Saw-whet Manor

Heard this evening at Saw-whet Manor...

2012-01-26T15:38:00.000-08:00

Bill: We have, like, every size of cast iron skillet that they make.

Me: Does that make you happy?

Bill: YES! I mean, what other measure of a successful life could there possibly be?

-------

Some boys want big TVs or fancy cars or expensive watches. My man wants a well-seasoned 20-year old pan that costs $5 at a garage sale.

Love it.

It's cold here now...

2012-01-15T13:45:00.000-08:00

We have snow:

...but just a few months ago it was so hot that our popcorn popped on the ears:

Cheeeeeese, Gromit!

2012-01-14T11:56:00.000-08:00

We've recently acquired some exciting infrastructure which will greatly expand our food (and drink) making capabilities.

Bill has been making mozzarella for a while and decided it was time to step it up a notch. Today, following the recent purchase of a cheese press, he's going to start our first hard cheese - a farmhouse cheddar. I think he's a little discouraged that cheese making doesn't have an instant payoff, so he's starting with one that only has to be aged 4 weeks (instead of 4 months or 4 years).

I believe there will be wax involved. On Tuesday, apparently.

More to come!

We may have also acquired the tools and instructions for making beer and soda...but that's another weekend.

Happy Solstice from Indiana

2011-12-22T15:24:00.000-08:00

We are in Indiana.

"Well, duh" you're thinking. "It says that right up there in the header ^."

Well, we're supposed to be in New York with our families for the holidays. But events have conspired and we're not. I'm not gonna lie. It sucks. It sucks a lot.

But we're trying to have some holiday spirit anyway. Today is the solstice and we celebrated with a Yule Log. The log must be cut by us on our property, so Bill picked out a great locust round.

We decorated it with a turkey feather for our birds, a (spouted) potato from our garden, and a bit of wool - all things we hope will be prosperous and abundant in the new year. We also included a cough drop for Bill and a bit of tape from my finger splint incident to keep us both healthy. Finally, on the very right is a bit of wrapping paper with a heart drawn on it - for happiness of everyone we love. We chose wrapping paper because the wrapped presents we won't be taking to NY this week are the most tangible reminder of our families right now.

Don't they look pretty??

The orange bobble ribbon is for my sister because she is funky and fun and her present should be too.

(sad face)

Ok - back to the Yule Log. We lit this year's log with the shard we kept from last year. Apparently keeping a bit of the Yule Log all year protects your house from lightening.

It totally worked for us.

Though, we did get hit by a tornado.

But it was a little tornado. It menaced our neighbors much worse than it did us.

So, anyway...that black coal in the center - that's last year's log chunk.

We saved a much bigger piece of this year's log - like half of it. Bill seemed to rather enjoy taking a flaming hunk of wood out of the stove, placing it on the ground outside and throwing water on it.

Boys.

We also cracked open the Rumtopf. We put this up with fruit leftovers from throughout the summer and fall. There's not a lot of drinking going on here this week, but we each ate a (very potent) peach slice.

We hope you all had a lovely solstice.

Things that come in the mail.

2011-12-11T05:55:00.001-08:00

This morning Bill ordered our 2012 chickens. A bunch of them are dorkings.

Dorkings are dual purpose birds that originated in Italy during the Roman Empire. How awesome is that?? (When they come, I plan to show them my Roman oil lamp and see if they know where it came from or who it belonged to.)

They look like this:

(Photo from Wikipedia)

They should not be confused with what my sister calls Dork Birds - little plovers that we'd watch on vacation at Long Beach Island.

(photo also from Wikipedia)

We've also got some laying hens coming - a few more australorps (they lay like champions), a Rhode Island Red, and some Araucanas (aka Easter Egg Chickens).

The extra layers are because we had to order a minimum of 20 (25?) birds (it's a hatchery rule, I swear!), and the dorkings are limited availability (and it's possible we have a slight addiction to poultry). Dorkings are listed as threatened by the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy, so I'm guessing even the breeder doesn't have a lot of them.

We also ordered three hens for one of Bill's coworkers. We tried to give her some of the Hobbits we hatched this spring. She did some reading, built and coop and picked up three mostly grown chickens. We thought they were all hens. But, every single one of them was a rooster. Every one. They all started to crow and she brought them back. They're in our freezer now.

So, expect photos of new baby chickens that will come in the mail in mid-March.

In the meantime, we had some other cool things come in the mail. I participated in a swap on Ravelry where we picked odd holidays and sent presents to a partner to help them celebrate. My holiday was Lost Sock Memorial Day (a day to move on and and realize you are never going to find the lost mates for those single socks that you keep in the back of your drawer) and my partner sent me an awesome package. Everything was wrapped and decorated with single socks. So cute.

We also had an enormous, mysterious package waiting for us one rainy night.

After much excavation...

...we discovered it is an awesome, Billy-sized rocking chair from Bill's parents.

(That's not my living room...)

It's currently next to our wood stove and is quickly becoming my favorite spot to knit socks.

WaPo opinion piece

2011-11-26T09:38:00.000-08:00

The new domesticity: Fun, empowering or a step back for American women?

Spark plugs

2011-11-25T11:25:00.000-08:00

Bill changed the spark plugs in our car today. Naturally, Bernie supervised the process.

Sugar approved the finished work.

fingers

2011-11-21T14:30:00.000-08:00

So, yeah... this:

Two weeks ago was chicken weekend. During chicken weekend, I sustained a plucking injury to my right index finger (a strain? tendinitis? repetitive stress whatever? My muscle - it hurts to move. A lot!). Today, I finally went to the doctor and she gave me a really adorable blue splint to wear for a while. This is awkward for the following reasons:

1) I kinda use my right index finger a lot

2) The blue tape really clashes with my wardrobe

3) For the next 2 weeks I'll have to tell everyone I meet that I injured my finger plucking chickens. It's not the sort of thing I typically lead conversations with.

At least I provided some entertainment for my doctor today. She said she doesn't come across chicken plucking injuries often. I worry that humorous, unique maladies might becoming a habit for us. A few years ago it was Bat in the Bed, and now Chicken Plucking Injury. I don't want to know what's next.

Fortunately, (very fortunately) I have been able to adapt my hands to continue knitting and spinning.

Some lovely Lincoln Longwool, which may someday be a sweater:

Fun fact: I had no trouble typing the word "sweater" just there, as "sweater" is composed of all left handed letters.

Wenselydale - maybe to be a shawl or some such:

The most adorable mittens EVER. I love them, but may reknit them. I used needles that were too big for the yarn and the mittens, despite their extreme cuteness, aren't very warm.

In closing: sweater. Sweaters. sweet sweet sweaters. Stewardess! Sweaters, dear. Sweaters.

November is for long wool

2011-11-12T13:25:00.000-08:00

(alternate post title: November is Longwool-ember)

Look how shiny:

The brown is a Wensleydale roving and the gray is my Lincoln Longwool fleece. Longwools are awesome - they have big scales which reflect light and make the wool shiny. They are also a little bit more coarse. They aren't soft enough for baby sweaters, but so far, these seem wearable.

The Lincoln starts out like this:

Then, I flick it with a very specific wool tool - a dog brush:

When it looks like this, I spin it:

November is also for anniversaries. Bill and I celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary last week. This photo is for my mom...she sent these flowers to me at work and I wanted to let her see how pretty they are. They still look lovely 10 days later:

Thanks, Mom! Happy Longwoolember, everyone!

A whole post on a pair of gloves

2011-10-30T15:04:00.000-07:00

Oh, but what gloves they are.

Handspun from Ava, Ludu and Bees Merino.

The pattern is Albina Armwarmers. It's wonderful.

They've been done for a while, but they needed the right buttons. These are made from cyprus branches.

I like 'em.

Things which are autumnal.

2011-10-23T13:20:00.000-07:00

Our lovely old honey locusts have shed most of their yellow confetti compound leaves and are now dropping the leaf stalks.

It's not quite as magical as a rain of gold.

Bill's oven now has a pretty arch and the start of a chimney.

Wood fires are autumnal, right? We had our first fire-to-heat-the-house-and-not-just-look-pretty last week. Note to self for next year... clean the outer surface of the living room wood stove before Bill makes the fire because burning dust smells awful and it's really, really difficult to wipe off a 350 degree stove.

I've been feeling really guilty over the poor quality of my Rhinebeck purchases photo. I got gorgeous tops and rovings which were loving dyed by brilliant people and I showed them to you illuminated by a CFL. Terrible. Here they are in the sunshine. I clearly had fall colors on the brain when I was buying.

Lastly, nothing says autumn like sweaters! ...also pumpkin ale, but I don't have any of that at the moment. So you get a sweater. An unraveling sweater.

I got this sweater ages ago and it never ever really looked good on me. I think people would describe my fashion preferences with the same sorts of words used to describe potato sacks. This sweater was the definition of that. Brown. Loose-fitting. Unshapely. Garlicy.

Mmm...maybe "garlicy" describes mashed potatoes more than potato sacks...but if a sweater can be garlicy, this one was.

So, I'm ripping it apart and getting yards and yards of cotton which I'll dye into less potato-sack-like colors and reknit into something a grownup might wear. Unraveling this $20 sweater is way fun and the amount of yarn I'm getting would certainly cost more than $20. I have grand plans to do this with $5 sweaters from Goodwill too, but the people who donate to Goodwill 'round these parts really like acrylic. Ick. I might have to seek out a fancy Goodwill for sweater unraveling adventures.

Happy Fall, y'all
(it says that on the big window of our grocery store. I couldn't resist.)

Ooooovvvveeeennnn (and Rhinebeck)

2011-10-18T16:35:00.000-07:00

I feel as if I am running out of clever post titles for the oven construction. If you've got any suggestions for future titles that say "Oven progress" in a more interesting way than "oven progress" lemme know.

This is roughly where Bill is at:

He added the two additional arches of bricks and a slanty thing up front. To the very right of the photo is the red brick arch that will be visible in the final product. In between the slanty thing and that arch is where the chimney goes.

An interior view:

That's where the fires will be built and the pizza and bread and cakes will be cooked. Bill is a little further along than these photos show, but not much. This is because we drove hundreds of miles to go to Rhinebeck this past weekend...and visit family. Very important the family visiting (Hi Krista! I know you are reading this in bed...and now all the internet knows too!!).

However, as we didn't bring any of the family back with us, I only have photos of wool to share with you.

Aside from one lovely skein of alpaca, I focused mostly on all sorts of food for my wheel. On the right is a Border Leicester fleece. And then all the rest is tops and roving of various wools...some merino, corridale, finn, cheviot, rambouillet...and a sheep I've never heard of - masham. There is also a silk cap which I'm planning to knit right into mittens (ala the Harlot).

I am clearly in some sort of red and green phase.

These purchases represent only about half of my Rhinebeck budget. Though my plans were big when I started saving money, I don't think I could have actually spent it all - even a wool freak like me can get overwhelmed at the wonder of Rhinebeck. Fortunately (?) I brought a man with me who likes food. Within 20 seconds of seeing the Italian guys from Brooklyn with their tables full of bread and salami, we had a bag bursting with pepperoni, salami and cheese.

It was a good trip!

Oven walls

2011-10-09T08:55:00.001-07:00

Bill's epic oven build continues.

After laying the hearth slab cooking surface, he built three oven walls.

He also made this edgey part. As the chair of the oven decorating committee, I assisted in the selection of these bullnose tiles. These are the first parts of the oven that will still be visible when it's all done. All the rest of this stuff will get covered in insulation, concrete and eventually a pretty facade.

The roof of the oven is built on top of an arch form. There will be three rows of bricks when the roof is done.

The rows have to be built one at a time, though and they have to cure before the form can be removed and the next row added. Bill is working on row two today.

It's starting to look more like a pizza oven every day!

The oven is being built just outside our kitchen, about 15 yards off our concrete picnic table and grilling area. We selected a flat, open area as close to the house as was feasible.

And, naturally, Bernie had to approve the site before we started construction.

Fortunately, he likes pizza too.

Golden.

2011-10-08T16:14:00.000-07:00

We have the most wonderful old pair of honey locusts on either side of our driveway that make a lovely, amazing canopy near our house. The people who planted them are my most favorite Previous Owners.

They are currently raining yellow confetti and making a layer of gold all around the house. I tried to take a photo of the leaves as they were falling to share with you, but there are some things that are too magical to be captured on film.

Instead, please enjoy the leaves that have already landed.

All the mundane updates

2011-10-06T16:15:00.000-07:00

In news that shocked the world (or 5 people), I recently deleted my Facebook account. I realize that this leaves a giant void for all the people in the world (5) who have a keen interest on the mundanity of my days.

As such, I bring you an update of all the things that have happened since I left Facebook one full day ago.

This morning was garbage day.
This evening for dinner we ate garden potatoes for the first time this year.

Whilst we were eating, an autumn leaf fell from a honey locust on to Sugar Pie's fuzzy ear.

Bernie slept through it all as cats are wont to do.

Bill has gotten to this point in his oven building.

I have gotten to this point in my hat and glove building.

(Also, since leaving FB, I have turned into a hard core rocker chick. Hard. Core.)

We received another delivery of wood.

I know, it looks like the last delivery, but I assure you it is not. See the wood in the shed? We stacked that. Also, please note our propane tank has been downgraded from 1000 gallons to 300 something. We use significantly less propane than the previous owners and the huge tank was unnecessary. Wood is the heating source of champions!

Finally, the turkeys want you to know that their tails are growing in for the season and they don't look nearly as silly as they did over the summer.

They want you to know they are handsome again. Image is very important to turkeys.

Very handsome turkeys.

Hearth Slab

2011-10-02T15:17:00.001-07:00

Today Bill started laying the fire brick for the cooking surface of his oven. He wanted to start days ago but it's been monsooning.

There is a big long story about fire clay and "fire clay" and Asimov and the Foundation Trilogy that I hope he tells you... It's a good story. A fable, if you will.

But, in the meantime, here's Bill laying the first tile for the cooking surface of the oven:

And then I added a block. My token contribution to the project:

The layers look like this:

The brownish bit at the very bottom is vermiculite. And then a layer of concrete. Then the fire clay and the fire bricks. (There is a step I sorta skipped in the blog chronicles of the form building and hearth slab concretey stuff and the curing. I didn't think you'd miss it too terribly)

Laying the last brick!!

Mmm. Pizza cooking surface. So pretty.

Me, taking a picture of the firebrick. Oooohhhh...

Bill also picked popcorn today. A dastardly raccoon stole a bunch of ears overnight, so even though they are still a bit wet, we've picked them for safe storage.

Whilst Bill was harvesting corn and building an oven...this is what I did today:

...and this:

The sock is knit with gradiance yarn from Unique Sheep. The colors blend from green to red.

And from red to green on the opposite sock. The colorway is called November, and I quite like it.

I also admired the insanely blue sky. It was so deep as to be nearly purple. I felt like I could almost see into space today.

It's a little less productive than building a cooking surface, yes...but that's what fall weekends are for, right?

Staycation Souvenirs!

2011-09-18T14:44:00.000-07:00

All vacations require souvenirs, even if you don't go anywhere.

For our vacation, Bill got:

Fire brick.

5/8 inch rebar. This was a super fun souvenir because it only comes in 20 foot lengths, which is too long for our little truck. So, Bill had to cut three pieces with a hacksaw at the lumber/rebar yard. It was like going to a carnival and watching my man complete the feats of strength game...but instead of getting a dumb stuffed animal as a prize, I got rusty rebar!!!

Bill also got some scotch - which is sort of the his only instant payoff souvenir. The rebar and firebrick represent work for now, but will be awesome in a few weeks.

I got...

Two bags of stinky wool! We went to sunny Ohio for a fiber festival yesterday and I bought two fleeces. On the left is 7 pounds of Lincoln Longwool. It is such a lovely gray. Lincoln is typically used for outerwear, and isn't really considered next-to-skin soft. Everything I've read says this will be harsh when I spin it up (though some people make it into socks). Right now, it feels super soft though, so I'm excited to try and see what happens. Plus, the sheep it came from was named Sunshine. That sounds sounds happy and lovely, doesn't it?

I also have 3.5 pounds of Icelandic fleece. Bill is lobbying hard for our sheep to be Icelandics. I like that they are really hardy and seem low-maintenance. I'm not sure about their fleeces, though. I have a sweater from Iceland (which is presumably made with Icelandic wool) and it's pretty scratchy. Bill has a blanket from the same trip...which he named Scratchy.

I've heard that Icelandics in America are bred for their fleeces, though, while Icelanders focus more on meat and conformation. The fleece looks downright odd:

It's dual coated, which means it has two different types of fleece. The long stuff is called Tog and the fluffier short stuff on top is Thel. They can be separated and spun individually, or spun all together. This fleece came from a lamb named Pig.

Finally, our last souvenir is my favorite. Our first delivery of wood:

Today on "Staycation..."

2011-09-15T11:25:00.000-07:00

Bernie is helping Bill build the form for the hearth slab:

Sugar is fixin to eat her some chicken

And my first adult sized sweater is blocking:

Gender Role Staycation!

2011-09-14T12:43:00.000-07:00

It's More Exciting than the Great Dumpster Vacation of 2008! It involves sewing and masonry and puppy kisses! It's the 2011 Gender Role Staycation!!!!

Bill and I are off for a few days this week and working on various projects. I worked Monday because this week is Direct Support Professional Recognition Week (did you know??) and I've been working with a group of Indiana DSPs for the last year or so - helping them form a statewide organization supporting their profession. Monday was their annual conference and I couldn't miss it. Have you thanked a DSP this week?? They work hands-on every day with people with developmental disabilities and need an insane amount of knowledge, skill and commitment. They also get paid really crappy wages. Indiana is the most populous of 9 or so states that serve all people with disabilities in the community rather than in large state institutions. DSPs make sure everyone gets to participate in their community - go shopping, attend events, work meaningful jobs. They rock and I was glad to spend the first part of this week supporting their conference.

But now...now I get to support the gender roles that can drive progressive women crazy. I'm spending a portion of this week sewing, while Bill is lugging rocks and wielding power tools.

Many of the windows in my house are naked and winter is coming. My goal is to make curtains for two rooms this week. However...curtain fabric is really, really thick and I don't have the right needles for my sewing machine. I know this because I keep breaking them. So, the curtain making will wait a few days.

This is fine with me because there is nothing you can do with a sewing machine that is more boring than sewing curtains. Even staring at an inoperable sewing machine is more exciting than making curtains.

Do not fear, however! I have sewing content to share. Inspired by the adorable blog New Dress A Day, I did some shopping at Goodwill and came home with this enormous shirt:

It's a "before" picture, so I have to look grumpy.

I love the fabric and the shape, but it's a bit big on me. Since it cost $2 I wasn't afraid to experiment. I laid this shirt on my bed inside-out and placed a shirt I liked the fit of on top of it. I pinned the places I wanted to take it in and tried it on. After sewing it up it looks like this:

I like it enough that I'll head back to Goodwill and find some more things to modify. Also, it apparently inspires me to act like a goof while wearing it (though goofiness may also be attributed to Bill being behind the camera).

When he's not taking photos of me this week, Bill is continuing the work on his oven. Here is a brief recap of what he's done so far:

He tilled up some dirt, patted it down and built a square and level form. Then he poured some pea gravel all over. This has something to do with drainage.

Then there is the plastic layer. We got the wrong plastic the first time. It wasn't enough microns. So, he got better stuff, laid it all out and made a support network of rebar and wire mesh.

Some of these words I am using may not actually be words. I'm hoping you know less about this than I do and don't notice...

Then the cement man came with the truck.

We screeded it all up.

And wrote stuff in it.

After letting the cement cure for a week, Bill started the cinder block base. He started on the left and his mortaring is nicer on the other side, after he had a little practice.

Then there was the cutting and mess making from the previous post. This involved a diamond blade and the late realization that "they" make cinder blocks that have the groves Bill spent hours making.

Then we ate donuts. Last November the donut shop in town had a fire and we were tragically without donuts for months. They reopened in August, but it was weeks before we could get in. The lines were hours long and you had to get up way too early to have a chance at a donut. Today we scored.

And now, fueled by sugar, Bill is doing this:

The cinder blocks will be filled with concrete and a form for the hearth slab will be built.

I don't really know what that means, but we can watch and learn together!

Projects in progress

2011-09-05T11:15:00.001-07:00

I've been working on this little quilt for a hundred years. I started it just after we moved to Indiana, and last weekend I finished piecing the top.

I imagine it will sit for another hundred years before I quilt it and hang it on our bedroom wall.

Bill is working on a new project...Here is a hint:

It is our very own masonry oven! Here's the thing about being an NY girl in Indiana - all the pizza here is bad. Like, grade school cafeteria bad. They even cut it into squares. SQUARES!

When it's cold outside, Bill makes me pizza in a 500 degree oven in our kitchen (he also makes me all sorts of yummy bread). However, often I'd like pizza when it's not cold out. Sometimes even when it's 100 degrees with a million percent humdity. Turning on our oven in the summer is a bad, bad idea. So, Bill is making an outside oven.

He's following the plans laid out in the book The Bread Builders (you can see all the steps preformed by some other guy named Bill on this blog).

My Bill is still in the early stages. We had a concrete pad poured last week and a few days ago Bill started on the cinder block foundation. Today he is cutting things and making a general mess.

More updates to come!

I'll conclude with some spinning. It's much less dusty. Though, also less tasty. The last few ounces of my white fleece were dyed all sorts of pinks and purples:

And here are two tops I recently spun. I think they shall become socks ...

...and a hat.

Glamour Socks

2011-08-21T17:58:00.000-07:00

Get it? Like "Glamour Shots" but socks. Uh-huh. Get it? Glamour. Socks.

I am so excited I learned how to really do lace:

Handspun sock. First ever.

These socks are taking a while. They are a bit slow, but totally worth it:

The skills of bad-assery

2011-08-20T09:21:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time (yesterday), a woman wrote a blog on Huffington Post. In her article she lamented the growing number of women who enjoy (and blog about) domestic womanly pursuits, like baking and gardening. How they seemed to have retreated into an ultra femininity of the past - a delicate, pathetic girliness. She was aghast that we have squandered the hard-fought gains of our fore-mothers. You know, suffrage and the ability to be the Board Chair of a big company and not wear a bra.

She was making a tired point that so many small minded women have made before... trying to convince us that there is only one form of feminism wherein women are the same as men. (This is naturally stupid. Though women should absolutely have the same opportunities as men, we have different strengths that should be celebrated, not cast aside. Some people even argue that this idea of feminism - being a working mom and the chair of the board - has succeeded not because it was good for women or families, but because it was good for industry.... this is all a separate blog post, and suddenly too long to be parenthetical.)

The blogger, however, in attempting to make her small minded point did something that resulted in a firestorm I am certain she didn't expect.

She called out knitters - and one knitter in particular - as proof of our femininity destroying feminism. Knitters, she implied, are meek, delicate girly girls and the complete opposite of bad asses. We who love fiber arts are ruining feminism for women who shoot guns, hot-wire cars and kill vampires. We, with our lacy shawls, are an embarrassment and should be ashamed.

Here is the problem (and hopefully something the blogger has now learned). Knitters are not homogeneous. Just as Board Chairwomen are not. I recently read an article about a woman serving in the army in Iraq who set up a knitting group for her fellow soldiers. Here in Indy, The Naptown Roller Girls wrote a book of knitting patterns which includes armpit cushions for crutches, an Elevate that Ankle Pillow, and a "hey, at least it wasn't your leg" arm sling. There are active groups of knitters on Ravelry for bikers, gun owners, homesteaders and martial artists. Sounds pretty badass, no?

In a related vein, the large, large majority of business owners in the knitting community - people who sell yarn or dye it, write patterns, publish books and even raise sheep are women (unlike the male-dominated Hollywood that she extols for giving us kick ass role models). With the exception of a very few men, much of the knitting industry is owned and run by women. I wish I could put a dollar amount on that - but instead, know that there are more active knitters in the US than golfers.

Finally, if Ms. Aloi is really, truly concerned about the ability of domestic sorts of women to survive in an apocalyptic future - and she mentions it twice, so I presume she is - I must take issue with her logic. Gardening, she believes is worthless, and women should prepare to "manipulate our way into a bomb shelter" instead (which sounds daftly sexist to me). So, let's say we bad ass women overpower all the men with our bad-assery and superior marksmanship. And we eat their bomb shelter food - we eat it real good. All of it. Then what?? I imagine we're going to wish we knew how to grow some more damn food. Or make some warm sweaters that keep the rain off our bad ass calloused skin as we're out hunting for more men to beat up.

And here is the thing - my whole main point. Women are GOOD at these things. In general, we are better at them than men. Successfully gardening and raising farm animals especially requires the skills of nurturers - observant, intuitive nurturers. And (in general) this is an area where women excel.

So, why are we ignoring those skills and talents? Why would we dismiss them as being anti-feminist? We should consider the ability to turn raw wool into a sweater, or grow pounds and pounds of potatoes, or can a year's supply of beans just as bad ass as defending a border or killing a deer.

Because it is.

I knit and garden. And I am a bad ass.

Knitting ... in color

2011-08-16T17:03:00.000-07:00

I am knitting a hundred things right now. And they are all rather girly in color.

There's these Wedge socks which are the first socks I've knit that have pooled colors and do not make me twitch. See how the purple stacks on top of itself in each consecutive row, rather than distributing itself randomly? Yeah - that drives me batty. Except for these socks...

I started pink socks too. When he helped me wind the yarn, Bill was very surprised I had such a color. He asked at least three times "These socks are for you??"

These lacy socks are a triumph. I only recently learned how to make holey lace while working in the round. It has opened up scads of new possibilities for me. Scads! And it was so simple as to just knit through the back of the YO, rather than through the front. Revolutionary!!

And this...This is my sweater from some handspun yarn. In starting this I realized the colors I like to spin... and buy... and knit with are not the same as the colors I like to wear.

For example, this is what I was wearing when I photographed the sweater.

I like to wear brown and gray. And light brown and dark gray. ...and light brown. But I like to buy orange and purple and bright green yarn. This is not a problem with socks that get tucked into shoes and hidden by pants. But it's a bit different for sweaters.

I was so concerned about this sweater that I took it to work for opinions from fashionable people who have to look at me all day. They said this sweater did not have Too Many Colors.

I asked, "but won't I look like a clown?" They assured me I would not.

I countered, "Bill joked he'd gladly call me Rainbow Randolph." (In the [likely] event that you have not seen Bill's favorite movie, Death to Smoochy, I will clarify - this is not really something a girl aspires to.)

They said that if I didn't want the sweater, I could give it to them and they'd wear it happily.

So, now I am nearly convinced that it is possible and ok to wear an item of clothing which contains more than 3 colors.

I will soldier on (...and practice my tap dancing...just in case).

Reference Bookshelf

2011-08-06T13:25:00.000-07:00

The library nook is nearly finished. You may recall it previous looked like this:

We painted it a lovely shade of gray and today it looks like this:

There are details left to finish. A rug, some decorations, and alterations to the curtain. I am quite pleased with the curtain - I found it at Goodwill for $2. I would never be able to buy just the fabric for $2. Like nearly all modern curtains, it is too short for my window and I'm thinking I'll add some red fabric to the top to make it longer.

Also super cheap...the bookshelf. The fancy (?) cinder blocks were in our basement. They were spray painted gold, which I didn't realize until we got them out of the basement and into the sun. With the addition of some painted boards and the complete 1985 Encyclopedia Britannica, the Reference Bookshelf is under way.

How does one procure a complete 1985 Encyclopedia Britannica? Well, one day Bill emailed me and asked "do we want a free 1985 Encyclopedia Britannica?" And I replied "I don't understand why you are asking this question? Is there anyone that doesn't?"

So, if you have any questions which require the latest info about the USSR or Reaganomics, you know who to ask.

Today, I'm filling the bookshelf with other hardcover reference books. Lots from college, some on home repairs.

And a few old, old reference books we picked up at a library sale. The bottom book is a Better Homes and Gardens reference for family health from the 60s which says if women complain about cramps during menstruation to just tell them it's all in their head and they'll get over it. Also, to not let them crawl into bed for rest, but rather encourage them to be up and about, presumably making dinner and doing laundry.

We also have two copies of "Our Universe" (1986) from National Geographic. Even before we started dating, Bill and I talked with each other about reading and re-reading this book as a kid. I like to keep both our copies on the shelf together.

Inseparable.

Odd Ducks...

2011-07-31T06:57:00.000-07:00

Well, no ducks, really. Yet. But definitely Odd Poultry.

This is Leelu. She's a Narragansett Turkey, about 2 months old.

She hatched with 4 other viable turkey chicks, but she's the only one who survived a raccoon assault shortly after they were born. Leelu has been doing just fine and is a tough little turk. She's basically on her own now as her mom has wandered off into the tall grass, presumably to sit on a new nest. More on that in a future post. Narragansett turkeys are fun but they are the biggest troublemakers on the farm.

This Dark Cornish Chicken was a victim of the same raccoon. He was attacked when the birds were still sleeping on ground and we think the raccoon reached through a tiny gap between the coop and the ground and grabbed his leg.

He was pretty well beat up, but has recovered nicely - though he did loose the leg. He gets out and about with the other chickens, is growing well and even makes it up to the perch at night. We have named him Hawkbait.

Finally, we have Jesus (with the Latino pronunciation). We were out of town last weekend, and when we came back, Jesus was waiting for us outside the chicken pen. He was born, seemingly a week early and took it upon himself to wander away from his brooding mama - still incubating his brothers and sisters - and explore his world.

At first, Bill attributed his birth to immaculate conception (I'm not really sure how that works in chickens? Maybe I could buy-in to immaculate hatching though), but has recently changed his theory.... Earlier this spring we had two clutches of chicks hatch - 13 babies in total. When they were about a week old, one of the wyandottes (like Jesus) disappeared without a trace, leaving us with 12.

Bill has decided a wormhole opened up in the chicken pen and Jesus stumbled into it and was transported a few months into the future - thus showing up in our pen last week.

The baby chicken is certainly a mystery. Chicken eggs incubate for 21 days. Given when the hens started setting, we weren't expecting any chicks until this weekend. Jesus' first clutch-mate was born this morning, actually.

Pretty odd stuff!

Things, finished

2011-07-09T16:06:00.000-07:00

A large coral colored shawl to wear with a tan dress to my sister-in-law's wedding. I am told that this color combo is so in right now. Being the intensely fashionable person that I am, did you think I'd wear anything else??

The pattern is Damask in the largest size. Super fun to knit.

The yarn is Knitting Notions Classic Merino Bamboo. So yummy. The warm sunset light makes it look much brighter than it is. The color is actually much more earthy and subdued. My shawl doesn't really glow in the dark.

And some spinning. IT LOOKS LIKE REAL YARN!!

It needs a good soak. It's a bit energetic and super twisty right now. This is about 110 yards, sport weight, Navajo-plied. There is another bobbin resting that I'll ply tomorrow and then, I think they'll become some Albina Armwarmers.

Around the farm tonight...

2011-07-08T18:03:00.000-07:00

Sock, Shawl, Spinning

2011-07-05T18:47:00.000-07:00

...in that order. Hey, Mom! Look at all the COLORS!

The shawl is blocking now...it's going to look way different in a few days. Stand by!

Black, white, gray

2011-07-03T15:48:00.000-07:00

Today I sampled some of my spinning from yesterday. I plied together the colored roving with three different undyed fibers - black, white and gray.

The grey is my favorite in a yarn, but the white isn't too bad either.

The only way to really know how I'd like these as a sweater is to knit them up!

I think I'm going with the white:

Sampling is awesome.

Tour de Fleece - Day One

2011-07-02T16:00:00.000-07:00

So, there's a bunch of dudes racing bikes in France right now? Did you know there are also thousands of spinners making yarn right now too???

This year marks the sixth Tour de Fleece in which spinners celebrate the wonder of making yarn all around the world. The general idea is that folks set individual goals and then spin every day the Tour de France guys ride. (Ok - it's really weird to type "Tour de France." It just looks wrong. Don't they mean "Fleece?".) There are even prizes - prizes beyond spending time spinning and creating lovely yarn.

The whole event takes place on Ravelry where there are 4,000 spinners participating on over 200 teams. As I write this, 350 people have already checked in and posted photos of what they spun today. Here's what I did:

It's a BFL roving from Dancing Leaf Farm. I have 8 oz and am hoping to ply it with a naturally colored roving and love it enough to make a sweater quantity...maybe a short sleeved sweater? I don't have enough experience to know how much yarn I'm going to get.

Vive la Fleece!

Fleece Wash - part II

2011-06-28T16:07:00.001-07:00

So, I've been practicing my fleece washing...because I did a really crappy job the first time. Two things: 1) Soap is different than Detergent. 2) Our hot water heater isn't set hot enough to wash lanolin out of wool.

I fixed these two issues during my remedial fleece washing. I purchased detergent. And I heated up water on the stove to add to the stuff that comes out of the tap. Much better!

The next step in turning raw wool into something wearable is to card it. There are lots of videos if you are fascinated by this sort of thing (Google "hand carding"), but here I present photos of White Wool on Red Picnic Table. This is mostly because I just painted the picnic table and want it to get some blog time.

Part, the first: Load hand cards with some raw wool:

Brush the wool back and forth between the two cards until it's all smooth and fluffy. This is what it looks like after the first transfer:

See the hay? We call that VM (vegetable matter). When you're satisfied, roll the wool off the card. Here is the carded rolag next to some raw fleece.

(Can you believe that Firefox's spell check doesn't recognize the word "rolag?")

When you have a bunch of rolags, head to the wheel and start spinning! I sampled a bunch of different ways of spinning the fleece. To the left is fluffy long draw (woolen), and to the right is a smooth, squishy short draw which is chain plied. Chain plying is a crazy Escher-like technique that boggles Bill's brain, and results in a single strand of wool becoming three-ply.

Spinning has taught me that a fiber can change so much from it's initial form to yarn and then again to a knitted fabric. So, before I decided what I liked best, I knitted up my samples. Look at all the wooly goodness here...fiber, yarn and swatch:

All the samples. Labeled, natch: (really, Firefox? You recognize "natch" is a word, but not "rolag?!?")

I'm adding to yarn for my sweater vest too. Just one more yarn to go and then I'll start knitting.

Finally...I've been stockpiling fiber for the Tour de Fleece. More on that soon!

Workin at the fleece wash...yeah!

2011-06-19T16:31:00.000-07:00

Ok...that makes very little sense. But, whatever.

I started washing my fleece!! I'm totally faking it, by the way. So, don't try this at home. I have no idea what I'm doing.

The first step, apparently, is to lay the fleece out and inspect it. I'm supposed to remove all the unsuitable parts. Thing is, I'm rather new at this and don't really know what is unsuitable. There was no poo, so that's good! I imagine with time, I'll start to recognize the second cuts (which aren't so great for spinning) and the parts that are too dirty to wash. Right now, I'm just washing it all and hope to learn some stuff as I'm spinning it.

This is two pounds of a fleece from a fine wool mutt sheep:

It smells fantastic! Like sticky, sweet, dusty sheep. It is perhaps odd that I love the scent of wool. I take this to mean I should own lots of sheep.

Step one...scour fleece to remove lanolin and dirt. After three to four soaks in really hot water + soap, I think my wool is clean. Washed stuff on the left, raw stuff on the right:

I don't know that it's clean. Totally faking it. It still smells a little, and still has a bit of slipperiness to it, so I suspect it's still got some lanolin in it.

I let it dry on a baking cooling rack overnight and then hung it on the line this morning. I love that it's still in the strips the shearer took it off in.

Tonight I'm going to card it. More on that later!

I've also been spinning the colored rovings I got at Hoosier Hills. I experimented with some color blending and decided to stick with solids:

Blurry baby chickens, handspun yarn

2011-06-18T09:56:00.000-07:00

That about sums it up...

Studying Wool

2011-06-05T10:20:00.000-07:00

On Friday I took an all day class at the lovely Hoosier Hills Fiber Arts Festival. We spent the whole day talking about the different properties of different wools and the best uses for them. Being a new spinner, I also picked up lots of new skills. It was a super class with fantastic spinners and I'm gonna tell you all about it to make you jealous!

We talked about 11 types of sheep. We didn't get a chance to spin all the breeds in class (I think this could easily have been a six week course - or six months - instead of just six hours), but I will be playing with them all at home.

We started by spinning three breeds - a long wool, a fine wool and a down. The type of wool helps you determine how to spin it and what to use it for. A coarse wool makes a great, durable rug, but it terrible for baby blankets.

Here is a fine wool (Cormo) on the left and a long wool (Wensleydale) on the right. See how different? Isn't it awesome!?!?

I only spun 5 breeds, but I'm quite smitten with Cormo. I haven't tried the Wensleydale yet. It has the most adorable little locks and I haven't found the nerve to muck them up yet. See how cute:

How a wool is prepared and spun makes a big difference too. You can line all the individual fibers up in one direction and spin the wool tight, or you can make the fibers go all which-ways. This makes lots of room for air to get in the nooks and crannies of the fiber, which results in a fluffier yarn.

These are both cormo, but you can see that one is fluffy and one is tighter and smoother. The top yarn was spun woolen - the wool is carded so the fibers go nutty and produce a fluffy yarn. I'm not very good at this yet, so my newness accounts for some of the bumps, but that's ok in a woolen yarn. The next step is to wash the spun yarn in hot water and then beat the crud out of the skein. It makes the yarn "bloom" and fluff up even more. I haven't done it yet, but spinners say it is very gratifying.

The bottom yarn was combed. This lines up all the long fibers, and helps discard the short ones, and creates a lovely strip of smooth wool. I am now addicted to hand combing.

Here are some other samples I spun:

After class, I bought stuff! My first raw fleece!! These are both fine wool from mutt sheep. The dark is Maine Island/Cormo/Border Leicester. I forget what the white is.

I also bought 4 oz balls of roving. These are a mix of different sheep and alpacas. I got them to experiment with blending colors. I think there will be enough for a vest when I'm done.

The brown one is 50% camel! (Yes, Mom, I had to get brown.)

There are interesting economics in wool and you can really see how value is added as the wool becomes processed. For the same price as 1.25 pounds of colored roving, I got over 3.75 pounds of unprocessed fleece (the garbage bag might look small, but trust me, it's heavy!):

Had I bought yarn for the same price, I would have gotten about 0.4 pounds of sock-weight yarn from an independent dyer. I like that the economics of wool seem so honest. So many other consumer goods (doritos, ipads, oil) have wonky subsidies and outsourced externalities that make the actual cost of the good far higher than the price we pay. Buying fiber directly from farmers or mills or independent dyers feels a little cleaner for my soul.

So now, I'm off to play!

Kentucky Sheep and Fiber Festival, Lexington

2011-05-30T10:25:00.001-07:00

Last weekend we went to the Kentucky Sheep and Fiber Festival near Lexington. It was our first time in Lexington, and really our first time in Kentucky.

The festival was cool - lots of sheeps and nice people selling fiber. We watched the herding of sheep by children and border collies. The dogs were much more effective. A professor from the University of Kentucky something (livestock?) school brought the world champion of something collie to demonstrate herding sheep. The dog was insane! She was brilliant and had an unreal amount of energy. We listened to the nice professor give different commands by using only a whistle - circle clockwise, circle counterclockwise, creep in, stay. The commands were given at lightening speed and the dog didn't miss a single one.

I wish I grew up to be a professor of sheep dogs...

My purchases were 2 skeins of wool for a shawl and these hand carders.

I don't quite know what to do with them yet, but they are an impressive tool.

Lexington is a neat old city. Very federal architecture and much older than anything in Indiana. It felt like Virginia - Bill said it reminded him of Fredericksburg.

Outside the city there were hills! Most of the fields seemed dedicated to horses.

We camped at Fort Boonesborough State Park, home to the second settlement in Kentucky and named after Daniel Boone.

It was here that we realized Kentucky is not the Midwest. Kentucky is the South.

Standing near the original site of the original fort was a monument dedicated to the "gallant band of axemen pioneers and Indian fighters who...opened the doors of destiny to the white race in Kentucky and the west."

The monument lists those gallant folks by name, and then adds "a negro man, a negro woman." When, do you suppose, this progressive monument was built?

1935. What is UP, 1935? Why did you harbor such discrimination? You had the dedication of the Hoover dam, the release of Monopoly, and of course the depression and the dust bowl...it was hard times and you should have pulled together. Lame, 1935. Very lame.

Another side of the monument praises the white man as the "advance guard of enlightened civilization," among other things.

The monument was just standing alone near the fort, right off the parking lot. I think there is so much value in the present for really understanding the prejudices of the past. In that way, I can sort of see why this monument is important - to remind us how stupid we were not very long ago.

But, lacking any context...any contemporary message...this monument is gross. It stands in the park as if its fact. History written by the victor. It made the whole state feel very unwelcoming to me. It spoiled a beautiful land.

Memorial Day is for painting things red

2011-05-29T16:10:00.000-07:00

I believe that when you have done the same thing on the same weekend for three years, it officially becomes a tradition. Right?

We seem to traditionally paint things red over Memorial Day weekend. Our first year here, it was the barn. The following year, with the help of Bill's parents, it was the chicken coop.

This year...Coop Mk. II. Our "chicken tractor" for the meat flock. It was built last summer, but never painted. We initially thought it might house ducks this year. But (apparently) we had so much fun raising Dark Cornish last year, that we're doing it again this year.

What's that? You didn't know that we received 30 baby chickens in the mail last month because I forgot to tell you? Yes, this is true. It seems that getting poultry from the mailman is no longer news-worthy.

The coop:

Bill picked out the brown trim and the quilt block. We were inspired by a barn we saw in Kentucky last week (more on that later). Bill - who retains far more knowledge about my hobbies than I do about his - picked a flying geese block... geese being birds and such. He rejected the "hovering hawks" block, given the raptors tendency to eat our pullets. And, though they aren't a worry here in Indy, "bear paw" was also rejected (bears like chicken!).

The birds were a little skittish when we moved them from their brooder box to the coop. They soon settled down and got right to eating bugs.

In other baby bird news...our good mama turkey hatched 6 healthy turkey babies, who are growing well. There was a lot more mortality with our baby turks than the chickens, and our three other turkey hens are rather flakey when it comes to setting on eggs. They are still young - just barely a year old - so we hope they'll do better next year.

PS - I say "chicken tractor" because the intent was to make an easily movable coop that could be relocated every few days, giving the chickens new areas to scratch around (and not deplete), but the Coop Mk. II is a beast and isn't going anywhere unless under the force of an elephant.

Baby chickens!

2011-05-24T17:33:00.000-07:00

About two weeks ago baby chicks started hatching from eggs. We had two hens go broody at the same time - a Barred Rock and a Cochin. The babies all started hatching on the same day, and are all about the same size, so everyone is on the same playing field. They seem to be trading moms at will, which is a very good thing. No one is being too defensive and the chicks are looking great.

We started with 13. Everyone hatched well and is growing rapidly.

Just after hatching:

In the two weeks, we've lost just one chick. He disappeared. We're keeping them close to home, so we're not sure what happened, but he likely got lost. :(

This is the Mama Barred Rock teaching the chicks what to eat. She finds something yummy and makes a very specific cluck. The chicks come running and she pecks at the food for a second before allowing the babies to munch on it. In this case it was a worm. Yummo.

These chicks apparently prefer the food that we provide.

They are all little mutts. Our rooster is a Colombian Wyandotte. The hens are Barred Rocks, Partridge Cochins and a single, awesome Black Australorp. You can see all breeds in this photo. The Rocks are the three that are black with yellow beaks and legs. They have white spots on their heads too. The gray one in front is a Cochin, and the chicks with black legs and beaks are the Australorps. Most of our hens...and therefore most of our chicks...are Barred Rocks.

I leave you with a glamor shot of our awesome Barred Rock Mama.

A million updates in one post

2011-05-13T16:56:00.000-07:00

This here is what we're going to call a free form post. It has no common theme, no real intro, an unsatisfying conclusion...but lots of info. It's a dashboard update. Big picture. Many updates crammed together in one place.

A few weeks ago, there was an F1 tornado in our town. It completely blew apart a barn just a few miles away. It toppled so many trees across our neighbor's driveway that it took him 5 hours to cut himself out. It sent Bill and me into our basement in the middle of the night, and it broke one of the trees in the beloved canopy that (used to) shade our house.

I took a picture, but it just looked like a tree. So, picture 1/4 of the top of a 75 year old locust tree split in half and being held just feet above our roof by another branch of the same tree.

We called some tree folks (I could not support Bill taking on this tree - it gave me panic attacks. I am not ashamed.)...and decided to take down the whole tree. The tree folks parked their truck outside my window:

...and dismantled the locust. There is an old "before" photo in the right sidebar up over there --->

Here's what it looks like today:

We're splitting and stacking the wood.

Two of our chicken hens hatched chicks. They are adorable little mutts. So far, there are 8 - though one isn't looking so good.

Bernie has decided he's sneaky and stealthy and we can't force him back inside if we can't see him because he's hiding behind the grass.

Our broody turkey is still on her nest. We didn't mark when she started incubating, but it was just after tax day. Turkey eggs take 28 days to hatch, so we're getting close!

The lilacs bloomed and smelled fantastic.

And...here is your unsatisfying conclusion. The end.

Goal progress (subtle)

2011-04-23T15:42:00.000-07:00

Gradual change is difficult for me. It's boring. Bore. Ing. One of our 2011 goals is to make the upstairs landing adorable. So, I'm painting it. It's boring. The landing connects with the hallway upstairs and down and we like it in a light color. But painting with light colors is BORING!

See! You can't even see the progress. Snooze!!

It's nothing like making a blue bedroom orange. Or taming a crazy pink guest room with a calming yellow. Or a turning a poop colored bathroom into fresh Irish spring green.

It's changing from beige to...greyish beige. Fortunately, the color change is more visible from some angles, or else I'd go batty. Bat. Tee. (New color on the right)

Also, it's making the current grimy walls all shiny and new. See all that muck on the lower part of the right wall:

That's not new gray paint or shadows. It's old, oily fingerprints. Eww.

In other goal-related news...I drove the truck back from town yesterday! I stalled a few times in the parking lot, and I kinda drive like a cautious old lady. But, I'm still driving.

My February project for the Self-Imposed Stash Club didn't work out. I had some very picky, lovely yarn that refuses to be anything right now but yarn. For March, the randomly chosen project was socks for Bill. This yarn is the very first I purchased at a yarn shop. Never knit with it because it's boring and Bill has very large feet. Nearly two months later, I'm about this far:

April is much more exciting. Another long-held yarn - my first Creatively Dyed yarn. It is becoming Aquaphobia (this is a Ravelry link, but I think common people can get there now?).

And, I'm spinning. I've moved from cheap merino I've dyed myself:

To a merino/raw silk blend dyed by people way better than me.

Shiny!

THIS!

2011-04-09T17:47:00.000-07:00

Today was the sort of day for opening all the doors in the house and drying roving and sheets on rope strung between trees.

The sheets, you will note, are not flannel. This is a milestone. Also, the roving is green. I am craving some green. Fortunately, Mother Nature is obliging.

It was also the sort of day for having dinner outside. Homemade bread, local cheese and salami and the very, very last of the wine we brought back from New Zealand. Cards too. We always play cards when eating dinner at a picnic table. It's a thing. Should you ever eat dinner on our picnic table, expect to be presented with cards.

Today was also the sort of day for replacing fuel lines chewed on by red squirrels. Mmmm. Gasoline coated rubber is so delicious!

Daffodils and daft chickens

2011-04-08T16:02:00.000-07:00

We have tons of daffodils that pop up in the center of our driveway loop. We don't take any care of them at all - they just grow in the spring and look lovely.

We think they might be pretty old. Have you ever seen ones with funny centers like this?

We also have some trouble-making chickens who have learned they can hop through the gate in our fence to access new parts of our yard...the grass always being greener and such. It wasn't so bad when they were just scratching around our compost pile, which is right near the fence, but now they are venturing over to the house.

Well within reach of the dog.

Fortunately, they know what a Ball jar full of chicken scratch looks like and we can lure them back to where they belong.

Scrappy yarn...

2011-04-07T10:44:00.000-07:00

Now with pictures!

Stealing the idea from here, for the past few weeks I've been collecting the ends of yarn that I clip off my knitting. They are now ready for the birds:

We'll see how it goes.

Bees... part 1.

2011-03-27T14:48:00.000-07:00

I've decided that I want to try keeping bees. I've also decided that I want to be as low impact and cheap about this as possible, both for me, and the bees. Today, I built my first bee hive. It is a Kenyan top bar hive. Thanks for the suggestions, Chris! This particular one is 20 inches long and is intended as a bait hive.

I have some lemongrass oil coming to use as an attractant. When it arrives I intend to hang this hive about 20 feet up in this black locust tree.

If I manage to catch a swarm, I will build a 4 foot long hive to transfer it into. If not, then next year I will consider trying to purchase some bees.

Got any other suggestions for me?

Eagles.

2011-03-27T07:10:00.000-07:00

New birds on the farm. Here they are across the street enjoying breakfast. Once upon a time I' d have been very excited to have eagles in my yard. Now, I'm mostly worried that they are going to eat my chickens or turkeys. Anyways, welcome to the neighborhood.

Don't look!

2011-03-07T15:47:00.000-08:00

I've been doing a lot of fibery stuff. But...I can't show you. It's gift-fibery-stuff.

This is all you can see:

And maybe a little of this:

And some of this:

I also finished knitting with some of my hand spun. Now that I have more practice spinning, knitting was pretty nice. I'm keeping the hat.

This is my January self-imposed stash club shawl. I finished it on Feb 28...

Melting! Melting!

2011-02-13T07:38:00.000-08:00

Spring is coming! I know it is. The chickens are venturing outside. The turkeys are...mingling...in a very special way. The snow is melting to reveal layers upon layers of domestic and wild animal poo. And I am spinning pastel yarns:

Do you like how I transitioned from poo to yarn right there? I think the mention of gross poo made the yarn seem prettier in contrast. Let's try it this-a-way.

Spring...chickens...turkeys...snow melting to reveal ground soon to be covered in spring wildflowers and me spinning lightly colored yarns:

Eh?

It's even warm enough that Bernie has resumed his attempts to escape the house:

Hope it's warm where you are too!

January Goal Progress Reporting

2011-02-02T11:59:00.000-08:00

This is a serious post about the work we've done this month.

Seriously.

Not really. It's about knitting, natch...and spinning. Knitting, of course, being the most important of the goals for 2011. (Actually, we've also been working on another goal: feeding Sugar homemade food pretty regularly. She mostly gets whatever we're eating - meat and potatoes, oatmeal, waffles. I don't think we're at 25% consistently, but I expect we'll do better in the summer when we have veggies.)

First - I've been practicing my spinning and dying so that I can knit a sweater from yarn I've spun. Here's the rovings from the previous post spun up:

I also dyed some more roving - this is decidedly more girly.

I'm nearly 4/5 done with my monthly mystery package January shawl.

Bill picked a new package this weekend for February. Another ruffly shawl! Tornando dalle Cascine in a Mohair/Wool blend from Rhinebeck.

I also worked on a house goal! We've decided that February is the time to tackle: Make upstairs landing into library nook. Toward that end, I did very important work. I took "before" pictures.

Step one is clearing the landing. Then, we'll paint the walls and floor, make a curtain and install some bookshelves.

But right now, some girly roving is begging to be spun...

More and less

2011-01-23T08:33:00.000-08:00

It's currently the very specific time of year which results in many conversations between Bill and me regarding wood supply. It's been wicked cold this week and our stacked wood is dwindling. Every individual log that goes into a fire initiates an estimate from Bill on how much wood we have left and if it will get us to spring.

We have this much left in the wood shed:

(can you see the tiny pile in the back? It's about 4 pieces)

And this much on the porch:

Current guess is that we'll be ok until March, but we will have to dig into the pile of unstacked wood which is under snow, but covered by a tarp.

While we have used much more wood this year, we haven't used any noticeable amount of propane. In fact, the batteries in our thermostat were dead for 2-3 weeks around Christmas break, meaning the furnace wasn't on at all, and we didn't even notice. It is possible the propane company may come take our tank from us, as they expect us to use at least 500 gallons per year.

(the tank just looks lonely and disused, doesn't it?)

Between last year and this year, I think we've used a total of 200 gallons. Far less than the 7-800 the first year we lived here. And - with two wood stoves and a proper amount of wood, we are much warmer than when we burned propane.

As an added bonus of using more wood and less propane - I love stacking wood...and boiling water for tea and hot chocolate on the stove...and even lugging carts of wood from the shed to the house through the snow. I love putting on my blue hat (knit from yarn I spun and dyed!), boots and gloves and venturing out into the cold - especially when the sky is blue and the ground is white. The cold is refreshing and I appreciate the warmth of the house even more when I come back in.

What's that? You haven't seen my blue hat yet? Well...here it is:

It was made with my first knitable handspun. I've spun more since then - it is more even and less bumpy, which is very exciting.

(new yarn- shows improvement!)

(bumpy "yarn" from my first attempts)

I believe I've now earned the chance to spin with colored roving. Bill helped me dye a pound of it yesterday. Both of these are dyed with the same 3 colors, but different distribution. On this one, I just plopped the green, brown and yellow all over randomly.

On this one, I kept the colors mostly segregated:

I'm interested to see how they spin up! More color, less white!

Progress on knitting goals!

2011-01-08T08:56:00.000-08:00

Yes, it is true - knitting projects were included on my list of 2011 goals so I could feel like I was making progress without having to do anything that actually felt like work. I am totally ok with that.

I dyed my first 65 yards of handspun. It's slightly less purple than the photo - more of a dusty blue. Though I've dyed with plants before, this is my first attempt at powered acid dyes. These dyes contain no heavy metals, but still give the variety and vibrancy of acid dyes.

It became very apparent in the dying process that I need spinning practice. The parts of the yarn that were underspun, or too thick got felty and frizzy.

And this is the progress on my Self-Imposed Yarn Club. I wasn't feeling the pattern until I started the second section of ruching (is that a real word?). Now, I dig it.

Yarn, yarn, yarn!!

2011-01-01T17:34:00.000-08:00

I am now addicted to spinning. It just took one lesson and some deep thinking about machines and twist, and I'm addicted. A week ago, I would have told you the spinning wheel was for Bill. Now, I can't imagine when he'll have time to use it.

I spun my first 65 yards of yarn! You get to see it in black and white because the sun is down and CFLs don't make for naturally colored photos.

The roving is plain ole white merino. It starts in the big ball of fluff, and then I spin it to a single ply.

After only 150 yards of spinning, I'm ready to move to colored roving. It's hard to see the twist in white-on-white and seeing the twist is the most rewarding part.

I think I understand the main concepts of spinning and how my hands, feet, arms and eyes should all be working in concert. I just need some practice on keeping the yarn more uniform. Here it is after plying two single strands together:

You can see it's a bit too thick in some places and a bit too thin in others.

I've decided that spinning should really be called "twisting." Creating yarn seems to be really all about controlling the twist. Keeping the twist in check until I am ready for it to go where I want it to. Also, I believe my role in spinning is to prepare the roving for the wheel to consume. The wheel does most of the work and all it asks from me is that I give it the material prepared to specific specifications. Despite the homesteady nature of hand spinning, my relationship with the wheel feels rather industrial. Like I'm working on an assembly line, contorting my work to the desires of a machine.

Some of yarn is really pretty even. This part makes me feel as if there is hope:

I'm not certain yet about twist and how the yarn will react to being knit. Do I want it plied more twisty or less twisty? I think I'll dye this batch up and turn it into a hat as a test run.

In other yarny news - Bill picked a random package from my Self-Imposed Yarn Club. I bundled up 12 projects (yarn + pattern) from the deep stash and I'll work on one project each month. The first is Citron, a shawl which will be made with a canary yellow alpaca. I've been wanting to start this for ages, but keep getting distracted by other shiny objects (mmm - like spinning wheels).

Tomorrow I cast on!

Plans, plans, plans.

2010-12-31T06:58:00.000-08:00

I like scheduling things. Plans give me comfort. I like taking the time to do all the thinking and then - once the planning is done - jump in and get the actual work done with gusto. Just plow through it because the path has been decided.

In the world of Myers-Briggs, I'm a pretty strong J. A scheduler.

So, yesterday, I scheduled 2011.

Well, I made goals. I also made contingency goals, so that if all the initial goals are completed, a back up plan has also been scheduled. The goals are broken into three key areas and are as follows:

Farm

Get Sheep - Such a simple statement! There is a lot of work involved with this one. The barn needs some repairs and the fence has to be reinforced. Plus, I have to find sheep. The plan is to start with 2 older ewes of any acceptable breed. I'm not too particular at this point with breed, as I don't have much experience and there are so many types it's a bit overwhelming. As these will be practice sheep and we won't be breeding them, to be acceptable, they should be hardy and have a desirable wool. Once we have more experience, we'll be looking for a good dual purpose breed for a sustainable flock.
Can 20-30 quarts of veggies - About 95% of the canning around here is fruit. I'd like to put up some beans, tomatoes and other veggies this year.
Build raised bed and plant fall greens - Extend our gardening beyond spring and summer.
Drive pickup truck - It's time to reacquaint myself with a standard transmission.
Kill chicken - Really not looking forward to this one, but I eat the meat and I think it's time I earn it. Plucking is certainly hard work, but it's not fair that I rely on Bill to do the really unpleasant part. This one is going to be hard - but it's a reality I'm (nearly) ready to face. Plus, Aaron Sorkin broke my heart with a ridiculous blog post about Sarah Palin and hunting which made me realize that until I take this step, I'm not really fully involved in what it means to eat meat. Blech.
Convert 25% of Sugar's food to homemade - This is related to the chicken killing. Pet food is the major source of CAFO meat in our house. Feeding the dog 3-4 meals a week of homemade food is a pretty easy goal, especially in the summer when the chickens are laying prolifically.
Learn to shoot rifle and shotgun - Also not excited about this - I've been promising Bill I'd learn for about 2 years now, but I keep wiggling out of it. However, I am even less excited when a raccoon kills our poultry. The goal is specifically not to learn to shoot well enough to hunt or defend our animals - but just to learn to shoot and not hate it. Small steps. I'll be putting this (and the chicken killing) off as long as possible, I'm sure.
Paint and re-roof woodshed (stretch goal) - It needs it but it's a big job.

House

Make curtains for Bill's Room and Guest Room - I can't think of anything more boring that sewing curtains, but the ratty lace has got to go.
Trim 2 hearths - It's just wood and a little bit of grout. I don't know why we haven't done it yet!
Paint bedroom floor, decorate walls - Our walls are a spunky orange, but the room is still pretty stark.
Make upstairs landing into library nook - Move crap, paint floor and walls, make curtain, furnish.
Strip wallpaper in upstairs bathroom (stretch goal) - Yeah, it's just wallpaper, but it happens to be on the ceiling, 12 feet up.

Knitting

Complete 12 projects in Self-Imposed Yarn Club - Based on the brilliant idea of the Yarn Harlot. I took 12 yarns I've had in my stash for 2-3 years, but am still very excited about using, and packed them up with a matching pattern. They are wrapped in packing paper and each month I'll pick a random package to knit up. There is a mix of socks, shawls and other accessories.
Knit sweater from handspun, hand-dyed yarn - We had a lesson on our wheel at the knit shop yesterday. I'm feeling confident!

Winter Knits

2010-12-28T10:12:00.000-08:00

It's been pretty lazy 'round these parts. Making bread. Knitting. Keeping the home fires burning. Shopping at Goodwill.

See:

Uh - no photos of the bread. We ate it.

Solstice!

2010-12-21T15:59:00.000-08:00

I remember the exact moment I fully understood the purpose around celebrating the winter solstice. We were in Iceland, the day after Thanksgiving, and decorations were being hung in Reykjavík - evergreen boughs and festive lights.

It was cold (though the natives weren't bundled up as much as me and Bill) and dark. The sun rose around 10 and set by 4. Here is it just before noon:

A mere 6 hours of daylight, and it was still a month away from the shortest day of the year. So much darkness!

As I watched Reykjavík be decked with signs of life and light, I understood that marking the shortest day of the year - the longest night - was a big deal.

Since we moved to the farm, we definitely notice the change in seasons and enjoy celebrating the cycles of the year. For the past few weeks, we've been watching our supply of firewood dwindle (and our stock of eggs, since the chickens have stopped laying [which is related to the shortened day light]). Tonight, I pulled a cart of wood out of the shed - and through the snow - knowing that we've made it half-way. It will start getting easier, and lighter, and closer to spring tomorrow. Tonight, we celebrate!!

One of our celebrations involves this Yule Log. I don't know a lot about Yule Logs, but we took the concept and made it our own. The log was cut from our property, by us, and decorated with tokens to represent things we hope will prosper (or be abundant) over the next year.

It contains: a turkey feather for the productivity and health of our birds, pancake mix, wool and bacon (three things we hope to never run out of - ever), corn from our garden for a prosperous harvest, and wine to represent wine....and grapes ;)

The Yule Log is burning right now and the celebrations continue!

Saturday Snow

2010-12-04T13:27:00.000-08:00

We've got about 4-5 inches of snow on the ground and it's still falling.

It's lovely!

Indiana isn't very pretty in the winter - lots of empty brown corn fields. It looks a lot like a wasteland, so it's nice when the snow blankets the ground.

The chickens don't like it much, though. These two ladies are trying to determine if it's worth venturing 6 inches outside of the coop for the corn we threw just beyond the door.

They decided not.

The turkeys, however, have been out playing. They're staying pretty close to home, but at least they're outside.

When I venture outside, I make sure to wear my newly finished mittens:

Not really. These are fancy mittens and when I go outside it's to do dirty chores like fill up the birds' water or bring in firewood. But...I thought it was a nice transition.

Happy Snowy Saturday!

October 30 - First Fire, 2010

2010-10-30T15:32:00.000-07:00

Indiana finally decided to be seasonally appropriate with the weather. On Tuesday (I think) a big ole storm blew through and left behind autumn. Today is our first we-need-to-heat-the-house fire (opposed to an aesthetic fire). It's actually pretty warm outside - mid 50s - but our dang brick house is holding on to the recent cold. So the wood stove is lit! Last year our first fire was 3 weeks earlier - we went away to California, drank some wine and came back to winter.

Fortunately, I got some knitting done, just in time, including Bill's Six Animal hat. It's made of undyed alpaca from at least 4 animals (a gift from my mom from her first Rhinebeck) and the white stripes are a handspun merino and possum blend from New Zealand that Chris and Kelly were so kind to spin and gift to us. New Zealand possums are an invasive species and there is a big effort to encourage folks to kill them. Often when an economy is built around an animal there is an incentive to maintain the animal at profitable levels - which is contrary to wanting to eradicate it. In NZ (at least when we were there) it is illegal to keep (farm, breed) any possums. They all need to be wild-caught.

Also, in case you are wondering why anyone would want a possum hat, NZ possums don't look anything like ours. They are more like badgers. But, that's enough ecology. On to the knitting!

Bill's hat:

And a cowl for me:

Sugar, helping with the photos:

Bill, being artistic. Apparently cowls make great egg cozies:

This autumn evening in pictures

2010-10-22T15:44:00.000-07:00

Mostly Sugar Pie and knitting...

Report of....not from...Rhinebeck

2010-10-16T08:43:00.000-07:00

This weekend is the NY Sheep and Wool festival, and I am not at it. It is about 800 miles away - you can't just make that trip willy nilly for every festival that happens to come up.

Worry not, fair reader. I am here to prove, mathematically - and beyond any doubt - that I am completely, totally and one million percent ok with that.

The weather report for Dutchess County is sunny and cool - perfect wool weather. Last year it rained. But....I'm ok with that.

These were my purchases last year (in the rain):

Surely, that looks like enough wool to keep a knitter happy for multiple years, right? You are correct. From that pile, I have completely used up 4 of the 15 yummies and 4 more projects are currently in progress. These projects represent only 47% of my total Rhinebeck purchases. I'm ok with that.

Clearly, if I knit at a consistent pace from last year, I still have a year to go before I run out of lovely, hand dyed yarn...that I can't purchase anywhere else and have to wait until one lousy weekend in October that requires me to drive 900 miles to obtain.

I also wound and attempted to knit with 4 additional yarns in the past year. Here is one failed attempt (Do you see the stripes?! I couldn't abide by the stripes):

So, there are 4 more only slightly molested yarns wound and ready to try again on a new project.

For the visual folks out there, let's take a peak at this information in a graphic format:

That sure looks like a lot of arrows. Eep.

But, we're still doing ok. Right? Still TONS of yarn to use in the next year or two before we need to go back to the most amazing, wonderful, beautiful, fun...I mean plain ole, boring, crowded Rhinebeck.

Just to make us all feel better, let's take a graphical look at the yarn we haven't even thought about using yet. The yarn that was so wonderful and soft and lovely that it was purchased (in the rain) and dreamed about the whole 1,000 mile drive back to Indiana, but just hasn't been allowed to be amazing yet. The virgin yarn I still pet lovingly and can't wait to find the time to cast on with.

Um.

Ok.

I know it just looks like three projects worth of yarn. Three little, tiny...projects. But, we're not panicking. Nope. Not panic...three?? Just three?

Uh. Think....think... It's ok. That's still 27% of the yarn. That will last until...let's get out the calculator here. Still not panicking....punch in some numbers.

Um. Ok. That yarn should last until...January, 2011. I will run out of Rhinebeck yarn during the coldest, darkest most miserable month the year.

I'm not ok with that.

I've got to go... my mom should be wandering through the lovely buildings of the fairgrounds right about now. Gazing among the booths overflowing with the best yarn on the planet. I think there is still time to give her a list and my credit card number.

Bernie in the fall

2010-10-12T16:27:00.000-07:00

Bernie has been venturing out to the field with us these past few evenings. When we go to check on the birds and walk Sugar, the cat follows right on our heels.

He wanders around the pasture, but is never far from us. The turkeys find him to be endlessly fascinating and they follow him everywhere.

This freaks Bernie out. He puts his ears back, squats real low to the ground and runs to the nearest person as fast as his little legs will carry him. As amusing as that is, I'd rather our turkeys show a little fear of carnivores (no matter how tiny and ill equipped to eat them). The turks have a curiosity that is adorable, but I imagine they would also follow a raccoon or a fox right into their hole for dinner.

Socks of Autumn

2010-10-03T08:34:00.000-07:00

I finished a new pair of socks this morning. They are the perfect fall socks - a great color, cozy and casual.

I also started my first ever colorwork. It is WAY FUN and I don't think I'll be able to stop. Ever. Except for when I'm squeeing with delight and asking Bill to "look at how awesome this is" every 28 seconds. He's very patient and sufficiently awed. It's one of the eleventy billion reasons I love him. (Another being his sweetness in taking the photos above.)

The design for this sock calls for yarn which is dyed in a gradient from one color to another. The sock starts like this:

...and ends like a photo negative - reverse of the colors it started with. In the middle it gets all blurry and muddled. It's wicked awesome.

This picture shows the colors much better.

I'm a little stuck at the moment on the instructions, but I'll get started knitting again soon.

A Wool Gathering

2010-09-19T07:18:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, Bill and I traveled to Yellow Springs OH for A Wool Gathering - a sheep and wool show at a dairy farm.

It was a very nice day. Our first stop was for lunch in town. Yellow Springs doesn't seem like it belongs in Ohio...it seems to be a little bit of California transplanted to the Midwest.

The town was full of diverse people out enjoying the day. There was a farmers market, which drew a lot of folks, and the sheep and wool festival brought people in from out of town, but it seems like a place that is always buzzing (and I mean that in more ways than one). Though it's a small town (population around 3,700) it seemed like an engaged, active community.

It was a fun town to visit. We admired well-maintained old buildings, ate some pizza and yielded the right-of-way at a stop light to one of Yellow Springs notable residents - Dave Chappelle.

Then it was on to the fiber! There were lots of fiber farmers there with their animals. We pet all sorts of sheep and stared at a very intense llama.

The gathering took place at a fabulously agro-tourismy dairy farm. There was mini-golf, tons of playground space for kiddos and lots of fun animals to feed. We saw the fattest Barred Rock chicken ever and had goats chewing on our shirts

Naturally, there was ice cream.

And yarn.

It was a pretty nice day!

Write a post...help a dog.

2010-09-19T06:00:00.000-07:00

You all know Sugar, right? Sugar Pie, Sugarino, Puppy Pie, the Fuzzy Bear.

We like her. She keeps us warm in the winter, and licks our plates clean so we don't have to scrub so hard when we're doing the dishes. And she's super cute.

We found her at the fabulous Indianapolis Humane Society and knew right away she was our dog.

I have a confession. I don't like puppies. They're a lot of work and kind of a pain in the butt, and you don't know what kind of a dog they're going to be. How big? Will she like people? Want to snuggle? Will she eat my cats?

That is why I, personally, am really glad we adopted A Dog (though, if you want the trouble of a puppy, the Humane Society has them too).

Sugar was only at the Humane Society for a few days when we snagged her. They treated her, and us, awesomely. She was spayed, given some shots, and played with by great volunteers. We were sent home with tons of great info and the best dog on the planet.

If you are so included, check out the the PEDIGREE Adoption Drive on Facebook. Pedigree is raising awareness for homeless dogs by donating a bowl of food to shelter dogs for everyone who becomes a “Fan” or “Likes” The PEDIGREE Adoption Drive on Facebook. So far more than 1 million bowls have been donated.

Sugar Pie thanks you.

Uck. Brown.

2010-09-11T14:54:00.000-07:00

I have discovered an odd mystery of life and knitting. It's so complex, most of you won't really understand. You'll just think I'm nutters. I'm not, though. This is a real thing. But don't feel bad if you don't get it - it is pretty complex.

I think Brown is going to kill me.

Whatever - you know I love brown clothes. Like, everything I own is brown. I've been knitting my first ever sweater (for the past two years) and...guess what? It's brown. When bought the yarn, my mom pointed out that everything I own is already brown and...really, it's BROWN - didn't I like the coral or the antique rose or even the dusty green?

Nope. I went brown.

I'm excited that this sweater might even be done for fall to join the rest of my brownish wardrobe. I bound off the bottom edge and am halfway through one arm. The pattern told me to do this fancy bind off (apparently they didn't know it was my first sweater). It looked crappy. Like this:

So, I did my plan ole bind off (BO, for those in the know). It's way better. Go sweater! I can't wait to wear your lovely brown-ness.

I've also been working on a scarf for Bill for the last two years. It too is brown. Dyed with our very own Estate Walnuts.

But these socks are killing me!! They're so....brown. It's really wrong. See what I mean:

Uck. It's a gosh darn travesty. You see it, right?

Socks are supposed to be orange and yellow and occasionally blue.

I'm knitting them to try something new - brown is the September color for a knitting group on Ravelry. So, I decided to play along. A few months ago, that same group was knitting in white (white!) and, while I was quite skeptical, I joined in and these socks were the result:

Awesome right? They're one of my favs, but I never would have done it on my own. I mean, who knew white could have so much zing??

So, I was hoping for a similar earth-shattering color epiphany this time around. Brown, though? I dunno. Just looking at them puts me into a coma.

Maybe I'll go work on that sweater instead...

Finished - socks edition

2010-08-30T16:06:00.000-07:00

Earlier this month, I was working on three pairs of socks in a fit of sock ADD. You remember, of course?

That's them. Well now, they're all done! Here they are in ascending order of how much I like them. Starting with Meh and ending with Swoon.

Multi-colored yarn is difficult for me to knit with. Very easy to buy, however. These socks are fine, but not spectacular.

Some Red Sox for this NY girl.

My favs. Lovely socks from the CSK. I keep licking them. I love them.

All three pairs have been set aside until the Autumnal Equinox. I am becoming a Sock Pagan. New thing...just invented it today. I've decided to roll out new socks with the seasons. Every sock I knit between the Summer Solstice and the Autumnal Equinox goes into a basket, not to be worn until the start of the new season. On the equinox, I'll pack up some of my favorite current socks as well, so I can rediscover them at a later season. See:

Sock Paganism. Everyone's doing it.

Hop-A-Long Animals

2010-08-30T15:36:00.000-07:00

We've got all sorts of animals with leg issues around here. One of our cochin hens did something to her left foot so that now she can't stand on it at all, and she just squats around all day with her leg sticking straight out in front of her. She's not sick. Just injured.

Now, Sugar Pie has some sort of sympathy injury to her back left foot. She's still able to get around mostly fine - though jumping on the couch has been an issue. So, she's been quiet, calm. We're spending the evening on the floor with her in solidarity and taking advantage of her sedentary-ness to get some in-focus photos.

Or not.

This is a bit closer.

Here we go.

Pathetic puppers, looking for some lovin.

The Summer of Indiana

2010-08-22T13:07:00.000-07:00

We have been enjoying the summer of Indiana - lots of lovely folks have come to visit us, and this past week we took some time off from the day jobs, but didn't go anywhere. We hung out with the turkeys, canned up lots of peaches, read books, didn't do a lick of work on the house, and ate good food.

We also spent a very exciting day in Lafayette...

...where we got ice cream. All summer vacations require ice cream...

...and a visit to the county courthouse(??)...

...and beautiful souvenirs.

Finished!

2010-08-08T11:28:00.000-07:00

We painted Bill's hobby room a few weeks ago. It still needs some finishing touches, such as a rug (I think Bill would really like an animal pelt) and we may install a wood stove.

But the painting is done and the room now has the major furniture to make it a second guest room. In fact, it's already housed guests - twice! The first guests, however, didn't have access to the futon (sorry Sis).

Or the wicked cool dresser we scored at Goodwill (my favorite place to shop).

The dresser is stamped Dixie, though I have no idea how old it is. Any guesses? It likely doesn't have value as an antique (which is probably why it was at Goodwill and not the antique mall down the street), but it is solid and in pretty good shape.

I love the details, and the funky contact paper in the drawers totally sold me on it. If this were fabric, I would absolutely make it into a quilt.

I used to quilt all the time before I was distracted by other things. But, suddenly this weekend, I decided to finish something old.

Because it's been so long (at least three years) I know nothing about this quilt. I'm pretty sure the pattern is from a magazine and I remember that I had to paper piece AND applique parts of it. As I dislike both those techniques, I'm surprised that a) I started this quilt and b) didn't finish once the hard parts were done.

All I had to do was tie the border and apply the binding. (Because I like piecing tops and buying fabric much more than any other part of quilt making, most of my large quilts are tied, rather than quilted. It works for me.)

But now it is finished and ready for fall.

I stopped quilting in earnest about three years ago when I learned how to knit. While the autumn leaves quilt took perhaps 7 years to make, this fantastic sock took only 7 days. The pattern is the first of a Community Supported Knitting project - Indie Socks. As participants, we're supporting a super designer in the writing of her next book.

Plus, I get to knit socks like this. How great is the scalloped edging?

Off now to finish more things!!

Butterfly Blogging By Bill

2010-08-07T06:23:00.000-07:00

Willful incompetence... Do you know it? Do you use it?

I'll admit that I do. Not seriously as mentioned in the link... (I can do anything. I rock like that. You do too.) ...just playfully with Bill for things he doesn't mind doing such as cleaning toilets or cooking dinner. In return, Bill claims willful incompetence with regard to using the washing machine and uploading pictures to the interweb.

This week, he spent a while in our pasture taking photos of butterflies and then whined a little about blogging them until I promised to do it for him.

What I don't think he realized, however, is that now I get to tell the story of his butterfly blogging any way I want.

Bill is kind of a girl. He's a total softy. Remember that bunny from the spring? He totally wanted to keep it to snuggle with. He also really likes flowers. One morning as we were carpooling and, of course, running late for work, he wandered off into a brushy area following spring wildflowers, completely obvious to the time that we didn't have.

I said, "Ahem..." (I probably didn't. It's more likely I swore at him.)
He said, "But, Baby...Flowers!" As if that was all the explanation needed.

Picture Ferdinand the Bull.

But he also takes pretty awesome photos, which I'm pleased to post. More here.

Bill's turkeys are also doing well. They've got free range of the whole pasture and are finding lots of good food to eat - most recently they've learned how to wrap the tall grass with the fuzzy tops around their beaks and strip the seed heads right off. Delish.

Things we built...

2010-08-05T16:34:00.000-07:00

Here is Coop Mk. II (aka the Duck Hut). It is currently home to the 29 chicks we got earlier this year.

This was initially supposed to be a chicken tractor - a light, portable structure which is moved frequently to provide birds access to yummy things to eat and mitigate destruction of the area they are in. So, before the grass turns all to mud, the chicks are moved to a new location.

'Cept our "tractor" weighs about 4 tons. We did attach it to the truck and drag it from the location in front of our garage out into the pasture, but I think it's going to stay there forever.

The chicks have a solar powered electromesh fence to keep them in and bad things out. It's working so far, but we've seen a curious Northern Harrier trolling our fields. The chicks have plenty of cover inside their fence and they seem to know how to use it, so we're hoping they get big and don't become prey.

Two of our Wyandotte roos, lookin pretty:

So, all these chickens...why "The Duck Hut?" Well, when the eatin birds are all in the freezer and the Wyandottes and Cochins are integrated with the Barred Rocks, we'll be filling the coop with ducklings. Maybe Cayugas.

Also being built....socks. I have contracted a common disease among sock knitters: SSS or Second Sock Syndrome. Pictured here are three socks currently being knit. None of them has a match yet. And that's just fine. Clearer photos when they're all done.

Why?

2010-08-03T14:40:00.000-07:00

I've been reading Walden and appreciating it much more than I did when I was in High School. I pointed out the bit below to Bill because it reminded me of one of his favorite Heinlein quotes:

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

While Heinlein said it logically, practically and succinctly (which appeals to Bill), I prefer Thoreau's poetry. This here is why chopping wood, clipping turkey wings, laying tile and generally living in a beat up old house that needs lots of work is appealing and fun for me.

There is some of the same fitness in a man’s building his own house that there is in a bird’s building its own nest. Who knows but if men constructed their dwellings with their own hands, and provided food for themselves and families simply and honestly enough, the poetic faculty would be universally developed, as birds universally sing when they are so engaged? But alas! We do like cowbirds and cuckoos, which lay their eggs in nests which other birds have built, and cheer no traveler with their chattering and unmusical notes. Shall we forever resign the pleasure of construction to the carpenter? What does architecture amount to in the experience of the mass of men? I never in all my walks came across a man engaged in so simple and natural an occupation as building his house. We belong to the community. It is not the tailor alone who is the ninth part of a man; it is as much the preachers, and the merchant, and the farmer. Where shall the division of labor end? And what object does it finally serve? No doubt another may also think for me; but it is not therefore desirable that he should do so to the exclusion of my thinking for myself.

Every time I read it, I love it a little bit more.

Photos of stuff we - mostly Bill - built for birds soon...

Symphony. Prairie. Geekery.

2010-07-24T07:20:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, we headed to Conner Prairie for the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra's Sci-Fi Spectacular, featuring George Takei. I know, right? How cool is that?

We brought some wine. This is Dragonsleaf Red we picked up during our trip in the fall at Imagery Estates. We figured the dragon part was fitting.

The folks in the stripey green chairs to the left of Bill had large plastic wine glasses and a fancy table. We had ball jars and a blanket.

And some local cheese.

Obviously, there was only one t-shirt I could wear.

Because it was a Sci-Fi concert, there were some interesting characters in attendance.

Boba Fett? Boba Fett? Where?

The stage. The crowd. The storm clouds.

We got scary-midwest-stormed out at intermission, but not before we got to hear Mr. Sulu admonish Darth Vadar for his lack of diplomacy.

It was a very unique night.

Summer excitement...

2010-07-11T16:46:00.000-07:00

WE GOT WOOD DELIVERED!

I was giddy with excitement when the truck full of wood pulled into our driveway. It's been a bit difficult finding wood this season and prices are a bit higher than last year. I won't lie...it's been a bit stressful.

So, it was awesome to have the wood guy come with his big ole truck of split, seasoned (mostly) wood. It was even more awesome when he pushed a button on the truck and it dumped all the wood out without human intervention. Last year, it took us over an hour to help unload a trailer.

This is 5 ricks. I don't really know how much that is. Cord... face cord...whatever. It's about 3/4 as much as we used last winter in the two stoves. Fortunately, the wood guy is coming back at the end of the week to deliver more.

Unfortunately, we've got to stack all this wood this week so he has a place to leave the next load. (I was going to say "dump the next load" but that sounds kinda bad, eh?)

Also exciting is the start of a new shawl. They're never very pretty while they are being knit, but I know some day soon (or in 6 months), I'll get to block it and it will be wonderful. It'll look something like this.

The shawl is to distract me from these socks, which are boring me to death.

And these socks which are pooling unacceptably.

But, I expect there will be little time for knitting this week. I'VE GOT WOOD TO STACK!!!

Turkey pen

2010-07-05T19:22:00.000-07:00

Last week Bill built a small barn yard for the turkeys. They're ready to go outside and eat up yummy ticks, but we'd still like a little control over where they go, so now they have their own little pen.

We also clipped their wings. This was absolutely as terrifying as it sounds. Bill was in charge of grabbing and holding the turks, while I cut the feathers on one wing. With just one wing cut, they can still hop up a few feet, but they can't fly over our fence and on to the neighbor's roof.

At first, of course, they didn't know their wings were clipped and they kept trying to fly away from us, resulting in hilarious nose-dives. Ok...it was mostly sad, but a little funny.

We can really see the difference between the jakes and jennies now (I think those are real turkey words?). The males are developing waddles and snoods, while the females' feathers are becoming lighter in color.

Sadly, the day after these photos were taken, we found one of the males dead. We suspect an evil-doer dug under the fence and killed him. I've read lots of reports of people loosing whole flocks in a single afternoon, so we're glad it was just one. We don't think it was a sky monster like the one that got a hen last year - the turkeys are much bigger than the chickens now and the dead guy still had his head, unlike our hen who got hit.

Today the turkeys spent the day safe in the barn and Bill filled in the possible entry under the pen with cement. Hopefully the 13 that remain will be a lucky number. No more unintentional turkey deaths!

The baby chickens are doing great. Photos soon! We think we can start telling their sexes. We ordered straight runs of some birds, which means the chicken packers pick a random handful and throw them in the box - it is cheaper and more adventurous that way. Unfortunately, of the 6 wyandottes, it looks like 5 are males.

Also doing great...socks:

The prettiest thing I ever made...

2010-06-29T18:37:00.000-07:00

I am completely smitten with this shawl. I had to crochet part of it and everything - but I am totally in love.

It's always fun to complete a lace project and block it. It starts out as an indistinct clump, but a few days pinned to the guest bed and the result is delicate, open lace.

And by "always fun," I mean that I've done it twice.

But I'm pretty sure this is love.

The pattern is Haruni. The yarn is Yarn Chef's Bouillabaisse, color: Sage Brush. Knitting it took about two months. Two months that were totally worth it.

Love.

Bill's room

2010-06-29T03:32:00.000-07:00

We've been working on Bill's Room/The Overflow Guest Room in anticipation of summer guests (who are arriving Friday...THIS Friday. We are apparently procrastinators).

Before:

There are a lot of issues with water around the chimney. The wall and ceiling have been plastered many times. We plastered them again and plan to call our trusty chimney sweep to come take a look this summer as well as install our third wood stove.

In progress. White room, black puppy.

Friday, before the painting and plastering, we spent much of the evening pulling up those stupid carpet tack strips and gobs of floor staples. It was a lot of work and made no real noticeable difference in the room. It's nice that my sister can eventually enter the room without providing a record of her last tetanus shot (ours were during the Great Bat Incident of 2008), but it's not as rewarding as painting.

So, we rewarded ourselves with mint juleps. In Ball jars, cuz that's how we roll.

WWKIP out takes and behind the scenes.

2010-06-19T18:31:00.000-07:00

My favorite is ferocious Bernie snuggling my toes.

WWKIP

2010-06-19T17:46:00.000-07:00

This month there have been many World Wide Knit in Public celebrations around the globe. Today was the WWKIP scavenger hunt for Sock Knitters Anonymous (it's a 12 step program) at Ravelry. For the scavenger hunt, Bill helped me tell a fairytale of a little piggy. The point system is terribly boring, but the resulting photos are here for your amusement.
__________________________

This little piggy went to market.

When he got home to the barnyard...

...he noticed the date. "Oh Goodness!" He exclaimed. "It's already June and I need to start building my house for winter."

He built a house of straw.

But a big, bad wolf appeared!

The wolf blew the straw house down and sent the piggy flying through the air!

So the piggy built a house of wood.

But as the house was completed another...wolf (!?) appeared and blew the wood house down too.

The piggy decided to build a house of bricks.

The wolf couldn't blow the brick house down.
So...he walked in the front door. Fortunately, the wolf and the piggy became good friends.

And lived happily ever after. The end.

Green, green garden

2010-06-12T06:03:00.001-07:00

Our garden is growing and being eaten - but not yet by us. A deer has been sleeping in our field. She seems to feel protected by the tall grass and our newly installed fence and in exchange for our hospitality, she's been munching on our peas, corn, and tomatoes.

We've attempted to make part of the garden deer-resistant with twine. (All the plants that have been enjoyed by deer in the past are grown inside a second fence, while the plants that were previously untouched (squash, corn, tomatoes) are in an unsecured patch in front of the barn.) At first, we made the 4 foot fence taller with the classy addition of saplings and twine, but the deer found a weak spot and got her second taste at our strawberries.

Now, we've made a nearly impenetrable maze of twine.

It keeps the deer out of the garden, but it's a big barrier to us too - hence the ever expanding weeds.

The beans have been protected though. There's three types of beans here:

In the foreground are Jacob's cattle beans. I don't know who Jacob is, but his red and white drying beans are speckled like little Holstein cows.

In the middle on the trellis are yard long beans (which I keep calling Mile-long beans. Bill is impressed with my optimism). I think we got the red noodle variety. They have developed a fuzzy orange fungus that is of mild concern. Fortunately, it does not seem to be affecting their vigor - yet - and, as these beans are a totally different genus than typical garden beans, it doesn't seem to be spreading to the others.

In the back, along the fence, are pole beans. Much adored by me and our chickens.

Our potatoes are growing too. We're making a box for them out of our old barn doors. Unfortunately, 2 of the 4 varieties may have blight.

Mulberries are growing in abundance too. They are a favorite of the chickens and Sugar Pie, who snorfs fallen berries up from the ground with great enthusiasm.

Though it's raining today (which means jam making!), we've had a lovely spring with some beautifully blue skies.

For the birds...

2010-06-07T15:32:00.000-07:00

It is possible we have an addiction to mail order poultry.

Three times in the past 15 months, the nice lady at the post office called at 6:30 am to tell us there was a package of chicks waiting for us to pick up.

This morning, that nice lady actually gave our chicks to someone else by mistake, but Bill remedied the situation, and 29 new babies are now living in our barn.

We have 15 Dark Cornish chicks, which will eventually live in a chicken tractor. These are meat birds, but not icky meat birds. They're naturally growing birds that won't die of a heart attack at 7 weeks because they overate. Bill is very excited about the chicken tractor. It is possible that the only reason we are raising birds is so that Bill can have a chicken tractor.

Also included are 7 Partridge Cochin. They will hopefully be excellent setting hens. The problem with our current flock of Barred Rocks is that they refuse to go broody and hatch out some eggs. It is possible this is because Alby, our rooster is an ass and they don't want to raise babies in that environment.

Though, it is more likely because they are cruddy at brooding, despite my attempts to goad them into it - "hey there momma hen, you've got a big fat butt, how's about you go set on some eggs." Nothin. Cochins are known for their broodiness, so hopefully we'll get a good mama hen out of the batch.

We also have 6 Columbian Wyandottes, a pretty heritage laying breed.

And lastly, a free random rare breed chick, which will be a surprise. Right now, he's just a little black puffball.

But what about the turkeys, you ask??

They are doing well in their new home - The SR 71 Turkey Coop. This coop, which was built in our barn, is named in honor of Bill's dad (Bill, Sr) who assisted in its planning and building.

The 71 refers to some airplane(?), the SR 71, that boys like presumably because it is loud and fast. Ironic, because our turkeys really stink at flying. They are like adolescent drivers - wibbly wobbly and crashing into walls.

They're growing though!

And pretty soon, they'll be allowed out in this beautiful field to eat all our ticks. Yum!

Coming soon...garden update

One of the many reasons that I enjoy living in Indiana...

2010-06-05T13:01:00.000-07:00

In anticipation of visits from family and friends this summer, we have begun stocking up on necessities.

There are mortars, repeaters, fountains, candles, parachutes, rockets, spinners, crackers, sparklers and more. Based upon the names alone, my favorite is "Red, White and BOOM!!!"

Sun tea...

2010-05-23T09:39:00.000-07:00

Then and now.

Arlington:

Indiana:

Spring means baby mammals....

2010-05-09T13:39:00.000-07:00

It's been a mammal-rific weekend around these parts. Wild fuzzy animals are everywhere. It started with an odd stray dog/hyena thing in our driveway. Later, a raccoon (a big, fat, ugly one) was caught in the act of trying to eat our baby turkeys. We were out for evening poultry chores and, when we went into the garage to check on the turks, we saw a striped fuzzy tail slink away from the brooding box and into a corner.

Boo.

The chicks are all ok. The raccoon is not. Predator defense is not fun.

But look! A baby bunny!

Later that same evening...Bill (at the insistent urging of Sugar Pie) discovered a momma opossum and her SEVEN babies in our garage. We've had opossums around for a while without any harm to the birds, but they are known to eat baby birds, steal eggs and sometimes attack mature hens. To the momma opossum's great benefit, her babies were adorable and Bill is a softy. We spent nearly an hour gathering them all up in a garbage can and then transported them back to our woods. They were given a stern talking-to and told that there would be some serious trouble if they messed with our birds.

As the momma opossum headed off into the woods with 7 babies clinging to her back, Bill swears she turned back toward him - tear in her eye - to ask why she was being thrown out on the streets, a single mom with 7 mouths to feed.

But look! A baby bunny!

This little bundle was spared a dramatic end in the chicken pen. Bill was out scything the tall grass in the pen (rather than using a weedwacker or lawn mower) when he found the baby bunny. We made him pose for some photos, contemplated keeping him, but eventually let him go.

Adorable.

But he's been warned. Before we let him go, he was given a demonstration of what might happen if we caught him snooping around our garden:

What's in the box...part II?

2010-05-01T16:12:00.000-07:00

What could it be that is in the box, capturing Bernie's attention?

15 baby Narragansett Turkeys!

Compared to baby chickens, the turkeys are much more inquisitive (far less...chicken), have longer necks and seem to enjoy sprinting.

As a rare heritage breed, they are a bit more pricey than more engineered turkeys. In fact, at nearly $10 each, these one day old chicks might even be more than a frozen Thanksgiving supermarket turkey. They are supposed to be excellent foragers, however, and perfect for small farms. We are told they breed well too.

Narragansett turkeys are a cross of Eastern Wild turkeys (of America) and a bird that Europeans took from Mexico, domesticated in Europe and then brought back to North America. They were popular through the 19th Century, but became endangered when turkeys became industrialized. In 1998 it was reported that there were only about 60 breeding pairs left, but they are becoming more popular now with the growing interest in sustainable agriculture.

I just think they are cute.

What's in the Box: The Reveal!

2010-04-26T15:49:00.000-07:00

The new toy Bill was excited to get last week is....

A LIGHTSABER

...for cutting grass.

It's his own, made-just-for-him scythe. There are lots of exciting details about this scythe. I, though, haven't paid attention to a word of Bill's explanation. Something about a snath? Or a ball sack? I dunno. But a lot of the details sound very sketchy and dirty.

Bill intends to hay 4 acres of pasture with this handy tool. Much like I prefer sweeping over vacuuming, Bill says he'll enjoy scything much more than mowing. Mowing is loud, he says, and "bees sting you and you smell like gas." Apparently scything is rhythmic and soothing.

Our strawberries and peas are growing!

The hay mulch we've been using to prevent weeds in the garden is working pretty well. We just need more of it! Let the scything commence!

Garden progress

2010-04-18T11:36:00.000-07:00

Our strawberry plants look better than they ever have. This is likely because a deer hasn't (yet) munched on them. We also used a lot of hay left over from last fall to mulch around them and prevent weeds.

They love it. I swear I can see them grow by the minute.

Radishes are peeking out.

And Sugar is rather enjoying running in the pasture.

That pasture grass is getting pretty high, don't you think? Given that we're not expecting ruminants until later this summer, and our neighbor isn't going to hay the field this year, I wonder what we're going to do...???

Let's play "What's In The Box?!"

2010-04-17T11:06:00.000-07:00

Bill was very excited to get a new toy yesterday. Any guesses?

Fencing!

2010-04-10T08:08:00.000-07:00

Bill recently installed 400 yards of woven wire field fencing around our pasture.

It was hard work that took him two full days and left him looking like this:

But now all of this:

and this:

...is the free-running range of Sugar Pie - at least until the turkeys come. After some barn repairs it may be the home to sheep and/or goats as well.

Sugar, syrup inspector

2010-03-20T17:49:00.000-07:00

Today was sap boiling day (report on food blog soon), and Sugar spent the entire day looking sweet and snugly in the sun.

Bill, artist

2010-03-16T18:24:00.000-07:00

Bill is always very sweet in agreeing to take photos of my finished knitting. While I typically abhor pictures of myself, I rather love the composition of the photos he took this evening (when it was still light out....after work!).

His random egg photos are quite lovely too.

Completed Knitting. Cute Puppy.

2010-03-05T15:54:00.000-08:00

That is all.

Except also that I love this sweater (though it's not hand knit) and now that I have a shawl to wear with it, I love it even more.

Also that these are Monkeys - the most popular sock pattern in the history of the 'verse. And I totally understand why.

And that my puppy is irresistible.

Really now. That is all.

They grow up so fast...

2010-02-20T13:47:00.000-08:00

Remember Pablo Stinkypants, the baby opossum from our garbage can? Well, he's bigger now, but still enjoys our refuse.

He's been making Sugar crazy again and trying to scare us off by showing his terrible teeth.

We laugh at him.

Tapped three maple trees today. It might be a bit late, but the temperatures haven't been much above freezing except for the last few days. It's been a cold, long winter.

Freezing fog

2010-02-13T12:23:00.000-08:00

Ever heard of it? I had no idea until this winter and we sure are getting lots of it now.

It's just what it sounds like....water droplets from fog, freezing on surfaces.

It's the same stuff that forms in freezers. It makes everything white.

Everything.

And it sure is pretty.

It's been a treat waking up to frozen fog covered trees all week.

Usually, it is accompanied by clear skies that are bluer than blue.

As it warms up, the ice crystals start falling from the trees. It looks like its snowing, but the sky is incredibly blue. Very trippy.

Speaking of trips...we had a lovely day in Cincinnati last weekend. We stopped at Jungle Jim's for hot sauce and micro brews, had Chipotle for lunch, and watched Syracuse beat Cincy in a good game. We got to sit with Orange fans from all over the Midwest, including a gentleman who played with Boeheim and regaled us with stories of the old days.

And, here are some unrelated socks.

And the rain rain rain came down down down

2010-02-04T16:01:00.000-08:00

...so Piglet (and everyone at Disney) started bailing.

We just got back from Florida, which is apparently experiencing monsoon season. We had a nice time though! Lots of photos online.