Catching up

Wow, it's been a while.  Life sometimes gets in the way and priorities change.  So, here is an update:

I am still living at the same place.  After 5 years of trying to garden in pottery shards I have decided to truck in dirt.  This spring my garden will have 46 cubic yards of good soil made into permanent beds.  I am shooting for a garden that is 55x55 and using this book to help me get more organized.  My issues with consistence are getting much better, I have seen great improvement over the last two years.  Instead of trying to do it all, I do what I can and my motto is "Do what you don't want to do, then you can do what you want."  My kitchen is cleaner because of it!

A note about the book I am using; it is written by two people who are in a zone 6 / 5 area so if you live in Florida, it is probably not the right book for you.  I live in a zone 4 area, so I have to modify it a bit which is not a problem, but if I lived in a place with 200 or more frost free days I would go nuts trying to make this book work for me.  That said, I really like it.

Today I finished sharpening, cleaning, and oiling my garden tools.  It is too cold and windy to inspect the orchard so I will do that tomorrow.  Yesterday I ordered all of my seeds from Johnny's and I plan on getting more plants when planting time comes.  Here is my garden plan that I tweaked from another book.

sorry it is such a bad photo, I will work on it.
My to youngest are also doing a bag garden from the book so I gave one the 1 year plan and the other the second year addition.  This is a great idea for kids who do not want to spend too much time working on a garden because there is very little weeding and prep involved.

I really like this book and it is fun to use.  I purchased both of them from Amazon after checking them out at the library.

Missoni Comes to Target!

Rosebud thinks this is soooo cool

New Babies, the human kind

We have a new addition to our family, a little girl.  Since Dear let me go wild in the closing yarn store, I had to look for something to make for the "new girl."  My mother-in-law wanted me to make the same dress I made for another baby, but I wasn't really feeling it, I knit it twice before.  So, I found a cute little hoodie called Roo by Kate Gilbert. 
I decided to knit this in the round instead of pieces because I hate piecing knit projects.  Here is the progress so far.

This sweater is made from Debbie Bliss Rialto.  Rialto is a DK weight, 100% extrafine superwash merino wool.  The yarn is very "squooshy" and feels nice on my hands.  The stitch defenition is pretty good too.  I chose this yarn because it is wool, so it will be warm, and because it is washable.  I have some of this for sale in my etsy shop.  It retails for almost $9, I am selling it for $8 and free shipping.  I have a few more colors, but I am only adding new ones as the other sell.  If you are looking for a specific one, convo me at etsy and I will see if I have it for you.

Socks? Never Say Never

I never thought I would ever knit a pair of socks.  I mean, what a waste?  I can buy them cheap and they get holes in them and worn out really fast.  Right?  Well, with the closing of my favorite yarn shop, I bought some pretty sock yarn (Alpaca Sox by Classic Elite).  Then I searched for a free sock pattern on Ravelry and found the Artichoke socks by Megan Humphrey.  I went back and forth between the socks and Rosebud's Zauberball dress

 and finally finished them in 2 weeks. 

These are the softest, warmest socks I have ever worn.  My toes are always cold, even in the summer, but yesterday, wearing these socks, my feet and toes felt as warm as they do burried in warm sand at the beach.  Now, I am not the most consistant person in the world, probably the least, so the thought of handwashing these socks does not really bother me now, but a few weeks from now??? I don't know.  Anyways, I loved them so much that I went back and bought the rest of the Alpaca Sox yarn and purchased a book by Cookie A. .  She is famous for her sock designs, in the knitting world, and I have already begun the first pattern in the book.   

The kids took pictures

Rosebud took a picture of my "forget me nots."

and one of my prickly bushes that have great color and a name that slips my mind at the moment

little man captured the black locust trees

and a magnolia that came from a rare tree my mother bougt me years ago, it's name is "Pinky".

Rosebud got the best picture of Edith.

The little man got a great picture of the Oak tree in the front yard.

and I wish I had a better zoom on my camera so I could do our pelicans justice.

8 Year Old Son's 1st Crochet Project

My son has been working on a pink scarf for his cousin, he decided to add long strips as a neat design feature. I almost died laughing when I saw it. It is a thong! I told him we can not give it to his cousin, but I will save it for his future bride’s wedding shower.

I want one of these

We plan on getting this in April. My old piano is in very bad shape and not really fixable because it has plastic pieces inside that have degraded. I have not seriously played in over 10 years. Everytime I sat down to play I had little fingers messing with the keyboard. Now my kids are old enough and I should be able to play some. My middle child wants to learn as well.

On the farm

My camera did something weird to this photo, but I kind of like it.

I watched a documentary on Messner and I think Rosebud is practicing for Everest.
Here is our new mama for the year, 64. She is a great suffolk (with a little bit of hampshire) mom. She delivered 3 full breach lambs at about midnight on Friday. We stayed with her from 10-3. It was a long night but we wanted to make sure it all went the way it was supposed to. She had one ram lamb and two ewe lambs and they are all hopping around.
The heat lamp is nice and warm, so sometimes the chickens steal the lambs' spot for themselves. This time the lamb was able to sneak under it.

Here one is, hiding under mom.

A few weeks before 64 lambed we vaccinated her for entertoxemia and tetanus. We do that close to lambing so the lambs get the benefits of the vaccine through the ewe's milk. Later we will give them their own dose to strengthen their immunity. We will band their tails tomorrow. We already cut their umbilical cords shorter and iodined them. It is important to disinfect the navel because illness and disease is easily passed through the navel. Many people iodine the navel twice.

We will try a partial castration on the ram at 4 weeks. We usually just band the scrotum and it falls off, but this time we are going to push the testicles up into the lamb's body and band below that, right at the body line. The body heat kills the sperm and sterilizes the ram, but because he still has his testicles, his body still produces male hormones that help with the growth of lean muscle tissue. This kind of banding needs to be done at about 1 month of age.

Just some of the boys

This is Pee-Wee
My 7 year old boy neamed these two. The one on the left got a bottle for a little bit and is friendly so Friendly is his name. The one on the right (not the brother of the left) is Cutie-Pie. After hearing the names, my husband turned to the boy and said, "Are you a boy?" He giggled and said, "Yah!" Dear appreciates the gentleness of the boy, he was just teasing him.

Way up high in the sky beds

The kids needed more space in their room, so the "twins" (not really) got matching loft beds from IKEA. They love them.

We also took all of their toys out of their room and went through their clothes. We told them that they will get a little bit of their toys back at a time so they learn how to organize them and keep their room clean. So far, without toys, the room is staying pretty clean. Next week they will get to take one box of toys back. They have bins to help them organize. I am also making them get rid of at least 10% of the toys in each box. We will see......

New glasses

Wow she is pretty!

Since getting her new glasses with prisms she has spent a lot more time reading. Hannah has a problem with the function of her eyes. She does not have lazy eyes, but she has to use eye muscles purposfully when us "normal" people have eyes that function with not a lot of thought. We say, "ok, eyes, time to read." and our eyes automatically work together to grab the letters. Hannah's do not. She has to use her eye muscles to position her eyes in the right place so the letters are alligned properly. I never would have known she was having this problem if I did not take her to the eye doctor. Thankfully I did. She looks adorable, so grown up. She likes the transitions too. The frames are made by Candies.

School begins!

After a long summer of hard work, Amanda, our 8 year old developed a hard body.

We had our first official day of school. The kids will be updating their blogs regularly now. Check out what they are learning. Aaron is in first grade history and science, Amanda is in second grade history and science and Hannah is finishing up forth grade history and science.