I Just Can't Help It! Hmmmm!

I had to go to the wool shop today. This is not a safe thing to do for me. I actually went because the wool store that I frequent is also a beading store and I needed supplies to make stitch markers. I am getting a parcel ready for a friend in Newfoundland. I thought I would include some nifty stitch markers made with semi prescious beads. Problem is that when I went in to the store the balls of yarn nicely displayed at the back of the store called to me and so I couldn't help but go have a look. Hmmmm!

I knew that time was of the essence as Hubby and the girls were sitting in the truck waiting outside the store in the vehicle. I had told them that I would only be a few minutes and I would be right back. Hmmmm!

No one was looking so I grabbed two balls of sock yarn that is self-striping and took it to the cash register along with my beading needs and paid for it without a second glance. I snuck into the truck with my purchases camoflauged beneath my arm so that Hubby would not ask what was in the bag so bulky besides beading supplies. Hmmmm!

I haven't looked into the bag yet because someone might ask unnecessary questions. Problem is that I really am not sure what I bought. I grabbed it so quickly that I didn't really look. I know it was among the sock yarn. I know it was pastel. I know it had the word 'wool' on it, other than that I really don't know what I bought. Hmmmm!

I know that I had better not look because I have a few more rows on another project (next post or the one after I will show you). If I look now I may get distracted from the other project that I have been trying to finish for ages..... I'll want to start my new socks. I know that the wool I purchased will be good with the Leyburn sock pattern (check out Yarn Harlot's blog, Jan 13, 2009 post). Hmmmm!

Ok..... I just can't wait to look.......

75% superwash
25% polyamid (what's that?)
blue, yellow, orange,
green, purple, (interesting)
I hope this works! Hmmmm!

Ok, forget that other project for now. Hmmmm!

True confessions of a compulsive sock knitter.... Hmmmm!

The Llama Came Back The Very Next Day... or Four Months Later

Honeydew is our Llama. When I started writing this blog I did not mention that we had a llama because at that time we didn't..... well sort of. Here is the tale of Honeydew.

When I agreed to buy sheep from my friend who was going out of the business as it were, I also agreed to take in a llama who was known to be 'high spirited'. This did not concern me as I was an idiot and had no clue what a llama can do. Llamas are highly intelligent animals and they are capable of feats of amazing..... well they can clear a fence that is 6 or 7 feet high with out a backward glance. They are large weighing up to 350 - 500 lbs in a grown animal. They have eyes as big as saucers and can see things miles off. They learn very quickly..... and most important they don't trust humans..... at least Honeydew doesn't.

Honeydew likes our sheep and watches over them as if they were her friends, which, I suppose in some sense, is true. Along about September, when we were weaning our lambs, Jelly my Romney ewe got anxious about her lamb who was in another paddock and so she pushed her way through the fence. The llama, who was in the pen with the mother sheep, saw her chance and made a break for it. She meandered out to the road in front of our house and proceeded to nibble the green grass along the edges of said road. The sheep thought this was great and so the whole flock proceeded to follow her.

Meanwhile I was in the house unaware of what was happening. I happened to glance out of the window and noticed that the alpacas in their pen were watching with great interest as my flock of sheep and the llama made a break for it down the road.

Needless to say my heart began to pound as panic set in. I was home alone with no one to help me get my animals back. I quickly ran to the shed and grabbed a bucket of oats and proceeded to run to the end of my driveway in an effort to 'head off' the animals from wandering further down the road.

Getting the attention of sheep is not the easiest when all you have is a bucket of oats and they are head-down in foot long green grass. I knew my best bet was to get Jelly's attention since she can't turn up oats at all, and also the others follow her as she is kind of their leader..... it worked. The sheep followed me quite placidly back to the fold where they proceeded to munch oats as I fixed up the busted up gate. Meanwhile Honeydew took one look at the bucket of oats and decided the green grass was her best bet. For the rest of the afternoon I spent my time trying to coax her to come with me because I had oats and she didn't.

We live on a road that has a turn-around at the end of it. There is a lovely little community forest at the end of that road with walking/skiing trails. There is approximately 200 acres of forest and bordering the forest on two sides is some lovely fenced pasture. I knew that if Honeydew found the trail head that comes out at the end of our road that would be the end of her. She did.

After Hubby and the Daughters spent all afternoon, after they returned from school, trying to chase Honeydew back into the paddock and scaring the freaking wits out of her, she finally bolted off down the nearest trail. I put out a PSA (community service announcement) to let people know she was on the loose. I spent the next few days trying to locate her which I eventually did. She spent the majority of the fall in a pasture of one of our neighbours where she fed voraciously on grass and alfalfa. She had no need to return and every time I tried to coax her to take oats she completely ignored me. Hubby and I even spent an afternoon chasing her back and forth the pasture just about bursting our lungs in the process. Trying to outrun a llama is a completely pointless activity, we discovered. They can run very fast.

She continued to thwart our every effort at recapture. Then finally when the snow came, she decided to move on. We had reports of sightings in various fields over the next few weeks and meanwhile we were getting closer to Christmas. Then finally just before Christmas break the llama was caught by one of Hubby's students..... he wanted to keep her. Considering that we were seriously thinking of turning her into jerky, we felt that if he wanted her and his parents were ok with it, that we were too.

I finally put the llama situation to rest and forgot about her. Then the fateful day came when we got a call from the family who had "wanted" her, to tell us that they had set her free and she was not welcome at their place as she scared their horses. Hm!

Now why they couldn't keep her so that we could come pick her up I don't know. Setting her free was the worst case scenario that I could think of. We were back to square one.

Then, praises be, we got a call from the local rodeo arena that she was getting into hay at their facility and could we please come and do something about it. Hubby and I went to have a look as it was cold..... really cold and snowing to beat the bands. She was hungry and though Hubby couldn't do much with his back in a shambles I proceeded to try my hand at capture. I was able to lead her into a small paddock and that is where she stayed for the rest of the week while Hubby took priority in my mind with his back ailment. Then Friday past I was able to line up some friends with a trailer and some other friends who had experience with llamas and we managed to catch her and bring her home.

It was four months pretty much to the day that the llama was on the loose. She is home now and acts as if it were all our fault that she was able to lose as much weight as she did. She is quite content to be back with her friends. You have no idea how relieved I am to have her home and not causing problems among the members of the community...... However, Hubby is ticked. He says that if she gets out again then the only thing following her will be a bullet! I'm not quite sure how I feel. I certainly look at her with a different feeling than I used to have. I don't think she is cool anymore. I think she is a big pain in the.... well you know. But still, when she looks at me with those big brown eyes..... I kind of feel that she is sorry she made so much trouble for us as she did, that she is glad to be home, that she likes me... a little.

By the way, the one thing about llamas that I didn't tell you is that they are the most coniving stinkers you will ever come across. How dare she make me like her again.....

Unlikely Love Affair

I have been knitting for thirty-five years now and I could never understand why anyone would want to spend their time knitting sox. Why knit something that you can go to the store and buy so cheaply? Recently Daughter #1 and Daughter #2 have grown to the point where their feet are the same size as mine. Now that their feet are as large as mine I cannot keep sox in my drawer.

I have never been hard on footware and so a pair of shoes or even a pair of sox would last forever. I have been known to wear sox for years before they wear out. But since the Daughters have caught up with me in foot size they have begun to wear out their sox like normal people and so I find myself in the distressful situation where my sock drawer gets raided regularly. Theirs have holes in them and so "Mom always has sox, lets go get hers," seems to be the new norm.

Finding myself without sox on a regular basis has created a necessity to knit sox that are different from store bought ones so that I know when the Daughters are sneaking off with mine. I bought the wool, I bought the needles and started to check out patterns. I believe I've told you about N who brought her sox that she was knitting to Knit Night. Her plum lovelies actually started me looking for sock patterns. Then locking my keys and knitting in my truck on a weekend away necessitated that I purchase a new project to knit. What better time to take up the knitting of sox.

I have enjoyed the knitting of my first pair of sox far more than I ever expected, and turning a heal was far easier than I ever expected too. I have enjoyed a stimulating discussion regarding sock knitting on the popular spinning group Canspin. I've downloaded more sock patterns than I will ever knit. As a result, I find I have become caught in some sock vortex and so has begun a love affair with the lowly sock. I look forward to picking up my socks each day and knitting a few more rows. I look on them on the table by my chair with pride. I pick them up regularly and look over the portion I have finished and smile a gratified smile of pride and joy. If this is not a love affair with sox I don't know what is.

I keep wondering if it is the real thing and that my love affair will bloom into a lifetime love or whether the initial joy will burn away and I will discover the flaws of sock knitting thereby ending a beautiful love affair.

In the meantime here is my first pair.....

Crashed and Burnt

I last wrote on Wednesday before the fall..... Hubby was pretty good at that time and was iimpressive about going to bed. I was quite pleased when he managed to get himself there on his own. I made my way to bed shortly after for a long winter's nap. Ah but that was not to be. At three in the morning Hubby tried to roll over and couldn't. He had overdone it during the day and his back went into severe spasms and there was nothing I could do to help him. I rubbed his back..... I got pillows for him.... I tried to give him pain killers but nothing worked. And so at 4:15 a.m. he said I should call the ambulance. This scared me.... when Hubby says get the ambulance I know it is bad. The one and only time before this occasion that I was allowed to call for help, he had acute appendicitis.

Twenty minutes later, I was showing the ambulance attendants to the bed where Hubby was groaning in agony. I had managed to get him from near nakedness to decency in PJ bottoms but it almost killed him. At 5:30 a.m. in the morning with the two Daughters crying in fear, the ambulance left for the nearest hospital an hour and a half drive away. I reassured the girls that everything was going to be alright and then proceeded to doubt myself the truth of these words. There was nothing we could do till he was assessed in several hour's time and then a decision would have to be made as to whether I would be driving to the small city where they took Hubby. We went back to bed having only slept a few hours before our rest had been greatly interupted. Facing a drive on three hours of sleep is not my idea of fun and to my surprise I did sleep... some.....

At 8:30 a.m. I called the hospital only to be told that Hubby was being released after having received medication in the form of pain killers, muscle relaxants and anti-inflammatories. With the Daughters not getting a lot of sleep, I decided they could stay home from school and so together we drove to the hospital to pick up Hubby.

He is home and hopefully staying that way. He sleeps a lot, having tons of medication in him. He seems to be getting around ok but there is still a nagging pain in one hip. Hopefully a week of bedrest and the pain killers will get him on his feet again, enough to get him back to work.

It has been a worry and not to mention a great endurance for all of us as well. The freezing cold temperatures have not let up and I am frankly tired of freezing my buns off. I have hauled water, fed animals, hauled more water, fed more animals all with great difficulty and planning in order to make it all work. I have not got the physical strength that Hubby had and so I have had to figure out ways of doing things that he would do without a thought. I can not lift and carry the way he can and so I am compensating. So far I have been successful in all that I have done. I only haul water in the middle of the day when it is warmest that way the hose on the tank doesn't freeze. A frozen hose would be a major catastrophe let me tell you. It would involve lifting a 200lb tank out of the back of the truck which I am pretty incapable of doing. Feeding animals is an ongoing battle. To fork hay over fenses is never easy.

My greatest success to this point though was bringing home our lost llama. Honeydew the llama got out of our paddock in September and has been, dispite our best efforts, avoiding capture for nearly 4 months. On Friday I was able to bring her home. That's a story onto itself, which I will probably write about in a day or two.

Friends have been so helpful and we appreciate all that everyone has done to help us. It is what makes living in a small town so wonderful..... people help others when they are in a pinch. We have had our share of help. We have our share of friends.

Hubby is getting frustrated with staying in bed but stay there he will until I allow him to go see the doctor in a week's time. If the doctor says he can go back to school then he can go but not before. Until then I will keep on doing what I do best and that is managing, and he will just have to suck it up Buttercup....

Upright Again

Hubby is on his feet. This is good. He is upright like a vaccuum cleaner again. He actually crawled downstairs so that he could have a change of atmosphere. But since then he has actually made it across the living room on his feet. Like I said, this is good. Hubby is the kind of person who finds sitting indoors for more than a day is a horror. He likes to get out doors and shovel snow. He likes to do things and doing them out doors is all the better. Laying in bed for two days is just about killing him. I know because he is figeting and he read Pride and Prejudice. This is a major indicator that he is bored.

I'm don't care. When you watch your husband slither across the floor because he can't stand up no matter how many jokes he cracks, it is a scarey thing. I don't care if it takes two or three or four weeks just as long as he is able to function again. Crawling is scarey slithering is scarier. Upright is good! Now all we have to do is get him past turtle speed. Bed rest is good, obviously I'm going to have to get him some books. Oh well, knit night is tomorrow night... maybe I can get him some books then..... it is held in the reading room of the library.

By the way Dad has his chair. Electric wiz... way cool as Daughter #2 said.

2009 Starts With Bang... I'm Dead

So remember the post yesterday of the glum faced Husband standing upright.... you know like a vacuum cleaner? If you can't remember have a quick look. Ok. So you've had a look and now you remember. Well here he is today. He can't stand up. Not only can he not stand up he cannot walk. He is now an invalid.

For the last two weeks Hubby has been fighting a problem with his back. He has a slipped disc and is supposed to have an appointment with a surgeon in April. This was fine until while horking hay on the 27th he hurt his back and decided that taking it easy might be the ticket. His back started to improve over the next few days and then he sneezed on New years Eve Day and really did it in. But he was still mobile. Last night his aching back died... and I mean died. He went upstairs and lay down before supper and when he got up to go to the bathroom his hips would not support him and he couldn't walk. Problem is he would not listen to his body and so proceeded to get half way down the stairs before his back totally died. I managed to get him to the bathroom with the help of my great grandfathers cane but that is where the buck stopped. He colapsed on the floor, flat on his stomach with his pants still around his knees. This was terrible as the Daughters would need therapy if they caught sight of his nether regions. I managed to get his pants and gaunchies off and his PJ bottoms on him with much laughter and groans of pain. Then with comments of how he was feeling very snake like today he slithered on his belly as far as the computer chair. Tootsie our small Shi-Tzu decided that this was some kind of game and proceeded to lick Hubby's face thoroughly. When he got to the computer chair he managed to get to his hands and knees. Then very carefully and very slowly he crawled to the bedroom. He has been there ever since.

Robaxacet is our friend and we are happy to have it come and stay with us for the next while. But Robaxacet can only help Hubby. I am now the sole farmer in the house. This is not necessarily a good thing since only five years ago I had surgery for a slipped disc myself. I know my limitations. Horking hay day after day in - 40 temps is not conducive to good health in my back either. Meanwhile Honeydew the runnawy llama is now caught but at the rodeo grounds where she is not welcome to stay. I have to get her home and I can't back a trailer for love or money. How this is going to happen I haven't quite gotten my mind around yet.

Then there is Dad, my Dad, who is requiring support too. Hubby and I bought him an electric recliner with a lift to help support him with his back and heart problems. The chair arrived at the local Sears outlet yesterday and so I have to figure out how to get that to their home without doing myself in. This should be interesting..... Stay tuned.....

Glum Faces

I might hate Christmas but I love Christmas break. With Hubby a teacher and the Daughters still in school the school year dictates how we live. Today is the first day of school after a two week Christmas vacation and no one is happy.
The morning started with the cat biting me when he decided to wake the girls up early. Something that is certainly not welcome. Then waking the girls at 7 a.m. was not pleasant. Daughter #2 got saucy with her Dad and had to be reprimanded and I had to make lunches. This is never a good thing. I hate making lunches.

With the school dictating our year, we find that celebrating New Year's on Jan 1st with the rest of the world does not fire us up. We are more likely to have a celebration at the end of June than we are at the end of January. Our year begins in September, the Tuesday after Labour Day weekend. Our most wonderful vacation is summer vacation when we can give up the misery of waking early and making lunches and can fully particpate in life. We also enjoy spring break. Christmas is just a much needed rest after a fall of exhausting work, colds and stomach ailments, report cards, homework, and those dreaded lunches.... still it is a break and I for one am not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

So to all the teachers out there wo are heading back to school and to the kids who are their children and especially to the Mom's of those kids, the wives of those husbands..... we salute you! Just remember there are only 112 days of school left. Yeah!