Mango Blackberry Crumble- in less than 10 minutes

So I'm still on my kick of using fresh fruits to make "less than 10 minute desserts". Something about summer makes we want light fresh desserts (although chocolate is never, never out of season). Even though it hasn't been that hot this summer, I still don't feel like firing up the oven for too long so these have been perfect!

This is pretty much the same technique I used to make the nectarine dessert about a month ago. The only difference was that this time I used more crunched up granola bar, squeezed the juice from half a lemon over the fruit along with the honey. Obviously, I used mangos and blackberries instead of nectarine. I also left the cinnamon out of this one. It baked up quicker than the nectarine version and it was really nice served on it's own (sans ice cream).

Hope you try it- Enjoy!

Dyed and gone to heaven.

Here's a revelation- Color Makes Me Happy.

Really maybe it's more of a declaration since I kind of already new that. Color is one of the items on a short list of people/things that make me truly, purely, energy producing happy. (By the way some other things on that list are 1. Husband 2. Pets 3. Halloween (really fall in New England in general) 4. First snow of the year... and the list goes on, you get the idea)

Last week I was away on a business trip. I came back exhausted and ready to have a relaxing weekend of nothing but sleep and more sleep but that was not to be.

Yesterday was the last of all the different classes {note: scroll down if you click the link, this post will be the first in the class list} I signed up for this summer. I will admit to more than a bit if crankiness at the idea of doing a class this weekend (despite the fun subject). Honestly lately I've felt that we've packed our days (especially weekends) full of more than we can possibly handle and there is no end in sight to the commitments we've made (hint Saturday wasn't relaxing either unless you count moving furniture and cleaning out storage relaxing...). It's sort of to the point where I feel like I'm on a hamster wheel and no matter how fast we go there is still more to do. So much so that the idea of a fun class had me really irritated just because it was something else I felt I "had to go do".

Despite my foul pre-class mood I ended up having a great time. This was a yarn dyeing class (instead of fiber for spinning like the last and only other dyeing class I've ever taken) taught by Gail Callahan a.k.a the Kangaroo Dyer (Side note, Gail has a book coming out soon, I saw a preview copy and it looks amazing!).

Most of the day we worked in teams of two on a color wheel. I ended up with 36 colors of yarn all made from the 3 primary colors my partner and I chose for ourselves. Interestingly there were 3 different shades of each primary color so all the groups ended up with a different wheel based on what they chose. The group next to us had two out of the three colors the same as we did, but picked a different red (red 351 instead of magenta) and came up with a totally, drastically different wheel by changing just that one color.

I love color so much (always have) and getting down to this kind of specific mixing in controlled steps was really wonderful- totally took my grouchy mood away. I tell you, 12 mason jars lined up, each with beautiful mix of happy color jewel-like colors is the cure for a terrible mood!

Sadly I forgot my camera for this class (see, shows you where my head was at before going) so I only have the finished product to show you.

Wow this much gorgeous yummy colored yarn all lined up like this makes me crazy... I just love it!

After the color wheel we also dyed some yarns experimenting off what we learned from doing the wheel. I colored two skeins of sock yarn and was really excited by the results. This is the first time I got exactly what I was going for (well pretty darn close anyways)! I feel like I should make the yarn official and name the colorway... just don't know what to call it (I'll take suggestions).

I have a few more goodies from the "free dyeing" portion of the class, but I still have to set the dye in those so I'll do a post about those later.