winter interlude

Pssst! Are you looking for

the Grow Your Blog Party post

and giveaway? It's right here!

~~~

We've had a little break recently: after weeks of bitter and paw-chilling cold, the past few days have been warm. Really warm: first in the teens then 20s then breaking 32F yesterday.

There has been much melting.

Piper and I took the opportunity on each warm day to spend some joyful time in the woods.

This is what it looked like the first day:

 And this is what it looked like yesterday:

There was still lots of ice and snow on the forest floor, but there were also many open patches, usually under hardwoods or along the woods road, where the sun had melted most of the snow. 

It was refreshing to see so much color again, and to smell the sun-warmed earth and the autumn-dried plants. A wonderful treat for the senses, especially since I knew more snow would probably be falling soon.

 

Since I didn't need to keep my mittens on (!!!) the camera never left my hand. More than once I spent several happy minutes in one spot, clicking and clicking away, without moving more than a couple of feet in any direction.

Piper finds such behavior baffling. She demonstrates this by eventually running full-tilt across my field of vision, only inches away from my body, and crashing through whatever plant or tiny landscape I am photographing.

And then looking back and giving me a huge happy grin.

Something like this:

Sometimes, I repay this hooliganism by asking Piper for a "Stand Stay" while I take her picture. Yesterday she stood on one of the big glacial erratics we visited many times last summer:

About 5 seconds of standing quietly...click, click, click...then I said, "Okay!" and she was off in one grand, blurry leap.

~~~

Now the cold is back, and falling snow is already covering the recently-exposed ground. Piper accompanied me on chores this morning, then headed straight back to her cozy bed. 

Makes me glad we seized the day(s)!

~~~~~

Grow Your Blog!

It's the 2014 Grow Your Blog party, hosted once again by the lovely Vicki of 2 Bags Full. Welcome to my little part of the celebration! I'm delighted to be participating again. The 2013 Grow Your Blog Party brought me into contact with many lovely bloggers who now both share and enrich my world.

Thank you, Vicki!
Thank you, my bloggy friends!

~~~

So this is where I came in, one year ago, as a brand-new, wet-behind-the-ears blogger. Today I looked back at my first post to see what I had envisioned:

"I'm just going to give it a go. And keep it very simple:

a place to post photographs, thoughts, and words that make me think,

and a place to record projects, creative endeavors, and some of the ordinary magic that seems to go on all around."

In retrospect, this is pretty much (exactly) how the blog has developed. Which just goes to show:

if you keep your initial plan broad enough, it is possible to stay right on track!

Heh.

If you'd like a quick idea of what you'll find on Comptonia, you might take a scroll through my 2013 pictorial retrospective post of monthly collages. Here is one example:

February 2013 highlights: fiber-dyeing, cashmere-combing, playing and working in deep snow, sewing, cooking, and a little attitude from a goat.

~~~

The regular cast of Comptonia is mostly four-legged. 

Some are cashmere goats:

First-time mum Lily, and her daughter Tsuga

Violet teaching her daughter Sambucus to dance

but the star is a Piper:

"Yes. Yes, I am. The Star. Yes."

And if even one of those critters would learn to type 

and work the camera, I'd be reading the blog, not writing it.

By the way, there are hens here, also, but I don't expect my hens to be able to type. That would be silly, wouldn't it?

(Of course, now that I've written that, it's clear the hens would be the best typists of the bunch, with their innate hunt-and-peck method. Hmmm. Something to think about. Stay tuned.)

So, there's some gardening, and a little cooking, and reports on the International Space Station, and walks in the woods, and highly technical analysis of market trends (just kidding), and generally a little bit of whatever comes up.

Welcome! I'm glad you decided to visit Comptonia and have a look around. If you find something you like, I hope you will come back again!

~~~

And now for the Grow Your Blog Party giveaway:

a handknit hat.

Knit by me, in Cascade Superwash, which is a soft Peruvian Highland wool you can machine-wash and machine-dry without fear of...well, without fear of anything. No shrinking, no felting. Truly fearless machine-laundering of a handknit. Woohoo!

The color is a dark reddish-brown heather, with hints of green and gold. It's surprisingly hard to photograph accurately: the first picture shows the darkness quite well, and the others are too light but do show the subtle multicolor-heathery quality. It's a pretty yarn. It reminds me of the ground covered with oak leaves in late Autumn. Oak, and maybe beech. With a little bit of moss peeking out between the fallen leaves.

The hat should fit a medium to a large head, as it is quite stretchy.

Fibery note: I made this hat ages ago as a test-knitter for the Goose Chase Hat, designed by Sarah Roy. The pattern is Sarah's interpretation of a sweater worn by John Watson (Martin Freeman) in "Sherlock" - how clever is that? I finished the hat, washed and blocked and dried it, reported back to Sarah on Ravelry, then tucked the hat carefully away in the Future Knitted Gifts box, for when someone special would need a cozy hat.

And here we are: it's The Future.

Do you need a cozy hat?

The giveaway is open to anyone, anywhere. Just leave a comment and be sure to include a way for me to reach you if you are the winner. I will draw a winner on 15 February and announce it in a post on that day. Good luck!
~~~
A follow-up note: I won't reply to your comments here on this post, because it will be easier to do the drawing on the 15th if every comment is an "entry."
But I'll come and say hello on your blogs! :) 

~~~~~

happy hour

There's been more snow. And ice.

When I start morning chores, it's often rather gloomy.

Piper usually comes along, but to be perfectly honest, she doesn't always help. This morning, for example, she went straight off on some mission of her own. Very busy, she was.

While I dealt with frozen latches. I use these double bolt-clips for all sorts of things, such as hanging each goat's feed bucket.

It's hard to hang a feed bucket when a latch is frozen.

The answer to a frozen latch is directly-applied heat.

Glove off:

  

(Not my favorite thing.)

This morning, Sambucus had a suggestion.

"Never mind that frozen latch.
You can just stand right here
and hold my bucket for me while I eat!"

"See? Perfect! Don't move!
I'll only be ten minutes or so."

 Yes, Bui, that would work if you were my only goat. But I can't hold everybody's bucket at once, and naturally everybody likes to eat at the same time. This is why we put on collars and ties, and everyone has their own bucket, hung up with a latch and...

???

"What are you saying?
I am NOT your Only Goat?!" 

This morning, after everyone had finished their grain and been turned loose, and I had collected the collars and topped the water buckets and distributed the hay and filled the mineral feeders, the sun suddenly came up. It sent bright lateral rays here and there across the paddock.

Lily, searching for that one perfect blade of sweet, dry meadow grass hidden deep inside a million lesser blades, was lit by a dazzling ray:

I wonder if everyone with livestock enjoys hearing them eat.

The goats' little munch-munch-munch always makes me smile. 

As I headed back to the house carrying the empty water buckets, I whistled for Piper and she raced up to reveal the success of her mission:

"Found it!!"

It's amazing how much can happen in an hour.

~~~~~

because it was there

Very strange to be bake something without an apple in it, I know. But here goes.

I hadn't planned to bake anything this morning, until I discovered several leftover Portuguese sweet rolls in my cupboard.

They were just slightly too dry to be used for sandwiches, and would probably make terribly sweet breadcrumbs.

So...a venture into bread pudding.

 Cut into little blocks...

...and placed in a buttered baking dish.

Not too tightly, but filling the dish.

Then doused in a mixture of 4 eggs, 2 c milk, 1.5 c sugar, 2 TBS vanilla extract, and 1 TBS cinnamon.
(The recipes I found called for 2 c sugar, but I just couldn't do it.)

Baked at 325F for an hour.
(Because I use Pyrex. In a metal pan: 350F.)

Here's what the pan looked like as I removed it from the oven...
Action shot! 
Drama!! 
Feel the heat!!!

I had a little taste while it was still hot.

And because I didn't make a sauce,

I added a little sliver of ice cream.

Not bad. Especially considering the absence of apples.

I've never made a bread pudding before and can only recall one cold, bland, raisin-studded serving, eaten in a cafeteria somewhere, sometime. 

(Now that I'm thinking about this, there may be a connection between the second part of that sentence and the first.)

This bread pudding tastes rather like French Toast, as one would expect from the ingredients. But the texture is different, with each individual chunk of bread saturated and baked through, and all the chunks forming one cohesive dish.

It would be nice for serving a group for breakfast: simple and quick to put together and pop in the oven, and - unlike French Toast - no one standing, plate in hand, waiting for the next slice to come out of the skillet.

What's your favorite way to use leftover bread?

And if you make bread pudding, what do you like for a sauce?

~~~~~

in a rut

In the past two weeks

I have baked this apple and cranberry tea cake

 three times.

Perhaps not every rut is a bad place to be?

~~~

The recipe is Marian Burros' Plum Torte, with minimal modification which varies every time I make it. This is a very simple and adjustable recipe.

The result when made with plums is what I would call a cobbler, with gooey pockets of fruitiness scattered in a plain cake. When made with apples, or with apples and cranberries as above (and above, and above), I would describe it as a fruited teacake. It is not overly sweet and has an even, dense texture. It's a nice take-along cake, and a good choice for a packed lunch that may be jostled a bit in a pocket or backpack.

My only advice is to watch the baking time toward the end, as a full hour may result in a slightly overdone edge. I check it at 45 minutes, and then every 5 minutes til a knife or toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

If you try it, please come back and share!

I'd love to hear more ways to play with this recipe.

~~~~~