Cabin Crafted

Blog

  • The Rabbit Hole has deepened – 12/25/2019

    My love added to my fiber toys this morning. Under the tree was an Ashford Samplet 16″ rigid heddle loom.

    We began our morning with Huevos Rancheros, a dish I traditionally fix on Christmas and New Year’s mornings. It is a special treat for him, one he grew up with. It was just us this morning so no rush on opening gifts, he already had most of his with his new leather chair and his refurbished “new” computer, but there were a few minor surprises under the tree for him.

    We took gifts to daughter’s house and had an exchange with them, then home and I upacked the loom box.

    When our house was being built, I made several 5 gallon buckets of home-made paste floor wax. The instructions said to wax or seal the wood before assembly, so I opened on of the remaining buckets, scooped out a tin full of the wax and spent about an hour hand waxing the pieces. Then assembly commenced.

    With my recent lesson, having warped my friend’s borrowed loom, and the very detailed instruction booklet, I successfully warped the loom with some of my hand spun dk weight yarn.

    My stocking contained a Barnes and Noble gift card, so a book or two of projects and techniques will be added to my growing collection of craft and fiber history books, several had been added by eldest son’s family for my birthday and Christmas. The booklet with the loom has a sample scarf with instructions for several different weaving techniques to try in the meantime.

    The Let it Snow box in the photo above was the gift from daughter and her family. Treats and a beautiful cribbage game in a wooden box. I used to play it with my Dad and plan to refresh my skills and teach her and her kids.

    Youngest son and his family sent us a pair o mugs with all of our grandchildren represented on them. Tonight I am enjoying my evening tea from mine.

    As a Christmas bonus, the year old hens produced 3 eggs today. We have been getting 1 or 2, and I have never had hens lay in the winter before. Such a treat to still be getting farm fresh eggs to eat and cook with this time of year.

    I think my favorite gift from hubby today is a tiny music box in my stocking.

    It plays, “You Are My Sunshine.”

    Here’s hoping you had Merry Christmas or Happy Hanukkah.

  • Winter Solstice with family 12/22/2019

    Eldest son and eldest grandson made a very quick visit, arriving yesterday afternoon and leaving this evening. I traditionally prepare the Christmas Day dinner, turkey, ham, and all the fixings, but since they couldn’t be here on Christmas Day and since they arrived on the Solstice, we had Christmas/Solstice dinner with all the fixings for them and daughter and her kiddos. Brother and sister got to spend some time together as did the cousins, and they shared gifts, I got some help in the kitchen, and we all ate well. I even spatchcocked the turkey all by myself. Doing a chicken isn’t too hard, but a larger turkey is difficult for me to do.

    Yesterday morning, two of the young men who are part of the team who mow our farm and get a share of the hay for a small herd they share, came over with chain saws, a hydraulic log splitter, dump bed truck, and a big tractor and cut up a red oak tree that fell into our hay field winter before last. They had hayed around it for two summers. They brought the entire cord plus of wood up to my woodpile and dumped it. They even offered to stack it for me which I refused as I hadn’t expected the entire tree. The three grands got out there while dinner was being prepared and spent a couple hours stacking firewood.

    This morning, this is what I found. The kids ate well and I’ll bet slept well. This morning after fixing biscuits and gravy with grandson’s help, sharing gifts with son and grandson; grandson and I went out and did some cleanup of the last little bit, hopped the short stack on the right over the pile on to some cedar poles on the opposite side of the big stack where we had also stacked the clean up amount.

    Son was in the house nursing a finger he had seriously cut about a week ago and finishing grading the papers from one of his upperclass University classes he teaches. To try to keep grandson out of his way and away from too much TV time, I also got his help finally pruning back the dead asparagus tops and getting spoiled straw from the compost pile over it, getting about a foot of hay into the chicken run for them to peck through and to keep it less slippery for me when it rains. The big round bale was wedged between two objects that made it difficult for me to peel layers off of it, but with his help it is now more accessible. I asked son if I could keep grandson for a while. He jokingly asked me how long. My response was as long as I could still get good help out of him or until he started treating me like a parent instead of grandmom.

    Son got his grades done and submitted in time to have hot turkey sandwiches and other leftovers before heading home this evening.

    We will go to daughter’s house on Christmas Eve for dinner and back for a bit on Christmas Day give them their gifts. Christmas morning will be quiet, just us. Jim will primarily get a stocking as his gift was “the chair III” which arrived Wednesday and he has been enjoying it for a few days now.

    On Thursday afternoon, daughter came over and she and I were able to get the two deteriorating pleather loveseats onto our trailer and off loaded at the local trash location. After Christmas decorations are down, we will consider what to get to put in the living room. The loft got a rocking chair that had been in our bedroom and had become a place to dump things instead of putting them away. Maybe I will be better about keeping that area organized now.

  • Colonial Christmas 4th grade style – 12/20/2019

    The fourth graders at the local elementary school have just finished up studying about Jamestown and today is the last day of school before winter break. There are 3 classes that rotate with 3 teachers for Science and History with one, Math with one, and Language Arts with one with a 4th teacher that is support. To end their unit and try to have some level of control on this last full day, they planned a Colonial Christmas celebration. In one room they dipped candles, in another they made pomander balls, the third room had a Christmas movie playing, making herb coated ornaments, and me in Colonial clothing with a lesson about colonial clothing, textiles, spinning, and weaving. I always take many “toys,” several different types of spindles, lucet, combs, carders, my wheel, and this time a borrowed rigid heddle loom. I love this type of event.

    The children had an hour in each room, so I had 6 groups for about 30 minutes each to talk about a brief history of spinning, history of homespun, and some weaving. Some groups watched and asked a few questions, the most common one was, “Do you wear that every day?” Some groups wanted hands on and I allowed carding of wool and playing with the various spindles that I demonstrated first. With the number and age of the kids, I didn’t let them handle the sharp combs and knew that letting any of them use the wheel I was asking for trouble. And as the rigid heddle was borrowed from a friend, I only demonstrated on it.

    There were photos taken by various adults, but none by me.

    My favorite question though, was as I was packing up to leave, a tiny little gal approached and very quietly asked if she could ask me something. Of course, I replied. She asked, “Where you around in Jamestown?” I laughed my way home with that one. The old lady with her spinning wheel.

    Another great opportunity to teach the youth and maybe interest some of them in pursuing an interest in fiber.

  • Olio – 12/16/2019

    Olio: a miscellaneous collection of things.

    Yesterday was spent in recovery from the long, cold, wet day on Saturday, but wasn’t totally idle. The craft display stuff was returned to the guest room closet where it is stored, the inventory checked, sorted, and put away this morning.

    The pop up tent is still slightly open in the garage drying, but will be packed up soon and tucked away in the garage with the weights and cart. My next two events are spinning demonstrations in Colonial costume on December 20 for the local elementary fourth graders, and at Wilderness Road Regional Museum on January 6 for old Christmas and the burning of the greens. Neither of those events are vending events.

    I have written about “the chair” and “the chair II.” At some point, once all of our furniture was moved to this house and the basement had been finished (several years after the house was completed), we did some rearranging. We had a leather couch and club chair that had been our living room furniture for years that moved with me. A Lazy Boy couch that is leather on the seats and back and synthetic leather on the low wear areas that stayed in the apartment in Virginia Beach until hubby retired and it moved with him and was added to the living room here initially. We had an oak futon that was in an office/guest room when we sold our home in Virginia Beach and it moved with me as a guest bed in my apartment in Blacksburg and later into the loft of the house. When the basement was finished we moved the Lazy Boy couch and the futon to the basement rec room leaving a huge hole in the living room, so we went to a local furniture store and bought a reclining loveseat to fill the hole. It didn’t match the color of the leather couch very well, so we decided to move the loveseat to the loft, and get another love seat, just like the first one but a better color match. One of the loveseat purchases generated a Father’s Day Sale coupon that resulted in the disposal of “the chair” and the purchase of “the chair II.”

    “The chair II” was heavily used and the phony leather deteriorated pretty quickly. The loveseats which we thought had leather on the sitting surfaces were gently use, but once our daughter and her family moved in with us for a couple of years while they sold their Florida house, saved for the down payment for their local house, the living room loveseat started getting lots of use and it didn’t take long for us to discover that the leather sitting parts were not leather.

    It was soon cracked and shedding pleather so I bought a stretchy cover to try to slow down the progress. The upstairs one was doing fine, but again, it received little use until “the chair II” was discarded. It only took about two weeks use for it to begin breaking down as well.

    The living room one is going to be discarded and is currently sitting on the front porch to make way for the Christmas tree. After Christmas, a second rocking chair will be added to the living room. The cover will be put on the second one to try to get more use out if once the new chair is delivered mid week. It seems almost like fraud to sell furniture that wasn’t inexpensive junk (we thought) that can’t hold up to basic wear over a couple of years.

    This morning, I had another check up at the hearing clinic to raise the functionality closer to 100% effectiveness on my hearing aid. While we were out and about, we drove to Joe’s Christmas Tree Farm, about 10 miles from home, hoping to get lucky like last year and find a precut reasonably sized tree right near the store, but not this year. We didn’t want a huge tree this year, nor did we want to spend a long time walking the farm in the rain. They had some 7 foot trees near the store and as we were the only customers at the time, the young man working the yard brought out his chain saw and cut down our tree for us, drilled it for the stand, tied it and put it on our car while we shopped inside and paid for the tree. The tree was small enough for me to handle once home and it is up and decorated.

    This gave me the incentive to finish decorating with my Santa collection and the snow village. This weekend, eldest son and eldest grandson will arrive to spend two days with us. I will prepare Christmas dinner with all the fixings on Saturday for them and daughter and her family.

    This is an impromptu Christmas decoration. This begonia has bloomed better since I brought it in for the winter than it did outdoors all summer.

    And to close today’s post, “Esplain to me Lucy,” why does a box of raw sugar need vegan and gluten free labels on it. My science background tells me that sugar is a plant product, not a gluten bearing plant.

  • Up & Down, Up & Down again – 12/14/2019

    Another Saturday double booked. The second Holiday market set up at 8 a.m., to take down at 2 p.m., at least that was the schedule. The vendors all set up in the rain this morning, but we got unloaded, tents up and organized mostly by opening at 9 a.m. It was surprisingly busy considering the rain. Knowing that it was to be wet, and since I have wool and soap, we bought me 4 clear shower curtain liners to hang on the back and sides to protect my wares. They worked well and are now spread all over the garage to dry. The sun finally came out off and on around noon and with it, wind gusts. I have 100 pounds of weight, 25 per leg to hold down my tent, so it really wasn’t a problem, except when a big gust came, I grabbed for the tent, a mistake, as one of my tables, the one in the center of the photo with heavy box, soap display, signage, and all my salves, lotions bars, beard oils and soaps blew over backwards, into the wet. And to make it more of a mess, it took my chair over too that had a travel mug of coffee in the holder and it poured over all my business cards. By the time my vendor friends and I got it all picked up and I got it sorted back out, it was about 1:30 and I gave up, loaded my car and came home.

    I was fortunate, only the elongated sign frame broke and only a few labels and my business cards were lost. The photo is from last weekend, I didn’t manage to take any today, much less of the mess.

    After a quick trip home to unload the tables, wet tent, wet liners, wet red table cloth, and a quick change into Colonial costume, I headed over to Wilderness Road Regional Museum for the 3rd of 4 nights of Noel Nights and Christmas Bazaar and set up again. The circuit breaker that wasn’t working last weekend was repaired, so we had several space heaters running in the German Barn and it was much more comfortable in there tonight. Instead of spinning, I gave a spinning lesson to a friend who was there with her husband, our local blacksmith, while he was also vending.

    The craft shows are over for me for this year. I still have a couple dozen holiday shape and scent soaps, very few knits or woven garments left. Tomorrow it will all be sorted out, make sure it is all dry, and stowed away properly instead of just randomly unloaded in the garage and hallway.

    I learned a lesson this morning however. In the future, the wooden table will not have a rack with signage and heavy items on it, it will be used for the yarn and lighter items. The study plastic table will hold the heavier items, and the signage will have to be displayed a different way. I was lucky. Several vendors had breakage as the wind blew down displays. Others had to take down parts of their displays to prevent them blowing down. And everyone, needs to make sure to bring weights for their tents, we didn’t have any tents take off today, like last year, but many were not weighted down which contributed to displays being knocked down and damaged.

  • Not Lara’s Ice Palace – 12/13/2019

    This is not a scene from Dr. Zhivago, but what we awoke to this morning. It is more than a little crunchy.

    Tomorrow’s Holiday Market is low 40s and 80% chance of rain. I don’t think it will be as successful as last week. If I can safely get out later, I will go buy 4 inexpensive shower curtain liners for the back and back parts of the sides of my pop up tent. Right now, I need to try to finish a pair of mitts and band some salves, try to pack up the car without slip sliding.

  • Rabbit Holes – 12/10/2019

    Various crafts have come and gone from my life, but most have been fiber crafts with limited equipment and consumable supplies. My mother switched crafts like clothing and most of her crafts required cabinets full of molds; candle making and cake decorating come to mind. She tried cross stitch after I started, bought boxes of bobbins and colors, embroidery hoops, and needles, but failed to keep her crosses all in the same direction and consistent and lost interest. Later in life, she helped on a quilt for her church’s retiring pastor and decided she wanted to become a quilter. I have what I think is the only quilt she ever completed. It was made for my husband and me as a wedding present. She pieced the top and had it quilted by someone else. It is lovely, but has never been used, just displayed because every time it is spread out, I have to sit with needle and thread and re-applique sections as she used a poly cotton blend and her stitching was too long.

    Each of her crafts required lots of equipment and when her health failed and my parents sold our childhood home to downsize prior to her death. I went to help pack goods for donation, trash, and the move. Boxes and boxes of candle and cake molds, alone with other craft goods were packed up and taken to a donation center. I don’t remember if the quilting frame had been borrowed or purchased.

    I do have an antique spinning wheel and a contemporary wheel I spin on, a 5 foot triangular loom with an easel, hand cards and combs that I use when demonstrating spinning at living history events. A set of interchangeable knitting needles and a couple of crochet hooks, but I have been doing this for quite a while now and continue playing with fiber.

    My weaving experience has played with a rigid heddle loom for a few times and learning to weave on the Tri loom to use up some of my yarn more quickly. Having borrowed a small rigid heddle for the upcoming Colonial demonstration at a local elementary school, I needed a refresher on warping it. I posted a bit about it a few days ago. I wove off the short bit that was already on the loom and will make a small bag from it. Sunday, I stripped the rest off and tackled warping it with a 7′ warp.

    To my surprise and delight, I was able to do it and it only took me about half an hour. I started weaving some of the gray and some of the teal wool yarn I had purchased to warp it and demonstrate on it and just kept going. I wove about 40 inches, carefully removed it and tied the remainder back on the front bar for the demonstration and made a cowl out of what I had woven.

    Weaving the cowl, tying and twisting the fringe took just a couple of hours. Knitting a cowl takes much, much longer. This could become another rabbit hole, but it is easier on my arthritic wrist and hand.

  • Whew, What a Day/week- 12/8/2019

    Currently, our lives aren’t our own, we have some control over scheduling, some, not total. I don’t even want to count the days we have been in doctor’s offices, physical therapy offices, and hearing clinic offices in the past 5 weeks. The only positive side of it was lots of time to knit for the holiday craft season. That is a double edged sword in itself. I have years when knits sell, then have years when not a single knit item is sold at the events, so there needs to be a balance, not too much inventory because I pay personal property tax on unsold inventory. Don’t get me started on that, you pay tax on the purchase of the fiber to spin or the yarn to knit, then personal property tax on the inventory in stock at the time of reporting to the county, then I pay state sales tax on anything I sell. And if the item sells through the on line shop or the buyer uses plastic to pay for it, there are fees. Then my time, etc. and people wonder why a handmade knit or woven item is expensive. Anyway, back to the week. Various appointments, mid week was my spinning group’s holiday party and the hostess has loaned me a small loom for the Elementary School Colonial Christmas event on the 20th, but I couldn’t remember all the steps for warping the loom. The day after the holiday party, she had several of us over to teach a new weaver, refresh two of us, and demonstrate to another who hasn’t fallen into that rabbit hole yet. That was two full afternoons last week.

    Friday was cold and rainy, but the car had to be loaded for the first Farmers Market Holiday market event. The holiday markets are outdoors, so in addition to tables, racks, and inventory, I have to fit in the 10 foot pop-up shelter and the 4 weights to hold it in place if it gets windy. All this has to go into my little 14 year old CRV. Since I had to leave home around 7:15 Saturday morning to get there and unload, it couldn’t wait until morning. And since that event was followed last evening by the first Christmas Bazaar at Wilderness Road Regional Museum, I had to make sure I had everything I needed for that, but my spinning wheel wouldn’t fit.

    The holiday market was terrific, beautiful weather, so many vendors, so much foot traffic.

    Well, yesterday was a buy knits event, so the inventory is significantly reduced. There are still a few shawls, hats, mitts and mittens, and the sweater in the above photo left, but far fewer than I started with yesterday. That event ends at 2 p.m. and the vendors in the parking lot have to break down and get out quickly so the vendors under the shelter roof can break down and get out. I was headed home by 2:20 to unload the tent, weights, and mannequins, quickly change into Colonial clothes, grab my spinning wheel and fiber basket, give hubby a quick kiss and update, and leave to be at Wilderness Road Regional Museum Noel Nights by a bit after 4 (it is almost an hour from home).

    Photo credit Wilderness Road Regional Museum/April Martin

    The evening there was great too, some soaps sold, time to visit with some of my “Colonial” friends, and demonstrate spinning in the old German barn. Just look at those floor planks.

    I left at 7:15 a.m. and returned home at 8:15 p.m. yesterday. At least I didn’t have to pack up from the Christmas Bazaar as we will repeat tonight with different musicians in the Museum, more savory and sweet snacks, more Wassail and hot tea to enjoy, then a pack up and stow away until a repeat next weekend of both events. I hope for similar weather, but the forecast has flipped between cold rain, freezing rain, and snow. I am hopeful that it will shift away from Saturday.

    The rest of the upcoming week’s schedule is still packed. I am trying to decide whether to put down the fingerless mitts/convertible mittens that I am making for myself to see if I can add to my stock this week, or just go with the flow and hope that I start the new year with very limited inventory to report. I am certainly leaning in that direction.

  • Fun With Friends – 12/5/2019

    I belong to a spinning group that meets once a week during the day and has an offshoot (maybe the original group) that meets once a month at night. The group is called the Spunsters, nice play on a term. We are mostly gals, but not entirely. The daytime group are mostly retired women, but a few that still work outside the home that come when their job allows. This group is very generous with their knowledge and often their equipment as well. I had recently taken up spinning with a drop spindle when I discovered them, then using the Community Room at the local library. Eventually, the library started preempting us, often at the last minute, so we relocated, finally landing at the Recreation Center. A couple of times each year, one member who has a lovely, large home that is centrally located holds a social event where we bring snacks, she furnishes beverages, and we have sale and free tables and at the holidays, we have a Dirty Santa exchange. The gift must be of fiber or fiber related theme. Last year the event was just after mid December and we had just had a snow and ice event a few days prior, so her driveway was a bit treacherous for some of the gals. She decided to try to beat the bad weather this year and we held the party today.

    There are a lot of food allergies in my group of friends, and I often try to make something that is gluten free, dairy free, and nut free. This year I didn’t. I love shortbread, but didn’t want to make plain shortbread. I made the recipe, added Almond extract, topped it with a thin layer of melted Giradelli dark chocolate, and sprinkled crushed Heath Bars on top. I did put an allergy list on it, but still half of it was consumed.

    Half the fun of the Dirty Santa game is to have folks that don’t just pick a wrapped gift from under the tree, but peruse the already opened gifts and select from one of them. Most of this group are reticent to do that, but a few of us will. One gal couldn’t stay for the entire Santa part so she didn’t participate in it, and as she was leaving, the hostess told everyone to wish her goodbye and quickly grabbed an opened gift. Lots of laughs and exaggerated perturbation over having their gift taken. Sometimes they go get a different wrapped item, sometimes they will take another open gift. There were lots of very nice gifts today, fiber, yarn, notions, and books. I took an opened gift and it was taken from me. I took another opened gift and came home with this.

    I also came home with a fringe twister and a Mayan spinner that will be added to my spinning equipment that goes to teaching events. The fringe twister was the result of my asking for knowledge assistance as I spent hours untying knotted fringe on a shawl and hand twisting the fringe into a more finished twisted fringe. The Mayan spinner a gift to add to my demonstration tools.

    On December 20, I will be a Colonial spinner for the 4th graders at a local elementary school as they conclude their unit on Colonial history. One of my Spunster friends is going to loan me a small loom and help me get it warped so that I can have it set up and demonstrate it that day too. It will be a fun day of demonstrating how labor intensive having clothing and household linens was in Colonial times.

    I don’t get to this group weekly, but enjoy when I have the opportunity and appreciate the generosity of these spinners of their time, expertise, and loan of equipment.

  • Gifts- 12/3/2019

    A plan is finally in place and not too stressful, I hope. With lots of doctor’s appointments, PT, and hearing clinic appointments between us, we seem to be spending lots of time in waiting room which affords me knitting time. Yesterday, daughter needed help with a sick child so she could go to work, so more knitting time. During hubby’s TV time is even more knitting time. The amount of it though is causing some joint pain with the cold raw weather. I have taken to wearing lots of wool layers from skin out to keep warm.

    Hubby needed a new chair as “the Chair II” had failed, and then his laptop crashed so we ordered a new chair and he ended up with a business grade refurbished computer from the computer repair shop. He will only get a stocking stuffed. Child #2 provided a few wishes and wants experiences for her kids rather than more toys. Doable. Child #3’s family is taken care of. Child #1’s family is partially taken care of, that one is still in progress.

    This weekend begins 3 weekends of craft events and hopefully, folks will buy my goods as gifts for their families and I will go into the new year low on stock which will make my personal property tax lower next year.

    Time to get back to knitting.