Silent Sentinels

There must be a full moon somewhere close by. I'm awake.... and nobody else is. Like what's that all about? As I was coming downstairs I happened to look out the window. It's been snowing a lot in the last couple of days and the trees are loaded with snow. Right now the street light, that lights the road out in front of our house, is shining on the trees and it really does look like a scene from a Christmas card. All the trees are white. I thought I would call this blog post Silent Sentinels because that is what the trees look like out there.

There have been some exciting developments. First, we are getting new furniture! Hubby and I sat down last night and had a look at our house and decided that it was time to buy a sofa! I was given a second hand couch last year and you can see the results of the reupholstery job I did here and here and here, but when Mudder and Fadder's couch died on them, just before Christmas, I gave them my new old couch on permanent loan. Since that time we haven't really had the need for a sofa since it was only a few months later that Hubby and I started the "Big R" and the house became a complete disaster zone. But things are starting to look better and so it is time to think about Christmas decorating... which means we need a couch. I went online to our handy dandy website for our local furniture stores and started perusing... we found this.
It will match our nice red floor (har har!) Since we are buying a couch we have decided that we had better move things around... (how do you know I'm on the mend????... I start moving furniture!) We now have the office moved over in the sunroom taking up some of my studio space and we have moved the dining room table into where the office was. I would put some pictures here but my camera's batteries need charging and I can't find the charger. I'll try to get on that later.

In addition to that exciting news, we are losing June the chicken.... I couldn't see her so lonely and so we have a friend who will come and take her to their chicken coop to live among the other chickens and roosters..... I think I've had it with chickens. I can think of much better uses for our chicken coop. Hubby suggested that we use the coop for an outhouse.... I'm thinking that might not be such a bad idea. You can never go wrong with a two holer!

The next exciting news, (well... it is to me) Hubby has lost his boot. The snow has become deep enough that it is time to bring out our winter boots and jackets. Hubby went looking for his and can only find one boot in the heep in the shed. He has gone through pretty much everything and can't find the second of his pair. I'm thinking it might be time to buy him a new pair anyway. He has managed to clean up a huge pile of junk in the shed. He will take the pile to the dump but meanwhile where is his boot? I know, just know, that if I buy him new ones he will find the old one the day after. It's Murphy's law you know.

Ok.... I'm getting cold and it is almost 5 a.m. and I'm starting to yawn. I think I've pretty much covered everything anyway so ta ta, I'm off back to bed to warm up and catch a few last zzzzzzzz.

And The Snow Comes Down

It's still snowing and it is hard to tell the sky from the ground. The animals are not happy though they have a barn to hide away in. Instead of going in out of the snow they stand there or lie there and stare at the sky like they have never seen this stuff before. I too look out the window and am astounded at this constant snowfall. It is a lovely day to stay indoors and just read a book. Or weave.... which is what I am doing... I'm weaving on the tri loom today... the small tri loom with the child's poncho. It is looking lovely.

June, the chicken, still lives in the chicken coop but she is all alone and I think she pines for friends. I will probably give her to one of our friends who already has chickens. I hate to see her so lonely. She never lays any eggs.... so sad....

In the house two cats and two dogs snore incessantly... they are happy to have a nice cozy house to sleep in with all this snow. The young cat looks out the window in disgust and heads back upstairs to sleep on Daughter #1's bed, and there he stays till his bladder calls him to go out. But let me tell you it is not long before he is back meowing to come in.

There's a huge chunk of snow about to fall off the roof right past the window that I'm sitting by. I wonder if it will fall soon or just hang there.....

Have a happy wintery day...

Reprieve

Today is a day of reprieve. Here I sit with the lovely white grandeur of snow outside my window. Our company left early this morning and Hubby and the Daughters are back in school. So I am having a peaceful reprieve. I've even written some more poetry which you can read here. With a fairly heavy snowfall accumulating outside it is a good day to think and just be. No one to cook for, no one to appease, all my own, a day of reprieve. The wind is not blowing at least not enough to notice and everything looks quiet and pristine. The sheep and alpacas are bedded down in the quiet too.

Hubby managed to finish putting in the sink in the bathroom downstairs over the weekend and I am wood burning one of my poems onto our bedroom door. It is a poem that I wrote to Hubby a few years back and somehow seems appropriate for our bedroom door. So things are once again progressing on the renovation. It is somewhat slow and maybe even painfully slow, but at least it is progress.

This day of no demands is such a gift. For weeks I have been fighting ear infections and bronchitis and H1N1 and it has taken it's toll. I still am tired all the time but it does seem to be getting better. I do more every day and I am not coughing nearly as much... I think that it's due to the steroids and anti-biotics that I am on the mend. I will stay in much of this week in an effort to get rid of any lingering illness and hopefully that will put me back to my old healthy self. Still a little knitting, spinning and weaving won't hurt and while my motivation to do these things is sadly lacking, I think it is just that I need to do it to be motivated. So for now it is wood burning and poetry but tomorrow it's spinning and weaving.

I never thought I'd say it but thank heavens for this snow.... it's quiet fall to the ground forces me to have this lovely day of reprieve.... there was no twisting my arm I assure you.

Basic Black

Boom Boom.. out go the lights.... Last night with all that wind we lost the power. We had just finished dinner and whamo everything went black. Out came the candles and the kerosene lamps and we sat around gabbing till 10 p.m. then I think there wasn't much point in staying up and so we all headed for bed. 1:45 a.m. the lights came back on. It was a quiet night here in the house but outside the wind continued to rage until the wee small hours of the morning at which time everything finally settled down and peace was once more restored in the form of a gentle rain..... well except that the rain was freezing rain. Still after all that wind it was a nice quiet reprieve.

Hubby has been hunting but with no luck. The company has picked up a buffalo and are in the shed gutting and cleaning and quartering the meat for the early drive home tomorrow morning. It has been a pleasant chance to catch up with our company and enjoy a bit of a reunion.

Today the weather is just as drab and grey as it has been and some sun would give a much needed lift to the spirits but the forecast is calling for more of the same as this in the next few days so I expect it will be dull for a few days yet. Sunday afternoon is turning out quiet and peaceful which is good I think. I am needing this peaceful day.

I have been back at the triangle loom and working on the child's poncho. It was a welcome diversion and is getting back into wanting to create. I am also thinking about getting those cards out for round 2 with the jacket commission maybe later tonight I will do that.

Right now I'm off for a lazy Sunday snooze!

Wind And Ice

Today as I look out the window here at Nicholsville West Farm, the sky is grey and the wind is blowing a gale. The trees are wavering back and forth and somehow everything looks dull and drab. Hubby is off hunting with the "company", Daughter #1 is in the kitchen making cookies for the craft sale next week and Daughter #2 has a friend here for the afternoon. I'm just going to sit here a while and fool around on the computer. I'm not really in any mood to do anything artsie. I think it is the wind.

For days now the wind has been blowing steady and while generally, I don't mind wind, today somehow it seems to be disturbing my peace of mind. Sometimes it sounds like the roof is going to lift off. I remember growing up in Newfoundland, wind was a constant and in those days I would cuddle in my bed at night grateful for a roof over my head and a safe place to hide away from the howling gales that swept the shores of that province. I didn't mind it and listened to the sounds of those gales and passed peacefully into sleep listening to its lullaby.

Now, I hear nothing of those dulcet tones that rocked me to sleep in my youth. Now I hear the constant drone of the wind and think about how I hate to go out in this stormy blast. I wait for the wind to die so that peace of this lovely farm and valley returns once again. I look out the window and see that the wind has swept over the lingering snow and turned everything into a hard packed surface of ice. I dread going out in it because the one thing that I don't like about living here is that the snow is never shoveled to the ground surface below. We also have an unanticipated problem... the snow that falls off the roof falls right into the path that leads from the driveway to the steps. Just this afternoon I went out to pick up Daughter #1 from a horseback riding lesson and when I came home I walked across the uneven ice that has formed on the path and down I went skinning out my knee and ruining a perfectly good pair of jeans! Harrumph!

I would much prefer the soft lovely flakes of snow drifting lazily to the ground on a peaceful hot cocoa day. I could sit and watch those flakes in their hypnotic fall as I knit on my lace gloves or card rolags for my jacket commission. But here I sit with neither hot chocolate, gloves, or hand carders. I just stare at the hard grey sky with thoughts of happier times, and wish for a moment of peace.

What Am I Going To Blog About

Daughter #2s vote was chocolate.
Daughter #1s vote was Tootsie licking off lip balm and making his tongue silly.
Hubby's vote was windy nights and how hard it is to find a good husband and how lucky I was to do so!!!!!!
I wanted to blog about further renovations to the house and now driveway too. But then I got scared that Hubby would read this and die of a heart attack.

In the end, I was no further ahead. Nothing seemed any good to blog about so.....I think I will tell you about what I want for Christmas... I'm not sure why other than it just popped into my mind.

I really don't want much this year.... I'm really thankful that I feel this way because there are millions out there who will never know what it is like to have enough. Pops (a.k.a. my father) asked me earlier this week what I wanted and I just sat there with a dumb look on my face.

Daughter #1 asked me too and I really didn't know what to say. Then when Daughter #2 asked, I knew that I was a hard person to shop for.

Here's my Christmas list.
Unrealistic....
1. To have the renovations done.
2. A new car.
3. A Golding Loom ($11,000.00... not likely! ever!!)
4. My Christmas decorating done.
5. My Christmas shopping done and enough money to pay for it all.
6. A new driveway so that we don't have to crawl over crunchy snow from the roof of the house to get to the steps.
7. A new puppy (I love puppies!)


More realistic....
8. New boots.
9. New shoes
10. Nice woolen hand knitted socks (preferably lace)
11. Foot cream. (are you noticing a trend here?)
12. A Golding spindle (but not the painted ones)
13. Knitting needles from Knit Picks and the case to hold them.

Wishful thinking....
14. World peace especially between the Muslims, Christians and Jews.
15. For the sponsor children we support and all children to experience enough to eat and good access to medical facilities.
16. No abandoned animals (dogs and cats etc...) starving and with no one to care for them.
17. The end of the Pine Beetle infestation.
18. No more CFC's so that we have a world rich in water and oxygen.
19. The end of Cancer, Heart disease, Alziemer's, and Diabeties
20. A Real Santa Claus (because I'm still a kid at heart!!)

So Company's Coming!!!

September was the end of our house renovation. I knew it would happen and so I put a big push on to get a bunch of things done that last week of summer. Hubby managed to finish the ceiling in our room and the upstairs bathroom and hall over the steps. I ran out of clear coat about mid-week with the intention of getting more. I wrapped up the paint brush and laid it on top of the old paint can and there it has lingered, hardening till solidified till today. Hubby,since then, did manage to get our front door working but has not completed the trim boards around the door. The kitchen does not have the door to the pantry finished nor are my shelves that hold dishes and glasses put back up and as a matter of a fact the shelves are fading and greying in the outdoor sunlight. The downstairs has a working toilet and a tub that is in the right place but not hooked up. There is no sink hooked up either. The mirrored cabinet is not on the wall in the downstairs bathroom and that is just plain laziness since that is just screwing it into place. Either way, the renos have come to a resounding halt. I think we are just too burnt out to do any right now. This week when our company called to say that they were coming I jumped on the opportunity to get us back into action. Mike has been busy each day, in between working and other obligations, to get another panel up in our bedroom and I have clear coated the door for our bedroom. The door is not hanging yet but I'm working on that. I am going out to the shed in a little while and dragging in the mirrored cabinet for the wall in the bathroom and then if my energy doesn't die on me I'm hauling in the shelves for the kitchen. That at least will be a little on my part. Hubby has taken the trim boards for around the front door to plane them on the planer at work, and hopefully they will go up tonight. Every little bit helps. Here are a few pictures to see our progress.

Bathroom vanity still a mess with no sink in yet. the sink is still in the box.


There still needs to be paneling put up behind the toilet in the downstairs bathroom.


The tub is in place but not hooked up and the paneling needs to be done here to cover in the plumbing... if it ever gets finished.


Yes, the pantry door is not in and there isn't even a framing board to attach it too anyway!


Temporary table in corner and stool. Notice that there are no shelves above the the table and stool.


The sunroom/studio is still a mess. Notice there is still paneling to be done, flooring to be done and ceiling to be done.


The electrical box is still exposed and waiting for the next round of electrical renovations.


The front door still needs the trim to be done.


Our bedroom door is not in yet but Hubby only put up the paneling yesterday and notice we still have paneling to do at the top.


Around the door to the balcony there is still a lot of work to be done. The closet is in but there are no doors to it and the top is not on. Two whole wall have to be paneled and the bathroom has no paneling at all.

There is still a lot of work but I'm not pushing the issue. I figure if I can get a little done every month then Hubby won't hate me for nagging but it eventually will get finished.

I just hope the company won't mind the mess and lack of privacy.