Ordinary Time

I just finished reading Reinventing Wool: how a natural fiber survived the synthetic revolution by Melissa M. Little. Ms. Little focuses on the story of wool as a textile fiber and how it (barely) survived the 1950's when synthetic materials were marketed as the better and more modern fabric choice. I found it both interesting and infuriating. First, the 1950's just have a lot to answer for. It was an era of chemists playing with chemicals that were then unleashed on the world with no thought that their new discoveries would ultimately be deadly. One of the chapters highlights how a moth repellent spray was created that housewives could spray on their woolen garments and all insects would be killed. It was effective because DDT was a major ingredient. The whole chapter was a bit terrifying. The other thing that was hard to read about was the implicit mysogony in the advertising. (I'm sure it was not only in the advertising, but this is what was in the book.) One of the more...

How we celebrate Halloween continues to change as everyone gets older. The past several years we've made a trip to a cool, local candy store to fulfill the candy portion of the holiday since no one had interest in trick-or-treating. Then we chose movies to have a movie marathon while we enjoyed the candy plus take out. It is a fun way to observe the holiday.  This year? This year was trickier because of various children's jobs. Y. was totally out for Halloween evening, L. was done at 5:00 which meant a layer starting time, and G. was done at 8:00 so would join us partway through. J. celebrated by driving. Driving children to work. Picking up take out. Picking up children from work. We did get to the candy store, but that was yesterday morning which was the only window where no one was working.  There were children in the store choosing candy, I promise. For our single movie, Coraline was finally settled upon. And why this movie? No one had seen it before and it was made by the...

I'll dive right in. It is finally starting to actually feel like autumn and the leaves are turning. In one of G.'s classes recently, they had to take a survey on their technology usage growing up. I'm more than a little proud that G. scored as an unusual combination of 90's child and Internet child.  The path that J. built last weekend used up nearly all the bricks that we had. We still have need of more pavers, though. That's why I jumped on a freecycle offering of a significant amount of them. We collected them today; it took a couple of trips. We had a fence builder out to give an estimate on the additional fencing we need. I'm a little nervous about how much it's going to be. Ducks are funny. They like to stay out late floating in the pond, long after the chickens put themselves to bed. The trouble is that once it's dark, they can't find the pen door and we need to go out and shine a flashlight on it so they can go to bed. Tonight, while J. and I...

One of the things I absolutely love about living here that wasn't a part of life in the Big Ugly House is being aware of the migrating birds. Last week I paused my barn cleaning to stand for a good ten minutes just watching the absolute river of dark eyed junkos fly overhead. Even when I stopped watching to go back to work, there were still hundreds of birds flying overhead. It's an amazing sight and I might have waved goodbye to them.  Then yesterday, the starlings passed through. Our property seems to be a brief stopping point for them as twice a year we are inundated. Most stay in the trees, with a lot of constant shifting from place to place. Others, though definitely a minority, land on the grass. Pretty much all the grass, including the pastures, has starlings on it. It is nearly impossible to take a picture that shows the full scope. But what is even more remarkable is the noise. They are very noisy birds, especially in large numbers. Turn the sound up on the video to he...

Since I am currently binge reading Live Laugh Love: the secret history of white Christian women and the world they made by Kristin Kobes Du Mez, you don't get much tonight. (Ms. Du Mez also wrote Jesus and John Wayne.) I may write about the book after I've had time to process it, but I don't know if I will yet. I first have to deal with some personal anger over feeling a bit of a victim of a bait-and-switch first. To clarify, that would be anger at people I thought were better than they were and not at the book. If you've read it, I'd love your thoughts.  Here's what you do get. First, the ever awe-inspiring photo of canning jars out of the canner. That would be six quarts of beef stock that I pressure canned today. We had beef and barley soup that I made with some beef bones over the weekend. This also meant that I made quite a bit of stock. Today was the day where I had enough time to babysit the canner. Pressure canning isn't difficult, but it is a bit ti...

I don't really have anything to show you today. I'll start weaving the red towels tomorrow, I turned up the hems of the green towels so I can start hemming, and I need to put a third warp for a wool scarf on my rigid heddle loom. It's all holiday market making all the time here. It's also not terribly interesting blog content.  So you get a brief story instead. I stopped at Michael's today to pick up a couple of things I needed. The pins were easy. I also wanted some more wool yarn because of like to have quite a few wool scarves to sell. I looked and looked and finally found three (out of two aisles of yarn) that was 100% wool. I didn't think I'd have a huge selection, but I thought I'd have more options than white, brown, and grey. Everything else has acrylic in it. There was actually so much plastic yarn that I worried some small county's petroleum reserves must have been stolen by cheap yarn manufacturers.  And it wasn't even that cheap. I do...