Cabin Crafted

Author: Cabincrafted1

  • A Beautiful Day

    We have had so much rain, that the occasional day or two without are such a treat. Today was the second in a row and the last for a while. Yesterday the pretty day was used for outdoor chores. Today, we took a walk. Because of back issues suffered by my love, when we go out together, we keep to smooth surfaces and not too much elevation changes. Between Blackburg and Christiansburg is an old rail grade that has been paved with asphalt, ideal for joggers, bikers, the occasional skateboarder, and lots of walkers, powered conveyance is not allowed. Because of it’s location and access points on and off of it, if you walk near lunch time, you see lots of business folks walking on their lunch break. In some areas, you see houses and parts of Virginia Tech Campus, other parts are in the woods or through the edge of farm fields. I’m not sure how long it is now, as they have extended it in two directions since I moved here. Today, we left from the original start, near the public library branch that for the first 1/2 mile passes between houses, then opens up to agricultural study fields and between a lacrosse and cricket field and the local small plane airport. We walk about 2 to 2 1/2 miles.

    This time of year, the spring flowers on the banks behind the houses are beginning to peak through.

    There was a bee busy with the crocus. I have wanted a pussy willow since I moved here and have tried to root it unsuccessfully. Maybe I will order one already rooted this year.

    Up on our farm, nothing is blooming yet. I don’t even see daffodil shoots, but the iris, day lilies, and Autumn Joy sedum are beginning to emerge. Later, the forsythia, lilacs, and dogwood will bloom, but not for another 6 to 8 weeks. I fear that the warm winter will cause the fruit trees to bloom early and then get hit with a spring frost. I noticed that the garlic and potato onions are up a few inches and they too might get burned back, but if they have established roots from the bulbs, will recover. If the fruit trees bloom early and get hit by frost, we won’t get Asian pears and apples this summer. That will be a disappointment.

    I’m glad we got out. Tomorrow will still be in the low 50’s, but rainy. Then we have cooler cloudy days, a couple with sunshine (maybe) but much colder, then back to rain again. When it isn’t rainy, we will add layers and gloves and go on out and walk. It is good for both of us.

  • Weekend doings!

    Our weekend started with a luxury dinner out for our Valentine Anniversary. There are few nice restaurants in our nearest big town. There are more in the nearest city, about an hour away, but this was the first February 14 that we have spent at home that it hasn’t snowed, so we don’t make reservations that far from home. Last year, we went to the same restaurant and having been there several times before we expected a good dinner and left very disappointed. They post their menu a few weeks prior and we gave them another chance. The starter, salad, and dessert are set, but they had a choice of three entrees, beef, salmon, and pasta, each well presented. Hubby got the beef, I got the pasta and we were both pleased.

    Yesterday was a quiet day, not much accomplished but some knitting and spinning, some laundry. The coop needed cleaning as did the house. There was no straw or woodchips to use in the coop, we needed dog food, chicken food, and bird seed but didn’t want to go out yesterday.

    After a lunch out today, a trip to Tractor Supply took care of all those needs and the coop was cleaned, sprayed down inside and refilled with fresh pine chips. Tractor Supply had 6 pounds of Black Oil Sunflower seed for $7, but 40 pounds for $10. Not sure how I would deal with 40 pounds, the bargain was too great. Every extra bucket is filled, along with the bird seed container and the bag still is about 1/3 full. The house was vacuumed, dusted, and the kitchen cleaned. Between jobs and preparing dinner, the fiber that was being spun on the spindle was finished and a few rows knit on the scarf.

    Left is the fat little cop of singles, Merino, bamboo, and silk from Inglenook Fibers; Close to You being knit from Lollipop Yarn, and the fat little cop of the plied yarn. Looks like I’m stuck in a color warp.

    The warm winter and lengthening days have upped egg production from 1 to 3 a day, now getting 4 to 6 a day and the yolks are taking on a nice healthy golden orange. This is the first winter wince I’ve been raising hens that there have been any winter eggs.

  • Another Year

    Forty two years ago tonight, we were celebrating at a rehearsal dinner and then slightly tipsy rehearsal for our wedding the next day. He proposed on New Year’s Eve and decided that Valentine’s Day was a good wedding date. If he forgot it, he said he would be in double trouble. His proposal came the night we got back from a week long ski trip to Vermont, my first real ski trip, and I had separated my shoulder on the first day and continued to ski for the rest of the week. As soon as the bus returned, we went to the Emergency Room, had my shoulder Xrayed and left in a sling. We went out for an early adult beverage and home to spend the evening alone. Our honeymoon plan was for another shorter ski trip and a lot of home therapy was done to make sure I would be physically able.

    Our wedding was a small church affair on the evening of February 14. An at home reception at my parent’s home. We did get our ski trip as Valentine’s Day that year was close enough to President’s Day weekend, that neither of us had to take too much time from work.

    That day was a good beginning, 3 children, 8 grandchildren, several house moves, a few pets, a few vehicles and we are a retired old married couple now, as happy now as the night he put this ring of hearts on my finger.

    If he asked again, I would say “Yes” again. I love you, Babe. Happy Anniversary and Happy Valentine’s Day, love.

  • A Typical Saturday

    A Typical Saturday

    Most Saturday’s are started with breakfast out, followed by the Farmer’s Market. Yesterday, we debated whether that would be a good idea as it snowed lightly all day, mostly horizontally as the wind howled, then enough after the sun went down to wreck havoc on some of our local roadways as they weren’t expecting it and the roads weren’t pretreated. When we got up this morning, there was barely a dusting in the grass and on the cars, the gravel drive was clear and we headed out. Any snowfall that slickened the steep roads last night was gone and it looked like the salt truck had been through even on our mountain road. After a fresh bagel at our local shop, a brisk stop at the Farmer’s Market for some weekly goodies we headed home. Just in time to meet up with our local blacksmith friend who has done some work for us lately.

    I have previously described our Rumford style fireplace. It has a floor vent size hole that goes from the front of the firebox to the outdoors. We immediately put hardware cloth at the outer opening to prevent it from becoming a mouse freeway, but the air still had free movement. For all the years we have lived here, a piece of 1 x 6 board has sat on that opening when no fire was burning, and it has been replaced numerous times when someone tossed it in the fire as kindling. There is also another rectangular hole, not quite as large that had a hinged flap so that ashes could be scooped down it, but that made an awful mess when they fell a whole floor down and didn’t hit the bucket at the bottom. More than a decade ago, at a local craft fair, we bought a 3 piece hand forged fireplace tool set that lacked tongs.

    This is where our local blacksmith friend enters the picture. First, he made us a metal cover for the floor vent sized hole and put a handle on it to make it easy to remove from the vent when we are going to light a fire. Last time we had the chimney cleaned, the sweep glued the door on the ash dump shut, but the fireplace heat broke it free again and so Josh welded it shut for us. About a week or so ago, we had a fire going and a log rolled over the vent hole which allowed smoke to start entering the living room and I wrestled with the log with a poker and the ash shovel, prompting a message to Josh about making us some tongs. He met us with us today because he finished them.

    He made the tongs to match the older tools. And he makes both hammer in and screw in hooks, hanging hooks, shawl and hair pins, and other metal work as well as teaching blacksmithing locally. If you need anything, you can seek him out on his Facebook page JJL Forge.

    Most of the morning chores are done and I am working on spinning the alpaca/merino and Cormo rolags I blended yesterday morning on my blending board. I have about 2/3 of them spun so far. I didn’t weigh it first, but I think it was close to 4 ounces of fiber.

    I don’t know what it will become, but whatever it is will be soft.

  • And then the rains came

    And then the rains came

    It started raining night before last, rained hard most of yesterday, all night to the point of interfering with hubby’s Direct TV signal, and all day today. It would have been a good day to not go out, but there was a necessary errand and PT to deal with. I was also told by the man who loves me that I was spending too much time alone with him and neglecting my friends, so off to town we went.

    It was raining too hard when we left to hear our creek, but the big creek at the bottom of Mt. Lake Rd. was very high. We drove through periods of heavy rain, areas of fog, but no incidents on the way in. About the time we got in town, they announced the schools that had opened today, several systems in areas prone to flooding didn’t even open, were all closing hours early. When I worked for the school system, we had a rain like this that flooded a couple of areas and they couldn’t get the kids that lived beyond the flooded areas home on the buses. They were returned to school and parents had to find an alternate route around the flood or get someone else to pick up those children.

    Errand was done, we went and bought me a rain jacket as my old one had been discarded a year or so back when all the seam taping came off. The seams were resealed, but the ones around my arms and the back of my neck were irritating and it leaked. The store had a variety of colors, mostly nature colors like blue, green, black, white, but they had red, bright cardinal red. I can wear it in the woods and be seen.

    About an hour and a half was spent with a small contingent of the spinning group, none of us brave enough to bring our wheels out in the pouring rain, so today we were a knitting group, but some socialization was fit into the day before PT time. Because that was late today, he picked me up and I sat in the waiting room until a client/patient spent 15 minutes pacing back and forth just off my toes while reading on her phone. Not able to think of a polite way to ask her to stop or to redirect her pacing down the hallway leading to the PT room, I just left and returned to the car.

    When we got back to our driveway, we passed it to see what the two creeks on our property were doing. The big one flows all the time to some extent, down the edge of our property to a rock cliff formed by a sink hole. The creeks disappear underground in that flat, but today the flat was flooded and the creeks were running down the old creek bed that it used before the hole opened. The upper one is a run off creek and only flows when we have significant rain for a day or so. It was roaring and had jumped it’s banks, creating a second flow that was washing out the edge of the road. In an effort to prevent that, we went over the nearly rusted away front fence to see what the issue was. It looked like all of the fall leaves from around that creek had gotten caught at a bend. To deal with it, I removed my shoes and socks, rolled up my jeans and climbed in the creek bed to about mid calf and scooped soggy leaves out of the channel. Then we gathered rocks, one so large I had to flip it end over end from up hill to try to dam off the new channel that was being formed and get the creek back in it’s bed away from the road. My feet and hands were frozen by the time we quit and got back in the car. After the rain stops, I will go back up there with a shovel and garden fork and clear the rest of the leaves and build that edge back up so the creek doesn’t wash out the gravel road. I did see the new shoots of the day lilies that I planted up there from my Dad’s garden when we first bought the property. I planted three clusters and the creek movement and their spread has moved them down both sides of that creek. After my Dad passed, I did go back up there and bring a clump of them back down to the day lily bed at the house.

    The poor chickens never got out today, with 3 to 4″ of rain expected, I knew their pen would be a muddy mess and they are too stupid to not get soaked. They were given a scoop of scratch and a bucket of water in the coop. After the rain stops, tomorrow, I think, and before the snow flurries of Saturday night, I will break up more of the big round bale of hay and get a good layer down in the bare areas where I slip and slide trying to deal with letting them in and locking them up. I figure if I keep doing that, eventually the pen will be level inside or I will have barrow and barrows of great compost for the vegetable garden.

  • Projects, more project ideas

    While the yarn dries, and some parchment colored Coopworth is being spun, I hope worsted weight this time, I needed a pocket project for today. While looking through my remnants of yarn, I found another small skein of the merlot colored Coopworth that I used for the last mitts, and a partially used skein of the same yarn. A project was started. The Owl hat required Aran weight yarn, the two skeins, held together produced about Aran weight, so I cast on for the hat yesterday afternoon instead of warping the loom.

    I got about halfway through the owl last night and finished the owl and started on the decreases while in the PT waiting room today. First they were 30 minutes late taking him in, plus the 30ish minutes he was in the back. The owl will stand out more when the white buttons for the eyes are added.

    This gave me the idea that maybe instead of random hats, I could do ones with cats, frogs, alpacas, and owls on them. Since hats and mitts are going to be the primary knit items in the shop and for the fall and winter markets, they might sell better than plain or striped ones.

    Larger wraps, cowls, and scarves will be woven.

    It seems that more and more people are doing soap and other body products at events, so other than my B&B contract, I may just return to making soap for family and friends that have a particular one they like or limiting myself to just a few favorites for the markets.

  • Productive Week

    Productive Week

    Today is a glorious break in a gray and wet week. We have had snow flurries, freezing rain, and drizzle this past week and two weeks of similar weather in the forecast. It has been calm wind wise until today, with warmer temperatures and sunshine. With the calm we had a fire scare earlier in the week when the farmer not immediately behind us, an area that is still wooded, but just beyond him in an area that has been logged, graded, and planted for pasture lit off first one, then several more large burn piles creating billowing smoke that looked too close to us that we feared was our nearer neighbor’s woods. We contacted him and after sending him photos, he left work to come check and let us know where the fires were and that they were being monitored with a track hoe.

    There has been smoke down there for 6 days now from various piles, but at least we know the woods below us aren’t on fire.

    Through the gray, drizzle and three waiting rooms days, I have been stitching through several smaller skeins of hand spun yarn that I had, making a hat and three pair of fingerless mitts, and finishing the Tool Box cowl from the mini skeins.

    Can you tell I’m a lefty, always wearing the mitt on my right hand to take the photo? The Merlot colored mitts still need to be washed and blocked, they were finished last night. After trying on the cowl that I had made for me, I decided I’m not a cowl person, so I put a price tag on it and put it in the shop with the other items.

    While perusing patterns, I found a cute hat with an owl on the front. Since there isn’t much yarn left that isn’t designated for weaving, I returned to spinning some gray/brown Coopworth last night. It would be a perfect color for the hat, but the pattern will require me to do some math as it calls for Aran weight yarn, this is likely to be DK weight when plied.

    Since I’m not a Super Bowl watcher, I only know one team that is playing and have no allegiance to them, I think I will warp the loom and start a cowl or scarf with a pattern instead of plain weave and continue spinning the Coopworth so I have a pocket project to work on during waiting room visits this week. Since we try to group our errands and lunch out around hubby’s PT visits, I have a 30-45 minute waiting room session a couple times a week, so I need a new pocket project.

  • What Am I Worth?

    Generally, when I spin and knit, I don’t track my time very carefully, if at all. I know it takes me about an hour to spin an ounce of fingering weight yarn on my wheel. An ounce on drop spindles is much longer.

    I am not a speed knitter, but not a slouch either and the size of the yarn and needles affect how much I can get done in an hour.

    These factors always stop me cold when I am pricing an item of hand spun, hand knit for my shop. A hat of worsted weight yarn might take me about 4 hours to knit if it is a simple pattern, like this one, a slouch hat of stockinette, garter, and ribbing. The yarn was worsted to aran, about 3 ounces, so a couple of hours of spinning and plying. A total of 6 or 7 hours of my time plus the cost of the wool to spin.

    This cowl took me close to 24 hours to knit. The three skeins that were hand spun in the cowl were done on drop spindles. The fiber and the mill spun mini skeins were all gifts or bonuses that came with other purchases, so it was just time involved.

    Total hours on this fingering weight cowl, maybe 35. I doubt that this cowl will go in the shop, but there is one in the shop of silk, drop spindle spun, my own pattern design. Paying myself slave labor wages of a couple of dollars an hour, it would have to be priced at more than $70-75. People will look, comment that it is lovely, that they can’t spend that much money on a gift or on themselves, and walk on, at least in the area that we live.

    The shawl in the header photo is the one I did from the Shave ‘Em to Save ‘Em challenge yarns. It has 8 different breeds hand spun on the wheel. Each breed had to be at least 4 ounces, but the white center triangle was 15 ounces and the light gray around the edge and one stripe was 8 ounces. That was countless hours of spinning and then probably near 50-60 hours to knit it. It isn’t for sale, it couldn’t be. How could I ever price it?

    This is my conundrum. My hook is that my items are hand spun, hand knit, or hand woven garments, so I don’t want to work with inexpensive big box store yarn. My body products are handmade with organic ingredients. Because the body products are generally priced under $10, they sell at craft shows and holiday markets but spinning, knitting, and weaving are what I do for pleasure.

    So how do you decide what you are worth? Or how much loss you are willing to take to continue the crafts? And none of this takes into account what the equipment costs are to do these crafts.

  • That kind of day.

    Sundays are quiet days. This Sunday is gray and gloomy, cold, just at freezing but not wet. A good day for sitting by a fire with a cup of tea, a good book, or my knitting. A good day for stew simmering on the stove and bread rising for baking.

    To build a fire in the living room, a fire needs to be built in the wood stove in the basement or we get a downdraft on that side of the chimney and smoke in the basement.

    That fire heats up the basement, where we keep the thermostat set below the ambient temperature of the ground as the basement is set three sides underground and the fourth side south facing. Having a fire there heats the basement above the temperature that we set the living area thermostats and the rising heat up the stairwell keeps the thermostat for the main part of the house from turning the heat on, and it heats the floors enough to help keep the main level of the house warmer.

    The living room fireplace is a Rumford design that has an actual open vent from outside to bring in air and the tall curved back and smoke shelf to prevent downdrafts, projects heat back into the house. This is about as efficient as an open fireplace can be. When we aren’t sitting in front of it monitoring the burn, we have both screen doors and glass doors that can be closed for safety. Fortunately, we have never had to rely on these two sources of heat for more than a handful of days from power outage due to an ice storm. With the woodstove, a gas grill, and a camp stove, cooking wasn’t a problem then. Water was, as we are on a well, but we have a 4500 gallon cistern system that catches rain and snow melt from the roof and downhill from it is a gravity fed yard hydrant so water for toilets and animals can be obtained there. Purchased water for cooking and drinking for us if we haven’t filled bottles. Generally, the basement freezer has a dozen or so gallon bottles frozen in it to help keep food when the power is out. Since we don’t hunt and don’t buy perishables in bulk, there is usually not too much to lose.

    We love our retirement farm and are truly fortunate in having acres of grass that can be hayed and young men who want the hay for their livestock that take care of mowing and baling it and in exchange for the hay, keep areas brush hogged and this year keeping us in firewood by cutting an oak that fell at the edge of the hay field two springs ago, split that wood and brought it up to our woodpile. They were going to stack it too, but three grand kids that were here awaiting a holiday meal stacked most of it for us. We don’t abuse their offers of help, but know that if there was really a task beyond our capabilities, we could call one of them and they would make time to take care of it. Country life is certainly different than the suburban life of my working years.

  • An ark, an ark, my knits for an ark

    Whew, we went from 12 degrees f a few mornings ago to 40 and torrential rain. It was low teens 3 nights in a row (no frozen pipes thank goodness) and the days weren’t even reaching freezing then it changed as Virginia will at any season. There was a winter storm warning last night causing schools to delay or close for no reason as it never was cold, and it rained. The wind blew and it rained some more. Still is raining hard. Without an attic to buffer sound, we hear it when it rains hard. Not the pinging on a metal roof like in the barn, but it is still a metal roof with insulation.

    When we went to dinner and then to daughter’s house for grandson’s birthday dinner on Sunday, we discussed having another mother/daughter movie date, taking her kids this time, to see Call of the Wild when it comes out the end of February. We had both watched the trailers and wanted to see it. It has been many decades since I had read it, and in our home library is a leather bound copy of Jack London books, so as soon as I finished the ebook I had out from the library, I started reading it. I’m not sure how true to the book the movie will be, but I am looking forward to it.

    Today’s rain allowed me to finish it.

    The Toolbox Cowl is progressing. I sat in a waiting room again yesterday and knit. Work has been done on it at night. I’m on the last stockinette section, the second to last skein. There will be one more Diamond tweed section with this skein and the final skein and the last Garter Rib section. I’m not sure I should have used the more brightly colored variegated one, but I think I like it anyway.

    With lots of Corriedale, Merino, silk, and bamboo in the skeins, it is soft. It shouldn’t take me too much more time to complete. I read the Yarn Harlot’s blog and she posts finishing mitten and cowls in a day. Wow, she must be a speed knitter.

    Tomorrow is going to be chilly and party sunny, maybe I can finally get the coop cleaned out. Today a bale of pine chips was purchased because straw seems to be scarce. The old straw is going in the run, the rain has made the area just inside the gate a hazard to my health and safety. There really isn’t a level spot on our property, but I’m not sure I picked the right spot to put that coop when we got it. With the bare scratched earth and a couple inches of rain or a coat of ice, I can slide forever. Perhaps I should put some rough pavers from the gate to the pop door.