Falling into Winter

Once again, it's been a while since my last post. Fall in Vermont was beautiful. I use the past tense for this season of colorful landscapes and bountiful harvests because it snowed today. For those of you that do not live in Northern New England or similar climates, you may think that you read that wrong. Nope. It snowed. So, before I touch on the winter ahead in terms of weather and politics, let me just say that this was one of the most beautiful autumns that I have ever experienced. The red, orange, and yellow leaves that mark this season in Vermont seemed to be particularly intense and long-lasting this year. The picture above shows a few of the many trees that I had the pleasure of resting my eyes own this past month. In addition to enjoying this weather on foot, we were able to enjoy it from our kayaks.
So now most of the leaves are on the ground along with a dusting of snow, the long haul of winter is upon us. I don't say long haul in a completely negative way, just the reality of the fact that winter here will last well into April. In preparation fro this long winter, we have put quite a bit of food away, either freezing or canning. We invested $200 in a 7 cubic foot chest freezer and we have it about 1/2 way full with veggies, pesto, soups, and berries. A couple weeks ago, a friend invited us to harvest one row of trees in a nearby apple orchard at the end of the season. Here I am happily harvesting. It is amazing how many apples one tree can produce. The end result was (this is only an estimate) about 700 apples. I have made a ton of applesauce, Robb has baked about 12 loaves of apple bread, and we have had more than our fair share of apple pie and apple crisp. We are supposed to go over to our friend's house and press the remaining apples for cider this weekend. No shortage of fiber in our diet nowadays.
















The cooler weather has also motivated me in the knitting department. I cast on and quickly knit the Odessa hat pattern (free ravelry download) in Mirasol's Hacho yarn. The combination of this very colorful yarn with the swirly pattern made it fun to knit and almost as fun to wear. In larger knitting projects department, cast on the lovely Cobblestone sweater for my DH. I am knitting it in O-Wool balance and it is lovely. Since it's a 50/50 cotton/merino wool blend, I think this will be a three season sweater. It has a lovely texture and handsome tweedy look because of the fiber mix. The 17" of primarily stockinette with a little garter stitch that I am currently working on make it a great mindless project for knit night, movies, or other times when I am trying to multi-task.

I was going to write about how the larger world seems to falling into winter, plus what we are doing to prepare, but I think we all know that and a little distraction from this economic crisis is well deserved by all.