Mouse poop!

When are mouse turds cool?  Never - but it's part of this new process that is my current obsession. A few weeks ago I went to the Canby Flock and Fiber Festival in Oregon.  While there I purchased a bag of unwashed fleece recently sheared from a lovely silver/chocolate Romney sheep.

Unwashed means there are bits of hay, grass and (eww!!) even a mouse turd or two in it.  It smells somewhat unpleasant as well.

I didn't know what to do with it - but I knew that to make yarn you had to start here and I wanted to experience the whole process from start to finish.  I looked on the internet to find out what to do first.  Because, of course, if it's on the internet it must be true. 

The first thing I had to do was to spread it out and pick out all the bits of dirt, grass and turds (again.. EWW!!!)  Then I washed it via a very specific process (one wrong move and it could turn into a block of felt) - and then I spread it out to dry:

There are several options for the next step.  Use a fancy drum carder, use hand carders or use a flicker.  I have a flicker.  To use a flicker you take a lock of the washed and dried fiber:

and then you flick it with a flicking tool to get loose fibers that can be spun:



You spin them and end up with this:

Yarn!  This is just the coolest thing!  I'm so digging it.  I currently have a big pile of fiber drying on the kitchen table.  We don't need the table. We can eat in the living room in front of the TV. Soon my freshly washed fleece will be ready to be flicked (flucked?) and spun.  Once I have it all spun, I will knit it into something wonderful and will have created something from start to finish.

I have discovered that fiber is warm and alive and satisfying.  It makes me feel complete and connected to nature.  The process is fascinating.  Working with hand-spun yarn is better than therapy or yoga or even exercise.

My mother-in-law is amazed that I do this voluntarily and enthusiastically.  When she was a child she HAD to do this.  It was war time and if you needed a sweater - you started by shearing the sheep.  I wonder if I would enjoy it so much if I had to do it?  Maybe not.

Ramblings

My brother told me I should blog more.  Apparently he doesn't realize I generally collapse into bed every  night with barely enough energy to brush my teeth.  I never, EVER lay in bed wishing I could fall asleep.  Jerry (my brother) seems to think that my grandchildren will be interested in what I'm saying here.  Maybe.

So here I go.. a bit of rambling created just for my brother and my future grandchildren.

Potatoes

Today was potato harvest day.  We've managed to dig 13 rows of 26.  That's like.. half.   This is a photo of one of the first potatoes I dug up today.  Perhaps not so appropriate for my grandchildren.  Haha..

Digging potatoes went something like this.  Scoop the hill to the right. Scoop the hill to the left.  Sift through the soil with bare hands to find the potato.  Place it in a pile.  Shovels and other implements can damage the spud.  We must do it by hand.  The hills, of course, are on the ground (I know.. duh, huh?)  but that means crawling through the field on hands and knees, unless of course you're suffering from a sore knee and a back (that's me.. after our adventures in roofing).   So my method was to sit with my legs out and the row between  them.  I would lean forward, scoop to the left, scoop to the right, find potatoes then scooch forward on my backside.  I left interesting butt prints in the soil and my overalls have seriously ground-in dirt.  Peter thinks that with enough time I would level the whole field.  Thank goodness we don't have THAT many potatoes to harvest.

Getting fixed

Peter fixed me today (my back that is).  It's fortunate I'm married to a chiropractor.  Chiropractic Neurologist actually.  We went to the office this evening and he treated me.  Chiropractic neurology is not your traditional chiropractic.  It involves stuff that doesn't seem relevant to the patient but is really important.  It has to do with the fact that the brain controls everything.  The stability of the spine and the muscles.  To increase spine and muscles strength, you need to strengthen or activate certain areas of the brain.  This activation is, of course, followed up with appropriate traditional chiropractic treatment. He had me looking at numbers, watching red squares, following a moving object.  By the time I got home I could pick up my shoes from the floor without a lot of whining. 

On our way to the office we passed a car.  It was on it's roof.  In the ditch about 1/4 mile south of our house.  We have salmon in that ditch.   Poor salmon!

Enough rambling for now.  I shall go brush my teeth now, if I have the energy.

Little House on the Ditch

Sometimes it feels like I live in the Little House on the Prairie.  I no longer go to an office.  I'm one of those "stay-at-home" people.  I've stepped back in time. 

• I wash laundry and hang it on the line to dry.
• I feed the chickens, ducks and guineas.  Soon I'll be feeding and milking goats as well.
• I make dinner and I wear an apron!  The other day I roasted a chicken.  Today I turned the leftovers into chicken pot pie.  In the process I made chicken broth and will turn that into chicken noodle soup for tomorrow - and I'll make the noodles from scratch.
• I go out to the garden and dig potatoes and vegetables to make that dinner.
• Tomorrow I plan to do some canning.  I'm going to make sweet pickles and pickled beets.  Gotta get prepared  for the long hard winter.  I wish I had a root cellar.
• I fetch water from the well  (okay.. not really - but I don't get water from the tap. I get it from the bottled water we keep that we get from an artesian well.)
• I knit and spin and card wool.
• There are salmon spawning in the ditch under our driveway bridge.
• We do not have a microwave oven or a dishwasher.

I made pie crust for my chicken pot pie today.  No rolling pin to be found  (mine is still boxed up). I ended up using a wine bottle as a rolling pin.  It worked quite well. Yet another valuable use for a fine fruit by-product!

I'm not complaining.. not really.  It's just so completely different than my previous life or any life I could have imagined.

The other day I put on high heels to go to Thanksgiving dinner and I could barely walk in them.  It was very sad.

I'm hoping we're out of the batchelor pad by early November.  I'm sure it will all be better then.. Of course I'll still be knitting and carding and spinning and cooking and washing and feeding the chickens and..

I guess nothing is going to change.

That's good because actually, I like this new life.  I just wish I could still walk in heels!

Batchelor pad roof - days 3 & 4

Day 3..



10:30 a.m. Peter had to work this morning - I spent my time continuing tear down of the green house.  Do you see Sparky?  Isn't she skinny??



3:30 pm Green house was finally cut back from the house and the underlayment started getting put down. 

 Day 4 (it was only supposed to be a two day project!!)

Felt is down and significant progress was made on the shingles



3:30 day 4. The rain started.  Sprinkles mostly. 

We did manage to "mostly finish" the roof by 8:30.. in the dark.