Author: Ann Marie Hardin

New Craft Closet

Ann Marie Hardin2 Comments
While Steve and Doug played with wood, Linda and I played with fiber and loaded in my new craft closet. This is the absolutely most decadent thing I’ve ever had in my house. A complete closet fully and totally dedicated to organizing the supplies for my various hobbies. I ask you, does it really get much better than this?
We’ll start with the doors neatly closed to protect all my supplies from cats and dogs.
Now, let’s open up the left side.
I think my favorite thing on this end is that all of my knitting needles are organized by length and out where I can see and find them easily. The lower baskets hold some of my scrapbooking supplies, and my papers are currently stacked flat on the floor in bags. I’ll get some holders for the papers soon. Large cutting items are on the shelf above.
We’ll move one section to the right to look in the middle left.

Here you can see that I actually even have some empty baskets for expansion. See, my stash still has a little room to grow (just don’t tell Steve). At the top, you can see part of the shelf that is dedicated to my crafting books. Most of these are knitting books, and my library is pitifully small, but most of my patters are my own, so I don’t feel too badly about that. I have a request in for a couple of additions for my Birthday and Christmas. Hopefully the elves will be paying attention.
If we move one section to the right, we see the rest on my bookshelf and the beginnings of my fiber.
There’s quite a variety visible here. There’s a lot of acrylic that was gifted to me, an unfinished cross-stitch baby blanket, some serger cones that were also gifts, and my stash of crochet cotton. Now, I don’t crochet at that gage, but the stuff works great for tablet weaving, and is perfect for teaching that craft, so I’ve got a stash. Besides, you never know when you might need a little smooth thread to hold knitting stitches.
One more section to the right, and we get to the bulk of my fiber stash.

I’ve again got quite a variety, but there’s some very nice alpaca, and some wool-silk blends in lace weight, and some sock yarn, and some baby yarn, and some Cascade 220 for felted slippers. The important thing, though, is that it’s all out and visible so I can easily see what’s there. It’s kind of like having my own private yarn shop in the bedroom.

Do you every wonder why?

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Occasionally, I wonder why some creatures exist? I used to wonder this about snakes, but I’ve mostly gotten over that. Currently, however, I have been pondering this question in regards to yellow jackets and wasps. They aren’t particularly good pollinators. Bees, humming birds, and butterflies are all much more effective, and they are all much more pleasant neighbors. What, you may be wondering, could have led to such questioning?

It all began on Monday. We’d been noticing quite a few insects attempting to escape the cooling temperatures by sharing our warm domicile. Now, I’m pretty tolerant of most insects as long as they remain outside. Inside, however, they are fair game. Things were getting pretty bad, so Steve set off bug bombs in the attic and the crawl space Monday morning. We figured this would eliminate the most likely populations trying to enter the house. Lat on Monday, we noticed a few listless refugees. We put them out of their misery anytime we saw them, and went blissfully to bed.
Tuesday morning, when I finally decided I needed to drag my carcass out of bed, I tossed on my robe, and headed down the hall to wake Sarah. About 2/3 of the way to her room, I felt a hot burning sensation in the middle toe of my left foot. Now, understand that I went most of my 40+ years without being stung by bee or yellow jacket. In fact, I’ve only been stung 4 times in my life, and all of them have been inside one house or another. And two of them were Tuesday morning. Yes, two dying little buggers had stung my toe. I’m screeching like a banshee, ’cause it hurts. I want to hop around and grab my foot, but I have no idea how many more of the little buggers might be around, because of course, we don’t have lights in that hallway, and of course, I didn’t have my glasses on nor my contacts in. And I really don’t want to get my other foot stung too. Remember, I had just rolled out of bed, and hadn’t been to any other room in the house yet. Any woman over 40 will understand what I’m not saying.
Steve of course, only hears me screeching, and comes running out of the bedroom to see what was killing me. Needless to say, I turn my ire on him, particularly since he insists on calling the offenders bees. These are not bees. They are good-for-nothing yellow jackets.
By this time, I’m in the bathroom taking care of the rest of the morning business, and trying to figure out how to make my poor throbbing toe feel better. I can’t really find the sting, so a meat tenderizer paste is out. I finally decide that I’m just going to have to settle for ice. So, I cool it down for a little bit with and ice pack. At some point in there, Steve comes down and tells me he has killed a total of 7 bees. I inform him, perhaps a bit forcefully, that there are no *&^%&*) bees in this house. OK, perhaps I was still a bit irate and irritated. Fortunately for the state of our marriage, Steve thinks I’m cute when I’m angry, and once he started trying not to smile, I couldn’t help it either, and the steam was all blown off.
Then he set off another bug bomb in the attic to kill the last of the stragglers. I’m still a bit leery of running around the house without at least slippers, but it’s been three whole days now without any sightings, so I think I’m safe for a while.

New Treasure

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Steve unearthed a previously overlook treasure this weekend during his cleaning and winterizing. Can you spot it in this photo? It’s right there tucked into the stump.No, it’s not the pump, although that is neat too. It’s smaller than that. Look closely. Yes, that is a fruit press tucked up into that corner. I have no idea how old it is, but I don’t ever recall it being put to use, so it’s probably older than I am. Steve tested to see if it still turned, and it did, so he set it aside. After he was done with everything else, he sat down and worked it over with a steel brush to get some of the rust off.
Here he is, doing his best Wilson impersonation. Everyone does remember Wilson, from Tim Taylor’s sitcom of years ago, right? He scrubbed it up with that steel brush, and then hit it with SOS pads, and then we went down to Mom’s and got two medium-sized moving boxes of apples from her

tree. She doesn’t spray, so they were wormy, but we’re juicing them, so it shouldn’t matter. Just cut out any bad spots and squeeze the rest to mush.
We go run some errands, and then I settle down to finish some prep work for this week’s classes. I had two tests to write, and a pile of homework to grade, so I wasn’t paying much attention to what Steve was doing. He was in the kitchen, so I figured he was doing the dishes. It eventually dawned on me that it doesn’t take that long to do the dishes, and I’d heard the tea kettle whistle, so I figured coffee was nearly done, and surface to get myself a cup.
Upon entering the kitchen, I find Steve trying to hold the press still (it’s intended to be bolted down) while turning the handle. He’s got a gallon of apples about squeezed down to about half their original volume. It’s not an easy thing to do, and it’s even harder when the thing won’t hold still. So, I help by holding the handles for a little bit. Steve’s working awfully hard at turning that press, and he gets the apples down to about one-third their original volume, and he’s got about 2/3 of a cup of cider. Yes, that’s an awful lot of work for a tiny amount of cider. We develop a plan bolting the press onto a board and clamping that to the kitchen counter for actual cider production, and head off to the living room so Steve can make his post of last night, and

I can finish my work.
This afternoon, when I come home from classes, Steve says to me, “The more I think about it, the more I think that press is a great decoration, just like it is.” Now, I was pretty sure we’d end up there eventually, so I’m actually pretty impressed that he came to that conclusion before we mounted the thing on a board. We may still mount it, but now it’ll be for decoration, rather than any attempt to make cider. He still wants to make cider, but I think we’ll eventually purchase a press that’s slightly larger and has much longer handles so we can get better leverage. So, this lovely piece of history will eventually stand on a nice wrought-iron stand and grace a corner of our kitchen.

Houdini has been talking to our sheep

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You’ll recall that I mentioned a few days ago that the sheep seemed to be dissatisfied with their pasture. After today, I’m pretty sure the problem is actually just the perverse nature of sheep.

This morning, I let the dogs out to do their business, and noticed some rather unusual animal life out by the cars. No, it wasn’t deer, nor moose, nor anything more exotic than 4 of our very own sheep. Oreo, the adult ram, and Longtail and the boys. Now, we’ve gotten pretty immune to seeing them out on the hillside, but not out by the vehicles. Besides the obvious potential issues, there is a very large open field not too far from where they were, that opens up onto the road a ways up. And no, there is not a gate on this end either. Just a nice opening through which the sheep could pass into this haven of freedom. Needless to say, they needed to be encouraged back to their more usual range.
Sheep are usually creatures of habit, so I thought this would not be too much of a problem. I’d go out, leaving the front gate to the yard open, encourage them to go into the yard they covet anyway, and everyone would be happy, since the side gate out of the yard opens directly onto their pasture. So, I ducked back inside the house to grab my shoes, and went out the gate. The dogs, of course, came with me. That’s when everything went wrong. Sprout, the little one, headed at top speed for Mom’s house (in the opposite direction from the sheep), while Bailey, the big one, headed over to try to mother the lambs. Needless to say, Momma sheep was not too happy about this, and any visions I’d had of calmly herding the sheep into the yard vanished as they darted back into the barnyard. Bailey, or course, followed. I’m sure she was trying to be helpful, but…..
So, I went back to the house, and woke the progeny to come man the gate at the upper end of the pasture. My thinking at this point ran along the lines of getting the sheep to cross the creek in the barn lot, and then go up the road and into the gate. The sheep cooperate in the beginning by walking up to the creek. Where they promptly mill about looking confused. Bear in mind that the creek is all of 2″ deep here. It’s a bit wide, but really, their feet will get wetter in the tall grass than they will crossing the creek. Once again, my plans are thwarted as the sheep insist on turning tail and heading upstream and out the barn lot as fast as their legs will carry them. At this point, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m going to have go get the pickup and find them so I can get them back to the general area of acceptability and then try to get them in.
Then, I notice them up on the hillside behind the house. Now, understand that this means that the contrary little creatures went just a little bit upstream and then crossed not one, but two creeks in order to get from where they had been to where they now were. I was only asking them to cross one creek and then go in a gate.
By this time, it’s become a matter of principle, and I must get them back into their pasture. So, I move Sarah to the other gate (the one that opens onto the back hillside), and I go out and straight up the hill in order to get above the sheep so I can circle around them to move them towards the gate. I probably haven’t yet mentioned that this is the hillside on which the star thistle are flourishing, nor that I didn’t bother with socks, much less boots when I started on this adventure. I am at least wearing jeans, but my ankles are fairly unprotected, and star thistle are sharp little buggers. I successfully circle around the sheep and come up on them nice and calmly. By this time they’ve remembered that food generally comes from us two-legged beings and we’re not all evil, and they calmly wait for me to approach. Then I notice that they are eating the little bitty short almost moss-type weed that grows on the barren hillside! Not the green grass growing right beside it. No, the nearly dried out browned bristly little lichen-stuff. And yes, there is plenty of this inside their fenced area. See, perverse. Anyway, this time they go calmly into the pasture, and Sarah shuts the get behind them. Then, she gets some corn and treats everyone so they can remember why they should come when we call them.
Then, I only needed to go down to Mom’s and get Sprout. At least I got to sit down and fish the stickers out of my shoes once I got there, and Mom came out and we had a nice visit while we watched the hummingbirds. Did I mention that all of this took place before 7:10 this morning?

Farm life practicalities

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I find myself worrying that our recent trend of posts have offended some of you. Now, most of you are probably aware, at least on some level, that life in the country is not all idyllic and peaceful. Especially not when you’re surrounded by 100’s of acres of what is essentially idle land that has been planted in native grasses, trying to raise domestic animals that are by their very nature prey to the predators that live in those 100’s or acres of native grassland. But, Steve’s rather blunt about the measures that we have taken to protect our investment. I’ve tried to suggest that he move on, but he’s rather stubborn. I suppose that’s a good thing, as I’m rather stubborn as well. So, I hope you’ll stick with us and not judge us too harshly for having to protect what needs protecting. I promise this trend will end soon – or at least I hope it will. I’m not a big fan of searching for the angry racoon at 3:30 in the morning dressed in Steve’s robe, and carrying a 22 rifle and a flashlight.
In the meantime, I’ll gush a little bit about how exciting it is to have the barn useable this winter. No, the roof will not be repaired, nor will the entire floor be fixed. But, remember that the sheep had next-to-nothing for shelter last winter. Even with a big hole in the roof at one end, the rest of the barn will provide more shelter than they had last year. We’ll start repairing the floor at the end nearest the house, and stop when we run out of time. We’ll put panels up at the end of the good floor, and that will be where the sheep get to stay for the winter. We only have 7 of them (or will only have 7 by winter). They don’t need very much space to sleep and eat in anyway. The hay has been moved into a much more secure location (thanks to Hector), and we have a plan that will eventually allow easy access to that space for future unloading. And, it’s in the barn – right where we will need it.

You see, this barn was built by folks who knew how a barn was supposed to operate. There’s a large open space where the animals live. I suspect that this space originally had stalls for the draft horses, but that’s just supposition. And there are two very large feed bins. Bins is really not the right word. Imagine rooms approximately the size of a decent living room. But empty with a tunnel over the door. When Grandpa fed the sheep, he fed chopped hay, and the chopped hay was literally dumped into these rooms. The tunnel over the door allowed a person to walk in and scoop what they needed from right by the door. The feed would shift and re-fill the space, always keeping the feed handy, at least until the level dropped. Then you had to go a bit further in. Still, it was a good system, and it works just fine for baled hay too.
It feels like a win that we’re going to be able to salvage a good portion of the building and put it to good use again. It’s been standing for over 100 years. Here’s hoping that with a little rejuvenation and minor (okay sort of major) surgery, it can stand for just a little bit longer.
On another note, this is Sarah’s favorite of the photos she took. She doesn’t really like Steve’s favorite. Anyone want to weigh in with their favorite? We need some neutral voices to break the tie. I’m staying out of it, because I’m just very proud that she took the initiative and then took some great photos.