Ordinary Time

When J. goes to work he takes whichever children have classes that day with him. They go to class, do homework, roam the school until their father is done for the day and then they all come home. It's a great system with no extra driving needed. It's a great system that is until J. needs to be at a meeting off campus two hours away all day.  While there is a shuttle bus that goes between the end of the Metra line in our little town and the NIU campus in DeKalb, there is no additional transportation from NIU to the community college in a small town three miles further west from DeKalb. (For selfish reasons, I really think there should be a regular shuttle between NIU and the community college.)  This meant I found myself driving children too and from school today. It was a lot of driving especially since I added in a bunch of errands on each return trip... Getting gas, Costco, farm store, equine vet (to pick up prescriptions, and the library all told. The library was the last s...

I feel I need to say out loud what I am not hearing said regarding the gang rape of a woman in a frat house at Cornell University. All 57 men who were involved in some way are cowards. The administration who swept it under the rug are cowards. The national governing body of the fraternity (from whom I've seen nothing at all) are cowards. They were all so afraid of drawing attention to themselves by doing what was right that they instead did nothing at all except pretend it wasn't happening.  Do you want to know who are not cowards? Any woman who reports a sexual assault. She knows exactly what she is in for. These woman are not treated kindly by the system. It takes guts to do what is right even though you know that it will exacerbate the pain of the original assault.  In my opinion, all 57 men who either participated or stood by need to be charged and prosecuted. At a minimum, all members of the administration who covered it up need to be fired without their golden parachutes...

I'll spare you my sad and frustrating story about the project on my floor loom. It's ultimately going to be okay, but I think I just need several straightforward projects after this. Moving on... I'm also weaving 100% wool scarves on my rigid heddle loom. Here is the first off the loom and all ready to go. The next one is already warped and I'm working on the weaving.  This one will be a plaid instead of hounds tooth.  And that's all I have for you. As a bonus, I wanted to share a picture of our drake whose colors are nearly all in now.  But what I want you to really pay attention to is the cute little curl he has in his tail feathers. I know it's a typical drake kind of thing, but I think it's so cute!

We had been wanting to ride on the boat that L. works on all summer. Finally today we were free, L. was working, and the weather cooperative. It was more than cooperative, it was pretty much the perfect day to take a boat ride.  That's L. at the end of the gang plank. I didn't take any pictures while we were on the boat, but we spent some time walking around the park the boat leaves from, so you can still enjoy views of the Fox River.

It sounds so good to find some good deals on produce to can and freeze, the trouble is it's only a good deal if you actually do the canning and freezing. Which is what I did today. All day. All day standing in the kitchen chopping vegetables. It is worth it in the end, but I'm beat.  The totals for today?  7 pints of sweet pickle relish (canned) 6 cups of frozen green pepper strips 20 cups of frozen mixed color bell pepper strips 4 dehydrator trays of bell peppers (they're still dehydrating so I don't know how many cups) Two dinner's worth of frozen sliced okra (to be fried) 5 pounds of ground cornmeal - we had run out and I needed it for the okra so needed to grind more I still need to prep and freeze the extra lemongrass that I bought yesterday. Plus there are still cucumbers which I need to turn into bread and butter pickles. I'm also guessing there will be enough cucumbers to make a couple jars of dill pickles. I'm hoping I'll be done with it all by ...

Do these give you some clues? That's a half bushel of sweet peppers. Pickling cucumbers  If you guessed making and canning sweet pickle relish you'd be correct. I will probably also make bread and butter pickles because we go through them quickly and they're not something you can dobuy in the store. If I still have cucumbers left over, I'll probably make some dill pickles as well. They're actually the quickest of the pickles I make. And maybe I'll decide we need a lot more dill pickles, in which case I'll have to go buy more cucumbers.  The relish is not going to use up all those peppers, but the price was far too good to pass up. I'll slice/chop and freeze them in recipe sized amounts. Did you know you can do that? Freeze them as is then put them in recipes where they'll be cooked? The same goes for onions. Neither would be good to eat raw, but they're fine in things. Plus, it's super easy to just take pre-chopped peppers or onions out of yo...

Today was the day that H., R., and I headed out on a major grocery shopping expedition. The closest Asian markets near me are about half an hour away. Plus, they are not on the way to anything I regularly drive to, so require a special trip. I put this off as long as possible, but eventually I do need to restock. With the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival on Friday, I needed to go to get mooncakes. (Y. has made them before but with school and work, she doesn't have a lot of free time.) It had been a long time since I had gone, so supplies were low. I knew it was going to be painful. First stop was the Chinese market and it was as painful as I was expecting. We then drove a mile east to hit up Patel Brothers. This wasn't as bad, but was still significant. I've just now finished repackaging and putting things away.  Here is most of what we brought home. You can't see the 50# bag of rice or the things already in the refrigerator. Mooncakes packages always get put inside their own s...

And what was the little bit of panic? It was realizing that I needed to submit my application to have items in the holiday market by Oct. 2. In theory this shouldn't be a problem, but I need to submit photographs. (It's a juried sale.) I don't have the guest towels I'm going to weave finished so I don't have a photograph. Today is September 21st which is not that very far away from October. If I was going to get my application in, I needed to get a move on.  Which is why I spent quite a few hours yesterday dressing my loom. I did have my warp measured out and my project planned, so that was something, but there is still a lot that needs to happen. I managed to sley the reed, thread the loom, and get the warp wound on yesterday. Today was a bit nuts, so all I managed to get to was to tie up the treadles and begin to get the front of the project tied in. I did discover one section of crossed threads, but I decided to leave that until tomorrow. I really hope I can be w...

We did indeed have apple fritters for breakfast.  G. made them with our own apples and the glaze has cider and bits of apple in it. They were delicious. It was very nice to come in from cleaning the barn in very wet weather and be able to enjoy a freshly made apple fritter. Teaching your children to cook pays off. 

It's rained most of the day and there was very little on the calendar. J. and I decided it was time we dealt with the apples that had taken up residence in our kitchen. We opted to make and can caramel apple pie filling with the decent ones and press the others for cider. I'm happy to report that the many baskets of apples have been processed. The total? Seven pints of caramel apple pie filling, which all sealed. The remainder of the apples produced a gallon and a half of cider. No picture of that, though. It was a low yield year mainly because the apples ripened far earlier than I expected or was able to do something with them and many has fallen before we realized it. I suppose this means that I should make a note in the calendar for next August to start thinking about apples. Because who doesn't want to process apples during a heat wave?  As I had a suspicion would happen, opening up my canning recipe book has kicked my brain into preserving mode. I spent a little time t...

I'm not sure there will be much to share as it has been a quiet week.  I really dislike books with unreliable narrators. It is especially annoying when you only start to get the hint in the last 75 pages. Then to add insult to injury, the book ends the moment before the foreman of the jury is about to read the verdict and the last line of the book is, "Guilty or not guilty? You decide." And that's it. Absolutely no closure after nearly 400 pages. I've been sputtering about it all day. Ducks are hilarious. They also like to stay out until after dark. But then they can't find the door of the pen without someone shining a light on it. L. suggested outfitting them all with little head lamps. How cute would that be? I love listening to my children's stories about odd things that happen at work. L. and A. seem to collect the oddest experiences. It's just me, R. and H. at home on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It's very quiet... and a little odd. J. and I spend ...

For anyone who comes here to work with horses, we do a lot with emotional intelligence. I've lost track of the number of times I've told someone that the horses don't care how you feel, they just want you to be aware of how you feel. Incongruence drives them literally wild it is so uncomfortable for them. (I've got stories... ) Today I was listening to someone who works with parents of autistic children. It kind of stopped me in my tracks when I heard her say (my paraphrase): <<Parents need to do some work on themselves. They need to know how they are feeling and acknowledge it. These children don't care how their parents are feeling, but they want their parents to be aware of their feelings. It is very uncomfortable for them if the parents are pretending and that is when the behaviors escalate. If parents can get a handle on themselves then the emotional tone of the home changes and the big behaviors start to abate.>> I don't know why I didn't p...

I'm in the middle of reading Jesus and John Wayne by Kristin Kobes Du Mex. Yes, I know I am very late to the party on this one. I hadn't felt up to it. Last week I listened to an interview with Du Mex about her new book, Live Laugh Love: the secret history of white Christian women and the world they made. I will be reading this one; it's currently on my hold list at the library. The interview seemed to make it seem as though the second book builds on the first, so I figured it was time to finally read it.  It is as hard and disappointing and infuriating as I expected it to be. Sadly, it is also completely unsurprising. I really just need to plow through it and be done with it. With that ringing endorsement, I do encourage you to read it, especially if you are (or were) a Christian and have found yourself being completely mystified as to how so many people who are supposed to believe in love, goodness, and mercy have so completely lost the plot. It will answer a lot of those...

I think I mentioned in my post about the Sheep and Wool Festival that I splurged and bought a new fiber tool. It's a Clemes & Clemes Lock Pop , otherwise known as the most expensive block of wood I have ever bought.  So why did I? I have a lot of fleeces that need to be processed and turned into yarn. I enjoy the spinning part, but am not overly fond of the combing or carding part. It's just super time and labor intensive. So I put it off. But if I don't prep the wool, I can't spin it. I was beginning to think it might be worth it just to send all the fleeces I have to a mill and accept the fact I should just buy fiber ready to spin. And then I tried the Lock Pop at the festival.  It doesn't look like much, but it works amazingly well. So well I bought it. What does it do?  Here are a pile of Cotswold locks that I dyed. You can see they are all mixed up together. There is no way to spin these without opening them up and getting the fibers all going the same way....

This morning G. and I made our annual pilgrimage to the Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival. We had a really lovely day. We wandered the vendor hall, watched some sheep shearing, ate a picnic lunch while watching the sheep dog trials, did a little more shopping, participated in a farm auction, and watched a Shetland sheep show. It was a pretty perfect day.  And there were a lot of sheep. G. took nearly all the pictures. This is the portable sheep fencing we got at the auction. By far the best part of the whole day was watching the ewe lamb class at the Shetland sheep show. This little white ewe lamb captured our hearts because every other baby was losing its mind and this one just stood there amidst the chaos. Be sure you have the volume turned up to hear what ~30 lambs sound like.

It was Inclusive Game Night tonight, so I'm shot. I will leave you with two very random thoughts.  1. It is supremely frustrating when playing the Wordle to get four letters correct on your first guess, but then still not get it until your fifth try because you keep guessing the wrong consonant.  2. It is wonderful to hear the students in your spinning class talking amongst themselves and you hear, "There's all those people out there who crochet and they have no idea how much work goes into making yarn!" I'll take that as a win.  Now off to bed.

When interacting with parents, whether on social media or as a client, it seems as though the concept of respect comes up again and again. I'll admit that that the word has become to me as rather a red flag is to a bull.  First, let's discuss the actual definitions. Respect can act as both a noun and a verb. According to Merriam-Webster the definitions are as follows: n. - a feeling or understanding that someone or something is important, serious, etc., and deserves appropriate treatment or regard v. - to consider worthy of high regard The flag can be respected. The Constitution can be respected (it isn't currently, but that's a different blog post.) We used to be able to respect the President (oops, also a different blog post.) My point is that there are entities out there that deserve our respect (noun), but even then, if those entities act in a way opposite to being worthy of respect, it is not a requirement for us to continue respecting them. I'm just not sure t...

I just finished reading East of Eden by John Steinbeck. I had recently come across several different reviews in various places about how much the readers adored this book. Steinbeck and adored don't necessarily go together in my head, so I was intrigued. I didn't have another book to read, so checked it out of the library. As is my usual practice with "classics", I went into it cold with no advance research as to what it was about. I did know that it took many of its themes from the opening chapter of Genesis.  Well.  Usually I am quick to set aside a book that I am not enjoying. For supposed classics, I will waive this rule because it might have something worthwhile to say even if it isn't my favorite. (Hello 1984.) This book was a slog. I didn't enjoy most of it, I didn't like the majority of the characters, and it was just depressing. I truly don't understand how so many readers find it to be one of their favorite books. To each their own, I guess. ...

Late last spring I finished a denim skirt that I had sewn using my self-drafted pattern. You never saw it because I wasn't happy with the fit and so didn't really consider it finished. I tried a few things hoping that simple fixes would get it to fit right, but I knew deep down that I was going to have to take off the waistband and open some of the seams and take it in. It sat in my studio for weeks waiting for me to prod myself into action.  The combination of my drafting class starting again (which meant I would be busy working on other things) and one too many times standing in my closet wishing I had a denim skirt to put on finally was enough to force me into picking up a seam ripper. You know what the really silly thing is? It took me one afternoon. I could have been wearing the skirt all summer if I hadn't made the process into a bigger deal than it was.  So finally, I have a completed denim skirt to share that actually fits. This was made out of five worn out pairs o...

The other day, while I was driving Y. to do the onboarding for her new job , we passed by a pond that often has birds of various sorts in it. It was a jackpot day. Y., who is always on the lookout for birds, noticed that there were four egrets. We paused to admire them and moved on. Coming home, I paused to see if they were still there. They were, but they had been joined by a blue heron. So I took a picture.  You can see them if you enlarge the picture, but I'll make it a little easier. Take time to notice the bits of wonder around you. K. is here for the night, so he got in some picture taking. Here are a few of them. And my favorite.