What Housework?

Pigs, poults, and a yarn sale

Yes, more animal pictures. It's all I've got these days.

More spring excitement on the homefront. The piglets finally got to hang out with their dad:

who seemed quite comfortable with them:

In fact, he slept through most of the fun.

I wonder what this piglet's so happy about:

Here, two of them sample the trough:

This one likes rubber shoes:

This same afternoon, my husband and brother-in-law made a temporary fenced-in area for them all to go outside. One piglet contemplates the great world beyond the barn:

So tempted...

Mom?

Eventually, Sassy did take them all out to the wallow:

A mother who's been cooped up with six little ones for several weeks might understandably want a "Calgon-take-me-away" bath:

But any mom will tell you that once you have kids, privacy and quiet, reflective moments come rarely and briefly.

On the same day, we managed to get an asparagus bed and three blueberry bushes planted. And the peas are up... We also got our fire pit set up and had a cookout and an evening around the campfire after dinner. Life still doesn't suck around here.

Meanwhile, inside the house, a slightly unexpected thing happened. Saturday night, some of the turkey eggs we had been incubating started to peep. We really didn't think they'd hatch. By Sunday morning, there was one poult staggering around among the 7 remaining eggs. It wasn't easy to get pictures through the window, but I tried. Here's another egg about to hatch:

Minutes later, a very tired poult emerged:

Two poults:

Over the course of the day, all but 2 of the eggs hatched. The last (sixth) one to show signs of life struggled all day long to break through the shell. Although it had gaps all the way around the egg, the inner membrane started to dry and no matter how hard the poult wobbled and pushed, it couldn't break through.

Moral dilemma.

Some people say you should never help a bird hatch. If it can't do it on its own, it isn't meant to live. Others warn that if you do help, you risk hurting the chick or causing it to hemorrhage. Others say you should do what you can. My husband decided to snip some of the dried membrane and see what happened.

Within minutes, a very loud and lively poult popped out!

Here they are in the brooder box Sunday night:

If you recall, we incubated four eggs from each of our two hens. Three of each hatched out. Rose, like last year, did not sit on her nest so we knew she'd never hatch her own. Trixie, being less than a year old, was an unknown quantity. But she did set, and her poults hatched over the weekend. My husband caught sight of a couple of them peeking out from under her.

As of this morning, Trixie was still nesting up on a pile of lumber. We had to move her and the poults down to a safer, lower nest before they started wandering around and fallilng. We expected a beak thrashing from Trixie. Instead, when my husband reached under her, she stood aside. We found five happy little poults and several unhatched eggs. We moved them all down to a hay-lined dog crate on the floor and in minutes Trixie joined them, rearranged her eggs and settled in.

Since she only had five poults (the other eggs are not likely to hatch after all this time), we decided to give her the six poults we had in the house. This was a tough decision as, unlike baby chickens, the poults are much mellower and more curious and seem to like to be held. My daughter, rarely moved by small animals, has been cuddling them for two days.

We set them out in front of Trixie. It took about five minutes (I think the poults felt we were putting them up for adoption, because they kept turning to us and trying to get out of the crate!) but one by one they slipped under her. So now she's got her three indoor babies back, plus three of Rose's, plus her five, so 11 in all.  We will miss them, but it's easier for us and better for them this way.

My daughter came home from school, learned what we had done, burst into tears, and is no longer speaking to us. Still, Trixie will make a better mother than we will.

In celebration of all the new babies around here (and because I'm too busy to dye up more yarn this week), I've got a two-day sale going on at A Piece of Vermont Yarn and Fiber (like the new name?). Both the Panda Superwash and Colonial Superwash sock yarns are 10 percent off now through Thursday! Enter the coupon code SPRING at checkout to receive your discount. The sale has already been advertised to people on the mailing list so inventory is down a little bit. But there's still plenty there.

Spinners: I have bamboo/merino top cooling right now, and a freshly scoured pile of fluffy white Romney waiting for something, I don't know what yet.

I actually took a few minutes to spin today because I have desperately wanted to make a Clapotis out of handspun bamboo/merino. Knowing I wouldn't have the time to spin, I eventually decided I'd just dye up some yarn and knit it from that. But I didn't have any suitable yarn on hand. So yesterday, I confess, I went to the LYS and almost bought yarn for this project. At the last minute, I stopped myself, curbed my impulses, and remembered the original goal: Use my own handspun.

I will have a handspun Clapotis. Someday.

Remember, the coupon code at checkout is SPRING!!!!

Hog heaven

Fudd got a new wallow this week.

Ahhhh.

He's not the only one in hog heaven lately. My husband bought ANOTHER tractor this week, this time a 1952 Ferguson, and a set of harrows for getting the cornfield ready for planting.

Of course, what antique tractor purchase is complete without an antique two-row corn planter to go with it?

Not to say that my husband is getting carried away with this whole homesteading thing, but this might be an indication: Here's the garden space he tilled for me. Do you think it will be big enough?

(Confession: The nearby farmstand planted it last year, so the ground had already been used for veggies. He kept it the same size, just in case....)

Anyway, it's spring. And it's crazy.

We have been extremely busy around here, more so than usual. Tuesday, I wrote a column about the goats (which you may be able to read online shortly). And today I will be sending a big batch of yarn to yarn4socks.com for their sock club.  Because of that, there is no shop update this week.

Nor is there any appreciable knitting to show. Now that we can actually get outside and it's light from 5:30 in the morning to 8:30 at night, why stay inside?

My husband and brother-in-law have been working until dark to get everything ready for summer around here.  Here's my brother-in-law, whom I may start calling "Lurvy," building the Stairway to Heaven.

But where does it lead?

Up over the pigpen...

To the new chicks' penthouse. I swear this would make a great studio apartment. It has a great view of the fields and just needs a little sheetrock to be nice and cozy.

Introducing 41 balls of fluff:

Don't get too sentimental. In a couple of months, these birds will be going into our freezer (and my brother-in-law's). But for now they're living in high style and not getting treated like factory birds.

In fact, we're trying to slow down the frightening growth rate that meat chickens have been selectively bred for. Rather than being crammed into tight quarters, kept under lights 24-7 (so they can eat more often) and being essentially force-fed nothing but grain, these birds will have space, fresh air, sunshine, an outdoor run, and a wider variety of food. They are still freakishly mutated animals, just like the ones we eat from the supermarket, but they will at least get treated well. This is our first foray into meat birds. I'll keep you posted on how it goes.

We are getting ready to put Fudd back with Sassy and the babies. The boys took out a door and put in a fence so the pigs could at least see each other. Fudd and Sassy were practically overjoyed. And the babies and Fudd seemed quite taken with each other. You should have heard all the happy grunting and seen all the curly-tail wagging. As soon as a piglet-proof fence gets built, they can all be together, outside and in.

Fudd and Sassy, together again:

Fudd and a piglet:

At one point yesterday, I found Fudd with his snout through the bars and one of the piglets rooting around INSIDE HIS MOUTH. For now, Fudd is a bit forlorn. (Yes, I know it's dangerous to attribute human emotions to animals, especially those whose offspring we will someday serve for dinner, but if anything I'm learning that it's not a bad thing to have empathy for your food.)

The piggies are growing fast. Sassy's a good mama:

Here, five piglets are getting dinner:

Number 6 is busy with other things:

But eventually she crashes the party:

The 3 other pigs have been working hard. Check out this fond embrace:

But wait, there's more. Can you spot the turkey in this picture?

Yes, up there, above all the junk, there's Trixie:

She's been sitting on a nest (my husband brought in the hay for her) for weeks. Babies are due next week! We also have 8 eggs (4 of hers, 4 of Bad Mother Rose's) in an incubator. They're due to hatch Monday, although we're not sure if they will.

Dave is big into courtship these days. He likes to show off for the peahen under the apple trees.

As usual, he moons the camera:

All of this displaying is accompanied by vibrating feathers and vigorous foot stamping. Below, he pretends to be a satellite dish. Radar Love, indeed.

Finally, I got the full frontal view.

We're kind of hoping the hen isn't impressed. Dave already spends much of the day standing in the middle of the road stopping traffic (a springtime ritual, we've learned). We don't need a dozen birds doing that. Supposedly peacocks are rather secretive about their mating and nesting so we won't know for awhile if babies will result from all this showing off.

The chickens and turkeys are doing their best to liven up the view in the yard.

Chip in charge:

Calvin yearns for power:

Big Fat Daisy snags a strawberry:

Lars:

And what farm scene would be complete without sheep and goats and apple trees?

Springtime in Vermont.

It doesn't suck.

Fiber heaven, and some piggy pics

Saturday: Rainy, cool, gloomy. But there is goodness to share.

First, I updated the A Piece of Vermont with three colorways of Panda Superwash. Here we have Fern Lake:

May Day:

And River Rocks:

If I ever finish my April socks, my next pair will be in Panda Superwash. It's nice and shiny and makes a good warm-weather sock project, in my opinion. But what with the spring weather and the longer days, knitting has hit the back burner, I'm afraid.

Fiber, however, is right up front. I just put hand-blended batts up in the shop. These are primo fiber: 65 percent Tussah silk, 35 percent alpaca from Champlain Valley Alpacas right here in Vermont. I processed the raw alpaca here, dyed it and then blended it with the silk that I dyed separately. The way the colors end up totally floors me. Check it out.

This silk:

plus this alpaca:

Becomes these Champlain Sunset batts:

You can't see all the color variations that well, but they're in there. Here's the fiber still on the carder after the second pass:

And this silk:

And this alpaca:

becomes these Shore batts:

My friend Jenn was kind enough to spin up a tiny sample of the Champlain Sunset:

I Andean-plied her singles and made a very dumb (too wide, too short) swatch:

It doesn't do the fiber justice, but you can see a bit of the sheen from all the silk. So soft.

Anyway, I've put a bunch of batts (plus or minus 2 ounces each). Honestly, they're pricey. But the alpaca, being local, cost more than the silk, plus I processed it from raw fleece to fiber. But if you're a spinner looking for a unique and really luxurious fiber to spin, this might be the ticket. I'm still swooning from touching it all day yesterday.

And now, the moment you've all been waiting for: Piglets!

I didn't get such great shots, as the lighting is low and I had a backlighting situation going on. But I lightened these up a bit so you could see the growing babies. I have nothing to add to these, so just enjoy them and get on with your day.

I know why you're here

It's not for the knitting or the spinning. It's this:

I wish I had better pictures of these fast-growing little piggies but I haven't done very well with the camera. The above picture is a couple days old and these are even older (see how fat they're getting already?):

The thing is, these guys move like lightning and I have to use a slow shutter speed because there's not enough light in the barn. In lieu of adorable baby pig pictures, however, I did get some good ones of the older three. It was barn-cleaning day on Sunday and pigs absolutely love to burrow in fresh hay. Here, my brother in law is tossing forkfuls onto two of them. They run around and roll in it and snort and come for more when he stops.

There. Now that we've gotten that out of the way, there's more to report. Such as this on Sunday evening:

No, I don't mean the tractor, which saw a lot of use this weekend. And I don't mean the acre or so my husband tilled for my 30' x 40' garden (the man is a maniac on a John Deere). I mean that black dot way out beyond the pond. Here's a closer shot:

Yeah, that's a black bear. On our property. This was my first bear sighting, since last year I only heard the one that overturned furniture on our porch and bent our bird feeder pole. Maybe it's the same one.

I've got a bit of a shop update. There are four imperfect skeins of Crazy Love in Colonial Superwash:

That violet blotch appears once or twice in each skein. Still, at 20 percent off, maybe it's worth it to you. Four skeins could make a good-sized shawl...

I also put up some Blue-Faced Leicester in what I think are very cool colorways.

Suite: Judy Blue Eyes:

Peace Train (my favorite):

   

Scarborough Fair:

Long Ago and Far Away:

I spun up a tiny bit of this last one and got this. I Andean plied it and apparently the midpoint was in the middle of the black, so it knit up with a sort of gradient look, which was not actually what I was trying for. But it's neat. (And sooooo soft.)

Now, a couple of weeks ago, I spun up some merino/bamboo top. I finally figured out what to use it for: Katja from Knitty, for my nephew's new baby daughter. I'm not sure it's going to fit, as a lot of people on Ravelry said it was kind of wide and mine came out the same. But I'm hoping the colors are going to distract everyone:

I will be putting up more merino/bamboo top next week, and I am most certainly going to re-post these pictures, for advertising. This stuff is incredibly soft and silky.

I haven't blogged in a while because suddenly it's spring in Vermont and we've been doing a lot of outside work. It's been so refreshing (and exhausting) to be able to get outside and hang out with the animals.

The sheep and goats got a new electric fence and lots more pasture:

I have started brushing the goats with the horse slicker I use on the dog. They are becoming frighteningly addicted to getting a good grooming.

My friend Jenn, the newish knitter, just finished a Classy Slip-Up from the Knit Socks! book. I believe she used Plymouth Happy Feet yarn in a clever colorway such as 8. Or maybe 9. I forget.

I believe this is only her second pair of socks and she has quickly mastered the Kitchener stitch, although she has to have a paper bag to breathe into the whole time she's doing it. I was working in the shop (playing with my new toy, below) while she was grafting, and I think Sassy did less heavy breathing when she was giving birth to the piglets.

Look what I got:

It's not actually a Milo warning, although it could be:

It's actually my Pat Green Triple Picker, which makes short work of raw fleece to prep it for carding. That, or it's a medieval torture device.

I had some plans to offer some custom dyed Romney and other local fiber this week, but the Romney turned out to have too much VM for me to sell. On the bright side, I'm in the middle of blending up pure silk with Vermont alpaca, which is going to make batts so delicious I can't stand it. I'm carding the alpaca right now and it's so soft I feel like going to sleep while I'm carding. Just wait. More Panda Superwash is coming, too.

Well, I think I've gone on long enough here today. I've covered everything but the gratuitous cat photos. Here:

Piglets!!!

Last night around 8:00, Sassy went into labor. I haven't mentioned her pregnancy much because (a) we didn't keep track of when she actually was bred and didn't have a confirmed due date and (b) I wanted to be sure everything went well before sharing the news. Also, (c) Sassy has grown so unbelievably fat I didn't want to embarrass her:

Everything went well. Here's the first little piggy, unsuccessfully looking for a teat:

The midwives (my husband, daughter, and brother-in-law) looking on:

We weren't sure how much to interfere, but sometimes the gilt or sow can roll on or step on (or even rip apart!) the just-born piglets while she's delivering another one. So the boys moved the piglets out of her way each time she got up and moved around. They were surprisingly lively and wandered all over the pen shortly after being born.

My husband helping Sassy with her rhythmic breathing:

Fudd, the dad, paced nervously in the waiting room:

It took quite a long time between the first two piglets and the next two, but eventually there were four, in color-matched pairs:

Our older piggies seemed a bit curious about all the barn traffic that late at night:

And Fudd got up for a snack but went back to bed:

There was almost an hour where Sassy seemed to be having contractions but no piglets. I took more pictures of the first four but then had to bring my daughter (who was falling asleep seated on an upturned bucket in the pen) up to bed.

A few minutes after I got into the house, my husband called to say two more piglets had been born and it was over. The last one, he said, couldn't get the mucous out of its mouth and throat and would have died if they hadn't been there to help.

I got this picture this morning, although you can barely tell there are 6 piglets here:

Dad is exhausted:

We were very pleased with how smoothly everything went. There is still a chance Sassy could accidentally roll on the piglets but my husband said now that labor was over she was being very careful to tiptoe around them when she got up. Cross your fingers.

There's been a lot of stuff going on, farm-wise, lately. Both of our hen turkeys have been laying eggs, although only Trixie is actually sitting  on hers. My husband took four eggs from each of them and has them in an incubator in the house. We may be lousy with turkey poults in another few weeks.

My husband and BIL devoted the weekend to setting fenceposts for the cows' pasture. You may be able to see a bluebird box on a post to the right of the fence. The boys had to move this, with a nest and four bluebird eggs inside, while putting up the new fence. Mother Bluebird flew around during the process but settled back down when it was over.

Dave the Peacock supervises:

Daisy:

An actual flower picture proving that spring is coming to Vermont:

Although things are turning green very slowly, the weather has been absolutely perfect all week: high 70s to low 80s, breezy, and sunny. We so deserve this.

Lilac buds:

Ed and Lars:

And, Milo, doing what he does while off-duty:

While I'm blogging, I'll throw in a couple pictures of my handspun April socks, made with my BL Sophie/merino yarn. I'm doing the second cuff now but here's the first:

These are the Diagonal Cross Rib socks from Interweave's Favorite Socks book.

I am doing these on 0s, thanks to my loose knitting, but they are a bit snug. I could have used 1s like the pattern calls for. However, I like a rather close fitting sock, so I'm quite happy so far.

Yesterday morning, one of the cows got out and ran laps around the barn until my husband got home and settled her down. (I now call him the Cow Whisperer.) Then once we got her in the barn, we found someone had left Sassy and Fudd's gate open. Fudd never woke up, but Sassy had waddled over to the hay and was sleeping against a round bale. Then that afternoon, all the turkeys crossed the road and in my efforts to herd them I tripped over a branch and ripped my leg all open.

And most annoying of all, I was trying on a dress I bought online. It was way too small, and the stupid spandex thing with built-in bra top was so tight I kind of got stuck in it. In my effort to get it off, I think I may have torn something important in my shoulder. Fashion can be deadly.

Today is much better.

The Lemonade Hat

You know that really annoying saying that when life hands you lemons you should make lemonade? Well, I made some.

What started out as a lovely pile of Real Vermonter "Addison" roving (wool/mohair/alpaca)

and was intended to be spun up as sock yarn, turned into lemons when I Navajo-plied it and got 106 yards of a bulky yarn. Soft and squishy, but bulky:

After being angry with it for two months, I finally did the right thing: got on Ravelry and did a pattern search. I came up with the Garter Ribbed Hat by Christa Giles (Ravelry link) and did it up quick.

Yes, that's a ponytail hole in the back.

My garter stitch cuff is not exactly what is called for in the pattern. Let's pretend that I did that on purpose to conserve yarn (which worked, by the way) and not because I misread the pattern.

Best of all, it doesn't itch, even though the Real Vermont has mohair in it.

I'm happy to say I've just updated the shop with three more bumps of this roving. ETA: That first one just sold.

However, it's the LAST THREE TWO EVER of the Addison blend, so if you like it, act fast. I don't have any plans to have any more roving commercially processed. I will start offering blended batts as soon as my new picker arrives, but this is the end of the Real Vermonter roving. Seriously.

Something I have noticed about my handspun lately:

Do you see something these all have in common? I don't even like blue that much. Why is everything blue? It's purely coincidence that I've gravitated toward this color, although lately I do feel a real attraction for blues and greens together. It's the Pisces in me. Anyway, yesterday and today I did something to fight my instinct to go blue again. I spun this:

Do you love it or what?

I totally love it. It's spun from a merino/bamboo blend which, not coincidentally, I am now carrying at A Piece of Vermont. I actually spun this skein in the hopes that I could start selling some of my own handspun, but I'm afraid either I'm too slow a spinner or other spinners are way undervaluing their time. I wouldn't let this go for less than $70 and I don't expect too many people to be lining up for a 218-yard skein of yarn at those prices. Spinning takes a long time, that's all there is to it.

But if you want the top, check it out:


ETA: "Sweetness" above is SOLD

One more bit of advertising. New Colonial Superwash:

Now, I've totally neglected to take any photos of my April socks, but since only half of one cuff is done, you're not missing much. It's....blue. But very pretty. You'll see.

Life on the farm is going well. After so many months of winter it's like an explosion of activity.

Dave the Peacock is wreaking town havoc with his constant trips across the road. Since it's mating season and the peahen is over here, I don't know why he can't stay home.

Every morning, our house is full of my brothers-in-law and their grown sons, several of whom work for my husband. It's the local contractor coffee klatsch and lately it has expanded to include breakfast. Around 7:00, the sun streams in across the kitchen and makes for great food photos. Our own eggs feature prominently on the menu (love that yolk color!), as does French toast with butter and real maple syrup. Yum.

My next project, other than finishing up Ms. Marigold and Sunkist and my husband's seamless hybrid sweater and my April socks, is to spin up some of that new merino/bamboo for a Clapotis. On Ravelry, something like 5,633 people have posted their Clapotis. It's a popular pattern and it's been done to death. But I love it and I miss the one I made and lost.

Spring has arrived in Vermont. Will I make time to knit and spin?

Sock yarn, at last

The specs: This is around 6.5 ounces of hand-dyed and hand-blended fiber, about 25 or 30 percent commercially processed superwash merino, and 70 or 75 percent Sophie, our Border Leicester:

It went from this:

and this:

dyed and carded into this:

To singles:

To the final product. I know this is a recap, but I am so taken with the whole process, I figured I'd go over it one more time. I love my sheep!

I ended up with about 549 yards in a yarn that yields almost 1300 yards per pound. This would make it, technically, betweena  DK and fingering weight. But it looks so fine! Depending on how I wind it, I get between 15 and 17 wpi, which I think makes it very thin. If I have to go down below a size 0 needle, I'm going to be an unhappy knitter.

As for the "hand" of the yarn, it's quite smooth but not at all elastic. I'll put some ribbing in my sock to hopefully solve some of that problem. Casting on soon...

Farm stuff: Here's a disorienting picture of roosting birds, as seen from below. Chip between two hens, and Roy the turkey on a higher roost. Take a moment to get your bearings. Every night I walk under them to close up the turkey house, and I pray they don't poop on my head. So far, so good.

We went for a walk last night. Not as relaxing as it might sound.

The goats and sheep have just one fenced area at the moment and there's nothing new for them to eat. So they were beyond thrilled to get sprung for a while and acted like the occasional measly tufts of semi-green growth were an absolute feast.

First, the goats made a beeline for the chicken coop and raided the feed bag. All three of them were in there:

Once I dragged them out and we went a-grazing, my daughter practiced a bit of softball catching (this is important later in this story) and the goats and sheep ate for all they were worth.

Not surprisingly, the animals didn't care to go home to bed. What followed was chaos I can only hope the neighbors didn't see. In between trying to lure, coax, and shove goats and sheep alike back into their pen, I had to deal with the yellow Lab going in and arguing with the goats about whose pen it was. Meanwhile, I had given my daughter permission to "chuck eggs," disposing of the chicken eggs we found in one of the turkey's nests, since we didn't know their age.

She piled almost a dozen raw eggs in her softball glove and started throwing them out into the field. In my frantic herding efforts I hardly noticed when her cheers of delight after each toss turned to hysterical screams. Apparently, J.J. decided it would be fun to ram her. Repeatedly. I'm not sure whether she cried more from the sheep attack, or the fact that in her panic she smashed the eggs in her new glove.

There were tears.

Anyway, I updated A Piece of Vermont yesterday. (If you got the email, or if you hate blogs that hawk yarn and fiber, bail now.) The skein of Tie-Dye, made by my daughter, sold nearly instantly, but I thought it was so cute I have to share it:

There is Colonial Superwash: