Fall Bounty

I was at Westfield on Sunday and I was in a building instead of at the bake oven.   On the table was a huge array of veggies.  If I was smart, I'd have taken a photo as it looked so pretty.  There were carrots, onions, potatoes, squash, parsnips and cauliflower.  It turned out that a particular Canadian 19th C murder mystery show was filming there the week before and one of the scenes required fall veggies.  They left them behind for us to play with.  I made a pot of veggie soup for lunch and it was very tasty.   Afterward, we divided up the veggies and took them home so they wouldn't get tossed out.  I was sad because a 50 lb bag of onions was left. I couldn't carry it to the truck, and I didn't have a bag to take it in bunches.  However, I did get 5 cauliflowers, a whole bunch of carrots, potatoes, squash and whatever spare onions were rolling around. 

 I spent all day yesterday freezing produce!  There are now bags upon bags of frozen cauliflower and carrots.  I don't normally freeze carrots but these needed to be used up.  I also cooked some for dinner and made a bunch to puree for use in a Victorian carrot pie recipe that I will try out next Sunday.    Luckily the boxes that the 1/2 bushels of tomatoes came in were still in the house, waiting for recycling, so I repurposed them in the pantry cupboard, for onion and potato storage.

I'm spinning Angora right now, as in Angora bunny not Angora goat/mohair.  It's super soft, but the bits that I have to play with are a bit compacted, so I have to hand card all of it before use.  The fibre has a range of staple lengths, making it interesting and a bit challenging to spin.  As well there are lots of bits about 1/4 inch in length, which I'm presuming are short cuts, so this would be cut, rather than plucked Angora.  I had to experiment before I found a spinning method that actually worked for me.   I need to loosen up the fibre by carding it and pull it off the cards into as much of a rolag that I can get.  Most of the fibre is too short to make a rolag, so it just sort of curls up a bit.  Then I fold it up and it makes this light, fluffy pile, like a cloud and it will spin nicely with a short forward draw.  It takes forever though, but I imagine that it will make pretty yarn.  I am looking forward to blending some as I think it will be quite enjoyable to spin that way.