It started with a half a hat.....

About a year ago, my friend, Leah, was knitting all these beautiful hats and sweaters! I thought it was amazing how great they came out and I was interested in learning how! I couldn't believe that I was considering knitting! Anyways, she taught me the basics one night at her house and gave me a pattern to follow to make a hat. I was diligent for a few weeks, but eventually felt tired of knitting and purling over and over, and the fact that I wasn't able to visualize my final product. Needless to say, the hat, needles and yarn sat in a box until this past November.

Ronnie and I live in the town area of Warner, so there are some (okay, only one, that actually has recently closed...) shops that we can visit. We decided to take a gander when Warner had a "buy local" day. This shop had loads of kids toys, stamps, stationary, books and beads. My eye was caught by a knitted stuffed animals books and I decided at that moment that I was going to learn to make those! I got Ronnie's attention and proceeded to (sarcastically) encourage me to "go for it." He decided he would buy the books for me as a Christmas present, but that I couldn't look at them or practice until after I opened them. The next step was to obviously text Leah and tell her my new endeavor. She was more encouraging but also more realistic about the difficulty of the stuffed animals. DON'T CHALLENGE ME!

The first animal I finished was this elephant! My mother-in-law had a secret talent of knitting that I didn't discover until I started myself! From this point on, I couldn't stop myself! Of course, it helped to find out that my friend, Leah, was having a baby and I had the perfect opportunity to put my practice to good use! That's how I learned the other important techniques of knitting in order to complete the small safari in the picture above! I have now become addicted and would love to try to sell some of the animals eventually! Until then, this will be one of my hobbies while Ronnie is busy making liquid gold!

Shilson Sugar Shack's Liquid Gold

Last year, Ronnie, his father and his brother, decided to make their dream a reality by starting a maple sugar shack.

 The whole ball got rolling when Ronnie was younger and watched a neighbor making the "liquid gold" in his driveway. About a year ago, when my grandmother and grandfather decided to sell their house and move to Florida, my grandfather mentioned having a few sap buckets and of course, Ronnie jumped at the opportunity to make dream a reality! 

One thing led to another and before we all knew it, the sap was flowing and the boys had steam flowing out of the evaporator and smoke out the smoke stack!

This has become a fun hobby for us (mostly Ronnie) and our families. The operation improved this year with a custom built evaporator (care of Ronald 3 and Ronald 4- for those of you who don't know, my husband is the 4th, Ronald Shilson Palmer, of his family, which would make his dad number 3...... no pressure for number 5...right.....), which I'm sure has some high tech reasoning to it, but I wouldn't even begin to know what. 

There were many other changes to the shack this year as well. For one, it not only moved from one area of the yard to another to make it easier for Ronnie's grandfather to partake in the excitement, but it grew by about 8 feet! Jacob, Ronnie's brother was away at college this year and wasn't able to help (total bummer for Ronnie since Jacob collected almost all the sap last year AND practically camped out in the shack every night to take care of Ronnie's baby by continuously feeding the evaporator with wood- NO JOKE, he literally slept on a wood pile out there!)

 Secondly, the season was cut very short by the quick warming of weather. Because of this, there wasn't much sap, which in turn means less syrup. Ronnie also decided to invest in tubing this year which is a lot easier than collecting sap from buckets. The sap flows by gravity from one tree to another until ending in a 55 gallon drum. He was able to tap more trees this year, so again, it was a big help for collecting.  

We even had visitors! Family and friends (even a bun in the oven! :) )were able to come out and enjoy the process with us! Overall, we ended up with about 13 gallons this year, which wasn't far from last years total of 16 gallons. Plans are already in the making for next year (many of which I'm sure I don't yet know about!). 

Be on the look out for Shilson's Sugar Shack Maple Syrup in a store or house near you!

Our year at a QUICK glance

Ronnie and I met about 3 years ago through our best friends Leah and Keith. Long story short, we got married this past summer and are loving married life! 

We couldn't have asked for a more supportive group of family and friends to help us make our wedding perfect! We had a beautiful summer evening wedding in Hopkinton, NH and it was everything we could have ever asked for! 

We are living in Warner, New Hampshire now, and needless to say there is not much to do here. Ronnie is a contractor and stays busy fixing up people's houses. I have recently been hired as a long term substitute in the Kearsarge District and am loving every minute of it. We are both looking for more permanent positions (Ronnie with firefighting and myself with teaching), but are loving having the flexibility right now while it is available. 

New to this...

So other than reading my friend's blog a few times a month, I have no clue what I am doing. Ronnie and I have recently realized that we have many hobbies and people tend to wonder about them! I have recently started knitting (yes, if I hadn't gotten married, I would probably been the picture of a "cat lady," I'll thank Ronald later for that one!) and Ronnie is really getting more determined with his maple sugaring hobby. I figured this would be a great way to show people our adventures within our "talents" that they could access anytime. So here goes!