Author: Cabincrafted1

The Scarf

In late September, an independent yarn dyer friend, specially dyed some yarn to match a hat made of yarn I had purchased from her several years ago (https://fstafford165.wordpress.com/2013/09/21/girls-day-out/) . I love the color, it is my favorite winter hat, my own design. Ever since I knit the hat, I have wanted a scarf to match the hat. She had tried several times to duplicate the color, which had been an unintentional, wonderful accident, but had not been able to make the match. When I asked again this year, not for a match, but a yarn that would coordinate, maybe blend with the hat color, she tried again and hit it true on.

Other items had been on my needles, the reknit of daughter’s black lace sweater, a sweater and hat for a baby due in December, the two hats for the grandkids for their Halloween costumes, and the finger puppets for the grand daughters, so I had not begun the design for the scarf. The very cold couple of days this week were incentive to get on this scarf design, to get it knit before the winter weather is consistent. The past couple of days knitting have been dedicated to the scarf design. I have completed three repeats of the hat pattern and am now trying to decide how to proceed. The hat has a simple stockinette upper part, decreasing to the top. My dilemma is whether to continue to repeat the pattern to the center, reverse it for the other half, to work in stockinette like the hat until the length is near what I want then reverse the pattern for the other end, or doing a lighter simple lace that is part of the pattern for the center section. What do you think?

Once it is complete, the pattern will be published to go with the published hat and finished photos of the hat and scarf together will be posted.

November 14, 2013
Like a Cat

Like a cat, I sit in the pool of warm sunlight, enjoying my hot cereal and coffee. Outside the day is bright, The morning is 21f, the cat and chicken waterers frozen solid, diamond dust is sparkling in the sun and the wind from yesterday’s Arctic front that blew through leaving only a dusting of light snow has still not totally dissipated. Our first blast of winter will be short lived, returning to more autumn like weather by the weekend, but it is the beginning and if the old timers are correct, there will be much more of this to come.

Life is good on our mountain farm.

November 13, 2013
Mountain Morning Gifts

A faint rainbow just before the storm. A huge Tom turkey strutting his stuff in the hay field; 2 young orphaned raccoon that that have been in our area this fall, looking for food or shelter before the weather; and snow flurries. All beautiful and welcome sights.

Life is good on our mountain farm.

November 12, 2013
The Last Hurrah

This morning is glorious.

The sky is a beautiful shade of blue, nearly cloudless. The fields and fir trees still wearing the greens of summer, the deciduous trees bare of their foliage, a light haze on the distant mountains, the haze that named a nearby mountain chain The Blue Ridge. It is mild this morning, only the lightest skim of ice on the chickens water tub and expected to reach near 60f today, the fierce winds of yesterday have calmed.

In the mountains, weather systems don’t last long, this beautiful fall weather will end today. Tomorrow, the weather prognosticators say we could see up to 2″ of snow. It is early for snow, the earliest recorded measurable snow for nearby Roanoke was October 10, 1979. The average first snow is December 15th. Meteorologic winter begins on November 21st, my birthday and the winter solstice, the official first day of winter and the shortest day, a month later.

Regardless of the season and the weather it brings, this is still the most beautiful place in the world. We love it year round. Life is good on our mountain farm.

November 11, 2013
A (Half) Week on the Farm – November 9, 2013 (Goodnight Garden)

After a half week in Northern Virginia babysitting, this afternoon is the best of this season. Azure skies, wispy white clouds. Mild mid 50f temperatures. Knowing that the season is moving on toward winter, threats of snow showers to accumulated snow in our forecast for mid week, I decided it was my opportunity to plant the garlic for next year and put the rest of the garden and orchard to bed for winter.

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The last of the broccoli was harvested, the cabbages still hiding under a row cover. The garlic was planted in two square beds, about 85 cloves, a combination of three different red hardneck varieties. They were heavily mulched with straw then covered with row covers, not to protect it from the weather, but rather to protect it from the chickens.

While mulching, the grape, berry and other vegetable beds were given heavy layers of straw as well, mulch placed around the now dormant fruit trees. While I was working on this, the chickens were free ranging and trying to undo my work as fast as I was working to put the mulch down. The tomato cages and garden stakes were put to use to hold down the straw in the beds. The fruit trees may get rings of fencing if tomorrow as mild as predicted.

The chickens were given a bed of mulch in their pen to give them something to scratch in for entertainment to try to keep them out of my work. In spite of the nights that are consistently freezing the top surface of their water tub, they are still providing me with 5 to 8 eggs each day, except for the one who lays green eggs, she seems to be on strike, not having produced an egg all week.

November 9, 2013
This Moment

This idea is from SouleMama’s blog and will be a new feature on my blog page. A single photo from the past week, no words, that I wish to remember. If you are inspired to do so, leave a link to yours in the comments for others to see.

November 8, 2013
Hunting Season

Living in a mountainous rural area, we often hear gunfire. The frequency of this noise increases as the various hunting seasons roll around. Most of our neighbors hunt, wild turkey and deer primarily, but also bear, raccoons, squirrels and rabbits. Bow season for deer began in early October, this is followed by muzzle loaded gun hunting in early November then on to other firearms for the last couple of weeks in November, then the seasons reverse, ending in December. When this begins, we see fewer deer on our property, it almost like they go into hiding. One doe has been hanging around for a couple of years. We know she is the same one because she has a gimpy left hind leg. In spite of this, she has raised twin fawns last year and a single fawn this year. She sticks close to the upper part of our property and we often see her with her current young near our barn. As we drove out late this morning to deliver eggs and to resupply the various animal foods and get a few items for our larder, she and her fawn were grazing near the barn. It surprises me that she has survived the seasons. I hope that she makes it through this cycle as well. This evening, there is one in the lower hayfield. During this season, we don’t venture far from the house without wearing a blaze orange hat or vest even to go to the chicken coop or garden. We consider putting a blaze vest on our mastiff as he is of similar size and coloration to the local deer.

November 7, 2013
Home at last

The journey finally ends. After waking early, closing the suitcase for the last time on this trip, packing up the laptop, rolling the sleeping pad as I sleep on the floor in daughter in law’s studio when babysitting in NoVa, I fixed breakfast for grandson, took son to campus and headed for home. Son had told me that I would head northwest from his campus and not have to backtrack to I-66. This seemed like a good idea, giving me less time on the interstate. However, the Gods were against me making it home in a timely manner. As I pulled up the ramp onto the interstate, traffic was dead stopped as far as I could see to the west so I went right back down the off ramp and took off in a westerly direction on an unknown rural road. About 30 minutes later, I rejoined the interstate, clear of the accident or traffic blockage and traveled smoothly along for the next couple of hours.

As I approached the midway point of the trip, two interstates intersect and as I approached this area, an electronic warning board announced that I-81 S that I was on was totally blocked a few miles ahead. I rounded a curve, fortunately at an off ramp and sure enough, nothing but stopped traffic as far as I could see. Off again on a rural road looking for an alternate route home. Somehow, though no one seemed to be following me, a 20 minute jaunt through a rural part of the Shenandoah Valley, I spotted State Rd. 11, an alternate north/south route. Knowing this route would get me past what turned out to be a tractor trailer accident, I finally made my way the rest of the way home, about an hour and a half later than I expected.

During the 21 days gone, autumn, which was not very pretty this year left. The trees are barren, the garden gone, but the garlic did arrive and one last day will be spent getting it in the ground and mulched for next year’s crop.

November 6, 2013
An Outing

The morning dawned gray and quite chilly. Son was sluggish, but with a day of teaching to do, he mounted his bike to ride either to the campus or to the Metro station to catch the University Shuttle over to campus. Daughter in law has hours to put in on a piece of art due for a class tomorrow, but was slow moving to get to her campus. Grandson, who had the day off from school was up at the crack of dawn and stayed in the shower so long that I finally poked my head in the bathroom and asked him to turn off the water, so that the rest of us would have some hot water, then he snuggled under a towel on the floor of his bedroom until his Dad got up and asked him to please dress. The apartment is cool. They, like us, keep the thermostat low to keep their hard earned dollars out of the hands of the local power company and sweaters indoors are in order when the temperatures outdoors are low.

Once they left for their respective campus, grandson completed his homework with my supervision and practiced his guitar in preparation for his lesson later this week. We discussed how we wanted to spend this gloomy day, not just sitting inside. We agreed that a metro trip into the district was in order with the American History Museum the goal. First we needed to go mail a package to his cousins then decided to try to park at the Metro station instead of making the mile plus walk over to it. The garage lot indicated it was not full, but once in, it costs you a daily rate of $4.75 to get out. We took our chance and after driving every aisle on every deck twice, passing the same half dozen other cars looking for spots, decided that the garage was indeed full in spite of the sign and paid the fee to leave. The only other parking near the Metro station was a quarter for 15 minutes up to the limit of the meter, but the meter did not tell you what that limit was and I was unwilling to start feeding it quarters only to find out that the limit would be insufficient for us to make the round trip and see anything once we got there.

The other possible outing was to drive to Great Falls National Park, about 20-30 minutes away and check out the Potomac River gorge there, tour the visitor center and walk one of the paths through the woods along the side of the river. Three years ago, hubby and I both got Lifetime Passes to any National Park, available to seniors for a nominal fee. Prior to our cruise, we each emptied our wallets of all “extra” cards, to avoid their loss while on the trip. This card, sitting in my drawer at home, would have saved us the entry fee into the park, but the fee was a small price to pay for an outing with the eldest grandson. He is 8, an age of motion, fearlessness, and a desire to climb. It was fun watching him climb around on the rocks safely within the barrier walls, reminding him off and on to read the signage that implored him to not climb the railings or walk on the remnants of the C & O canal walls. Though we didn’t stay but about 90 minutes, he did expend some energy and I got some photos of the gorge and the grand enjoying the visit.

Entering the overlook that gives the best view of the falls, which we were told drop about 80 feet was this sign.

This sign was about 10 feet tall. Each number represents the year and the height of flood waters, that would put the water above the banks of the gorge with a total depth of 90 to 100 feet. The immensity of the volume and power of the water in those floods stages must be staggering. Oddly, the visitor center is within a flood stage depth that has occurred within the past 20 years.

Tomorrow, my 21 days away from home finally comes to an end. I will leave Northern Virginia when they all leave for school around 8 a.m. and will drive to our home, my own bed and the comfort of our own home. I have enjoyed the past 21 days, but I am looking forward to that.

November 5, 2013
Still Away

Today is day 17 of suitcase living. Leaving home 17 days ago with a suitcase packed for a cruise, a backpack packed for the week of fall weather in Virginia Beach and the half week of even cooler fall weather in Northern Virginia and my laptop, and a large leather tote style bag that serves as my travel tote with knitting, necessary papers, a lotion bar, anti inflamatory meds, anti seasickness meds, and antacids, just in case, a camera plus a paper back book. The backpack remained in Virginia Beach during the cruise and after the return week there, the suitcase was relieved of its summery cruise clothing which were sent home with hubby and repacked with the fall clothing. The backpack, then lightened to the laptop and the newly acquired bag of fiberfill as my knitting projects are finger puppets to go along with two story books for the 2 year old granddaughters for Christmas. The two stories have 5 of the same animals in them, so there will be two of each of them, then 3 other animals must be completed to make the two sets complete. They are quick knits, however, the first was done while I was a passenger in the car and my attention was not there, so it ended up looking less like a rabbit than I had hoped. It was knit from my homespun which I feel contributed to it being less than perfect. Today, while entertaining grandson, we went to a local yarn shop and bought a small ball of commercial cream colored yard to make rabbit # 2. The first Badger seems the correct scale and Badger #2 is on the needles. The girls should have fun with their puppets and their new books.

November 4, 2013