Daily Archives: December 21, 2011

Cookie Challenge, Day 3

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Today’s cookie is so easy and quick you can whip it up for last minute guests.  I wove in ends and put finishing touches on a knitting project while making them.  The recipe is once again courtesy of Susan Branch, and can be found here.

Paul loves these macaroons.  They’re chewy and chocolatey and just enough decadent for holiday baking.

Since they were so easy and quick I have plenty of time left over to clean up and watch It’s A Wonderful Life (in black and white.  I maintain only heretics watch it colorized)  before we head out for a family tradition: driving around to look at all the Christmas lights.  It helps put us all in that holiday frame of mind.  I like to do it as close to the day as I can, because it gets us all super excited for Santa!

Surprise! The Amazing Win I Never Saw Coming

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Waaay back in the beginning of November I got hooked on a site / idea called “Wovember”.  The basic idea was to raise “wool awareness”; that real wool comes from sheep.  Behind every wool product you buy is a real animal and the shepherd who raised it.  There’s a whole farm economy and lifestyle in there that many people don’t even think about when picking out their woolens (or worse, their synthetics).

The fun part of “Wovember” for many of us was the challenge to wear  100% wool all month long.  Hand – knit socks from pure fine wool? Check.  Hand knit sweater from Juniper Moon Farm yarn? Check.  A commitment to only buy 100% non – synthetic wool products? Check.  You get the idea.

Then my friend Anna convinced me to enter a photo into the Wovember photo contest.  It was a photo of her holding a JMF sheep she had sheared this fall.  So I thought, why stop there?  I searched out a few other photos I had taken at the farm and submitted a few of my favorites, never dreaming anything would come of it.  I mean, the other entries in the contest were jaw – droppingly stunning, super adorable and very woolly.

So imagine my surprise when I got an email from >Kate Davies.  I won first prize in the Sheep Photos category with this photo of Neve:


I am honored,  excited, and most of all, stunned.  Sheep and wool are near and dear to my heart and I am thrilled to have taken part in this!