Cabin Crafted

Category: farm

  • Sunday’s are for football…

    …unless you are not a fan. Whilst hubby watched the early game, I disappeared to the outdoors. Several of the empty garden beds were freed of the weed cover that had bloomed, most of the corn stalks were pulled and the weeds under them cleared, the fenceline along the east of the garden where the chicken run used to be before the dogs and free range chickens decided they could coexist was rank with horsenettle, lambs quarters, cheese head weed, and other tough coarse weeds and that fence line was cleared as well. The garden weeding involved some pruning back of the tall asparagus tops and some of the sprawling tomatillos and many tomatillos were harvested along with a hand full of red serano peppers. The orchard was mowed as I had failed to do it earlier in the week and apples picked again for another basketful to eat and another batch of applesauce to make and can. There are still hundreds of apples on the trees, they were quite prolific this year. There is nothing better than picking an apple fresh off the tree to eat while riding the mower around and through the orchard trees and mulching up the pulled weeds from the garden fence with the mower. A couple of years ago in the fall, I was helping Son 1, DIL, and GSon1 move from the rental they had been in for many years to the first home they bought and mentioned the difficulty of picking the apples and pears each year, when the last spring frost didn’t kill off the blooms. They asked me if I had a fruit picker and I must have looked like the proverbial deer in the headlights at them as I had no idea what they were talking about. During that trip when they went out for some supplies, they returned with this implement as a gift to me.

    Last year there wasn’t much fruit, so it didn’t get a lot of use, but what a boon it has been this year as buckets of pears and apples have been harvested using it. The extendable handle allows me to get to the very tops of the trees. It was a wonderful surprise gift that I have thoroughly enjoyed having.

    The Tomatillos and Seranos sat on the counter overnight as I debated whether to chop and freeze them or use them now. This morning, the decision was to make a batch of Roasted Tomatillo Salsa Verde. I had made a small batch a few weeks ago in late August, used a half pint and froze a pint. I now have canning lids and decided to can it in half pint jars. The harvest yesterday was roasted with garlic and onion, the lime juice, cilantro, and salt added and chopped in the food processor and the frozen pint thawed and added to the freshly cooked batch and heated up. Since half pint jars don’t require that I haul down the super large canner, I often use my largest stock pot, but always have an issue with a rack or layer in the bottom to keep the jars off the bottom of the pot. Today, I realized that the shallow steamer basket from the smallest stock pot fits perfectly into the larger pot and holds 7 half pint jars exactly.

    I haven’t tried to see how many pints it will hold, but this pot heats up so much faster than the huge canner pot. And 7 half pints of too spicy for me salsa were made and canned.

    This was sort of an experiment as I ordered 100 canning lids from Amazon, just prior to a friend texting me to tell me she could get me Ball brand ones from a location near her. I responded with a please, yes, get me some, but I wanted to test the Amazon lids out too. My SIL said she had very poor results from some she had gotten online. Six of the jars this morning have the Amazon lids. If they don’t seal properly, the jars can always go in the freezer, but I am hopeful as between those lids and the ones from my friend, I should have enough for next year as well.

    I still have the yarn for one more breed blanket square spun, but not knit. The last one knit has been blocked and dried and is ready to be added to the blanket. The pattern I am test knitting for another friend is being knit in some of my handspun yarn and the first mitt is complete, the second one begun. And I am continuing to spin the Ruby Blue Faced Leicester wool on a spindle.

    I still have yesterday’s apple harvest to cut and cook to can for more applesauce, but I am waiting to see how the Amazon lids do before I use us the ones from my friend. The next few days will be a return to summerish temperatures, but I think still cool enough to do a bit of canning. A pot of tomatoes need to be cooked down for pizza sauce which will require canning as well.

    It is nice to have the produce to put away, the energy returned to do it, and the time to can and craft in the early fall weather.

  • Autumn is here…

    at least this week, though it is going to warm up next week, not to summer temperatures but much warmer than this week. The winter squash were all harvested and some pumpkins and gourds purchased at the nursery along with a mum, just beginning to bloom. The fall decorations in storage were brought out.

    A bit of fall decorating was done with the winter squash, some beeswax candles, and mum.

    The past few mornings have been in the low 40’s f (4.5) c and we awaken to heavy fog and glistening dew.

    The asparagus look frosted. A quick trip into Lowe’s for a tarp showed me small bundles of dried corn stalks from Canada, about 4 stalks for almost $10 each. I should go out and cut our stalks and bundle them to add to the decorations in front of the house or at the corner of the garden. I must have $100 worth out there.

    Because of the chilly nights, the houseplants that spend the summer on the front porch are being brought inside after spraying the bugs and spiders off of them with a jet of water. The move back inside also resulted in some pruning and transplanting.

    The two largest house plants and the two hanging spider plants still need to be sprayed and brought inside.

    I went out to use the line trimmer this afternoon and it is missing the bump ring, so it wouldn’t function. I am going to have to purchase a new one. I want to repair the wood wheelbarrow that my Dad made for me about 2 decades ago and fill it with fall color.

    A nice afternoon walk away from town today showed lots of fungi and greenery that benefitted from the rain this week.

    I was happy to see several patches of running cedar (Diphasiastrum digitatum) or fan clubmoss growing in the woods. Though it lacks legal protection it is becoming more rare due to destruction of it’s habitat and over gathering.

    This morning, I began the second test knit of the mitts. I went down a needle size and extended the cuff on this pair. The gray handspun yarn is showing off the design much better.

    My knitting gauge must be much looser than the pattern designer.

    It is nice to be beyond the hottest weather, but I’m not looking forward to the cold months ahead. Spring and Fall are my favorite seasons with the milder temperatures. The nursery today had fig plants and mine that I transplanted into a half barrel wasn’t looking very good. I had hoped to bring it in to the garage for the winter, but it was already so pot bound, that I dug it in to the walled garden below the southwest exposure of the stone retaining wall. I will shield it with heavy gauge plastic and mulch when freezing temperatures are expected. It formed about a dozen and a half figs this year, but none of them came to maturity. Maybe it will be happier in the ground in the sheltered location where it will get regular watering during the summer.

    The hydroponic gardens are sprouting.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • From one type of busy to another

    The heat finally broke today! I don’t think it got to 80 or just barely. We even took a walk. The past few weeks we have had Grandson 1 in residence, beginning with a basketball camp for a weekend, followed by having him here to visit and help out a bit. During his stay, we took a rail to trails 17+ mile bike ride on the Virginia Creeper Trail and took his almost 10 year old female cousin too. Another day we went to a very dry Falls of Dismal for a swim, there were still a couple pools deep enough for him to squat and immerse. Friday night, his Dad arrived for the weekend and toted down 3 kayaks on the top of his little car. Those kayaks were ours when we lived in Virginia Beach and often went kayaking, then they moved to the mountains with us and visited Claytor Lake and the New River a few times. Later those kayaks which weren’t getting much use here were driven to Son 1’s house as he could access the Shenandoah River and have gotten much use. Yesterday, those three kayaks, daughter’s two tandem sit on top kayaks and 7 of us ranging in age from 9 to 78 years old launched on the New River and floated a 5 mile section with a class 1 rapids. It was hot even on the water unless the breeze blew, but it was a great time. I enjoyed being back in the yellow boat with the yellow paddle I used to use.

    The kayaks were loaded back up in the late afternoon for the trip back north today.

    Before we left yesterday, Grandson helped me finish picking the peaches from our tree. We brought in a plastic tub full, most in decent shape to put in the fruit bowl, sent more than a dozen home with them, but the rest were very ripe, bruised, or had some damage. After they left, I began processing peaches. Excited that we finally got real fruit from the peach tree.

    Three different peach jams were in the plan. I got the Peach Sriracha jam done and a second batch peeled and cut and realized it was time to prepare dinner for Daughter and her two kiddos who came over this evening, so that batch was doused in a bit of lemon juice and stashed in the refrigerator. After they left, the second batch became Ginger Peach jam and while it was processing, the last batch was peeled and cut and a batch of chunky peach jam was cooked and processed. The jars are all sitting on a towel on the kitchen counter until tomorrow and all the sticky peach juice has been wiped up. All three batches are low sugar jams and each tasted wonderful from the warm samples.

    We will never eat that much, so I’m sure some of them will find their way to other homes. If the forecast holds true, we have several more milder days and a bit more rain that we finally got this evening, so I will tackle the two bags of tomatoes in the freezer and the bag of tomatillos and see what they become. The tomatillos will likely become Tomatillo/Jalapeno Jam and Tomatillo simmer sauce. The tomatoes may just be canned as plain tomatoes that can be later turned into pasta or pizza sauce or added to chili. I’m sure there are more tomatoes, tomatillos, and ground cherries ready for me to pick as I haven’t harvested in a few days.

    Very soon it will be time to harvest the apples and Asian pears, before the wild critters get them all. Though canning has gotten a late start this year, it will be nice to fill up the shelves for winter.

  • Another dry summer day

    None of the predicted rain has found our farm in weeks and weeks. The grass is brown and crispy to walk on. Last weekend the temperature was mild for summer, but the heat is back. Today was HOT. We packed up the grand and headed for a location less than an hour from here that has a natural swimming hole at the base of a falls area. Depending on which sign you passed, it was either Dismal Falls, or the Falls of Dismal. The falls were so dry they was very little water going over. This is the image we were expecting.

    This is what we saw.

    I waded to upper thigh deep, Grandson 1 went all in. There were two pools deep enough for him to dunk all the way under by squatting down, but it was a nice walk in and back out, though the GPS took us well past where we should have been.

    This morning before it got hot, I did a garden harvest, bringing in Cape Gooseberry (Ground Cherries), Tomatillos, Tomatoes, and a few cucumbers. After our trip, I decided to make a batch of Ground Cherry Jam. The recipe called for 3 cups of fruit, I had only harvested 2, so back out into the heat, I harvested another cup. I expected 3 cups of fruit, a cup of sugar, and the lemon juice to make at least two cups of jam. It only made 1 1/2 cups.

    After dinner tonight, since the pot was still on the stove and still hot, I pulled out the tomatillos from the freezer, added enough to today’s harvest to make a pound and made 3 cups of Tomatillo/Jalapeno/Lime jam.

    I hope the reusable lids sealed better this time.

  • Oh Boy, stick a fork in me…

    …I’m totally done. Done staining, done in. Last night was a sleep is optional night, I may have slept for 3 hours, but was awake when it was light and it was cool out, so I donned my painting clothes, dug through old deck stain until I found a gallon and a half of penetrating oil stain, grabbed a couple of brushes, stirred up the stain with the stirring attachment to the power drill, and tackled the coop. Here is a before picture.

    The wood was so dry it soaked up a gallon and a quarter of stain. My efforts put me in a rather uncomfortable spot trying to get the peak on the pop door side, it is too high to reach from the ground because of the slope. The step stool was not level, the end with legs pushed down into the ground. That end of the coop sits on several cinder blocks while the other end is only on a thin half block. And the pop door side is the side that has a fencing roof over the pen that doesn’t go all the way to the coop roof, just high enough for us to slip in to open and close the pop door. The sides you see above are the east and south sides and lack any real overhang. When the coop has to be resided in a few years, I hope we can remedy that.

    This is after on the west side. To do the coop, I had to hold the gallon can in my right hand while I stained with my left because everytime I set it down, the hens came running over to see what kind of goodies I had in the bucket. My arms are spent. Hopefully, my efforts will give this siding a couple more years before it has to be replaced.

    A google search indicates we shouldn’t let the dogs go across the stained porch floor for 24 to 48 hours and Ranger, the Mastiff is still resistent to going through the garage. He goes to the barrier at the porch and just looks at me like why don’t you move it for me. I would be happier if the dogs would learn to use the garage, utility room access and egress regularly, it would keep muddy feet off the front porch and the wood floor in the living room.

    Tomorrow we are expecting thunderstorms. If there is any energy left in this body today, the furniture will be swept free of spider webs and dog hair, scrubbed free of bird droppings and ready to carefully carry back on to the porch tomorrow between storms.

    I meant to get paint to repaint the old milk can that sits on the front porch and forgot earlier today when we went out for a little while. We also need to get paint to repaint both sides of all the exterior doors, it has been a decade since they were done. That will take a whole day to accomplish and has to be done on a dry day that is cool enough to leave the doors ajar while they dry. It will get done eventually, but before cold weather so the house looks fresh and well maintained for the upcoming autumn weather ahead.

    The spider plants are back outside, tomorrow, the rest of the houseplants will join them. The fan is reassembled, the decorative birdhouses hung.

    And I climbed the 8 foot ladder to reach up and rehang my terra cotta Sun face that was a gift from my Sis a long time ago.

    We bought a new door mat and a matching 4 by 6 foot runner to go from the door mat to the edge of the porch to try to reduce the wear on that high traffic area. It can’t go down until tomorrow evening when it has been 48 hours since staining was done. New mats and furniture will complete the task and the porch will be usable again and the exterior maintenance other than mowing and weeding if it ever really rains again.

  • Hip, Hip, Hooray

    The deck stain for the front porch dries to touch in 1 hour at 50% relative humidity. It is a bit more than that here so it probably took a couple of hours, but many hours before last night’s much needed rain. Not enough rain, but some. Today’s rain chances dissipated, Sherman Williams is open for 6 hours on Sunday, and the stain was on sale, $16 off the gallon price, so a nice sale.

    Because the older cans were totally unusable, though they were very old. We used a bit more than half a gallon yesterday doing the rails, balusters, and kickboards, so about a half gallon left to work on the floor, so we only bought one more gallon today. After lunch, I donned my painting outfit and got on my hands and knees to brush the stain on the floor. The boards are 4″ wide and I was using a 4″ brush doing 3 boards at a pass. It took about 9 boards before my knees screamed and I sat, scooting back and forth across the 8 ‘ depth of the porch, moving backwards, every 3 boards. When I got to the post that marks the east opening of the rail, I shifted to the west end to work back toward the middle. As I ran out of the first can, my knees said no and scooting was inefficient and I remembered a square oak plant rolling stand tucked away under the hutch. It was perfect to sit on and push myself back and forth. It took about an hour and a half to get the floor done with a coat and it had to wait 4 hours before it could be recoated. The only areas that really needed two coats were the 15 boards that mark the porch exit and the 3 boards on the west end of the porch that gets full west sun year round. We had put a coat on those boards yesterday while doing the other work, so they got their second coat. After dinner, the heavy traffic entry area got a second coat.

    This presents a bit of problem as the dogs are used to coming and going through that door. The German Shepherd will go out the back door and down the deck steps or through the utility area and the garage if coaxed. The Mastiff will not do the open backed deck steps and he has been scolded so many times for going in the garage, he resists going through there even on a leash. A leash and a sliver of the chicken we were having for dinner and two adults managed to get him back inside. The dogs will have to take that route at least tonight and tomorrow morning before I am willing to remove the barricade that prevented them from coming up on the freshly stained floor. By Tuesday, I should be able to brush down the porch furniture and put it back in place, move the houseplants back to finish summering out there, and rehang the two hanging spider plants. I’m glad that job is done. The coop is remaining, but there are expected midweek showers, so it may not get done this week, unless it happens tomorrow.

    My conclusion is that knees and backs with more than 7 decades on them don’t like this kind of work.

  • Almost there, but not quite

    Up too early for a Saturday morning, but the young one had to be at Basketball Camp at 8:45 a.m. and it is a bout an hour drive over if there is no traffic, no accidents on the interstate, and they aren’t actively working on the expansion and sound barriers that involve the last 15 or 20 miles of the trip. Before we left, I had to make his lunch, pack a cooler with enough drinks and ice to last him til 5 p.m., get the 16 year old out of bed (no small feat in itself), gather laundry for a load, fix him breakfast that he could eat in the car. We made it and got back to the Farmer’s Market only a bit later than usual for a Saturday and yet many of the goodies I wanted were already sold out. Oh well, there will be another day.

    On our way home from the market, we stopped to get a few more paint brushes that hadn’t been in the oil based stain so we could start on the front porch rails, balusters, kickboards, and floor that still needed to be done with the latex stain. We don’t want to wait too long as it was freshly washed Thursday evening.

    Hubby and I got it all done except for the floor. He had to quit to go pick up the camper and when I opened the two old cans of stain, one was so separated it couldn’t be remixed even with the paint stirrer on the power drill. The other can that had never been opened except to tint it had sat too long (several years) and it was the consistency of set up pudding. We had one new can and used slightly more than half of it, so there certainly wasn’t enough to do the whole floor. We have thunderstorms, much needed, predicted for tomorrow, so I guess we will go get more stain on Monday and try to finish the job. What we got done looks good and the floor should be easier because it is flat and we don’t have to worry about drips or getting latex stain on the parts that were oil based stained. I’m hoping that by Monday or Tuesday, the staining on the house will be done for this summer. Still have the coop to go, but I will get my tall 16 year old helper to assist on that.

    I will be glad when it is done and this furniture put back on the porch.

    The pullets have been allowed to free range for the past few days. At first, they stayed very near their coop and pen. Today they have ventured over toward the house, especially if they see me come outside to set sprinklers on the flower bed and vegetable garden. I don’t want them to get as comfortable around the flower garden as the old hens did. I don’t need 13 of them digging up the bed. They are a prolific lot. I have gotten at least 8 or 9 eggs from them every day this week. That’s a lot of eggs, but there are folks that appreciate them.

    Here is a basketful, but not all of this week’s as a dozen and a half went to daughter’s house, there are a dozen in a wire basket, we have eaten nearly a dozen this week. The spindle and ball of wool were added to the basket for the last day of July spinning challenge. We had to put our spindle with something that was too many to count. I did this, then also did seashells, because there are too many of them to count. And here are gals that provided them right after they were lured in from free ranging this evening. They still aren’t real good at that skill.

    One more day of travel to and from camp and then some other chores can be done.

  • Freezer Camp

    Yesterday afternoon, Son 1 and Grandson 1 arrived. Son 1 only to stay one night, but get a lot done. We had rented a 3000 psi power washer and he scoured the front porch floor and railing. They will be repainted with the latex stain this week to finish the summer maintenance on the house. The coop still needs to be stained and I will enlist the aid of Grandson 1 who will be staying with us for about two more weeks, going to Basketball camp this weekend, then here for fun and work. He and hubby returned the washer, purchased the Gatorade that I forgot yesterday, but he will need at camp, bought an ethernet cable so Grandson 1’s computer which does not have WIFI can be used to continue with what he learned at Coding and Gaming residential camps while he was back home for a few weeks.

    While they were out running errands, Son 1 and I set up a makeshift processing station. We had designed the perfect one a few years ago, but it requires a unit of scaffolding and a walkboard and we have loaned all of ours out to a friend trying to get siding and guttering on a house they are building.

    All 8 of the old hens and the two young roosters were slated for freezer camp today. I went to the Palace to grab the first one and in the flutter, they got the door open and one of the roosters escaped into the yard. I have never seen a chicken run so fast or so far. He took off across the east field and almost crossed into the next farm. After the other 8 were done, Son 1 and I decided to see if we could get him. He would run up into the rock piles, over into the woods with a 41 year old man and a 73 year old woman running after him. Finally laughing, we decided our chase was silly and we needed lunch, so we broke down the makeshift processing station and were hosing down the grill we use to heat the dunking pot on the side burner, tying up the bag of feathers and stuff, hosing down the area we used when Roo 2 crowed. With my hearing impairment and hearing aid, I have difficulty with sound direction and was headed down to see if he can gone into the Palace looking for his ladies when Son spotted him under the pullet’s coop inside the fenced and covered run. We quickly closed the gate, grabbed the big fishing/butterfly net used as a last ditch means of catching the last few and with me holding the one area that a panicked chicken can flutter between the fence and top, he caught Roo 2. If he had waited one more minute to show himself, he would have lived another two weeks until Son 1 returned. Instead, we worked together without our station to get him processed and in the freezer. As we were working, we realized that one of the hens was polydactile.

    She had the normal 3 front toes, but had two back toes, quite odd. In the past week, those 8 hens produced on 12 eggs total and ate 15 pounds of food, not economical.

    Last night I finished putting twenty of my squares together for the breed blanket. There are enough to do more, but I have to evaluate what fibers I have left, what colors they are to get the pattern for the last rounds. The next row will go down the right side in the photo.

    There are still two dyed squares and several gray and white squares remaining already spun, plyed, and knitted. I may use them randomly.

    Early in the week, I was able to purchase another Jenkins spindle in their newest design and size. It is so much larger than my others that it will take some getting used to and will probably be used for plying only. It is a pretty spindle.

    I tired from the morning’s efforts, need a shower and clothes change so we can drive to the “big city” as folks here call Roanoke to take Grandson 1 to his introductory evening of camp.