This morning my sister and I went to France to buy food. Switzerland is lovely but it’s very expensive to shop here. How expensive? Well, a tall latte at Starbucks is about $6.50. Now multiply that by everything you have to buy and you’ll get the idea.

When Carrie little in Basal 10 years ago (and I spent most of a year going back and forth between Basel and L.A) we always went to France for groceries, but Basel is right on the French border and it wasn’t much of an ordeal. These days, my sister usually buys her groceries here in Zurich, but I love going to the grocery store in France so she indulged me today.

Markets and grocery stores are always my favorite places to go when I’m in a foreign country. I love seeing the different foods they have  and what people are buying.

In my experience, packaged foods in Europe are 100 times better than in the U.S. and there is a lot more of it.

For example, when was the last time you saw Bechamel sauce on your supermarket shelf?

Obviously the cheese selection is staggering.

I know this picture is blurry but I’m putting it up anyway because everything you see here is frozen pastry. There must be 10 different kinds- and I mean kinds, not brands.

You can get everything you need  for authentic Alsatian Choucroute Garnie in one convenient package.

They have more frozen seafood than you can imagine.

And, of course, frozen escargot.

I almost always discover a new kind of fish when I’m at the market.

This is the BEST YOUGURT IN THE WORLD. I was buying a couple every day in Zurich but they had multipacks in France for the same price a one. I especially like the little ceramic pots they come in.

This made me laugh.

But not as much as this did. Yes, that’s New Zealand scented Febreze.

Of course we stopped at a French Pharmacy on the way home, which is ALWAYS a must if you are within 100 miles of France. But I’ll save that for another post.

My sister moved back to Switzerland about a year ago. The company she works for own businesses all over Europe, and she travels between Germany, Denmark, Holland and here most weeks, so I had her apartment and all of Zurich to myself for a few days.

As tempting as it was to stay indoors – where it is not 3 degree – I spent all day yesterday wandering around the city.

I’ve spent a lot of time in Switzerland and people always want to know if the Swiss eat as much fondue as we think they do. The answer is no. They eat MORE fondue than we think they do.  They also eat a lot of raclette. But more on that in another post.

It’s super-cold so the outdoor cafes have blankets on the chairs.

And the fancy ones have sheepskins and blankets.

The architecture is so amazing.

Even H & M is in a lovely old building.

This is one my favorites.It reminds of that house in The Italian Job.

I know we’re meant to feel bad for not speaking other languages, but there is something terribly freeing about not being able to understand other people’s conversations or even the signs. At home, my brain is always in overdrive, taking in every bit of information, but here I am much more in the moment.

I followed this sign thinking it might be a yarn shop but it was shop selling hats and mittens.

I have never been able to walk past a toy store.

The trams don’t move very fast but if you get hit by one, the police come to the hospital and give you an expensive ticket for screwing up the tram schedule.

That was yesterday. Can’t wait to see what today bring!

I’ve seen more swans in three days in Zurich than I’d seen in my whole life before.

Did you know that male swans are called “cobs” and females are “pens”?

Or that their young are called ”cygnets”, from the Latin word “cygnus” for swans?

The correct appellation for a group of swans is a wedge.

Swans form socially monogamous pair bonds that last for many years, and in some cases, for their whole lives. Unlike many other ducks and geese, the male swan helps with the nest construction.

I learned all of this while trying to find out why there are so many swans here. That particular piece of information wasn’t to be found.

The light was so lovely on the lake and the swans so majestic, I may have gone a little crazy photographing them.

A cheery good morning to you from Richmond International Airport! It’s 5:30 a.m. and I’ve been up for two hours already! Wooohooooo!

I’m fixing to board a flight to Dallas/Ft Worth, where I will catch a plane to JFK, followed by a long flight to Zurich. Weirdest itinerary ever? Perhaps, but I’m not complaining, for three reasons. 1. My ticket free, thanks to my sister’s air miles. 2. I’m going on vacation.  and 3. I believe this is what they refer to as a “first-world problem”.

I did pack a startling amount of gear for the flight(s) though. I don’t deal well with boredom and I’m not wild about confined spaces, so the more I can distract myself the better off everyone will be.

In my two carry-ons I have books, magazines, an iPod full of audiobooks, a bunch of stationary for catching up on my personal correspondence, two kind of tea bags, bottled water, hand lotion, face lotion, foot lotion, extra socks, a tooth brush and tooth paste, two kinds of prescription eye drops, my laptop and, believe it or not, a whole lot more. (Which totally reminds me of this classic Bert and Ernie episode. Have I ever told you that I was crazy in love with Ernie when I was little? May have been the best relationship of my life, now that I think about it.)

Caroline and Zac have a bunch of fun blog posts planned for you this week and I’ll be popping in from time to time.

Got to go- they are calling my flight. Next time you hear from me, I’ll be in Switzerland!

A little over a month ago, I drank my very last Diet Pepsi. Those of you who have spent any time with me know that my addiction to Diet Pepsi was serious and  complete. On bad days, I was drinking  5 or 6 20 ounces bottles of Diet Pepsi a day. That is a lot of diet soda by anybody’s measure.

I had tried to quit a few times before but with no success. I knew that all those chemicals were terrible for me but the cravings and headaches that go along with giving up that much diet soda were too much for me take and when any other stressors presented themselves, I would head directly for the store for a bottle of the thing that comforted me and gave me energy.

So what was different this time? I think I was just really tired of having to plan my day, my life around making sure I had laid in enough Diet Pepsi for the day, the weekend, the car trip. I was definitely tired of feeling achey and tired all the time. And there as some speculation between Joel and my doctor that Diet Pepsi might be setting off my auto-immune disease (since then I think we have found another factor that’s probably the culprit.).

I was assisted in quitting by the fact that I got a nasty stomach virus over the Christmas holidays and couldn’t really keep anything down but water. I had my last Diet Pepsi on the afternoon of December 30th and I haven’t had one since. I’m not saying it has been easy, but it is getting easier all the time.

I am far from an expert but I will share the things that helped me quit. I should start by saying that I wasn’t trying to give up caffeine entirely, which made things much easier.

1. Lay in supplies- I hadn’t ever had much use for hot tea, but I knew that there are lots of health benefits associated with drinking black and green teas, so I ordered four or five varieties and rotated through them until I found my favorites. Right now, I’m loving Harney & Sons Hot Cinnamon and Republic of Tea’s Blueberry Green Tea. I wasn’t a huge fan of green tea at first but I read that one cup of green tea increases your metabolism by 13%, so I kept trying until I found one I really liked. The Blueberry Green Tea is just wonderful!

2.Since I was used to the instant gratification of opening a bottle, I invested 25 buck in an electric tea kettle. Best $25 I ever spent in my life! This thing is crazy, crazy fast. If it’s not full of water, I can boil water for tea in less than 60 seconds, which is pretty instant as far as gratification goes.

3.Use sugar, not a substitute. In the beginning, I was adding Splenda to my tea because I didn’t want to add extra calories of sugar. Don’t make the same mistake!  All it did was intensify my cravings for Diet Pepsi. Sugar only has 15 calories per teaspoon which is nothing in the grand scheme of things. I started by using a teaspoon to measure the sugar to make sure I didn’t put in too much. I’ve been slowly decreasing the amount I use every couple of days, and it only takes a pinch to sweeten it sufficiently.

4. Water water water water water. I am drinking tremendous amounts of water these days and already, in one month, I can see difference in my skin. Seriously! People have commented on it. (Green tea is also supposed to be great for your skin too.) I never go anywhere without a bottle of water anymore.

5. Avoid situations and foods that you associate with drinking soda. For instance, I can’t imagine going to the movies and not having Diet Pepsi with my popcorn. Pizza is another thing I’m currently avoiding. I also avoid the checkout lines at the grocery store that have drink refrigerators in them.

6. Reward yourself in other ways.  I figured out that I was spending about $6 a day on Diet Pepsi, so I’m setting $6 aside for every day that I don’t  have one and, this time next year, I will have $2190 to spend on something I really want.

7. Pay attention to how you feel. Since giving up soda, I feel a thousand times better physically. I’m not achey anymore, my insomnia is GONE and I am no longer getting tired at 2 p.m. every afternoon. This should be #1 but it has taken me a month to get to this place. You will get there too, though, I promise. I won’t go back to drinking soda because I don’t want to feel terrible all the time ever again.

Here’s the thing: if I can do this, ANYBODY can do this. I was about as addicted to Diet Pepsi as a person can be and I don’t even miss it anymore. That’s a pretty amazing thing to say after 4 weeks.

Do you have any tips for giving up an addiction? Share them here.

I run a small online retail business. Running a small online retail business means shipping a lot of packages. It’s not my favorite part of the job, but it’s a necessary part since those packages pay for the roof over my head, the food in my fridge, my staff salaries, their roof and food and everything the animals need to survive.

Since I ship so many packages, I’ve gotten to know the lovely people at my local post office pretty well. They are absolutely wonderful to us, opening a new line whenever Caroline and I pop our heads in the door and helping us figure out the delicate balance between getting our customers their yarn quickly without bankrupting us. Truly, they couldn’t be nicer.

The problem is, that my local postal workers can only do so much. At some point, our packages have to leave my local post office and then all manner of hell breaks loose.

About a month ago, Caroline went into the post office to ship a whole bunch of yarn shares and was told by one of the ladies who works there that there had been an error in the sorting facility. 30 of the packages Caroline shipped the week before had been returned to us because the person or machine scanning the address has read the FROM: address as the TO: address.

This had never happened before in our experience (or in the clerks’) so the lady suggested that we needed to spread the TO: and FROM: address out further. Caroline pointed out that we were putting the TO: and FROM: address in the spot that the post service has designated for them on the box. Designated by printing TO: and FROM: on the box. 

WTH? Oh well, we laughed, it’s a one time thing and it’s not like it cost us anything. Our post office staff simply crossed out the return address and sent them off again. What were the chances that such a freak and unexplainable accident could happen again?

Pretty good, as it turned out. In spite of the fact that we started putting the return address up in the upper left hand corner of the box, completely ignoring the FROM: space, we had another 25 or so packages returned to us.WHAT. THE. HELL?!?

Now, one could argue that, once again, this mistake didn’t cost me any money. But I would counter that it cost me something more important than money. It cost me good will. I have worked for five years to build up good will with my customers and, when it takes two weeks to receive four skeins of yarn, we lose a little bit of that. And, although it’s not quantifiable, my gut tells me that it will cost me money in the long run when customers chose to order from someone else next time because it took so long to get their previous order.

I also want to point out that I spend on average $500 a week on shipping. That’s not counting the weeks when we are shipping shares or having a big sale. In fact, I may be my local post office’s biggest customer.

I wasn’t happy to here about this but I did not get angry with my post office’s staff. I did make an appointment to talk to my FedEx account rep about switching to FedEx home delivery, because the post office appears to be trying to make me have an aneurism.

Speaking of aneurisms, Caroline and Zac are coming home tomorrow night on the 13th from a week-long vacation, and not a moment too soon! Doing my job plus each of their jobs for a week had nearly done me in.

I’m sure the folks at the post office will be happy to see them too.

Goodbye 2011! I watch you go with mixed emotions; you were equal parts exciting and exhausting for me, with more highs and lows than a roller coaster. I will always fondly look back on 2011 as the year we launched Juniper Moon Farms Yarns in store across the country.

And I will surely never forget the Yarn Shop Tour that took over 10,000 miles and introduced me to so many lovely new friends. It very nearly killed me (not to mention my car) and I will never embark on anything so foolhardy again, but I am so happy that I can say that I did it!

I am looking forward like crazy to 2012! We are already hatching plans for secret projects, and I have already committed to a couple of projects that will mean a tremendous amount of new work, but- luckily-  it’s mostly stuff I can do from the comfort of the farm.

Since resolutions seem to be something that everybody makes but nobody keeps, I’ve decided to make goals for 2012 instead. Here are the four things I will be working on in the coming year.

1.Oversee the successful launch of Juniper Moon Magazine. More on this soon, but I can tell you that it’s going to be very exciting!

2. Stop working nights and weekends.This one may be the hardest to actually accomplish, but I am determined. My family was less than happy about my answering emails on Christmas and New Year’s Eve, and Joel would greatly prefer that I stop bringing my laptop to bed every night. I need to start trying to confine my work to business hours. In fact, I’m  going to spend more time with the people I love and less time at the keyboard!

3. Lose the weight I gained while taking Prednisone for nearly two years. I’m not particularly vain, but gaining 20 pounds has really slowed me down and my clothes are uncomfortable. Now that I’m off the steroids I can get back to working out regularly and, hopefully, regain some of my former energy

4. Spend more time knitting. I cast-on for a new knitting project over the holidays and it made me remember how much I enjoy making something lovely with my own hands.

EDITED TO ADD: I totally forgot to mention my goal to stop drinking Diet Pepsi. Maybe because I haven’t had one in three days? It is definitely going to be a struggle but I am trying really hard. I’ve been drinking gallons of water and the occasional cup of tea, when the caffeine headaches roll in. So far, so good. I even went to Target to pick up a few things and resisted the temptation to sneak one in while no one was watching. Wish me luck- I am for sure going to need it.

That’s my list!  Do you make resolutions and do you keep them? What are your goals for 2012? Is there anything in particular the you find helps you to meet your goals?

A few years ago I was poking around a sort of junk/antique store near my house and found a big box of old horse show ribbons. I can’t really explain it but something about them spoke to me.

 I mean, they are completely lovely as objects, but there’s something more than that.

I like to think about the person who won each of them and how hard they must have worked getting ready for the event. They must have been bursting with pride when they went up to accept their ribbon.

They were stupidly cheap so I bought the whole box.

It was the beginning of a collection that may have gotten a scooch out of hand. You can easily find them on eBay by searching “equestrian ribbons” or “horse show ribbons”. Prices are all over the place but I never paid more than a couple of bucks a piece, even for very old ones.

As much as I loved these ribbons I never really did anything with them. They were languishing in a box in my closet until last week when I decided to make a wreath with some of them, based on one I’d seen in a magazine.

I only used the newer ribbons- I couldn’t bear to cut up the ones from the 1940′s and 50′s- and the ones that were damaged. I bought the wreath base at Michael’s for $2, I think.

Most of the ribbons had clips on the back that clipped right to the wreath, but I had to hot glue a few.

It’s definitely not perfect but I kind of love it’s imperfection.

Of course, this would work with any kind of award ribbons. I would love to find ribbons form sheep shows but they seem to be more rare. I did find this gorgeous photograph of vintage sheep show ribbons and framed it for one of the guest rooms.

Speaking of ribbons, I would be remiss if I didn’t share the wreath Zac made for our barn for Christmas. He used grapevines and berries he found in our woods.

It’s impossible to convey the size of this thing in a photograph. It’s massive! It probably weighs 500 pounds and getting it hung was an adventure, let me tell you!

I’m going to let you in on a little secret; I want everyone to like me.

When I say everyone here, I truly mean everyone. I want you to like me but I also want the postman to like me, and the checker at the grocery store, and the nice couple we buy our hay from, and the people who buy our yarn and the shops that stock it, and and and…

Because I want everyone to like me, I often chose my actions based on what is most likely to make everyone else happy without regard for what is best for me or my business. I almost never say no, and when I do, I almost always end up wishing I’d just gone ahead and said yes because other people’s negative reactions stress me so.

I avoid confrontation like the plague. And, yes,  I am firmly aware that this is not a very grown-up way to live my life.

I suspect a lot of women suffer from the same ailment, people-pleaser-itis, but I would argue that my case may be particularly advanced because of the industry in which I make my living. As my insightful friend Jen put it, “It is an interesting aspect of the yarn business, that it operates of this level where everyone is supposed to be friends and give to others on a level that just wouldn’t be accepted in nearly any other business – it seems to come from all sides, and I think in the long run it can’t be good for the business.”

In the past week, I have dealt with three people (in a business capacity) who, for various reasons, don’t like me at all. In all three cases, I tried very hard to see the situation from the other persons point of view and do the right thing by them and by my business. And in all three cases, I made enemies for life.

These three people will have to get in line because the list of people who don’t like me seems to be growing right along with my business. Not exponentially, by any means. I have made literally hundreds of friends in the past year and only a handful of enemies, but it is the enemies that keep me up at night, the enemies who I spend time worrying over.

Which is just bananas, when you think about it. Why am I wasting so much time on relationships that are irredeemable when I could be putting that same energy into celebrating all the wonderful people that Juniper Moon has brought into my life? Bananas, I tell ya!

I’m going to try very hard to make 2012 the year that I get over this irrational need to be liked by every living human being. I’m going to try to do what I believe to be right and let the chips fall where they may. I’m going to try, but I know the habits of a lifetime will be hard to break, so I may need reminding now and again.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic. Do you avoid confrontation? Do you feel a keen drive to be liked by everyone you meet? Do you think this is a women’s issue in particular? Do you expect businesses that sell yarn to operate on a higher plane than businesses that sell shoes or golf clubs or light bulbs?

I’m really looking forward to hearing from y’all on this one.

No one loves Christmas more than my Mama! She spends ages decorating her house and it really is spectacular. Every year I feel terrible that neither Carrie not I have provided Mama with grandchildren, because it truly is magical.

Mama has been collecting Christmas decorations for nearly 40 years and she creates little scenes in every nook and cranny of the house. Here are a few of my favorites.

Believe it or not, this is just the tip of the iceberg. All this Christmas-ing used to embarrass me something fierce but now I love it so. Nothing gets you in the Christmas spirit like having one of Santa’s elves for a mother.