Hay Day

5 bales in and more on the way. All that worry during the summer and here we are almost ready for winter with a good supply of hay arriving Tomorrow will see the rest of the hay arrive.

Ipwitch the non-ram has been enjoying getting his jollies off with the old ewe who suffered a nasty case of fly strike last spring. I really didn't mean for her to be bred.... she's really too old... but then I'm not sure she is since Ipwitch, we're pretty sure, doesn't have the equipment to enjoy her hind quarters even though he is trying..... although I have to admit that I've never seen a non-ram lift the skirts of a femme fetale and have at her. We bought Ipwitch as a ram and then Teapot discovered that he didn't have the equipment to do the job... we contacted the breeder and told her she had sold us a dud... she gave us another ram to replace Ipwitch, but now we're wondering if Ipwitch was hiding his equipment when we flipped him on his butt for a looksee... We were going to slaughter both of those sheep.... now we may have to keep them. I don't want to slaughter a sheep that might have a lamb. And I don't want to slaughter a perfectly good ram. Sheep! argh!!

The horse will soon be heading back to the arena where we board her for the winter, that way Daughter #1 can ride after school in the arena which is heated. The horse will also have shelter which she wouldn't have here... we didn't build her a barn when we built her the paddock she is in.

It is funny how we set goals for ourselves here on the farm but they never seem to be met. Teapot intended on putting in the new steps to our veranda on the front of the house. But that didn't happen. He thought he would get the roof on the electrical shed.... but that didn't happen, he thought he would finish the fencing for the three new paddocks.... and only one paddock got finished... the other two are only partially done.  But then I have to wonder what we did all summer long. I was going to help him when he got to the work on the roof but he never got to it so I couldn't help him.... and I sure couldn't do it myself.

So with September winding down and summer at an end.... with freezing temperatures starting to set in... well.... we will have to wait for next summer to get some more of these jobs done.

I have finished the level 3 homework and it has gone in the mail.  I have paid the marking fee and now I wait. I have been looking at my level 4 books and starting to think about what is next.  For level 4 I will be starting to spin more exotic fibres.  Bison is the first one.  I spun the other night on my charka about 15 gm of bison fibre which turned out nicely except it was underspun in some areas.... so the plied yarn is not satisfactory for a sample for my books. It was all the bison fibre that I had so now I am scouting websites that sell bison roving.... if you know of a source then please by all means do leave the contact info. in the comments.

Well 6:30 has come and gone and Teapot has unloaded the hay so I had better go too....

I'm really hoping my back will be a little better today....

Wee Kitty

For the last week I've had a wee kitty living here. Teapot was out doing stuff in the yard for the end of summer... you know putting away chairs and fixing up the deck so that there were no flower pots to freeze etc.. he happened to go out to the road where he had left our garbage bin for the garbage man to pick up, and while he was out there he noticed a wee grey kitty all alone on the side of the road. Not wanting to leave it for owl fodder he brought it into the house.

Unfortunately, I am allergic to cats.... not all cats, just to the females. People always look at me funny when I say that. But ever since Teapot and I have been married we have had a male cat as part of our family. Never a female. I don't know how we figured out that I was allergic to females only... I think we just figured it out.

Teapot, as a child always had cats in his home and it didn't take me very long to realize that every time I went to his parent's home I would have a severe allergic reaction... Eyes watering and sinus congestion and so forth... to the point that I was miserable no matter how hard Teapot's mom would clean... I felt really bad that she would work so hard to make her home livable for me and still I would have a horrible reaction.  Teapot missed having cats around and I think he really felt that he was a cat person more than a dog person.

When we moved to Ontario first when we were married, there was a great orange cat who followed us home one day.... (actually it followed our dog ,, but that is a really long story). We started feeding the cat out doors and it would come to our home regularly for food. Winter came and the temperatures would be oh so cold and I started to feel sorry for the poor thing.... I would let it in to feed it and then let it back out again. Well soon it was in all the time.... except at night.... I definitely couldn't do a litter so he was pretty good about letting us know when he needed to go out to do his business.  He lived with us for 6 years until we moved to BC.... then he disappeared.

By this time we had children and they were devastated when the cat went missing especially Daughter #1 who adores cats. So we got another cat.... but we made sure it was a male. also, by this time, I knew that I could handle having a male cat around me for limited amounts of time and with limited handling.
Females still posed a problem.

Our second cat was white and went by the name of Mister O'Malley.  Mister O'Malley didn't last long since he got sick and bloated and died withing a day of us realizing that there was something wrong. We decided to wait a while but it wasn't long before our big black cat Midnight came along when Teapot was talking to a lady in town who was looking for homes for kittens. He's black and he's short haired and he is still with us after ten long years. I do not have a problem with him.  Then two years ago came along Oozle the cat.... also known as Pinecone.... he disappeared last month and we were all really upset that he disappeared.... we think we know what happened to him though.

Lately, we have been seeing a great grey owl hanging around, and then Teapot discovered that there is a nest of grey owls in a copse of trees not far from our house.  We have seen owls and eagles lift full grown cats off the ground and then let go in order to kill the cats. Then they lift them up and take them to their young to be eaten.... it is a horrible sight. We think Pinecone/Oozle departed this world via the owls.

Now that I have told you the long rambling story of our cats, I'll get back to telling you about what I started to tell you all about..... so Teapot brings home the stray kitty.... Of course the first thing we did was put out a public service announcement to our community, to let people know we had found a wee grey kitty and that if someone had lost their cat they could come pick it up whenever they wanted. This got no response... zip... zero... nadda!

It is a female so we cannot keep it. Already she has made my eyes water. Daughter #1 is upset that she can't keep the wee thing but she has asked her best friend to take the kitten... (she lost her cat a year ago). The problem is that her friend is away for the next week and so we won't know if she can take the kitten for another while yet.... and so we take care of the kitten while I try not to have reactions and Daughter #1 and #2 and Teapot (and if truth be told, me too) grows fonder and fonder of the little wee cutie. She is a very nice natured cat and she's already got the dogs liking her......  it's hard not to like her.

But she has to go....

I hate dilemmas.....

Drugs, Drugs, And More Drugs.

O.k... I'm really sorry for not making a whole lot of sense in the previous post but I'm on painkillers and anti-inflammatories, thus my head seems to want to float around, about two feet above my neck!  I'm not really sure what I was trying to say this morning when I wrote that, except that wpi doesn't always work as a reliable measurement for gauge in knitting. Why anyone would want to use wpi for knitting instead of knitting a swatch and checking the gauge is beyond me anyway.....But I'm on so many drugs for my cold and bad back which doesn't seem to be getting better, that I'm really in quite a bit of a fog. So if you read the previous post and went,  "Huh?!" then I don't blame you. I did too.

I think I'll go blow my nose and have a bit of a lie down now...... : /

For Those Who Like To Spin

I'll say sorry now to those of you who read this blog and are not spinners or knitters, because this post is all about a topic which has confounded me for a very long time.

Each morning I wake up and after having gotten breakfast for everyone I sit down at the computer and read the news, the weather, and then Knitting Daily which is an e-newsletter that I subscribe to. Sometimes it's really not interesting and sometimes it is. This morning was one of those mornings that was really interesting. They were talking about w.p.i. (which, for those of you who insist on reading this even though you are not a spinner, is wraps per inch).  Not many knitters use wpi but this morning there was quite and enlightening article about w.p.i.  Basically the gist of the story was that a lady who was confounded by wpi decided to test how reliable it was. She made wpi measures out of firm paper printed with a graph of 1/4 inch grid. Then she gave them to several fellow knitters. She handed each of her subjects a length of yarn and had them wrap the yarn around 2 inches. She was careful to tell them not to wrap too tightly and not too loosely. The strand had to be touching but not squeezed or squashed. Then she did this with several different strands of yarn. Each time her subjects were given the same kind of yarn. The wpi measurements that they got were very different, and none of them were consistently high or consistently low. Nope, their wpi measurements were all over the board.

I have always felt that w.p.i. was an unacceptable measurement. I wouldn't mind trying this experiment myself. I would like to test these results.  For a knitter following w.p.i. it can be a really big problem when using a different yarn from what is being used in the actual pattern.

In the last few days, while I have been nursing my back and trying to rid myself of phlegm, (yes, the first cold of the season) I have been looking at a lot of knitting patterns, especially in Vogue Knitting, which I have subscribed to many years. Vogue knitting has one problem.... that is that they are printed and published in New York and they seem to think that nobody lives outside of New York and that we can all run out and buy the type of yarn specified for the project with ease. Now all of us who live in the North, in rural setting know how laughable this is. But as I was perusing the pattern yesterday I thought, wouldn't it be nice if I could spin that yarn.

For spinners w.p.i. as well as t.p.i. and a.o.t. are absolute musts. Angle of twist will determine how the yarn handles, w.p.i. will give the right guage. Without them you're shooting in the dark.

My wish is that all knitting publications including Vogue Knitting and Interweave Knits, the two knitting giants of the world, would publish all patterns with yarn resources.... and that include t.p.i., w.p.i., and a.o.t. They way it is easier to duplicate the yarn. It might be good to include the number of plies (which usually is on the label though I have come across some labels that don't include the number of plies) and the type of yarn and percentage of any blends in the yarn wouldn't hurt either.

So w.p.i. well it might not be a reliable way of knowing whether or not it will work in a pattern but it sure is important if you're going to duplicate a yarn.... besides if you measured your w.p.i. now and got one thing and then measured the same yarn later in the day and got something else then you would have to worry!

How To Figure Out When Summer Is Over

1a. Daughter #1 comes home from school with a cold.

1b. Mother (that's moi) catches the cold and gets really congested.

2. Teapot goes off into the bush on the weekends with a gun.... looking for moose or elk.

3a. The bedroom windows remain closed...... even at night.

3b. The spider webs around the outside of the above window are visible because of morning frost.

4. The bright morning light does not wake us anymore.

5a. I begin to think about slippers and s---ks!

5b. I begin looking at thousands of s--k patterns  online and picking out all the favorites that I will never knit.

6. Going outdoors means looking through the closet for something to put on over your regular clothes.

7. Knitting is a pleasure and not a hot sticky pass time.

8. The Sears Christmas catalogue shows up and you actually feel like looking at it.

9.  You have to turn on the lights around supper time.

10 a. The grass turns green.

10 b. It snows...... waaaah! All the mountains are white in the back country.... we've been watching the mountains now for over a week and they turned white three nights ago and now the forecast is calling for snow here today.....

Best Laid Plans

Right well my work was supposed to go in the mail today. It is still sitting on the coffee table as I have put in the worst 24hrs with a really bad back.... at least I am hoping that is what is going on. Since the trip down the river in late August I have been carefully nursing what was up to that point a back that would only give problems occasionally but lately (since the trip) it has done a complete nose dive and is giving me trouble like never before... and even medication is doing nothing. For 4 days after the trip I could barely walk with a bad case of sciatica that stemmed from a prolapsed disk in my lower spine which I have known about for years. It seemed to clear up and then yesterday evening it came back.  But this time along with the sciatica came a really bad case of spastic muscles in my lower left leg calf. My leg does not want to hold me up. My muscles in that area are permanently contracted and they will not ease up. I have tried the new bath and it feels lovely while I am in the tub...but the minute I lift myself out... I am back to square one. Going up steps has become a lesson in patience as my left leg will not work.... basically what is happening is the nerves that exit my spinal cord at the site of the prolapsed disk are being squeezed. They are being slowly and inexorably damaged. I have seen a specialist about this problem and he has told me two things which will affect any decision I make regarding my future back issues...

1. I have had already three surgeries in this area. This means there is an abundance of scar tissue. Scar tissue for a surgeon is like a mine field. The specialist will not even contemplate corrective surgery, which involves a spinal fusion, without an MRI..... I am seriously claustrophobic. I tried to do an MRI a few years ago and I made it in to my nose.... then panicked.... I couldn't breath... I didn't stop running until I got to the great outdoors. (I'm not kidding!) If ever I try to go back in that machine again I will need serious drugs to get me through.... like, knock me out drugs. I also have a fear that an MRI (magnetic resonance imager) will turn me into a human magnet since I have a 15 inch steel rod in my back. Going into my back for the surgeon, without an MRI is like traveling through a mine field blind folded and I could be left in a wheel chair.... this scares the $h!t out of me!!!

2. I was advised that since I already have 15 spinal fusions for spinal scoliosis that having another spinal fusion would mean a lot more limited movement in my back. Already my spine has limited movement and adding the one at the bottom would mean that I might not be able to turn... swivel.... you get my drift. To turn around I would have to turn my complete body. Also I would be that much more ramrod straight..... there would only be 4 discs left absorbing shocks and that would seriously alter my lifestyle so basically I want to seriously think about this surgery before going through with it.... the doctor said that I really need to postpone it as long as I can.

It has been 8 years since the last surgery.... but with my leg now starting to go spastic I'm thinking that surgery is definitely in my future and probably nearer than I think.... that is if I can face the dark minuscule hole that is the MRI machine.

So the plan is to drug myself for the next few days with serious quantities of anti-inflammatories, muscle relaxants, and pain killers, hope that this pain goes away soon and stays away, for at least 6 months. I will also try really hard to get a decent night's sleep so that I can function. Then I will get my books in the mail to my instructor as soon as I can get to the post office... which will happen before the weekend since I will call in the help of Teapot or Fadder if I have to.

Amen to best laid plans.

Tee Hee Dingle Dork!!!!!

I think I am a little punch drunk... it is 10:04 p.m. and I'm done. Tee Hee... giggle giggle!

Level 3 that is!   I just packaged it up for the mail...... It goes in the mail tomorrow...... : ) a bigger grin you could not see.... I think I'm smiling so much that I'm lighting up the night with the sheen from my teeth..... been at it all day today and got a nice 2ply and then on my first try I got my 3 ply..... it's not perfect but I'm happy with it... the tpi is bang on even if the grist is off.

Now I just have to wait for my mark.... argh!

I think I'll go take a bath....... except I'm so tired I might drown..... maybe I'll get Teapot to hold me up.... hee hee hee hee ha ha haha ha! See I told you I was punchy.....!