...some day. Things have been busy, as usual, and I have pictures and stories piling up. I've been sick for over a week (and now I have an ear infection too) and I know I haven't been resting as much as I should be. Fighting with this darn computer to post a few pictures isn't very relaxing or restful, so it will have to wait a little longer.
I hope all you readers out there are having a lovely transition into fall!
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Friday, September 10, 2010
Finally, those stairs
I've been meaning to post about these stairs for ages. Once again, here are the stairs before:
After looking at different paint colors we decided to go with a reddish-brown color. Just before starting, we decided we really had better prime it first. Jeremy picked up some primer and the woman at the store tinted it as dark as she could. It turned out to be a brownish-grey color. We kind of liked it.
Then it was all dry and I started painting the final coat:
And that is as far as we got with that color. One a half steps! We both looked at it and agreed it was much too dark and we liked the primer color way better! So Jeremy went back to the store and got the stair paint with as close a match as they could to the primer color.
Ta-da!
In some way, the color doesn't even matter. It's just nice to finally have the stairs in good shape and in one color! And I guess it's nice to have the drywall patches done and the trim up too.
I didn't get before pictures of the desk, but there wasn't a whole lot to show. Jeremy has been constructing the table top for a couple days. The main piece is some plywood and then he cut a groove in the edge and notch on the rounded pieces, then fit it all together and glued it.
It's pretty fantastically beautiful. Once it dries a bit more he'll attach it to the knee wall, the supports, and a leg we've got for it. Then we'll practically be done!
After looking at different paint colors we decided to go with a reddish-brown color. Just before starting, we decided we really had better prime it first. Jeremy picked up some primer and the woman at the store tinted it as dark as she could. It turned out to be a brownish-grey color. We kind of liked it.
Then it was all dry and I started painting the final coat:
And that is as far as we got with that color. One a half steps! We both looked at it and agreed it was much too dark and we liked the primer color way better! So Jeremy went back to the store and got the stair paint with as close a match as they could to the primer color.
Ta-da!
In some way, the color doesn't even matter. It's just nice to finally have the stairs in good shape and in one color! And I guess it's nice to have the drywall patches done and the trim up too.
I didn't get before pictures of the desk, but there wasn't a whole lot to show. Jeremy has been constructing the table top for a couple days. The main piece is some plywood and then he cut a groove in the edge and notch on the rounded pieces, then fit it all together and glued it.
It's pretty fantastically beautiful. Once it dries a bit more he'll attach it to the knee wall, the supports, and a leg we've got for it. Then we'll practically be done!
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Finished quilt
I liked the black and white thing, but it was a bit stark. I found the perfect (I think) fabric to go with it and I rather like how it turned out.
The machine quilting went pretty well. I did it all in a couple hours one night. Amazing. I think I mailed the quilt off to my friends one week after buying the fabric at the store. Incredible. I don't think I've ever quilted anything that fast, so I guess there is something to be said for the machine. But... I still kind of feel bad about it, like I cheated somehow.
The machine quilting went pretty well. I did it all in a couple hours one night. Amazing. I think I mailed the quilt off to my friends one week after buying the fabric at the store. Incredible. I don't think I've ever quilted anything that fast, so I guess there is something to be said for the machine. But... I still kind of feel bad about it, like I cheated somehow.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Harvest time
For mushrooms, that is. Way back in April I told you about the winecap mushrooms Jeremy had... planted? inoculated? ...spread around on the ground on the north side of our house. We've actually harvested some before now, but we hadn't been expecting them yet so by the time Jeremy found them they were dried out and not very edible.
Yesterday I peaked around the corner and saw the tell-tale sign of bulges in the hay. I sent Jeremy out with a basket to collect what he could find.
It was a little over a pound for this basket. Jeremy cooked some up for a quiche. How do they taste? Not bad. I don't know that there is anything I can compare them too. It's hard to pick out the flavor with so many other things going on in the quiche. Perhaps we'll try them again in something with fewer ingredients.
I'm not sure how successful this mushroom experiment was, and that's only because we didn't keep an eye on them much at all. We didn't bother to water them (just let the rain do it's thing) and we didn't do anything to protect them from cats or squirrels (both of which have been in there digging and chewing on 'shrooms). I'm sure we'll do better next year, if we decide to grow them again.
Yesterday I peaked around the corner and saw the tell-tale sign of bulges in the hay. I sent Jeremy out with a basket to collect what he could find.
It was a little over a pound for this basket. Jeremy cooked some up for a quiche. How do they taste? Not bad. I don't know that there is anything I can compare them too. It's hard to pick out the flavor with so many other things going on in the quiche. Perhaps we'll try them again in something with fewer ingredients.
I'm not sure how successful this mushroom experiment was, and that's only because we didn't keep an eye on them much at all. We didn't bother to water them (just let the rain do it's thing) and we didn't do anything to protect them from cats or squirrels (both of which have been in there digging and chewing on 'shrooms). I'm sure we'll do better next year, if we decide to grow them again.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Yesterday's project
A friend of mine just had a baby and I decided it was high time I got back into making baby quilts. The last one I made was in 2005! Life intervened, as it is wont to do, and I've missed making quilts for quite a few folks.
No time like the present to get started again. I whipped this up yesterday:
I decided on black & white because supposedly that's all a baby can see for the first while anyway. Maybe it's too stark though. I'm going to add a splash of color to it, just have to make another run to the quilt shop.
I wanted to make a quilt with the cirle motif and I saw a couple like this online. Most of them, however, do it differently than I did this one. They cut out a circle and, through different methods, sew it down on top of a square of fabric. I didn't want to do a ziz-zag stitch and I didn't want to mess with folding under the edges of the cirle (what a pain!). So I cut the circle out of the square fabric, placed a square piece of fabric under the hole, and folded under that circle. Does that make any sense at all? If anyone is interested I guess I can post more detailed pictures. In any case, it seemed to me to be way easier.
I think I'm going to take the plunge and do some machine "quilting" on this one. I use quotes because I just think using a machine to quilt is cheating! (And yet I am jealous about how much faster machine quilters can get their quilts done!)
I'll post a pic when it's all done.
(p.s. oops - I forgot that I have made two baby quilts since 2005 - both for my niece!)
No time like the present to get started again. I whipped this up yesterday:
I decided on black & white because supposedly that's all a baby can see for the first while anyway. Maybe it's too stark though. I'm going to add a splash of color to it, just have to make another run to the quilt shop.
I wanted to make a quilt with the cirle motif and I saw a couple like this online. Most of them, however, do it differently than I did this one. They cut out a circle and, through different methods, sew it down on top of a square of fabric. I didn't want to do a ziz-zag stitch and I didn't want to mess with folding under the edges of the cirle (what a pain!). So I cut the circle out of the square fabric, placed a square piece of fabric under the hole, and folded under that circle. Does that make any sense at all? If anyone is interested I guess I can post more detailed pictures. In any case, it seemed to me to be way easier.
I think I'm going to take the plunge and do some machine "quilting" on this one. I use quotes because I just think using a machine to quilt is cheating! (And yet I am jealous about how much faster machine quilters can get their quilts done!)
I'll post a pic when it's all done.
(p.s. oops - I forgot that I have made two baby quilts since 2005 - both for my niece!)
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Visitors & Visiting
This summer has been overwhelmingly busy, and I know it's not just me. I've heard from other overwhelmed folks too. I'm falling behind in my blogging, and sometimes I feel like we're falling behind in house and garden work!
Leaving house/garden work aside, this post is about visitors and visiting. The visitors came last week in the form of Thea the cat and 4 chicks, ranging from baby to adolescent. Jeremy's sister's family went out of town and needed to farm out their menagerie of animals (there is a dog too, but we draw the line at dogs!).
Due to loss of one chick and some replacements, they have two older birds and two younger. But they seem to get along just fine. One of them is very large and very obviously a rooster. We heard his funny attempts at crowing a couple times while watching him. The family can't have a rooster where they live so we get to keep him. However, we'll only be keeping him till he makes a decent sized meal, another month or two I'd say.
Here they are running around outside in a pen we put up for them. I love that they're small enough to hide under the violets! Though this smallness will work against us in future days... (cue the ominous foreshadow-y type music...)
Last Friday I took Jeremy out of town on a little visit down south to a goat farm, Dancing Winds Farm. It's not really a working dairy farm any more, but Mairi still has some goats, a cute farm cat or two, and some great neighbors. In fact, it turns out her newest neighbor is someone Jeremy has known for 20 years! We had a great time relaxing, exploring the farm, chatting with Mairi, petting goats, going to a farm celebration at the neighbors, and then Mairi arranged for us to go milk some goats at a neighboring farm. Morgan and her husband have lots of goats and are milking almost 40 right now, twice a day. They sell to another local place that makes cheese which you can buy at the co-op.
Jeremy ended up milking three goats. Morgan made it look so easy it was amazing. It's definitely part science, part art, and a lot of practice! Here are some images from our trip:
Look at that milking action!
Back to that little rooster now. We returned home on Sunday and made a little isolation pen for the rooster inside our chicken coop. A guy that little would definitely be harassed by any group of chickens. So we made him a little spot with food, water, grit, a roost, and a little box to hide in (he certainly doesn't need it for eggs!).
That day we cleared out an area next to the run and fenced it in. We've been talking about expanding the run since last year, but there has been a rotating mountain of stuff stopping us from doing that, not to mention the fence there. We finally decided we might as well do with the space we had - especially since we'd just carved out 1/4 of the run for the rooster. Those girls needed more space! We secured the fence and put bird netting over the top, then Jeremy cut a hole in the hardware cloth creating a little doorway for the girls to exit the coop in the "extra run" as we're calling it. They are loving the new space.
Monday night we went for a walk around the neighborhood. We came back and Jeremy went out to close the door to the extra run. He came back inside and informed me that he could not find the rooster. He was not in his enclosure.
We both went out to look, me with a flashlight and Jeremy with his headlamp. I checked his enclosure and sure enough: no rooster. I looked all around the coop, no rooster. The girls were all innocently perched in the hen house ("what rooster? we don't know anything about any rooster"). No rooster in the hen house or the nest boxes or the extra run.
Ack! Where was the poor little guy and how did he disappear!? We were both afraid he would get eaten by some neighborhood cat or dog or racoon or who knows what. Jeremy went out the back gate looking in the alley. I started looking all around the coop amongst the piles of bricks, pavers, tall weeds, etc. Then I flashed my light over by the fence and caught sight of a fluffy whiteish bundle: our little baby rooster! He was snuggled up by the fence, his chosen sleeping spot for the night. Jeremy went around behind and caught him. We returned him safely to his enclosure where he promptly showed us how he had escaped. He jumped up and climed through a large hole in the fencing we'd used for his enclosure! Our fat girls couldn't fit through that gap, but he could. Then he simply ran through to the extra run and crawled under the fencing or found a big enough hole to jump through - again, something we don't have to worry about with our big fat girls. =)
We put some more fencing up with smaller holes so the rooster can't escape now. I sure hope we can integrate him with our girls eventually. I think he would be much happier hanging out with other chickens and not being confined to his own pen.
Okay, okay, more cute goats! Some videos I took:
Leaving house/garden work aside, this post is about visitors and visiting. The visitors came last week in the form of Thea the cat and 4 chicks, ranging from baby to adolescent. Jeremy's sister's family went out of town and needed to farm out their menagerie of animals (there is a dog too, but we draw the line at dogs!).
Due to loss of one chick and some replacements, they have two older birds and two younger. But they seem to get along just fine. One of them is very large and very obviously a rooster. We heard his funny attempts at crowing a couple times while watching him. The family can't have a rooster where they live so we get to keep him. However, we'll only be keeping him till he makes a decent sized meal, another month or two I'd say.
Here they are running around outside in a pen we put up for them. I love that they're small enough to hide under the violets! Though this smallness will work against us in future days... (cue the ominous foreshadow-y type music...)
Last Friday I took Jeremy out of town on a little visit down south to a goat farm, Dancing Winds Farm. It's not really a working dairy farm any more, but Mairi still has some goats, a cute farm cat or two, and some great neighbors. In fact, it turns out her newest neighbor is someone Jeremy has known for 20 years! We had a great time relaxing, exploring the farm, chatting with Mairi, petting goats, going to a farm celebration at the neighbors, and then Mairi arranged for us to go milk some goats at a neighboring farm. Morgan and her husband have lots of goats and are milking almost 40 right now, twice a day. They sell to another local place that makes cheese which you can buy at the co-op.
Jeremy ended up milking three goats. Morgan made it look so easy it was amazing. It's definitely part science, part art, and a lot of practice! Here are some images from our trip:
Look at that milking action!
Back to that little rooster now. We returned home on Sunday and made a little isolation pen for the rooster inside our chicken coop. A guy that little would definitely be harassed by any group of chickens. So we made him a little spot with food, water, grit, a roost, and a little box to hide in (he certainly doesn't need it for eggs!).
That day we cleared out an area next to the run and fenced it in. We've been talking about expanding the run since last year, but there has been a rotating mountain of stuff stopping us from doing that, not to mention the fence there. We finally decided we might as well do with the space we had - especially since we'd just carved out 1/4 of the run for the rooster. Those girls needed more space! We secured the fence and put bird netting over the top, then Jeremy cut a hole in the hardware cloth creating a little doorway for the girls to exit the coop in the "extra run" as we're calling it. They are loving the new space.
Monday night we went for a walk around the neighborhood. We came back and Jeremy went out to close the door to the extra run. He came back inside and informed me that he could not find the rooster. He was not in his enclosure.
We both went out to look, me with a flashlight and Jeremy with his headlamp. I checked his enclosure and sure enough: no rooster. I looked all around the coop, no rooster. The girls were all innocently perched in the hen house ("what rooster? we don't know anything about any rooster"). No rooster in the hen house or the nest boxes or the extra run.
Ack! Where was the poor little guy and how did he disappear!? We were both afraid he would get eaten by some neighborhood cat or dog or racoon or who knows what. Jeremy went out the back gate looking in the alley. I started looking all around the coop amongst the piles of bricks, pavers, tall weeds, etc. Then I flashed my light over by the fence and caught sight of a fluffy whiteish bundle: our little baby rooster! He was snuggled up by the fence, his chosen sleeping spot for the night. Jeremy went around behind and caught him. We returned him safely to his enclosure where he promptly showed us how he had escaped. He jumped up and climed through a large hole in the fencing we'd used for his enclosure! Our fat girls couldn't fit through that gap, but he could. Then he simply ran through to the extra run and crawled under the fencing or found a big enough hole to jump through - again, something we don't have to worry about with our big fat girls. =)
We put some more fencing up with smaller holes so the rooster can't escape now. I sure hope we can integrate him with our girls eventually. I think he would be much happier hanging out with other chickens and not being confined to his own pen.
Okay, okay, more cute goats! Some videos I took:
Friday, August 20, 2010
My, that's a tall garden you have...
I think it must be the vast quantities of compost and manure we put on the garden, but it seems outrageously tall. We’re growing the biggest marigolds I’ve ever seen and I’m almost sure tomatillos don’t usually get to 7 feet tall. Our tomato plants are pretty big, but still smaller than our neighbors. Our beans are trying to take over everything.
It's hard to see but the beans are trying to use the enormous tomatillos as more climbing support:
A couple of our raspberries have shot out new growth and are going for a second round of berries.
Unfortunately, our broccoli are mostly leaves and not much broccoli! We did harvest some earlier and it was tasty. We’ve also harvested some fennel. Our sage has turned into a jungle:
There is something wrong with the peppers and they’re turning to mush on the plant. The same is happening with our neighbor and some other folks. The diagnosis (we don’t know if we’re right) is that we've just had too much rain . It seems to be affecting the raspberries and melons too. Beautiful fruit but not much flavor. Maybe the culprit is just too much water.
What does one make with all this garden produce? A fabulous tomato-based sauce of course!
Jeremy made this with about 7 tomatoes, sage, rosemary, lemon thyme, garlic, green peppers, and mushrooms all from our yard; and local celery, onion, leeks, scallions, and ground pork (the local stuff came from our CSA and the co-op). My goodness this was a tasty, tasty sauce!
It's hard to see but the beans are trying to use the enormous tomatillos as more climbing support:
A couple of our raspberries have shot out new growth and are going for a second round of berries.
Unfortunately, our broccoli are mostly leaves and not much broccoli! We did harvest some earlier and it was tasty. We’ve also harvested some fennel. Our sage has turned into a jungle:
There is something wrong with the peppers and they’re turning to mush on the plant. The same is happening with our neighbor and some other folks. The diagnosis (we don’t know if we’re right) is that we've just had too much rain . It seems to be affecting the raspberries and melons too. Beautiful fruit but not much flavor. Maybe the culprit is just too much water.
What does one make with all this garden produce? A fabulous tomato-based sauce of course!
Jeremy made this with about 7 tomatoes, sage, rosemary, lemon thyme, garlic, green peppers, and mushrooms all from our yard; and local celery, onion, leeks, scallions, and ground pork (the local stuff came from our CSA and the co-op). My goodness this was a tasty, tasty sauce!
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