it can never come back. Meaning when a horse goes to a competition outside of Iceland, it can’t return! That seems so sad to me, but it’s completely understandable. They don’t have the diseases in Iceland that we do in other countries, so their horses don’t even need to be vaccinated. Which means horses can move from one barn to another, the horse clubs can get together and there is no paperwork, vaccine checks, etc. It makes their horse culture so open and free!
We were free to walk out to the pastures and pet horses whenever we wanted. In fact you could open your bedroom window and see horses just a few feet away from you! I loved every second of that.
We definitely had LOTS of riding time. I’ll post more about that tomorrow. There’s just too much adventure to fit into one blog entry. But in the meantime, there was also this:
Baby Icelandic horse! Yes we got to pet it!
I’ll try to get more up tomorrow. In the meantime, if you want to go horseback riding in Iceland, I cannot stress enough how wonderful Hestland is!
Dead Boy Detectives and Sweater Weather
So this is some exciting news! This is a bit of a long story, but it ends with me screeching from the rooftops that I knit a sweater that has ended up on TV!
As you all know, Kyle Cassidy and I worked on the book Lopapeysa. While we were there Kyle Knit his own Lopi sweater for the first time as we traveled around the ring road. We discussed seeing stones at a church and how the shapes could be incorporated into a lopi yoke. Kyle said he wanted something with swords in it!
After knitting (and gifting) his first sweater, he set about making another one. He used my pattern (recipe) for the adventure sweater, and the yoke graph as a template to make an insanely cool design utilizing his sword idea. Then he gifted it to none other than Neil Gaiman.
Neil Gaiman wearing the sweater knit by Kyle Cassidy
Shortly after Neil posted a picture of himself wearing the sweater, the crew from HBO reached out to me asking if I could make another one for an actor to wear. They offered fair compensation but there was a catch. The sweater had to be in Canada in just a few days. Meaning with shipping and blocking time, I would have to knit it in less than THREE DAYS.
“No problem!” I said. In my mind I was of course thinking, small problem, but heck, most actors are on the smallish side, this should be easy.
“Great! They replied! Here are the actors measurements!
Okay, bigger problem. This actor is apparently fit. And muscular. This sweater needed to be a size Large, not small. But I dove in, didn’t sleep, cried a couple times and got it done!
I sent it off, they said thank you and then… silence. Was it used? Who wore it? Will I see it on screen. I had no way of knowing. I heard the show got sold to Netflix, then came the release date. Then finally, today I saw the show. And guess what? THEY USED THE SWEATER!
I’m so happy and excited! Kyle wrote up a lovely description of how it came to be, and we have released the sweater pattern for absolutely zero dollars, though we would love it if you could tag us when posting your finished creation.
If you’d like to learn more about knitting Lopapeysa sweaters, check out our book Lopapesysa!
Catching up
Trying to get through a to do list that seems to just grow and grow! I was laid up for a week with surgery, and Evelyn has surgery next week. I’m hoping that while we are hanging on the couch together I get elements of the website caught up, new patterns put up, old patterns put up, etc.
In the meantime, I am so excited to see that we’ve got a handful of people coming to Iceland! I’ve booked my ticket and I’m ready to go. If you haven’t signed up yet, please do so, as spots are really limited.
Retreat sign up!
I’m so excited to spend a week in Iceland knitting and riding horses! Remember, don’t know how to knit? No problem, I’ll teach you. Don’t know how to ride? Don’t worry! The folks at Hestaland will not make you go beyond your comfort zone. You can ride, you can pet the horses, you can do whatever makes you happy.
Meals and drinks are included on this retreat. I can’t wait to see you in Iceland! CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP!
21Years
Cheers to 21 years for me and this guy. One thing I was a little bummed about with my old website going away with the wind was losing the blog post I share every year on our anniversary. Then I remembered that Wayback Machine is a thing, and I found the post! Minus pics of course. But since our wedding was pre digital cameras really being a “thing” I have some in a photo album!
So please enjoy my Grandma’s accidental wedding advice. Don’t Bury the Cake.
“Today marks 14 (eep now 21!!!) years of marriage to Dill Hero. I always knew that I would someday get married, assumed it would be when I was 30 or so, and knew that I would wear white, but never thought too much beyond that about it. I wasn't one of those girls or guys who planned a wedding from the second I saw a Disney movie, though I definitely thought it would be nice and fun.
So imagine my surprise when I met Dill. Well, really met him. We'd been running in the same social circle for several years but for some reason, a couple of months before my 20th birthday, I went up and started talking to him. One thing led to another and after some phone calls we went on a date. After coffee and conversation, I found myself with a boyfriend. Within a few weeks, we talked marriage, About a year later, he proposed. I never thought, "I'm too young! This is too soon!" or really anything beyond how much fun we would have together.
A month before my wedding, and again on my wedding day, my Grandma gave me her advice for a happy marriage. Don't bury the cake.
I was confused and asked her to tell me the full story.
When she first got married to my Grandpa, she was very young. If I'm remembering correctly she hadn't finished high school, so they kept the marriage a secret because her high school wouldn't have let her graduate if they knew she was married. So when that was over and done, they lived together, and my Grandma, wanting to be the BEST WIFE EVER, promised her new husband a chocolate cake when he came home from work.
She worked on it all day, but at the very end, the cake completely stuck to the pan, and trying to get it out turned it into a crumbly mess. Grandma panicked, felt like a failure and buried the ruined cake, pan and all, in the yard. When Grandpa came home that night and asked about cake, she lied and said she didn't have what she needed to make it.
I laughed the first time I heard the story, and then, when she saw me on my wedding day, she told me that story again, except this time she said "I shouldn't have buried the cake. I should have turned it into something else we could have eaten, instead of having no cake at all." (I'm paraphrasing a bit) I know my Grandma wasn't trying to give me some deep life lesson here, she was just trying to teach me how to bake a cake, (specifically, not to use a certain kind of cake pan) but I think it is a life lesson anyway. The times I've tried to hide a mess or a disaster from my husband, we've both just felt like crap afterwards. I'd rather we get through messes together, rather than have some secret shames apart from one another.
So that's my advice to you, if you're ever thinking of getting married. Don't bury the cake. Find a way to enjoy a mess, even if only one of you caused it, together.
Speaking of which, this is the very first cake I made for Dill for his birthday/Christmas. I tried to take the layers out of the pan too soon, and they all collapsed. Dill had the idea of just icing the damn thing anyway and eating it, and it was of course, delicious.
Some more wedding pictures of us 21 years ago. We were absolute babies.
Bride and Groom Pez wedding cake toppers
Desk Chickens
I did not mean to have office chickens again, but here we are. We’ve been wanting to add to the flock, but the plan was to wait until the spring. But then I went to Rural King for a bee suit (I stress bought bees. It’s a story) and there were those little cheeps, and there was Evelyn saying “PLEASSSSSSEEEE” and well, we got more chickens.
This is Elizabeth Hennet. I may or may not have been partially persuaded to get more chickens because I’ve been dying to name one Elizabeth Hennet. There are 5 others, and I’m letting Evelyn name them all because one of the joys of little kids is seeing what they come up with for pet names. So far Midnight Applesauce is my favorite.
Being so overwhelmingly busy, we have not gotten the chicken coop of my dreams built yet, so I ordered another Omlet coop to get us by until next summer. I’m hoping to add some Silkie Bantams to the flock, but from a reputable hatchery instead of an RK impulse buy.
Sweater Weather
While I’m not quite ready for summer to end (the endless tomatoes from the garden! the flowers! the chicken eggs every single day!) I am ready for sweater season! There’s some thing so comfy and cozy about wearing a sweater, while knitting a sweater in an old farmhouse at the top of a hill.
I knit this one just for fun, since I had grabbed some yarn on sale. Just a cheap, self patterning acrylic, but it’s soft and will probably make a nice gift for someone. Knit from the top down, no particular pattern, just measured out where my shoulders should go and did some steady increase shaping. I think it came out alright for just messing around!
I know many people have very strong opinions on structured (knit in multiple pieces and seamed) vs non structured (knit in one piece, either bottom up or top down) sweaters. And sure, there are benefits to a seamed sweater. But I definitely appreciate the ease of the knitting something in one piece and not having it go to my “to be finished” pile where it will sit until it’s out of style!
Come knit and ride with me! (In ICELAND!
If you’ve been following along with me since I started my Lopapeysa obsession, you’ll know that I absolutely fell in love with the horse farm, Hestaland. I went there when Kyle Cassidy and I wrote the Lopapeysa book and it took my breath away.
A year later, I went back with my husband and daughter. We stayed for a week, rode horses, and of course I did a lot of knitting!
einband yarn being knit with a lopapeysa sweater in the background
At Hestaland you’ll be surrounded by horses, with the opportunity to ride daily, as well as take classes with me! I’ll be offering everything from absolute beginner classes, to designing your own lopapeysa!
Me moments before my very first Icelandic horse ride at Hestaland. I was a little excited.
We will also go on some adventures! Meet some sheep and of course, go buy some yarn!
Meals are included, you just need to get yourself there. No need for a car, or transportation, just take the main bus from the airport to the station, and the folks at Hestaland will come and get you.
My daughter and her first horse ride at Hestaland
Then you’ll hang out with me, and the horses, and the yarn. What could be better?
Living with fear
When I announced my pregnancy, I heard from so many well meaning people that you never know true love until you hold your child.
I disagree. I will say that I never knew true FEAR until I was pregnant. Fear I would lose the baby, fear the baby would succumb to SIDS, fear the baby would get taken, fear of long covid, fear the child will be part of a school shooting, fear fear fear. It’s as constant as my heartbeat. This little undercurrent of anxiety, constant, never ending. I live with it daily.
This morning, while in the school drop off line, we learned our friends had just lost their son. I remember him as a bright faced smiling kid, always polite, incredibly accomplished in school, now a young adult and new father. The fear bubbled up again as my daughter grabbed her backpack and ran into school.
I am crying for him, crying for his kids, crying for our friends. And a few tears for myself, and a new fear that even when she grows up I’ll never feel like she’s safe. Just more fear.
This day has been a year…
You ever feel like you just can’t scrape ahead? No matter what I seem to do it’s just setback after setback. We’ve been STRUGGLING since 2020. All of a sudden we got hit from every side. Ex employees, friends who were secretly mocking our attempts to navigate covid, being so, so soooo isolated. It was just hard!
We decided to make some big changes during that time. We no longer wanted our business to just provide jobs, but careers. So we took some major risks and did some major investments and… we still aren’t there. It’s like we are scraping along by our fingernails and every single time we get close something tries to yank the ground out from under us. I just can’t figure out why.
For example, yesterday we finally got a piece of equipment in that we’ve been trying to get for months. It is something that is pretty much an instant income maker. We were so excited! We picked it up, got ready to set it in place and as we unboxed it we realized… it was broken. Dejected, we returned it, only to be told it’s going to be another month before they can replace it. While a month doesn’t seem like a long time, it’s just another punch in a series of gut punches. It’s 30 more days of not being able to do what we want to do. 30 more days of not being where we want to be.
It’s just frustrating because if we had just stayed in our lane we would be better off right now. We’d be living our life with a lot less stress, that is for sure.
I know there will be the moment when we look back at this as a hard time that we got through, but I’m ready for it to be there now.
Everything old is new
Years and years and years ago, my husband and I played in rock bands. He was in Medicated becky, I was in Chuck Marten. We circled each others orbits for many years before even speaking to each other. (I did say two words to him once. “That sucks”. It was behind the Emerson Theater, probably around 1997 or 1998) We both had our share of musician turnover in our bands, in his case, drummers. One drummer in particular was named John Treeter, and he was probably one of the coolest band members that Dan ever had. When he quit, it was because he wanted to go live in AZ for a while with his soon to be wife. He gave several months notice, no drama, no storming out or kicking over of gear, just nice adults being chill with each other.
Several years later, Dan went to get some beer at a local brewery, and saw John behind the glass working as a brewer. He’d moved back to Indiana, gotten married and had a couple of kids. They started hanging out weekly, sometimes multiple times a week and became even better friends than they were when they were bandmates.
Flash forward to present day, and Dan’s current band Union Suit Rally needed a new drummer. Dan mentioned it to John, I threw in my two cents (Please please please your wife is awesome and this way we can hang out at shows together and your kids are so nice to my daughter!) and John finally relented and joined the band. They had their first show this weekend and it was such a success. I’m so happy because as adults, it’s so hard to have time to hang out with friends. We have our daughter, our business and the rebuilding of our house all keeping us beyond busy. So it makes it nice when we have to be someplace (a show) and friends are already there with us.
John on Drums, Dill on Guitar and Brock on bass, in the Medicated becky days.
These made me so happy. I asked them to recreate their old “stand by a wall and everyone look in different directions” pose, but they could not get through it without one or the other laughing.
Anyway, super happy for Dill that he gets another friend in the band. John is good people, a great drummer and an awesome beer brewer. (Side note story time: when I was pregnant, he knew I liked their Grapefruit Rattler beer, so he saved me a keg of it for after pregnancy!)
From the vault
Going through my files to decide what comes back to the blog and what goes away forever, and I found this wonderful article. This was my first big feature, and it was so much fun! I literally got stopped at a car repair place by someone who recognized me from the paper. So this one stays on the site, because it makes me happy. Indy's Rockstar of Knitting
The Return
Well! I didn’t mean for the old site to disappear but it did. When it crashed we tried to rebuild it and it just felt so stressful, and I’ve got enough stress in my life. So brush it off and move forward. With social media being what it is these days, it feels nice to have my little web journal world back, so expect to see a lot more of me here!
AAAAnnnnd We’re Back
Coming in Hot
The Re-build has begun. A whole new layout and content coming soon.