It's Autumn

Hello folks,

It's Autumn here in the Pacific Northwest. In my neck of the woods the colors are great. Reds, yellows, golds, coniferous greens. The rain has washed away the summer dust allowing the leaf colors to glow.

Two kids, two educational centers, three campuses. Trying to keep track of schedules is challenging. the oldest is taking college physics and college upper level algebra. The youngest is taking college level writing and Shakespeare, Greek drama, trigonometry, American history, clay, and more.

Maude, my youngest is taking about exploring internship opportunities with you. Stayed tuned for more on that later.

I am spinning and knitting. I added much more to my stash at the Sock Summit in August and OFFF in September. I have given in to the fact that I am a colorholic. In a hopefully not to vain attempt to save my wallet contents I have photographed my stash and set up a screen saver that uses these photos in random order. The intent is to remind myself just what fun colors I have immediately available for use.

I frogged a few items that have been nagging me with their incompleteness. What a relief. Other than gift knitting I am trying valiantly not to start anything new before finishing something already in progress. We will see how that goes.

A couple of finished items:

A sweater for a co-worker's new daughter















Helena from Knitty - Summer 2008


Socks for one of my nephews:















Tree Frog colorway from Sereknity Yarn and Fiber purchased from The Loopy Ewe.
Toe-up, short row heel, ribbing at ankle and cuff. I am always amazed to see how the color changes differ depending on stitch count, and stitch type.

That is it for this morning. Off to the dentist for the semi-annual checkup.

-Mavis

Pouty Mare Syndrome (PMS)

Yes, that's correct. Izzy has Pouty Mare Syndrome (PMS) and tends to be a very irritable girl when this happens. The first time we didn't expect it and she sent DS1 flying as she got him in the rear. Today she was PMSing again, but she didn't get the great response she wanted. However, it was interesting to watch DS1 bring Izzy across the field to get up to the house to be saddled. She tried to rear, buck, and bite. However, this time DS1 was prepared and keep his rear end pushed against her shoulder and keep a close hold of the lead rope to hold the head down so she couldn't bite or rear. Once saddled she was actually not to bad to ride. She had a couple of irritable moments, but over all she was good.

Tini seems to not have Pouty Mare Syndrome quite as badly. However, running water is a totally new experience for her and she is having to learn how to go over it. Getting her out of the pasture and up to the house requires crossing a stream (normally dry except when we've had rain). Today I bribed her with a little food in the food bucket I was carrying. While riding she wasn't bad through the boggy areas and even went over the first creek ok. But the second was one that she refused to go across for any reason. So after way too many tries we ultimately walked her up stream until we found a place she was willing to go across. Her bad luck really because it meant she had to cross 3 more streams her way versus one the way I originally intended. The only thing with her is she's now decided to jump over streams, which wasn't what I wanted as I was taking her back to the field. She jumped right at me after I crossed the creek and I had to jump quickly out of her way.

The joys of living on the homestead.

-Myrtle

From one of the deliquent blog owners

OK all, where are you. I'll update you all on my life if you'll do the same for me.


Two days ago I picked the final harvest of hot peppers from the garden. The bag contains 13 pounds of chilies, Serrano, and jalapeno peppers. I cut the tops off all them, ran them through the food processor, and then froze them in freezer bags. I still need to break up the freezer bag contents into smaller (more usable portions, since these are HOT!)

I also picked 9 pounds of the remaining sweet peppers that I need to slice along with some of the onions from earlier this year and freeze. That way we'll have the pre-cut makings for fajitas in the freezer for faster dinner preparations.

Now I just need to finishing picking all the tomatoes (this has been a very poor year for tomato harvest here.) Then I'll see about canning a couple more jars of pasta sauce. I've canned 15 jars quart of tomato soup (plus we've had tomato soup 4 times for dinner this fall) and 2 jars of pasta sauce. Last year at this time I had over 100 quarts of tomatoes canned. As you can see we just haven't had a great tomato year.

We picked the last of the beans. The boys are tired of eating them fresh, but I'm sure they'll enjoy them again in a few months. We froze 12 gallon bags of beans, so those actually did well growing in the garden from just a couple rows of beans.


Knitting wise I've finished several pairs of socks that I posted last time and a couple of scarves and a shawl. Now I'm working on a pair of socks that has become my nemesis. I've taken them out more times than I can count and finally redesigned the foot because I couldn't figure out the pattern. For knitting time, these socks have taken me more time than my very first pair of socks that I knit 8 years ago.


I also a finished a pair of hand warmers that DS4 was given on his birthday. He was ecstatic when he discovered I'd made him a pair and wore them for two days straight.


Now I'm working on a hat knit from my first ever spun yarn. The yarn is definitely over spun and varies more than I'd like for diameter of the yarn, but most of it would probably be between dk and worsted weight. It's taken me several tries as well to get it going, but now is close to being finished (although the picture I'm posting is of the beginnings of the project.) I ran out of hand spun yarn, so am finishing it with some left over yarn and doing a seed stitch with that to make it look more intentional than it did when I just switched yarn.

I hope you all are doing well. My goal is to post weekly for the the next couple months. I miss you all, but am glad that Mavis and I saw each other last weekend as our 16 year olds had their first official campus visit.

-Myrtle