Anniversary #3 edit

Posted in Farming, Fun on the farm, Fun with fiber, kids, Uncategorized by 4theloveoffiber

Apparently I missed it, but according to WordPress

So let’s have a quick year in review

* This time last year I was home schooling

* We were renting a house on the New Hampshire/Vermont boarder, just two hours south of Canada

* We were just starting our house hunting search, hoping for at least 50 acres

* We had a dog, cat, and rabbit

In that time we have:

* Stopped Homeschooling

* Bought a 95 acre farm a little over two hours away from where we had been living

* I started quilting

* I joined a knitting group

* We now have deep breath: a dog, cat, rabbit, three pigs, four turkeys, ten ducks, 66 laying birds, and 100 meat birds….I feel like we have more chickens than that…but I am not going to go count.

I am now also 32, & according to my lovely nine year old, if you think I look younger, you need your eyes checked. Nice, isn’t she?!

So, to add to the last post, yes we FINALLY got couches

Which would almost make my house look “adult”, if it weren’t for my fireplace

We built a coop for our backyard flock last week

And then went & picked up:

(Back to front): Splatoon, Petunia, & Toffee (who is anything but sweet I case you were wondering).

Saturday we attended the New Hampshire Sheep and Wool festival! It was so much fun!!

I was lucky enough to run into two of my old guild members from the RI Spinning Guild, Dave & his daughter Katie!! I was hoping to see Iris and a few others as well, though I heard they were going to be there the next day, sorry to have missed everyone.
We had a busy afternoon, we watched the herding dog demo

Toph got to help shear an alpaca

They don’t just sit there all docile like every single sheep I’ve ever watched get shorn, but he seemed way happier without all that heavy.

I bought 6lbs and 3oz of yummy wool!! Ohhhh baby! The two largest bags are each 2lbs of my all time favorite, beautiful, silky (after its washed) Merino. The bag in front is 1lb of beautiful luscious Romney, behind that is 3oz Corriedale all ready to be spun up, and then finally a lb of coopworth. I cannot wait to start processing this wool!!

There were so many large bags of wool, I couldn’t believe it, and the prices were fantastic!!

Lorelai enjoyed watching the horses, while we waited for Toph to finish watching the lecture about coyotes.

I finally figured out the Bavarian stitch blanket on the way home.

I’m currently recovering from the head cold I picked up after you know…building a coop in the rain on Friday, & processing chickens (not mine) in the cold and rain on Sunday. Monday I slept all day long under three heavy blankets.

Tuesday and Wednesday I made a rather large amount of progress on my sweater

Not the best picture, but it was a last minute picture. I am just starting the lovely semi-lacy design part….glad to be doing something other than the stockinette stitch.

I’m off to soak up the sunshine (I hope, we’ve had hail twice this week).

Have a great day folks!

Also, thank you to everyone who has read my blog along the way, read it once, read it & liked what they have read, read it & rolled their eyes, those who keep coming back, those who are new, those who stumbled on my blog by mistake (oh yes, I’ve read the search terms and also wondered how you ended up here).

Thank you all for sticking with me!! You are all awesome!!
*edit*

Oh hey look!! 200 posts!

9Feb2016

A walk in our oasis

Posted in kids, Uncategorized by 4theloveoffiber

Well the snow is back folks, as my bosom friend says “it only snows when you make plans”, and that certainly seems to be true! Friday I had plans to go visiting, and then we were hit with snow, yesterday I was lucky enough to get out & go grocery shopping with a friend, and made it home soon after it started snowing.

Don’t get me wrong, I love snow, I am jealous of the amount of snow everyone is getting. I’m just learning that the weather people say sunshine, and that doesn’t apply to my house, because we live on top of a mountain, so it’s hard to plan day to day activities.

This morning I had plans to go vote in the NH Primary (by the way, I endorse you all to use your minds and vote for who you want, & ignore the celebrity who says “vote this person”).

However the snow that was not in our forcast had other plans

That is our driveway.

The plow trucks don’t seem to visit our road as often or maintain it as well as the do the main roads, so even if I had been able to make it out of my driveway in my car, it wouldn’t have done so well on my very steep road. Luckily my husband was able to get a good amount of the driveway with the snow blower, and after hearing that I was considering tossing on the snow shoes & walking to town, he put the truck in four wheel drive and away we went.

Speaking of snow shoeing, we spent some time over the weekend snow shoeing 3/4 of the boarders of our land, first we started off with the kids in tubes

But after awhile, the trees started to get in the way

We found that we had a few springs on the property

And experienced some sibling love

We all had a lot of fun and the parents were certainly exhausted in the end. All my Saturday evening plans (reading, knitting, crocheting) went down the tubes & instead I spent two hours looking at seeds, because that is all the energy I could muster.

My sweater slowed down due to the quality of knitting needles I was working with. 18 sizes of circular knitting needles for $8 sounds like a great idea in theory, but it’s really not. It’s like going shopping for groceries when you are hungry, “why did I buy these?!”.

So, while I was out yesterday I stopped at one of my absolutely favorite yarn places, Nancy’s alterations and yarn shop in Conway, and purchased two pairs of circular needles and had to shield my eyes from the yarn because I want to buy it all but I need a new car…priorities 🙄😒

However here is my progress so far

Even Ailey appears to be a fan.
Have a great day folks!!

4Feb2016

A few rows short of a blanket

Posted in Fun with fiber, Uncategorized by 4theloveoffiber

Last time on ‘The Year I Made My Own Clothes’

I had an 8 year old
I was crocheting a mermaids tail blanket
I found some neat artwork
And we had a lot of snow.

Well, I now have a NINE year old 😳, the mermaids tail blanket is almost finished, turns out my girl had a bit of a growth spurt (I also apparently used the wrong size crochet hook for twelve rows 😭) so I am adding rows to the top

And I messed up the fin, go me. So while I have presented the mostly finished present to Lorelai (which is how we found that blanket to be too small), I still have a little ways to go.

However I have been enjoying every moment of it & I am excited to announce that I have joined the knitting group in town and I absolutely LOVE every minute of it. I haven’t been part of any group since the spinning guild two years ago, so I am happy to have been invited to join in and have made new friends!

I started a new project this week (because we all know how great I am at finishing old ones, maybe I have a fear of finishing things…is that a phobia some sort?, I’m attached to the project so much that I can’t bear to finish it?!)

Anywho (disclaimer for people who keep getting snarky with me, yes I meant to write anywho over anyhow, so simmer down!!)

I started the bluebell cardigan from Jane Austen Knits 2015 designed by Zsuzsa Kiss

(Picture curtesy of Intearweave’s Jane Austen knits 2015)

Lorelai, the budding fashionista she is, chose the colors for me

I’m using this Caron simply soft Harvest Red & the contrast color will be Caron simply soft Blue Mint.

I won’t lie, this pattern was a little confusing at first because it called for something I had never heard of before, but after frogging six rows I finally figured it out and now it’s coming along.

We are currently have strange weather here in New England, some people are getting hit with snow, while here in our part of NH we are having 50 degree days that is melting snow, today we had a mix of rain and snow, and sometime next week we will be getting snow again.

We are looking forward to spring however, we just got in the first order of seeds for our garden, with plans to place a second order sometime soon!

I’m also looking forward to fluffy animals and hopefully spending some quality time with my hand carders and the insane amounts of wool I have sitting in my craftroom. I’m ready to be spinning again!!

This was the last thing I spun, seasilk back in who knows when!!

Oh well, soon enough 😊

Have a great night folks!