I AM BACK!!! HOPEFULLY!!

 View of the hills from the kitchen window.

Well Blogger is finally recognizing me again, I hope!! Haven't tried to post anything yet!! When I tried to write a post I was told I did not have a blog with them?? They were after me to try the new and improved and now I have been forced to be new and improved, will see how it goes. Can not believe the month of January is gone and I had only posted once. Our lives have been nothing but stress lately, keep saying this time next year we should be settled. First of all we have had such terrible wind storms, house had been barely here and we were losing shingles off the roof and as the shingles that were put on are only guaranteed for 120 and the wind was over that we were on our own, guy came and replaced shingles then four days later more wind and away went the shingles again so RH went and bought shingles and a lot of glue and fixed it himself, no one knows how to do the job properly anymore, when we have done it ourselves we have never lost a shingle...so am hoping that stress is done. Then lately we have been losing the power to part of the house on and off and these new smoke detectors go off with horrid shrieks which almost pierce your ear drums, specially when it happens in the night, electrician came out and found some wires burned a bit in the electrical box in the house....not a good thing...so he replaced them and away he went...that night same thing...so they thought it was something else so replaced that......that night the same thing...by that time I was ready to move out, I had such a headache from the alarms going off, I said to RH what else is on that breaker... he said only the basement lights and the bathroom fans and the smoke detectors.....I said turn the bloody thing off and go get the smoke detector from the trailer and we will put that up and that is what we did, next morning we phoned the company we got the house from and talked to the people that had installed the electrical in the house and they said to phone the hydro company and have them come out and check everything. The guy arrived after dark, our main hydro shut off is way off by the old barnyard site so off he went over there and when he checked that the hydro box was sizzling...not a good sign!! wires were burning off there too!! They replaced the main switch and so far o.k. hope that problem is solved. This is a old farm site so we are slowly finding all the glitches in things.
   I am still living out of boxes as we have not got any shelving up yet, RH has all the basement walls finished right up to the drywall on them and we have a large storage room ready for shelving, he is picking up the shelving today and as soon as we get that up I can start sorting things out, all my fibre is in bins and that wasn't bad when I had the bins sorted so I knew where things were but as the walls were being put up the bins were moved from here to there and I lost track so it was a real treasure hunt when I needed something. I had finally knitted up all the sock orders and got them delivered and thought I would get out all my unfinished articles.....well maybe not all of them...that would be too confusing...o.k. I got out a couple of them.....then the problem was to figure out where I left off in the pattern........remember this sweater, back was finished and I had started on the left front.......with all the pattern. Could not figure out where I was

in the pattern so it was rip back until I could see where I was........now I know why I dropped this project and started something else.......there are three different patterns in the fronts and you do not work from a chart...you do this row from the lace pattern...then this row from the cable pattern etc...if a person could just sit and finish the whole front without interruption you would be o.k. but even with me marking down where I left off in the pattern it was a chore, so have finished the left front...well almost finished... the last few inches is in time out... until I get the right front to that point and I can do them to match up. Then I only have the sleeves to knit. The only way to get this pattern was to buy the whole kit and it was acrylic yarn in the kit, at the time I thought I would knit the pattern up in the yarn in the kit and then knit it in a natural fibre, well when you get used to using natural fibres it is hard to knit in synthetic yarns. will carry on and finish it. Had just started working on the sweater and had a order come in for two more pair of alpaca socks, got them knit up and phoned to deliver them, lady had bought a pair at one of the Christmas markets for her husband  and he loved them so much he had not taken them off and wanted more......well when I called her she asked if I could reinforce the toes as on these socks as the toes on the pair he had were getting thin.......now.....this would have been so much easier to do before I finished the socks...right!! O.K. ripped back the toes of the socks and found a fine nylon yarn to knit in with the alpaca yarn and almost have them finished...again. Have to get the spinning wheel going and spin up a fine alpaca/nylon yarn to use for reinforcement on socks in the future.

Now this is the other unfinished article I got out to finish, why would I get two out to finish that had so much pattern in it...to make myself crazier!! This is my first really fine yarn shawl and pattern is not too bad when you work on it steady but have the same problem of trying to figure out where I left off......the dumb thing is I did spend time ripping back until I could see where I was....made notes on a piece of scrap paper...which has now disappeared.....I had had a good talk to myself about writing things on odd pieces of paper but guess I better give myself the talk again, my solution to this was to have a note book and everything is written in that, not as easy to misplace. As looking at the shawl and the sweater both laying there was stressing me I decided to tuck the shawl away until the sweater is finished.
   So that is what I have been up to lately besides stressing over blogger disowning me, having to vacuum everyday because of cat and dog hair and dust from the building downstairs all over everything........now if blogger does not let me post........I will not be happy. Now the good thing...we have to have a good thing in this post...right?........son Tom came out and got the router up and working so we can use the computers, the ipads and the printer where ever in the house!!
  

Happy New Year 2012

Here  goes, hoping between blogger and my laptop I will be able to post, We have had such warm weather and that means wind and more wind, we had a couple bad days with the wind over 140 klm, lost some shingles on the new house and half of a large evergreen broke off. The shingles are only covered on insurance if the wind is under 120 klm. We had quite a strong wind last night but did not hear any shingles taking off so am hoping the guy tarred them down. now are supposed to get bad wind again tomorrow. It is getting so warm am worried about my perennials I brought from the other place. the people that lived here before us had planted trees all around the house but left an opening to the west because of the view and that is where the wind has been coming from.
   I was so busy with Christmas markets and knitting orders of socks it was taking ages to get the house straightened out and we seemed to be living out of boxes, and knitting had to get finished before Christmas as they were gifts, plus my mother has been has been in the hospital which is over two hours away from where we live, managed to get down and see her a couple of times. Then the friday before Christmas I woke up with a bad tooth ache, managed to get a dentist appointment and had an abscessed back tooth so was on meds and could not chew anything, am now scheduled next week for a root canal. RH had put the tree up. last year we had bought an artificial tree so he just had to take it out of the box and it was a tree the lights were on, so there it sat until Christmas eve, we finally dug out a few boxes with ornaments in them and we had a decorated tree for Christmas day, the bottom was a bit scarce on decorations but next year all the boxes should be sorted out and I will know where things are. Keep saying to myself....this time next year....things will be better. Here was our tree.

Don't know whether I have ever posted the pictures of some of the needle felted items my daughter M.J. had made and gifted to me, they are beautiful. Am always afraid the cats will think they were made for them.

 

Blogger is trying my patience, it is only letting me download one picture at a time and does not want me to move them around, am giving up and leaving them where they are. Son T is coming out tomorrow to help sort out our computers and routers etc. so hopefully things will go better after that. Slowly am getting the furniture in it's place, this house is so much smaller so is a challenge fitting things in, once we get one of the bedrooms organized for a computer T.V. room things will start to get into shape, one thing about having the tree up and it seeming so crowded, when I took it down it looked like we had more room. This time next year....this is what I keep telling myself......Now this picture is not an ornament...it is Sheba supervising the taking down of the tree....do you see the halo around her head.....she did not take anything off the tree this year and destroy it......I hope she is not thinking....,next year at this time....I will have more energy.....

Hope everyone had a great Christmas and wishing everyone a healthy New Year!! And here is hoping blogger will be nice and let me post this........

Finally in the new House!!

Well we are in the house finally and so glad as the weather has really turned cold, it was getting a little uncomfortable in the little holiday trailer. They had scheduled the basement to be finished and the new house moved out the end of September.......well that did not happen...we discovered we had the contractor from hell...do not know where he found some of the guys he sent out to do the work, when they came to work, when they ever finished anything...this is the fourth house we have built and this was the simplest basement and I have never seen such a mess...the only way we finally got it finished so the house could be moved on was to not pay him any more money until things were done. I could write a book on the problems we had with him. This is the house arriving in the yard.

And here it is being moved onto the foundation

And here it sits, will look better when we get the deck built and the stone down around the basement windows but now winter is here that will have to wait until spring, RH built a temporary step up to the back door and that is what we will use for the winter. Right now we are finishing the barn for the llama and alpaca girls and have to pull the shelter we had for them over for the males.

Here we are putting the trusses on the barn, son Tom and Grandson Zach came out to help on a weekend.

I will have to get out and get some new pictures as we have it all sheeted in and ready to put the metal roofing and siding on it. Hoping we get some nice weather so we can finish it, the girls have already moved in, we should have had it finished but spent so much time trying to get the house stuff finished. Now we are in the house we are moving our furniture home from storage...we moved from a large house to this little house and we are trying to fit things in..not easy. Plus...where are all my plants going to live...right now they are crowded into the rooms we were going to use as a spare bedroom and a T.V. computer room.  Will work it out somehow!! Well am off to bed, blogger is not co-operating tonight and I am getting tired of fighting with it.
  

WELL...WE PACKED.....WEMOVED...WE STARTED UNPACKING....THEN WE PACKED UP AGAIN.......

I has been a while since I posted, we got everything packed up and moved from our old place and moved down the smaller place and started to unpack....but then looked around and this house which was a modular without a basement needed a lot of work and we had to make a decision whether to spend the money doing all the repairs and still having a modular house that is thirty years old and we would have the problem the previous owners had of trying to sell it later on down the road. At the time we got a flyer advertizing our local RTM (ready to move houses) houses that we had already been looking at when we were looking at places to move put all their last years show homes on sale. So......we purchased one of their houses.....we are great recyclers so we recycled the modular home, a young couple who are just starting out took the modular for just the cost of moving it, they had land but no house.

  The big problem we had to give a lot of thought to, we had the guy that moves the old house off and the guy that moves the new house come and see how we could manage to do all this moving on and off with out taking down too many trees. The trees when they were young were planted too close together so there were some of the trees that were really suffering, so we managed to take out a few of the bad one's and not feel too bad and hopefully the other trees will enjoy the extra space, when I counted just around the house there were more than fifty, fifty foot evergreen trees, so they were really crowded. The trees were put on the back of the property and they will also be recycled into firewood.

So we moved out to a small holiday trailer..........two of us...two cats and a dog.....litter pan in the tub....cat scratching thing under the table..dog kennel squeezed in between the bed and the wall...laptop...T.V. etc. etc. and all our stuff stored in storage...seacan...garage..most of my plants are in the small room on the side of the garage and are doing surprisingly well!! The african violets were in the holiday trailer but when we had to move into it they moved out to a friends house that is empty at the moment, most of them are doing not bad considering.....RH thought he was doing me a favor and watered them for me......he thinks when you water things you drown them......so there are a few that are struggling.

As the people that lived here before us were moving into a condo they left their outside cat here, well I was more than concerned what would happen when our Jack Russell Maxx met him for the first time plus our inside cat girls like to go out in the morning for a few minutes, what were we going to do.....the resident cat was this big black cat with big yellow eyes. So the first morning we were here out went the dog and here came the cat.......Black Cat looked at the dog and the dog looked at him....then Black cat said "Hi Dog...do you want to be my friend?....and Maxx the dog looked at him and said"O.K." What a relief I tell you. Here they are waiting for Dad to come home. We could not find out what the Black Cats name was so I gave him a new name......Batman!! He keeps the yard and garage free of mice and gophers, what a hunter he is, we are so grateful as we have so much stuff in the garage, so he gets special treats and pats.

At first the house cats would run inside and spit at him through the screen, and then they got braver and would walk up to him and spit in his face...and he would just walk away. And then...Sheba who has a bit of Siamese in her background has started chasing him out of the yard and then strutting back to the house as smart as can be. I have never seen such a mild mannered cat, specially when we were the ones that moved into his space, for some reason he was happy to have animal friends.

    Then here is the picture of the house leaving the property, with me holding my breath as I was sure it was going to tumble off the truck but it made it safe and sound, the picture I did not get was the face of poor Maxx, poor little dog as he watched the only house on the place leaving. have promised him we will not move again in his lifetime.
  Now they have the basement dug and the footings poured and hopefully if the weather stays nice they will have the forms up for the walls and the cement poured, and when that is all finished it will be time for them to move the new house on. If everything goes good we could be in the house before the end of September. Meanwhile we are starting to build the llama barn.
   Now I have been trying to write this post for days but was having trouble with the internet, it would be up then would disappear...now I should not be surprised as RH took the internet thingy off the house just before they put the house on the truck and had to cut the line where it went into the house and then he spiced all the little wires together and taped them good and the internet thingy if now sitting on a lawn chair so we forgive it for being so temperamental. Only thing I have been doing fibre wise is knitting a few socks and fingerless handwarmers. Just got the fibre I carded and pulled into roving before we moved, from the storage place, have to get it weighed out and bagged next week ready for the fall sales. We are hoping for a long warm fall.

Only Nine Days Left!! Almost Finished Packing!!

I am still here but have been busy packing up the house for the big move.  Only have nine more days to get everything ready to go. The weather has helped the packing as it has been raining steady so am not tempted to be outside at all. Have not been that well so it is pack a bit and rest a bit, trying to pace myself. Have been having trouble with my Gall Bladder, why were humans blessed with such a thing if all it does is cause you grief. Ended up in emergency one Sunday and spent the afternoon on a drip getting re-hydrated, now have an appointment with the surgeon this coming Wednesday. Just kept hoping to hold off surgery until we got moved and looks like I will make it. So far so good. Another couple of days and everything will be all boxed up and then I can start doing some cleaning. We have moved a lot of stuff into storage so will not have that much to move on moving day, the hardest thing was to move all my fibre stuff out of my sight, still have not been able to move my spinning wheels and carder......I am afraid it will be in the car with me as I go....same with my sewing machines......is my car large enough......two spinning wheels...my big carder.....four sewing machines.....two cats....one dog.....All my houseplants??........ maybe I should be taking the truck and stock trailer. I think it will take more than one trip. The other problem....moving from a large house to a smaller house....will have to work it out. Good thing is the outside animals can stay here until we get the fences and a barn up.
   I have been doing a bit of knitting. Loved this sweater pattern and it only came as a kit with acrylic yarn which I am using. Would like to make it in a natural fibre.

Got the back finished and part of a front, just get the pattern going in my head and then have to set it aside for a bit,

Also have been knitting fingerless gloves, when I knit them for sale I like to just use the rib as it fits more sizes being so stretchy, just finished my fourth pair, in my packing I found a few balls of Kroy sock wool so thought I would knit it up into the fingerless mitts, don't need to follow a pattern so are an easy knit.

Here is one of the flowers on my large Hoya plant, it was just covered with flowers the other day, was so busy with the packing almost missed them, sneaky plant.
   Well better get myself off to bed, RH is off to the market tomorrow, yup we are trying to fit the markets into the moving etc. We are really getting too old for all this!!

Another month almost gone!! Have been carding Alpaca fibre and digging in the dirt!!

I can not believe it has almost been a month since I have posted!! Where has the time gone.....packing up the house to move that is what...how can I have so much stuff!! I am beginning to think that in my life time there is no way I can use all this stuff. I see a lot of garage sales in the future and.......large gift bags for Christmas....and do not say I did not warn you!! Besides sorting and packing things up I have been carding my alpaca fibre like crazy as you know...I just might run out of roving to spin and yarn to knit with and that would be a disaster I tell you. I have got all the white alpaca and llama fibre carded and pulled into roving. Jody wanted to see the process so I took a few pictures and it was hard to take pictures while I took the roving off the drum but here it is

The drum full of fibre

Starting at one side pulling some of the fibre through the diz creating the roving

Almost finished pulling the roving off the drum

And here is my roving ready to spin!! Love the Patrick Green Supercard! now to find the time to get the tan colored alpaca carded with some merino and silk, found I had a bag of tan cashmere (found all sorts of goodies while packing) and I might card a bit of that with the tan alpaca and see how it turns out. Don't know how long it will be before I get my workroom set up so am trying to get as much as I can carded before we move. Plus we will start shearing the llamas and alpacas next week so would be nice to get last years carded, shearing should have been done but with selling this place and finding somewhere else to live and packing time has gotten away from us.
   And finally the snow has disappeared and green grass is showing up!! Look what I found in the pasture!! I think this means spring is here finally!!

I could not believe it...Crocus's!! One day they are not there and the next day the fields are full of them! It just amazes me, they are so beautiful, when the sun was just going down when you looked down the hill the crocus were sparkling like jewels. Beautiful!! I spent today potting up the plants I am going to take with me, I have been storing them in one spot in the garden. When I look at my raised beds it is all I can do not to plant them but have to keep reminding myself the people that move in can plant them.
   Well am off to bed, had an enjoyable day digging in the dirt in the sun all day today even though knees are aching and feet hurt right now.

Where does the time go!!

I can not believe that it is already the 22nd of April!! I have lost a couple of weeks somewhere!! But we have been busy, we have had our farm for sale for the last year and never had one call from anyone, we were not in a hurry but wanted to downsize in the future. Well a couple of weeks ago we had a couple of out of province call and were coming to see our place and the same weekend we had another couple phone and want to come out. The second couple wanted to buy so that is what we have been doing, we have been back and forth to the lawyer getting everything signed etc. and then have been madly looking around for somewhere for us to move to. The places we had liked were already sold and the couple we liked the area and the houses as presented on the web but when we went to look at them( pictures are deceiving)....one I think will have to be demolished and the other one had a disaster of a floor plan. We kept coming back to this other place but hesitating as the house had no basement and the question was...can we downsize that much....   but the good thing was there are no neighbors right next door except for the ones in the cemetery across the road from us and I am sure we are not going to have a problem with them because of our animals, might have to make a little suit for our Jack Russell Maxx if he insists on attending funerals. We will have to build barns and put up safe fences but the people that have bought our place have no problem with us keeping our Llamas and Alpacas here until we get fences up. It is going to take some time until I get the garage set up for my work room so this month I will be busy sorting fibre and carding fibre to carry me over until I get a work space.
    Meanwhile back on the ranch this is what my garden area still looks like!!! We have had eight inches of wet snow twice lately and the temps have not been that warm so it is not disappearing that fast.

We have never had this much snow out here in April, when we get down off the hill the snow is almost gone but we must have our own weather up here. The little birds have been fighting over the nesting boxes, hope they wait until warmer weather to lay their eggs. have been putting out seed bells for them as they are so hungry, with all the snow cover is hard for them to find food.
   As I can not get out in the yard I have been busy carding my Llama and Alpaca fibre, mixing it with different wools. Cleaned up the carder so I could get some white carded, is a job getting all the black and grey fibres out of the carder, so while I have the white run going am going to try to card most of it then work my way down the other colors.

The grey I carded before starting on the white and I mixed some superwash Merino wool with it, the white I wanted to mix superwash Merino and silk with it but I had the Alpaca fibre washed and dehaired at a mill and the alpaca was so soft and fine it broke it down a bit so have carded it with a longer staple wool and it is working out great. mixed some with some BFL I had and then some with some Corriedale wool roving I had, wanted to get the white all carded up but think I am going to run out of wool to mix with it. Although I have some cream colored llama fibre that mixes well with the merino/silk. And...we still have to try to get our animals sheared before we move.......we have a lot of challenges ahead of us......we have done it before but we are a bit older now.

For some reason my Christmas Cactus are still blooming...maybe it could be the snow they see out the windows???

Love this plant as it is the original plant of my Grandmother's and must be well over fifty years old, I better start some new ones from it just incase. The flowers are so beautiful. The other problem when we move is where am I going to put all my plants!!

I also have about twenty-five African Violet plants too, they need to be repotted which means when I am done there will be more, some have formed extra plants in their pots, so glad it is going to be warm when we move.
   Have not even had time to wash and block my sweater. Everything should be final of the sale of the place next week so will hopefully get back to the fibre thing as it is going to take some time to dry up for me to get in the flowerbeds and then I better start packing!!!