Cabin Crafted

Author: Cabincrafted1

  • Craftiness

    This month’s spindle challenge was an easy one, just spin a minimum of 15 minutes each day. This is going to lead up to two consecutive months of produce items using your Jenkins spindle spun yarn. Since a lot of my yarn this year has been producing squares for my Breed Blanket Project, there are lots of bits and bobs of leftovers from the squares and a scrapy scarf or cowl will use up a lot of them.

    After spinning three breeds this month and knitting several squares, I started on a braid of wool dyed in Ruby colors that are not for the blanket and just for fun. The first 12 g were spun on a large spindle plying on the fly until I decided that the spindle was just too large to use in the car, so I switched to one of my smaller spindles that fits nicely in a Talenti gelato container and drops into my carry all bag.

    The colorful case is a rigid sided, zippered pencil case that is perfect for toting a spindle or two when I want or need to go away. It was a recent acquisition to my collection. The ruby yarn that will be produced will become fingerless mitts and a hat or cowl for holiday markets and my Squareup shop.

    In early to mid August, I did a test knit of a cabled hat pattern, Debbie’s Tobaggan on Ravelry for a friend. As I usually use my own handspun yarns and I didn’t have any yarn in the correct gauge, I purchased a skein from another friend (Sunrise Valley Farm) that vends at the local farmer’s market. Her wools are lovely and hand dyed.

    The pattern designing friend was at the fiber retreat I attended in late August and she was working on another pattern, fingerless mitts or mittens. About a week ago, she asked for test knitters for this pattern. I had purchased a skein of alpaca/wool blend yarn from yet another friend and had enough of it left from a project to test knit the new pattern, Blue Ridge Mitts, which will soon be released on Ravelry. See the mountains and the sun?

    The mitts are currently drying from being washed and blocked, and I am about to start another pair using some of my homespun Shetland in a soft gray.

    Recently my decade old Nexus tablet quit. That tablet has lived in an Oberon Design leather cover for most of it’s life. I am a real fan of the Oberon products, owning a card case, notebook cover, checkbook cover, and the tablet cover that have been purchased by me or given to me by hubby as gifts. I was trying to think of a new life for the tablet cover and as many of the patterns that I knit have charts in the pattern design, I took a metal chart holder that was a bit too large and with tin snips, cut it to size, so now I have a pattern holder.

    I consider that a win/win!

    My health crisis appears to be behind us. My diet is back to normal and we are walking every day (except the day of the monsoon) and doing at least 2.25 miles and trying to challenge myself on speed and inclines. Most days, hubby and I goad each other as to who is pushing who, but it is all in fun and should one of us feel taxed by the effort, it just takes a word to slow the pace down a little. We are both fitter for the effort, which is good for our senior bodies.

  • Where was the Ark when we needed it

    Night before last, it began to rain and rain it did all day yesterday and all night last night. Heavy, downpour, run down the driveway like a river rain. The creeks are raging, our village is under a flash flood watch. We are safe up on the mountain side, down in the hollow, but well above the creeks that merge on our west property line. In heavy rains, those creeks overwhelm the sink hole and run down the old creekbed along the west side of us.

    The windows on the chicken coop were left open and this morning, all of the hens had wet tail feathers, so the rain must have come from the east at least for a while. The straw under their roosts is soaked and though I just changed it out less than a week ago, I will have to do so again once it stops raining today. The sun peeked out briefly, but the clouds and drizzle returned. The last time we drove by the feed store, the straw trailer was gone. I hope that means a new trailer full was being brought in. I have barely enough to put in the coop this time and none for winter layering and coop cleaning. The coop has nearly twice as many birds in it as it should for it’s size and as they only spend the night in there, I don’t fret about it too much, they free range during the day. But because of the number of them in there at night, the coop requires much more frequent maintenance and in spite of free ranging, they go through a 5 gallon bucket of feed a week. They are producing plenty of eggs. It is fun to gather them each day. The Marans eggs are large to jumbo and such a pretty dark brown, the Buff Orpingtons and NH reds lay lighter brown eggs in the average size. The two Easter eggers lay a blue egg and a green egg that are smaller, but not usually as small as this one. This was a shell with eggwhite and no yolk, an oopsie egg. Often as the hens are still young, there will be an egg with double yolks. Last week, there were three eggs where the shell was incomplete on the end and had a small rounded edged hole just in the shell. One was slightly flattened on one side and the shell was washboard shaped. They are still figuring it out. At least there won’t be molt this fall, so egg production will continue.

    The friend for whom I did the test knit of a hat, has designed a pattern that can be fingerless mitts or mittens. Since I had gotten several of my breed blanket squares knit earlier in the month, finishing one yesterday, I volunteered to test knit her new pattern as well. Last night I did about half of one mitt and will finish it today. Hoping I have enough of the yarn to do the second one while awaiting a second skein from another friend.

    Not a very professional shot, taking a photo in the dark of my dominant hand with my non dominant hand. Next time I knit this pattern, which I will as I love her Blue Ridge Mountain chart, I will make the cuff longer.

    I continue to spin at least 15 minutes each day for the September challenge. I am trying to see how much of the Ruby BFL I can get on this spindle, spinning and plying in one pass, called Ply on the Fly.

    The braid is 4 ounces. I would love to get at least half of it on the spindle, we will see.

  • A little processing

    Yesterday afternoon before dinner prep, we set out to do a walk. My energy and blood pressure had been in the dump all day and I was hoping it would help. We generally walk two figure 8 loops around the double pond, so about 2-2.25 miles, and I only managed one. As a result, I never went back out to the garden in the evening.

    This morning, while it was still cool and the sun low, the fall bed was planted with spinach, spinach mustard, kohlrabi, and radishes. Last night I planted the two hydroponic gardens on the kitchen counter with spinach, spinach mustard, mesclun mix in the 12 cell one, and an herb garden in the 6 cell one and set my alarm clock for 6 a.m. to go down and plug them in. At 6 a.m., I was sound asleep deaf ear up and didn’t hear the vibrating alarm go off. I turned them on when I did get up, but will have to try again tomorrow to get them on a reasonable schedule so the lights don’t keep us awake at night staying on too late.

    We decided that we needed a day off from our walks, hubby had a bad calf cramp that has him sore. And I called the primary care Doctor to get my access to the portal reset to see my results. My RBC, hemoglobin, and hematocrit are unchanged from the morning I left the hospital inspite of eating dark leafy greens, meat, eggs, or seafood at least one a day, and taking the probiotic and multivitaminn with iron suggested by the hospital releasing physician. I expected a call from the P.C. Dr. as he said he would call when the results were in but I haven’t heard from him.

    Because we weren’t breaking up the afternoon with a walk, I decided after lunch to process the bucket of apples as many were going bad, and the basket of Asian pears that were very ripe by making apple/pear sauce. We found a 4 pack of pint jars with lids last week and I had 1 remaining lid, so jars were put in the canner, the fruit cut from the cores and chopped to cook down until it could be run through the food mill to remove the skins. I ended up with 4 1/2 pints of fruit sauce to add to the shelf and with the metal lids, heard the satisfying pop of each lid as they cooled.

    Don’t you love the unpaper towel they are sitting on. They are made by a friend with an Etsy shop. I love her stuff and no, I don’t get a cut for advertising for her.

    The hot peppers from yesterday were brined and stored in the refrigerator for use later in the year.

    That was about all I can manage in one day, so I will sit and spin for a while.

  • It’s been a week and a half

    After lunch and a grocery run, while hubby turned on football, I wandered out to my very overgrown garden with intent to start cleaning it up. The lighter weight weed eater allowed me to fairly easily beat down the grass that has come up in the paths. Sitting on the edges of the various beds, some weeding and harvesting was done, but there are still tomatillos and tomatoes that I didn’t bring in, I just couldn’t do any more. I did gather a lot of tomatillos, 3 small cabbages, some tender new kale, 2 winter squash, and some peppers. There are still so many weeds, the dry corn stalks to pull and I think the tomato plants after I gather the ripe tomatoes, though the freezer is full of ones I haven’t had the energy to process. The second crop of bush beans were eaten to stalks by bean beetles and there are hundred of bettle larva and young beetles in that bed. I killed as many as I could by squishing them. I will have to see if there is an insecticidal soap that will kill them off, the stalks were pulled and put in the compost. I need a really hot pile to kill off any remaining insects.

    When it cools this evening, I am going to try to smooth the bed that had the potatoes in it and see if it is too late to plant some spinach, spinach mustard, and kale and cover them with a mini hoop house of row cover and later plastic. One of the 4 X 4 beds will be planted with garlic in late October or early November. The rest of the garden just put to bed, a little bit each day.

    I had to quit while out there, because every walk and every other activity that requires exertion, drops my blood pressure, which makes me feel washed out. I didn’t get results on my most recent hemoglobin check yet and for whatever reason, I can’t log in to the Doctor’s office portal to see if they were posted. Maybe they will let me know tomorrow. I am hoping to see some improvement so I know there is an end in sight.

    The upcoming week is a return to summer at least during the daylight hours. The cooler fall like days of last week were so welcome. Next weekend the University plays an away game, so maybe we can eat on one of the patios in town one night and actually go to the Farmer’s Market on Saturday.

  • Dealership Hell

    I am in my 7o’s and have been driving since I was 15, so approaching 50 years. In that time, I have purchased a number of vehicles, one with my Dad, several on my own, a few with hubby. Most of those vehicles have been in my or our lives for only a few years before they had to be replaced or were replaced because they shouldn’t have been purchased in the first place. That changed 16 years ago. We purchased me a brand new Honda CRV not financed and it is still on the road with 252K miles on her. Three years later, we purchased a new Nissan Xterra which finally quit during the first wave of the pandemic with 250K miles on it. We have been using the 16 year old car solely since then and hoping that: 1) the pandemic would end; 2) the lack of computer chips for the vehicles would resolve, and we could seek a car and keep the old CRV as a sporadically used backup vehicle.

    Two weeks ago when things took a tumble in our lives with daughter’s serious car totaling accident, me landing in the hospital for 5 days, Son 1 coming to the rescue, but having to put his car in the shop for a few days while here and being forced to rely on my old car to drive daughter around, drive hubby to the hospital, pick up groceries, pick me up from the hospital, etc., we realized that we shouldn’t count on the one aged vehicle as our sole transportation source. I have never liked the car buying experience. The least irritating was when we purchased hubby a new Saturn and they had a fixed sticker price and no negotiating games. Usually, the process is so very irksome. You test drive a car or two, perhaps decide you have found the one you are going to purchase, and then they sit you in a tiny office cubicle with a glass wall so they can make sure you don’t slip out and disappear to “work on the numbers.”

    The process was no different yesterday. Hubby had done online research, had the cost of several vehicles noted, reached out to several dealers regarding availability, and off we went, an hour plus west into the adjacent state (where they actually had a few cars on the lot). We wanted a hybrid, all wheel drive, not white exterior or interior. They had 1. We test drove a non hybrid a bit smaller than the one they had, but it lacked most of the new safety features. We test drove a non hybrid the size of the hybrid, but the hybrid was only slightly more expensive and had a nicer add on package. BUT, the car had an additional sticker in the window that indicated a market upcharge of almost $3000 that wasn’t on the website. The manager, of course, apologized all over the place, said prices weren’t supposed to be on the website at all, and more bull shit. Then we were put in the cubicle to wear down our resistance. When the manager finally came in, he had “worked the numbers” and could take $100 off. Really! Oh horse patties. Then the upsale begins. We can knock off x if you buy the extended warranty (that by the way is owned by the dealership owner and cost $3000). No thank you.

    Four and a half hours later, we drove off the lot with the hybrid, having been given a $500 reduction for hubby’s military service, but otherwise, the sticker price we saw going in. Such a frustrating business. I guess, this might be the last new car we buy since we are both aging like my old CRV. My CRV will be cleaned up, kept maintained, and driven a bit, but it will be our back up car, one to use when the new one is in the shop for maintenance or when we both have to be out in different directions.

  • Recovery, Rest, and Resurrection

    Life is resuming. Daughter is doing better. Son 1 has returned to his home, his family, and his job. Each day, a bit more is being done here at home. After 5 days in the hospital and now 5 days home, we are working on my stamina. We have taken a few walks, the first a slow slightly less than a mile, the second a mile and a half, but still slow and with a halfway point rest. Today, I challenged myself with a 30 minute interval walk; 5 minutes warm-up, 20 minutes at a much livlier pace, and 5 minute cool down and did it without a rest. It was just barely over a mile and a half.

    The month’s spinning challenge is a relatively easy one, just spin 15 minutes each day. The month challenge begun with the wool for my breed blanket. It is Shropshire, not my favorite of the breeds spun. I am spinning it plying on the fly so making a three ply yarn. It will make a fairly dense square when finished and knit.

    The wool spun last month was plied on my wheel, making about 500 yards of very soft fingering weight yarn. It is currently drying.

    In the past couple of days, I have knit more of the Helsinge wool that I also spun last month into two more squares for my blanket. Those two squares are blocked and drying.

    I am indebted to Lisa who sent me the wool in two separate packages, the first with a spindle purchased from her, the second as a gift. This provided me enough wool to knit three squares to be added to the project.

    The young hens are laying well. Most days there are at least 11 eggs. One day, hubby gathered 13, one per hen. Though each egg is usually about 1.7 ounces, yesterday I got one that was 3.1 ounce and a double yolked egg. Today there was another about 2.5 ounces and I’m betting it too will have 2 yolks.

    Life moves on at a slower pace, but moving on. Daughter and her kids came over this morning to pick apples and we brought another bucket in the house for me to make another batch of applesauce. I am going to attempt the reuseable lids again, but be prepared to freeze the jars if they don’t seal properly. The freezer has many tomatoes, but I think they will just be used as needed. Other than planting garlic in early November, the planned fall garden won’t happen this year. The second crop of bush beans have been totally eaten to stems, so there won’t be any crop there. There will be peppers, but not enough to pickle jars and jars for the winter. It will soon be time to clean up the beds and let it rest until spring.

  • When life throws you a curved ball!

    Without a lot of details, this family has had it’s share in the past month. A grandson diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, one of our children involved in a very serious auto accident. Our daughter is okay, sore and without her own wheels.

    A much anticipated retreat with friends I hadn’t seen in 2 years to sit and spin, knit, weave, and share social time was cut very short because my first day there, I ended up with an emergency medical situation. Without letting my family know and only limited revelation to the event coordinator, I foolishly slipped away after packing my spinning, clothes, and vending set up and drove 4 hours home, only to be hospitalized that afternoon. Five days in the hospital, 2 surgical procedures, and I’m home, hopefully without a recurrence.

    This has caused stress to the family, caused Son 1 to temporarily leave his job, his family, and drive from his home to ours to be the unpaid Uber driver for hubby and daughter, to be emotional support for all of us, and to be cook when allowed. He has harvested my garden and frozen my tomatoes, taken care of my chooks and been as he always is, a generally good man.

    It has been a tough few weeks. Not much to report on spinning and knitting. No canning for a while, but tomatoes in the freezer for when it can again be done. It is likely the end of the garden for this year, but there is always another year and we will rely more heavily on the Farmer’s Market until their season also ends. The hydroponic units will be started with herbs and salad greens to supplement what we can purchase and as a last resort, imported organic produce purchased from our local Natural Foods store.

    Sometimes life gives you lemons and you have to make lemonade. My lemonade is knowing how much my family is a loving unit and how caring and concerned my friends are. I want those of you who knew and offered healing messages to me and my family, thank you, I love you all.

  • It isn’t fair. . .

    I know, life isn’t fair, but having the hottest part of the summer just when everything is ready to harvest and be canned isn’t fair.

    Since I am heading out for a few days later this week, and leaving hubby home to hold down the fort, I decided that the apples, pears, and gooseberries, should be processed before I leave, so in spite of today’s brutal heat, I heated up the huge canner. Since the ground cherries (gooseberries) would only make a small batch, I was able to cook them in a small flat pan. The large pot filled with pears as I peeled, cored, and sliced them and a thinly sliced orange to make Asian Pear Marmalade. Once they were both in the canner, I began to core and chop the apples and put them in the large pot to cook down. The apples after cooking down and pressing through the food mill, provided 5 1/2 pints of applesauce for the shelves.

    There is now more jam than I will consume in a year, and since each pint of applesauce is two meals and there is still at least one jar left from last year, this will be enough for us. I still have 3 more pounds of of pears on the counter. I’m not sure how I will use them, maybe some pear sauce or pear jelly. Or maybe they will be peeled and frozen to use in a holiday dessert. The rest of the tomatoes can wait as they are frozen, but pizza sauce and crushed tomatoes still need to be done. Maybe it will cool down next week when I am back home and I can heat things up again.

    While the applesauce was in the canner, I finished the test knit for my friend. After this photo was taken, it was soaked in vinegar water to set the dye and is now blocked on the bed downstairs. If it dries before I leave, I will take it to show the designer. I haven’t decided whether to add a pompom or tassle or leave it as it is.

    It is time to get back to spinning, very little was done this past week.

  • Whew it is hot!

    The blue tub of tomatoes were bagged and stuck in the freezer, the tomatillo frozen, the ground cherries husked and put in the jar with the rest of them. There are enough to make a batch of jam now. Maybe tomorrow.

    Two of the gallon bags of frozen tomatoes, mostly the paste variety, were dumped in the cleaned out blue tub and water run over them until I could slip the skins off. They were put in the medium stock pot, crushed and chopped, seasoned, and simmered for hours and just before time to prepare dinner, 7 pints were canned. The remaining bit and a jar of frozen pasta sauce with some kibbles of Italian hot sausage were simmered more to provide the sauce for tonight’s spaghetti.

    I was happy to find a flat of pint jars with new lids on them in the basement, so all 7 sealed properly. After canning season when the lids return to shelves, I will stock up for next year and reserve the reuseables for freezing. I have dozens of jars, plenty of rings and dozens of the reuseable lids. I will use them when the product being canned can be frozen if they don’t seal, but the regular mouth pints don’t freeze well, they tend to crack as the contents freeze. The regular mouth half pints have straight sides like wide mouth pints, so they work in the freezer.

    The hat I am test knitting and ripped out a few nights ago is back where it was, 8 more rows to go before the crown decreases. I will finish it before I leave for the retreat and the designer of the pattern can see it for real, not just photos.

    We need our daily walk, it is going to be hot, but at least the sun will be low and nearly dark when we end.

  • Maybe I should check more often

    This afternoon, with fruit picker in hand, the apples and Asian pears started coming in to the house to make applesauce and pear marmalade.

    There are many times that amount of fruit still on the trees. It got too hot to stay out there, so I quit for today. I will leave some for the wildlife, I tried to pick higher than they can reach, but last year the fruit was there and not ripe and a week later it was gone, not a pear, and only enough apples for a few pints of sauce. I will also pick a box of apples to take to Wilderness Road Regional Museum for pressing and bring home a half gallon or two of fresh cider. I divide it into smaller jars and freeze it to enjoy longer. Maybe I’ll make vinegar out of some.

    As I was heading out toward the garden after dinner, I spotted these two spring fawns frolicking with each other with two of the hens right by them and no concerns about sharing the yard.

    When I stepped out the side door after they had moved farther across the back, they just stood there and watched me as I pulled out the camera on my phone to get a shot. One doe is in the picture, the other just out of the frame.

    The garden was generously overwhelming when, I went out to pick ripe tomatoes. This 16 liter bucket has a quart of ground cherries in the bottom, and maybe half a dozen tomatillos, the rest is tomatoes and there are more in a few days. The leaves on the plants are totally devoured by bugs, but that just makes it easier to see the tomatoes. I discarded at least 4 or 5 of the large flat slicers as they were too far gone or were sunburned down about half the fruit. The popcorn was ready to harvest and dry, so two armloads were brought in and put in a box. The husks were pulled back and the cobs spread on a wire shelf to dry out. Some of the short vined Hubbard squash were ready too, so 5 of them came in. While I was picking the tomatoes, I stood up and the corn was right behind me and I got stung on the tender underarm near my shoulder. I don’t know what got me, but it still stings.

    And the hens gave me a full dozen eggs today. The fewest I get from these gals is 9 a day, still haven’t gotten 13 which would be all of them providing an egg.

    A few nights ago, I finished the second 16 row chart on the hat, placed it flat to take a picture and spotted a “I can’t live with that” error on the 3rd row of the first chart. Totally disgusted with myself for not spotting it earlier, I went to bed. It ended up being a sleep is optional night, so I got back up after an hour or so, ripped the hat back to the first row after the ribbing and started over. I have reknit the first chart and and about a third of the way through the second chart. Yesterday’s dressing up as an 18th century working woman and spinning at a Heritage Day event, put a crimp in my knitting on the hat or spinning for the monthly challenge with my spindles. I use my wheel at events and a top whorl drop spindle or a Scottish Dealgan, as the Turkish style doesn’t fit the period.

    Tomorrow, I will have to get more large freezer bags to put the tomatoes in the freezer until I’m ready to can them.

    I think I am organized to pack up for the much anticipated fiber retreat later this week. We are all vaccinated, will all wear masks, but it will be so good to see those friends after 2 years.