Birthday Bag

My sister's birthday was on Wednesday. I've been making some cloth bags lately and was thinking of sending her one. Then I saw a cool jean bag two weeks ago and decided to try making one. I'm quite pleased with the results:



It's made of recycled jeans, on this side you can see a piece where a pocket used to be.



And the inside:



It was hard to send it away - I wanted to keep it for myself! I think I'm going to make one with corduroy on the outside. I have five or six different colors of it - some I picked up at sales and others in the form of mostly worn out pants.

A little civil engineering

If anyone is scrutinizing pictures of our yard you may have noticed something new going on from the photos in yesterday's post. We've got a little civil engineering project going on.

We have this giant hill o' dirt in the back yard. We managed to get rid of a little more recently, but there is just so much! We intend to keep the mountain, some of it anyway. We're going to plant things in it in another month or two.





But we realized much of it is too steep to plant in and the dirt will just keep sliding off. We've been talking about putting in steps or something so we could walk around on the mountain. Then it occurred to us a couple days ago that we could terrace it!

So we've made a start. Actually - I've made a start since I've done all this on my own while Jeremy is drilling mushroom logs!



We're at an impasse now thinking about how and where to curve around and what plants need how much space. We're using the broken up bits of sidewalk that we dug out last fall and we'll soon reach another impasse when we run out of broken bits of sidewalk! But, one thing at a time.

Today's project: bane of our existence

I don't know what it is, what it's for, or when it was put in, but this giant slab of concrete in our yard is... giant! We didn't even know it was there for awhile because dirt had migrated over the top of it and things were growing on it (this was of course before we dug out the back yard). It's in the way of a raised bed that wants to live there so it had to be moved.



This little baby is 2 1/2 feet wide and almost 4 feet long and about 10 inches thick. It seems to be brick and stone and rock with a concrete slab poured on top and a few asbestos shingles glued to the side. There was once a ring of bricks mortared all around the top of it. Perhaps it was once a little oven?



Anyway, so I dug out all around it and Jeremy found his grandfather's move-it/haul-it winch thing. We attached one end to the fence post on the other side of the yard, hoping and praying that we wouldn't pull the fence post out of the ground! We got a thick strap around the block and then had to use an intermediary strap since neither strap nor winch was long enough to reach the distance.



Then Jeremy started cranking on the winch. I was afraid the old strap would snap or something would break. At one point the red strap did break in half - they just don't make 'em like they used to. But by that time the block had moved enough that the winch reached the old strap just fine.



I did a lot of leveraging with a 2x4 while Jeremy was winching. They definitely don't make 2x4s like this anymore! Either one of us could stand on the end of the 2x4s and jump up and down on it - making the block move up and down a little - and the 2x4s never broke!



Since the strap was off center the whole block turned as it came out of the hole. I just dug underneath and we passed the strap under and kept winching.



We finally got it moved almost all the way back (further than this last picture) and filled in the holes so we could build the bed. We figured the block would make a great base for putting our bee hives on when we get those someday. So the block will just sit back there in the corner, out of the way, until we need it.

It may have to move a tiny bit more before we're ready, but not more than a few feet and that's where it will stay for good. I tried to estimate the weight using Google calculator and a formula for how to calculate concrete weight and they're suggesting it weighs over 1,000 pounds! It seems like that might be an overestimate - but then again, it was really heavy! I made it sound easy, but it took us all day to do this and it was backbreaking, sweaty, hot work! Perhaps it never will move from its current position...

Booze!

We received a very exciting gift from a friend when we were down in KC. A friend of the family that goes way back, Boda used to do some homesteading and living off the land as well.

She gave us a bunch of canning things and most of the things we'll need to make wine:



Two glass carboys, a crown capper, syphon, fermentation lock, something to measure alcohol content, other things I can't identify, and this great book:



We had some awesome sumac wine last year and have been dreaming of making our own. Now Jeremy has dreams of dandelion wine, rhubarb wine, maybe some root beer, maybe some hard cider... The possibilities are endless! (If only our time was endless!) Thanks Boda!

itty bitty quilts

While we were in Kansas City and Jeremy had building duties to attend to, I had sewing duties. I sewed like a maniac for a week or two to make sure I had some projects to take with me.

I took three little quilts down (not that itty bitty, they're about 3 foot square). I finished quilting these two:







And I got halfway done with this one:



A month or so ago I had whipped up another quilt and sent it down to Echo (mom-in-law's partner) to quilt while she had a recent hospital stay. She handed it back to me all quilted and ready to finish - so I came back with four little quilts!



The last quilt has an owner (unbeknownst to her) but the others I'm going to attempt to sell. (No more progress to report on our big quilt - I'm still waiting for the white fabric to come in.)

Flower box

Jeremy's mom is off in Southeast Asia for a 70th birthday present trip. We didn't help pay for the trip or anything, but we went down to KC to hang out with her partner (who can't skip dialysis to go gallivanting around the world unfortunately) and to build his mom a planter box.

Of course, any project must begin with a sketch (and a trip to the store).



We lugged down the table saw, mitre saw, and other tools so Jeremy could do this project.









It's official - we need some of these for our house too!

The box is all cedar with heavy duty locking wheels so it can be moved about easily. We can't wait to see what is planted in it!

Kansas City Zoo

And now, a few pictures from our trip to Kansas City. Okay - actually a lot of pictures, especially when it comes to the zoo. I know zoos have nothing to do with homesteading, but there are goats...so...it counts.

Baby llama!! Is he not the cutest thing you've ever seen!?



This would be the llama mama:



Snack time for the baby:



I'm sharing less than half the photos I took of these adorable llamas, so be grateful!



Across the path were these Fallow Deer. There were little food dispensers so for a quarter you could get the deer to come over and eat out of your hand. They were so adorable!



The meerkats were in an indoor building. I can't remember seeing meerkats at a zoo before. They are so cute! This rather chubby one was relaxing in the sun in the window.



In fact, they really liked hanging out in the window and staring outside.





If they weren't in the window, they were sunbathing in the dirt...



...or anywhere else they could get a good shaft of light.



On the other side of the building were the lemurs. I think there were five or six in this tight bundle.



Downstairs were a dozen or so spider monkeys - crazy, daredevil, leaping things. This one kept ending up on a branch a couple feet away from the window and then he would fall forward to rest his front hands (paws?) on the glass. They were very curios (and adorable, yes).



Going back outside we discovered the goats!



The goat pen had one of these food stations as well. And those goats were trained so well to the sound of a quarter dropping in the slot. Pavlov's goats.



The quarter drops and they both gallop over, climb the fence, and start fighting for who is going to get the few tasty morsels.





At the end of our tour of the zoo, we came upon an area where there were lots of kangaroos wandering around, not in a pen.



It reminded me very much of when I was in Australia and there were kangaroos everywhere. Of course, it was very weird to see kangaroos and snow, together in the same place.



Apparently the boy kangaroo had to be penned up because he was challenging everyone who came into this area of the zoo. I guess he thought people were encroaching on his property or his harem of lady kangaroos. So he's off on his own and has lady visitors from time to time.

I somehow end up going to zoos almost every time I travel. This was one of my favorite zoos. It reminded me a little of the Portland Zoo which I haven't been to in ages. I'll have to check it out next time I'm in Portland...