Fashion Shoot on Ye Olde Farme

Hurray for mustachios!

Amidst the wildness of the post-Irene clean-up and full-on production of our fall/winter line (which includes many new nuno-felted styles we are very excited about!), we finally got around to doing a photo shoot!  The weather was steamy and the model was freshly scrubbed after a morning helping to muck out Main Street, but photographer Kelly McCullough did a fantastic job and we are thrilled with the resulting images!  Feast your eyes on these hats, and the beautiful Lisa Rader!

Nuno-felted toque with hand-beaded flower and leaves

Nuno-felted toque/turban with iridescent coque feathers and flower

Jute cloche with nuno-felted flower and peacock swords

Nuno-felted toque/turban with beaded flower

Jute top-hat with nuno flower and iridescent coque feathers

Hand-felted alpaca top-hat with peacock eye and handmade silver pin by Rebecca Zelis

Nuno-felted cloche with self-embelishment

A good model and photographer are everything.  Thanks Kelly, Lisa and Alyssa!  These are gorgeous!

Wild Grape Jelly in the wake of Irene devestation

Irene overstayed her welcome in Brandon, and all of Vermont, for that matter.  We have towns that are cut off from the rest of the world, overwhelming infrastructure damage, loss of life and a frightening uncertainty that will linger for some time.  BUT Vermonters have a spirit that defies all of this and in Brandon people were mobilized by morning to help clear out flooded shops, remove debris, and assess the damage.  Facebook and twitter posts offered places to stay, shower, eat or plug into wi-fi.  And the response to photos like the one below that shows our pizza place floating into the street was simply that we'll all get it back in business as soon as we all collectively can.

This morning we woke to the most glorious weather: crisp and cool, and so sunny that I actually broke down and bought sunglasses at the drugstore.  I think it was Vermont's way of saying to Irene to not let the door hit her in her nasty ass.

So I went for a walk in the sunshine with my family down our practically unscathed dirt road.  We talked to neighbors that passed and shared news of the storm and stopped in at Gramma's because (of course) my 5 year old had to go to the bathroom.  That's when we noticed the bunches and bunches of wild grapes we had been watching all summer at Gramma's house had finally turned purple!

We picked as many grapes as we could in the two minutes or so that our busy kids would allow, brought them home, searched a few recipes online, and made some delicious Wild Grape Jelly.

Here's what I did (because I think it's absolutely scrumptious!)

I picked them all off the stem, cleaned them and put them in a pot with about a cup of water.  I mashed them with a spoon and a potato masher and heated them (just to encourage them to get mushy and let the juice out), then strained them in a metal mesh strainer.

I ended up with about two cups of juice (and the recipe I found called for 5 cups of juice, so I had to adjust a few things).  I put the juice back in my pot, heated it back up and added a little less than 2 cups of sugar and a little more water because the flavor was pretty intense (remember I'm not a real recipe follower--guidelines, I say...)  Kenny and I tasted the juice at this point and the flavor was great but, as Kenny said, it had all the flavor and the tartness that makes these grapes special, but it lacked a fruity finish (he doesn't usually speak like this, but he takes his food very seriously.) 

So I wondered (aloud) what could I add to give it a fruity finish.  I went to the kitchen garden and grabbed a big bunch of mint (I'd say a packed cup) that I chopped, threw into about a cup of water in a small sauce pan and added about a tablespoon of my raw honey (with a majorly flowery/fuity finish). 

I pounded the mint down with a wooden spoon to draw the flavor out of it and heated on the stove.  I added this to the grape juice and it was perfect!  I simmered the mixture 5-10 minutes (we were getting close to bedtime for the kids so it was becoming chaotic), added almost one package of pectin (left about 1/4 of it, since I had so little juice to start with), brought it to a hard boil for 30 seconds, jarred it, and processed my jars in a hot water bath for 5 minutes.

I don't know if the jelly will set perfectly, but I like to experiment with fruits and things each year and sometimes we have perfect jelly and sometimes we have syrup.  We will eat it and enjoy it either way.  If you want a more certain recipe, look online and use my ideas of adding mint and honey to make it yummier!

So here's the rundown:

1 1/2-2 lbs Wild Grapes

1 1/2-2 cups water

2 cups sugar

1 (packed) cup fresh mint

1 cup water

1 tablespoon honey

3/4 package pectin (maybe more; we'll know more tomorrow!)

Other thoughts:  We're going to make a batch to go with lamb (we have a ram going "to market" next week) that has cumin rather than mint for the flowery finish.  I think that will be tasty too!  And, of course, since I've allowed mint to take over my kitchen garden, I'm going to do a nice big batch of mint jelly!

News from the Farm: Use your zucchini!

We like to say that the only time you need to lock your car in Vermont is during the summer, when everyone's looking for places to ditch extra zukes.  So, stuck inside because of all this Irene-induced rain, I thought now's a good time to share my three favorite ways to use it all up and free myself from zucchini-wasting guilt.

Once you have bored of zucchini bread, ratatouille, and sauteed zukes try :
Chocolate Zucchini Cake, Zucchini Relish, and Zucchini Pasta:

1)  Chocolate Zucchini Cake
          I use a recipe from Fanny Farmer's baking book, a sweet oldie timie cookbook I got years ago at the Strand in NYC.

• 3/4 cup butter
• 2 cups sugar
• 3 eggs
• 2 1/2 cup flour
• 2 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup cocoa
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 2 cups shredded raw zucchini
• 1/2 cup milk

Cream butter and sugar, then beat in eggs. Sift together and add flour, baking powder, soda, cinnamon, salt and cocoa. Mix well. Add vanilla, zucchini and milk. Stir until well blended.

I usually use two squares of baker's chocolate, never seem to have oranges to zest and sometimes substitute honey for some or all of the sugar (we have hives so there's ample honey around here).
Other thoughts are adding some hot pepper (maybe something smokey like ground chipotle), adding raisins or chocolate chips or making cupcakes with frosting.
I skip the frosting, throw it in a tube pan, sprinkle powdered sugar and call it a day.  (bake at 350 for an hour for tube pan.)
SOOO Good warm!

2)  Zucchini Relish
This is just like pickle relish, but tastier and with zucchini (obviously)
I use "Margaret Hawes's Zucchini Relish from Putting Food By (on of my two canning/freezing/drying bibles).  Here's the recipe, but remember the things you don't want to mess with are the vinegar and sugar (unless you know what you're doing) but I alter the seasoning and the vegetables, depending on what I have in the pantry and in the garden.

Ingredients

• 10 cups finely chopped zucchini (if small, leave in the seeds; if over 8 inches, remove seeds)
• 4 large onions
• 4 green bell peppers, seeded
• 4 red bell peppers, seeded
• 1/2 cup salt
• 2-1/2 cups white vinegar
• 4 cups white sugar
• 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon turmeric
• 2 teaspoons celery seed
• 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

Preparation:  Wash and peel zucchini, removing stems and blossom ends; remove seeds if squash is cut in large chunks for grinding. Peel and quarter onions; seed and quarter the bell peppers. Put vegetables through the food grinder, using a coarse knife. (With a food processor, use the shredding disk: the steel blade can make these ingredients lose too much texture.) Put ground vegetables in a crockery or stainless steel bowl, stir in the salt; keep the vegetables in the resulting brine by holding them down with a weighted plate. Let vegetables stand overnight. The next day, drain off the brine and rinse vegetables with cold water; drain again, and squeeze well by hand. Mix cornstarch with the sugar and four other dry seasonings, add all to the cold vinegar, blending well. Over medium heat, bring to boiling, stirring well to prevent lumping. When sugar is melted and the syrup is clear, add the vegetables; simmer 30 minutes, stirring often. Pour into clean very hot jars, leaving 1/2 inch of headroom; adjust sterilized lids, and process for 10 minutes in a 185 F/85 C water bath. Remove; complete seals if necessary.

3)  Zucchini Pasta

This is so good, even my kids that don't like sauteed zukes, love this pasta.  When cooking, I'm not much for measuring and mostly use recipes as "guidelines," as my husband says, so use your judgement and your taste for proportions:

About half a stick of butter

a few cloves of garlic

a couple small zukes or one big one, shredded

a bunch of fresh basil

parmesan or romano cheese

Sautee everything but the cheese, throw it over a pound of pasta and grate a bunch of cheese over it.  The yumminess here does come from the glutteny, so don't be shy with extra butter, some olive oil, lots of garlic and basil, depending on what you like.

We also shred zukes with lots of basil and freeze it in quart-sized freezer bags so we can eat this all year long!

A Bonus Use of Zucchini:

No matter how good we are about harvesting zukes daily, we always end up with those hidden mosters no one can eat....no one but the chickens and the turkeys.  Our oldest son recently got a potato gun from a friend. This is a plastic gun that you stick into a potato, making a little potato pellet, then shoot it off.  We now send Luca off with his Zucchini gun and huge zucchini and he sits in front of the chickens and turkeys, firing off food!  It entertains his little sister and brother too, so it's a HUGE bonus for me!

Shhh! Clandestine photo shoot in the Little Hill Studio

Recently some friends came up to the studio, and while they waited for me to arrive, they did some dressing up and playing with hats.   Among the images they sent me from this spontaneous photo-shoot is one of my fave hat pictures of all time:

I love the intimacy of this picture, the playfulness and humor and self-affection in her expression.  There is a whole story here - she has been trying on many hats, and each has transformed her, emphasizing different facets of her character & reminding her she is debonair, glamorous, innocent, gamine, worldly, woodsy, funny, sexy, edgy, romantic, hip, old-fashioned, seductive, cute ... intimidating ... funny ...

This is perfectly emblematic of what I love best about making hats, and watching people wear them. 
Hats are the poetry of fashion.  They are transformative, quickly-grasped (or not...), and the art is in the play between function, form and brave aesthetic leaping. 

Fashion is not a shallow pursuit at all (malls and big-box stores be damned.)  Self-adornment is as old as humanity, as fundamental and universal as music and language and tool-making.  It is an aspect of culture where the zeitgeist is very close to the surface, where tribal affiliations, sub-cultural alliances, gender, age and regionality meet the Socio-Economic Macrostructure filtered through the fluid ebb and flow of personal self-expression.  It is where the individual body interacts with the collective unconscious.  It is a language, a communicative repertoire, and dressing communicatively is a generous act that offers something of oneself  to others.

What do you wear when you are feeling extra communicative?  any good mirror pictures?

 
  

Forget the eyes, hats amplify the soul.

I know, heady words, right?  But seriously, there's something profound about watching people put on hats.  Take our experience last weekend at the Lincoln Center Festival of American Crafts.  We had a blast, got our human-contact tanks filled up, and played dress-ups to our hearts' content.  (Nice work if you can get it:))

But there was more going on than we could quite put our cocktail-ring-flaunting fingers on...  For instance, some people make a bee line for exactly the right hat as soon as they come in.  They reach for it, put it on, and everything goes still; suddenly their personality comes into sharp focus & we know something inexpressible about who they are, and best of all, what they like best about themselves.

 Other people start more shyly.   They tentatively choose something demure and wait patiently for room at the mirrors. Then they quietly work their way through more and more exuberant hats until they finally strut off wearing one of our wildest feathery numbers and looking fabulous...

When the right person puts on the right hat it's alchemy, pure and simple.  The hat is transformed from an inanimate object into an extension/reflection/amplification of something that person values about themselves.

Now, which of these beauties will amplify your soul?

 

Alpaca luv - so much fun!

We are thrilled to announce a new collaboration with our friend Deb at Maple View Alpaca farm http://www.mapleviewfarmalpacas.com/ !  Deb loves her gangly-yet-gorgeous babies as much as we love our beautiful (if a titch less soigne) herd. 

 A cross between a swan and a teddy bear if we ever saw it!

After a visit, Sam came home with several colors of Deb's alpaca fiber recently and we have our very first offering up on etsy!  We're very excited - as well-loved as alpaca fiber is, it seems like few people are making elegant hats felted with it!  So here goes, our very first alpaca creation, modeled by the lovely Midge Park!

Introducing Midge Park

Hello Daaahlings!  Well, it's a few days off the mark, but we have a winner for our name-that-mannequin contest (cue the bells, whistles and catcalls).

We had so many witty and charming entries, and couldn't quite decide even with the sage input of our cloven-hooved pals, so we canvassed customers at the Cabin Fever Craft fair on Sunday, and finally arrived at Midge Park as the correct moniker for our lovely, corporeally-challenged covergirl.  The name smacks of 1920s&30s girl-friday style, and evokes our pastures in black-fly season to boot! 

So, without further ado, let us present our lovely and intrepid model, MIDGE PARK!!!

 (Our girlz love her!)

Midge's dear cousin, Ms. Shannon Park provided the name and has chosen the first of the two headbands as her prize.  Shannon, dear, send us your mailing address and we'll send you your goodie!  Huzzah, and thanks to everyone for all the adorable entries!  Muah

FIRST ANNUAL LITTLE HILL WOOLWORKS NAME THAT MANNEQUIN CONTEST

In honor of Valentine's Day we'd like to present the newest member of our multi-culti-mixed-species herd and the love of Arlo's life!  But we can't 'cause she doesn't have a name! (Cue the "Aaaaawww"s)

We at Little Hill approve of love of all kinds - even animate/inanimate cross-generational love.  However, we just can't STAND her namelessness.  So we are proud to announce the:

FIRST (possibly only) ANNUAL LITTLE HILL WOOLWORKS NAME THAT MANNEQUIN CONTEST

The brilliant winner will receive your choice of the following crimson-hued headbands (modeled by our other as-yet-to-be-named mannequin, ain;t she sweet?)

How it works:  She needs a first and last name!
To enter, you should: 1)subscribe to our blog, and 2)send your entry by Friday, Feb 11 to littlehillwoolworks@gmail.com along with which headband (1 or 2 ) you prefer. Also, let us know whether you'd like to pick up your prize at the SOWA Cabin Fever Show (http://cabinfevershow.com) Feb 13, 2011, or if you can't make it there, where you'd like us to ship it!  

A distinguished panel of adults, children and cloven-hooved folk will make a sober judgement and announce the winner on February 12.  How easy is that? 

Arlo and Madame X thank you!

We don't mind the winter blues, but save us from the winter blahs!

Blue is one of our favorite colors, so we kinda like the winter blues... especially sky blues...  and periwinkle blues... and deep soul-searching midnight blues...

turns out, making coloriscious bonbons for pallet-challenged New England noggins is a sure-fire antidote to "blahs" of any kind.  We've been busy mixing dyes in our big stained stock-pots and dipping felt, feathers, ribbons and even our new straws in to see what yummy shades we can come up with.  We are especially in love with the slightly "off" shades we get when we over-dye gray Lucy and brown Hannah.  Much better than spring. Really! 

Shoveling through waist-deep drifts to deliver hay to the herd is another story - our intrepid Sam once again gets the short end of the old stick with that task!  Meanwhile, Nora is up in the studio layering mustard yellow grosgrain over salmon-colored silk... no that's no good... how about cranberry velvet over nutmeg?  hmm...

Next we are headed down to the SOWA Cabin Fever Indy Gift Show on Sunday Feb. 13 (http://cabinfevershow.com) and we must say, despite the OUTRAGEOUS onslaught of snow and more snow and more more more snow we are much more sky blue than blah. 

For the love of....

For a traditionally slow period, Sam and I have been awfully busy!   All last year, when new ideas occurred to us, we'd say "wait until January" - and here it is, January, and we are rushing around trying to do it all.

Sam is experimenting with her felting techniques - she recently got a bit of alpaca roving from our friend and neighboring farmer, Deb and made a pair of very delicate refined hoods for me to block and play with.  Next, she has been felting with contrasting layers of color - sometimes with 2 layers of the same sheep's wool from different years (they lighten as they age so you get complementary shades) and sometimes she layers dyed wool and undyed wool, a gorgeous effect that I am absolutely thrilled to start designing with!

Woo hoo.

Meanwhile I have been puttering around with straw hat bodies, to see what we can do about spring and summer hats.

And a pair of new shapes for valentine's day and beyond:

    

Pardon the pins in our heads

A new year!  Imagine that!  We at Little Hill Woolworks extend our salutations and appreciations to everyone, sheep, family, friends and customers, who made last year so exciting and memorable.  The end of 2010 was a big bag of thrills, including a lovely turn at the SOWA Holiday Market in Boston http://www.sowaholidaymarket.com/ which was a blast.

We came back woefully depleted in inventory but very, very encouraged!  It's so much fun playing dress-ups with new friends all day!

Now on to:

Chapter 2011 

In which our heroes make many hats, attend many craft shows and 

CONQUER THE WORLD muahaha

First stop: The SOWA Cabin Fever Indy Gift Show on February 13: http://www.cabinfevershow.com/index.html

meanwhile, we've got pins in our heads, trying to get our inventory up. 

Can you tell we've been in a purple and red mood?