January Thaw

The girls getting some exercise in

Our lovely 16 inches of snow has been reduced to about 4 inches, where it still exists.  There is so much bare ground showing that the chickens are happily running all over.  They were not impressed with the snow.  In fact, they would come to the door of the coop, stick their heads out, see that the ground was white, and retreat.   You can imagine how they are in favor of this January thaw!  Lots of places where the ground is Not White.  I am sure it feels good to them to run around and get some exercise.  Wonder if they were worried about getting flabby when they were "cooped up".   Hens must be talking about something with all that low murmuring they do.

Cooking and visiting

As the snow was trying to disappear this weekend we had a chance to do our annual Winter Picnic.  It was so much nicer to do in the snow than it was last year on bare ground.  Although the snow was awfully wet, which made the sledding a little iffy.  The day was very foggy and the temperature was in the high 30's and that made the picnic part nice.

Skip-it and Dodge-it #2

I finally got pictures of the scarves I have made.  Well, not all of them, but two for the shop.  It is very hard to get the colors to be true on the monitor.  Or maybe I just am a poor photographer.  Probably the last as I get tired of fooling around with all the props, lights, etc pretty easily.  Maybe I can find someone who would do it for me!  At a reasonable cost.  Or maybe a trade.  At any rate, it was good to get two more things into the shop to replace things that had sold.  I then tried to put the "mini etsy" widget onto this blog site, but for some reason I just can not do it.  The site keeps having an "error".  Oh well, eventually maybe I will get it to work.   I think it will be a nice addition.

Wool and silk from commercial yarn

The maroon, or crimson scarf is the first thing I have offered in the shop which is Not my handspun yarn.  I had this lovely wool and silk blended yarn in these great colors that I wanted to do something special with.  The scarf was a great weave--I did a variation on twill for the threading and I loved the result.  It is a weft faced project and I thought that is what I wanted.  Now I wonder if maybe a better balanced weaving, not so weft heavy, would have made it more of a plaid pattern.  However, I think it looks very manly and hope that some gentleman gets to wear it someday.  And the drape is really lovely.

Next I am determined to finish spinning some alpaca that I am going to ply with some wool to over dye in green.  The two fibers are grey, so I am hoping for a dark heathery green.  This is for a shawl project that I hope to do for a woman who has been longing for a green shawl for ages.  Color, being a very personal thing, is tricky to do for someone else.  That is why when I show her the yarn I will have three shades of green for her to choose from.  The ones she rejects are going to be woven into a stunning shawl.  You just wait and see!

Winter Wonderland

Lovely snowfall

Pretty tree

We are experiencing our first winter storm of the year.  It has been snowing steadily since 10:30 last night.  This is fine with me as I am ready to have a quiet day at home, slowly taking care of all the lovely remains of Christmas. Not for me is the custom of stripping the tree bare and heaving it out the door on the 26th.  Nor have I frozen all the goodies so that I don't eat them all at once.  Instead, I have gathered up all the burnable materials and taken them out to the barn to await my New Year's Eve bonfire.
Drank more coffee.  Ate some gingerbread warm with butter.  And a couple of cookies. Put all the Christmas lights on.  Then sat down here to write a bit.
As an end of the year musing I thought I would let you know "the rest of the story" as Paul Harvey used to say.  When I left you last, I was looking forward to giving some spinning lessons to a woman.  I did just that, as best I could, with the result of her becoming enthusiastic enough to go in search of a wheel to practice on.  After the New Year I hope to get together with her again.
In August I had mentioned that I thought the hen we call "Baby" was becoming an egg eater.  Well,  after being very vigilant with collecting eggs and getting her to stay outdoors as much as possible, the egg eating pretty much stopped, so we kept her.  She is still the odd chick out.  There appears to be something wrong with her that the other hens know about (and I do not) as they shun her all the time.  Since early summer she has had a rock hard abdomen which is not the norm.  And as far as I know, she has never laid an egg, although I must admit to not always knowing which egg comes from which hen. At any rate, her unusual condition doesn't stop her from doing all the normal hen things, so I just keep an eye on her and life goes on.

Baby

I sold my slouch hat at one of the craft fairs we did this fall.  The second skip-it and dodge-it scarf was woven,  although I never took any photos of it.   We had pretty good craft fair experiences.  I spun and knit and wove things for Christmas, but didn't take any pictures of those items, either!  So now it is on to finishing things and starting things.  I am determined to finish the sweater I started last year, for one.

Start of sweater Feb. 2012

We will see if I continue this blog in 2013.  I began when it was suggested that having a blog is a good marketing ploy if you are an Etsy seller.  However, only one of my Etsy sales could be linked to this!  So I am not sold on that concept.   The thing is, it gets habit forming.  Well, time will tell.  Meanwhile may you all have a Happy, Healthy and Blessed New Year.