Hi There Hammy

Mummy and Dad got me Baking Illustrated for Christmas this year. So far I made the granola, and the spiced biscotti recipes but Joe has been going butter/baking crazy. He’s made the yellow cake (aka cupcakes) and by far the BEST chocolate chip cookies I have ever EVER tasted. I can’t stress this enough. If you can get your hands on a Baking Illustrated cookbook or the Cook’s Illustrated website subscription MAKE THESE COOKIES. As fast as you can!

Since it was so sunny but so cold we decided to take Linus for a romp. He hasn’t been in the snow since his last shave and he did pretty well considering his lack of fur.

Headed toward the great whiteness, with a smaller lump of whiteness.

I’m clutching Linus in my arms, my gloves in my teeth getting ready to plop him in the middle of this mysterious snow.

His feet look like little raccoon hands to me.

And then there are always attempts to toss him into snowbanks…

I’ve been doing some small crafty things. I knit Joe a hat for Christmas and, since I couldn’t wait until that crazy holiday to give it to him I also decided to write a pattern for it and have him pose for some pictures. So, the pattern is in the etsy shop (check it out!) and the hat has been on his head ever since…

I also started a new series of tins. I’ve run out of the actual tins until after Christmas, but I’m busy making the embroideries that will go on them when they reach my sweat, busy little fingers.

Foxy Suit And a quiet Deery…

Stay tuned for these guys in the shop after the holidays.

I’m finally getting around to putting up pictures from the last couple of weeks! Woot! The internet appears to be cooperating long enough to get something done for once. Anyway, a week ago our friend Micah from camp this summer came out for a visit! We were the first stop on her epic hitch-hiking road trip from here down to the glorious place called Mexico. We decided to try out the climbing wall here on one of the weekends she was here and it was so much fun! Joe took the “pimp coat” out for a spin (it’s made several famous appearances at camp and it crouched in the corner of my room until I brought it cross country with me) and it was glorious.

Micah and I decided this picture looked like he was posing for an Eddie Bauer-esque catalog. Heehee..

This is definitely one of the most epic climbing pictures that have ever graced this blog.

Micah is reenacting a Slow Loris (WHO comes up with these names!?) getting tickled… too perfect.

I was belaying Joe, until he swung on his way down and tripped me on purpose. We’re just swinging back and forth like a big pendulum at this point. It was a good day for a climb… and a jacket.

Joe organized a trip to a big corn maze last weekend. We all hopped into a van and drove about an hour away along some twisty, dirt “highways” and finally got to a five acre field full of corn. Everyone split up pretty quickly and started in on what would turn out to be something like a two hour bit of frustration. I’d never done a corn maze but I like mazes in general… what I didn’t take into consideration is the fact that in a paper maze, you’re just moving a pencil around and you can see the whole thing. In a corn maze you have to walk it all in a little bit of mud and you can’t see more than 20 feet in front of you. Snap. It was a long day.

In the middle of the corn maze they had a boat on a platform so that it looked like we were sailing through the corn. Majestic and fairly epic.

We found this after about an hour of wandering around. Probably more than that though because the frustration was already building.

After two hours (AT LEAST) we finally found the “Bell of Success!” Oh my, so long and so good. I don’t know if I want to do another one, but it was definitely worth going to at least once. Joe used to work at one of the Sauvie Island corn mazes so he spent a bit of the car ride talking about how he had corn mazes down… but we didn’t look at the aerial map before we went in and it was a several mile long maze. In the end it was mostly guesswork and luck, you should try it some time…