Thankful Ramblings

Since we are copying American holidays like Halloween, why not Thanksgiving? Sounds like such a positive holiday and it involves food - perfect! Here are some random thoughts I have been thinking about lately. Its the little things, right?

• I have finally found something to watch on TV! Since Gilmore Girls stopped, Grey's Anatomy got too dramatical for my taste and Oprah stopped (such a house wife cliché, isn't it:), I have not found anything to watch on TV and I have really missed having my own party for one in front of the TV. I do watch some series with my husband, which is nice, but I was longing for something for me. And now I found Parenthood and I like it, so yay! I have my weekly TV moment. 
• A big upside of adopting Halloween are the pumpkins. I love the look, the taste and the Dutch word for it - pompoen. Doesn't it sound funny? Our local store sells organic pumpkins which are super delicious and not too big. Yesterday I roasted a whole pumpkin in a oven and made pumpkin bread. Yummy!
• Thinking of pumpkin recipes, the first time I prepared pumpkin was when I lived in Sweden (I studied there) and Tina made it on her show. She is my favourite TV chef ever! 
• After experimenting with Twitter some years back and quickly visiting Pinterest, both mediums that did not work for me, I really like Instagram! I'm piecesoffab there. It is visual and delightfully imperfect full of shots of peoples everyday life. Celebration of the little things in life I would say:) 
• I found myself yelling to the kids (not that I would never yell to my kids...) "if you don't have anything nice to say then say nothing" when one of them was criticising other ones drawing. What a great advice for me too! Like something? Enjoy it. Don't like? Move on. This is a practice for me since I feel we are taught to think that being critical is being clever. Complaining and criticising is oh so very easy, but it does not really brighten up my day I must say.
• So I will try to focus on what I like and am thankful for, take some picture of it to remind myself and share them. Here is one  your:
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Have a lovely day!

This and That

Even though it still feels that I have not got anything done this autumn, there is some small progress. I almost done with a scarf for my son. It is the most basic thing that you can knit, just straight knit stitch. I have some more advanced projects in making but it has been hard to find time to work on those because I need to think when knitting unlike with this scarf. Also on both of my other projects I have made some mistakes and really dislike the idea that I have to unravel and correct them. I have a long history of not finishing knitting projects...

There it is in my little do-to-box

I have also been working on a Alabama Chanin skirt. It has been a very interesting process and I'm just so fascinated by Natalie's work. It is so simple but due to the level of detail also kind of complex. In her books she describes every single tool they use and it really does matter. For example I did not have the right kind of thread and now I finally found something similar that she uses and it really makes a difference. She does sell all materials and tools on her website which I think really is great concept. On it best the process has been almost a meditative experience and at its worst very frustrating, but the frustration usually kicks in when I try to rush things.

I also want to introduce you lazy gardeners two best friends, Jerusalem artichoke and mangold. The first one was gifted to me at the beginning of the summer. You can just pull them out at the beginning of the growing season and plant somewhere else. I had put them in a bucket of water, forget about them for a whole week, and finally in a hurry planted them in the corner of my kitchen garden. I was sure they will die, but no, they survived, had beautiful yellow flowers and produced enough for a big pan of soup! The mangold is a old favourite of mine, you just plant it and you can cut from it the whole summer (I just learned from wikipedia that when the tempature hits 85 F / 30 C the season is over. Lucky me, it didn't get even close to that here this summer).