Be Careful What You Ask for..

     We had a quiet house last week with Rachel and her children down in Oregon for spring break. I had commented to Linda that I missed having Lance play with my spinning wheel. It seemed kind of sad that when I came home from work the wheel was always exactly how I had left it. Rachel and the kids finally got home on Friday night. Lance started making up for lost time the following day.  I had been spinning a lot on Saturday while I listened to two General Conference sessions.  As a result I had a lot of one ply wool on the bobbins when I left with my son-in-law to go the Priesthood session on Saturday evening. When I came home it was obvious that Lance had spent some quality time with my spinning wheel.  He had successfully transferred some of the one ply yarn into four little balls of yarn using my ball winder. (Pretty impressive for a four year old). He was less successful in plying two single strands into two ply yarn with the spinning wheel. It took me about a half hour to undo the rats nest from the flyer. I was actually quite impressed that he had paid enough attention to attempt to duplicate the specific activities he had seen me do. I consider the rat's nest a small price to pay for Lance's avid interest in my hobby. I should have taken a picture of the aftermath, but thoughtlessly staightened out the mess before I realized I had missed an opportunity.

    I really don't mind the grandchildren playing with the spinning wheel. There really isn't much they can do to damage the spinning wheel as long as they don't take a hammer or a hatchet to it. Usually I just have to put the belt back in place and every once in a while I lose a little bit of yarn or carded fiber. I love the fact that they're interested in the spinning wheel. I would hate for them to have memories of me being grumpy about it.

    I'm currently spinning some dark brown shetland wool that was a gift from a student in one of my bee classes. It is relatively soft and I suspect it will make good socks, hats, and mittens which is mostly what I knit. So far I've been given two fleeces by bee class students and three others by a member of our bee club. Between those fleeces and the goats I'm pretty well supplied with fiber to spin. Linda has been pretty patient so far with the four bags of carded wool currently in the loft.

     We are only a week away from package bee week.  I got some help today from several friends today as we're trying to get the trailer in shape for the trip.  Quinten Williams hauled the trailer to the bee store for me and Don Smith welded a new hinge onto one of the doors.  It's an exciting time, but I'm feeling a bit of stress.  The store has been really busy the past two months as we are continuing to do better each year than the year before. I pray for the success of our business and then stuggle to deal with the resultant growing pains.

Serious Redneck Moment

    Being a college educated, non drinker, non smoker, and non chewer, and still being in possession of most of my teeth, I'm not inclined to think of myself as a redneck.  I do have to admit that I have an affection for firearms and fiddle music, but I still think I don't fit the general profile.  However, this afternoon I had a serious redneck moment.

    It all began with something new I'm doing at the bee store.  I bought some thymol crystals on line as an additive to the sugar syrup I feed my honeybees.  Thymol is a substance the extract from thyme essetial oil so it is a sort of herbal extract.  A small amount of thymol added to the sugar syrup will prevent both mold and fermentation and is likely to kill a troublesome fungal parasite called nosema.  The problem is that thymol isn't water soluble.  The thymol crystals need to be dissolved in alcohol as a pre-mix before it can be added to the sugar syrup. Given a choice of using rubbing alcohol or something like vodka or everclear, I opted for the everclear (151 proof grain alcohol) as being less harmful to the bees.  This put me in the uncomfortable position of having to visit our local Washington State Liquor Store to purchase 151 proof Everclear.  Since I'm making up the pre-mix for sale in our store I needed to buy several bottles.

     I visited the local liquor store at about 3:00 p.m and purchased two fifths of 151 proof Everclear.  On my way home I stopped by the post office to send off a few mail order packages.  When I got back into my beater cargo van and tried to start it, the shift lever came off in my hand.  I felt like I was back in one of  those old slapstick comedies where the driver hands the steering wheel to the passenger.  My efforts to reinstall the shift lever were not successful so I decided to just walk home and call someone more mechanically inclined to help.  The key is stuck in the ignition because I can't shift the van back into park and I can't lock up the van with my only key inside.  As I was getting ready to walk away, it occured to me that it probably wasn't a good idea to leave two fifths of Everclear on the floorboards of an unlocked van.  So I set off for home with my two fifths of everclear in a brown paper bag tucked under my arm.  I was halfway home before the irony of the situation hit me.  Here I was walking home with two fifths of Everclear because my old beater van broke down on the way home from the liquor store. I would call that a serious redneck moment.

     An hour later a good friend reinstalled the shift lever and the cargo van is mobile once again.
         

Shearing Photos

          So we finally have some photos of the goat shearing. I'm not sure what happened to the actual "before" picture so we will have to make do with  the closest thing we have to that.

       Here we have the "after" photo with Black Jack looking quite a bit smaller, but no worse for wear. I'm not very fast, but I managed to get the fleece off without any blood being spilt.

Shearing Time

      I finally got around to goat shearing today.  Linda helped restrain Black Jack so I could concentrate on shearing and avoid an inadvertant amputation.  I find the goats to be a bit more difficult to shear than a sheep.  Not that I am any expert on shearing, but the sheep I have done have always been more cooperative.  I use hand shears and I'm not very fast . Black Jack was not cooperative at all and I finally had to resort to tying his legs together.  Lance was very sympathetic to Black Jack's pain and started singing a lullaby to him to try to calm him down.  Due to my delay in shearing him some of Black Jack's fleece had started to felt.  Between the felted fleece and Jack Black's attitude it took me a couple of hours to get him sheared but we finally got through it.  He finally began to accept his fate when we were about 80 percent finished. After two hours on my knees I could barely walk. As a result White Jack got a reprieve on getting sheared today. Luna's contribution to the shearing was that of official photographer

     Previous to the shearing, Black Jack had been the dominant goat. After shearing he looked about half the size he did before shearing.  When I put Black Jack back into the pen, White Jack immediately began to assert his dominance.  He'll be the big goat for another few days.  Once I get White Jack sheared, they will be on equal terms again.

     I don't like washing and carding fibers that felt easily so last year I took my pygora goat fiber to Gretchen's Woolen Mill, a local custom carding business. I had her blend it 50:50 with wool and I was really happy with the results.  The blended fiber has the softness of the pygora and the memory of wool.  I did a couple of tam hats from the wool/pygora blend and they turned out well. I'm always amazed at how you can take something that is dirty and smells bad when it comes off the animal and turn it into something wonderful. Shearing is a big hassle but the end result is worth some trouble.  Also I think the grandkids really enjoy getting a hat that comes from a goat they know. 

    I spent the morning watching Lance and Luna while Rachel worked at the bee store. We took care of the animals, built a fire, collected eggs, and generally had a good time. They were really excited when they saw that our peas are starting to come up.  They also helped me with the mole traps. They drew the line at helping me with the bees. They watched a movie while I opened a few hives. I think our high temperature today was in the high sixties so I was able to take a few hives down to the bottom board.

   I'm having technical difficulties getting the pictures out of Linda's camera so Black Jack's before and after pictures will have to wait a day or so.
    

Lemon Pie Followup

    Last weekend my grand daughter, Madelynn, spent the weekend with us.  On Sunday afternoon Madelynn and I made two lemon blender pies as featured in an earlier blog.  I like them, but I realize that they are a bit tart for some folks.  We took one of the pies to Madelynn's family when we took her home that evening and I gave the other one to a good friend, Quinten Williams.   He gave me some feedback on the pie tonight.  He gave a piece of the pie to his 6 year old stepdaughter.  Upon tasting the pie she exclaimed, "Why did you buy this?"  Quinten explained to her that I had made the pie.  She then stated, "He should have had his wife make it."

Flower and Garden Show

     I am relieved that the NW Flower and Garden Show ended a few days ago and I still have a voice. We have had a booth at the show for the past four years to sell mason bees. I always enjoy the show, but I'm always glad that its over.  Between setting up the booth, working at the booth for five days, and taking the booth down, its been a very long week. I am very grateful for the help of some very good friends and family who helped me get through it. We didn't do as well as we did last year, but we didn't lose money either. Attendance at the show was down due to the economy so our sales were off some too.

     This year's show had a self sufficiency theme which I certainly endorse. Three of the display gardens actually had some sort of chicken coop. I took some pictures at the show with my phone, but I'm still trying to figure out how to download them to the computer. I may need to mooch some of the pictures that Linda took with her camera. One chicken coop was made from an old truck, with the chickens roosting in the cab. My personal favorite was a "John Deere" theme chicken tractor made from a fifty gallon drum.

      Rachel Kang did a very fine job as our cashier for the first four days of the show. Rick and Theresa Jamsgard helped on Wednesday. Terry Johnson, Linda, and Sofia Romero came on Thursday.  Sofia promptly wangled a position as cashier trainee. Sherry Russell and Sofia helped on Friday.  Beth and my daughter Rachel came on Saturday. On Sunday Sherry, Shannon Boling, and Shannon's daughter, Savanna worked at the booth. All of the non relatives are friends from the bee store. Having lots of help made it a much more pleasant experience and is the only reason I had any voice left on Monday..
     On Monday I had to get up at 5:00 a.m. in order to get to the Convention Center by 7:00 a.m., our scheduled time to get onto the loading dock so we could dismantle our booth. I am so grateful I have friends who will cheerfully get up that early in the morning to help me. Don Smith helped me set up the booth and Quentin Williams helped me take it down. It felt very good to have it over and I celebrated when I got home by working in the garden with Lance.



      Lance and I had a great time working outside.  We fed the animals, pruned one of my grape vines, planted peas, and shallots, and set a "have a heart" rat trap I borrowed from Quentin. I actually don't have much of a heart where rats are concerned. It just means I have to drown them after I catch them. We baited the trap with peanut butter and set it up near my new "Chicken Chateau". We also played a little bit of half court croquet. Lance stuck right by my side until Linda came home.  Then he dropped me like a hot potato. I actually don't mind that the grand kids like Linda best. I feel like I score a lot of points with them just because I'm part of a package deal. Linda is a rock star among grandmas so I don't mind being her sidekick. I always use prunings from my grape vines to make a trellis for the peas. Lance had a great time planting peas and pushing in the grape vine sticks.  Lance is a little fuzzy on the concept of proper spacing of seeds so I will probably have to do a little thinning when the peas come up. He made a great point of telling people that he had planted sugar snap peas.
      When Lance got up on Tuesday the first thing he wanted to do was check the rat trap. I made the mistake of telling him that I had already checked it.  I'll make sure I don't ruin the suspense for him tomorrow.

Sofia's visit

        I missed all but the tail end of the big  the big pokemon birthday party because I was teaching bee classes at the Country Living Expo in Stanwood on Saturday. That was an enjoyable experience, but it can't compare with the excitement of a grandchild invasion. However, I had committed to teach the classes several months ago, long before the big party was scheduled.  The Country Living Expo really is quite the event.  It had over one thousand attendees, all of which are interested in a lot of the same things I like. It is a fun time hanging out with people who are gathered together to learn about things like poultry, sheep, cattle, fruit trees, honeybees, green houses, etc. Our little display table was right next to the table for Gretchen's Woolen Mill and across the aisle from The Black Sheep Creamery and a place selling Border Leicester fleeces. I talked with a lot of familiar faces from past bee classes, the spinners guild, and the fruit club. I had a great time, but was still very happy to get home and hang out with the grand kids for a bit.

      As the Romero's were getting ready to leave, Sofia managed to wangle permission to stay for a few days.   As much as I enjoy having the whole bunch there, it is a special experience to get to spend some time with just one of the grandchildren. It was a lot of fun sitting behind Sofia during sharing time in primary. She is so very smart, just like all the other grand children. She actually conceded at the end of church that my primary class is rowdier that Anthony's primary class. Apparently, that was a pretty significant concession. After church, Sofie made a very nice venison-vegetable soup for lunch.

     This evening, I took advantage of  Sofie's interest in making things to do a little felting project with her.  We wet felted a beret of sorts using white alpaca fiber.  Sofia decided we should make it into a mushroom hat so we dyed it red and attached little white spots using felting needles.  At this point all the hat needs is a bit more drying and some bias tape attached to the rim to give it a more finished look. I think I'll let her mom help her with the rim.

      As I was working on this blog post, Sofia was busily needle felting a cat. (More specifically, she was making a toy cat using alpaca and wool. She was not using the felting needles on Rachel's cat.)  I am not totally comfortable with kids using the felting needles as they are wickedly sharp and can really hurt if not used carefully.  After an hour of relatively close supervision, Sofia seemed to have a good handle on it so I backed off a bit on the supervision. That is, I went from hover mode to frequent nervous glances over my shoulder.. The toy cat is coming along nicely.  You can see a little bit of the cat in the middle photo.