Cabin Crafted

Category: crafting

  • Holiday’s approach

    November is birthday month in our family, two grands, stepmom, nephew, daughter, and me, plus Thanksgiving. November and early December are the months that various Holiday Craft Markets occur, ones I participate in and ones I visit looking for gifts. I hate to shop, maybe abhor is a better word and some years I have a genius idea for the grands, not this year. They range in age now from 16 to less than a month. I have done fleece blankets in favored themes with books, hoodies and books, hand knit hats and books, but I’m out of ideas. I don’t know interests of them all and I’m trying to match age to known interests and still keep a reasonable budget. I am at an age where I don’t want more stuff in the house and have been making regular donation runs, and a shared yard sale with daughter, so I’m no help in answering the “what do you want” question to me. I want my family around me. I want visits to and from them, I want to know they are all healthy and successful, that they are achieving to their abilities.

    In the spirit of the holidays, I will have two of our children and two of our grands for Thanksgiving dinner, right in the middle of the birthday week. And I am preparing for the only Holiday Market in which I am participating this year. My soap supply was basically depleted and to make some more holiday festive, I made three batches this week, actually 4, but one was a nightmare failure that set up too quickly and the colorant did weird things to the round bars. There are squares of goat milk, oatmeal, and honey soap with a “frosting” layer of finely ground roasted cacao blended in to a little, round bars of rosemary scented soap with a bit of green colorant blended unevenly (on purpose), and traditional shaped bars of peppermint scented soap with red colorant marbled in. I am working on a buttoned cowl in light mint green Merino handspun wool, and over the past week infused comfrey I grew into Avocado oil and made tins of salve to add to the other salves available. There will be hats, fingerless mitts, a couple cowls, some mittens, and a couple shawls and scarves available for people to purchase as gifts.

    Along with these efforts, I am knitting a little stuffed frog to go with a book, spinning wool for my Breed Blanket Challenge, and actually cooking and prepping in the kitchen, not just making products. At Farmer’s Market last week, I purchased 3 good sized Daikon radishes, a white, a red, and a purple and they are fermenting on the counter for kimchi, my favorite kind of kimchi.

    The peppers tented with heavy plastic did not survive the three nights in the mid 20’s, the greens are hanging in there, maybe they should be tented later this week when the temps are again going to plunge. It is nice to be able to pick some fresh goods still from the garden and salad and herbs from the hydroponics. Some of the lettuce is beginning to get bitter, so I should restart those cells with a new batch of seed. Winter is coming, life moves on, I am glad to be able to still preorder some produce from the Farmer’s Market at least until the middle of December, and get meats, breads, some cheese year round. Projects need to be done, so back to work.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Opportunities

    I haven’t done any living history since March, but next weekend, an opportunity is there. Saturday is at Wilderness Road Regional Museum, and Sunday will be small group tours of Ingles Tavern at Ingles Ferry (the Ingles of Mary Draper Ingles fame) by reservation. I can’t do both and will do the Sunday at Ingles Tavern, not taking a wheel, just a basket of fluff, my tools, and a couple of spindles. I can sit in the shade of one of the huge trees or walk around and spin while groups come and go.

    Conversation about this opportunity also initiated discussion about doing a class of some sort at the museum. As I have already done salve making, and spinning, we will offer an old fashioned lard soap class to be taught by me at the museum on August 12 from 5:30-7. Information will be forthcoming on their Facebook page and website. There will be a small cost to cover materials, but you will go home with a bar of soap and the museum will have soap to sell once it cures.

    After such a dry spell of not doing any of these activities, I love that this has presented itself to go along with the Heritage Day sponsored by Montgomery Museum on August 21, where I will demonstrate spinning on spindles and a wheel as well as vend, and the following weekend getting to go to a fiber retreat, visit with friends, spin, socialize, and set up a table of items to vend.

    In the meantime, I’m finishing up a square for my blanket, not a wool I want close to my skin, so definitely not on an edge. I love when I finally have enough stitches to knit it on to a 16″ needle instead of doing magic loop on a 32″ needle.

    And I gave up on the mitts, frogged them and am using that yarn to knit a small shawl.

    I will get back to mitts using finer yarn and a single ball, it was getting so tangled I made an error that wasn’t worth the effort to try to fix since I only had about 2″ of the mitts done.

    The Tour de Fleece challenge ends today with final posts due by Tuesday morning, mine is already in and tomorrow we start a mini challenge to go through the end of July. I have 8 beautiful ounces of Falklands wool, I will begin a spin on it with one of my Jenkins spindles to finish out the month, maybe be able to use it during August, and it will go with me to the retreat. I don’t want to use it for the demonstrations as it is a dyed braid and I generally use natural colored wools for demonstrations and washed locks if I am going to card or comb as part of the event.

    On an unrelated side note. When I went to gather eggs this afternoon, I checked the potato patch and dug up 4 medium egg sized Kennebeck potatoes that were roasted with rainbow carrots, kohlrabi, and chicken breasts for dinner. It looks like it is about time to dig that bed and store some spuds for good eating. I also bought a couple of pounds of red beets at the Farmer’s Market yesterday and boiled them to have the first of the season beets. I don’t know why I don’t grow them myself.

  • Successes and Epic Failures

    I began making soap many years ago after a friend who makes great soaps offered to teach me. Have I thanked you lately, Cat? A great afternoon spent and a batch of soap to keep along with some of the necessary tools and a new skill came home with me that day. I subsequently have taught a few other folks to make soap and make sure they go home with some supplies, a batch of soap, and a new skill. I can’t count how many batches I have made at this point, but it is in the dozens. For the past three days, I have made two batches a day. I limited it to two because I wanted to use the loaf molds, not wanting to spoon soap batter into shaped molds, so I was having to wait 24 hours to unmold, wash the molds, dry them, then make two more batches. I have only had a few epic failures, one when I forgot and measured by volume instead of weight, one when I used ground cinnamon as a colorant and the soap seized, and one of yesterday’s batches for unknown reasons.

    Five successful batches curing in the guest room.
    One epic fail, no that isn’t french toast in syrup.

    I could tell that this batch wasn’t quite right as it took forever to come to trace and even then, the consistency was off. It was a batch of Goatmilk, Oatmeal, and Honey soap. I know the goatmilk powder was old, but used it as I didn’t have any fresh milk (I have used the powder before), maybe the match between the temperature of the oil and caustic liquid were off. Whatever the reason, this batch separated and is still caustic. The container will be well wrapped in newspaper, double bagged, and disposed of, it is unsalvagable. If I want a batch of that type of soap, I will have to purchase more goatmilk. I wish I had checked it before we went to the Farmer’s Market.

    All the equipment has been cleaned up to store away, it may come back out if I can get some goat milk. The equipment sits out overnight so the next day I am cleaning up soap, not caustic soap batter. It is easier on the hands and the septic system to do it that way. There are two pots, the immersion blender, a couple of plastic scrapers that get wiped down with newpaper or paper towels and allowed to saponify overnight.

    Day before yesterday, I noticed the onion tops were folding down so the onions were pulled and left on the soil surface overnight. Yesterday, pop up storms were forecast, so the onions were gathered and brought into the garage to finish curing. It was a nice mix of red and yellow onions, some as large as softballs, some barely larger than the bulbs that were planted, two that were showing some stem rot were peeled, cut, and used in two subsequent dinners. Yesterday also produced the first two cucumbers. I guess pickle making will occur soon. Last year I made so many fermented and refrigerator pickles that the weight of the jars, broke the 13 year old support glides that hold the produce bin in the refrigerator. That part was ordered and I replaced it, but I guess this year, most of the pickles will be canned so they are shelf stable to keep the weight off the refrigerator shelves.

    As soon as all of the stems have dried and the skins have papered, these will be moved to the basement shelves to join the garlic that was spread on the hardware cloth shelf down there yesterday.

    When I began raising a few chickens for our eggs, I started with too many and ended up with a lot of randy young males, thus learning that “freezer camp” was the solution. I kept one young rooster so we could maintain a sustainable flock without having to purchase chicks and I banded their legs so we could keep track of ages with the idea of never keeping more than a dozen birds at a time. A few years ago, after having several batches of chicks hatch and all of them falling victim to predators of some sort, some as tiny chicks, some as “teenagers”, I decided to just keep females and replace them every two or three years as their egg production dropped. This was the year to replace them and “all” pullet chicks were purchased in February. By May, it was clear that two of the pullets, the two Oliver eggers were roos, not pullets. I enjoy the female birds, most are friendly and the pullets are beginning to lay small colorful eggs now, but the two young roosters are driving me crazy. A crowing rooster first thing in the morning doesn’t bother me, these two compete all day long every day. I’m ready for them to be gone. They are beautiful birds, but oh so annoying. When the pullets were reaching the point where I thought they would begin to lay eggs, I put two of the mature hens in with them to help teach them where to lay each day. When freezer camp time occurs soon, I have to get them back out of the coop and into the Palace with the roosters and other mature hens. I thought this would be easy, but they are also Olive eggers and in the coop at night, I can’t tell them apart from a couple of the Marans. They have green legs, but the Marans have black legs and they can’t be distinguished by flashlight, both have black feathers, and some of the Marans have the gold necklace. This may be a challenge, but the coop really isn’t large enough for 15 birds. It really isn’t large enough for the 13 pullets.

  • Preparations

    Events start up in August, two of them within a week. Trying to get goods for my shop prepared requires beginning early as soap takes a month to 6 weeks to fully cure and it takes time to spin and knit items. My focus in the first half of the year has been on spinning challenges and not a lot of items have been knit, a mini shawl here, a hat there. This month’s theme was to challenge ourselves to spin, ply, and create an item. To challenge myself, I learned a new technique called Ply on the Fly where you spin singles and ply immediately. Learning this produced a thicker yarn than I usually spin and ply, but it was perfect for knitting a hat. A bit of left over yarn from knitting blanket squares gave me enough to add a couple of stripes.

    In my scrap bin, I uncovered most of three skeins from spinning for the Shave ‘Em 2 Save ‘Em event, parts of those skeins were used in my half hap shawl that I knit. Those three wools coordinated well, so I used them to knit a cowl.

    And then divided what was left from them to knit mitts two at a time, so I am shuffling 6 balls of wool.

    The past two days have also been spent making soap, a project that I have neglected since last November. Yesterday I made 20 bars, today, 20 more, and tomorrow, at least 10 more will be made, perhaps 20 more. Prices for the ingredients have increased dramatically. Some of the oils were provided by Son 1 and DIL in part in payment for soap I made for them and in part as a gift and that helps.

    I have been striving to eliminate non biodegradable disposables in packaging my products. One of my favorite moisturizers is Cocoa Butter which because of it’s crumbly texture is difficult to use, but a bit of formulation experimentation, I came up with a lotion bar, but it still would crumble when it got thin. I found some cardboard tubes and created lotion tubes that apply like a deodorant stick and do not crumble.

    Each tube holds 2 ounces and when used up, the tube is biodegradable.

    With a supply of herbal salves, some yarn, and products being produced, I hope I will have enough to make a nice display. I will have to slow down my Breed Blanket square making and focus more on items for the shop. The blanket already has 31 squares which will make it 40 X 48″ and there are still 5 months so a minimum of 5 more squares to make. That would be a 48 X 48″ blanket even if I only make one a month.

  • Challenges

    I have mentioned before that I participate in a couple of spinning challenges during the year. For the past year, my focus has been with a social media group that spins on the Jenkins Turkish spindles that I love to use. The spindles let me spin finer yarn and slow my production down to about 4 ounces, 1 skein a month. In January two different challenges were initiated with the group, one of them a year long challenge. The monthly challenges, most months allow double dipping with the year long one. The year long challenge is a Breed Blanket Project to pick a single pure breed of sheep wool and spin enough on a Jenkins spindle, to knit a square that at the end of the year will be sewn together to produce a blanket at least big enough for a baby blanket. I decided that I would tackle two breeds a month and try to make a blanket large enough for an extra cover on the bed. Most of the wool that I have gathered are natural colors, whites, fawn, gray, and darker browns. A few are pure breeds that are dyed braids. I started the blanket using one pattern, but didn’t care for the way it looked.

    Mostly, I didn’t care that each block was attached as I knit which meant that I had to be more careful of planning ahead, and realized that I had started with darker ones which might end up with the blanket very unbalanced with the colors. Then, one of my favorite pattern designers offered a sale on their patterns and I fell in love with one of them. This meant taking apart everything that I had already done and rewinding the wool into individual balls. The new pattern is a center out square which has required that I learn a new skill, doing a pinhole cast on. I finished square 4 of reknitting it and I still have to pull up a slow motion lesson on how to do it. Maybe I will eventually get the point where the video is no longer necessary to get started, but I really like the blocks that the pattern produces and each block only takes a couple of hours to knit. I hope by the end of the month to be back where I started, but the new blocks are 8 inches square instead of 10 so I will have to knit more blocks to get the size I want.

    Next month’s monthly challenge won’t allow me to double dip as the fiber has to be silk or blended with silk, so I may not be able to get as many done for the blanket, but the requirement is only for one. If I have to finish it after the end of the year to make it as large as I want, that will be okay too.

    There will be a lot more sewing the squares together in the end, but I can lay them out in a pleasing way to make it work.

    Now on to knitting the three remaining. I got two done yesterday. Next up is the one from yarn in the lower right corner of the first post. It is interesting to see how it looks different in the new squares. The lower left of the two pictures is the same yarn.

  • A Rough Start

    This week start has not been a smooth one. For some time, we have observed the “newer” of our two vehicles, it is only 13 years old compared to the almost 16 year old one, has been not running well and leaking oil. We wouldn’t drive it farther than town and kept our fingers crossed that if it broke down, that daughter would be available to get us home or to a rental car location. Because it is the larger vehicle, we loaded the trash and recycling in it yesterday morning to take down to the “Convenience Center.” Don’t you love that as a name for the fenced in area with the dumpsters and recycle trailer boxes in it? As soon as hubby put the beast in reverse, I could smell the clutch and suggested we take both cars and leave the Xterra at our local shop for diagnosis and state inspection. The decision was made to take it the next time we had to go out and not yesterday. The garbage was dispatched, the package I had that needed to be dropped off at the USPS was dropped off, we drove into town to get lunch and a birthday card for a grandson, but didn’t make it home. As we started up the first hill, the smell got stronger, the car got slower, and before we got to the top, there were no gears that the car would go in. A call to daughter, but she was an hour away headed home. A call to the local mechanic and he sent a masked driver in their “Shuttle” van and another driver in the tow truck to haul it in. Once we get an estimate, we have to decide if a 13 year old car, leaking oil, with 246,000+ miles on it is worth the repair, leaving us at least for the moment with the 16 year old car with 240,000 miles on it as our sole transportation.

    Last night as I prepared to address the birthday card, I realized that one of my favorite pens was missing. I can’t find it anywhere. Usually it is clipped to the small leather notebook cover that I carry in my bag, but it isn’t there. Isn’t in the bag. Isn’t stuck down the cracks of my chair. It has at least temporarily gone missing. I’m sure it will turn up at some point, in a car, a pocket, or some place I normally wouldn’t set it down.

    Also yesterday as I continued to knit on my fingerless mitts, I realized that somehow, I had crossed yarn balls and both mitts were knit from one ball, linking them together with a piece of yarn too short to just cut and weave in, so I had to begin tinking (knitting backwards) for a row on one mitt and another row on both. After doing that, I decided I didn’t like the thumb gusset on the fingers down pattern as I tried one on for fit, so I pulled the needle and frogged (ripped out stitches) for many rows to get back to where the thumb stitches were picked up. Then tediously and carefully picked up the stitches again in an order that would still allow me to knit two at a time, knit a couple of rows to make sure there were no missed stitched and all the stitches were turned the right way and decided to work the wrist up vanilla pattern I always use with a classic thumb gusset that will allow me to knit a real thumb. I am probably back about to the total length I was before yesterday’s error.

    During this reknit project, the television was on to the news and talking heads that analyze everything going on and I was appalled at how a congresswoman who had been in the Capitol during last week’s siege would throw a toddler tantrum over not being allowed to carry a gun into the chambers, and how dozens of the rioters from last week and people interviewed at Trump’s bazaar charade of a visit to the Alamo and his incendiary speech there yesterday, exactly parrot his language to the exact phraseology. And they call those who don’t agree with them sheep. They call themselves patriots and true Americans, yet they attack our halls of government and threaten our lawmakers.

    Next disaster, a relatively minor one today. Lunch was prepared, just grilled cheese sandwiches still sitting on the griddle pan on the stove, the plates with pickles served out beside them and I called hubby down to eat. In reaching up to get a glass for my water, he knocked another to the Silestone counter below the cabinet and it exploded sending glass shooting across the stove top, the adjacent counter where the plates were waiting, and all over the floor. After glass was cleaned up, lunch tossed in the garbage, counter tops and griddle and dishes washed, I started over.

    On the positive side, the hydroponic herb garden that Son 2 and family gave me for Christmas has sprouted all 6 herbs. I check each day to see how much growth has occurred. The dill, thyme, and parsley are putting out secondary leaves, The mint and basils are above the rims of their planting baskets. That was such a great gift for a gardener suffering the off season doldrums that houseplants just don’t satisfy.

    Back to chores, knitting, and spinning. Hmmm, I wonder where the pen is?