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Son 1 arrived a few days before Christmas and we enjoyed his company until the morning of the 26th. We enjoyed Christmas eve dinner at daughter’s house along with the traditional reading of “The Night Before Christmas” by the family patriarch for the kids, including the two adult ones.

Christmas morning was low key with Huevos Rancheros for breakfast and the exchange of gifts between the three of us. Daughter and her two kiddos arrived for a late lunch/early dinner with the fancy trimmings and gift exchange with them.

Yesterday I went over to pick up the grands to take them to a friend’s house to see a couple new lambs and daughter was waiting to go too. She had already taken her decorations down as her tree was getting too dry and her cats were threatening her Santa collections. Since we purchased our tree the same day, even though it was in a deep basin that holds more than a gallon of water, I realized that our tree was no longer drinking up the water and it too was getting dry and droopy. I unplugged it for safety reasons, and though the rest of our decorations are still up, the tree has been taken down, moved to the woods, and the rug vacuumed of needles. The rocking chair that has to be relocated when the tree is up is back in the living room.

Yesterday’s mail brought a letter that caused me to check my retirement online and found a very significant error that the retirement system had made. A phone call was made, a return call later, and another this morning, their error has been corrected, but my monthly deposit is way off and the balance won’t be received for a few more days later. That caused a bit of stress as we have several monthly expenses that come directly out of our account. It is resolved fortunately, but we wonder if other members of this retirement system had the same occur to them.

The weather has been so warm that the pussy willows are blooming. I hope it doesn’t trigger the fruit trees. It will remain spring like with rain until next Monday.

To use up the left over bits of yarn from my breed blanket, I started knitting bulky weight hats, holding several strands together on large needles. The first one went home with Son 1, the second one, I must have blinked when counting stitches and realized last night that it wouldn’t fit an infant, so this morning I ripped out the 5″ I had knit, wound a ball and restarted it.

I love the marled look of holding 4 different strands together and the bulky weight makes the hat go quickly.

Right before Christmas, I purchased myself a box/tape loom and it arrived on Christmas eve’s eve. Beginning with a very simple ribbon pattern I have been working to learn to keep my edges even.

Several years ago, I purchased a kit to make one of the looms but it was made of plywood, laser cut, so it couldn’t be used at historical events. This one can. This first tape won’t be pretty, but hopefully will improve my skills so the next one will be more consistent. I deliberately used strongly contrasting colors so I can see where I need practice.

The New Year will be celebrated here at home again. Maybe one year soon, it will be safe to return to Mountain Lake Lodge for their party with dinner, room, and breakfast.

Hope you have a safe Happy New Year.

There was no 25 second from the front door last Sunday as we were able to go visit Son 1, have a couple delicious meals out, tour a couple museums, and help transport a chair.

This week was cold, very cold at night and the fall color has faded and many trees are bare now. One morning, the frost was accompanied with frozen fog and all of the trees and shrubs were glazed.

The peppers were covered with heavy plastic and with nights later this week staying above freezing, I will check to see if any survived the nights in the 20’s.

Just before our trip to see Son 1, Son 2 sent us an announcement that he and his wife had had a baby girl, our 9th grandchild. Each grand has been presented with a hand made Christmas stocking, made with love by me. With a stop at Michaels and the local yarn store, I acquired the three skeins of wool needed to get started. I found a pattern that actually knits like a sock instead of flat to be sewn together later. The stocking made good car knitting and was finished this week.

Each stocking is lined and has a cross stitched tag that states, “Made with love, Grandmom, year.” It has been steam blocked and lined and is ready to send with other family gifts.

Without a lot of details, this family has had it’s share in the past month. A grandson diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, one of our children involved in a very serious auto accident. Our daughter is okay, sore and without her own wheels.

A much anticipated retreat with friends I hadn’t seen in 2 years to sit and spin, knit, weave, and share social time was cut very short because my first day there, I ended up with an emergency medical situation. Without letting my family know and only limited revelation to the event coordinator, I foolishly slipped away after packing my spinning, clothes, and vending set up and drove 4 hours home, only to be hospitalized that afternoon. Five days in the hospital, 2 surgical procedures, and I’m home, hopefully without a recurrence.

This has caused stress to the family, caused Son 1 to temporarily leave his job, his family, and drive from his home to ours to be the unpaid Uber driver for hubby and daughter, to be emotional support for all of us, and to be cook when allowed. He has harvested my garden and frozen my tomatoes, taken care of my chooks and been as he always is, a generally good man.

It has been a tough few weeks. Not much to report on spinning and knitting. No canning for a while, but tomatoes in the freezer for when it can again be done. It is likely the end of the garden for this year, but there is always another year and we will rely more heavily on the Farmer’s Market until their season also ends. The hydroponic units will be started with herbs and salad greens to supplement what we can purchase and as a last resort, imported organic produce purchased from our local Natural Foods store.

Sometimes life gives you lemons and you have to make lemonade. My lemonade is knowing how much my family is a loving unit and how caring and concerned my friends are. I want those of you who knew and offered healing messages to me and my family, thank you, I love you all.

The pile of tomatoes on the counter was more than I could mentally and physically deal with the other day, so I bagged them and tossed them in the freezer. There are at least that many out there again that I need to pick, but it was drizzly rain when I went to turn the chickens out this morning, so they are still there. I really like the paste variety I planted this year, the slicer is a nice meaty, low seed variety with decent flavor, but grows flat oval tomatoes with deep stem inset that weigh well over a pound each. I can’t eat one alone at a session and don’t like to refrigerate tomatoes, so I will have to do some research on a different variety for next year’s garden.

Sometime in the near future, I will haul the bags out of the freezer, slip the peels and make a big pot of pasta sauce for dinner and the remaining amount will be put in wide mouth pint jars and frozen instead of canning them. I reread the instructions on the reuseable lids to see that the band needs to not be too tight when they go in the waterbath and tightened 10 minutes after you remove the jars and still I am experiencing failure to seal, but not at the rate I was having. I now remember why I sold off the first couple dozen of them I tried a few years ago. I guess I will use them for freezing and try to get metal lids for next year. I also can’t/don’t want to put them on jars I am making for others in case I don’t get them back. We have a chest freezer, so filling it will jars and the bamboo fiber boxes I bought, of sauces, beans, soups, and stews isn’t a bad idea.

Last night, I taught soap making at a “It Takes a Village” session at Wilderness Road Regional Museum. Because I was on the teaching end and it was more instructional than hands on, I have no pictures except the finished product from cutting this morning. The participants took turns stirring the soap mixture until it looked like time would run out before it turned trace to be able to pour it into the mold, so we cheated and used the immersion blender I use at home to finish the stir process that can take up to an hour or more of hand stirring. I had made a batch a month ago, so they could each take home a cured bar of the same recipe.

Though the cutting box isn’t a necessary part of soap making, I love the ease of being able to uniformly cut 1″ bars with the bench scraper. The rack came in my microwave and never gets used there, so it makes a great curing rack. The wooden box mold is one of two that Son 1 made for me as a gift early on in my soap making. I line it with parchment or freezer paper, the other one I made a liner from a silicone baking mat, so the saponified soap comes out of the box easily. The silicone loaf molds are good too, but I have had the bottom of a batch break out like a cake or bread from a pan that wasn’t properly greased. It may be because it wasn’t as firm as it should have been when unmolded, but the wood boxes with a liner, hold the heat better and unmold nicer. I probably should have waited until this evening to unmold it, but it was firm enough to do. This is a simply Old Fashioned Lye soap with a lemon/mint scent. It can be used for body soap, a stain rub on clothing, or grated and used as laundry soap.

Today is hubby’s birthday, so he gets to guide the day culminating with a dinner of his choice, either prepared by me or out if the weather permits patio dining somewhere. He recently lost his summer version of the Greek fisherman’s hat he wears, so in addition to a new leather belt from the local Street Fair in Blacksburg a couple weeks ago, his hat was replaced. We joked about options to prevent losing it. He had “lost” the other one earlier this summer, but we remembered where it was likely left and it’s return happened. This loss is a mystery, unless he wore it in the restaurant where we had lunch after our long bike ride down the Virginia Creeper Trail and it is too far away to go back and retrieve it. Maybe this one needs his name and phone number put in it.

Tomorrow, I will dress in my Revolutionary War garb and set up as a spinner and vendor at the Montgomery Museum Heritage Day event in Christiansburg. Ever since I began vending at events and craft fairs, I have struggled with a method to haul the most stuff in the least trips. I have crated and carried, bought a RubberMaid flat cart that promptly had a wheel failure the second time I used it inspite of the advertised weight load. I don’t think it was the weight, but rather the terrain, plus my load wouldn’t stay on the flat unsided surface. Daughter owns a folding wagon that she loaned me to try. With is larger wheels, deep sides, I have managed to test load everything needed but part of my ladder rack that I think could be strapped on top and my spinning wheel.

Next week when I go to my fiber retreat, I don’t need the table or the chair, so it should hold everything for vending and spinning. I probably will only take spindles, as that is what I have used mostly for spinning the past year and a half, and knitting to it.

A friend from that group is getting into pattern designs as Mountain Legacy Designs. I am test knitting one of her patterns at the moment and since I can no longer force myself to spin worsted weight yarn needed for the pattern, I purchased a skein from another friend, Sunrise Valley Farm . They can be found on Etsy in the link or at the Blacksburg Farmer’s Market. The test knit is progressing nicely, though I am taking my time on it.

I hope that Gail from the farm who is also a member of the retreat group can attend with me next year as a participant and maybe a vendor. It would be nice to travel together and room together at the retreat.

The test knitting has slowed my spinning this week, but earlier in the week, I posted 84.34 g of spun singles, and 41.70 g of plied yarn for the prior 7 days.

I beg to disagree. The summer chore list was long this year. Many major projects needed to be done to preserve the integrity of our house, to have a garden that required less maintenance, and to get a coat of stain on the coop to try to extend it’s life. Spring was spent getting the garden ready with new boxes from reclaimed wood, filling them with soil dug from old beds, compost, and some bagged soil. Paths were lined with weed mat or cardboard and about an inch of mulch placed over it. The beds are fine and fairly easy to maintain as most are sturdy enough for me to sit on the side to weed. The paths needed several inches more mulch, but buying it by the bag is neither economical nor environmentally friendly, I need to find a load or two of woodchips from a tree service and have it dumped to move by wheelbarrow.

The house needed all 4 sides of the garage, the east wall, the north dormers, and all surfaces of the roofed front porch powerwashed and stained, as well as staining all the raw wood from the deck rebuild two years ago. Son 1 and grandson 1 got it all powerwashed and Son 1 stained the east wall, the walls of the garage, and the dormers. Hubby and I got the garage doors done, but the porch was still in need. Thursday, we decided to try tobegin to finish everything but the railing and floor which take a latex stain, probably a mistake years and years ago. While hubby stained the posts, I did the ceiling. Friday, we set up again, and got the front porch log wall, the windows and door frame done. Today we started on the deck. Hubby did the upper work while I did the frame underneath and outside parts from an 8 foot ladder. Most of it has been done, but there are still the joists under the floorboards that were not on outside edges that probably should still be done, but it is going to have to wait for a few days. Our arms, necks, shoulders, and backs are screaming.

We still need to get the floor done, the railing also. I guess in a few days, the remaining joists under the deck floor will get a coat of stain too. The chicken coop has had wood repaired, but it still needs to be stained too. The list is getting shorter, but isn’t done yet.

First Sunflower, a bird planted volunteer. None of the ones I planted have sprouted, I will try again.

First blueberries and peas. There will be many more to come.

First fawn spotted, this doe had a single and they were in the yard behind the house. By the time I got my camera phone ready, the very wary Mom had urged her little spotted one into taller forage.

Still waiting for the first egg from the pullets. A couple look like they are close with red combs instead of pale undeveloped ones. They will be 18 weeks old on Tuesday, so most any time now for some of the breeds, the Marans take longer to lay their first, so another 3 to 6 weeks for them.

And we are seeing the tail end of the asparagus. I have dug as many crowns from the old bed as I could for Son 1’s garden. I will thoroughly weed what is left and heavily mulch it. I can’t get the rest of them up, so there may be more in that bed next year.

One of my favorite places to walk or hike is on the Mountain Lake Conservancy property. There is a 1 mile trail/dirt road that leads from the lodge to the upper recreation area and from there, another trail that traverses the ridge line and can loop back to the first trail or continue on behind the lodge to a fire road just below the lodge. We usually walk up the first trail to a crossover trail that is 1/4 mile straight up to the ridge trail then walk it back to the recreation area and then down the 1 mile trail. We get in about 2 miles or slightly more and it is rare to see anyone and never on the upper trail. Saturday’s walk after Farmer’s Market and some planting was taken up there. Spring isn’t as far along there, about 2,000 feet higher elevation on the mountain. There weren’t many wildflowers yet, but we did see this little white daisy like flower that my app won’t identify. The wood ferns are still fiddleheads, the trees with squirrel ear sized leaves, but many with lichens growing on their bark.

I had donned a long sleeve shirt to work in the yard and was glad for the sleeve length up there.

Once home, the rest of the garden was seeded and transplanted then watered in thoroughly. Bush beans, cucumbers, popcorn, Hubbard squash, Tomatillo, Ground cherry, and Cilantro transplants all in. The rest of the old garden boxes were removed for destruction and burning which clears an area for me to improve or restart the asparagus bed and I think to add 3 more half barrels with thornless blackberries. I have a Comfrey that is not in a good place, but it is going to be dug out and given to a friend tomorrow. And I need to use a flat hoe or spade to dig out some grass right under the edge of the fence. In working out there today, I realized that though I thought the asparagus was a poor crop this year, that actually they have expanded out from where they were planted and there was a large cluster under the spoiled hay. Since this garden is my first experience with asparagus I didn’t realize their habits over the half dozen years plus they have been there. I guess more research needs to be done on that front. And perhaps a new start in a raised bed to help control the weeds better. They really don’t like any weed growth.

After prepping, eating, and cleaning up dinner, I tackled the succulent pots, giving one it’s own pot, making a nursery pot, and one that is just pretty to look at. The triple ponytail palm that was in our bathroom was so rootbound, I was surprised it hadn’t broken the pot, so they were divided, unfortunately ruining one of them, but replanting one for us, putting one aside with some trailing succulents to do daugter’s Mother’s Day gift she received from DIL last weekend. There are two more houseplant that need attention and moving out on the porch. I realized the Jade plant is pot bound and the tall Dracena needs some TLC and feeding. I guess larger pots will have to be obtained and both of them transplanted and fed.

Another potbound plant was a small pothos, so it was transplanted into my Mother’s Day gift from DIL. I love the trailing stems over the sides of the white egg shaped pot.

Yesterday was a busy, pleasant mix of social and market time at the Farmer’s Market, yard and garden time, a beautiful walk.

Today I will try to connect with daughter to plant her pot and take her some Cilantro starts that I have going for her. My two hydroponic gardens are currently idle. They will likely stay that way for a bit until time to plant fall and winter house herbs and some salad greens for hot summer, fall, and winter salads.

This week has been unseasonably cool and windy and this afternoon an added cold rain. We even had frost warning two nights with temperatures dropping below freezing, but the garden survived just fine.

This week is supposed to flip to summer like temperatures by midweek. The fickleness of spring in Virginia.

After holding the older hens in the Palace for two weeks, I started giving them all day free range and with 30 acres to explore, they chose to scratch and dig right around the pullets pen, digging holes that the pullets can manage to squeeze through to the outside world. Yesterday the hens discovered the walled garden I worked on all last summer. After building up the wall, cardboard or weed blocking fabric was put down and bagged soil added on top. Culinary herbs were planted in part and various medicinal herbs and perennials beginning to fill the other areas. When I looked out at dinner prep time, they had dug up two of the newly planted daffodil clusters and a comfrey plant, scratched soil over the oregano and parsley. Now I have to try to figure out how to keep them out of that area without destroying the appearance of the bed. I had to put bird net over the bed along the south wall of the garage to deter them from digging up flower seedlings and to stop the deer from eating the daylilies. I am hesitant to use the bird netting on that garden because the bird feeders are on the wall that juts out into it and I don’t want the song birds to get tangled in it. Since that netting is black and fairly fine, maybe I can erect a 2 foot band around just inside the stone wall to deter the hens. This morning, I found a bunny about to make it’s way in as well.

This one was run off before it could navigate the rocks and find a feast. Because of the damage yesterday and the rain today, they are penned in. I will figure out a solution tomorrow. I have considered controlled free ranging with a roll of electric netting that can be moved to various areas to provide fresh forage without causing the damage. As far as the pullet’s pen, I think I will fill the holes with soil and put a row of rocks around the outside that can protect the fence line from digging and can still be cut with the line trimmer.

The chilly week has given me time to relearn how to do Tunisian Crochet. The leftover yarns from making my blanket squares are being used as I make a 6″ wide strip. As more is spun, more strips will be crocheted and stitched on to this strip to make a table cover for my craft display table.

This strip will be blocked to uniform width as soon as it reaches the length that I am seeking.

We missed our walk today, hope tomorrow will be warmer and dryer.