Beary Happy Holidays

Just want to show everybody right quick what my Mama made for the grand kids:

are they not adorable?

She's been making these bears for several years now. They are totally hand sewn.The head, arms and legs rotate.They measure 14 inches each and are identical except one has black eyes

and the other one blue and the paw and footpads are a little different in color.

I'm in love with the blue eyed one ,blue eyes turn me into mush :)These boys are super soft and sooo cuddly!

She made me one too but he is still in transit. as soon as i get him I'll post a pic.

The grand boys are going to have a fit over them.

Other than that it's been quiet at the home front. It's been soooo cold!! below freezing for about 6-7 days now and lows at night in the teens or even below zero when the wind kicks up. Horrible, and this is the deep, deep south mind you.

I've had a steady stream of custom sock orders coming in and i can just so keep up.

Now I'm waiting for the holidays to be over and everything calms down. Then I'm going to try my hand in bear making. Hopefully i can get as good as my Mom. I'd like to make them to sell.

So i wish everybody very Happy Holidays, and a Happy,Healthy New Year.

Some knit's and a couple of "Thank you's"

First of all i want to thank everybody for commenting here or e-mailing me with their thoughts on Star's passing. I really appreciate the kind words.

The first week was quite bad , i caught myself looking out the window several times checking on her until a split second later it hit me : not there anymore :(

It's better now , i think it finally sunk in. I never thought i would miss her so much, especially since i haven't actually used her in the last five years and she was just a front lawn ornament.

Now to other things.

My dear Mom send me another goodie box with lot's of knitted baby socks:

and some German chocolate (best in the world) but i didn't get a pic of that, ate it all :)

...and myself , i knitted these socks for my Daughter in laws mom for her help with putting Star to rest:

and these fingerless texting gloves for my step daughter in law for her birthday this last Wednesday:

I already started another pair of patchwork socks and after that i will make a pair of thick socks for my daughter in laws grandad for letting me bury Star on his beautiful pasture.

Star...

She liked Parades.
She would Dance and Prance and show off.
She loved drinking Beer out of the can.
She loved rolling in the mud after a good rain.
She loved Bread and Butter Pickles.
She loved trail rides in the woods.
She never gave me an ounce of trouble.
She loved chewing tobacco, and Pimento cheese sandwiches.
She was a Good, reliable companion. She carried me thousands of miles.
She brought me pleasure for 15 years.
She loved to run in the pasture, bucking , kicking with her head up high and her tail straight up in the air, trailing her like a banner.
She never bucked while ridden, never kicked or bit anyone.
She loved her sweet feed.
She was a McCurdy.
She never faltered, no matter where I pointed her nose.
She loved dogs, cats and goats.
She loved a good scratch under her belly.

She loved a good cooling off with the water hose when it would get hot in the summer.

She loved kids and was very gentle.

And I loved her…
She will be in my heart until I die and she will be terribly missed.

born late 70's, early 80's - died 10.29.2010

　
　

At long last, progress !!!

 I've finished a couple more socks and a pair of DK weight fingerless gloves (they're called 'texting gloves ' now), and I'm almost done with redoing all of my shop pics.

I'm suffering from insomnia for the last 8-9 days. i think i hadn't had more than 10 hours of sleep in that time. I walk around like a zombie all day , so very tired, but if i try to take a nap i can't sleep!! and am wide awake at night. it is now midnight and i am bouncing off the walls. what is wrong with me??

oh, look at this:

aren't they cute?! I looked up out of the window this morning and there they where, Bib half asleep and Jack watching over her with his paw wrapped around her, like he's saying : " your save , i'll look out for you ".

Disclaimer: No beer was consumed during moving of building and no animals or humans where hurt in said move.

Just a little knitting...

I have spend pretty much the last week and this one revamping my etsy shop, from banner to descriptions to pictures.Even at less than 30 items that is very time consuming and a lot of work, especially if you're on dial up. I try to get the pictures down in size as much as possible without loosing quality but it still takes several minutes per pic to upload.I think i took about 300 new pictures in all.

But now i'm almost done, i think i've got a couple items left to redo.

But i got a little knitting in.After all the black socks i knitted a pair of patchwork socks which i promptly sold and got a custom order for another pair.

After that i got a custom order for these cute fingerless gloves:

and then i made these and put them in the shop today:

and i already started on another pair, this time a DK weight, they should be done in a couple of days.

David Taylar Daniels is my Hero....

....and here is why:
Last week i had my etsy shop critiqued by several people and the biggest issue was that my pictures could use a major overhaul, mainly they where too dark and boooooring.
So after tweaking around the shop on some other issues i started taking lots of pictures , trying to lighten them up and make them more appealing.
Unfortunately the only program i have to work my pics on is the Microsoft program that came with the PC ( five years old). It was a trial issue and half of the features quit working after six month.
I've always loved how good Dave's pictures look, especially the ones without a background.
So i contacted him to find out how he does it.
I downloaded one program that will let you make your picture background transparent, well, that is everybody elses pictures, not mine. I could not get it to work right for me :(
So i tried to download a program that Dave recommended , but, i live in the boondocks, all i have is telephone dial up. Very, very slow. So after being informed that it would take 360 !!!! hours to download the program , i gave up. and I sure can't afford to buy Photo shop.
So, here is where Dave comes in:
When i went to the mail box this afternoon, i had a small package. At first i was stumped, i hadn't ordered anything!!
Then i saw the name of the sender: Dave.
now I'm even more stumped.
So back to the house i hurry, because it was one of those bubble wrap plastic envelopes and you just can't tear them open, you need a knife or scissors.
And to my surprise this is what was inside:



Oh, i can tell you: that was one of the nicest things anybody has done for me in a long, long time.
I immediately installed it and it works great!!! So now y'all watch out !!
I'll have some b*&%^ing pictures in my shop!!!
I'll be forever grateful.
Thank you Dave !!!

Updates...

This is just a short post , no pics.I 'd just like to update on a couple of things that have impacted my life in the past weeks and thank everybody ( here and in the homeland ) for their well wishes.

First my old mare: she has fully recovered from what I'm sure of now was a snake bite.She has lost quite a bit of weight during the first 4-5 days because she didn't eat. It takes many pounds of feed a day to keep a horse looking good. If they don't eat for several days they loose weight fast. Sometimes a hundred pounds or more in a few days.(boy, wish i could do that !!!)

But, she is back to eating everything i put in front

of her and asking for more.

So, hopefully I'll have her a little while longer.

Next, my ankles.

They are almost good as new. Well, not really. Both are weak and i wear braces on both of them ,especially when I'm outside wandering in the yard. I'm very careful where and how i step.I've always had weak ankles and unfortunately always will, I'll just have to be careful.

On the knitting side : I finished another pair of ( black!!) socks for a customer in Washington state, must be getting cold there :)

Also still trying to figure out how to get those holes centered in those beautiful beads.Any help or suggestion is greatly appreciated. Just be reminded that they are lentil shaped and do not lay down flat.
I started on another pair of patchwork socks last night. They should be ready to go in the shop by about Sunday.
I will put a picture in here after all. It has nothing to do with above story's.
These are my mother in laws African Violets that i inherited from her.

She had them for many years and tended to them with lots of love. They bloomed all the time and every time we visited her i admired the pretty little flowers.
So when i brought them home i got all the info on how to keep them off the Internet( i remember my mom had one for years and remember that hers was very fickle especially about the light it got) . I re potted them with new soil and tried to find them a good spot by a window, but after a couple of weeks decided there wasn't enough light and moved them to another spot and that's when the miracle happened:Blooms!!!

This plant has been blooming for about 3 weeks now.

I have one more plant and four cuttings. I hope they will bloom too once matured.

I wish i could tell mom-in-law but due to her advanced stage of Alzheimer's she won't understand :(

Well, this was not that short of a post after all and pictures too !!

Drop Spindles anyone?

About two weeks ago i got inspired by a forum on Ravelry about hand made drop spindles.Most are made out of wood with the whorl also made out of wood. I've never worked much with wood and don't have the tools to do so.I remember  seeing some very pretty chop sticks on eBay a couple of days before, they would make great shafts.

So i kept thinking what other media could be used for the whorl part. I looked at spindles on etsy and eBay and there i saw some made out of polymer clay. Aha !! I used to make jewelry out of fimo clay years ago and, hoarder that i am , still had some clay and books and tools to go with it. After looking at different shapes i decided that a lentil shape would be best.I looked at some videos online and tried it myself. Didn't come out too bad after some practice but they where not very even. They got to be as even as possible, you don't want any wobble when you're spinning.So i found Carola, of craftsbycag , a polymer clay artist on etsy who has been doing clay art for many years, (visit her store and look at her beautiful beads.)
She made me these:

Aren't they beautiful? Each one is a perfect little ,one of a kind, gem .

I paired them of like this to match the shafts:

this will be my personal spindle:

and last ( but by no means least ) :

I just love the one on the right( thinking about keeping that one too :-)

The whorls are between 1.5 and 1.75 inches in diameter and weigh 24 and 26 grams. the spindle shafts are 8 inches in length. So these spindles would be perfect for lace/ fingering weight yarns.Now i have to figure out how to find the exact middle of the whorls so i can drill holes and assemble the spindles.

If everything goes OK ,they will be available in my shop.

What a perfectly horrible day....

Talking about a bad day, yesterday was it !
First i found that my old mare Star , which I've been desperately coaxing along to hang around a little longer before galloping into the big pasture in the sky, had not ate her supper from the night before. Which is very unusual. I promised myself that as soon as she would stop eating i would do the humane thing.
She went of her feed a couple of times before in the last year but after a day or two she started again, i guess sometimes she's just not feeling good.I got days like that...
Well yesterday she just seemed different. I spend loads of time with my animals and watch them closely.So when they're behavior changes i notice right away.
After looking at her more closely i noticed a lump between her front legs on her chest, about as big as an egg.It was hard as a rock but didn't seem to be painful when i touched it. Well, that wasn't there the night before! So i decided that something bit or stung her during the night. I've never seen a bee or hornet sting look like that so i ruled that out.
Next thing :  snakebite!!
I haven't seen any snake around the house this year but that doesn't mean there not here.
Anyways, i dumped the uneaten feed out (since it had soured over night) and gave her a fresh ration of sweet feed.
 She took a little bite and i thought "Yes!!" but then she turned around and walked of.
Not Good!!!!
So i went down to the local Co-op and got a big bottle of penicillin and gave her the maximum dose.
I watched her close all morning and noticed that she was constantly drinking water. She also came back numerous times to check her feed but never ate any.
By noon i was afraid that this might be it.I'll not let her stand over a trough full of food and slowly starve to death. I could see that she wanted to eat but just couldn't.
By this time i was pretty upset. I know that she doesn't have much time left , she is about 28-30 old , that's quite ancient for a horse. I lost several pets during the years either of old age or sickness but it doesn't make it any easier.
Also I've got the problem what to do with her .This is not a little dog, this is a 8-900 pound animal.
It requires a little more than a shovel . Nobody in our neighborhood has a backhoe, also, we don't have enough room here to dig a huge hole.We can take her to the dump but i just can't handle having her buried in garbage! what to do, what to do ? Then my son called and i told him about the situation.
A couple of hours later my daughter-in-law  called me back. She apparently talked to her mom and she is willing , when the time comes ,to bury her in her pasture ( she has a backhoe !!) and since she is working for a vet and has put many horses to sleep over the years, to send Star, quietly and with dignity to the big pasture in the sky. The relief !!
Late in the afternoon i noticed her nibbling around on the sweet feed. She also looked a little more alert. YES !!! maybe, just maybe....
Well, stepping out of the house all excited , i tripped and , can you guess it ?,  sprained my ankle!!, this time the right one.This was one of the times where I'm grateful that we live in the country, far away from neighbors ( well, at least out of screaming distance), because the words coming out of my mouth!!! a sailor 's got nothing on me!!!
I laid there, on my back (talk about deja vu ), cussing and crying at the same time.Frustration, pain, worry all pouring out of me.
The pain!!Uhhhh
So now i got two bad ankles and i don't know if you ever seen what it looks like , someone limping both sides.It looks like a footsore duck.

Happily i can report that this morning Star is looking much better and is eating again, she still drinks a lot of water and the lump has gotten bigger, about the size of a small orange, but softer. If i could, I'd do the happy dance , but.....

If you look close you can see the lump between the legs.

I had calmed down enough by last night to start a new pair of socks to go in the shop.

It's a pretty easy lace pattern, only four rows repeat with every second row a straight knit row.I made several mistakes anyways, guess i was a little preoccupied, and had to frog several times.

oh, by the way , i also broke my glasses yesterday. Thank goodness i still got my old pair. They are not as good as the new ones but they'll do till i can get the other pair fixed. All in all, a horrible day!!!

Hoorayyy...

Yes !! Finally with Dave's help i got this comment situation straightened out. Thank you Dave !!!

So, comment anytime about anything :)

Otherwise not much new around here. I finally finished the order of black socks going to Germany. I know they will be appreciated once winter rolls around there.

It's been some what cooler here this last week ( only in the upper eighty's , lower ninety's), which one of my friends in Germany just thought funny that i would describe those temps as "cooler". But if one has endured months of 100+ degrees it feels cool .As a matter of fact it has been down right beautiful the last three days. Upper 50's in the morning, cool enough for a long sleeve shirt, haven't worn one of those since end of April.

On another subject: i acquired some beautiful chop sticks on e-bay a couple of days ago .

I've got very special plans for them.

 i will post on the finished project at a later date.

Here on the home front the Goats are finally getting along much better.

Lulubelle still sometimes gets a good lick in to Clyde but at least now she doesn't actively chase him any more.
Also, here is a new pic of Tom , Bib's kitten.
He has grown tremendously  ( bigger than Bib now) and speculating on the size of his feet he will be a huge cat.They are twice the size of his mama's .
After no less than 11 tries to take a picture of his face i got this.

 At least one can see his face on this one , the other eleven are either of his butt, back, side or top, no face.I don't know how Dave takes all these beautiful pictures of his cats. they are very well behaved. Tom is just camera shy. i even tried to hold his head while taking a picture and all i got was the back of it since he twisted it around just at the moment the camera went of.I love the little white moustache , he looks like one of those " Got Milk ?" ads.

This afternoon i will try to hook my sewing machine to my carder in a try to motorize it. I have probably about 150 pounds of fleece accumulated . I need to get to processing it but i really don't want to crank that carder handle by hand.If successful, post on that will follow.

I also will post on my new addiction ( and boy, am i hooked and just after one try!!) sometime next week when i have some pics to go with it.Thank goodness it's not illegal :), and No,it's not fiber related at all :O

OOOoooohhhh that burns me up !!!!

I just discovered that the setting concerning 'reader comments' has been sitting on "Don't allow" for probably several months. I know my blog doesn't have a big following but i have not had any comments on any of my posts since early summer.I was wondering if everybody had abandoned me. I love to get comments on my postings,or questions.That's why i got this blog in the first place , to share and get feed back from my fellow (wo)man . blogger has changed the way how you control your settings. Now you have to specify some settings for every single post. I DID'NT KNOW!!!
They also changed how to include pictures and i am not impressed.Before the change i could write on the blog while the pics where loading,( time saver), now i can't work on it until the pic is fully loaded and inserted. I'm still on dial up and that takes awhile, so the option to keep writing while loading was great, well, no more !!! Why don't they just leave things alone? If it works, don't fix it ! Always trying to improve but in the end complicate things.
 So, anywho.. from now on the comment setting is on "allow" and I've opened up my older posts too. So please feel free to comment on them too, i welcome any questions or input or just an "ata girl " here and there.

The goats are doing very well. They are getting along much better, at least the baby's. Lulubelle still butts Clyde any chance she gets. I tie them out every day and they eat and eat and eat. It's amazing what they can put away!!! They have gained some weight and are getting round and fat. I'll have to start watching them now and restrict them somewhat. Too fat is not healthy, not even for goats .

If you look close you can see Clyde peeking out of the dog house:

Knitting wise I'm on my last pair of black socks! I've been working on them steadily . I can't wait to cast on stitches for a pair of wildly colored ones, this black is really mind numbing!! Plus , the knitting is sooo hard to see!

After I'm done with them I'm going to bring my carder in the house and start carding some of my beautiful fleeces i bought over the past few month.I got several pounds each of corriedale, BL,Targhee,Cormo and Polwarth.I also have about 20 pounds of Alpaca in assorted colors i have to process that i got last year.So that should keep me busy for awhile.

Just Great!!!!

This is my ankle as of 8:00 am this morning:

I went out to let Jack out of his pen and stepping back into the house i stepped in a small hole by the stairs and twisted my left ankle bad. I felt this wrenching sensation ,i heard a loud snap and a pain like fire and down i went, flat on my back. I laid there for a few seconds to catch my breath , it hurt so bad.

Then i sat up and took inventory, the pain was excruciating but i could move my foot, so apparently nothing broken.I got up and put some weight on it, it hurt bad but i could hobble around on it. So i got in the house and put a bag of ice on it. Within 10 minutes the ankle  had turned all colors of the rainbow and swelled up considerably.

 Unfortunately i had a doctors appointment at 11:00 i didn't want to miss.So i hobbled to the car , parked right in front of the clinics front door ( I'd take care of a possible ticket later).

The doc looked at it, said that nothing seemed to be broken ( i surmised that already ) and that the loud snap i heard where the ligaments tearing off the ankle bone. Just great!!

He said i"d been better of with a broken ankle , because for these tore ligaments to heal I'm looking at several month of painful limping.Just great !!!!

And just as the heat seems to abate and i could actually do some things outside like building a goat pen and shelter for Clyde and his girls.

But no! Here i sit on the couch, foot elevated and  in a brace . Just great!!!!

Clyde...

I found my Billy!! :) :)

Isn't he cute? and he is very small . Ellimae at nine weeks old is already a tad taller than he is .

His name is Clyde , he's 6 months old and i found him googling on the Internet.I called the owners, making sure he was still available.We went that same day to get him.Luckily he was only about 50 miles away and this time we had no mishaps on the way.

I am thrilled to death. Unlike the other two he is as tame as a puppy.A real sweetheart.The girls were less than thrilled.Lulubelle showed him she wanted none of him. Ellimae likewise. They butted him around for awhile and he's learned real quick to stay out of reach.This morning they seem to be getting along a little better.

Lulubelle:

isn't she gorgeous?

I must appologise for all these goat related blogs but thats all that's going on here right now.

Still knitting on the black socks, still got three pairs to go.

Getting aquainted...

So, this morning i tied Lulubelle out in the back yard so she and Ellimae can get some fresh greens ( weeds , which we have a lot of ).

Of course Skimpy and Jack had to investigate these strange creatures a little closer. They circled like vultures, trying to get a good look and sniff.Ellimae didn't care but Lulubelle kept a close eye on them.

Skimpy got tired of it after a little while and opted to watch them from a distance.

 Jack of course couldn't leave it alone and he got nailed pretty good by Lulubelle.

 after that he decided they weren't going to be much fun after all and he went to harrass the cats.

After awhile Star came over to say hello.

 The goats weren't scared of here at all and all three of them grazed together for awhile.

So far, so good.

Still looking for a little billy :)

The Great Goat Adventure...

I've been toying with the idea to add a goat   to our menagerie for awhile now.I've been tempted several times this summer to buy a baby goat but i didn't because i was really looking for an African Pygmy goat.

I used to raise them several years ago for about 8 years in all.I love these little goats. Tamed they are very affectionate,loving pets.They're smart and because of their size (below knee high ,weighing about 40-50 # as adults) easy to handle.

So yesterday i decided to go to the local goat sale, sometimes a Pygmy gets mixed in with other goats. When we got there , there where only 6 goats there and they where all the big breeds.

So when we got home i googled local pygmy goat breeders and found a Nanny with baby  about 60 miles away.

I phoned the Lady, got some more info about them, got a price i could not refuse and told here we'd be there in a couple of hours (when i ever get rolling i waste no time :)

We had to take the horse trailer to put them in (wouldn't you know , just a couple of weeks ago i gave away a big dog crate ).Of course that meant we had to go in the truck which has no air conditioning. Boy was it hot. By the time we got there we looked like we just took a shower with our clothes on.

She took us to a little barn with several goats and pointed the pair that was for sale out. Love at first sight !

Needles to say the lady got her money and i got my goats!

We loaded them up and off we went. About 5 minutes down the road we experienced some bad truck trouble. We slowly limped to the next town 8 miles down the road and took the offending ,trouble making part off right there in the auto zone parking lot.

5 minutes later we where on the road again.Within just a few minutes we ran into a horrendous rainstorm.

We crawled along at about 5 miles an hour ,could not see the road it rained so hard.

After about 15 minutes it got somewhat better and we thought we survived the worst when we run into the next one even worse.Some of the road started flooding at least over a foot deep.One little town had the manhole covers blown out with water spurting out of the drain holes like geysers.

What a mess!! but eventually we drove out of it and when we got home it hadn't even rained there at all.

We left the goats in the trailer overnight with food and water and then this morning i transferred them to their temporary home : Jacks pen.

Little jack was going to eat them up when he saw them. He's never even seen a goat before and he is only the size of the baby but he tried to attack mama goat with hair standing straight up on his back and all of his teeth showing.These little dogs are gritty! Mama goat put her head down and gave him a taste of her horns and that is all it took. Jack backed up.He was growling and barking at them but didn't try again to get close.

I tied him up to the outside of the pen for several hours this morning for them to get acquainted. I think that did the trick. Jack doesn't hardly pay attention to them any more.

So, all is well. I Love my little goats.

I think I'll call them Lulubelle (mama) and Fleur (baby).

They have not been handled a lot and are a bit shy (to tell the truth you got to run them down and hold on to them) but that will change very quick, i'm fixin' to pet the hair off of them :)

Now for a little Billy Goat.... ;D   

...aaand maybe a    ,or     ?!

Jelly,Heat and Lace

Out of desperation to break up the monotony (and avert crawling up the walls ) caused by this relentless heat we are having, I've decided to make some jelly with the elderberries growing here in abundance.I made some years ago and it was delicious.

I picked a big bucked of berries:

washed them:

de-stemmed them:



cooked them,drained the juice ,and voila:

about 1 2/3 gallons of elderberry juice.

Adding the rest of the ingredients ( added 12 oz of grape juice too) i sealed the jars

and ended up with 15 -8 oz glasses of delicious jelly,

(first batch of 12):

or so i thought....

Unfortunately it didn't set. Apparently elderberries are notorious for not setting.

So, i will have to pour all of it back in the pot, add some more pectin and hope for the best.

We did use some of it on our ice cream last night like syrup. Oh, it is truly yummy!

I do have about 20 oz of juice left over that i will make into syrup. great over pancakes or -ice cream.

Still no movement on the Studio relocation.It's been 100+ every day. I'm literally house bound. I'm still working on the order of black socks. Finished the fourth pair yesterday. It's really slow going with this batch, luckily the customer is in no hurry.

I started on the lace shawl but found out that i don't like this kind of knitting at all.Too loose.

Summer - Blah's

There is absolutely nothing going on here! Everything from construction to weaving/knitting/spinning has come to a complete standstill ( i don't even have a decent picture of anything to put with this post (hence the smileys).I am working on a order of seven pair of socks going to Germany now and then. I'm dragging my feet on them because they are all black and i'm really not enthused !!

It has been sooo hot !! The last four/five weeks have been absolutely horrible with no break in sight.Most days are in the upper 90's with a heat index of 105 - 110. Today is supposed to be an even 100 with a heat index of 105-114. The low last night was 78 and now at 6 am it's already 79 degrees. Same tomorrow and Tuesday and so on and on....
Thank goodness we traded our old Jeep in for a little Blazer and it's got a working AIR CONDITIONER!!! I LOVE this little car!!
Now i can go shopping/ run around any time i want to without feeling like i'm going to melt. I don't even mind getting caught by the train.I can wait :)
Hopefully this heat is going to break sometime soon so we can commence on our construction project.Never got to move the Studio yet :(
It seems that we can't just slide the building around without damaging it. so it will be put on a big trailer. That means we'll have to hike the building up, maneuver the trailer under it, set it down, move it to its designated spot, hike it up, pull trailer out from under it, then set it down . NOT IN THIS HEAT!! So i wait.
Very frustrating.
Well, better get back to the socks. After the second pair i started to put little cable patterns on the rest just to break up the monotony.
Stay cool y'all