Voting, WI SpinIn, Apples!

Yes, I voted this morning -- along with my husband and our youngest son. I was so glad to finally get to vote! This historic election and the economic meltdown has left me very anxious lately. I know firsthand how tough it is for people to get by these days. Hopefully we will have better days ahead of us.

It was great to see the line of voters extending out into the parking lot as we drove up. And fortunately the weather was perfect -- 70 degrees and sunshine on Nov. 4th! Normally we don't have to stand outside the door of our township building when we vote, a few times we were left under the overhang of the entrance, but this was amazing. The election workers told us people had been lined up before they even opened the doors this morning. The huge voter turnout is very exciting. I saw lots of young people out there voting as well. And then to watch our youngest vote for the first time in his life, it was cool. :-)

Now I want to do some felting to pass the time until the results come in tonight. I bought some dyed merino/tencel braids this weekend at the Wisconsin Spin In. I also got some silk noils and dyed angora locks for embellishing my felt pieces.


I had a wonderful time at the Wisconsin Spin In, it was nice to have a distraction from all the political stuff. The pace all weekend was very relaxed. Thanks so much to Terri Drimel for inviting me to join her. We had interesting conversations during the 6 hour drive there and then 6 more on the way home. I live an hour from Terri's place. So I didn't get home until after midnight on Sunday.

We were happy to see Shel Gooch and Laura Matthews there. Terri bought a Patrick Green drum carder from Susan's Fiber Shop, what a lucky girl! We played around with it Saturday night and on Sunday morning she took a drum carding class with Carol Wagner. She made some really cool multicolored batts in class.

I took the knitting Shetland Lace class with Hazel Carter on Sunday morning. I got to see the wonderful Shetland lace pieces of Hazel's that were included in "A Gathering of Lace". What fabulous work! I bought Hazel's book, "Shetland Lace Knitting from Charts", what an honor to learn from such an expert lace knitter.

After lunch Terri and I attended the Spinning Icelandic Wool class. I was amazed at how soft the Icelandic fleece was. The first thing we did was separate the thel from the tog and then we spun it up. I have to say though, the tog spun up was really coarse - I threw mine away. The thel is very similar to Shetland - nice and soft, but it was a little short. When we carded up both layers of the Icelandic fleece together, the resulting lopi style yarn turned out very nice. I'm going to have to finish it up.

Applesauce!

I did up most of our apples last week. Two batches of apple crisp and 20 pints of applesauce. And there were plenty of apples left for the sheep. The BFL's love apples. Every morning after I put out the hay, Lanora stands by the fence calling for me to get her apples. A few of the Shetlands like the apples too, but Lanora never lets me forget to dole them out.

I noticed a good recipe from Michelle on her blog. Here is a favorite of ours, apple panakuchen (I'm not sure how to spell it actually). It's very easy to make out of things that are usually on hand in and it's very good for breakfast or brunch.

Melt in 9" pie pan: 1/3 stick butter

Mix together and pour over melted butter in pan:
3 eggs
3/4 C flour
3/4 C milk
1 tsp vanilla

Peel core and slice 1 apple. Arrange slices in a circle on top of mixture.

Mix together 1/4 C sugar and 1 tsp. cinnamon, sprinkle over apple slices.

Bake at 425 degrees for 25 minutes. Serve warm with syrup. Yummm!