Cabin Crafted

Tag: garden

  • It was short lived

    The sun came out, it only dried off a little before it rained again, most of the afternoon, though not as torrential, mostly light drizzle. This morning was thick fog again and it is beginning to rain now and tomorrow. During the brief respite yesterday, I did get most of the catmint dug from under the garden fence line as well as the thick clump of that dreaded grass with the long stolens underground that send it everywhere. A little more weeding inside the fence was begun and then the rain started so I quit again.

    Before lunch yesterday we made our weekly trip to get our curbside pickup from the local natural foods store and we always use my car when we go because the lift hatch on the Xterra doesn’t stay up unless someone stands there and holds it. A week or so ago when we went out in my car after a rain, there was a very wet floor mat on the front passenger side and some water in a dash cubbyhole. Early on in the 3 day torrent, I put my car in the garage because of that prior leak, not knowing where it is coming in. Yesterday when I backed the car out to load the garbage on our way to the store, I noticed that the passenger seat, armrest, and floor mat were damp, so obviously I didn’t get it inside in time. I think the seal around the sunroof and/or windshield is leaking. The car is 15 years old and has well over 233,000 miles on it. Not worth having the seal replaced, but maybe the entire sunroof can be sealed shut. I will ask our mechanic the next time it goes in for an oil change.

    Daughter had a plumbing flood at her house a couple of months ago and because of the damage, had to pack up lots of books, clothes, and other goods to store until it was repaired. Her house is finally back together and stuff is being unpacked and returned to the home giving me a windfall of empty cardboard to use in the former chicken run around the garden. The entire perimeter is going to finally be covered with cardboard or weed mat and thick spoiled hay to keep the weeds down. With the fence line cleared from the outside, I should be able to get a clean line with the line trimmer around the garden. I really hope that I have created a lower maintenance garden this year. Any extra boxes are going in the walled garden and will be weighted down with more spoiled hay and ultimately compost and soil. I know it is going to get too hot to want to spend a lot of time in the garden soon, so having it lower maintenance will mean I can weed and harvest in the early mornings when it is cooler or at dusk.

    This is from the bridge we have to cross over what is usually a calm creek about 15 feet wide to get off of our mountain, taken yesterday morning. There is a road to the left just before the bridge that runs along the creek, sometimes just a few feet above the waterline when the creek is high. That road was closed to all traffic yesterday. There are a few houses in low areas along the creek, I hope they fared well, one of them the residents just got back in their home from where it had to have major repairs done from having a large tree fall across the kitchen end of the house early last spring. We have never seen this creek this flooded before. There are reports and photos from the 1980’s where this bridge would have had water flowing over it, but we weren’t here then. I often wonder the wisdom of building in low areas near a large creek or river.

    It looks like it may be Monday before I can get back in the garden.

  • A Sewing Day

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    A few weeks ago, I made 5 cloth masks, 2 for each of us and 1 for daughter as she has been doing grocery runs for us. This morning daughter initiated a text exchange and finally a phone call asking for a mask for her daughter so she can resume Taekwondo outdoor classes. They will be limiting the number of participants, spread out 10 feet apart, and must wear a mask. We ended up on the phone to determine style and size. While on the phone, her son asked for one too and we decided daughter needed a second one. I don’t have any fun fabrics, but do have two different gray fabrics and some ribbon that could be used as ties. The afternoon was spent cutting and sewing 5 more masks so they each have two for being out in public.

    Hopefully this will help keep them safe as the state is allowing more and more activities to resume. We are still self isolating except for curbside pick up of some groceries and animal supplies. We will go through a drive through or curbside food delivery occasionally if we are out on one of the other errands.

    Daughter set out today to get the remaining plant starts for the garden for her daughter that I helped with via emailed garden plans, instructions, and support. They wanted two Jalapenos plants in what they bought, but couldn’t find any. There are a couple of other places to try, but I may end up starting the seed for her which will slow them down some, but they will still get peppers before the season ends in the fall. They sent me a picture of granddaughter’s garden with plant seed up and starts planted. I wish I could have helped more with it, but pleased that I could provide guidance and planning.

    Such a neat little garden and a great lesson for the 8 year old.

    Two nights ago, when I went out to lock up the hens, 5 of them had apparently gone under the garden gate and again wrecked havoc. They dug up 3 of the tomatoes, trampled peas, scattered the hay from the aisles. I had to call for help to get them out, did repairs in the falling dark and finished the job yesterday morning. I finally got a new battery for one of my solar fence chargers, so I will be stringing electric wire to keep the deer and fence climbers out. The charger isn’t my preferred one, but I can’t get that one open to see what battery it needs. The back is screwed on with tiny star headed screws and I don’t have a star bit that small. I put a board across the opening under the gate, but I haven’t given the hens any free range time since. I guess I will have to expand their run and only free range them when they can be supervised. Several of them will go over the gate in the garden.

    I really don’t want them in there now that the sunflowers and corn have been planted this evening in anticipation of 5 days of rain. In a week or two, the pole beans can be planted in there as well.

    The blueberries have berries, the raspberries have flowers, and there are potato sprouts showing. The garden is now fully planted except for the pole beans, a second planting of bush beans in a few weeks, and some herbs that will be tucked between the tomatoes and peppers so that we can have dilly beans and pesto. The pumpkins are started in a flat and will be planted out when they have secondary leaves and I can see where the sunflowers are. The corn block is 4.5 feet by 13.5 feet. That should be a sufficient sized block to get some corn. If the electric will stop the raccoons.

  • The Yard (Wo)Man

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

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

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

    The bearded Iris were gorgeous this morning.

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

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

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

  • Day 3 of beautiful garden weather…

    but it is going to end tomorrow, 20 degrees f colder and 100% chance of rain. I took advantage of the day to do the fencing work on the garden. The chickens lost about half of their run around the garden. The south edge of it was about 6 or 7′ wide between the inner and outer fence and had 36″ high fencing on the garden side, plus there were gaps beneath the fence they could get under. I also realized that there were asparagus growing almost to the fence on the north side, and the chooks could reach my comfrey through the fence on the west side. That section was only about 3 feet long. I secured them in their pen and and removed the inner fence, set better posts, shifted it away from the asparagus bed and reset it only on the north and east edges of the garden, a narrow open topped tunnel about my shoulder width and 48″ fencing on both sides of the run. They have scratched nearly all the weeds out already, but because of my shifting of the inner fence to narrow their run, I have some areas in the edges of the garden that now need attention. I put a “gate” at both ends in case one of us has to go in the run.

    This morning, we drove to daughter’s house and picked up the post pounder and I set 3 T posts from our supply and used a guide rope between the outer two so that the inner two were in line (that doesn’t usually happen when I am fencing). The sturdy exterior welded wire fence was moved in the 6 or 7′ to the south edge of the area that I plant. After I move a few rocks, that area can now be mowed and the working garden is fenced.

    The tall weeds and grass are the old fence line.

    I didn’t get to the spoiled hay down today because it was recover and dinner prep time by the time I was done. After dinner, I hung the gate.

    And pulled down the solar charger so I can get a replacement battery for one of the two we own. All of the extra fencing was rolled and stored. All of the short cuts were folded up to be taken to the “convenience center” where we have to take our garbage and recycling.

    While I was doing that work, the tiny spindle I was awaiting arrived in the mail. I thought the spindle I used the most was tiny, but this one is as small as it’s name, Bee Humingbird.

    The ruler is for scale. It came in a little tin with the brown alpaca for me to spin. Tomorrow as it rains, I will spin, knit, and recover from 3 days of hard work. On Wednesday when it is dry and cool, I will move spoiled hay to cover the cardboard and weed mat. I will grab some old deck wood from the barn and terrace the upper third of the garden and get spoiled hay down on that path as well. One more day of weeding and hay moving and then it is plant and maintain. If I work a few minutes a few mornings a week into summer, the maintenance shouldn’t be too bad. My garden plan is done, the worst of the prep work is done. Now to start enjoying the fruits of that labor.

  • The Garden is Prepped

    Yesterday and today have been great days for the garden. Yesterday I took the scuffle hoe to the boxes to knock down the weeds beginning to sprout in them and I used the garden fork to clear the back aisle of weeds thinking I would plant the potatoes there. Then I moved back up to the area where the mint was and using the fork, dug everywhere a sprout of mint had emerged. I got a wheel barrow full of roots and sprouts, but I am winning.

    This morning first thing, I took the cut potato pieces out and it took me about two heartbeats to realize that the area I cleared yesterday was much too rocky and compacted for potatoes. The 4 X 8 foot bed that had the failed wren nest in it was the next option. It turned up nicely and is adjacent to the area the mint was, so there is lots of good soil beside it that I can use to make the mounds as the potatoes sprout, so they were planted. The garlic, onions, and asparagus were weeded and a couple dozen dandelions dug. After lunch, I was determined to get the rest of the garden ready to plant and to move the “gate” opening down to the wood post so I can hang a real gate on it. That meant moving a T post and I remembered that I had loaned the T post pounder to my daughter. Instead of pounding in the post, I dug it in as it doesn’t carry a load. The aisle below my comfrey plants was extended down all the way to the south fence line. Two wheelbarrow loads of weeds were dug out of the area that will be the three sisters garden and the weeds dumped in the chicken run for them to scratch into compost. I got weed mat down on the south and west edges of the garden, but I ran out of energy before I got all the spoiled hay down. There is a wheelbarrow load of small rocks that need to be relocated, but the hay will have to be another day.

    Before lunch
    After an afternoon of weeding
    Cardboard down where the potatoes couldn’t go, it has been extended to the west fence with weed mat and rocks. We definitely have some rocky soil.

    There is a bit of fence moving to be done this week, but I need to get the post pounder back. The spoiled hay needs to be put down on the cardboard and weed mat. And I need to wait out a few chilly nights this week, but next weekend may be planting time for the garden. I still need to clean up the edges some, but I feel good about what was accomplished this weekend. During the war, folks were encouraged to grow Victory gardens. This year, my expanded efforts will be a “Pandemic” garden.

  • True Spring is Here

    We are 3 days from our last average frost date. Now I know what average means and to get that date, there has had to be frosts later than May 5, but looking ahead 10 days in the forecast, it looks as though the arrival of the Ruby Throated Hummingbirds at the feeder and our last frost occurred on April 20. I will wait another week from tomorrow to plant the tomato and pepper starts in the garden, but I did put a few of the puny ones that I tried to start in pots on the south deck. Their primary leaves were red rather than green and they came from a packet of mixed hot peppers, so I am curious about what they might be. Because it is a truly gorgeous day, I took advantage of the alone time this morning to remove the barrier fence from in front of the Daylily bed as they are large enough now to discourage chicken scratching, and moved it around the back of the garage to protect the Calendula and Echinacea seedings there as well as taking a hoe and knocking down all of the Lambs quarters that have sprouted in those beds.

    I need a part for the line trimmer, line and fuel so I can edge those beds. The Bearded Iris look like they need to be thinned this fall, so I will have to get busy on my garden inside the stone wall to have a place to put some of them. I need to trim the grass down in there again with the line trimmer, then put down a weed barrier and fill it with soil.

    First thing after chores, I realized I hadn’t seen Mama Wren flitting in and out of her nest in a day or two, so I took a peek and the 5 tiny birds have fledged.

    Bird’s nests fascinate me that such a tiny creature can locate, move, and construct a birthing house. After having had several chicken hatches here and seeing that within half a day they are up, moving around and looking for food, and comparing them to other birds whose eggs hatch into large mouthed, nearly naked creatures demanding food, caused me to look up incubation and fledging times. A song bird sits on her eggs about half as long as a chicken, then the newly hatched birds spend the next two weeks demanding food and growing into their head size and growing feathers before they fledge. Poultry type birds sit on their eggs longer and their young peck out of the eggs more fully developed. And I already have a broody mama-wanna-be Oliver Egger hen. Though I love their green eggs, they are such a broody variety that I will not get Auracana, Americana, or Oliver egger chicks in the future. I spend my spring and summer trying to discourage the natural behavior. Maybe I should just get some fertile eggs and let her sit. I think I want to return to a tried and true breed and only have one breed when these hens are replaced, perhaps in the fall. If I could get fertile pure Buff Orpington eggs, I would put them under Broody Mama. I need to mark her so I can see if she is the only one or if all of the Olive Eggers take turns.

    Now that the Wren is gone, the day stellar, more gardening will be done and the overgrown Barberry bush pruned back.

  • Chickens make great compost

    Yesterday morning, we had two neighbors visit and help with the grass mowing since the belt for the riding mower still hasn’t come in.

    Meet Jumper Jr. and her sister “Bad” Penny. They belong to the neighbor to the west and find our spring grass greener than their own every year. The neighbor is a female farmer and she spends too much of her time in the spring trying to outsmart these two with new strands of barbed wire, new posts, new fencing, but Jumper Jr. like her Mom would, will go over the fence. When she makes a hole, she sometimes bring along other visitors.

    After preparing and eating lunch, I donned sunscreen, a wide brimmed hat securely tied down, and a long sleeved shirt, gathered some weeding tools and headed out to the garden. It was very, very windy, I think it tried to rip my head off a few times when it grabbed at the hat.

    Three of the rebuilt boxes had not been weeded when the boxes were set, so my project was to get the weeds out from inside the boxes and from the paths between boxes. Also it was time to remove the hay from the asparagus bed and in doing so, I broke off the very first spear, white from being covered and about 3 inches long. Not to waste fresh food, it was wiped clean and eaten right in the garden. I didn’t see any more new spears, but the hay is off and they will start emerging now. They are such a delight each spring.

    The boxes were cleared, the weeds piled in a tub to dump in the chicken run for them to dig through, eat the leaves, and make more compost. Because of the slope of their run, I try to keep a layer of spoiled hay on the ground, also when I clean the coop, the dirty straw or pine chips go in the run, and all kitchen scraps go to the chickens. They dig through all of that matter, adding chicken fertilizer to it and kicking a good amount of thoroughly broken down material through the fence at the down hill end of the run. This was raked and shoveled into the garden cart and wheeled around the garden. Each of the three boxes weeded today received an entire cart full of rich compost and a few fat earthworms that had taken up residence in it.

    Those boxes will be easy to keep weeded now until time to plant beans, cucumbers, and the tomato and pepper starts. There is still a 4 X 8 foot bed that hasn’t been weeded and a new 4 X 4 foot box that needs a load of compost. The corn bed needs to be weeded and the hills dug, but it is still 4 or 5 weeks before it can be planted. See the mint on the center right. I think I am going to sacrifice a dark tarp and hold it down with heavy rocks on the edges, just leave it in place for a year. The sun will kill the mint off. While adding a bit of compost to the raspberry barrels, I spotted a Preying Mantis nest, YAY! It is inside the garden and will hatch in late April or May. Helping keep the pests at bay.

    Today and tomorrow are rainy, so no garden work for a couple of days. Today’s high is 40 degrees (f) colder than it was three days ago. Ah, spring fickleness.

    Yesterday before gardening, I finished the second skinny scarf for daughter’s wardrobe accent. I love knitting and weaving for family rather than taking the time and effort to spin yarn, knit or weave and then put it in my shop for less than it is worth in time and skill. These two days will be for spinning and knitting.

    Oh, and that gorgeous handstitched (not machine stitched) quilt, I won on a $.50 ticket to a raffle about 15 years ago. It is a treasure.

  • Another rainy day

    But at least it isn’t snow. My two year memory for today on Facebook was a good amount of snow and the dogs playing in it.

    The grass needs to be mowed, it is emerald green now and growing so fast you can almost watch it change, but it is too wet, way too wet.

    The chicken pen was slick as a sloped ice rink when I went over to lock them up at dark last night. I grabbed a few hands full of the moldy spoiled hay from the big bale near their run and laid down a path to the pop door. This morning in the rain, sheets of the bale were put in the pen to keep it from being so muddy and to make going in to let the hens out a bit safer to my old bones. They get free range time for part of each day, but unlike prior flocks, this group has a few that won’t follow me back to the safely of their pen when I shake a cup of scratch, thus making them a target for our Mastiff to try and chase. He couldn’t catch one even when he was young, and running hurts his hips so he become even more lethargic in the house. Usually the hens are released when the dogs are fed in the afternoon and they stay out until dusk when they wander back to the pen and eventually coop up for the night.

    As soon as they are let out, they peck around the hay bale for a while then run straight for the gravel under the cars. Eventually out to the front yard and under the cedar trees across the driveway from the forsythia. When the forsythia and lilacs are fully leafed out, they prefer to shelter there and are really difficult to get out of that place.

    The half barrel planted with lettuce, radishes, and Chinese cabbage is showing signs of sprouting. When the sprouts are a little larger, the second one will be planted with lettuce, radishes, and Pak Choy. The third one will get some edible flower seed, dill, and basil, but it must get a bit warmer before that one can be planted. The 4th one is undecided, it has a returning perennial of some sort coming up in it. I want to try to sprout some parsley seed. If successful, it may be planted with more herbs for summer cooking to dry or freeze for next winter.

    The area inside the wall that gets so overgrown I think will receive a generous handful of mixed sunflower seed and allowed to grow and bloom until it can be cleared of rocks, weed mat or cardboard put down and covered with leaf mulch to plant as the herb, flower, and dye garden. Today’s exercise was moving more rocks and extending the path from the deck to the stone step that was where the old deck ended. That required heavy lifting and some serious weeding. On the step you can see a pigweed root that somehow I managed to lift from the earth whole, it must be 18″ long.

    The grill is always in the way when I mow. Eventually it will have a stone pad inside the wall on which to sit. Today, I just moved rocks, weeded a spot and wrestled it to the inside of the wall. It is not a permanent place and I wouldn’t cook on it at that angle, but it is out of the way. The new part of the path starts at the stone step and comes toward the deck. Those six boulders aren’t the only ones I had to move to do that much.

    The mower got gassed up and the tire pumped up and it started. It is running a little rough, hopefully once it is out of the garage and can move some, it will be in better shape. The rain stopped in the afternoon, but it is too wet still.

    The little potted rose my love gave me for Valentine’s Day was transplanted to a 10″ pot today now that it finished blooming. It is sitting in a sunny spot by the French doors until it is warm enough to put it on the deck. For some foolish reason, I decided last fall to overwinter,indoors, the begonias that were in the front of the house. One begonia and another pot were in the utility room window, two begonias on the floor by the French doors. I decided today that they were going to have to tough it out outdoors and put them out on the deck and front porch. If a frost is threatened, I will cover them, if they give up, I will plant some seeds in those pots.

    Right after lunch, I got some bread started. The last loaf in the freezer is almost gone and since we are eating in 100% of the time, more will soon be needed.

    Tomorrow is warmer and drier, maybe I can get the lawn part of the farm mowed. Next piece of equipment to fight with is the weed wacker, my least favorite, but necessary to get around the stone wall and the west side of the house. Maybe I can get it started too.

  • Yesterday repeat

    Today was even warmer than yesterday and another beautiful day for a walk. No photos of it today, but we did walk farther.

    First thing this morning, the seed starter flat was set up on the warming tray and seeded.

    The growlight frame was 3 inches too tall to sit in that position and as there is no other convenient place to put it, out came the jig saw and the frame was knocked apart, the legs shortened by 3 inches. Now we can get plates out of the cabinet above it. I never could understand why it was so tall in the first place. The light will be lowered to within an inch of the dome once seeds sprout, but if anything gets as tall as the light can be raised, they will be leggy and fragile.

    After the walk, two more boxes were built from the corners and boards from the deteriorating boxes. There are now 6 in two rows across the top of the garden. The mint box was removed, now to try to rid the garden of all the mint and put some of it where it can grow without over taking the garden. The remaining two deteriorating boxes will be rebuilt into two 4 X 4 foot boxes and any remaining boards will be stored to use for repairs or to build a box where the mint is, if I can get control there.

    The center top box with green mesh around it is the asparagus, the one closest to the camera is the garlic and onions.

    In the kitchen window is a confused Thanksgiving cactus, thinking it is an Easter cactus. It blooms a few blooms every year around this time.

    Tomorrow is still warm, but rain is expected, so the sore back from two days of garden can recover some.

    I still need to figure out how to deal with the fencing.

  • 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.