NASTY NOVEMBER DAYS

Before going to bed last night, I looked out the door and was this is what I saw.  
SNOW.....ug

Today, I look out the window and I see snow on the grass at the nearby golf course. There is something wrong about this picture, don't you think?  

Annual checks ups or not, we will not be in Indiana in November again.  We really need to find a better time for doctor appointments.  

I read the blogs of friends who have arrived in the southwest and am envious as my toes tingle, not with excitement, but with cold.  

I remember the days of "old" when we were still living in our in sticks and bricks.  Beginning around the fifteenth of November until about May first, my feet were always cold.  

Lesson learned.  

So what did I do on such a miserable day?  I sat and my spinning wheel and spun some yarn.  Today, I will set the twist by wetting the yarn and hanging it to dry.  

 Now I need to decide what to knit with this yarn.  

And how is Noah handling this cold, winter like weather?  

This is how!  

Thanks for stopping by today.  And a big thank you for the navigating to Amazon.com to make your purchases. 

God Bless!

MAKING MUCH PROGRESS ON THIS JOURNEY

For a long time (over two weeks, I think) I have not blogged.  When preparing to list a house for sale in order to full time, it gets pretty redundant to say we are working hard, but it is taking sooooo long to get everything done.  


As I told our realtor,  If we were thirty or forty or fifty something, we would be moving so much faster.  We are like lumbering turtles, slowly but steadily moving along.  It is difficult to guesstimate how soon we can actually put the house on the market.  Maybe three more weeds, if we are blessed with continued energy.


These are photos of what the weather was like here last year.  This year, the grass is still green.  Daffodils are reaching for the sky at five inches! (I'm sure the are in for a rude awakening some of these days.)

Discouragement is our enemy right now.  At the same time, we are so pleased with the mild January temperatures!  We have, unlike last winter, had no ice storms, no blizzards, no unbearably cold temperatures. 
This weather pattern has made it possible for us to work outside and in the barns getting ready for show and sell.  I actually feel a little heart flutter when I think of the  progress we have made.

Yesterday, we said good bye to our hot tub.  It is going to a new home in Minnesota!  The gentleman that is taking it is transporting it to his hunting / fishing cabin.  Another job checked off our outside to-do list!  (do you see the green grass? Compare that to the last winter pictures above.)


We have hired two workers to help us with the barns and oh, my.  The progress that is being made is wonderfully remarkable!  We are working in the barns and outside.  

  




In the smaller barn I have llama and alpaca fiber that I must decide what to do with it.  I can send the lesser quality to Texas to be woven into rugs to sell.  


Then I can send the best quality fiber to Connecticut  to be spun into yarn to sell to those that knit, crochet or weave.  
   

 But, I can also have some made into roving for me to dye, then spin or wet felt when we finally are able to start our full time journey.  I will probably choose all three options.  Just talking about  about fiber and traveling in the same blog is a joy!  Oh how I look forward to the future journey.  


Well, that's all for now.  Keep us in your prayers that we can keep turtleing along.  


God bless you all...

A Day of Challenges

Today's challenges have not been monumental.  They are just challenges.  But for some reason, they bug me today.  The heat, the air quality, the sock machine, the silk worms, the grass to cut, the weeds to pull, the motorhome floor to finish, the kitchen to finish as well as painting the house so we can sell it.  That's all. 

Today, the heat has been oppressive and the resulting air quality has made for a difficult day for John with his emphysema.  Working on the motorhome floor is impossible after about one o'clock in the afternoon.  He is so eager to get the flooring down and it is discouraging for him.  He pushes himself further than he should and this is a concern for me. 

The sock machine and I had a round today.  I am using a new / different yarn and am having a terrible time making all the adjustments.  I've knitted and ripped out more times than I can count!  As I have said before, this is a HUGE learning curve.  On the positive side though, I have found the perfect number of rows to fit my foot.  The first socks were too large for my feet, but the last pair.....just right.   What is so funny is that as I was ripping out a sock for the umteenth time, I was thinking that maybe I should get my spinning wheel and spin.  I had to laugh at myself.  When I was learning to spin, I would think that maybe I should just go felt something.  Nothing like wanting to take an easier road.  

The silkworms.....I have three very stubborn fellas.  They just don't want to stop eating those mulberry leaves and make their cocoons.  I have had cocoons for four days now, but these guys keep hanging on and eating.  I still can hear these three chewing on the mulberry leaves.  At first, as wee babes, they needed the youngest, most tender mulberry leaves.  Now they enjoy the large, mature leaves.  When I go out to cut more branches, I see those young, tender leaves and thing, ooooh they will like these.  I put the leaves in the silkworm container and what do these fellas want?  The old, hairy, tough leaves.  I guess my love of the spring mix for salads does not equate here.  I love the young and tender.

You can see the two coocoons and the worms here. 

I am tempted to reduce the amount we are cutting.  With the price of gas, I feel it is a waste of money.  It takes a lot of gas to cut 5 acres every 3 or 4 days.  The grass is still growing at a speedy rate and with most of our grass being out of sight, why not? 

And the weeds.  I just wish everything were level and we could just cut it all down....The woes of summer and home / mini farm ownership. 

We did have a cool visitor today.  I really do not know what it is.  It looks a bit like a dragon fly, but I don't think it is.  "He" was resting on the side of our house and I saw him as I was sitting at the circular sock machine.  Maybe you will be able to tell me it's name. 

Dinner is ready, time to go.....God bless all tonight~!

We Have a New Great Grand!

New babies are so precious.  Especially when they are our grand children and great grands.  Today, Harper Howe entered the world at 6 pounds 7 ounces and she is just beautiful!  I even have the photo to prove it! 

We have been waiting with a bit of anxiety.  She has created a stir for the last 2 or 3 weeks.  There was an irregular heart beat.  Cause for concern!   An ultrasound showed that there was an umbilical aneurysm and the physicians were fairly confident that the increased pressure created by the aneurysm was pumping too much blood into the heart creating the heart rhythm problem.  But we had to wait until delivery to be sure.  On top of that, our little darlin decided to present her tush, rather than her head.  Therefore, a Cesarean delivery was scheduled for this morning. 

The parents to be were to be at the hospital at 9:00 this morning.  The hospital personnel told them that it was "all clear" for their delivery.  When they arrived, they went through the registration process etc.  And then they waited, oh, oh,  the OR was needed for an emergency delivery.  Then another emergency... they had to wait their turn for the operating room.  Finally, it was time and Harper entered the world, easing every concern we had about her health. 

Megan had visitation all planned.  First she and Adam wanted to be with her for the first hour.  Just a nice quiet time to bond with their loan from God.  Next they wanted the grandparents for the next hour followed by the greats!  We calculated that if Harper was born between nine and ten o'clock, that would mean Meg and Adam would be alone with her from say, ten to eleven, followed by grandparents from eleven to twelve o'clock.  Then, last but not least the  greats at noon.  Now, I added about ninety minutes to that schedule based upon past experience.

I passed some of the waiting time reading and then I decided to spin some yarn.  But when the ninety minutes stretched to two hours, we decided we would make our way toward the hospital, hoping that we would get a call and we would be close by. 

We went to Camping World to make a couple purchases for the motorhome, then drove by Sam's Club. We decided that since it was a Sunday crowd, we did not want to stand in line, so we just moseyed on down the road.  While driving, we called daughter #1 - Karen to see what the progress was and she informed us of the delay, but said she was on her way to the hospital.  We knew from that it was going to be a bit longer, so off we went to our favorite Mexican restaurant to wait.  The good food helped distract us and made the time go quickly and suddenly, we get a text from Meg telling us to come meet our new little one. 

She is so petite and cuddly!  The hospital has swaddling blankets that make them feel nice and secure.  She looked so cute in her white blanket and her pink and white hat.  She's just a "knock out".  Can you tell I'm a bit biased?  Oh well. 

Well, the rest of the day is history. 

Yesterday, we spent time spring cleaning the motor home in preparation for next week's trip to the fiber festival in Wooster Ohio.  I was amazed at how much dust and grit there was from the desert of California.  Now all the wood is cleaned and polished, mirrors are shiny, windows are clean, exhaust fans are cleaned, etc, etc.  I even cleaned closets and drawers!  We are ready to roll and are looking forward to meeting up with our friends that we have  not seen since last fall and those we have not seen for the last month or so.  This begins our busy time with art shows and the fiber festivals.  Having our home on wheels makes our travels more comfortable and we are looking forward to hitting the road on Thursday. 
The gas prices have gone down fourteen cents a gallon.  Nice timing, don't you think? 
Well, it's been a great week and a marvelous weekend.  Till next time....God's blessings to you....