Cabin Crafted

Category: Fiber Arts and Equipment

  • Rainy Sunday Activity

    The rain did come off and on today, so I chose to do stay at home activities. First thing this morning, I finished spinning the wine colored wool that I took on my walk yesterday and began plying it on my largest spindle. It was taking forever and after about 90 minutes, I wished that I had plied it on my wheel, but persisted throughout the morning and early afternoon.

    I am trying to finish knitting a shawl with it before the end of June. This is the last 27 grams of the wool. The shawl had a major error in it and I had to rip it back about 2/3 of what I had already knit, pick up the stitches and start again.

    After lunch, I started two loaves of sandwich bread for the week. Of course it had to be tasted while still warm.

    I know that the fad during the pandemic is sourdough and I have made my share of it, but we both prefer yeast bread, half whole wheat with good stone ground flour.

    Between rain storms, I took a basket to garden and picked a basket full of fat shelling peas.

    While out there, I spotted 3 chubby asparagus spears among the thin ferny shoots, added them to the basket as well. Since hubby was having a chop for dinner with our corn, peas, and cantaloupe, I pulled a fresh small garlic bulb and a small potato onion. While out there I ran the broody hen off the nest for the third time today, grabbing the eggs under her. This has been a six week brood. Nothing I do breaks her.

    The onion, garlic, and their tops were chopped along with half a green pepper that was in the refrigerator and sauteed to top his chop. There were enough peas for dinner and the first batch in the freezer. I planted about 2 or 3 times as many peas as usual and wish I had planted twice what I did. My dinner was many of my favorites, fresh sweet corn, just picked and lightly steamed peas, cantaloupe, and fresh bread. The hens get the pea pods, corn cobs, and cantaloupe rinds and seeds to make compost to feed the garden in the fall or next spring.

    While wandering the garden, I picked a few raspberries and a blueberry, but they didn’t make it back to the house.

    I love when the garden starts to provide and pay back for all the toil of the spring prep. Every couple of days the suckers are pinched from the tomatoes and the tomatoes and tomatillos are tied higher on their posts. I am seeing blooms forming on both. The cucumbers have been given a trellis, the bush beans are filling out, but no blooms yet. The potatoes have purple/blue flowers and desperately need a good layer of hay applied to them. I’ll tackle that the next dry day. The peppers aren’t doing much yet, but they will. I added more basil seed and a few Chinese cabbage seed to a bed that still had space. The only failure I am seeing in the garden is the corn. I have planted it twice and still only have 3 stalks and the pumpkins didn’t come up. I need a plan for that area that will provide us with something for the table, maybe more potatoes?

  • Today’s Walk

    I periodically suffer from extreme GERD attacks. The first one landed me in the E.R. thinking I was having a heart attack. Now when it happens I grab the Tums, chew Fennel seed, avoid certain foods, but I don’t feel like heavy exercise when it happens. The most recent attack began last weekend, so walking our steep road was not appealing to me, doing the driveway to the mailbox and back, almost half a mile has been about all I wanted to do. Yesterday was better and we went to town to walk a part the old paved rail grade that runs between two towns. The part we chose is usually not busy with walkers, but we know there are a lot of bicycles. We ended up seeing at least a dozen walkers, another dozen bicycles, and three maintenance men mowing the edges. No one had on a mask but us. The path is about 8 feet wide with another couple of feet mowed on each edge. When we were approaching another walker, we moved off the right side of the path and kept going, doing about 2 1/2 miles.

    Today I decided to do our road. I had a couple of ulterior motives because we are about to get a few days of rain and it will be muddy and the rain will knock down Rhododendron blooms, and because Artist daughter in law wants Cicada shells. I have been looking around the trees near the driveway and gathered a few, but mostly seeing live Cicadas. I found a windfall of them today along the road and quit counting at 60 gathered.

    As they emerge wingless, they climb and the shell splits down the back and the new adult Cicada emerges, dries it’s wings and flies off to find a mate. We are in week 2 of the emergence and they only live 4 to 6 weeks then after laying their eggs, they die.

    The one craft that I do that can be done while walking is spinning on a spindle. I stuffed some fluff in a bag, hooked it to my belt loop and took my Jenkins Finch for a walk and parked it in a Rhododendron bush to take a picture of the flowers.

    I always love coming out of the woods after climbing this hill and seeing the roof of our house appear below the ridge.

    The seasonal wildflowers continue to change. The multiflora roses, another invasive species here is blooming, the dandelion puffs have faded and the Goat’s beard puffs are emerging.

    It was a pleasant day for a nice walk before coming home to prepare dinner for us.

    Stay safe.

  • I’ve Lost Track

    After retirement, days started melting into each other, but there were certain events each week that helped keep things in order. The spinning group met on Thursday right after lunch and I had a Thursday late morning regular appointment. Saturday morning was breakfast out and a Farmers Market run year round. Sunday we would have lunch at McAllister’s.

    With the stay at home order, each day is, “What day is it?” followed by a check of the phone or computer to see where we are. There is no regular schedule, we get up whenever, usually early for me as the sun lightens the sky. Lunch is prepared after hubby is up, news checked, etc. Sometime during the morning or afternoon, some garden time and a walk are included. Some spinning on the front covered porch, except Asplundh has been chain sawing everything near the power lines for days. They even drown out the Cicada song.

    Our state is in Phase II of reopening. Shops and restaurants can operate with restrictions, but we aren’t comfortable at our ages going in to them, especially since so few people heed the mask wearing and social distancing guidelines. I did venture in to the grocery this week and a man about my age without a mask crowded me every time I distanced to let other shoppers make their selection and move on. I am afraid to say anything for fear of enraging a fool. The employees are all supposed to be masked, though many wear them only over their mouths. The frozen food manager who always is loud, didn’t have one on at all. Thank goodness for our Natural foods store and their curbside delivery, they have mostly eliminated the need to go anywhere else. And our local plant nursery and garden center who have gone overboard to be safe and ensure safety, so flowers and vegetables have been purchased and planted to maintain.

    Last night, the school board in the next county where daughter lives had a virtual meeting with hundreds in attendance to discuss school reopening for the fall. Daughter watched 3 hours of chaos and disorganization. The plans sound like someone came up with them an hour before the meeting and will have a detrimental effect on any parent who is working, working from home, lacking childcare, lacking the ability to connect to the internet, without transportation to get their child to and from the abbreviated days they are in the building. Tonight we had a video chat with our eldest grandson who turned 15 today and they don’t know how the new school year will operate where he lives.

    Who would have thought in this modern age, that a virus would shut down the world and turn our lives around.

    I spin, I knit, I garden and cook and try to make our lives as normal as possible, but someone please tell me what day it is.

  • Productive Crafting

    Once masks were recommended, prior to them being required in businesses and other buildings other than your home, I made each of us 2 masks. Then I made daughter one, later another and two for each of her two kiddos. It seems like they are always in the laundry even though we aren’t going out much. This morning, I decided that we should each have two more and I had seen a short video on the construction of the pleated kind that seemed a better design and simpler to make, no pattern required, no elastic, no bias tape. Simple job, but the folding chair at my sewing machine is so uncomfortable.

    They are designed to be tied behind the head, however when I was making the first ones, I bought a dozen cable locks and slide the two ends through which makes a tight fit and does not come untied.

    I have been spinning on the Peacock gradient braid of fiber with my spindles. Last night I finished spinning the first two colors and plied the yarn. I wasn’t happy with the twist, it was too loose, so this morning, I ran it through the wheel a second time and careful not to over twist, put more in. It is 190 yards of very light fingering weight, it is only 47.78 grams.

    When the gradient is finished, it will become the yoke of a sweater for me with the body and sleeves, the gray Shetland that I have been spinning. There is more of it waiting for a turn on the wheel, I got tired of spinning it on spindles.

    The reddish wool that I have been spinning on the tiny spindles is being knit into a lacy edged shawl.

    The garden got a couple of Bull Nosed pepper starts and some basil. There is more basil started from seed and it will be added to the garden as well and some dill started also from seed.

    I had to replant the corn bed. Then it got two heavy rains, so I am hopeful that it will come up this time. The seed is not from the company I generally use, but it is packaged for this year and I didn’t do a germination test first. If it doesn’t come up this time, I will do a germination test.

    The tomatoes are being trained up 7 foot poles as a single leader per plant so suckers are being removed every couple of days, the tomatillos are also being trained up poles, I don’t need them sprawling all over the beds. The peas are heavy with pods, the tomatoes have blooms, the onions have bloom buds on top. The potatoes are getting large. I need to top them again with more soil and then start piling on spoiled hay. Spoiled hay needs to be put on the asparagus bed and soon a containment rope will be needed to contain their ferny tops away from the other beds and the paths.

  • Morning Song

    Last evening as the night chores were being done, the sky had this gorgeous pink swathe in the sky.

    As I was planning last evening’s meal, the frozen green vegetables in the freezer did not appeal. I knew I had among the last of this spring’s harvest of asparagus, which I love, but are not favorites of hubby, I remembered that 4 of the plants in the row of spinach I had planted survived the chicken onslaught a few weeks ago. A quick pop over to the garden and the two smaller heads, a handful of pea shoots, and a couple of asparagus that had emerged were harvested and a salad plan was made. Fresh raw spinach with pea shoots and shavings of the most delicious vintage aged cheddar cheese and a mild vinegarette. A nice fresh from the garden addition to dinner.

    The morning chores were greeted by the song of the cicadas that have emerged up the hill in the woods. I stopped during my walk yesterday and recorded their sound. In our south woods or in the tall hay, a gobbler was sounding his call. No traffic sounds, no jets like I grew up with, just natures calls and bird songs.

    Soon there will be fresh peas, the two beds are full of white blossoms.

    The potatoes look like they need topping again. I am excited to have potatoes in the garden again this year, though they aren’t a long keeping variety, they will be enjoyed fresh, maybe a few small ones will be able to be dug from the edges when the bush beans are ready, that is a delightful combination.

    On summer mornings, when I go out to turn the hens out, I carry a hoe with me and in the cool of the morning, the weeding is done. More mint was dug and pulled this morning and I realized that I had not put down cardboard around the potato bed and covered it, so that task needs to be undertaken. Though I don’t like plastic in the garden, that feed sack is tucked under the edge of that bed and will have to remain there until the potatoes are dug unless I can tug it out before putting down cardboard and spoiled hay.

    More spring flowers were cut last night for the dining table. The Dutch Iris are blooming now that the Bearded Iris are fading, the Coreopsis is blooming and lots of Comfrey flowers.

    I am a failure at flower arranging, but love a bouquet of fresh cut flowers on the table during the season.

    After chores last night, I finished spinning the second bobbin of the gray Shetland and plied a very full 4 ounce bobbin. There is still about 6 more ounces of the wool, some on the two bobbins that didn’t fit on the plying bobbin, so I will weigh them, subtract the bobbin weight, divide the remaining Shetland so that each of those bobbins end up with 2 ounces and spin and ply another 4 ounces. I think there is plenty now to knit the sweater for me for next winter.

    It was spun with a pattern in mind, then I bought this Peacock gradient braid and I think a yoke style sweater with the Peacock at the yoke and the gray below would be stunning, so now I am in a quandry.

    This morning is cool enough for a light hoodie, too cool to enjoy my coffee on the deck, so maybe I should take advantage and though I have already spent some time in the garden this morning, I should put down the two paths of cardboard and hay and put a layer of mulch on the asparagus bed that will now be allowed to send up it’s pencil thin ferny shoots to feed the crowns for next year’s harvest. The cycle of life.

    “When the power of love, overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.” Jimi Hendricks

  • Rainy Day Activity

    Bertha has been providing us with rain all day long. Another front has stalled over our area and we are looking at 3 or 4 more days of rain on our saturated soil and full creeks. Another flash flood warning is in place. We are high above the creeks and sloped, but flat enough hopefully to not have mud slide activity, though there has been a lot of that including destroying a property and making a home uninhabitable in our tiny village.

    With my spindle spinning, I am participating in a spin along using only the Jenkins spindles. Since I had filled them all a couple of days ago, I elected to report my results for the month and wait until June 1 to work with them again. I have a new to me spindle due in the mail tomorrow or Friday and received a gorgeous braid of wool a few days ago that I am anxious to begin spinning. To occupy my time, I have been using my wheel to try to make a bigger dent in the pound of gray Shetland that I have been spinning on spindles for two months. And knitting on the shawl that has been on the needles about that long. The first Shetland bobbin is nearly full and I will fill another before plying. The shawl was finished tonight, soaked and is pinned out to dry. I played a bit of yarn chicken with it and finished with only about a yard left, not enough for another row.

    I have enough yarn spun to begin my sweater, but knitting a sweater when the weather is hot is not something I want to begin. With the current pandemic cancelling events daily, knitting more items for my shop seems futile, there won’t be craft shows and holiday markets this year. Most people don’t want to buy knitted or woven garments online without being able to handle them, try them on. I have a knitting request from a family member, but it will need to be superwash wool, which I haven’t purchased yet, and it is another sweater. Maybe I will just work on the Shetland, perhaps even one spindle that I can clear before the first of the month. We are going to be indoors for a couple more days, but I did get a bit of weeding done in the walled garden between rain showers today.

    When the rain ends, I plan to make a compost bin to put in one corner of the garden. If I can make it sufficiently large, I will gather the composting material from where I moved the chicken run and use it as a base to finish composting along with kitchen scraps to have it ready to supplement beds as they get harvested and replanted. I really hope to fill the freezer and the canning shelves with homegrown produce for the winter season.

  • The Storm Has Ceased

    After three days of relentless rain and wind from the northeast, it ended overnight. The temperature climbed all night instead of falling as it generally does at night and I awoke to thick as cream gravy fog. The weather and last few days of inactivity made me lazy enough to stay in bed much later than usual. I generally awaken when the sun lightens the sky outside the windows, but today I ignored it, turned over and dozed off and on for another hour.

    The morning routine, everyone has one, after getting myself together is to let the pups out, prepare their breakfast, turn the kettle on to make tea or coffee, and either put granola and yogurt in a bowl for me, or toast a couple slices of homemade bread that get topped in various ways. If there is left over cornbread, it gets pan toasted in butter. As I sit at the table with my coffee or tea and breakfast of the day, I watch the birds. The Hummingbird feeder stays out and they are busy at it early, it is on the front of the house. The back has the Shepherd’s crook hangers and the three feeders that go there get brought in to the garage at night after they were taken down and damaged by something one night, shortly after we spotted the small bear in the hay field. The mixed flock of finches, chickadees, and titmice flit around it all day. Other visitors attend their needs. We have a Red bellied Woodpecker, a Hairy Woodpecker that are frequent visitors, Cardinals, a bully Mockingbird that chases everything else off, and this spring we have had Rose Breasted Grosbeaks, new to our feeders. First I would just see an occasional male, yesterday there were 3 males and 3 females. Lovely birds, I hope they stay. There are a few Eastern Bluebirds that pop by too, I think one has a nest in one of the boxes in the garden.

    Hey hooman, it is your job to feed us, where are the feeders?

    When I went out with the feeders and chicken scratch, the creeks were raging. The news said the New River crested over 20 feet overnight, flooding the low side of the river in Radford and probably other areas along it’s route. A road we take from Blacksburg home when we aren’t in a hurry runs along a low edge of the river and though we have never seen the water up to the road, it has flooded yards, the campground, and other low areas.

    The topography of our farm is the highest elevation is at the entrance to our driveway. The house is about 80 feet lower. The west side of the farm has a creek that flows down to a sinkhole and drops through the ground at the base of a stone cliff. There is a second creek that is just a run off creek that will keep some water in it except in very dry weather, then it is totally dry. It flows the width of our property, across the road for about a quarter the width, then under the road in a culvert and angles along the top of the property until it is about 100 yards from the other creek and they converge in the sink hole. Down the west edge of our property and over on the adjacent farm is an old creek bed that dried when the sinkhole opened. When we have a lot of rain over several days, the drain hole in the bottom of the sink hole can’t cope and the flat bottom of the sink hole becomes a pond. If that pond gets high enough, the water runs down the old creek bed. Though the uncut hay was wet, after chores, I walked over to see the creeks from the top of the cliff.

    The left photo is the “pond” that forms in heavy rain and the right photo is the old creekbed raging this morning.

    Usually the creek runs clear even in heavy rain, but they recently logged up the mountain from us and I suspect that contributed to the mud.

    Walking through the tall wet hay soaked me to above the knees.

    Pants went straight in the dryer when I came back inside. The wood ferns are unfurled, the blackberries are full of blossoms, so there should be lots of berries to pick this summer. I can’t get to most of the berries until after the hay is cut.

    After the sun comes out and dries things off a bit, there is some weeding to do in the garden. The beans are beginning to sprout, more potato sprouts are up, but lots of little weeds between them. The tomatoes and peppers survived the torrents. I still don’t see corn, sunflowers, or cucumbers. The herbs and pumpkins started indoors are sprouted and they were put out on the deck this morning to get some sunshine. While the ground is soft, it will be a good time to dig the catmint under the fence edge and also a clump of thick tall grass that has entangled the bottom of the fence so I can’t weed whack it. Last week when I did the major mowing and weed whacking, I came right in after, tossed all of my clothing in the wash, showered, and I still got poison ivy on my jaw line and the back of one of my fingers. I wasn’t allergic to it when I was younger, but wow, now I am.

    Last night, not wanting to spin or knit on the shawl, I decided the rainbow yarn was going to become a skinny rainbow scarf. It has a plan and a possible recipient. We will see.

  • I might be nuts . . .

    . . . or at least a bit stir crazy. For the stay at home order, I decided to do most of my spinning on spindles, rather than the wheel and to strive to spin enough yarn for a particular sweater pattern for me.

    The rainbow was partly spun on spindles, finished and plied on the wheel and it is not part of the sweater plan. It is 130.5 yards with no plan in sight.

    Whenever the weather is not conducive to walks, hikes, or garden. When I’m not cooking, baking, or cleaning, I am knitting on a shawl, slowly, or spindle spinning. The pile below is the result of a couple of months of being stuck at home. It is about 1200 yards of 2 ply light fingering to fingering weight yarn.

    There is still several ounces of the gray Shetland and the shiny blue BFL/Silk. A small amount of the maroon wools, and 4 ounces of White Shetland. The skeins to the right of the lower row are various small skeins, some will be used, some will be held out.

    We each have our means to keep busy, to settle anxiety, this has been mine. I spin on 3 Turkish spindles, I have a request for another Jenkins Turkish spindle, but so far I haven’t found one.

    As a sidenote, the sun just peeked out after three days of heavy rain, flooded creeks, threatened dams. Maybe it is going to quit before we float down to the valley.

  • The Yard (Wo)Man

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    The grass was tall again, the morning beautiful, the mate still in bed, so after critter chores and breakfast, I took to the mower.

    Front northwest. It takes several hours to mow what gets done on the riding mower. You can see the delineation between the hay line and the lawn line. This was the third mowing this year and should have been done a week ago, but it is done. There is hay behind that row of trees and hay to the northeast, east, and south of the mowed area. The hens had supervised free range time while I was doing the mowing. It stirs up bugs and they have a feast. After a break, I broke out the monster Stihl line trimmer, got it re wound with new line, fresh fuel, and worked around the culverts, the transformer box, and the well head. I still need to do around the mailbox and around the lower yard hydrant so the hay men don’t hit it.

    Haying has begun in the region, but the guys that do ours either haven’t started yet or they are doing more distant fields, I haven’t seen any evidence of them being out. We are one of the last on their list so it is usually the second week in June before we see them.

    The bearded Iris were gorgeous this morning.

    Last night after dinner, I plied the two balls from my spindles. I ended up with a tangle on the lace weight and lost a couple grams of yarn, but got 109 yards, 19.7 grams of lace weight yarn from the shiny blue Merino/silk blend and 132 yards, 42.08 grams of fingering weight from the gray Shetland. Only one spindle has been started again, with the Rainbow punis that arrived in yesterday’s mail.

    There are 4 one-half ounce punis in the package, 2 each of the red, orange, yellow and green, blue, purple. I am going to spin them in rainbow sequence and then ply them in the same sequence. It should make an interesting scarf or cowl from the finished yarn.

    I guess I should get back to work and see if I can finish the lawn chores before time to prepare dinner. Different hats for different times of the day.

  • A Super Day

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    From freeze warnings to upper 70’s. The local weather blogger and news reporter at the local paper, posted dates in history where the area went from a freeze to 80+ degrees overnight. Winter is over, the trees are green, the peppers and tomatoes have spent two nights outside, so after some morning showers and a run to the garbage drop off, I started planting and light weeding. The tomatoes and peppers are in the ground and stakes pounded in on the edges to provide support for the string that will hold them as they grow. The far end of the third box south, 8 cucumbers were planted and post set to hold their trellis. Half of the bush bean bed was planted with 72 bean seed. In a few weeks, a second planting will be made so we have fresh beans all summer and enough to make dilly beans and freeze for the winter. The edge of the 3 sisters garden got a row of mixed sunflower seed, but it is too soon to plant the corn. I am watching the local gardeners and farmers on that. The fields that will get feed corn have had their winter cover crop sprayed, a practice I hate, but when they plant their corn, I will know it is time to plant mine. The pole beans follow a couple weeks after the corn sprouts. The pumpkins will be started indoors tonight so that they are ready to be tucked in among the sunflowers and help shade the soil for the corn and pole beans. By planting two kinds of beans, I won’t be able to save seed, but I would rather have the fresh beans and the dried pintos.

    Every time I go out, I find more mint and dig more roots from that area. I hope I can stay on top of the garden and keep it as neat as it is now. The asparagus bed is not doing as well this year as the past couple of years. Son 1 asked if I had ever re dug it and thinned them and I haven’t. Early next spring, I think I will relocate it to the deep soil where the mint was (assuming I have won the mint battle), and will put a new growing box where the asparagus bed is now. The makeshift box that is around the asparagus had deteriorated to a few rotten boards with screws protruding. If I put a new box where the mint was dug, plant the asparagus there, I can put posts at the corners to tie up the ferns for the summer and still get to the other beds.

    I have been busy spinning on my spindles and wound about 70 grams of singles into ply balls. I haven’t plied it yet, maybe after dinner, but it cleared 3 of the 4 spindles. Just in time for a 2 ounce package of rainbow punis to arrive to spin.

    When I am out in the garden, the tree swallows seem to have no fear of me, they come and go from the two houses and sit on the fences so close I could practically stroke their iridescent backs. When I mow, they soar around the mower catching any insects that try to flee.

    Each evening before our freeze warnings, I cut yellow bearded Iris and filled jars and vases all over the house. Now the remaining ones will bloom in the garden and that bed looks like it needs a major overhaul when they are done. Some of the purple ones that were thinned and dumped just out of the mowed area of the yard will have to be dug and some of them brought back to the gardens. The deck destruction and reconstruction as well as all the rocks moved and the soil compacted seems to have affected them where they were planted. The yellow ones came from a neighbor several years ago, along with a red one. The red one did not come back and I was going to dig more this year, but he did a burn pile right in the middle of the area he has them planted and there will be no blooms there this year for me to figure out which cluster to dig. Maybe next spring and by then the walled garden should be ready for flowers.

    The seed and seedlings that were planted, just had a heavy rain shower to help set them in and now the sun is out again. The next few days look like warm and showers, just what is needed to get things started. Soon it will be time to harvest peas and spinach. The lettuce, radishes, and cabbages in the half barrels are beginning to develop too, so we may begin to get good home grown food soon.

    I love garden season and hope I can stay ahead of it this year.