A Stop at Fitger's Brewhouse

After leaving my dad's house, we drove north to Duluth.  The skies were perfect, which was a sight for sore eyes considering the lack of sun and warmth we have been experiencing this spring.  Our plan was to stop in Duluth at Fitger's Brewhouse for lunch.  Paul was looking forward to drinking their brews and I was looking forward to their wild rice veggie burger.

When we got there, we settled into one of their outdoor patio tables because we had Tchazo with us.  Before we could order, a strong storm blew in and chased us out of our spot.  From inside the foyer, as we watched the deluge and hail, we had to laugh at this perfect day that turned sour right as we needed it to be nice.  We were hungry, so we ordered some food for takeout and brought it into the covered parking garage where we could eat overlooking the lake.  As we finished up the food and got ready to leave, we realized the storm had moved out and we could salvage our patio and beer plans.

We took Tchazo on a walk by Lake Superior to get some of his energy out and let him play a bit.

Then, we headed back to the soaked patio and were the first to reclaim a table.

At long last, we got our tasting flight!

I really liked the apricot wheat beer.

Mission accomplished!

Next on our agenda was a stop at Split Rock Lighthouse.  When we arrived there we learned there are no dogs allowed, so we skipped that and headed to our final destination: Tettegouche State Park.  Much more on that tomorrow!

Quick Visit to See Dad

My week (week!) of vacation time kicked off with a trip up to see my dad in Wisconsin.  Paul, Tchazo and I wanted to check out how his combo birthday/Father's Day gift was working out and wish him a happy Father's Day in person.

My dad was injured at work and, as a result, is living with chronic pain.  Some days are better than others, but anything we can get him to ease some of the manual labor is a helpful thing for him.  This handy garden tractor seems to be a big hit.  He is demonstrating how he can sit and shovel!  My dad and I are alike in that each day is measured by what we accomplished.  His worst pain days mean he can't move around much.  Those are hard days for him.  Here's hoping this next year brings him better luck with the medical/insurance system so he can see some progress with his health.

Some of the garden gnomes are getting a little raggedy looking.

Since he is around his house full-time now, he has been able to get back into poultry.  There is a mix of butchering and laying hens in this group.  Cutie pies.

And, these guinea hens were an experiment for him.  By his account, they are not very smart birds and his much larger batch has been whittled down to these two due to a combination of predators and birds that aren't great at coming back to the coop at the end of each day.

They are laying for him, though, which is neat.  The eggs are smaller than regular eggs and have really tough shells.  We took some of these with us and they held up in our bags!

He is planting a big tomato crop this year, because we plan to go up again to do a big batch of tomato processing in the fall.

Macro!  This dragonfly is pretty from farther away and super intricate when you get up close.

 Look at all of those parts!

A walk to the end of the driveway and back is always a popular stroll up north.  Tchazo doesn't like it when I lag too far behind taking pictures.  He likes to keep track of his pack.

British Soldier Lichen. This stuff tickles my fancy.  It is so showy for such a small plant!

The lady slipper orchids were out in full force!  I've never seen so many!  There were at least 50 of them scattered through the woods on either side of the driveway.

We had time for Paul to get a lesson cutting steel.  We are working on some creative solutions for the front yard that would include raised beds edged in salvaged barn roof steel.  There would be a lot of cutting involved to make them happen.

Paul favors a grinder to do the cutting, but I like these giant nippers.

We were there to see the start of a lot of berries.  The photo above is of wild blackberry blossoms.

Some wild blueberries starting to form green berries.

We were a little bit too late for fiddleheads, but we did get some oyster mushrooms!

We saw some of the plugs from maple syrup season.

Wild strawberry blossoms:

There are pileated woodpeckers in the woods around my dad's house.  Luckily, they stick to damaging the trees...

and not his lovely siding!

After a sendoff breakfast of blueberry pancakes topped with his own maple syrup, we bid my dad goodbye and headed up the road to our next adventure.

Evening Walk

Monday evening was an absolutely perfect evening for a walk.  The weather was warm, but not too warm.  There was a light breeze and a bit of sun.  Paul and I took Tchazo on a long walk around our neighborhood and I brought along my much neglected macro lens.  I am still learning where this lens' strengths lie.  It was a lot of fun to play around with it, even if it did mean I needed to jog a bit to catch up with my boys.

Columbine

The ubiquitous dandelion

Longfellow Park

manhole cover

Mossy retaining wall

Longfellow Mural 

mushrooms

What are these?  I have never seen them before!

The macro is a good portrait lens!  This dude is pretty good, too.

not sure of this flower either

Happy Tchazo.  He has the teeth of an old dog.

Thistle

These trees were everywhere.  I am not sure what they are but they were all heavy with flowers.

Here's hoping for more lovely evening walks this summer!

Rhubarb Peach Galette and a Confession

Pretty, eh?  Well, let me tell you the whole story.  It begins with a confession: I am terrible at making pie crusts.  Truly and repeatably terrible at it.

I only make pie crust once or twice a year because the amount of butter that goes into it is alarming to me.  I always follow the directions and I always think to myself, "Self, this looks way too crumbly to hold together."  And then I reply to myself, "Well...but you've already put in more ice water than the recipe says to, so you should probably trust them and stop adding water."  Then I say, "Okayyyyy, but I don't feel good about this."

Then, I turn the crust out on to the counter and desperately try to make it stick together into "discs" like the directions tells me it should be able to.  And, of course, it doesn't work.  So then I get creative and find some way to add more moisture (most of the time this means flicking water all over the place and gently kneading it in).  Then, when I am finally able to coerce the dough into a disc-like shape, I tell myself, "Don't worry, Self.  This dough will rest in the fridge for an hour and come out perfectly balanced and ready to meet its future as a beautiful pie crust."

These are lies, of course.  The dough comes out of the fridge more crumbly and less hospitable to my rolling pin than when it entered the fridge.  At this point, I generally stop caring about how "light" and "flaky" my crust is and I just manhandle the heck out of it.  It usually involves more water flicking and more kneading.  Then, I roll that sucker into a roughly roundish shape.  Normally at this point, some of the edges start to crack.  You know what fixes that?  A little smear of water and some smooshing.  Eventually the crust and I reach a truce and I transfer it to the pan.

Now, for this particular pastry item on this particular day, I have chosen to make a galette.  Galettes do not have pans.  They are free form and are baked on a sheet.  I now know how important it is that you start with a well formed and solid crust when making a galette.  Because, see, when you put a bunch of fruit and their juices into a pie crust and your pie crust is NOT well formed and solid, you get a leaky, charred mess.  Little did I know that the pie pan has been saving my pie making butt all of this time!  The pan hides my failure at proper pastry technique with aplomb.

Horrid looking, eh?  In this case, I was able to salvage the galette but it did lose a lot of valuable and flavorful juice/sauce in the baking process.

Strawberry, raspberry and blueberry seasons have yet to come this year.  Maybe they will be my inspiration for improving my pie making skills.  I think I need to trust my instincts from the start so as to avoid the slippery slope of crumbling crust. Or, maybe I just need to start using store bought crust.

For those that might want to tempt fate with a galette of their own, the recipe I followed was this Peach Rhubarb Galette recipe. I added the beans from half of a vanilla bean pod.  This would also be good with minced candied ginger and some nutmeg.

Buttercup Sweater (sort of)

I finished this sweater almost a month ago, have already worn it a few times and still hadn't found an opportunity to photograph it.  Rain, rain go away!  I decided today was going to be the day even when the little window of time I had with Paul to just happened to coincide with some harsh lighting and wet hair.  Oh well, at least the sweater looks good!

I am totally happy with this garment.  Probably the happiest I have been with any garment I have ever made. The color, fiber, fit and pattern all worked in my favor on this one!  This tee is a very heavily modified version of Buttercup.

I knit this out of Hempathy yarn, so I expect it will just keep getting better as it should soften with wear. Bonus: this was (deep!) stash yarn, leftover from a previous project!

I liked the neckline and the lace panel.  Everything else, I modified.

My modifications included adding side shaping (increases and decreases) to give it a hourglass shape.  I didn't keep track of the shaping, but I did try it on a lot of times as I went along.  I also omitted the puffed sleeves, the gathering at the back of the neck and the increases under the lace panel.  I shortened the overall length and finished with a short garter rib instead of the lace edging.  I guess I didn't really need to buy the pattern since I almost made a totally different sweater, but now I know an interesting construction for a front lace panel and that was worth the price of the pattern.

Tchazo wanted to get a little bit of loving during the photo shoot.
Thanks to Paul for taking the pictures!

I will definitely knit more tee-style sweaters out of Hempathy.  It is really comfortable to wear and comes in a lot of wonderful colors.

ETA - Ravelry link to my project.