Summer Time in June

June delights us each year with festivals and family fun. Once again on the first Saturday of June, we traveled to Pensacola's historic village for the museum open house.



The children love the hands on activities and I love that they can explore their inner drummer without having to allow that kind of noise in the house.



This year, Kurt worked and didn't join us. We missed him, but at least I was able to spend more time talking to the tatting lady. I found out she gives tatting lessons and so that is now on my "to-do" list.



We love the indoor exhibits because there is air conditioning, an important consideration in the summer. (This year the weather was unusually beautiful fortunately.)

Gabrielle got to practice her Irish dancing.



Last summer both children took Irish dance classes from the teacher in charge of this exhibit. The Irish dancing is a long standing favorite of ours.

For whatever reason, Gabrielle always finds the chair caning lady.



I think it is because she starts looking for a place to sit early on.



This year, Gregory discovered a new favorite exhibition: Weapons. Rather than playing on the trolley as in years past, Gregory spent his time learning about historical weapons, especially guns.

The Wentworth museum hosts the kids' favorite exhibit however.



Here they get to dress up in period costumes and play.



Gabrielle spends most of her time with the food and in kitchens.



For a child who fails to cooperate at every meal, she sure loves playing with food.



Of course Gregory is a soldier at heart.



He loves shooting and forts and ships and more shooting.



I'm more and more fascinated with basket weaving. Perhaps it is because I love baskets. Basket weaving may have to go on my "to-learn" list one of these days.



Wood turning is another of our favorites. I suppose part of it centers around the fact so much of spinning involves turned wood tools.

Gregory couldn't wait to show me his new discovery.



He thought it was a tractor tank. He is totally into all things soldier.



He even got Gabrielle in on the saluting thing.

After the open house, we had our traditional picnic lunch.



This year we went to the little bay front park at the foot of the bridge to Gulf Breeze.



Even with all of the beauty, Gabrielle likes "car picnicking."



Of course Michael had his little picnic meal too.



Although I didn't get a picture, since I was too busy trying to point them out to both of the children, we saw a couple of dolphin playing in the water.



It was great to be close to the water again. Naturally when I say "by the water" I mean by the sea.



A great blue heron watched us eat while it worked at catching its own lunch.

Back on the homefront, we continue to work towards chicken husbandry. Gabrielle and I explored the "junk" corner of our property looking for things we could use in chicken coop construction. We found some metal roof panels!



When Gabrielle and I took Kurt for a look, Michael had to come along. He loves riding along in his little pouch.

We were very blessed to have some friends of ours agree to spend Father's Day at our place building the chicken coop. They arrived at 6:30 a.m. and we all planned to have the coop built before noon when we would have a barbecue and some swimming.



When the chicken coop construction looked like this after a few hours, I knew we were in trouble.

After 8 hours of work, the guys quit.



This is what the chicken coop looks like today. The chickens will be here in less than a week. It turns out the bad drought we are having is doing more than killing our grass. It is also baking our ground into bricks. The men simply couldn't dig holes for poles.

I'm concerned about the hard ground since I've ordered 7 fruit trees which are supposed to be here tomorrow. I don't know how I am going to plant them.



I'm trying to soften the ground with some water. I pray this will do the trick.

The garden continues to grow despite an ever increasing list of challenges.



Gregory's corn is growing. However, the corn in the back is nowhere near as healthy as the corn in the front. I suspect Kurt spread the compost in an uneven pattern. I'm going to try to add compost to the back of the garden to see if it helps.

I discovered a new problem this morning when I went out to take pictures of the corn.



This guy apparently fails to understand the fence is supposed to keep him out. I caught him munching and squishing my plants happily without regard to our fencing efforts. It looks like he killed my cantaloupe. How disappointing. The cantaloupe were the next healthiest looking plants after Gregory's corn.

Saturday brought the Brewton Blueberry Festival to the downtown area. Despite the heat, we had a great time. I picked up 24 pints of blueberries, which are now blueberry jam and 2 blueberry bushes.



This bush looks great, but I don't think my other one is going to make it. I'll have to call the nursery and see if they guarantee their plants.

We loved the "Redneck Hammocks."



Michael got to cruise the festival in comfort.



Quite a number of people thought he was cute.

Even though it was not an official part of the festival, Gregory loved the camouflage golf cart.



Of course, this goes with his love affair with all things military.



Gregory even found a military booth.



He bought a yo yo to commemerate the experience.

Michael has learned to make our lives more difficult.



Not only has he learned to crawl, but he is climbing up on everything now too.



This allows him access to a whole new world of off-limits stuff.



It also makes it harder for me to be on the computer since he spots me from his crib in an instant. He looks like Kilroy of the "Kilroy was Here" fame.

I've been working on my prayer projects whenever I can squeeze in a little bit of time, which has not been often lately. I did finish spinning 3 bobbins of GCNI fiber for the Hurricane Sock Yarn I am making for Dale.



Now I just have to ply them. This will be my first three-ply yarn ever. I understand three-ply is better for socks. I can't wait to see how it looks. I would have plied it up right away, however, Bill Wyatt, of Wyatt Wheels recently developed a high speed bobbin and whorl for the Pegasus and I am testing one out for him. So, I thought I would move onto my Moderator Yarn before plying the other.



I grabbed two ounces of Funny River Ranch alpaca, three ounces of Serenity Farms Corriedale wool and some angelina fiber for my blend.



It carded up into some beautiful batts.



The yarn is a bit challenging to spin because the fiber is a bunch of different lengths, but I sure do appreciate Mr. Wyatt's fast bobbin!!!

In addition to spinning and praying for Dale as she prepares for her bone marrow transplant, The Christian Artisans are knitting the Elegantly Simple Shawl while praying for Dale too. Due to everything else I am trying to do right now, I've barely done anything on my shawl. However, it is much prettier than I expected thanks to some very beautiful Heritage Yarns tencel yarn. It is hard to see the pretty purples and the teal in my picture unfortunately.



I think everyone is farther along than I am. Oh well. I do need to refocus a bit on it after I have completed my spinning for Dale because one of the ladies from Christian Artisans, Theresa and I are going to knit along with the Peacock shawl later this summer.

We've been doing a bit of gardening around here as well.



This is our family's first attempt at a vegetable garden. We are pretty good at growing weeds. Other than that, only Gregory's corn looks really good. The other plants are hard to locate among the weeds. We have tried to pull out the weeds, but I am worried about pulling out the vegetables at the same time. At least we can tell which plants are corn.



In our ever increasing quest to raise some of our own food, we are still pursuing the chicken thing. We visited Barbara's house last weekend to take a look at her chicken coop.



She has a couple of Dominique chickens. I understand she just bought another 69 chickens Tuesday. I'd love to have seen them.



Barbara and Jerry are still modifying their chicken coop. What they have finished is really nice. They promised to help us with ours. And. . .

We need to get our chicken preparations going because yesterday I ordered 50 Plymouth Rock and 10 Araucana chickens! They will be here by the end of the month. I figured we needed a deadline or we would never get it together.

Here is our chicken coop today.



Okay, I will admit it takes quite a bit of imagination to see it.

Alright, this is where we plan to build our chicken coop. I can't wait to get it started. It will be great to get the chickens into it - especially since they will have to spend the first few weeks in our house. (We don't have a garage.)

And while I am using my imagination, I would love to clear some of the woods behind our house and build a barn.



Can't you just see a barn back there? And maybe some sheep and a couple of goats? I wonder how far I could get my husband to go with this farming stuff?



I have all sorts of ideas for our property if we stay here long enough. Behind the first set of trees on the east side of our house is the creek that separates our property from the next property. I thought we should explore this creek and find out what feeds it. Perhaps we could build a pond off the creek.



At a minimum it would be nice to clear a little path to the creek and perhaps set a bench there to create a quiet little retreat.

Here is the dirt road leading to our property. I just love how old fashioned it looks. It reminds me of something out of the Waltons or something.



The 7 acres behind the line of trees coming down to the road used to be a part of our property before the prior owner subdivided it. I think it would have been great had the whole 12 acres been a part of our purchase too. Oh well.

In addition to eggs from our chickens, we hope to get meat. I will need to learn how to butcher the chickens. (YIKES!) The prior owner of our property was apparently a big deer hunter. On the back of the property behind the workshop is a little hunting shed of sorts.



From inside you can see it was once something else, I don't know what. Now it stores a bunch of junk. However, there are lots of big sinks and counters. With substantial cleaning we may be able to turn it into a place to butcher the chickens. I am going to have to convince my husband to start mowing in this area or it will be lost to the woods though.

What I really need are more hours in the day. If I could just get up earlier, I could get more done, but with allergies, it is hard to do.



Like his mother, Michael is not much of a morning person either. He often wakes up grumpy.

However, there is nothing like exploring to cheer him up.



Even though he can't crawl or walk, he can sure figure out how to get into stuff.



He manages to "scooch" around on his stomach and face often getting up on all fours like he is going to crawl, rocking forward and back a few times, then leaping forward onto his stomach. It is quite funny and naturally defies my efforts to catch it with the camera.

Michael really likes stuff. At the foot of his crib we keep a few toys. Like a dragon, Michael likes to sleep on his toys.



I sure hope this isn't a sign of a bent towards materialism!

Despite the busy schedule we still keep in our homeschool, I managed to plug away at some of my projects and finish a few. My mother's socks are done.




Kurt bought me an envelop yesterday so I can get them off to her soon. Naturally I finished her wool socks just in time for the hot Las Vegas summer.

When I received notice my new tri-loom was finished and would be shipping, I decided I'd better finish fringing the shawl on my older, smaller tri-loom.




I started weaving this shawl more than a year ago and was glad to finally finish it. I will confess despite regular dusting with a first class feather duster, I raised a cloud pulling this shawl off of the loom. Washing seems to have removed the dust however and the shawl turned out much better than I suspected it would. It is a nice light weight shawl which will be perfect for our mild Alabama Springs and Falls.

Now that we are in a rural area for the first time in our lives and because we have a little bit of land connected to our house, we've been thinking about animals. Naturally I immediately wanted fiber animals, but Kurt thought we should start with chickens. Fresh eggs and meat do sound inviting so we have started our research.




A wonderful lady with whom my husband works took the kids and I too a stock show right here in Brewton. Here the children finally see what chickens look like before they are in the grocery store.




Barbara wanted this emu, but her husband reminded her they didn't have enough room for it. It was awfully cute though.




Naturally Gregory wanted to look at farm equipment.




The kids thought we needed a tractor. I don't think any of us possess the skills to keep an old piece of equipment running though. In fact, I'm not sure if I could figure out how to get a new one of these running. . .

Barbara is going to help us investigate chickens and she and her husband are going to help us build our first chicken coop once we are ready. They already have a small flock of their own chickens. She mentioned wanting a pair of hand knitted socks so I turned the household upside down for a week so I could make her a pair.




These are actually more towards the green than the picture shows. They are from Lorna's Laces in the Ice House colorway. I made up a cable pattern which is hard to see, but which turned out quite nice. I am going to modify it slightly and make some for myself with this pattern too I think.

Our weather has been fun this Spring. I don't know what is normal yet, but I sure like it. Some days it has been hot and we have gone swimming.




Michael went for his first swim in the pool a couple of weeks ago.




He looks like a baby surfer!




Other days the weather has been downright cool. On those days we hang out on the front porch and enjoy our wilderness view.




Even Michael enjoys the country life. Soon we hope to be watching chicken antics as well as the breezes blowing through the trees.




Michael reminds me of a baby chicken with the fuzz on his head.




Gregory and Gabrielle have far more energy than I and they typically end up on the swing set or jumping on the trampoline.




While posting pictures of the children, I couldn't resist posting this picture of Michael kicking back in the bath tub. This is so typical Michael. He loves to kick back and take in whatever is going on around him, and if he can chew on a duck at the same time, so much the better.

On Mother's Day I started preparing fiber for my next spinning project. In conjunction with other prayer events on the Christian Artisans list, I am spinning some yarn for Dale, who is facing a bone marrow transplant and praying for her as I do so. She is a most wonderful lady. Please join me in praying for her for healing, for health, for comfort and for joy in her circumstances.




I've been washing fleeces lately and while this Gulf Coast Native fleece dried on my fireplace hearth, I keep thinking about how pretty the colors looked. I couldn't wait to spin some of it. So I thought I would use some of it to make some "Hurricane Sock Yarn" for Dale. I call it "Hurricane Sock Yarn" because the fiber and spinning will be from the two hurricane hit members of the Christian Artisans list. I thought I'd also do some lace-weight yarn too. I'm thinking about "Moderator Lace Yarn" made from a blend of fibers from two of the moderators.




Here is the fiber all carded up and ready to go. It ended up blending into a taupe color that I really like. I hope Dale likes natural fibers as I do. I've started spinning it already on my fabulous Pegasus, but didn't include any pictures because I've got so many in this post already. Hopefully I'll have some finished yarn to post soon. I sure love spinning on my Pegasus!

Looking at the date of my last post, I am amazed to find an entire postless month has passed. What have I been doing?

Home school mostly. Six and a half months ago I had a baby. Right before that we moved into our present home and had to find and fill it with furniture. Focus on our specific home school curriculum didn't happen. We fell behind, shamelessly. So, after our winter company all returned "from whence they came," we started devouring curriculum work in earnest. I hope to be finished with our school year by the end of July. That is a lofty goal as we are not quite yet half way through the program.

I did promise to make Gabrielle an Easter dress in and around our busy schedule. There were times I didn't think I would finish. Those times generally involved a seam ripper. But prayers sustained the day and the dress made it's Easter debut. Gabrielle was overjoyed.

This is the first real sewing I have done on my Bernina. I sewed most of Gabrielle's dress with the manual in my lap. I have to say the Bernina is a good machine. It seems more solid than my old Viking. I was surprised at how much basic sewing I'd forgotten in the last two years. I didn't use a pattern for this dress and there were a few times when I wished I had.



Gabrielle said she felt like a real princess. (Gabrielle helped to design this dress with that goal in mind.) I thought she was terribly over-dressed. I confess, I was a bit embarrassed when she told everyone I made the dress. It looked more like she was going to a prom than Easter church services. But at 6 1/2, Gabrielle will probably not be interested in frilly dresses made by Mom for much longer, so I decided to indulge her. I do think I will make her another dress as soon as I can so she doesn't try to wear this one to church every Sunday. Of course I promised Gregory I would sew a shirt for him first.

I've been working on my knitting. Right now every ongoing knitting project is poised on the edge of the frog pond. I need to rip out about 3 inches of the sweater I am knitting for Michael. I ran out of charted pattern before I ran out of sweater and I don't like my improvising. With my mother's socks, I must have been a bit too enthusiastic because I ended up going too far without starting the toes and must now rip them back to size.

I have really discovered the joy of podcasting. I have subscribed to 3 of my favorite churches for excellent podcast sermons. My present favorite is my former church in Gulf Breeze, Calvary Chapel Gulf Breeze. Pastor John is so funny. I really miss him. Check it out! I love to listen to my favorite podcasts while knitting, spinning or mopping.

Last August, give or take, I decided to use some of our insurance money on a completely self indulgent thing for myself. I never mentioned it, because I felt like I really didn't NEED it. It arrived a couple of days ago and now I find I did "need" it after all!



It is a Pegasus Spinning Wheel from Wyatt Wheels. I can't believe how wonderfully it spins! Making lace weight yarn is so simple with this high quality wheel. I can certainly understand why there is now a year long waiting list. This is the kind of wheel you truly must spin on to fully appreciate. There are not words or pictures enough to convey its quality. It is sitting in my dining room right now as this is the only place I could find room for it.

On a side note, my husband believes after the former "mistress" of the house made her husband paint all of the walls pink, he had to sell it and move his family to a new house. The paint would not have been our first choice, but I don't know when we will get a chance to paint it more to our liking.

I'm spinning some fiber I received from Melissa in a fiber exchange which she organized for our Christian Artisans group. I sure wish I knew what it was because it is just lovely. I'm sure she told me, but I cannot remember.

I finally got back to washing fleece - from last year. Here is a beautiful GC NI from Running Moon Farm.



Picking through this fleece, there seemed to be wool that would be good for sock yarn and then other, much finer wool with a fine crimp that begs to be a lace weight shawl. I only wish my schedule could accommodate all of my ideas!

Naturally, no post would be complete without baby pictures. Here are my efforts to fold clothes while Michael is awake.



I have to distract him so he doesn't "help" too much.

Here, he is just too cute!