Fran Sale Stafford

Olio for a rainy day

Olio: a miscellaneous collection of things

Every other day as far as I can see out in the forecast is for YUK. Today began with cold rain and fog, it is turning to freezing rain/sleet/snow later. Tomorrow is cold and cloudy, Saturday is freezing rain/etc. Some days freezing rain, some snow showers, but all freezing stuff.

This morning, I sat in the car in the cold rain, spinning on one of my spindles while DH was able to get his second COVID vaccine. He was in and out much faster than I expected as there was a short line outside and when I got my first, the line was like a ski lift line that snaked from outside, along a wall, around a corner and back down the other side of that wall. He said they had reconfigured it and the line I saw outside was all there was. I am two weeks out from getting mine. Now we wait and see if he has a reaction, but a day of not feeling well beats getting critically ill with the virus.

My spinning challenges of the month are all with Jenkins Turkish spindles. One requires a weekly check in with photos showing progress and that was done. The other two I can double dip this month as one requires spinning 25 grams of fiber, the other is the breed blanket challenge. My 25 grams spun was the fiber for the blanket square and I ran short so I had to spin more to complete the square.

While knitting the square on, I was spinning my second breed that I had been working on and finished plying it.

I began knitting that on as well, so I will have a blanket of 6 squares soon, each square slightly larger than 10″.

The spindles, my ply bowls, and the blanket so far.

For Christmas, Son 2 and his family gave me a hydroponic herb garden. It was set up immediately and watched carefully as each herb germinated and sprouted above the opening for it. It has been delightful to trim fresh herbs for salads and for cooking. I’ve even started drying some of the mint and the dill as they are hard to keep up with. The Thai basil is delicious in Asian inspired quick soups for lunch. The thyme and sweet basil are slower and the parsley is the laggard, but is coming along.

What a great gift idea for a gardener feeling the winter doldrums. Today I found out that “Chick Days” at Tractor Supply begins on February 22. I want a dozen chicks this year, but won’t have gotten my second vaccine yet and I am sure they won’t curbside them. Maybe I’ll send DH or DD in to get them for me. I figure if I start them the end of the month, I’ll be getting eggs before the old girls molt again in the fall. If I am careful of the breeds selected, they will lay most of the winter. If I have too many eggs, I’m sure there are folks that would welcome a dozen here and there.

It came, it went

We did get 6″ of snow Saturday night into Sunday morning. Wet, heavy snow. It caved in the fence top on my chicken run that I created to protect them from the hawk when I have to have them penned up instead of free ranging. It will be an easy repair, but it was too chilly and windy to mess with it yesterday.

The sun came out a few times and I plowed the driveway to help it melt off as I feared we would end up with some tiny two wheel drive sedan as the rental car. When we got there to pick up the car, it is a Mitsubishi Outlander, so plenty of clearance, but not AWD. While we were out and about waiting for the recalled switch to be replaced in the CRV, the temperature rose to the mid 40’s and though our road and our driveway are a muddy mess, getting in and out won’t be a problem. Much of the snow cover thinned to an inch or so by last evening and the temperature fell to 16f last night so everything froze over. By the time we got home from picking up the CRV and dropping it at the local mechanic for oil change and state inspection, most of the snow is gone.

It looks like we are due for freezing rain and snow showers mid week and frigid temperatures and snow showers over the weekend, so we aren’t done with it yet. Since we moved here, it has snowed almost every Valentine’s Day. Since our anniversary is that day, we have had some interesting trips to a restaurant, but this year we will celebrate at home, just the two of us, so it won’t matter if it does snow.

I finished spinning my fiber of the month for my breed blanket project and after doing a photo update for the February challenges, I began knitting it on to the blanket. The second “unofficial” breed for the month is being spun. I really love the one I am spinning now and really did not like the fuzzy gray Gotland that I am knitting on. It will be fun if Covid allows craft shows this fall to display the blanket with tags showing what each breed is to demonstrate the varying textures of wool. When I finish this month, I will have three gray wools of different textures and three softer dyed squares to offset them.

And as I am between knitting on squares, I am continuing to knit on a scarf from mini skeins of spun from wool samples that come with spindles and often with fiber braids to entice you to try a different fiber blend from the vendor.

I am finishing up two very similar salmon colored mini skeins and will have two more neutrals, one with some hints of blue that will transition me to a series of ones that are predominantly blues. I will keep adding on until I run our of mini skeins or reach a color that just doesn’t go. This scarf is going to have various wools, bamboo, silks, just about anything natural except cotton in it. They are all spun from lace to light fingering weight yarn, so it should be interesting with it’s changing color and lace edge.

It is very unusual for me to have two knitting projects going at the same time.

Oh, here we go again

The snow from last weekend is nearly gone on our south facing farm. The north facing hillsides still have snow on them as do the woods. And again something is scheduled for which being snowed in is a problem, but there is a winter storm warning for tonight into tomorrow morning with 3-5 inches expected again. I got a recall on my old CRV for the master switch in the driver’s door which failed about 2 years ago requiring that you manually lock and unlock the driver’s door then you can unlock the other doors. Because I am not willing to sit in a dealer’s waiting room while it is repaired for an hour or more on Monday and because we decided to go on and have the state inspection and an oil change by our local mechanic, we rented a car to use for two days, but said car will lack the clearance of the CRV and not have all wheel drive.

The good news is that it will stop in the morning and begin warming up quickly, so hopefully, by Monday afternoon, the driveway won’t be an issue. Hopefully, we will have the CRV back before the next round of winter storm weather comes in mid week. This is from the winter that was supposed to be warm and wet according to the Farmer’s Almanac and the weather prognosticators. After a couple of warm winters with little or no snow, we have returned to true Virginia winter weather. Our electric power bill compares each month with the same month from last year and it showed we averaged 8 degrees colder this year than last.

This morning, we went and picked up my new bird feeder and some bird and chicken feed. Since I use lidded 5 gallon buckets for storage, I did a clean up around them and the workbench in the garage before filling the buckets from the bags purchased. The new feeder was filled and hung and it didn’t take the little mixed flock of Chickadees, Tufted Titmouse, assorted Finches, Wrens, and Juncos to find it. I haven’t seen any of the larger birds or woodpeckers yet, but they will discover the change too. You can see the new split tube feeder and the suet tube on the shepherd’s crook in the top photo.

The sky has grayed, the barometer is falling, the snow will begin after dark tonight and we will see in the morning what the storm brought us this time. No matter what the groundhog saw or didn’t see, there are 6 more weeks of winter and here we won’t see the last frost until near Mother’s Day.