My thoughts go out to everyone affected by hurricane Katrina. I can't even imagine what it would feel like to have to evacuate my community and lose my home. The Best Friends web site has had some interesting info on the hurricane relief efforts of area animal shelters.

Here are the Fair Isle gloves in progress. I nearly abandoned them because I didn't like the colors but then DH suggested I make the fingers in a medium blue rather than the light green color. That should make all the difference. I may run out of the dark blue color before I finish.

Here's the blueberry lime jam/marmalade recipe I plan to use from the current edition of the Ball Blue Book of Preserving. I honestly don't even remember the flavor but DH recalls it fondly and has requested I make it again.

Blueberry-Lime Jam

Yield: About 6 half-pints

4 1/2 cups blueberries
1 package powdered pectin
5 cups sugar
1 Tbsp grated lime peel
1/3 cup lime juice

Crush blueberries one layer at a time. Combine crushed blueberries and powdered pectin in a large saucepot. Bring to a boil, stirring frequently. Add sugar, stirring until dissolved. Stir in grated lime peel and lime juice. Return to a rolling boil. Boil hard 1 minute, stirring constantly. Remove from heat. Skim foam if necessary. Ladle hot jam into hot jars, leaving 1/4" headspace. Adjust two-piece caps. Process 15 minutes in a boiling water canner.

Here are the Floral Fair Isle gloves by Carol Wassell in progress. I have a decent Shetland wool stash so I'm able to get similar colors to the original. We'll see... I am doing these on size 1 dpns in a mixture of Harrisville Shetland, Campion, and J&S jumper weight. I'm keeping my fingers crossed I don't run out of any of the colors.

Here are the Aran Island mittens from Folk Mittens in some fingering weight Cormo I bought at Taos Wool Festival. These lovely mittens continue to defy being scanned well. They're just too bright despite playing around with the brightness/contrast. Anyway, they're finished and are going in my Christmas present basket. I did a peasant thumb which I prefer to the sore thumb in the pattern.




I received several requests for the blueberry-lime marmalade recipe. I no longer have the original recipe but it will most likely be similar to the blueberry marmalade recipes HERE and HERE with lime as the only form of citrus. I have ordered some more canning books so I'll let you know if I find the recipe again. Otherwise I'll improvise.

I still have the Latvian mittens to knit and I'm starting on the Fair Isle gloves in a PDF file HERE.

Life continues to be busy here. The cooler weather is helping me get more done than usual. I can't drink caffeine so I will take any help I can get to be more productive. I'm waiting impatiently for the new Dale of Norway Turino Olympic pattern to be published as I'm considering making myself a sweater. I hope they have a cardigan design as I don't look that great in boxy sweaters. I think I'll probably make it in Heilo this time rather than substituting cheaper Nature Spun.

After a 7 year hiatus, I'm getting back into canning. I didn't bring all my supplies when we moved to New Mexico so I just ordered a new canning pot and supplies and lots of books on home preserving. I have to go to the local hardware store and grab some jars. Currently my plans are to can some peaches in light syrup, a blueberry-lime marmalade DH likes, a tomatillo green salsa (recipe HERE), pickled beets and some plain old raspberry jam. I was thinking about doing some jams with chile peppers but most of the people on my jam gift list are not that adventurous and we don't eat that much jam. Canning, like knitting, gives me lots of great gifts to present to friends and family. I have already decided to do only homemade gifts this year for Christmas.

My current spinning project involves a popular angora rabbit named Hank. Hank is so popular that apparently he even has a line of notecards with his picture on them for Wild Fibers magazine and his antics are often chronicled by his bunny caretaker, Anne, on her blog.

Peaches obviously finds Hank quite attractive so I thought I'd get some of THIS fiber - a mixture of Hank and some gorgeous alpaca. My plan is to spin up the Hank fiber then make a pair of gloves or mittens with a small amount of Peaches' fur spun up for the trim.

From top to bottom, Hank/alpaca fiber, Hank skeins, Peaches' skeins spun on my Tracy Eicheim spindle purchased at Taos Wool Festival, and at bottom right Peaches' fur knit up into a fuzzy swatch. I'm not totally sure these two colors go together but I'll figure out a way to make it work. Hank & Peaches would want it that way.

Here are the Latvian mittens from Nancy Bush's Folk Socks in progress. I'm using Essentials sock yarn from Knitpicks and I'm quite fond of this color - kind of a pumpkin spice although it looks redder here. I do believe this yarn will pill but I can live with it. The price is right.




Here is a tea cozy done in Peruvian Highland wool. The pattern is HERE. This cozy fits my smaller 20 oz teapot but is too small for my 32 oz pot. I chose the pattern because I wanted a cozy that fits really well. I made one of the cute licorice allsorts but decided against them - too fussy and they'd probably end up in my tea cup somehow.




And here is a bad close-up of one of the patterns from the Aran Island mittens. I need to finish the Latvian socks for an upcoming birthday present but should finish these soon. I really don't have much left to knit.

It's not that I haven't been knitting. It is that I've ripped out several projects. I got to the heel on the first Friday Harbor sock, found the pattern errata online, and ripped it out. I started an Aran tea cozy but found another I liked better. I ripped out the Girly Girl socks because I wasn't fond of the lace pattern.

And this mitten I designed is going to be ripped next. Great colors but I made the thumb too narrow - plus there are simply too many ends to work in for such a simple pattern.

It is time for an update on the booklet. Stranded Color Knitting has sold over 225 copies and with the addition of the rabbit photo items at the Cafepress store, has made over $1000 for rabbit rescue. Thank you to all for helping with this. The money has been used for spaying/neutering, veterinary care, food and shelter for rabbits taken in by the House Rabbit Society. I hope also that the booklet has helped knitters learn more about knitting with more than one color, my favorite type of knitting.

That reminds me that I have to work on getting more photos of Peaches for the 2006 calendar. Her 2005 calendar is a big hit where DH works - the kids fight over who gets to turn over the calendar to see the new photo at the beginning of each month. Once I went to a work function with DH and one young girl came up to me and shocked me by telling me the name of every rabbit I'd ever had. They're fascinated by stories about our rabbits I guess.

Here's yet another photo of Peaches stuffing her face. She looks so tiny in the photo doesn't she?

Oops - I forgot one additional Albuquerque knitting blog. I'm not sure why as it is on my list of daily reads. I've corrected the original post but the additional blog is Jenny Woman Obsessed. Go check it out to see a lovely example of a Territorial style home.

I've decided against the new mittens due to thumb problems but I'll show you the photo the next time I get the scanner out. The colors are really nice but they're too labor intensive for such a simple mitten. I also have some lovely angora/alpaca fiber to show you.

It was a busy weekend with little knitting. Today we went to Santa Fe and I checked out Thirteen Moons fiber arts gallery (on Canyon Rd.) again. They had fewer quilts but did have some neat baskets. They had an entire room devoted to an artist who takes found objects like baseball mitts and electric mixers and then elaborately beads all over the. Pretty neat.

I've become somewhat addicted to Book Closeouts . They don't usually have too many knitting books but the cookbook selection is wonderful. The prices are even more wonderful. I can barely wait for one order to arrive to get my 5$ off coupon for the next order.

I told you a while back I'd sponsored a rabbit through Best Friends Animal Sanctuary. (A local rabbit rescuer I adopted Peaches from now works there as head of the Bunny House.) For a $25 sponsorship fee you get a photo and periodic updates about your animal (dogs, cats, rabbits, horses, even barnyard animals and wildlife). I chose a cute guy named Sidewinder with chronic head tilt. Here he is enjoying the great outdoors. He has a girlfriend he's bonded with and loves to take his water dish wherever he goes.

I'm currently working on the Aran Island mittens, a mitten project of my own design in bright colors, and I want to start a new spinning project for some gloves. I will show my progress on those projects next week.

I've been meaning to compile a list of other Albuquerque knitting bloggers. Here's what I've found so far:

Desert Knitter
Nepenthe's Misadventures
Jeannie's Hands at Work
Sheepish
MooKittyKnitting
Hedgeblog
A Woman Obsessed

Let me know if I've missed any.

Finally, in lieu of a Peaches photo, here's a hilarious photo of a music-loving rabbit and his adopted dad. He was adopted from Rio Rancho Rabbit Rescue - more info on some great rabbits available for adoption in Albuquerque at the Four Corners Bunnies web site .

NEW MEXICO FIBER RESOURCES

I'm really behind this week but I've been meaning to post something for those of you considering coming to New Mexico the first weekend in October for the Taos Wool Festival. I hope some of my ideas entice you to come - we'll plan some sort of get-together at the festival.

Taos Wool Festival is held in Kit Carson Park in the center of town. It isn't a huge festival but there's a lot for fiber people including animals, sheep shearing contests, fashion shows, etc. They say there will be 68 booths this year which is larger than usual. I highly recommend Elsa Sheep & Wool for my favorite Cormo yarn and La Plata Farms for great deals on spinning fibers. There's also a booth that sells great fiber books and old magazines and Fire Ant Ranch has some fun learn-to kits (learn to spin on a spindle, learn to needle felt, etc.). The best time to check out the wool festival is early in the morning as it get pretty crowded in the afternoon.

In Taos the Apple Tree is a good restaurant for veggie burgers and Mexican stuff. They have an outdoor patio and the wait isn't usually too long. Doc Martin's hotel has some absolutely incredible strawberry French toast for breakfast. There is a surprisingly good Chinese restaurant with great service right on the plaza. There is a little shopping center with a great bookstore, Moby Dickens (check out their great cookbook selection), and a really neat French cookware store with lots of copper, Monet's Kitchen. Taos is famous for their own ice cream, Taos Cow, that you really need to try as well.

Also in that shopping center is the Yarn Shop which is my personal favorite yarn store in Taos. Lots of sock yarn and friendly service. There is also Taos Sunflower in Arroyo Seco on the way to the ski area in a cute building with lots of higher-end yarns. And you all probably know about La Lana Wools and Weaving Southwest (home of the wonderful Rio Grande Spinning Wheel along with a cool walking wheel) which are right across the street from the wool festival.

Visitors to Taos definitely need to check out the Taos Valley Wool Mill where you can see them turning fleeces into yarns. They give tours for festival attendees and you can find out what time they are at La Lana Wools. It is also a really pretty drive to the mill. Up at the ski area there is a neat little store that sells colorful Peruvian handknits called Andean Software. I have to get back there this year.

One really neat thing to do while in Taos is to tour the Greater World Earthship Community. It is a reclaimed gravel pit north of town that now holds earthships. Earthships are sustainable, passive solar, off-the-grid houses designed by famed NM architect Michael Reynolds. There is an earthship right off the highway you can tour and there are occasionally rentals available.

If you have a car, it is a simple drive to Los Ojos through the beautiful Chama Valley to Tierra Wools. This is a spinning and weaving cooperative in what seems like an old general store with a wood stove and weavers working everywhere. They sell lots of weaving yarns and other gift items.

Another idea is a trip to Mora to Victory Ranch where there is a gift shop and guided tours to meet all the alpacas. I hope to get there some day.

Don't forget a trip to wonderful Santa Fe. First you can check out the Espanola Fiber Arts Center (I've never made it there) and then you can go to Santa Fe to Needle's Eye yarn store (lots of Dale of Norway and an incredible selection of needlepoint supplies) and the Santa Fe School of Weaving (also a knitting/yarn store called Miriam's Well) near the Cross of the Martyrs. There is an incredible textile collection (check out the ancient indigo-dyed Japanese firefighter's uniforms) in the Neutrogena Collection at the International Museum of Folk Art along with several fiber arts galleries on Canyon Road. We enjoyed Thirteen Moons gallery where we saw baskets made out of fish and quilts made out of paper.

Albuquerque (about a 3 hour drive from Taos) has the Fiesta Yarns outlet in Rio Rancho and Village Wools (great place to buy Navajo Churro fiber) and Fibernations yarn store in the East Mountains.