November 19-30 are days filled with birthdays, Thanksgiving, and a wedding. The birthdays begin on the 19th with our newest granddaughter by the marriage of daughter to her new hubby in October, this one leaves her teens and turned 20. She is followed by my stepmom, me, granddaughter, daughter.
On Wednesday, eldest son (the groom), his bride, his son, her son, and her parents will arrive to stay with the us for the long weekend of celebration. Daughter will host Thanksgiving for 16, with contributions of help by son to spatchcock and season the turkey, me to provide some sides, relishes, and pies, and extra chairs.
Friday we have a traditional Ukrainian pre wedding dinner for those staying here and a few other guests and meeting up with daughter to give her a birthday card. The wedding will be in our home on Saturday with a light meal reception following. Sunday will have a traditional Ukrainian post wedding lunch.
Today, all guest beds have been made with fresh sheets, all floors swept and mopped. The cheeses and crackers for the cheese board were purchased. Other food purchases that I am providing will be made as the week goes by so they are still fresh when ready to serve.
Tomorrow, cranberries will be cooked, no canned cranberry sauce here, a couple of pumpkin pies also prepared and cooked. The brussels sprouts and sweet potatoes will wait until Thursday morning after breakfast for all the houseguests is done.
Such an exciting time. Then on to preparing for Christmas. Family tradition forbids me from decorating until after daughter’s birthday and this year, the wedding in the house. Next week, the bins of Christmas decorations will be hauled upstairs and the house will be festive for that holiday for a month.
Toward the end of October, my love tripped over the base of a broken sign on a public street and broke his collarbone enough to displace it 2 cm. It took them 11 days to schedule surgery to put in a plate to hold it together. It has been a week since surgery and he is still only minimally functional, requiring lots of assistance. Fortunately it was his non dominant arm, but is still very uncomfortable for him. He is 18 days in from the injury and facing several more weeks of wearing a sling. We hope that the pain settles soon so we can begin to get him out and walking again. He had just finished a 5.5 mile walk when the accident occurred. We don’t want him to lose all of the good he had done for his health since last spring.
The 18 days have mostly been home confinement and as I don’t want to leave him here alone while he requires assistance, my ventures out have been short and necessary such as picking up online ordered groceries or prescriptions and bandage material for the daily incision care.
This has allowed a lot of reading time and crafting time. A gal that does history education with me at the museum is a self published author and I have gone through 3 of her historical novels. I finished spinning a skein of yarn, spindle spun the start of another, knit about half of a Nordic star scarf with wool my daughter and SIL brought me from their honeymoon in Iceland (I was the teen supervisor for her kiddos), and started a hat from some previously spun yarns.
The weather has turned from mild and dry to cold and wet this week. The rain is much needed, though we only got a little more than an inch. There is some more predicted in the next week including our first snow shower possibility. As Thanksgiving approaches, the seasonal cactus is showing it’s beauty.
This is the month of family birthdays, with Thanksgiving crammed in the midst and a wedding to add to the festivities. We are hoping that though hubby will still be in a sling, he will feel well enough to fully participate in all of the celebrations. It will be fun having everyone together here and at daughter’s home.
So life goes on here, though my blogging as been sporadic.
We happily said goodbye to 2022, the last quarter of the year having been a medical nightmare. We welcome 2023 with hopes of heart repair, a reprieve for a few months from the immunotherapy treatments that have produced more extreme side effects for longer periods of time.
Traditionally, the holiday decorations were put away on New Year’s Day as school often resumed the next day. This year, the process was begun half a week ago, just after Son 1 returned to his job. The tree was left standing until today and it too has been stripped of his ornaments and lights, removed to the cedar thicket on the edge of the woods, and the needles vacuumed.
The Dyson decided it didn’t want to do the job, so the old Oreck was hauled upstairs and did a much better job of even removing the dog hair from the rug than even the newer Dyson when it is working at it’s best. The Dyson has been disassembled and every washable part banged free of dust and washed, set aside to dry for a few days.
The closet beneath the basement stairs needs to be cleaned out, some ductwork retaped, then the crates will be moved down for storage for the next 11 months.
The bottom left one will go straight to daughter’s house next Christmas, it has about half of my Santa’s in it that I chose not to place this year and are ready to move on to her collection. The tree ornaments got new storage this year that allows a separate cell for each ornament so they don’t have to be individually wrapped, which made the put away simpler and will allow easier decisions on what will go on the next tree if it is too small for all of them.
The Christmas Amaryllis gift is beautifully blooming, a total of 7 lovely red blooms.
Now that the holidays are behind us, more time will be spent working on the shawl that is from Jenkins Turkish spindle spun Alpaca, Merino, and Silk. It was begun in mid December once all Christmas knitting was complete. The spindle is holding a lovely blue wool of unknown origin, spinning enough to double the thickness of the hat that is my preferred one when the weather is cold.
After last weekend’s weather tried to destroy us with single digit temperatures and high winds, today feels like spring with mostly sunny skies. We managed to get a walk in before the tree came down and out. We have a couple more warmish days, mostly with rain, then a return to more normal winter temperatures here with low 40’s f during the day and 20’s at night. Life moves on, we continue to taking it one day at a time.
It was chilly and wet, not a day for a walk, but with errands that had to be done. The trash and recycle bins taken to the “convenience center” to be unloaded, packages and a card to be mailed. A box of gifts to be shipped. Chicken feed and wild bird food to be purchased. It seemed like a good day to see if the local tree farm where we often cut our own tree had any precut trees at the seasonal store. There were two, a very scrawny one and pretty little tree, much smaller than our usual tree for a room that can take a 12′ tree with ease and has in the past. This tree had to be of a size that I could manhandle alone to get it in and in the stand.
It was small enough to fit in the car and did not have to be tied on top in the rain.
Once home, placed in the stand on a plastic sheet, and the strings cut, it was allowed to drip dry.
And finally lit and decorated, using our large dried Starfish from a long ago Bahamas cruise as it’s topper. It has graced the top of our tree for more than a dozen years now.
It isn’t large enough for quite all the ornaments, but close. The very first one I hung was the first one hubby and I purchased as a married couple. It dropped from the tree and broke, which sent me into tears. It was glued back together with superglue, but though I tend not to be superstitious, I hoped it wasn’t an omen as hubby’s health continues to be a major problem. We hope that it’s repair means that the various medical specialists can repair him as well.
Our tradition, up until last year, had been to purchase an ornament together every year and years of significant events like the birth of a child, a second one added. Each one dated, if not already so, with a fine tip marker in a discrete place. A lot of joy comes from seeing the dates, remembering the time or event or where the ornament was purchased. Many of the more recent ones are from a local potter, a friend, and they were added to a wreath and hung from the hutch.
I have to admit, that decorating this year has been difficult, there have been many bouts of tears as hubby and I both know that there is a significant chance that this might be the last we celebrate unless healing is found. Today brought joy and several bouts of tears. Not all of the collection of decorations were used this year. There is a crate of Santa’s that will go to daughter. I held on to them this year without putting them up but they will go to her before she decorates next year.
The day ends with Christmas lights and fog in the hollows.
Hoping for many more with my love, but taking each day at a time and making the most of it.
Thanksgiving week in our lives is full of birthdays and family gathering. Five of us celebrate birthdays in a 9 day span, with one born on Thanksgiving Day and celebrating her 11th birthday this year again on Thanksgiving Day. Son 1 came for a week, preparing me a scrumptious birthday dinner and then offering to cook again another night, again preparing a gourmet meal. Grandson 1 came a few days later to be here for Thanksgiving. On the Sunday before Thanksgiving, we drove to Weathertop Farm to pick up our 19.36 lb turkey. Nearly a decade ago, after reading about spatchcocking chicken, Son 1 and I decided to spatchcock the turkey. The first time, we lacked the proper tool to do it, but managed and learned that it produces a delicious, golden, juicy bird in less than 2 hours cooking time and we have never looked back. Though I have managed to spatchcock a couple alone, it is Son 1’s “job” to butterfly the bird and rub the herbed butter under the skin, then he also is the carver when it is done.
As this year, granddaughter wanted Thanksgiving at their house for her birthday, Son 1 and I went over early enough to prep the turkey and for me to work with daughter to get the rest of the meal prepared together. Son1 and Grandson 1 went on a bike ride then returned home to pick up hubby and bring him over. Eleven of us gathered, enjoyed our meal and birthday celebration together.
Early, very early, the next morning, Son 1 was put on the bus to the train to go home to finish out his semester of teaching and working on a project for the Dean. And the following morning, early, but not quite as early, Grandson 1 was put on his bus home.
Today is Daughter’s birthday, the last of this flurry. She has to work all day, so we are going to take her to lunch tomorrow.
The birthday girls with another of daughter’s awesome cake creations for her girl.
Right at the time when eggs are needed in quantity for holiday cooking, the hens all decided to blow their feathers at once. The just cleaned coop has more feathers than wood chips at this point and egg production has virtually ceased. Two of the girls molted a bit earlier than the others, so one or two eggs about every other day appear, but I actually had to purchased a dozen and a half during the holiday to make pie and breakfasts.
Christmas decorating at our house is always on hold until after daughter’s birthday. It used to begin the day after Thanksgiving because as an educator, I always had a long weekend to get it done. As soon as she was old enough to catch on, she decreed that it had to wait until after her birthday, which only seemed fair. The snowman pillows, ceramic snowman, and sled were brought out already, the dried flowers pulled from my fall wreath and put in a vase and three carved wooden birds added to the wreath with a plaid bow, but other decorating will wait, maybe for a while. December is bittersweet for me. It ends with the holiday that represents family to me, but it is also the month in which both of my parents passed away. This year we enter December after 3 months of stress, doctor’s appointments, treatments, and pending treatments for hubby. Yesterday’s treatment was postponed due to a side issue, this is the second time that has happened. It should have been his last treatment based on the original schedule, but now he is only half finished with this round. There are still many appointments in our future with the various specialists. It has been a stressful and frustrating period for us.
Many months ago, our aging Mastiff reached a point where he could no longer manage the stairs and settled himself in the living room at night. He will turn 11 in 4 more days, very old for a Mastiff and he can no longer even get to his feet unassisted. A folded beach towel is used for me to assist him getting to his feet. About a month ago, the German Shepherd, who is a few months younger than him fell down the stairs and though she limped around for a day or two, still insisted on coming up when we were upstairs. In the past couple of days, she has fallen down all or part of the stairs 3 times, so a baby gate was erected yesterday to prevent her from coming up. This caused her, an already anxious pup, to be even more anxious as she paced around the living room and dining room for hours. Last night, she even urinated on the floor which she never does in the house. We had purchased the Mastiff a mastiff size bed last year. He uses it as a pillow with about half his body on it, but won’t get totally up on it. Last evening after I took her bed down to try to comfort her, I looked down to this.
She was totally up on his bed, he was resting his head on her much small one. I guess she will adjust to not being allowed to come up and it certainly will reduce the dog hair dust bunnies upstairs.
We continue on, taking one day at a time. That is all we can do. Decorating will happen to some extent when it happens, likely a much smaller tree and fewer shelf decorations, but some holiday festiveness.
Halloween is done, jack-0-lanterns and ghosts packed away til next year. The wreath on the door was a grapevine wreath with fall ribbon and ceramic turkey and pumpkins shapes so it stayed up until yesterday. Our friends, the wonderful flower growers that come to the Farmer’s Market, Stonecrop Farms moves on from fresh flowers to dried flowers and wreaths this time of year. Hubby suggested that since I had expressed an interest in purchasing one, that I pick out one for my birthday still more than a week away. When we got to the market, there were still several to choose from and though I was attracted to two, decided this one called me the loudest.
It is beautifully full with fresh greens and bright dried flowers. As soon as it arrived home, the skimpy grapevine one was packed away and this beauty hung to grace the door until it fades and the Christmas one is pulled out for a few weeks.
Yesterday was above normal fall weather, following the extreme rain from the late hurricane remnants on Friday, and this morning we awoke to below freezing temperatures, light snow falling, but only accumulating in crevices on the coop, deck, and corners.
It continued with light snow showers throughout most of the day. We managed our walk in spite of the freezing temperatures, wind, and snow showers.
While we were out, a birthday card was needed as one had been missed earlier in the week. It’s purchase, caused me a head shaking pause. The clerk rang it up, told me the total. I handed her cash, she messed with the register, paused and said, “I owe you (long pause)…” I responded, 95 cents, having quickly done the subtraction in my head. She counted out the change and as I was walking out, she called out to me and said, I owe you more money. No, I responded, the purchase was x, I gave you y, the change was 95 cents which you gave me. “But the receipt says z” she says. No, you gave me the correct change, you rang it in wrong, your register is right, my change is correct. She looks confused and heads toward the manage stocking shelves in the back. Poor girl can’t even make change. I fear for her future in that job.
After arriving home, some dried Amaranth and Eucalyptus that I had purchased fresh many weeks ago from Stonecrop and hung to dry with the idea of making a couple of decorations to sell at the last Christmas Bazaar, the last hurrah for the cottage business, was pulled out. The two tobacco baskets that had been display pieces for yarn and hats at events were decorated with the dried plants and dried Baptisia seed pods from my shrub were bunched and tied with Christmas plaid ribbons and floral wire hangers on the back. Hopefully they will sell and grace someone’s home for the holidays.
At the conclusion of that event, all of my display pieces that can’t be repurposed here will be gone. Hopefully, the stock of hats, mitts, mittens, scarves, soap, salves, and lip balm will be reduced to only what can be used as gifts or for personal use. It will be bittersweet to end CabinCraftedshop, but also a relief to not have to deal with the website, taxes, and deadlines.
This year it was hard to get motivated to decorate for Christmas, but I did and glad of it. However, we live on a gravel driveway off a gravel road and have two huge house dogs, so the house requires frequent vacuuming and dusting. Prior to decorating, every surface gets wiped down thoroughly, crevices vacuumed, then the Santas, Gnomes, Village, small decorated tree, and linens are brought out. A couple of weeks before Christmas, we go to one of the local Christmas tree farms, pick a fresh tree, have it cut and decorate it. Though it is pretty to look at, all of this just contributes to the mess. The tree goes up between the living room windows and door, so every time the dogs go in or out, tails swat the tree. This one really held it’s needles well, drank quarts of water each day, and was still pretty supple this morning, but every other surface was so dusty I couldn’t stand it another day.
I was awake early and instead of just lounging about, the tree was undecorated. This was challenging as Ranger, the Mastiff decided that since I was in the living room, he would be too and parked right in front of the tree. The stand we bought years ago at the tree farm holds lots of water, so after all the ornaments and lights are off, I have to sit on the floor with a dish pan and a turkey baster and siphon off at least a gallon of water before the tree can be removed from the stand and dragged outside. Usually a trail of needles follow me, but surprisingly few today.
The linens were all washed and folded, the Village dismantled and packed up, the small tree that sits on the jelly cupboard, soft sculptures, nut crackers all packed back in the big plastic totes that store them 11 months of the year. After lunch, the Santas and Gnomes were each wrapped in bubble wrap and packed in their totes. All shelves, mantle, tables, and other surfaces dusted, floors vacuumed and mopped, and Christmas has been put away for another year.
It always makes me a little sad to take it down, but cleaning up the dust, dog hair, tree needles, makes me feel better about the house. Last year, the totes were all stored in a guest room closet, this year, I returned all but two of them to the storage closet in the basement. The two that went back in the guest room are the two with Santas and Gnomes that are just too heavy for me to comfortably carry up and down the basement steps.
The ceramic Snowman and snowmen pillows will stay out until I am tired of snow, that hasn’t happened yet this year.
Soon the pumpkin pie and eggnog will be gone and Christmas will be but a memory. For a couple years, we have celebrated New Year’s Eve at Mountain Lake Lodge, up the mountain from us, enjoying the dinner, party, overnight room, and breakfast the next day. This year, we will stay home, it just isn’t safe to go out. Let’s hope 2021 is healthier and less contentious politically than last year. Wishing you all a healthy, happy New Year.
A friend reminded me that I had been silent for a few days. Time spent with hubby and via phone and video chat with family, time spent finishing my December spinning challenge, trying to finish a shawl as a finished project for the same challenge, and getting ready for the start of the new year, spinning challenges and mentally preparing for even more isolation as we are seeing about a dozen new cases of COVID in our county each day (56+% of the cases in the county since December 1) and between people travelling and gathering for Christmas and New Years, it will get worse.
When I went to the Farmers Market on the Saturday before Christmas, part of my goal was to obtain a Christmas roast for our Christmas dinner, we still have Thanksgiving turkey in the freezer. The vendor apologized that his abattoir had not gotten his latest beef back to him, but he expected to pick it up on Monday. He made a stop on his way home and let me buy a 3 pound rib roast. It was a much more expensive cut than I would usually purchase and wanted it to be cooked perfectly. When we have family here or that we can visit with, we usually have Italian food at Daughter’s on Christmas Eve, and Turkey, ham, and all the sides on Christmas day here. As a younger married, I would prepare either Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner, my Dad doing the other and extended family gathered. The Christmas dinner was always on Christmas eve and we grazed on left overs and other goodies on Christmas Day. Traditionally, I make Huevos Rancheros for hubby on Christmas and New Years Day mornings. Because it was just the two of us, I did prepare the breakfast then later in the day, prepared the roast that I had seasoned the day before. It was perfect and delicious. We have eaten about half of it over two days, the other half frozen to be pulled out in a week or so and enjoyed again.
We woke to a white Christmas with continued snow showers all day. Gifts had been exchanged with our children and grand children via distanced meetings or mail. We celebrated with just the two of us. My gifts included items lovingly chosen based on my interests, fiber to spin, a Jumbo flyer for my wheel, a travel Lazy Kate, a leather tooled pocket notebook cover, counter top herb garden with grow light, hand made pottery planter made by DIL and bee barn from them as well, wool socks and a wool tee shirt to keep me warm. It was a calm, lazy day filled with too much food, but no in person family except hubby.
My December spinning got side tracked when I started knitting the Peacock shawl, but I still finished with plenty for the challenge.
Yesterday was spent plying yarn, the “Redbud” ended up about 450 yards of light fingering weight and the Jacob (the gray) is this month’s and last month’s plied together to about 115 yards of light fingering weight.
The fiber hubby gave me is the left of this photo and will be the breed I begin my January challenges with, both the “Something New” challenge and a Breed Blanket.
After several frigid icy days, the sun is out and the snow and ice are melting, the temperature finally above 40 degrees, so we ventured out to take a walk, figuring the paved rail grade being the safest path. For the most part it was clear or wet, but there were some areas like this below.
Some of the areas that looked wet were black ice, but it was good to get out and stretch our legs and get some fresh air.
I have about half an ounce of yarn left before I have to use the rest to do the picot bind off. I’m hoping it is enough to finish the repeat I am on.
I’m very pleased with how the gradient blends until it gets to the purples and the gradient isn’t as subtle there, almost like the purples were reversed, but I spun this yarn on spindles and was very careful to keep them in the order they came off the braid. It is still a pretty shawl. Once finished, washed and blocked, it will go in my shop.
I hope you had a safe Christmas and will have a safe New Year.
A year or two ago, DIL took a favorite photo of Jim and a compilation of other photos and did a beautiful pen sketch for hubby as a gift.
She is a very talented artist and wanted to do something special for him. He loves the gift and it hangs on the siding wall of the steps to the loft in our living room.
In August, right at his birthday, hubby made the very difficult decision due to health issues to sell his beloved Harley and give up his “Zen” riding as he called it. In the years since he learned to ride, two months after his 70th birthday, he had collected patches, buttons, poker chips, and pins that never made it onto the iconic leather vest and as he was no longer riding, a vest he wouldn’t wear wasn’t an option.
I had an idea as a gift for him. It isn’t a surprise, but done out of love as part of his Christmas. The photo that was used as the focus of DIL’s sketch was printed as an 8 X 10, his license plate from the HD was saved, and the idea came to fruition. A large frame, some black cotton fabric, a piece of corrugated material for the pins to stick into and it was all put together with patches and other treasures.
Yesterday after the snowy morning, followed by a bit of rain, then more flurries, we drove the dozen miles to Joe’s Tree Farm and found a tree for the house. About the time we got home with it, the temperature that only got up to 36 f started falling. The tree was put in the stand and watered, hubby built a fire in the fireplace, I got a pot of stew started using left over pot roast and it’s gravy, made myself a mug of hot cocoa, and set to work decorating the tree. Putting the tree up, the huge Starfish, we got on our first cruise about 7 years ago, on as a tree topper, lights on and lit didn’t bother me. As soon as I opened the bin of ornaments, the history of our life together, I just froze, tears welled up and I didn’t want to continue. Beginning in 1977, our first shared Christmas, we purchased an ornament for our “Charlie Brown” tree. Each year, another ornament was added. Years we had a new baby in the house, there was a Baby’s First as well as the annual Hallmark ornament. At some point, the ornaments came from craft shows, or if we took a vacation and saw an appropriate token that could be the ornament, we added that and all are dated. There is a ceramic bell from Mexico, several carved/turned wood, pottery, and painted gourd ones. There are a few given us by others that have significance. As I brought them out, I cried more at the loss of family members, the isolation from our children and grandchildren. The tree is up, the house is decorated except for hanging two blown glass ones, that require some ribbon.
It isn’t getting easier. There have been 53 cases of Covid in our rural area in the past week, that is 15% of the cases since the pandemic began and in just 7 days. A neighbor told us yesterday that he had had it a few weeks ago, yet we still are seeing few masks. We waited to get the tree on a week day to avoid a crowded situation at the farm and the attendant that cut our tree said Sunday they had the lot full and a field adjacent as an overflow parking lot. We were one of three cars today, but two women arrived back from cutting their own tree as we arrived and without masks, entered the shop and stayed in there until their tree was brought in from the field, tied, and labelled. We stayed out in the cold to avoid them until our tree was ready for us to pay. There was no consideration of others, the older woman stayed near where we needed to be to pay for our tree.
We avoid going in any building we can. The online grocery order picked up Sunday was lacking several items from the list. There was no notice that the items weren’t available and we didn’t pay for them, but it means I will have to go in the grocer to get them. The curbside is nice, but certainly not perfect. I am having emotional burnout, but I can’t become complacent.
Covid has caused the Noel Nights event at Wilderness Road Regional Museum to be cancelled. I am sad that I won’t be able to vend, but feel bad for the Museum as this is a fund raiser for them. I am hoping that the Program Director who may have been exposed stays well. If you are still shopping for gifts, if you favorite an item in my shop, you will receive a 20% off coupon, many of the items ship free, there are knit and woven garments and accessories, salves, beard oils, yarn, and more. Check it out.
Cabin Crafted 