New Fleece

So, because of the swim team emails, I have a new fleece to process and spin. It all happened like this: an email went out to all swim parents, a parent replied to all with their farm's web site in the signature, I clicked on that link and found they raise Icelandic sheep and they have a fleece for sale, I bought it :) She doesn't spin, and is very excited that another swim parent has the fleece to spin.

The fleece won 1st place at two separate fiber events, Michigan Fiber Festival and an Icelandic Sheep competition. It's gorgeous, very soft, and well-skirted (means there's no dung tags, a very good thing!) with no straw or hay tangled in it.

It has now been washed, rinsed, and the excess water spun out in the washing machine. While it dries in the boys' bedroom I will be looking for a project to knit it into, so when it's dry I can process and spin it appropriately. Whatever I choose, I know it will be lacy! I also know I will be knitting it at meets, the woman I bought it from will want to see!

Publishing the Book

So, I have been uploading completed files to both AdoramaPix and LuLu, and have a problem at the LuLu site. Page bleed. The images all have to be resized with a border around them that can be cropped off, or we will lose important parts of the pages. I don't have this problem at AdoramaPix, so I know that book will be posted faster.

I am trying to find the exact printed area and bleed sizes for the pages, the outside edge has a larger cropped bleed area than the other edges, so the mat will have to be off center. I can write an action for Photoshop that will handle it for me in batches, as soon as I find the info. One action for right-hand pages, one for left. No big deal, just a bit of extra processing time and seperate files for that site :/

Anyway, here are tips & opinions for the first few recipes:

• Mrs. Fuller's Cookies: soft cake-like molasses cookies, these are very good.
• Nut Cookies: These are good too, I used walnuts and all-purpose flour (it calls for pastry flour)
• Sour Cream cookies: Yummy! I used raisins instead of dates, and walnuts.
• Pineapple cookies: These were very good too, soft and easy to make.
• Rolled cookies: easy to make, better with frosting. Excellent for decorating!
• Soft sugar cookies: they really are soft, excellent flavor
• Coconut squares: I'm not a fan of coconut, but these are good!
• Devil cookies: these turned out tasting like eggs, like something is missing from the recipe. I followed all the directions and had all listed ingredients, but trashed the pan of these. The gum drops were a nightmare to cut up too, then they stuck to everything!
• Chocolate Marvel Pie: this was very good! we put whip cream on ours.
• Chocolate swirls: peanut butter meets chocolate, these could have been Reese's cookies. Worth the effort of rolling up, chilling and cutting. Delicious!
• Russian Tea Cakes: Like pecan sandies, very yummy!
• Edith's Oatmeal Cookies: Boil the raisins before mixing the dough! These are great, very soft cookies.
• Swedish King's Cookies: These are good, a light jelly-rolled cookie with sugar and almond filling. They take time, be prepared to spend a couple days making these. They are worth it!
• Peanut butter cookies: mine were good but a little on the dry side. Have them with some milk or hot chocolate!
• Tom Thumbs: Great bar cookie, coconut again but yummy!
• Rusk Pie: Grandma made this for me, so I don't have any cooking notes. It was very good though, and nice to have a baking break!
• Rooks (not rocks, for sure!): Delicious raisin-nut cookie, cake-like consistency. Stays soft when sealed in a tight container.
• Rum Balls: These had a strong rum flavor, and needed to sit a few days before eating for the best flavor. I made mine with coconut rum (go figure, when I don't like coconut!) and the added flavor was nice. I think spiced rum would be good too.
• Helen Hansen's Molasses Cookies: Good crisp molasses cookies, rolled into balls and rolled in sugar. Lighter molasses flavor than the first ones.

Okay, that's enough noted for now :) I have to look back at some of the pictures to remind myself of the cookies before continuing. If I ever take on a project like this again, I will take notes of tip, impressions, and helps while cooking, instead of trying to recall later! I made some of these a few years ago, my memory is getting fuzzy on which was which :/

TIP: IF YOU WRITE OUT A RECIPE TO MAKE LATER, INCLUDE *ALL* OF THE DIRECTIONS!

people like me will thank you for it!

The recipes are almost all made!!!

YAY!! Only 7 more recipes and I will have made all of Great-Grandma's Recipes. Most have been delicious, some seem to have been missing ingredients or very important instructions :/ I will post notes here about specific recipes in the coming weeks, as I finish pages and work on the book.

There are 64 pages just of recipes and corresponding photos, with random photos of Great Grandma and Great Grandpa at various times in their life. Additional pages have family photos of both of their parents, Great Grandpa's entire family before immigrating here, and several documents. There's a Baptism Certificate written in Swedish for Great Grandma, and a letter from the city of Goes for Great Grandpa, certifying his birth there and written in Dutch. (I've translated both, thanks to Babelfish and iGoogle translator)

All together we're looking at around 70-75 pages, once it's completed. There are 2 sites I am looking at for printing an 8x8 book, one is LuLu.com (an 8.5 inch square book) , the other is AdoramaPix.com.

At LuLu, a hardcover book with 20 pages starts at 19.99, and each additional page is $1 (paperback starts at 9.99 with $1 for each additional page). I have never seen a book from them, nor do I know anyone that has, so I really cannot verify their quality.

At AdoramaPix, the 8x8 size is currently on sale (20% off, I think) for 79.16 for a 76 page book. I cannot go over 76 pages, they do not offer custom lenghts, and they only have hard cover. I have seen this book at Photoshop World, and when we went to the Rockford bazzar, one of the photo places had a book there, so Mom, Lynn and Aunt Mary have also seen it. I am totally in love with their books, because they have lay-flat pages. The layouts can cross two pages and not lose a single detail into the binding ;) After the sale they will also have a discount if we order 20 or more books in one order, and it looks like that's about 10%.

There are other sizes available at both sites, once I have the files completed and uploaded, I will post links here and on FaceBook, and you can order a book from whichever site you choose, whatever size you choose, at your leisure. I will continue to look for other sites and sales to make the books more affordable. They are expensive, and I realize that. To me it's an heirloom, making it worth having to scrimp and save my pennies for :) Check with me too if you want to order from AdoramaPix, I may have a sale code or discount from NAPP or PPA that will help with the cost also!

As always, I do not get any cut of kickback from either company for these books (wish I did!), so wherever you choose to order all you are paying is for their publishing. If you want a CD of the image files to print with any photo printer at your leisure, I will make those available once all the pages are done. There will be a charge for that though, for my time and disks. It's going to be a lot of files, and take several DVD's probably. Let me know if you want this option, and I will let you know how much they will be.