Tag Archives: Knitting

Harvest

Posted in Farming, Fun with fiber, Gardening by

Well the bachelorette party has come and gone and I can now share with you the goodies I made,

12 house scarf book marks, no pattern.
All wrapped in gold paper and pulled from this sorting hat, which also doubles as a wedding decoration for the movie themed wedding.

On the tables for the bridal shower I made these
The vases turned out much harder than I expected, so I was very glad to get to the shower to find that they turned out beautifully!

Now I know that doesn't seem like a whole lot, but that was my secret summer project. Meanwhile old projects have now made their way to my Etsy shop

and we are now moving on to harvesting yummy foods from our garden
peas are drying for next years planting.
Don't let the one crate of zucchini fool you, we have hundreds of zucchini, many still waiting to be picked.

We've also been picking potatoes, pole beans, tomatoes, and eggplant. This week the fall garden will go in and we are all eagerly awaiting the ripening of the watermelon, cantaloupe, & pumpkins.

I've gone from working outside from sun up to sun down, to canning into the evening.

We do have 50 new short term additions to the farm

We sold all but 15 of the meat birds this year, so we decided to get one more batch in before the snow arrives. For the first time ever we are not brooding chicks inside the house, which I think we are all happy about. No mess, no smell, no dust.

Have a great day folks!

Happenings

Posted in Fun with fiber, Gardening, kids by

I'm not saying that summer is coming to an end soon, but the signs of fall are rapidly approaching.

From the leaves changing to the cool weather to the insane amount of acorns everywhere.


We have been harvesting lots of goodies from our garden!

I've actually spent three days away from the farm this week:
We spent a much needed day at the beach

I went with my best friend for her hair and makeup test for her upcoming wedding
(No pics until after the wedding sorry)

Friday was the long awaited craft fair, I didn't have much to offer but my bosom best friend had enough to fill our table


My empty little side

Very thankful that my super talented friend had more to offer.

I am still finishing up items for the bachelorette party that happens THIS weekend! By finishing up items, I mean doing every knitter and crocheters favorite thing…weaving in the ends. I am very excited to share what I have been working on, it really has been a fun project.

Have a great week folks!

Not over yet!

Posted in Farming, Fun with fiber, Sew what, What's cooking?! by

Well once again we have a couple of more storms rolling in this week, the first being tomorrow with talks of 17 – 24 inches of snow during the day and well into Wednesday, followed by another 7″ of snow on Saturday, though I’m going dress shopping with my best friend for her wedding & we are both crossing our fingers that it holds off until night fall, as she is flying in from Illinois and will only be here for the weekend.
Well the chickens are back full force with the egg laying! We have been getting nearly three dozen eggs a day for the last several days.

 It has Toph’s hopes raised up so much so that he has considered buying an additional 60 chickens on top of the 50 we already have coming. 

We already see our eggs to a local natural food store, however we are hoping to set up at a farmers market mid-late summer, by that time we should have plenty of chicken and duck eggs to go around.

Last fall we took my niece to the Sandwich fair, where she fell in love with one of those blow up doughnuts, it was a prize for one of the games, you know…the games no one ever wins. Well we didn’t even attempt to win it, but I made sure to make a mental note to find a pattern to see if I could somehow make one for her, for her birthday!


Behold, the doughnut pillow. I used THIS pattern and it took me about six days to make. She was a happy camper, she had foot surgery the day after she had it, so it made for a comfy foot rest on the way home.


This past weekend we had tempatatures ranging from -5 to 15. We spent our days indoors trying to stay warm and keep busy. I spent my day in the kitchen sitting by the fire while dinner cooked 

We have been cooking a lot in the hearth lately, so it has become a favorite spot in the house.

Spending my day at the kitchen table next to the warm fire, I worked on many…still unfinished projects. Unfinished mainly because I would start working on one thing & think about how nice it would be to work on something else.

At one point I had three projects next to each other and I would work on them like they were part of an assembly line

Then I got the spinning wheel out, however the wool was so warm that my hands began to get uncomfortably warm and so that lasted about twenty minutes.

Followed by the fabric 

At this point I gained a whole new level of respect for the ladies who cut out the kits at our quilting guild. These are only 55 of the 678 flower centers, petals, and leaves that I need to cut out. Of course I found that I am short on fabric and I can only hope that this fabric is still available when I go back into town on Thursday. 

Last Monday I finished two quilt tops that I had started awhile back


The quilt on the right I started last June before I had to take a break for summer vacation. I started on my old crappy sewing machine and had just barely gotten the yellow and red piece sewn together to make 60 rectangles. I started in on it again and within two Mondays on my amazing machine, I was able to complete the top. 
As I feel I’m getting repetitive when it comes to talking about the snow, (as I am type it out I think in my head “Your reader’s get it, it’s winter and it snows”), I was thinking that I’d would like to do a Q&A for my next post if anyone is interested. I will answer questions next week or if no one has any questions to ask, I will just write a regular post. My blog isn’t as exciting as most bloggers, but I’m willing to try a Q & A!

I hope you all have an amazing week! Have a great day folks!

Well this is new

Posted in Fun with fiber, kids by

Growing up I was a bookworm, I still read now but not as much as I did as a child. Late at night I would read books under my covers at night until the batteries in my flashlight died. In the summers I would take sheets and make a makeshift tent on the top of the swing set, sides closed together with clothes pins. Just myself and a stack of books.

One series I read over and over again, even when the books fell apart, was Little House on the Prairie. Growing up on a farm myself, no running water, and outhouse, and no electricity until I was ten, my life at the time didn’t seem that far off from Laura’s, I was easily able to picture in my mind exactly what was written in the book, except for one thing… the blizzards.

Sure we have had blizzards in New England before, but in my life time I don’t recall ever seeing a storm like the ones described in the books “The schoolhouse had disappeared. They could see nothing but the swirling whiteness and snow and then a glimpse of each other, disappearing like shadows” The Long Winter 

Laura Ingalls Wilder was fantastic at describing things, however this was something I always had a hard time picturing. That is until this morning when it was so windy and snowing so hard, that we could barely see the frame of our house. 

Now it certainly was NOTHING like what happened in Laura’s books, please don’t think that I am claiming that at all, I do however think that I next time I pick up one of her books and she mentions people not being able to see ten feet in front of them, I will now be able to picture it in my head and understand.

With that being said, yes it is snowing outside…welcome to New England lol the wind is blowing and the snow is falling heavily, more in some places than others. 

We are staying inside today, reading, knitting, and drinking large amounts of warm tea. Some of us are even doing research for a paper. She’s writing about the hard winter of 1881

 

She’s getting more into the fiber world recently and I am crossing my fingers that once she moves on from carding she will try spinning and maybe want to start knitting again



She spun up some lovely merino mixed with the soft fiber I’ve saved up from Carrick over the years. 


Wherever you are and whatever the weather may be doing, I hope you are all staying safe and warm!

Have a good day folks!

Better

Posted in Uncategorized by

It is now my turn to work through a illness of some sorts, everyone in the house has had the pleasure of some type of cold, I myself am currently working through bronchitis…I blame the lack of bacon in my life, when I eat bacon I’m not sick, when I am the only person in my house eating bacon, I am the only person not sick. Therefor I need more bacon in my life.

We are currently surrounded by a winter wonderland, we had a good 2 feet last week and last night we had a mix of rain and snow, giving us this view


However trying to leave the house this morning to feed the animals was a real….treat

Luckily Toph is strong than I am, because I was unable to open the door.

I have finished the tiger 


I started a blanket for Lorelai’s best friend who just turned 11 and I am hoping it will be finished by her birthday party

I’m on day 8 and almost ready to decrease. 

I have also started a veil for one of my best friends who will be getting married this coming fall

We are excited for the upcoming year on the farm, we have ordered several fruit trees, we have wood to build some animal shelters so we can get cows and sheep within the next two years and we also have left over free lumber that was given to us, that Toph wants to use to build a cabin out in the woods….he may watch too much Alaska The Last Frontier 😉

Hope you folks have a fantastic day!

Back to business (almost)

Posted in Farming, Fun on the farm, Fun with fiber, Gardening, Uncategorized by

Well my migraines are few and far between, I can function with almost no medication, and I can leave my house for long periods of time, so I think it’s safe to say that despite limited mobility of my left hand (pain in joints, poor circulation), I might actually be back to normal (whatever that is).

Before my horrible food allergy mess, I joined a quilting group with the Ladies Guild in town and I have to say, I really enjoyed it. I met a lot of lovely women and learned a lot that first meeting. They donate quilts to the hospitals, which are the distributed to newborn babies. These quilts are just absolutely beautiful, I am in awe.

I missed a meeting and then attempted to attend one last week, but still wasn’t up to par and had to head home. Tomorrow one of the ladies will be teaching us to make “quick 9 patch” quilts, I intend to participate as much as I possibly can, and if all else fails, there will be pictures.

Over these last few weeks I’ve been able to sit back and enjoy watching nature (Toph put me on a housework ban, so I had time to sit and stare out the window)

I’ve enjoyed the crazy weather patterns 

 
And a little over week later 
  
   

Last Saturday Toph and I had a kid free night, we drove around the back roads of our little town for an hour, we saw in that time two dozen wild turkeys and three dozen deer, it was incredible. Sadly some of them were moving to fast to get pictures or as you can see it was starting to get dark.

We spent the time talking about critters, gardens, fencing, & shelters. 

 

Our seeds came in, ducks & chickens have been ordered, piglets are being looked for, and a guardian livestock alpaca is being considered 😉

As I cannot currently crochet or work on small knitting needles, my projects had to be shelved 😭, in the meantime, last week I stared The Ragnar blanket, the size 11 needles don’t hurt my hands nearly had badly, & I have this amazing ability to knit one handed when I need to.

   
   
And with that I say, typing one handed is hard and so I end this now.

Have a nice day folks!! (Typos will be fixed when both hands are better)

A walk in our oasis 

Posted in kids, Uncategorized by

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!!