Cabin Crafted

Category: Fiber Arts and Equipment

  • Rough Night, New Day

    We got home with the dozen new chicks yesterday after lunch, put them in the brooder, and I could tell we would lose a couple. By late afternoon, the reaction to my vaccine was kicking in, but I was still functional and got dinner made, eaten, and cleaned up and a final walk to the basement to check on the chicks. Two had died. Not totally unexpected with any new batch of little birds, but still disheartening.

    Last night was not a comfortable night. The vaccine had produced the expected sore shoulder, but also a royal headache and body aches. I slept fitfully, getting up every few hours to dose on the alternating Tylenol and Ibuprofen, and the last dose allowing me to sleep in until about 8 a.m. By the time I was up, it was mostly just a headache, one that with meds I could deal with. And the trip to the basement showed that two more chicks had died overnight. That brought my dozen down to 8 and half of my Buff Orpingtons were victims.

    The weather app, indicated that we were going to get snow, again, beginning around 2 p.m., eventually overnight, turning to rain. We were low on some grocery store supplies and decided to go back to Rural King to see about replacing the chicks. It turned out to be the same guy was in that area and he stated he was replacing the 4 free, however, there were no more Buff Orpingtons. I asked him what the typical attrition rate was and he said that usually it was very low, but he had lost about 1/3 of the ones that came in yesterday. They had hatched and shipped on Monday and didn’t arrive until Thursday morning. I agreed to taking other breeds for the 4 and add a couple more in case I lost anymore, I would still have a dozen. The coop is going to produce an Easter basket of egg colors. The Buffs and New Hampshire Reds lay light brown eggs and the Americaunas lay blue eggs. I came home with another Americauna as that was one that died, 2 Olive eggers, 2 Easter eggers, and 2 Marans, so dark chocolate eggs, Olive green eggs, and the possibility of pink, green, or blue from the Easter eggers. When I put them in the brooder, I could see that one of them was wobbly and tonight it looks like she won’t last the night, but there will be 14 young hens come mid summer producing a variety of egg colors.

    About the time they were settled in, my energy faded and a long nap followed while it did indeed snow.

    The driveway has stayed clear, so I expect the roadways have also and when I went out just before dinner to check for eggs, food and water for the locked up hens, there was sleet mixed in with the snow.

    The February spinning challenges are winding down, so much of what was spun has been plyed, January and February’s yarns reknit into 6 blanket squares with another on the needles and yarn for two more spun and plied. And some spinning of other fibers begun.

    The nap rejuvenated me enough to put dinner on and work on granddaughter’s garden plan some. I hope to get the plan and some seed to her in time to do the early spring planting in a couple of weeks. As I couldn’t remember what I had done with the copies of what I gave her last year, daughter, who was apparently more organized was able to come up with it and send me a scan back. Granddaughter is going to be given a notebook with the reference pages and the plans from last year and this year so she can keep her garden history. DD and GD are planning to double their garden in size this year and add a few vegetables they didn’t grow last year. I am making a duplicate copy of her plan as the reference pages, I also use and I will have the information I shared with her.

    I think this is going to be an early night, I still have no energy and a bit of a headache. Tomorrow I should be fine, except for the sore shoulder.

  • It’s Done

    First thing this morning, the second vaccine dose was administered. Now I wait to see if I will react and how, but any reaction is better than COVID.

    Since the vaccine site is two towns over, we did a side loop over to Rural King afterward to get chicks. Half a dozen Buff Orpington baby pullets, 3 New Hampshire Reds, and 3 Americaunas. One of the little Americaunas isn’t looking great, but that is why I buy a dozen chicks. I will keep the two Oliver eggers to add back into the flock when these little ones are big enough to fend for themselves. I will have light brown, dark brown, blue, green, and 1 pink egg layers.

    The one that didn’t look good was cold, so I removed one heat table that they were ignoring and added the heat lamp and put the little one under it to warm up. It is no longer cold, but doesn’t have the energy of the others. We will see how she does.

    I finished another square of the blanket last night, washed it and blocked it. I finished plying more of the Targhee for another square while I stood in the ski lift like line for my turn at the vaccine center this morning. On our way home, we picked up some quick soups in case I’m not up to meal prep tomorrow.

    Socially distanced spinning on the go.

  • New beginnings

    The giant rolling storage crate was pulled from the root cellar and filled with pine shavings, two heat tables, a feeder, and water in preparation for the chicks. But the nasty weather last week slowed things down and chicks didn’t arrive at Tractor Supply (either of them within 30 minutes of home) on Monday. On Tuesday, one got 3 breeds, not ones I want. A call to Rural King on Monday put me on hold for more than 5 minutes, answered again by the front end desk and again transferred and another hold until I hung up. We drove over there and they had bunnies, no chicks. But Rural King was supposed to get several hundred chicks in this morning, and they are supposed to be getting what I want. If the CDC is correct, I should be close to 90% protected with my first vaccine given two weeks ago, so I will mask up and go get babies. (Turns out the info I was given was incorrect and they don’t come in until tomorrow, so I guess it will happen tomorrow instead.) When I start a new flock, I always begin with a dozen, though I know that they won’t all survive the native predators and neighborhood domestics (though that hasn’t happened in a few years). The chicks will start in the basement for a couple of weeks. As the winter fades and the chicks begin to feather out, they will be moved to the garage until they are old enough to move outdoors. The 8 old hens will move in a few weeks from the coop to “The Chicken Palace” a huge A frame structure and they will be allowed more free range time as the replacements move to the coop to learn where they live and while they gain enough size to run around outdoors.

    The chicken palace with some of our deer visitors and the ever present stinkbug photo bombing. This is an older shot, we don’t have green grass right now.
    I’m ready for them if anyone every gets any in stock.

    And tomorrow morning, bright and early, I get my second vaccine. I’m prepared for the sore arm, the possible flu like symptoms for a day or so in hopes that it will make me feel safer when I do have to or want to go out in the world for more than a woods walk, drive thru sandwich, or curbside pickup of supplies.

    My breed blanket project continues. There are 6 eight inch blocks completed and enough of some of the already spun yarns to knit a couple more before the next breed comes up next month. Today, a sampler box of fiber arrived, it has 12 breeds, some of which are natural undyed duplicates of some I have dyed and one I have already knit, but they will be used as well to add more squares to make the blanket large enough to be a real wool blanket.

    I am finishing up the last of the official February fiber and a sample I got with my March fiber that because it is blended with silk can’t be part of the blanket. Now to decide which one will go in the blanket next.

  • 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.

  • We Won’t Need April Showers, Thank you

    In ski country, when the snow pack melts, they call it mud season. There are parts of the country that could use rain, snow, or the other YUK we have been receiving.

    Mornings and evenings require donning the thick ugly pink barn coat, a hat or the coat hood, muck boots (sometimes ice cleats would be nice), either leather or thick fleece gloves depending on what task needs to be done. Boldly opening the door to the garage, gathering feed and water bucket, tentatively opening the door to the outside and assessing my safety on the stoop there. Is it wet, coated with ice, or deep in snow. At this point, I actually prefer the snow, at least I can safely walk in it. Some days when looking out, the grass and trees glisten with tiny icicles hanging from the limbs and fences. Those mornings are treacherous, the stoop and other surfaces, including the grass are like stepping on a kitchen floor where cooking oil was spilled, but for the past week or so, even though surfaces resemble the ice palace in Dr. Zhivago, the surface below is mud, thick, goopy, slimy mud. If one surface doesn’t get you, the other one will.

    I keep a good thick layer of hay in the chicken run, which as I have mentioned before, is sloped, highest at the end away from the pop door. After opening, or chipping the ice off the gate to pry it open so I can get to the pop door, the first step is always a challenge. For some reason, the preferred scratching place in the run is right in front of the gate, thus all the hay gets piled deep at the other end in front of the coop. Of course, the rain, freezing rain, snow haven’t helped as they make the hay itself slick once compacted. Every few days, a new layer is put down and every evening when I lock them in for the night, I drag hay back uphill to the gate for my evening and next morning safety.

    Each morning for the past couple of weeks have looked like the above pictures. The top one was this morning with freezing rain forecast, but it is pouring down not frozen rain as I write. We are in full blown mud season.

    The daylilies have sprouted tender green tips which will get burned by the next onslaught of bitter cold, which is sure to come. The mud will freeze again and thaw again before the grass and trees sprout to drink up the spring showers. After two warm winters, my plans to get more cardboard down in the garden and build up a couple of new beds have been foiled by real winter this year. Maybe it is good that I can’t garden year round, this winter is giving my body the needed rest.

    Yesterday, on our Anniversary, we drove into town and got drive thru breakfast, it was too icy on Saturday when we usually do it, so we missed the Farmer’s Market, but so did many of the vendors. We picked up curbside delivery of grocery items and came home, sitting near each other as I spun on my new spindle, a gift from my love, and some on my wheel as one of the fibers I purchased for my blanket, though enough was spun on spindles to fulfill the one block requirement (actually there will be two), I don’t like spinning that particular fiber on spindles, so the remainder of the braid is being done on the wheel.

    Late in the day, we picked up the Valentine’s Day special from the local BBQ restaurant and drove down to the river to eat. We arrived to pick up our 5:15 p.m. order at 5:10 and it was already sitting packed on the counter, so it wasn’t hot. Packed in styrofoam clamshell contains, several each, cutting and eating from them was a challenge in the car. We should have brought it home and put it on real plates, rewarming what could be warmed. It was not the fancy anniversary dinner of the past, but it was shared together, watching the river flow by in the drizzly gloom. It was a very uneventful day, but a day spent with each other. Another tick off on the calendar of our lives together and another to look forward to.

  • Olio for a rainy day

    Olio: a miscellaneous collection of things

    Every other day as far as I can see out in the forecast is for YUK. Today began with cold rain and fog, it is turning to freezing rain/sleet/snow later. Tomorrow is cold and cloudy, Saturday is freezing rain/etc. Some days freezing rain, some snow showers, but all freezing stuff.

    This morning, I sat in the car in the cold rain, spinning on one of my spindles while DH was able to get his second COVID vaccine. He was in and out much faster than I expected as there was a short line outside and when I got my first, the line was like a ski lift line that snaked from outside, along a wall, around a corner and back down the other side of that wall. He said they had reconfigured it and the line I saw outside was all there was. I am two weeks out from getting mine. Now we wait and see if he has a reaction, but a day of not feeling well beats getting critically ill with the virus.

    My spinning challenges of the month are all with Jenkins Turkish spindles. One requires a weekly check in with photos showing progress and that was done. The other two I can double dip this month as one requires spinning 25 grams of fiber, the other is the breed blanket challenge. My 25 grams spun was the fiber for the blanket square and I ran short so I had to spin more to complete the square.

    While knitting the square on, I was spinning my second breed that I had been working on and finished plying it.

    I began knitting that on as well, so I will have a blanket of 6 squares soon, each square slightly larger than 10″.

    The spindles, my ply bowls, and the blanket so far.

    For Christmas, Son 2 and his family gave me a hydroponic herb garden. It was set up immediately and watched carefully as each herb germinated and sprouted above the opening for it. It has been delightful to trim fresh herbs for salads and for cooking. I’ve even started drying some of the mint and the dill as they are hard to keep up with. The Thai basil is delicious in Asian inspired quick soups for lunch. The thyme and sweet basil are slower and the parsley is the laggard, but is coming along.

    What a great gift idea for a gardener feeling the winter doldrums. Today I found out that “Chick Days” at Tractor Supply begins on February 22. I want a dozen chicks this year, but won’t have gotten my second vaccine yet and I am sure they won’t curbside them. Maybe I’ll send DH or DD in to get them for me. I figure if I start them the end of the month, I’ll be getting eggs before the old girls molt again in the fall. If I am careful of the breeds selected, they will lay most of the winter. If I have too many eggs, I’m sure there are folks that would welcome a dozen here and there.

  • It came, it went

    We did get 6″ of snow Saturday night into Sunday morning. Wet, heavy snow. It caved in the fence top on my chicken run that I created to protect them from the hawk when I have to have them penned up instead of free ranging. It will be an easy repair, but it was too chilly and windy to mess with it yesterday.

    The sun came out a few times and I plowed the driveway to help it melt off as I feared we would end up with some tiny two wheel drive sedan as the rental car. When we got there to pick up the car, it is a Mitsubishi Outlander, so plenty of clearance, but not AWD. While we were out and about waiting for the recalled switch to be replaced in the CRV, the temperature rose to the mid 40’s and though our road and our driveway are a muddy mess, getting in and out won’t be a problem. Much of the snow cover thinned to an inch or so by last evening and the temperature fell to 16f last night so everything froze over. By the time we got home from picking up the CRV and dropping it at the local mechanic for oil change and state inspection, most of the snow is gone.

    It looks like we are due for freezing rain and snow showers mid week and frigid temperatures and snow showers over the weekend, so we aren’t done with it yet. Since we moved here, it has snowed almost every Valentine’s Day. Since our anniversary is that day, we have had some interesting trips to a restaurant, but this year we will celebrate at home, just the two of us, so it won’t matter if it does snow.

    I finished spinning my fiber of the month for my breed blanket project and after doing a photo update for the February challenges, I began knitting it on to the blanket. The second “unofficial” breed for the month is being spun. I really love the one I am spinning now and really did not like the fuzzy gray Gotland that I am knitting on. It will be fun if Covid allows craft shows this fall to display the blanket with tags showing what each breed is to demonstrate the varying textures of wool. When I finish this month, I will have three gray wools of different textures and three softer dyed squares to offset them.

    And as I am between knitting on squares, I am continuing to knit on a scarf from mini skeins of spun from wool samples that come with spindles and often with fiber braids to entice you to try a different fiber blend from the vendor.

    I am finishing up two very similar salmon colored mini skeins and will have two more neutrals, one with some hints of blue that will transition me to a series of ones that are predominantly blues. I will keep adding on until I run our of mini skeins or reach a color that just doesn’t go. This scarf is going to have various wools, bamboo, silks, just about anything natural except cotton in it. They are all spun from lace to light fingering weight yarn, so it should be interesting with it’s changing color and lace edge.

    It is very unusual for me to have two knitting projects going at the same time.

  • Occupying time?

    There was only so much sledding my senior body could take and the snow has gotten thin and icy. After a very frustrating year of trying to keep my online shop open, paying fees to list, fees if I did sell something, still paying personal property taxes on my equipment and inventory, I closed my shop and debated whether I would continue to do in person events when it was again safe. When I do in person events, I use Squareup for payment when the buyer doesn’t want to use cash. As I was going through my inventory on their site which I hadn’t been on because of no events, I saw that for only a few dollars more than I was spending on my domain name, that I could transfer it to them and build a free website. The last couple of snowy days have been spent taking photographs, removing stock that was no longer there, adding stock that had never been added, and building the website. Squareup does not charge me to list items, I do pay a fee if something sells, but it is actually less than the prior “store.” My efforts can be seen by clicking the “Go to my shop” link at the top of the blog or here. And because the domain name remained the same, just moved to a different server, my business cards and labels are still good.

    We can finally drive down our driveway, turn up into the extra parking/turn around spot and backing down into the garage. The other two trips out this week have required me to back the car down the nearly quarter mile driveway or leave it out at the top of the steep drive and walk to and from. The car has been living in the garage because even after two applications to seal the windshield, water is still coming in somewhere, soaking the rug and mat on the passenger side when the car is left out in rain. Yesterday I got a recall on my 16 year old car. I wonder how many people still have their 2005 CRVs. Because it also needs an oil change and a state inspection soon, appointments were scheduled with the dealership for the recall and the local mechanic for the other work and we have reserved a rental for two days while we continue to research new vehicles to replace the one that died and was sold. The CRV will live in the garage and be our backup vehicle once we get a new one.

    After stomping down snow and spreading hay to coax the hens out a few days ago, we had more light snow and very strong winds that covered the hay with snow again and the hens just gave me the stink eye like it was my fault they couldn’t go out. Yesterday, I took a rake with me and exposed the hay again so they would come out. It has been so cold until today that the water bucket in their coop freezes all but a little pocket in the middle of the bucket, so it has to be changed out twice a day and the frozen one brought inside the house to thaw enough to dump and refill. It is finally above freezing today and supposed to stay above freezing tonight before the nights fall back into the 20’s and we have more snow showers tomorrow. It is interesting to walk around the west and south sides of the house and see where yesterday’s sunshine on the stone masonry walls has melted the snow away from the house. The areas that the deer have come close to the house have melted patches away exposing grass as well.

    I still won’t walk on the stones from the steps to the grass or over to the wild bird feeders, I cross on the upper edge of the walled garden where I know there is soil beneath the snow to fill the feeders each morning. The little birds are emptying them daily. The wind has been blowing the smaller two feeders down, so I have ordered a larger feeder that can be filled in one half with Nyger seed and the other half with black oil sunflower seed. As soon as it comes in for curbside pickup, I will replace the feeders with that one and the suet feeder.

  • Snow Day

    The snow began around 9 last night and dumped about 7 inches on us overnight. We have had some flurries today and are expected more through part of tomorrow. It is pretty to look at, but other than a couple trips out to give scratch to the cooped up hens, filling the bird feeders, and clearing snow from the satellite dish, I have stayed in spinning with my feet up in front of the fire.

    After posting yesterday, the mail brought me a form that caused hours of stress and tears as I had to go back a year and find every item I had sold and used Paypal as a means of receiving money and then trying to find when and how I purchased it (or received it as a gift or trade) with date and cost. That on top of a year where I spent way more money in personal property taxes and fees for Etsy than I made on Etsy resulted in me making a decision to close the online shop. I haven’t decided if I will do any live events after Covid allows or whether I am done. My experience with Paypal has had too many unpleasant moments, so I am done with it as well.

    I did finally get most of the seed I was seeking for the gardens. We have a nice local nursery that gets their plants from a local grower and will get the tomatoes, peppers, and anything else that requires a good start from them. it seems odd to be planning a garden when you can’t even see where it is today. But it is nice to have a day with no where to be and the inability to go there if there was. Dinner will be simple, just stuffed baked potatoes and a salad. If I had planned ahead, I could have made a loaf of bread, but I didn’t.

    Time to go throw logs on the wood stove and fireplace to keep the home fires burning, not because they need to, but it is nice.

  • New weekend, new weather warning

    This has been an interesting week. It started out moderately warm, then snowed. Of course it snowed the night before I was finally scheduled for my first COVID vaccine and I feared that we wouldn’t be able to get down the mountain and to the center two towns over in time. We did get a few inches over a thin layer of ice and I got an automated call that the vaccine was delayed by 90 minutes, so we left almost as early as we had planned to allow time to go very slowly down the mountain, trusting that the highway would be in good shape and allowing us time if we had no issues to run a couple of errands to the bank and a USPS drop off. Our road up to the paved road and the paved road to the highway were a bit dicey, but we made it and got to the center set up by the health department in plenty of time. I walked up to pick up the paperwork from a volunteer handing it out near the door, just as they allowed us to move inside, 20 minutes earlier than they had said they would begin. I had my vaccine before the time they had rescheduled and was in and out within 30 minutes. I have an appointment for round two the end of February.

    The frozen precipitation from the last storm hasn’t all melted yet because it has stayed between the low teens and 30 for several days and we are expecting 8-12″ of snow and ice beginning tonight through Monday morning. After the usual Saturday morning run for drive through breakfast and the Farmer’s Market, it was time to prepare for a cold, snowed in couple of days. A good supply of wood was hauled in to the basement for the woodstove. The rolling wood cart and wheelbarrow were filled for the living room fireplace, and put in the garage which currently has lots of room in it because the car that died was sold as is and we haven’t gotten a new one yet. Later in the day, I will scrub out the downstairs tub and fill it with water for dogs and toilets and hope that it isn’t necessary.

    Week before last, the Olive Eggers started laying eggs again, then at least one of the big red hens has also begun. I get from zero to 4 eggs a day right now from 8 hens, so I am no longer having to purchase them from the Farmer’s Market.

    Yesterday, in response to an email to daughter and her kiddos about their garden this year, they called and we discussed what I had seed wise, what I needed to get for us, and what we would buy already started. I figured that getting seeds in January would be a breeze. NOT. Much of what I wanted from one company was sold out, but they will send me an email when it is available. The other seed company I use isn’t even taking orders this weekend. I was able to get some of what we wanted from the Natural Foods store in town this morning. We will make it happen somehow. I thought that onion sets and seed potatoes would be bought from one of the reputable organic companies, but only perennial onions which produce tiny onions were available and seed potatoes were much more expensive than buying many pounds of potatoes at the Farmer’s Market, or were out of stock. Last year’s potatoes were from organic potatoes from the local grocer that had sprouted and I have a few pounds of Farmer’s Market potatoes in the basement that have sprouted, so I will plant what is locally available and keep looking for the onion sets. The bush winter squash seeds, 2 packages, cost a bit over $10 and they wanted to charge me $8 to ship them, I finally found them from another seed company, seeds and shipping are reasonable. This process is getting more difficult by the minute. Last year, I saw some really clever plastic templates for spacing seed in a square foot garden for about $10. I almost bought it for my grand daughter that I help with her garden, but didn’t. I looked for them today and they are now $27 for the exact same tool. I think a DIY event is in order. I can envision a 12″ wide acrylic/plastic cutting board, one of my power drills, and a few small jars of model paint and I can make the template for a few dollars.

    The month is about to end and I have accrued or reserved 23 breeds of fiber for my breed blanket. I know what one of my February spins will be, I have to decide on the other. This week, I began combing locks of Gotland, so I may just go on with that.

    If the power doesn’t go out during the storm, some obligatory snow shots will be shared in a few days. If the snow isn’t wet and sticky, I may haul out a sled and my ski clothes and play in it. Until I visit again, stay safe, and stay well.