I hope you’re not on dial-up, ‘cus there are a ton of photos in this post!

Last Sunday Robyn, Sean, my aunt (Robyn’s mom), Jakob and I went to a local craft fair. Like Robyn, I haven’t been there in ages. There was some cute stuff, some WAY overpriced stuff and some fun stuff. It’s a shame though…with the exception of some really original stuff (one silver or tinsmith table comes to mind that had wind chimes and jewelry made out of cutlery), it almost seemed like there were duplicate tables. Or at least, yet another table with your name written on a felt snowman ornament, or whatever.

There was enough interesting stuff to keep us walking around for a while, and I did end up buying from 3 stands.

One stand hand wooden items. Not the same type of wooden items as another stand I purchased from…the latter one had detailed, polished wood toys and items. The former was more cutesy tole-painted wooden signs and figurines. Robyn got a cute Laundry Room Lady. I picked up these two eyeglass holders for my dad (an optician) to put in his store.
The pink sunglasses are mine. Say what you will…they’re DKNY, plastic and silly…and although I can have my pick of any frame in existance (practically) and I get to try them all on when the reps come by…my night-time glasses are still an old pair of Ralph Laurens circa 1996, and these are my only pair of sunglasses. And yes, they are almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea- uh I mean almost, but not quite Barbie pink. (So you CAN say I see the world through rose-colored glasses!)

I was wearing Jakob in a Snugli because I figured it would be easier than pushing a stroller around. Many people came up to us and commented on him, and, being his usual self (even though he was exhausted) he treated them all to giggles and grin. As we passed one booth selling African items, the Kenyan lady manning the booth called out to Jakob and asked him to smile for her. I couldn’t see his face but I’m guessing he did smile because the next thing I knew she took a hand-carved wooden giraffe off her table and gave it to him! He is really cute and probably about 3 inches tall, and I couldn’t believe she just gave it to him like that! I browsed her table for a bit because I wanted to buy something as a “thank you” and her daughter came out from behind the table to play with Jakob. She was an adorable little girl, probably about 8 with the most adorable accent, and when she started playing with this zebra tam-tam Jakob went nuts! He was laughing and shaking…he loves music and I guess any noise-maker too. So I bought the tam-tam. You hold the stick in your hand and roll it back and forth, and the two little wooden bits swing back and forth on their strings and hit the center “drum”. It makes a loud tock-tock noise and though I thought it would scare him, Jakob loves it.

The last item I’ll show you is the first one I’d actually bought. How cute is this? It’s a toy wooden truck, hand made with real turning wheels. The best part- it’s a crayon holder! We are a very crafty family (duh…this IS a knitting/craft blog) and I think it is so cool that I can encourage my son to color or draw by letting him “drive” his crayons to the paper. It came with a free coloring book and I picked the 101 Dalmations one because the pages are heavy enough for paint, and they are perforated to tear out easily.
In other news, yesterday Jakob started zucchini for the first time.
He’s quite happy with it. 🙂
I did notice a bit of a rash on him today, but I’ve never heard of anyone having a zucchini allergy. Luckily tomorrow morning we are going to his doctor for his 6 month vaccinations and a flu shot, so I will be able to ask him about the rash.

I haven’t done much knitting this week…mainly because I feel like I haven’t left the kitchen. We did some grocery shopping on Saturday, and I picked up yet more stuff to become baby food.
Everything in this photo is for Jakob to eat. From the center top you’ve got 4 turkey breasts, pears, apples, sweet potatoes, carrots, a can of peaches in water, 2 chicken breasts, and celery and carrots to be used when cooking the poultry.

On Tuesday I cooked up the turkey and chicken and pureed those, plus I made the peaches. I think I mentioned previously that the peaches taste “eh”. I know fresh peaches will be better, but the store didn’t have any. I know, Maaike, that I could have waited until they did have some, but at least this way I can get Jakob to taste them for the 3 days to eliminate an allergy and then give him fresh ones once they have them.
Yesterday I made the sweet potatoe and the pears. I confess to reserving a bit of the cooking liquid and pre-pureed, but cooked pears for myself, and I will do the same with the apples once I make them. I hear they’re good on yogurt…
Remember the Hallowe’en pumkins? Well the baby one was stolen that night. Today I cooked up the lumpy Mama pumpkin. I swear I didn’t leave my kitchen all day! I spent nearly half the day cooking up, then pureeing 12 pounds of farshtinkener pumpkin. I filled 2 ice-cube trays for Jakob, and 5 sandwich bags with 1 or 2 cup servings of puree to freeze for myself in case I ever get the urge to cook with pumkin puree again. I reserved 2 cups to bake with, and made these: That’s pumpkin bread with walnuts, and pumpkin cookies with walnuts and corrinthian raisins (currants). I haven’t tasted the bread yet, but I imagine it will taste very similar to the cookies since the ingredients were almost the same.

And finally, if you’re still here…a reward for the eyes:

Last Thursday Maaike and I went down to Effiloche and I bought her some yarn as a thank you for a project she helped me out with. They had received a new shipment of recycled sari silk, and I decided that I needed me some. I already had the two top skeins which were a gift from my secret pal that one time I played along. I had a feeling, though, that whatever I would ultimately decide to do with it would require more, so I brought mine with to find a skein to match. Well. Mine don’t have labels, so heaven help us to know if they are “twisted”, “original”, “washed”, or any other variety of sari silk. In the end we narrowed it down to “twisted” or “original”, then set about finding a matching color. Some were too “tomato”, others didn’t have the very intelligent shade of the color blue (Hooloovoo). You should have seen us with all the skeins untwisted and laid open! Ginette was very patient with me, and in the end I think we found one that will match perfectly. Maaike also got some, but we’re still waiting for her to post photos…