Winter is Coming

This past week has been Winter is Coming week. Bill took a few days off and we've been stockpiling important things for the coming cold.

Hey! It's hay! We have a pile of hay that we (mostly Bill) scythed this year, but it's not enough for the entire winter, so we purchased some bales as well.

We've been stacking wood too. Last year we got a small electric splitter which is tied with our chicken plucker as one of my favorite purchases.

This is about an hour of splitting. Not nearly enough yet! Some of that wood is cherry, which means our shed smells amazing. 

Lastly, I've been doing a little quilting. Having my own craft room and working on project bags for my little Etsy shop has reacquainted me with my sewing machine (and fabric shops), so I'm hoping my quilting bug returns. I'm machine quilting a pepper quilt I started when we first moved to Indiana.

The archived process of making this quilt is on my very first (I think), rather old blog. Here's the best photo from the series:

We have lots more work to do before the snow (I hope!) flies, but we've gotten a good start.

Projects in progress

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.

Memorial Day is for painting things red

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.

Finished!

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!!