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  • And then the rains came

    And then the rains came

    It started raining night before last, rained hard most of yesterday, all night to the point of interfering with hubby’s Direct TV signal, and all day today. It would have been a good day to not go out, but there was a necessary errand and PT to deal with. I was also told by the man who loves me that I was spending too much time alone with him and neglecting my friends, so off to town we went.

    It was raining too hard when we left to hear our creek, but the big creek at the bottom of Mt. Lake Rd. was very high. We drove through periods of heavy rain, areas of fog, but no incidents on the way in. About the time we got in town, they announced the schools that had opened today, several systems in areas prone to flooding didn’t even open, were all closing hours early. When I worked for the school system, we had a rain like this that flooded a couple of areas and they couldn’t get the kids that lived beyond the flooded areas home on the buses. They were returned to school and parents had to find an alternate route around the flood or get someone else to pick up those children.

    Errand was done, we went and bought me a rain jacket as my old one had been discarded a year or so back when all the seam taping came off. The seams were resealed, but the ones around my arms and the back of my neck were irritating and it leaked. The store had a variety of colors, mostly nature colors like blue, green, black, white, but they had red, bright cardinal red. I can wear it in the woods and be seen.

    About an hour and a half was spent with a small contingent of the spinning group, none of us brave enough to bring our wheels out in the pouring rain, so today we were a knitting group, but some socialization was fit into the day before PT time. Because that was late today, he picked me up and I sat in the waiting room until a client/patient spent 15 minutes pacing back and forth just off my toes while reading on her phone. Not able to think of a polite way to ask her to stop or to redirect her pacing down the hallway leading to the PT room, I just left and returned to the car.

    When we got back to our driveway, we passed it to see what the two creeks on our property were doing. The big one flows all the time to some extent, down the edge of our property to a rock cliff formed by a sink hole. The creeks disappear underground in that flat, but today the flat was flooded and the creeks were running down the old creek bed that it used before the hole opened. The upper one is a run off creek and only flows when we have significant rain for a day or so. It was roaring and had jumped it’s banks, creating a second flow that was washing out the edge of the road. In an effort to prevent that, we went over the nearly rusted away front fence to see what the issue was. It looked like all of the fall leaves from around that creek had gotten caught at a bend. To deal with it, I removed my shoes and socks, rolled up my jeans and climbed in the creek bed to about mid calf and scooped soggy leaves out of the channel. Then we gathered rocks, one so large I had to flip it end over end from up hill to try to dam off the new channel that was being formed and get the creek back in it’s bed away from the road. My feet and hands were frozen by the time we quit and got back in the car. After the rain stops, I will go back up there with a shovel and garden fork and clear the rest of the leaves and build that edge back up so the creek doesn’t wash out the gravel road. I did see the new shoots of the day lilies that I planted up there from my Dad’s garden when we first bought the property. I planted three clusters and the creek movement and their spread has moved them down both sides of that creek. After my Dad passed, I did go back up there and bring a clump of them back down to the day lily bed at the house.

    The poor chickens never got out today, with 3 to 4″ of rain expected, I knew their pen would be a muddy mess and they are too stupid to not get soaked. They were given a scoop of scratch and a bucket of water in the coop. After the rain stops, tomorrow, I think, and before the snow flurries of Saturday night, I will break up more of the big round bale of hay and get a good layer down in the bare areas where I slip and slide trying to deal with letting them in and locking them up. I figure if I keep doing that, eventually the pen will be level inside or I will have barrow and barrows of great compost for the vegetable garden.

  • Projects, more project ideas

    While the yarn dries, and some parchment colored Coopworth is being spun, I hope worsted weight this time, I needed a pocket project for today. While looking through my remnants of yarn, I found another small skein of the merlot colored Coopworth that I used for the last mitts, and a partially used skein of the same yarn. A project was started. The Owl hat required Aran weight yarn, the two skeins, held together produced about Aran weight, so I cast on for the hat yesterday afternoon instead of warping the loom.

    I got about halfway through the owl last night and finished the owl and started on the decreases while in the PT waiting room today. First they were 30 minutes late taking him in, plus the 30ish minutes he was in the back. The owl will stand out more when the white buttons for the eyes are added.

    This gave me the idea that maybe instead of random hats, I could do ones with cats, frogs, alpacas, and owls on them. Since hats and mitts are going to be the primary knit items in the shop and for the fall and winter markets, they might sell better than plain or striped ones.

    Larger wraps, cowls, and scarves will be woven.

    It seems that more and more people are doing soap and other body products at events, so other than my B&B contract, I may just return to making soap for family and friends that have a particular one they like or limiting myself to just a few favorites for the markets.

  • Productive Week

    Productive Week

    Today is a glorious break in a gray and wet week. We have had snow flurries, freezing rain, and drizzle this past week and two weeks of similar weather in the forecast. It has been calm wind wise until today, with warmer temperatures and sunshine. With the calm we had a fire scare earlier in the week when the farmer not immediately behind us, an area that is still wooded, but just beyond him in an area that has been logged, graded, and planted for pasture lit off first one, then several more large burn piles creating billowing smoke that looked too close to us that we feared was our nearer neighbor’s woods. We contacted him and after sending him photos, he left work to come check and let us know where the fires were and that they were being monitored with a track hoe.

    There has been smoke down there for 6 days now from various piles, but at least we know the woods below us aren’t on fire.

    Through the gray, drizzle and three waiting rooms days, I have been stitching through several smaller skeins of hand spun yarn that I had, making a hat and three pair of fingerless mitts, and finishing the Tool Box cowl from the mini skeins.

    Can you tell I’m a lefty, always wearing the mitt on my right hand to take the photo? The Merlot colored mitts still need to be washed and blocked, they were finished last night. After trying on the cowl that I had made for me, I decided I’m not a cowl person, so I put a price tag on it and put it in the shop with the other items.

    While perusing patterns, I found a cute hat with an owl on the front. Since there isn’t much yarn left that isn’t designated for weaving, I returned to spinning some gray/brown Coopworth last night. It would be a perfect color for the hat, but the pattern will require me to do some math as it calls for Aran weight yarn, this is likely to be DK weight when plied.

    Since I’m not a Super Bowl watcher, I only know one team that is playing and have no allegiance to them, I think I will warp the loom and start a cowl or scarf with a pattern instead of plain weave and continue spinning the Coopworth so I have a pocket project to work on during waiting room visits this week. Since we try to group our errands and lunch out around hubby’s PT visits, I have a 30-45 minute waiting room session a couple times a week, so I need a new pocket project.

  • What Am I Worth?

    Generally, when I spin and knit, I don’t track my time very carefully, if at all. I know it takes me about an hour to spin an ounce of fingering weight yarn on my wheel. An ounce on drop spindles is much longer.

    I am not a speed knitter, but not a slouch either and the size of the yarn and needles affect how much I can get done in an hour.

    These factors always stop me cold when I am pricing an item of hand spun, hand knit for my shop. A hat of worsted weight yarn might take me about 4 hours to knit if it is a simple pattern, like this one, a slouch hat of stockinette, garter, and ribbing. The yarn was worsted to aran, about 3 ounces, so a couple of hours of spinning and plying. A total of 6 or 7 hours of my time plus the cost of the wool to spin.

    This cowl took me close to 24 hours to knit. The three skeins that were hand spun in the cowl were done on drop spindles. The fiber and the mill spun mini skeins were all gifts or bonuses that came with other purchases, so it was just time involved.

    Total hours on this fingering weight cowl, maybe 35. I doubt that this cowl will go in the shop, but there is one in the shop of silk, drop spindle spun, my own pattern design. Paying myself slave labor wages of a couple of dollars an hour, it would have to be priced at more than $70-75. People will look, comment that it is lovely, that they can’t spend that much money on a gift or on themselves, and walk on, at least in the area that we live.

    The shawl in the header photo is the one I did from the Shave ‘Em to Save ‘Em challenge yarns. It has 8 different breeds hand spun on the wheel. Each breed had to be at least 4 ounces, but the white center triangle was 15 ounces and the light gray around the edge and one stripe was 8 ounces. That was countless hours of spinning and then probably near 50-60 hours to knit it. It isn’t for sale, it couldn’t be. How could I ever price it?

    This is my conundrum. My hook is that my items are hand spun, hand knit, or hand woven garments, so I don’t want to work with inexpensive big box store yarn. My body products are handmade with organic ingredients. Because the body products are generally priced under $10, they sell at craft shows and holiday markets but spinning, knitting, and weaving are what I do for pleasure.

    So how do you decide what you are worth? Or how much loss you are willing to take to continue the crafts? And none of this takes into account what the equipment costs are to do these crafts.

  • That kind of day.

    Sundays are quiet days. This Sunday is gray and gloomy, cold, just at freezing but not wet. A good day for sitting by a fire with a cup of tea, a good book, or my knitting. A good day for stew simmering on the stove and bread rising for baking.

    To build a fire in the living room, a fire needs to be built in the wood stove in the basement or we get a downdraft on that side of the chimney and smoke in the basement.

    That fire heats up the basement, where we keep the thermostat set below the ambient temperature of the ground as the basement is set three sides underground and the fourth side south facing. Having a fire there heats the basement above the temperature that we set the living area thermostats and the rising heat up the stairwell keeps the thermostat for the main part of the house from turning the heat on, and it heats the floors enough to help keep the main level of the house warmer.

    The living room fireplace is a Rumford design that has an actual open vent from outside to bring in air and the tall curved back and smoke shelf to prevent downdrafts, projects heat back into the house. This is about as efficient as an open fireplace can be. When we aren’t sitting in front of it monitoring the burn, we have both screen doors and glass doors that can be closed for safety. Fortunately, we have never had to rely on these two sources of heat for more than a handful of days from power outage due to an ice storm. With the woodstove, a gas grill, and a camp stove, cooking wasn’t a problem then. Water was, as we are on a well, but we have a 4500 gallon cistern system that catches rain and snow melt from the roof and downhill from it is a gravity fed yard hydrant so water for toilets and animals can be obtained there. Purchased water for cooking and drinking for us if we haven’t filled bottles. Generally, the basement freezer has a dozen or so gallon bottles frozen in it to help keep food when the power is out. Since we don’t hunt and don’t buy perishables in bulk, there is usually not too much to lose.

    We love our retirement farm and are truly fortunate in having acres of grass that can be hayed and young men who want the hay for their livestock that take care of mowing and baling it and in exchange for the hay, keep areas brush hogged and this year keeping us in firewood by cutting an oak that fell at the edge of the hay field two springs ago, split that wood and brought it up to our woodpile. They were going to stack it too, but three grand kids that were here awaiting a holiday meal stacked most of it for us. We don’t abuse their offers of help, but know that if there was really a task beyond our capabilities, we could call one of them and they would make time to take care of it. Country life is certainly different than the suburban life of my working years.

  • An ark, an ark, my knits for an ark

    Whew, we went from 12 degrees f a few mornings ago to 40 and torrential rain. It was low teens 3 nights in a row (no frozen pipes thank goodness) and the days weren’t even reaching freezing then it changed as Virginia will at any season. There was a winter storm warning last night causing schools to delay or close for no reason as it never was cold, and it rained. The wind blew and it rained some more. Still is raining hard. Without an attic to buffer sound, we hear it when it rains hard. Not the pinging on a metal roof like in the barn, but it is still a metal roof with insulation.

    When we went to dinner and then to daughter’s house for grandson’s birthday dinner on Sunday, we discussed having another mother/daughter movie date, taking her kids this time, to see Call of the Wild when it comes out the end of February. We had both watched the trailers and wanted to see it. It has been many decades since I had read it, and in our home library is a leather bound copy of Jack London books, so as soon as I finished the ebook I had out from the library, I started reading it. I’m not sure how true to the book the movie will be, but I am looking forward to it.

    Today’s rain allowed me to finish it.

    The Toolbox Cowl is progressing. I sat in a waiting room again yesterday and knit. Work has been done on it at night. I’m on the last stockinette section, the second to last skein. There will be one more Diamond tweed section with this skein and the final skein and the last Garter Rib section. I’m not sure I should have used the more brightly colored variegated one, but I think I like it anyway.

    With lots of Corriedale, Merino, silk, and bamboo in the skeins, it is soft. It shouldn’t take me too much more time to complete. I read the Yarn Harlot’s blog and she posts finishing mitten and cowls in a day. Wow, she must be a speed knitter.

    Tomorrow is going to be chilly and party sunny, maybe I can finally get the coop cleaned out. Today a bale of pine chips was purchased because straw seems to be scarce. The old straw is going in the run, the rain has made the area just inside the gate a hazard to my health and safety. There really isn’t a level spot on our property, but I’m not sure I picked the right spot to put that coop when we got it. With the bare scratched earth and a couple inches of rain or a coat of ice, I can slide forever. Perhaps I should put some rough pavers from the gate to the pop door.

  • Foolish Question

    A few days ago, I asked, “Where is Winter?” Well it found us. When we left for grandson’s birthday dinner last night, there were snow flurries. This morning, there was a dusting on all surfaces and a morning temperature of 16f. The high staying in the 20s. Now, I know that isn’t cold in parts of the world, but it is pretty danged cold here. Tonight is a repeat, then we return to more normal 30s and low 40s daytime, 20s to low 30s nightime. I expected to get zero eggs today with it so cold, but the girls surprised me with 4. I have gone out several times today to check so they wouldn’t freeze in the nesting box. The water in the coop was frozen this morning and will be again tomorrow.

    This would have been a good day to stay in, but we had yet another appointment to keep this morning and it required a driver for the passenger, so both of us were out in the bitter breeze.

    Yesterday afternoon, I finished knitting the carry along hat I cast on a couple days ago. The pattern is Barley Hat by Tin Can Knits, the yarn is my hand spun Tunis dyed red, plied with a Jacob X Finn. I spun this skein as an early wheel project, so it has been sitting in my stash for quite a while and it has never sold. It was a good weight for a hat and enough to make a large slouchy version. It is damp and blocked in the photo.

    Knowing there would be waiting room time today, a project that has been in my queue for some time is Tool Box Cowl by Adventure DuJour Designs to use up several collected mini skeins, some of which I spun on the drop spindle. After I finished the hat, I cast on for it and got the garter rib section done and realized that I didn’t have the right needle size for the rest. My interchangeables only go down to a size 3, I have a size 2 fixed circular needle, but it is 16″ long and the cowl has 168 stitches, so too many for such a short needle. While at daughter’s house for cake after the birthday dinner, I borrowed a 24″ and continued on with the Diamond Tweed pattern on the correct size needle. I have finished the first two colors of 6 and am about to work the next Diamond Tweed section that uses color 2 and 3. Color 3 is the blue and teal mini skein in the lower right of the photo.

    Color 1 is hand spun Coopworth, Color 2 is a wool/bamboo/silk blend I spun on a drop spindle, Color 3 is a mill spun mini skein that was dyed by a friend that has passed away. Colors 4 and 5 are his yarns also, and Color 5 will be another drop spindle spun mini skein of Merino/Silk/Sari Silk. Each skein has some blue in it.

    Yesterday we picked up Saturday’s mail and in it was the yarn I had ordered as the warp for a scarf or cowl. It is Shetland lamb and baby Alpaca that will be used with my spun Romeldale CVM.

    The grayer brown is my hand spun. I had hoped that the book I had ordered with rigid heddle information and patterns would beat the yarn here, but the book is still not in. I would have had it sent to the house, but the book seller said it would come in in 2 or 3 days. The book seller I spoke with today said I should never have been told that, that it usually takes about a week and with their membership, which we have, it could have been shipped directly to me with no shipping charges and likely would have arrived sooner. Oh well! It will come in when it comes and I will plan out the use of the yarns above.

    The hat will definitely go in my shop. The cowl is probably mine. The undecided cowl/scarf/small wrap with the yarn above will likely go in the shop, brown is not my color against my face. I guess my inventory is being rebuilt for the online shop and next fall and winter’s markets.

  • The Crud

    Being a pair of over 70’s, one with a compromised immune system of unknown reason, we always get flu shots and have both gotten the old and the new pneumonia shots. As a young Air Force officer, hubby was stationed in Missouri and contracted what might have been histoplasmosis, but because they couldn’t culture it, he ended up having a thoracotomy from the back instead of the chest and a partial lung lobe removed. As a result, if he ever gets an upper respiratory infection, he will begin to get better then it settles in his lungs and usually becomes bronchitis.

    Three weeks ago, he began to have cold symptoms, then a full blown cold, then started feeling better by earlier in the week. By Thursday, we were in the doctor’s office and he ended up on antibiotics. I had tiptoed around, washing my hands frequently, keeping surfaces wiped down with cleaner, washing dishes in the dishwasher on hot and doing everything but wearing a hazmat suit and respirator mask, but by Wednesday, I knew I hadn’t avoided it. In my case, upper respiratory infections generally go to my sinuses, but usually not as bad as his and shorter lived.

    Saturdays in our house begin with breakfast out and then the farmers market, but we had a winter weather advisory and I really didn’t need anything available this time of year at the market, so we decided to change our routine. When I got up, it was in the low 30’s and there was a trace of tiny ice pellets on the back deck. It wasn’t doing anything when I went out to do morning chicken chores and let them out. Since the weather wasn’t looking too bad, we drove in and got fast food and came home, built fires in the basement woodstove and the living room fireplace and hunkered down indoors to see what the weather would bring. The temperature has climbed slowly during the day to the upper 30s and it has rained and rained and we have kept the fires burning, it was so gloomy out. The weather forecast shows today’s high will be around midnight tonight hitting about 41, then turning downward all day tomorrow to a low tomorrow night of 16. At least the precipitation is supposed to end before the temperature falls and we have several days of real winter temperatures.

    Because of having caught his crud and the weather being crud, today has been a sit and knit, drinks lots of hot tea and a quick stir fry dinner with leftover rice. I turned mine into a big bowl of miso soup. I figure I might drown the crud.

  • Organized Disorganization – 1/17/2020

    After the holiday markets and many months of knitting up my hand spun yarn, my yarn stock was low. When spinning in Colonial costume, I generally spin washed Jacob fleece, spinning from locks, combing or carding it to spin, but not using processed batts, top, or roving. I took advantage of lower stock and less stress to get things made to clean up my fiber area, see post https://cabincrafted.fangorn.space/?p=415 , but didn’t return to spinning then as I had been given a rigid heddle loom for Christmas and the announcement of the imminent birth of our 8th grandchild. I immediately bought cotton yarn and wove a baby blanket for him as I knew I couldn’t get a blanket knit fast enough. He was born on January 5th, the same day I mailed the blanket and it arrived the day he came home.

    I had begun knitting fingerless mitts for myself as every pair I knit ended up being sold except one pair that were too small for me. Hats and fingerless mitts make good carry along projects and I worked on them in waiting rooms whilst hubby was having some medical imaging testing done on several days. They were finished, but wanting them to be long enough to be warm, I had made them too long to be functional, so I set them aside for a few days and returned to my spinning. I had bought 4 ounces of Romeldale CVM roving from a friend, a second 4 ounces, the first having been turned into yarn for the mitts that didn’t fit and the too long ones, and I returned to finish spinning it. While that skein was being washed, I looked to see what else I had besides the Jacob. In my stash of fiber was some roving that I could identify as Coopworth from another friend and spun it. With woven cowls and scarves in mind.

    Two days ago, I ripped back the mitts to a more appropriate length, picked up the stitches and knit on new ribbing to make them useful, just in time for this weekend’s winter weather advisory. Then needing a carry with me project, I pulled a skein of yarn that I spun several years ago that has never sold and started a hat.

    And I went to my newly organized stash to pull out more fiber to spin. This is where the disorganized part comes in. The fiber is all neatly bagged in bins, but I failed to put any identifying information in the bags, so other than a braid I got at the spinner’s Christmas party and the Jacob that I washed and bagged, I have almost no idea what I have.

    There is still a little of the merino that a friend and I sent for processing, and a small ball of Cormo that was gifted to me, but there are bags that I can’t identify.

    I am spinning the gray brown and I think, maybe, it is Coopworth from a friend. The creamy gray is a mystery. It feels like it might have alpaca in it, but I have no idea when I purchased it or from where. I don’t think I will dig deeper into the bins until I finish these two, knowing that there is a pound of fiber on it’s way to me in the mail. I think I will label them. I guess that is a good idea, my memory just isn’t serving me well today.

  • Where is Winter? – 1/15/2020

    So far this is proving to be a mild winter, gray and drizzly. It suggests that stink bugs, ticks, and fleas will be prevalent this summer. It is so mild, that the weeds that are usually beat back in the vegetable garden in winter are not only growing, but thriving. Last summer, the garden was a lot of work and I tried to stay on top of the weeding, but was losing the battle with some of them. I never beat the mint bed and the Creeping Charlie is taking over and choking out everything. The garden is also too big for me to keep it all in rotation. I have looked at options for reducing the size, making some of the boxes 4 boards high instead of 2, but the perennials are at the two ends with a 4 X 8 bed of blueberry bushes that finally produced last summer, the 3 barrels that are old and fragile of red raspberries and I fear they would disintegrate if I try to move them and they finally have the raspberries contained at one end. The other end has the asparagus bed that is now 6 or 7 years old and produces more asparagus than daughter, a friend, and I can eat in a season. Those two perennial ends do control the garden size to some extent.

    One side of the garden is a pathway away from the chicken pen for about half of the garden length, beyond the chicken pen is one of the worst patches of Creeping Charlie. I have considered pulling down all of the fencing and starting over. If the fencing was hard up against the boxes on the side that the chickens can reach, the length of the garden and if I keep the plantings far enough away from the fence to prevent long necks from reaching through to eat my veggies, perhaps their scratching would keep the weeds down on that side of the garden. The chickens won’t touch the Creeping Charlie to eat, but maybe their scratching for seeds and goodies tossed down there would reduce it. The sides of the garden nearer the house and south of the berries could be reduced and the boards from those boxes used to make the rear boxes taller so they are easier for me to work. The issue there is the post that has the solar charger on it is on that edge, though the charger is dead. Maybe it could be moved with the fence or just be removed entirely. If moved, I could hang a gate on it.

    In April, the university has a service day that you can sign up for help. Maybe some help getting the fencing in order for the garden and chicken pen would be incentive to keep at it.

    Today’s forecast looks like maybe the thunderstorms from a few days ago are going to be followed as the adage says with some snow to start the weekend. More likely it will be a sloppy mix of snow, freezing rain, and rain with little or no accumulation.

    The hens must think it is spring. This week I have had a day with 3 eggs, one with 4, and yesterday I got 5. There probably won’t be any today, but that is okay. This is the first winter I have gotten any from my hens.

    The warm weather has had me reluctant to use one of my Christmas gifts, a cast iron bread pan, but this bread is an easy loaf that can be made in just a couple of hours with no kneading, so we had a hot loaf of Herb and Onion bread for dinner one evening.

    The drizzle outside, the doctor’s appointments, and now a pair of head colds between us have keep me indoors and instead of warping the loom, I finished spinning 4 ounces of Romeldale CVM that I got from my friend Gail (Sunrise Valley Farm) and got a generous 289.5 yards of light fingering yarn from it. It is now washed and awaiting the arrival of a purchase of mill spun alpaca, silk, wool blend yarn from another friend. The mill spun will be the warp for a scarf or wrap and the CVM the weft. I also spun 3 ounces of Coopworth from another friend, Debbie (Hearts of the Meadow Farm) and got 112.5 yards of worsted weight from it. I have ordered another 8 ounces of Coopworth that may be from the same lot, or will at least coordinate with it and it will become another scarf or wrap. I am going to try to spin some of it tight enough and fine enough to be the warp.

    Today after a frustrating attempt to order a rigid heddle book online using a gift card, we went to Barnes and Noble and ordered it there. I hope to learn some new techniques and patterns to work into my weaving. With the 8 ounces of Coopworth to match the maroon above, I ordered another 8 ounces of this

    It doesn’t really have a plan, but I have a 4.8 oz braid of BFL and Tussah Silk that might go well with it. I’ll have to wait to see how they spin before I decide.