What Housework?

I spy

See anything out of the ordinary? (The messy part is ordinary. Something else.)

Ah, it's a bit dark. How about a closeup:

Still can't see it? How about now:

Yup. Helen struck again.

We spent the day at the new house yesterday (more on that below) and came home late last night to find I had left the back door open. Helen wasn't on the porch, so we figured she was inside. We searched the entire house high and low and even spent a few minutes in the kitchen before my husband noticed her.

She slept well last night.

Meanwhile, outdoors, Georgia Rae continues to be a wonderful mother to her baby.

She takes the chick around the yard and makes a certain kind of cluck when she has found food. I saw her peck an earwig to death, then call the chick over to eat it. Now that's love.

 

And when the chick ge ts tired or cold, Mom provides the perfect comfort. Can you see the baby in this picture?

Now, the new house. The sellers gave us money to cover the cost of having someone empty out the barns (and the refrigerators and furniture they left around the driveway for their yard sale). So as of yesterday, the barns and yard are clean. Big sigh of relief.

The house was empty, but not clean. I am not a neat person. I struggle with dog hair and dust like everyone else. But having to clean up someone else's dog hair and dust was no treat. I still have two bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs to do, but the rest is ready for us to move into.

Two nights ago my friend Beth made us a picnic dinner and we took it to the new house. Wandering around the house, the barns, and all the way to the pond, we started to get completely freaked out a little discouraged. Although we can get by the way things are, seeing what should be done is a little overwhelming. (For instance, the office wall where my computer will be has one outlet. It takes two-prong plugs only.)

And then there are the gardens. Since I only posted winter pictures before, now you can see what's going on here:

This is the view out the front door:

And the back gardens are not much better. Here is one of three:

The good news is that we had money left over from the barn cleaning, and we have a friend who is a landscaper. For a price, she is willing to come in with a backhoe to move the giant weigela and forsythia from in front of the house. She is going to take out everything from the front of the house, till the ground, and replace everything that I want to keep. She'll also clean up the back flower beds and the side of the house. The front of the house is overgrown with raspberry brambles. We are big fans of raspberries, but not in the front garden. So she's going to move them out back and make us a berry patch.

You have no idea what a relief this is to me, because I am so overwhelmed with these gardens it's depressing. It would be nice to be able to see the front of the house, you know. Things are so full out back, the bee balm isn't even spreading!

Today, there will be no knitting, just cleaning and packing. I'll leave you with a few more pictures of the house and yard:

Home Sweet Home

An old picture of our new house. We did it.

Talk about a long day! Things started off on a discouraging note. The required "broom clean" (Carrie: read "swept") condition of the house and barns didn't quite meet our expectations. Does this look broom clean to you? Mark's future shop in the barn:

The upstairs hallway in the house:

At the walk-through, it looked like the deal might not even happen. Later, after frantic phone calls between bankers and lawyers and realtors and everyone, we worked out a few compromises and managed to have the closing. Without going into details, it's all okay now. We settled on friendly terms and the house is ready for us to move into. I have the small matter of a column to write today and then the moving shall commence.

It looks like we have our old house rented for a week in July (the power of the blog strikes again!). If anyone else is looking for a brief stay in Vermont, we've got the place for you, with pool.... Email me. Seriously.

I should just mention some knitting.

1. The stranded mitten is not working out colorwise. I just haven't taken pictures. There is too much common color between the variegated and the self-striping, so the design is totally lost. I like the pattern, though. I will try again.
2. The handspun socks continue to grow. It's my only easy knitting right now. My only knitting at all, in fact.
3. I think I have a new project planned. Bossy Little Dog mentioned some Drops patterns, and I saw this super-bulky zip hoodie (#81-10).

It's not elegant, but it's cute and practical for what I need. The only fall/spring jacket I have is micro-fleece and it draws dog hair like a lint brush. For the yarn, I had a hard time finding any cotton blend in a super-bulky weight. But I found some Gedifra Scarlet (acrylic-wool blend) that comes in really cool colors. It's going to cost a bundle but I think I'm going to spring for it; I'm going to need some relaxing in the new few weeks. The pattern is a raglan that's knit from the bottom up, but the yoke is done all in one piece. That's my kind of raglan.

Again, thanks for the comments. Typepad is having technical difficulties so it's hard for me to respond.

Blog buddy weekend!

Who did I finally meet in person this weekend?

It's JessaLu! (Forgive the tiny picture. I've got a houseful of chaos going on here and I'm not paying proper attention to my blogging.) She and RR came up camping for the weekend and we got them to come over for dinner Saturday night. Jess had a go at my Majacraft Rose and a good time was had by all. (Only it's a bit tough to have an intelligent discussion about spinning wheels in the company of two men who snicker every time they hear the word "orifice.")

Sunday morning, we headed over to Donna's house so Jess could try out Donna's two spinning wheels. First she took a crack at the Country Craftsman:

Then she tried the Louet:

I had the odd impression that because she does not yet own a wheel she was an inexperienced spinner. Wrong.

Then we went out to breakfast. My daughter decided that RR was a jungle gym and barely let him retreat back to the car. They got a beautiful sunny weekend, but it was punctuated by relentless rains on Friday night and this morning. Note to other campers: Bring seam sealer for the tent.

The power of the blog is really something and this weekend is just another example. I had a great time with JessaLu and I definitely hope we get together again soon. She was very kind about my obsession with chickens and didn't comment that the yard is starting to look like a shanty town with all the various chicken abodes I've cobbed together lately. (For the record, we now have 10 chickens: 5 in the coop, 2 in a dog cage in the yard, 2 in a dog carrier in the yard, and one on the porch.) Then again, they met some interesting characters at the campground (resulting in the two of them bursting into Dueling Banjos every time they mentioned their camp neighbors). So we probably seemed a bit tame in comparison. Anyway, I am convinced more now than ever that the Internet can be a positive force, and I really want to meet more bloggers in person. It's so cool!

Meanwhile, the house. Yeah, we buy a house today. Supposedly. I refuse to believe that this closing is going to happen when the current owners have been so lax about getting the property ready to sell. We have a walk-through this morning and if both barns and the house are not "broom clean," there are going to funds escrowed. Or worse.

If all goes well, I'll be blogging from my new house by the end of the week. (Can't have phone or cable modem hooked up yet because the current owner hasn't had her accounts cancelled. That's the kind of thing we're up against.) Secretly I am terribly excited about this move, but it just doesn't feel like it's going to actually happen. I'll let you know....

(By the way, to all the people who commented on my last post, Typepad is not forwarding your comments to my email again. But I did read them and I appreciate you taking the time to say something.)

All chickens, all the time

If you came looking for knitting progress, you can forget it. I have been working on my mitten project, but alas, the variegated and the skinny-stripe yarn don't play well together. I'll keep at it for a while (and show photos later). Meanwhile, there is breaking (literally) news in the coop today.

You may have forgotten that approximately 22 days ago, my black Australorp hen Georgia Rae went broody. I got 3 fertile eggs from a friend's farm and let her sit on them. Meanwhile, other chickens kept getting in and laying their eggs in there, and it got confusing, and I lost track of two of the three. I didn't expect much from the third, but today I found this:

Hmm. A broken egg shell. Did a chick emerge? Or did the hen break it? I could have lifted Georgia Rae up and checked underneath, but that seemed like a harsh thing to do to a possibly new mom, especially one who puffs up to twice her normal size and makes threatening noises every time I pull the burlap curtain away from her nest box.

I went back a few times this afternoon and finally was rewarded with this sight:

So, welcome to the world, little guy (or girl)! Georgia Rae is a mom by adoption, just like me! Now I need to get her out of the nest box and somewhere closer to the ground so the baby doesn't fall out. I have a feeling I might be getting a severe chicken-pecking during this process.

Meanwhile, Helen drifts between the world of humans and chickens. Sometimes, she hangs with us:

And sometimes she hangs with the girls:

She's still going to sleep on the porch and having me carry her to the coop at night. But she is eating out of the same feeder as the head bird of the flock, at the same time, which might not seem like much to you, but it's kind of like the chicken version of sitting at the popular table in the junior high cafeteria.

Meanwhile, the babies continue to grow:

You'd think we weren't about to close on a new house in less than 48 hours, with all the poultry on my mind these days. (Closing on the new house provided the owners empty two giant barns as well as the house and evict the 3 horses that have been boarding there rent free for 6 months. Can you say "procrastinate"?)

But wait: There's more excitement at the homestead as well. Tonight, we're having one of my favorite bloggers (and her SO) for dinner. (My daughter: "You mean, we're having TOTAL STRANGERS over for dinner?" Me: "Um, yeah. So?") I won't say who it is just yet, but she has the same name as me, has curly hair like me, lives in my very teeny tiny hometown in a neighboring state (even though I never heard of her till I started blogging, small world) and is, coincidentally, camping just a few miles from my house. And our significant others may possibly have been separated at birth.

You will read more about this event in the next day or two...

At last, yarn

We're getting down to the wire here. After these three skeins, there are only two or three more of the fingering-weight merino, at least for the next month or so. I'll have other yarns, some local, some not, in various weights and blends. But for standard merino sock yarn, this is almost it:

Behold, as yet unnamed, as yet not posted to the website:

Or, same yarns at a distance:

You can see in the top photo that I digitally tweaked the picture to enhance the blue of the skein. It just wasn't coming across in the picture like it does in real life. Personally, I like the last skein the best because it's the kind that registers grayish beige at a distance but actually contains almost every color of the rainbow up close.

As usual, if you are interested in any of these yarns, they are $20 apiece plus $4.40 shipping per order. Email me to find out if they are still available.

In other news, yesterda I arranged to have the electricity switched into our names at the new house. And today I re-ordered my husband's business checks with our NEW address on them. It's kind of like the first time you sign your married name. Weird. We are getting down to the nitty-gritty here and it looks like we are going to take the plunge and move right after closing (MONDAY) so that the house will be free to rent. Since we are leaving it partially furnished for that reason, I don't feel that much pressure about the move. Meaning, no, I haven't technically started packing. My husband is so busy with work (doing 14-hour days now, with no days off) that he is completely oblivious to this entire moving thing. Over coffee this morning, I had to plop a calendar down on his paperwork (which he does at 5:30 in the morning so he can leave for work at 7:00) to get him to look at our time frame. His response? "Whatever. I don't have time to worry about that right now. Just pick a date. Now move that thing. I have to order some windows for a job."

Some men. Sheesh.

Meanwhile, the mitten continues. Pictures when I finish the cuff and get started on the thumb gore. By the way, I am having an idea about this fall. Assuming that we are settled into the new house by then, and assuming that my husband does go away for a week or two (hunting in Wyoming, his first long trip), wouldn't it be a kick to have a knit blogger retreat at my house for a weekend while he's gone? It might be kind of weird to invite total strangers over for the weekend. But I thought it would be great to have a couple of days for knitting and spinning (and maybe some dyeing) with a couple of trips to yarn shops thrown in and maybe some shopping, leaf-peeping, and a trip to the apple orchard, which is right across the road from the new house. Apple pie, anyone? I would have room for 3 or 4 guests at the house, plus unlimited space at local inns or hotels. Tell me if I'm insane.

More than the sum of its parts

So I decided to take some spare skinny-stripe yarn and some of my handpainted yarn and try some stranded knitting. The two together didn't look like much:

In fact, I wasn't sure if they would work at all. I'm not looking for high contrast, but some amount of coordination would be nice. I started on the cuff of a mitten from this book:

This mitten, to be precise:

And look what I've got so far:

I'm happily surprised at the way the two yarns work together. It could be a different story when the actual pattern starts, but I'm looking forward to it. I forgot to photograph the inside of the cuff so far, so I'll save that for another day. The point is, stranded knitting with two hands means a very tidy wrong side. I can't believe it took me 20 years of knitting to learn two-handed knitting.

In the meantime, you're probably wondering how Helen is doing. Well, as much as I love her already, the mood around here is turning into a cross between The Birds and Basic Instinct. For the past three evenings, I have been putting Helen in the coop at nightfall, but not until she has spent an hour or so trying to break down the back door by pecking it to smithereens.

 

In business news: I still have yarns to post to the website. I spent yesterday accidentally climbing a mountain (6 miles round trip, still tired) instead of photographing yarn. Until my Vermont yarn is done and the fingering weight yarn is back in stock online, I plan to dye up some 8 oz. skeins. Would people be interested in 8 ounces of lace weight or fingering weight or worsted weight or bulky? I'm thinking some wool/silk or wool/alpaca blends. Should I do two of each colorway so a person could buy 16 ounces for a project like a shawl? I have no idea what to do here. I thought a nice worsted weight silk-wool blend would be nice for something like Clapotis, but that particular project requires around 11 ounces of yarn and I don't know if someone would spring for 16 ounces in that case. Tell me what to do.

Summer vacation starts in 3 hours. I'll try to blog again before the fall term comes around.

And, by the way, I do knit

With all the poultry-ness going on around here lately, I kind of forgot. I finished Tempting II last night while Helen was sleeping. Adventures with the self-timer resulted in 40 to 50 unacceptable shots (The focus, the framing, the lighting, the facial expression, the chins!). But here's (most of) the sweater:

I went down from the size 8's to 6's for the neckline and that seems to help keep things on my shoulders. I like the buckle, but it's a bit heavy, as you can see by the sagging underneath it.

Still, I picked it up at the vintage clothing store for less than $10, so I can't complain.

Still, what would a post from me be without a few chickens? Here's Helen keeping me company while I hung out the laundry this morning:

And here are the little girls. Looking like adolescents in the awkward stage, wouldn't you say? Asserting their independence, too. If I don't take them out of their box early enough in the morning, they wait for me on the edge.

Now, just as an aside: (a) If you had an real estate open house at your home tomorrow morning, and (b) if some previous viewers were coming back with their in-laws to look your house over a second time, and (c) if your house was in dire need of vacuuming, laundry, mopping, and dusting and (d) if you had spent much of the morning taking unusable photographs of  yourself and posting others to your blog for the second post in one day, what would you do next?

1. Clean the house!
2. Go to yoga
3. Go to the library and find a two-color mitten pattern with which to experiment with a skein of self-striping and a skein of handpainted yarn
4. Do 2 & 3 and worry about 1 in the morning.

Yeah, I thought so.

Make yourself at home

Um, Helen. I'm so glad you decided to stay in our yard. But it's raining, don't you want to go in the coop with the other chickens?

Well, usually they don't watch me through the kitchen window. They just go peck stuff in the yard. Besides, it's almost bedtime. You need to get yourself a good spot on the roost.

What do you mean, "I'd like to go onto the screened-in porch?" Helen, that's where the baby chickens sleep. You're a big girl now. Yes, I know you used to sleep on the porch at your old house. But that was an open porch by the back door.

Oh, all right. Just this once. Tomorrow night you're going back in the coop.

Um, Helen. You can go to sleep now. You're not coming into the house, honey. Stop pacing.

Now, listen, Helen. Chickens are not allowed in our house.

Excuse me. We're going to eat dinner now and when I get back, I expect you to be roosting on the bar over the chicks, like you did the other night.

Hey! Who left the back door open? Probably the dog, when he came in. Helen? Helen? Where are you? Well, great, you probably went back to the neighbor's yard. Good luck not getting another dart shot at you. Dumb chicken. Now I'll just go up the back staircase to our bedroom and---

YIKES!

Helen. Sweetie. Even though this is a not a finished staircase, it leads to a finished bedroom. INSIDE OUR HOUSE. I'm sorry, but we have to draw the line somewhere. No chickens in the house.

[Here, I put Helen outside on the roost and firmly close the door. Instantly she is back pacing at the back door. My husband, finding this hysterical, opens the door. She barges in, brushes past him and goes back upstairs in a huff.]

Helen. Now you are technically IN OUR BEDROOM.

However, I understand you've been through a rough patch lately. Oh, all right. You can spend the night there, but I'm going to put a towel under you.

The whole elementary school will be talking about this tomorrow. You're lucky we're softhearted people, Helen.

G'night, Helen.

Attention fleece lovers and wool sniffers

Feast your eyes on this:

That's just one fleece (Corriedale, I believe) in my first bulk wool/mohair order that I sent off to Stonehedge Fiber Mill yesterday. Would you like to see the rest of the pictures I took at my friend Donna's farm yesterday? Hold onto your monitor; there are many.

To refresh your memory: I am preparing to sell custom-spun yarn made from local wool and fiber. My friend Donna raises sheep and goats and other sundry creatures and she offered to sell me some fleeces to get me started. So I dropped by Creek Road Farm yesterday and followed her around while she did some chores. And then we got to the fleece part.

I didn't see Donna at first, but these two met me by the barn:

I felt some eyes watching me:

I went through the sheep barn and said hello to the piggies:

(I would love to raise a couple of pigs but I like them too much to have them axed, so unless I find a rescue pig, it ain't gonna happen.)

I found Donna fixing the water hose and we headed out to the angora goat pen:

How cute is that? The fleece is amazing. I wish I could get that kind of curl definition in my own hair.

Donna was trying to refill the goats' water tub, but there was a small obstacle.

Meet Jazz, the water-loving Cairn terrier:

Then Donna tended to the sheep. She has mostly Corriedales and registered Romneys. I didn't get any good group shots, but I got some nice portraits:

Here's Donna with the pushiest love-muffin of a cat ever:

The cat liked me, too:

Donna gave a lame sheep some foot medicine. Then she showed me the difference between the Romneys and the Corriedales, which I have since forgotten. I loved when she started picking burdocks off one of the white sheep. The brown one just had to come help out:

Here's a very pregnant ewe:

Then we got down to business. Donna had some kid mohair fleeces from the babies. (Apparently you can shear angora goats twice a year. I did not know this.) I won't include a picture of the fleece because it was overexposed and you can't see the shine. How soft, though.

Then she had 4 fleeces from the Romneys and Corriedales. Here's some Romney:

Less crimpy than the Corriedale. Beautiful. I have to say, I was a little sad to send these away to be processed. The crimp makes you want to whip out a wheel and start spinning. Instead, I am sending 7 fleeces in all to be spun into a fingering-weight mohair/wool blend, in approximately 440-yard skeins.

This does bring up a topic I'm opening for discussion. What kind of yarn are people interested in? I will end up with about 22 pounds of yarn but it won't be available until late August. By then I will need to be ordering more. I was thinking maybe getting some local alpaca and having a wool/alpaca blend made up in 8-ounce skeins (for mittens and hats?). Donna has some natural brown fleeces that I may have done up to sell undyed. How do you like that?

So if you could have hand-dyed (or natural, even) Vermont yarn, what would you like? All wool? What breeds? Blends? What weight? What size skeins? Keep in mind that for the hand-dyed, small lots are the key to consistency, so I won't be doing any sweater-quantity batches of any particular colorway. I am looking forward to hunting around Vermont for various types of wool and fiber and coming up with original yarns. But I have to know what people want. (By the way, Donna is an awesome handspinner and soon I will have some of her own yarn for sale on my website.)

I know I have probably bogged down computers all over with this post, so I'll keep my last remarks as short as possible:

• Honestly, did that crimpy fleece just give you a thrill or what? Or am I just weird? Does anyone else find goats and sheep totally captivating? I am weird, aren't I?
• Chicken update: I slipped Helen into the coop with the other girls last night and she is hanging out with them (when they are not chasing her) today. If I can get her back in there tonight, we're golden.
• The house. My husband and I discussed the move today and finally agreed that we aren't going to worry too much about renting the house. We close next week and we'll start moving (and maybe painting) then and we'll move out of here as soon as we need to, depending on whether the house is rented or is sold. It's going to be expensive, but only for a little while. Hey, we're open to short term rentals (by the week). Interested in a vacation in Vermont? Hiking, swimming, boating, wildlife. And we have cable.

Two more pictures (I couldn't resist):