The Round-Up: February 2024

Meet the Round-Up (Round 2)

The best of the month’s experiences that I want to share with you!  I’ve realized that I tend to neglect this space in between collection launches and also struggle to share my successes or other art I’m working on (that you can’t buy) so with the help of a brainstorming sesh with my little sister, The Round-Up was born!  I’ll be sending these emails out, and publishing a matching blog during the lfirst week of each month of the year.  It’ll give me a good chance to reflect and pick out a few things to share with you.  There will be nothing sales-y about these emails - the hope is that you get to know me better and perhaps find a new recipe to try, book to read or pattern to knit.

The Round-Up includes:

1. Best book I’ve read that month. (Follow on @gpowersfilm to see all of the books I’ve read/listened to with ratings in my story highlights)
2. A piece of art I’ve made or am making.
3. Fave recipe I’ve cooked.
4. Something cool I did outside!
5. A cool work thing I want to share.

Books: My top reads this month were: I finished reading the Shades of Magic trilogy by V.E. Schwab and definitely recommend it. I also listened to Tom Lake by Ann Patchett read by Meryl Streep and it was a slow paced delight - mostly because of the narrator.  I typically prefer books of a bit of a faster pace but listening to Meryl for 11 hours was worth it.

Art: I’m still working on Ali’s Sweater by S.Knits which I’m knitting in Explorer Knits and Fibers Rockies DK in Fir and Sweater Weather - ended up frogging my first sleeve because I got way off-pattern. Oops. Hopefully I’ll be able to report back that it’s finished in the next round-up.  I also made a pair of USA danglers the night before I left for the World Cup that I got more compliments on than anything I’ve made before. 

Food: It’s definitely soup season around here and we cooked up a chicken mushroom gnocchi soup from Half Baked Harvest’s cook book that we ate off of for three days straight and it just kept getting better.  This is the closest I could find on her website: https://www.halfbakedharvest.com/gnocchi-chicken-soup/ 

Physical: My sister and I successfully completed the American Birkebeiner! Because of snow deficiencies in the midwest - read: ZERO SNOW in Wisconsin. The Birkebeiner team had their work cut out for them building a man made snow loop 10km long.  Our race was shortened to 30km and we were grateful for a little less work as by the time the newbies in wave 10 got a chance to skate about the climbs and descents were equally sketchy.  Sheet ice underneath a few inch layer of sugar snow made me wish my skate skis had metal edges!

Work Things: I was hired by the US Ski Team to photograph the Minneapolis World Cup - the first world cup race in the USA in 23 years.  To say this was a dream come true of a job is an understatement.  I had the best time, it was incredibly challenging work between running around for about 5 miles a day and processing images faster than my fingertips could move I definitely leveled up that weekend.  Cherry on top was capturing Gus Schumacher win the first World Cup race for USA men in 18 years and Jessie Diggins nabbed a podium spot in front of her home crowd as well.