Here come the girls

The girls arrive tomorrow.  The coop is almost ready.  Keith and I were on a roll a couple of weeks ago. We had our plan, materials list and tons of can-do.  After lots of reading, research on the web and discussions with everyone who had an opinion, we started. 

The first trip to the lumber yard went very smoothly, but notice I said "first."  We got a good start by finishing the floor that first day of building.  I was feeling very confident as a foreman.  The next day went just as well.  The front wall went up and the front wall was framed in with a door and window.  I actually got the math right!

Then we realized that the material list did not account for framing in more than a door, so back to the lumber yard.  Then I cut a board wrong, so back to the lumber yard again.  But it all came out fine, until I found out I needed advanced trigonometry to figure out the angles of the side walls.  That one "whoopsie"  threw it all out of square.  The walls were up, but none of the rafters fit right!  Ugh! 

Thanks to my brother, Joe, who came to our rescue, we actually got a roof on.  I didn't even want to look at another nail.   He and Keith got the roof on, felted and the shingles started just as a huge storm hit.  Keith and I holed up in the chicken house for half an hour while the worst of the storm came through.  Not a drip of water! 

So, now we have it moved into place and only a few finishing touches until we are ready for the girls to move in!  It isn't pretty yet, but chickens don't care if the siding is color coordinated.  I do, so it will be cute by the time it is finished.  We have a recycled door from an old farmhouse and great arched windows.  I think we will do board and batten siding.  American Gothic meets Foghorn Leghorn!

And I have to say that even with the little mistakes, I am proud of us.  Without any building experience, I think we did pretty good for our first try, and thanks to my brother's tips and tricks, the next project will go much smoother.

Tonight I dream of fresh eggs, little "ladies" gossiping under the apple tree, maybe some meat chickens next spring, and being that much closer to a self-sufficient life.

SALE!!!!!

SALE! CHRISTMAS IN JULY!

From now until the end of the month get up to 15% off any item. I will give 5% off to every Facebook follower, 5% off to every blog follower, and 5% for refering one friend who becomes a follower on either Facebook or my blog. That equals up to 15% off any purchase all month long!

Plan ahead for Christmas giving, or give yourself something special.

Also, I am adding a line of hair accesories.  I have three posted already and several more on the way.  They would make great stocking stuffers.

summer continues

We turned over a new, exanded garden plot behind the tractor barn this spring.  Keith had fun trying to plow for the first time on the tractor that my parents gave us for a wedding present.  The first attempt was less than perfect, but the tiller covered up the little mess!

Now the garden is in,  and we are in a constant battle with weeds.  The front garden is 30 X 85 and the back garden is 30X 25, so we have a lot of ground to cover.  I let the weeds get ahead of me. Now I am paying for it. 

Also, I gave up on weeding the carrots because they came up so spotty I couldn't justify all the time in weeding them for such a bad showing.  Then on Saturday I went out there to till up the whole mess and found all kinds of carrots up in amongst the weeds!  Dumb carrots!  Now I have to clean them out.

We are very excited about getting chickens in the next month.  Keith's grandmother had chickens when she was a girl.  So when we talked about getting chickens, she jumped right in and offered to pay for us to build the coop and get a small flock started.  We have a good start on materials for the coop from sifting through the barns and sheds.  We found some great old windows with character and wood we can plane down for siding.  We went to the Habitat for Humanity resale store and found some new shingles and a beautiful door.  We will buy new for the foundation, frame and flooring.  

The chickens are ordered and will be picked up from a farm in Ionia.  Our girls, Silver Laced Wyndottes, will be ready to lay around the last of August.  I did quite a bit of reading before deciding on Wyndottes. Wyndottes are very hardy in our climate.  They are layed back and easy to handle and more importantly, they are a great dual purpose bird.  We can get good egg production, but they also make yummy meat birds, so the cockrel will keep our little flock growing so we can have meat too.

I'll be posting pictures as we start building.  We are not carpenters, but we will have some help from friends and family that have a little more experience.  I bough a book, the librarian thing to do, but the hands-on help will make things go smoother and the end result much better.

We finished planting the garden last weekend, well that is not exactly true. The first rotation of crops is in, but we are looking forward to a second planting of beans and putting in a few crops like chard and bokchoi for fall. But it isn't too early for me to begin dreaming of the canner jiggling away on the stove and the musical ping of jars sealing.

This last week I actually got a head start on canning. Seeing strawberries in my future, I froze 9 quarts of rhubarb in preparation for jars and jars of strawberry/rhubarb jam. Last fall my father insisted on juicing gallons of grape juice so I could make him grape jelly, 27 pints of grape jelly to be exact. Now he refuses to eat grape jelly and only wants strawberry jam....go figure!

We are completely out of canned tomatoes. 24 tomato plants will get us caught up, but we have salsa coming out our ears from last year! I think that has something to do with my husband getting on a habenero kick and making the salsa so hot he is the only one who can eat it! This year I will have to be vigilant in guarding the salsa while making a MILDER recipe.

Then there are the green beans, the peas, the cabbage to be made into kraut....on the endless, wonderful list. Starting a root cellar this fall too.

So while the rain comes down today, and I have to stay inside, I can dream of rows and rows of jars to be filled by the growing veggies come harvest.

Shibori experiment

I've been experimenting with shibori knitting. I did a pillow top first, and I loved the results. I am still working on beading the pillow and choosing a backing.

The scarf turned out really fun. At first I wasn't sure if I liked the results, but once I added the holes...fabulous! I tied in buttons from my vintage button box to create the bobbles. I was so excited to see how it turned out I sat in front of the washing machine for 20 minutes waiting for the end. Then I used a hair dryer to speed up the drying. I could hardly wait to pull out the buttons and see the final results. I'm very pleased with the end product. I think I will be doing more shibori. I have ideas for several other projects.

reuse and recycle

A couple of months ago I made a total failure of a bag. The colors didn't work. The design distorted in the washing machine. The yarns did not felt evenly. Everything went wrong. But never throwing anything out, I shuffled it around while I tried to come up with some way to salvage this disaster. Then, an epiphany on Wednesday! (que angelic choir)

On Monday I made a little turquoise bag to go with some lining I had bought in a random moment at the fabric store. I happened to set this new bag down on top of the disaster, and there was a Bob Ross moment ~ "In my world, there are no mistakes, just happy accidents". I cut up the disaster purse to make applique flowers, and suddenly a plain, little purse with okay lining, made perfect sense design-wise. Woo Hoo! And...I got to use some of the vintage buttons I dug out last week!

The good purse mojo continued this morning when my first box of wholesale yarn arrived. So, I off to grab my needles and go crazy.

Button Box

Glad to say my shoulder is back to normal, and I am knitting again! My recovery prompted a visit to my mother's button boxes for some inspiration in finishing the little, cream purse that has been sitting dejectedly on the dining room table for a month.

My mom and I spent an enjoyable couple of days sifting through all of the buttons. We found some really interesting vintage finds that may be inspiring some new designs in the near future. I am please with the little collage we came up with after several failed attempts at embellishing this latest bag.

The name is not really what I was going for, but it works. I wanted to name it "Lunch at Woolworths", but everyone said that was too obscure. I guess the bright red buttons reminded me of the red of the Woolworths decore. But "Dancing Barefoot" was a pretty good compromise. The buttons reminded me of Mom making me a new dress when I was little and the excitment of getting to model it for Dad before church on a Sunday morning.

Now I am back to knitting. Working on something new ~ a neck warmer made from some of my handspun yarn. I know it isn't the time of year to be thinking of winterwear, but the mood struck me....