Christmas 2017

It's 5:00 AM on Christmas morning.  I woke up at 3:00... I guess when you fall asleep in your chair at 7:00 PM. waking at 3:00 gave me 8 hours sleep.  I'm turning into an early morning elder...

This has been an interesting year.  Thankfully.  No surgeries this year.  No money crunches.  No car issues, house issues, pet emergencies... It's been a good year.

As I get older, I'm finding I "need" less.  And what I do need can't be bought.  Hugs.  Love. Smiles.  True friendship. Honesty & compassion.

We accomplished a lot this year, as I look back at it.  The garden didn't produce as well. But we did get some wonderful produce to eat.  Josh wants to leave the garden unplanted this coming year - work on building up the soil.

I didn't get into the "Christmas knitting" this year.  That was a relief, really. Some years I started focusing on gifts in October & finished in February.  That's a long Christmas.  This year, I made several batches of hats to send off, and now I'm working on a blanket for friend Lloyd.

We don't decorate for Christmas.  We're just not into it. 

I baked fruit cake, gave some away.  Lloyd & his brother brought over a pecan pie last night.  Looking forward to having some.  Josh & I processed some venison & made brats.  YUMMY.

Hobbit House update

The interior is done!  Well, mostly done.  The solar system still needs to be installed....

Anyway, here's a quick video walk through.

Cool nights, Autumn is here.

Once again, I find myself lacking anything to blog about... Summer is gone.  Three months have passed since I wrote anything.

Life here on Big Rock Farm has been rather uneventful.  Summer was warm.  We had a hot spell, then a wet spell, now a warm & dry spell.  We got enough rain that our rain barrel was never empty.  That's a first, I think.

Joshua & John went fishing one day & caught 3 brim to put in our "pond".  We did our part, and raised 2 different breeds of tadpoles.  Ariel always likes playing with them.

Work on the Hobbit House was rather slow.... but the door & window are in.  The entire exterior has been coated with Hydro-Ban (water proofing), I finished the painting with the main colors.  I still have some faux painting to do and some stenciling.  And I need to lay the tile floor.

The "parlor"or main area in the Hobbit House

Walking up to the front door

The door & window.

Mandala on a triangular shawl

 I did a bit of silk painting & dyeing this summer.  I'm happy with the results.

Sun painting silk scarves & shawls

Luna Moth silk shawl

My friends Gena Stout & Dee Blansett & I had a booth at a local craft sale. I sold most of my hand dyed yarns (mostly to Dee).  Here's a picture of our space.

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Health wise, I've been plagued by a chronic sinus infection.  Annoying!  John's still having trouble sleeping.  I think I've joined him in that.  Most mornings I wake between 3 & 5 o'clock.  Today I woke up at 2:00.

Earlier, in May, I hatched out 10 Black Copper Maran chicks.  As they grew up, I discovered we had 8 new roosters. Great!  I advertised them for free on Facebook & Craig's list.  Seven of them were gone within 2 hours.  I kept 1 young rooster & 2 hens.  I named the Prince, Mini & Betty.  Our bantam hens sat on eggs all summer, but didn't hatch out even a single chick.  Our adult Copper Maran rooster is named Elvis (because he "sings" from 3 AM to 10 PM), and his ladies are Ginger (RIR/Copper Maran cross), Mary Ann, & Mahogany.

This year's chicks

I knitted a wrap for my niece Kendra Kittle.  It came out pretty well.  Ariel was working on a project with the same pattern.  I'm not sure it will ever get finished.

Starting Point knit along project

Now I'm crocheting ponchos for my great nieces.

"Virus" poncho for Nevaeh

Poncho for Revan

The Hardy Homesteader's quilting project was completed.  I think it came out well.  We will be giving it away on October 7th.

Summer has turned hot

Time marches on, and here it is - the HOT season.  The mercury hasn't fallen below 70 for almost a week.  Daytime temperatures are in the high 90's.  Thankfully, we had a lot of rain earlier in July, so the plants aren't baked dry yet.  But we'll have to start watering our sad little garden soon.  We are getting tomatoes & cucumbers (and eggs, of course), the zucchini and squash are growing.  But the weeds have taken control.  Josh took the weed wacker to the garden, trying to at least get some illusion of control.

Last year, I put newspaper and wood chips around each plant.  That worked fairly well.  This year we didn't have a large pile of wood chips, so I just used newspaper.  That did NOT work.  The weeds grew right through.  Oh well, at least the plants we want are growing too.

Joshua & I took grandchild Ariel back to Ellijay, GA.  We visited for a week & returned home this past Monday (7/17).  We had doctors appointments on Wednesday & VA Dental yesterday.  Today, I can finally get back to work on the Hobbit House.

We went to a few interesting place while in Georgia.  Here's so pictures of Amicolola Falls.

    
And we visited an interesting farm store.

Lastly, I'd like to send a big Thank You to the Poplar Bluff VAMC.  The Dental Clinic staff helped me out yesterday & arranged for all my dental needs to be resolved in 1 day!  Amazing!  Thank you so much!

Early morning ramblings...

Quite often, I find myself wide awake at 3:00 AM.  Why?  Sometimes it's because I fell asleep in my big, cozy chair at 7:30 PM.  When I snore myself awake, I go to bed.  But I usually wake up very early the following morning.  Like this morning.

My grand daughter is still asleep, so I'm trying to be quiet.  She normally can sleep through anything.

I could blame my crazy sleep cycle on my back pain.  Or on my Parkinson's.  But the truth is, I've sleep like this since I was a teenager.  Back then, I used to get dressed & go out an sky watch. I love looking at the stars, the moon, satellites passing overhead.  I enjoy listening to the birds and other night sounds.

When the moon is full, you can see the bats flying.  Watch the lightening bugs.  Listen to the roosters crowing.  The dogs barking.

I don't go out sky watching as often these days.  My home life is calm & cozy, so I don't feel compelled to "escape" to the outdoors.

I like to read, and often my wakeful early mornings are filled with reading.  I'm more prone to watching YouTube nowadays.   I like to find interviews or other videos of people investigating ancient mysterious ruins or sites of megalithic construction. Sites from antiquity that have been covered in mud for thousands of years. Artifacts that are obviously made with high tech tools that are thousands of years old (or millions). Those things that just do NOT fit with the versions of history we learn in school or on the multitude of "scientific" programs on TV.

I've read Velikovski's books.  I think he was correct about ancient planetary collisions.  I've read many, many books about past cataclysms. Sahara green glass, vitrified rock forts, radioactive ancient cities buried in mud, giants, Baghdad batteries, crystal skulls, Fortean artifacts, Rock Wall Texas, the Mahabharata and other Hindu scriptures, the Old Testiment of the Bible, ruins on the Moon & Mars, sacred geometry,  genetic studies of animals and people, star maps, ancient Earth maps (like those studied by Charles Hapgood), the many pyramids all over the globe, cave paintings, ancient legends, other religions (I was raised Methodist), spiritualism, hauntings, UFO's.  All these subjects interest me.  My ex-husband called it my "weird shit".

I believe that truth is strange than fiction.  I believe we have stories of gods who flew through space because they DID fly through space. I think we went to the moon LONG before the Apollo missions (think 12,000 or more years ago).

I have always felt that something terrible happened to our planet at the end of the Ice Age. Horrible, deadly & destructive.  And there is now scientific proof that the North American continent (and other sites around the world) were destroyed by a comet hitting the ice shelf.  Causing instantenous melting & horrible floods.  Destroying everything with a huge increase in sea level (abut 400 feet). Flash freezing and burying the mammoths and other animals under feet of mud.

And these are the things I think about at 4:00 AM.  What was that civilization like?  How high tech were they? How far did their influence (or lack of) extend?  Do we have long-lost cousins out there in the cosmos?  Do they ever return?

Early June rains & mushroom picking

Well, June is finally here.  That means it's chanterelle mushroom time.  We are blessed with many patches of these yummy mushrooms.  I looked on line this morning & the going price is $100 a pound!  Wow!

So, Ariel and I get out our boots, long pants, and tons of bug spray.  Now we are ready for mushroom hunting.  And we head out...

Ariel & Cricket head down the driveway.

Peanut comes along too!

We found a good amount for the first day.  We saw many small ones too, so we'll go back for them in a few days. Here's our first day's haul.

Mushroom & a crawfish cast carapace.

Notice the crawfish carapace?  Ariel found this at the edge of the pool where the spring starts.  I was very happy to see this, because I'd never seen any crawfish or minnows in the spring.  Since this one is rather large, that means our little spring is a viable ecosystem.  I feel very good about that.  Since our spring doesn't flow all year long, I assumed the crawfish & minnows were only located further down stream.  I'm glad to see I was wrong.  

We've also been working on the interior of the Hobbit Housse (now christened Underhill). We're using a faux painting technique.  As the cement is rather rough, we wanted a smoother finish.  So, we are applying tissue paper to the walls & ceiling to give it a more finished look.  I like it, it's rather like the look of finished plaster.  Here's a Youtube video on the technique.

Tissue paper wall texture technique.  Here' how the first step is looking.

Sleeping alcove with tissue paper on the walls

 Rather green, I know.  But this is NOT the finished color.  The alcove will be a deeper sage green.  The sitting room will be a rich, golden color.

Family visit, grand-daughter is here for the summer

Our daughter, Tammy, and grand-daughter Ariel arrived last Thursday from Georgia.  Tammy will be leaving today or tomorrow.  Joshua & I will be taking Ariel back to Georgia sometime in mid-July.

While we're all together, we been having wonderful "family time".  We did some shooting....

My family

Peanut LOVES shooting.  She is wondering where the critters are...

Ariel and Cricket investigated a large tree that came down during some wicked wind we had...

We had a nice cook-out on Memorial day... No pictures.  Duh!

Yesterday, we did some dyeing. It was a lot of fun.  Friend Gena came over.  We dyed, ate, talked & dyed more.

Gena and Ariel

Gena, John & Joshua checking out the water tank (with tadpoles)

Tammy and Ariel collecting flowers for sun dyeing

We each did a silk painting.

Tammy's lily

Gena's koi fish

Ariel's interesting lady smelling flowers

My steampunk White Rabbit

Then we did some sun dyeing (it's really sun "painting", but heck, I don't name these products!).

Ariel's shawl

Ariel's second piece of the day

My rectangular shawl

This is a fun technique.  Wet the item to be dyed/painted.  Apply the desired colors.  Lay it in the sun.  Place leaves, flowers, branches... whatever on the item & leave it in the sun for a few hours.  The shadow of the objects leave an impression in the color intensity of the paint.  Allow the paint to "set" for 24 hours, then iron with a hot iron (no steam). We got our sun dyeing supplies at Dharma Trading Company.  In fact, all the silk scarves, clothing, silk painting kit & sun painting supplies came from Dharma.

Then we played with our favorite technique.  Microwave dyeing.  Again, wet your item to be dyed.  Lay it out & sprinkle dye powder on it, randomly or in stripes... whatever. Roll it up or crunch it up or wad it up... and place it in a ziploc bag.  Add a small amount of water.  Now put it in the microwave for 3 minutes.  IT WILL BE VERY HOT WHEN YOU TAKE IT OUT!!! Add some cool water to the bag. Now, swish it around.  Pour it out & refill the bag with cold water.  More swishing & refilling until all the excess dye is out.  Hang on the clothes line to dry.  Our results...

My yellow shawl

My blue shawl

Ariel's rectangular shawl

Another rectangle by Ariel

My greenish-yellow wrap

Tammy's tiered skirt

Tammy's dress

Dyes for these items were purchased from The Woolery.