Vegan Chimis (And . . . Potatoes Not Prozac)

The perfect easy meal: spicy stuffed and lightly fried in olive oil, a chimi with onion, garlic, pinto beans, vegan monterey jack cheese and vegan chicken strips all rolled up and served on a bed of lettuce topped with guacamole and your own fixins.

A perfect wake-up kind of drink: vegan hot chocolate, mixed with some coffee and topped with vegan marshmallows: Yum!

This is Elroy, our neighborhood pileated woodpecker taking in some suet chow this morning--he's just beautiful and such an incredible bird to watch.

So have spun my second roving of wool--a bit thinner this time as I split my roving in quarters, then eighths to get a slimmer strand. Now, the white roving is going to be fun--I'll use food coloring to dye this after it's spun!

I'm half way finished with my Cathy Carron (Vogue Kntting Fall 2009) cowl number two--I just love this cowl--it will be fun to wear and the pastel colors of pinks, purples, and teal are faintly showing as I combined a verigated mohair yarn (from my stash) with a strand of Caron Simply Soft in gray. I like the results!

I ran outside yesterday in twelve degrees with a windchill of minus three, in the snow, on the back streets and in the middle of a sunny afternoon that was both quiet and sublime (it was the warmest time of day). *Please do not attempt this if you are not a runner, nor a fit person--maybe start out walking to the mail box. Call me crazy, but this is what I call a perfect run. Mind you, I was layered with three tops, a windbreaker, my hat, my scarf and ski mittens that I know would protect my hands even if they were submerged in liquid nitrogen. I didn't care about speed (well, I sort of had to care about speed owing to that body heat thing and not collapsing from exposure), or distance or any of the normal running obsessions, I just wanted to be outside, with the warm sun, cool (okay, cold) hitting my face and my feet to carry me along. It took me forty or so minutes to get my three miles in--I didn't care, I felt energized and great afterward. In my headphones I listened to Science Friday (one of my fave shows) with Ira discussing our country's obesity epidemic with other healthy folks. Sort of a strange coincidence, don't you think?

The Snowy Day: New Handspun Pursuits

Our Buddha seems happy in the new snow suit he's wearing.

This little statue ended up in my garden because someone threw him over our hedge one night. I felt it was Providence and kept him even though his arm is missing.

This is my new Drop Spindle Kit--I love it! Oh, and my book, The Four Agreements--it doesn't come with the kit, but I thought it made a nice picture together.

Yummy new wool, new spun wool--on my new drop spindle!

Great Pyrs are bread to protect sheep. My girl here is smelling her ancestors in this, I believe. She would not leave my side--it was too cute--so I had to include this photo.

My new spun yarn washed and hanging to dry.

I loved the book The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats. First published in 1962, it was one of the first books I remember having read to me as a child. I have always loved the way Ezra's illustrations captured the feelings of being in snow, of the curiosity of a child exploring in the snow, and the wonderful sense of snow--plus his bold colors and strikingly simple but remarkable drawings have stayed in my mind all these years later. I think this manifested a love of snow in me like nothing else has since. (Well, except skiing the back country in Vail, Colorado--that truly was a heavenly, god-like experience--if you ever get the chance to take a lift chair to the top of the ridge of the Rockies and be one of the first ski tracks on the back side of a mountain to carve out a path in fresh fallen snow--by all means, do it.) So last night we got about four inches of fresh, cold snow. I loved it!