Mead me in Salem

"We" made mead Sunday. For those of you not in the know, mead is a wine made with honey - rather than grapes. The picture to the left is 15 pounds of orange blossom honey.

Mead making proved to be an interesting experience. Peter has been the wine maker amongst us. He has made wine at his house when I'm not around and I have had very little to do with the actual making. He's experienced. I'm the novice.

Here is what made this process interesting: "We" were going to make mead. It was a "we" project. However - Peter, being the expert, just went for it. Having nothing to do, I watched TV (the 2009 Strongman competition - the US did quite well). At some point Peter asked me to hold a spoon. Then he let me finish stirring the honey, with clear instructions and supervision on how NOT to contaminate it. I also got to hold the funnel while he poured.

Then, as he held a measuring cup of water in one hand and a thermometer in the other he asked me what temperature I thought the water was.

I won't give the details on what happened after that other than I will say my response was unhelpful. In fact, I'd go so far as to say uncooperative and a bit unreasonable. Being the incredibly perceptive person that he is, he picked up on my crankiness and thus began the process of discussing the situation. We had a wonderful opportunity to practice the fine and precious art of communication. Like.. for instance, it mighta been helpful if I'd communicated my feelings of frustration before I got all pissy and he could have communicated to me about jointly making the mead.

Although we started out making mead - I think we made excellent progress on that communication thing. It's new. It's scary. But I think it's a good thing and I'm sure this will be the best mead ever.

In two weeks, it'll be completely up to me to test the specific gravity of the mead and transfer it from one bottle to another.. all by myself! Here's a tip.. be careful what you ask for.

To the right is our large bottle of future mead. Rumor has it that this will make about 25 bottles of the stuff.

Knitting

On the knitting home front I've completely fallen in love with felting. I think I shall only make felted projects from here on out. The problem with that is wool yarn is quite a bit more expensive than man-made yarns (I think the sheep and alpaca have to work harder) and I needed a "rug weight" wool yarn for a felted bag I want to make and I can't find it locally. I had to order it on-line and now I have to wait. I hate waiting!