homegrown and handmade

  Some of my handspun. 

Very high tech fiber-drying apparatuses, huh?

 

I fought with the seeming frivolity of posting today. When I get really busy and consumed with projects or duties or just daily life, I often find pausing to take photos or write blogs tedious. I'm like, "Let's just get on with it! No time to pause for photos!" 

And many times, that is true and quite agreeable. I certainly find it harder to stay focused when I'm stopping to find my camera and snap photos. 

But yesterday, while swirling around in my busyness, I remembered why it is that I pause to take photos. I love to look back through our Shutterfly albums or read back through this blog and see all that we did as a family. I love to see our adventures, our journeys, our projects, our trips, our endeavors. 

So I paused long enough to grab my camera several times yesterday and this morning. And, admittedly, I hesitated. But, come one, these are the moments. 

So what has kept me so exceptionally busy?

Well, remember that interior door that I decided to paint? The one I mentioned back in this post? Yes, well that turned into painting all of our trim white. Then we decided to paint the walls. But first the ceilings, because nothing has been painted for eight years and you could tell. Then my mother-in-law gave us a very nice monetary gift to be used for a "home improvement" project! So then we decided we were going to replace our forest green counter top (yay!) and paint the cabinets. 

You know how home improvement projects escalate.

But also on top of all of that, I've been trying to wash as much as my alpaca fiber as possible, which is an all-day process. It's not an all-day project in the sense that I'm constantly consumed and attentive to it, but, rather, one that is drawn out and requires attention frequently. 

I've also been spinning and knitting and we've been picking and freezing cherries like crazy. And now my herbs? Well, they need picked and dried so we can enjoy them throughout the next year when we no longer have the fresh ones. 

Do I sound like I'm complaining? Oh, I'm not. All of these things are quite up my alley of interests. (Well, except painting ceilings.) And it has felt quite good to be so involved in the things that get my heart ticking. 

By the way, I'm joining in on the Yarn Along over at Ginny's blog, Small Things. 

outside play

It has been so gray, dreary, cold, and rainy here for way too long. When I woke up yesterday morning, the sun was actually out and the sky was blue and I was so, so happy. I'm telling you all, I do not tolerate gray days very well. Which is completely ironic since I live in Western Pennsylvania, which happens to be one of the least sunny places  in the United States. Really now. Go figure. 

Anyway, the sun was out yesterday when I woke up, and I immediately felt so much more energized and ready to go about my day. I had herbs, veggies, and flowers that I wanted to plant, and I had a big pile of my handspun yarn that needed heat-treated and hung out to dry. 

I managed to get all of the yarn simmered and pulled out of the pot and hung outside to dry. I'm not kidding when I say that a mere ten minutes after I hung out the skeins, Lily yelled into the house that it was thundering. I thought she was mistaken, but then the wind started to blow and the rain started to pour from the sky. Thankfully, Lily's warning gave me time to grab the skeins and put them on the back porch. 

It was a short-lived rain. It probably only lasted less than an hour, and then the sun did come out again and remained out the rest of the day. I can live with that. And while it rained, we ran to our neighbor's nursery and picked up a few hanging baskets and flowers. We also stopped and picked up a couple of fleeces that a neighbor was giving to me since she was literally just going to throw them away. (Gasp.) I have no idea what type of sheep she has; she didn't know either. Her son had bought them for her at an auction. However, I'll clean the wool and play around with it and see what it's like.

It ended up being a pretty productive day. The yarn dried. I got all of the plants into the raised beds. I prettied up our landscaping with some flowers. And I enjoyed doing all of these things while replenishing my vitamin D levels.

april

April is promising to be a very busy month for our family. Brad and I were walking around our property yesterday morning, both feeling a bit overwhelmed with all that we have on our "plates" right now, and I just really felt the need to stop walking and just look around at our many, many blessings. I don't want to miss them all for the sake of busyness. These things that are going to keep us busy are not things we can help. Some of them were unforeseen. Some of them were commitments made long ago. But I do know that I am going to practice being very intentional in slowing my body and my mind down long enough each day to breathe in the blessings around me.

I finished spinning another skein of yarn. This one is my largest yet; approximately 355 yards. I love the different colors and how they blended when I was plying. The plying part was exciting because I wasn't sure which colors would end up with which, so it was a surprise as it flew onto the bobbin.

The kids and I took a walk into the woods two days ago. I was hoping to find a bit more green, but the forest floor was still mostly brown with the leftovers from fall. There were a few patches of green here and there and some brush that was greening.

There is an old apple orchard in the middle of the woods behind our home. It is one of the strangest things to me, to see an old orchard in the middle of a forest. The trees hardly yield fruit because its been neglected for so many years, but it's a refreshing place to visit and it just looks so strange in the middle of all of the tall oaks, maples, and pines. The area also stays surprisingly free of brush and undergrowth, which seems strange to me, and is another reason I really like it. I need to take my knitting back there this summer and enjoy some outdoor knitting.

I recently ordered three new knitting books. I had already looked through The Gentle Art of Knitting because I had previously checked it out of the library. I enjoyed it and liked enough of the patterns to go ahead and order a copy to keep. I also picked up two other books, Home and Away and Swoon Maine. I've had both of those in my Amazon wishlist for awhile, and I snatched them up when I had enough Amazon cash to do so. Both of them have some really amazing patterns that I will be making for sure. I am loving the photography in both, particularly in Swoon Maine. I do love Maine so I love having the scenery of that beautiful state in a wonderful knitting book. Two of my favorite things in one.