whooooosh

My Dad just turned 81 (Congratulations, Daddy!) and reminded me again that the older we get, the fast time goes. Which puts me in mind of this little Dr Seuss ditty:

How did it get so late so soon?
It’s night before it’s afternoon.
December is here before it’s June.
My goodness how the time has flewn.
How did it get so late so soon? 

Anyway, it’s been a jam-packed, mostly wonderful, month. If a very fast one. I started a new project I was sure I’d have done in no time – but no time is exactly what I’ve had. This is Little Sampler by The Goode Huswife. I did it years ago in blues for Annemarie, over-one and very wee. This one is huge. I’ll use it as a seed pocket.

I’ve been trying to greenify my thumbs and other fingers with gardening endeavors. My friend Tigger just finished consuming his garden bounty from last year – I want that to be me next year!

The kids have, as always, been busy with a zillion things: sports, concerts, clubs, and much more. It’s not uncommon to hit the ground running at 2:40 when the school bus drops them off and not catch my breath till 7:30 or 8 in the evening. I don’t know how it affects them, but it exhausts me! LOL. Here are a few shots of the younger kids enjoying this and that, here and there.

There’s been a lot of farm activity, with the births of chicks, ducks, goslings, and bunnies. It being a farm, there have also been some sad losses. We are looking forward to the birth of some baby goats later this summer, as it appears both Annie and Eve are pregnant! Muffin left us to join her new home, and we will be welcoming a new buck to the farm in a week or so.

There has been a great deal of beauty in small things – special moments with the children, trying new things, mastering skills, connecting with friends, acts of gentleness and kindness – and over all, Mother Nature treats us daily to a spectacular feast of the senses if only we look around us.

I’ve been reading. Right now I’m reading The Wind-Up bird Chronicle by Murakami (and have the third volume of 1Q84 ready to read) and In One Person by John Irving. I just finished The Wind in the Keyhole by Stephen King and will soon be re-reading The Shining. Stacked up and ready to read are Affliction by Russell Banks, Winter’s Bone by Daniel Woodrell, and Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates. I’ve been listening to lots of music, too, mostly thanks to my Pandora connection, but I also bought Affairs of the Heart by Canadian artist Marjan Mosetich – it’s sublime.

Niek’s been traveling much of this month in Europe for his job, and next month I’ll begin a new job in the mental health field. With Arden ready for school, it’s time I can get back out in the world again and will do so with a new job and grad school plans. First we’ll enjoy the sweet months of summer together, though – I’m only working one day a week till school resumes after the summer holidays.

I have no idea how much time I’ll find to get online, but I won’t be far away. Thank you for your friendship – I’m looking forward to sharing more soon.

a face only a mother could love, and other stuff

The entire week has consisted of days that were not longer than 15 minutes each. How is anyone supposed to get anything done under those circumstances? I’ve felt like I’ve done little but race madly from one thing to the next without actually accomplishing anything. So today, I’m taking it a little slower (although there are still a million things to do!) and tomorrow I may take a road trip to meet some other farming-types who live in central Maine.

I don’t really know where to begin, so maybe I’ll just start chronologically and see where I wander from there. We had a gorgeously sunny day last Saturday. Although it was very cold, Rowen and Arden got the idea into their heads that we needed to go on an Exploration and have a picnic. So … we did. Brrr. Here are Rowen and Arden fearlessly perched atop the broken branch of a gigantic tree – especially when viewed from the perspective of an uncertain four-year old.

And here is Rowen with Flip in the same tree. Rowen has explained to me that the path we followed was one that Flip shared with Ro and Nick several days previously. I’d tell you where it is, but it’ a secret.

And here is Flip, showing that he is a fearless cat who possesses remarkable leadership qualities. Hey, do you think it’s too late to get him on the ballot?

Today is another brilliantly sunny day, and it is a lot warmer than last Saturday. So of course, no one is interested in being outside at all. Go figure!

Since I’m talking about our furbabies anyway, here’s the latest on Tom, who has been re-named by Rowen and now bears the weighty moniker of Major Tom Stubbs. He’s had his neutering surgery and is being introduced to the house. The other animals hate him, though, so it’s a slow process. His own behavior is still a little unpredictable – he’s generally an absolute love bug but sometimes he forgets that the hand that’s petting him is attached to the arm hovering in his vicinity and he bites and/or scratches the arm. The arm usually belongs to me, and I’ve been very glad we keep antibiotic salve and gauze pads on hand. It’s a face only a mother could love, and yet … we do love him and are glad to be able to offer him a comfortable spot for his golden years.(I’d like to point out that I obviously took these photos elsewhere because my own house is kept spotless and clutter-free at all times!)

Well, maybe some of us are less happy to welcome him than others. Flip is letting him know that this pool of sunshine will not be shared under any circumstances.

Also taking place in my clean and uncluttered kitchen is baking. Lots of baking. Baguettes by the bag full this week, and each more delicious than the last. Yesterday, the gray weather really got to me so I also began baking cookies (something I tend to avoid because I like my own cooking…).

Talking about the gray weather offers me a reasonable segue into the bizarre storm we had that dumped close to a foot of snow on us earlier this week. It’s still melting off. Here’s the barn, viewed from the back door of the house, the day it snowed.

Down in the barn, life has been busy. The geese continue to lay eggs and because I only have two small incubators, we’ve been eating some of the eggs. I made scrambled eggs the other day and when I saw how huge the goose egg yolks were compared to a regular chicken egg, I had to take a picture. Doesn’t it look like a face?

We have some new chicks down in the barn – 2 month old Barred Hollands. I love them! They look a lot like Barred Plymouth Rocks but they’re a much older (and rarer) breed that lays a white egg (rather than a brown one).

In the house, the little Miracle Marans are doing well, and the incubators are full-up. Hoping for some exciting hatching to start soon! While I wait, I occasionally find five or ten minutes for stitching. This is for an exchange, so I can just show a snippet.

I’d probably be able to get a whole lot more done if these impossibly adorable creatures didn’t keep distracting me.

Thanks for visiting! I hope your weekend is full of joy and good health!

it’s all about the …

There hasn’t been any stitching at all. It’s been all about the weather (spring is coming – we hung the sap buckets this morning!), the animals, the kids, and cooking. An exhausting but tremendously rewarding week. And before I go any further, I have to shout out a huge thank you to Niek for taking up all the slack at home – getting meals on the table when I get busy building chicken coops and simply don’t show up, taking Arden to and from school, driving to Bangor to watch Nicky’s performance today, and listening to me blabber on about things that are probably painfully uninteresting to anyone else.

Nicky has had a busy week at school and has had two different performances. In the third grade class play, he was a mail carrier and had us all laughing at his antics.

But before Nick’s part came up, some members of the audience were pretty critical:

And others got a little sleepy:

In his Destination Imagination group, they put on a skit about adopting animals from a nearby no-kill shelter (they also did fund-raising through the year for this shelter). Nicky and Niek are in Bangor today, where Nicky’s group is competing at a regional level. Good luck!!

I’ve been baking breads and muffins and scones. After taking a pretty long break from any sort of baking, it feels good to be productive in the kitchen. Not to mention that it tastes about a zillion times better than store-bought baked items!

I’ve also tried my hand in the woodshop. I am much better in the kitchen, but under Tigger’s guidance, I’ve managed to help put together three small portable coops for the chickens. I put the last one together on my own after he cut all the pieces to size, though I still need to put the wire around it.  The Icelandics and Welsummers are loving it, and after 10 days I can start pulling purebred eggs to go in the incubator. I’ve been incredibly humbled by the carpentry experience, but also pretty chuffed by the results.

School has also taken up a chunk of time and there are no fascinating pictures of me hitting the books, which is what I’ll be doing much of today in preparation for Monday’s test. Argh, my first test in … how many years?

Wishing everyone a wonderful weekend!!

a small, still moment

Whew, another chunk of time has flown by! What’ve you been busy with? Looking at everyone’s blogs, I see so much gorgeous stitching … you are all just too talented! (And fast!) What did you have to have from Nashville? I really love Seven Virtues by La D Da and had to laugh at Noughts and Crosses by SamSarah, my fancy was further tickled by 3 Blind Mice by Little by Little, but my favorite (of what I’ve seen, anyway) is hands-down The Weathervane by LHN.

For real life stitching, I’ve finished Primitive Smalls 6 by Dames of the Needle. It’s cute. Took a long time for being so teeny, but most of that was because I couldn’t seem to pull satisfactory colors. I’m still not thrilled with the WHITE sail … but I didn’t have all the called-for threads and made best-guess substitutions.

Next up are a couple of commitment stitching projects that I have really got to get busy on or I’ll be late for the deadlines. Argh - I hate that.

I’ve been reading – just finished Strong for Potatoes by Cynthia Thayer for the bookclub group I belong to. It was a nice story, a pretty story, a very neatly-wrapped-up story … but one that I felt was more on the level for young teens than adults. That said, if you like a bearable bit of drama that ends with a big happily-ever-after, it’s a good read. I much preferred the last selection, The Book of Salt by Monique Truong.

And I’ve been baking. Finally, my family says. I always go through a period around January/February where I just can’t be bothered to bake. It does nothing for me. And my poor family is stuck with store bought bread for weeks and weeks on end. I finally came out of it and have been baking for a couple of weeks now. Here’s what I took out of the oven this morning. (All but one of the breads went to good friends as gifts.)

I’ve also been pretending to be a carpenter, which is why I’m not stitching right now. My hands hurt so bad! What a little crybaby I am. Yesterday, my best friend Tigger took a day to help me put together some portable chicken coops (aka tractors) that I can use to separate the chicken breeds – Barred Rocks with Barred Rocks, Welsummers with Welsummers, etc. – to ensure that all the offspring that I incubate are purebred. We only finished one, but a second one is nearing completion and hopefully we’ve learned enough that others will come together more quickly. Having someone there who knows what to do and has the tools to do it with makes a huge difference – I simply couldn’t do it on my own. Sadly, I didn’t bring my camera with me yesterday so you’ll have to wait patiently for photos. (They’ll be worth the wait!)

The kids have several big school events coming up. Nicky has a school play tomorrow and another performance on both Friday and Saturday; Max was invited to the state championships for his age group but because we weren’t told until the last moment, we couldn’t organize things to be away from home for three days , and Rowen will be in a school play later this month. Arden’s going through all sorts of fascinating phases at the moment, and will be going through even more soon – we were just notified that the small Montessori school he attends will be closing. That’s a huge disappointment for the whole family because Arden just loves it so much there.

Mother Nature is making us wait for spring, but this sort of stillness as we wait has a beauty all its own. I hope you’re enjoying whatever season you’re currently in and finding the beauty all around you. Thanks for visiting!

day twenty three – catching up, thanks to mother nature

It’s snowing like mad! I woke up to a couple of inches of the white magic, and it’s been coming down steadily since in the hours since then. It is gorgeous. And of course, it’s the perfect reason to stay home and catch up on things.

First off was loading my camera pictures onto the computer. So here are the fun snaps I took yesterday when we celebrated Arden’s birthday at my mom’s house. She got him a remote control monster truck, and it was truly love at first sight.

Of course, there was some extra time spent in the barnyard this morning because the animals’ different reactions to snowfall are so interesting. The ducks love it.

The goats do not.

It’s a mixed bag for the chickens and Guinea fowl. Some don’t mind it, but others won’t put a toe out in it.

And our indoor pets know exactly how to handle a day like this. You curl up in front of a warm woodstove and don’t move for anything.

This human animal has a pot of chicken soup simmering on the stove and hopes to get a few stitches in while the kids whoop and holler and have a great time. I wonder if I can haul my Daylight lamp over next to Rigby there by the woodstove?

Take care, and thanks for visiting!

day fourteen – this ephemeral moment

It’s been a nice day. I had hoped it would warm up enough for me to pound the fence stakes for the new goat house, but alas … it didn’t reach 40 and the ground remained rock hard. But my aunties all came up for the day and we surprised my mom by taking her to her favorite Chinese restaurant for lunch, and that was certainly much more fun than pounding stakes. After they left, the remainder of the day just flew by with taxi-mom and dinner-chef duties. But the morning started out so quietly and sweetly that I wanted to share it with you. After Arden woke up over breakfast, we walked to school and on the return trip, I took some photos.

Crossings
by Ravi Shankar

Between forest and field, a threshold
like stepping from a cathedral into the street—
the quality of air alters, an eclipse lifts,

boundlessness opens, earth itself retextured
into weeds where woods once were.
Even planes of motion shift from vertical

navigation to horizontal quiescence:
there’s a standing invitation to lie back
as sky’s unpredictable theater proceeds.

Suspended in this ephemeral moment
after leaving a forest, before entering
a field, the nature of reality is revealed.

day five – in which the underdog hits it out of the park

I’ll bet you  noticed the lack of stitching pictures, didn’t you? Well, prepare yourself. You might want to sit down … because today I finished three (tiny, insignificant, but still – 3) stitched things. Okay, maybe it’s only exciting to me. They’re so tiny that really, they only warrant a sort of ‘happy shuffle’ instead of a happy dance. But I’ll take it where I can get it!

First off, here’s Goodies by Homespun Elegance stitched in Currant (GAST) on a white 28 ct bread cover that looks fabulous with my Pampered Chef stoneware.

And then, when I dived into my ‘to be finished’ pile (have you noticed all my thrilling titles for things? I’m blaming more than a decade of technical writing – I think it robbed me of the ability to use colorful language.), I stumbled across the forgotten placemat that I did last year around this time. I’d always meant to make it a mate, and discovered that I’d actually begun this process. Well, naturally, that had to be completed. So here are my little Danish placemats. (Don’t be too hard on me about the stitches – that fuzzy material was a bugger to stitch on!).

On a roll, I then started and finished this extremely tiny ditty from Stacy Nash’s first Christmas pattern book, called Christmas Bell Ornament (oops, maybe I’m not the only one with difficulty coming up with original titles!). I stitched this on a gorgeous scrap of linen that I would love to have yards and yards of, if only I knew what it was! Oh, and I used some Silk N Colours limited edition silks on it: Ickle Pickle and Kanga Ruby.

What’s that? Did I say I stitched with silk? Even though just a week or so ago my hands were so split open that they caught on everything and made stitching impossible? Yep. Thank you for your suggestions. I used Vitamin A & D salve several times a day (simply because I was using it for another skin problem) and before I quite knew what had happened, my hands were healed enough to stitch again! Hallelujah! That’s my big moment of gratitude!!

***

When I was making the kids’ breakfasts and lunches in the kitchen early this morning, I realize that everything appeared pink. I looked up and saw the most incredible sunrise. Thinking of you, dear reader, I dropped what I was doing to fetch my camera and freeze the moment for you. (I wish I could’ve done the same with the sunset, which was easily as breath-taking, but unfortunately I was right out straight with barn chores and taxi-mom duties.)

***

Non-commercial moments abound here at Chateau Chaos. Perhaps we aren’t doing our best to strengthen the economy, doing our retail duty … or maybe other things are more important to us. This morning I had a great time playing with Arden, cheeky little monkey that he is.

We played trains as well as playing invisible hide-and-seek (this is more difficult than you might imagine!), pretend telephone calling, and lots of other great stuff. That kid could be a one-person party!

But of course the best family fun this time of year is decorating the tree – and we did it with great delight! We enjoyed homemade eggnog and cocoa, listened to some really old Christmas music on CD, and just enjoyed ourselves. After we strung the lights, we turned out all the other lights and just sat there and admired it. I love this part of Christmas. I hope the kids will have wonderful memories of these moments later on; that they won’t fixate on the time their brother stepped on their toe or their sister hung the ornament that they really wanted to ….

***

Anyone interested in local cooking is welcome to mosey over to the farming blog and follow along with my SOLE food endeavors; I just posted this week’s meal.

day two – that’s not belly button lint

I started my day at six am, bright eyed and ready to be ahead of the wave today. That lasted till about … 2 in the afternoon, I guess. But hey, that’s a big improvement on feeling totally overwhelmed by 8:30.

Yesterday, the temps actually nudged above 60. It was unreal. The kids’ swimming coach rode her bike to practice. I went around in shirtsleeves. But when I got up this morning, it was 28. Brrrr. One very stubborn young rooster had refused all my efforts to get him in the barn and I was a little worried when I saw how cold it was. He was fine … and you can bet your tail feathers that he was one of the first birds in the barn tonight!

My feelings of gratitude started rolling over me as I did my morning chores with the animals. I was so thankful that even though the current bag of grain was empty, I had another 50 lbs in the garage that I could carry down. The goats’ hay rick was empty but there was a fresh bale to be opened. The weather had turned cold, but that would actually make it easier for me to maneuver the full wheelbarrow over to the compost heap. I came in from my chores rosy-cheeked and feeling very good about life.

It was also this morning that I picked my ‘thing of beauty’ for a photo. (How’s that for a snappy title? LOL) Now you may be wondering why a downed tire swing on a cold, frosty morning struck me as beautiful. But isn’t it, really, when you look at it? No, stop laughing and really look. There, did you see it? And not only that, but looking at it, I was back in the kitchen and it was summertime and I was listening to Rowen and Nick whoop and holler as they dared each other to sail off the ledge on either the tire or a rope swing that hung next to it. Goodbye cold nose, hello dog days of August.

My non-commercial holiday goodness is two-fold today. There are a ton of super cool crafty gift ideas that I’m dying for a chance to try out with the kids, but they have a new swimming practice schedule that has them tied up until dinnertime. Crafting and other forms of goofing off will have to be reserved for weekends. Just look at these yarn bowls - aren’t they incredibly cool? But best of all in my little world are crafts with lint. That’s dyer lint, mind you. Here’s a whole lot of ‘em (and I have a whole lot of dryer lint!). Can you blame me for being wildly excited? I thought the weekend would NEVER get here!! Anyway, no matter how these goodies turn out, the kids will not only be able to gift people they care about from their own two hands, but they’ll also learn that a gift comes from the heart, not the wallet.

The other good holiday feelings came from going to tonight’s live music performance at the Cobscook Community Learning Center. We love going to their monthly music and pizza nights, and in December the music is all Christmas oriented. What fun! It was also great to catch up with friends and to do what we can to support the wonderful programs offered by the CCLC and the positive effects they have here in the community.

I did stitch! Not much, but … This is Goodies by Homespun Elegance (link in yesterday’s post) using Currant GAST on a Charles Croft bread cover. I chose the color because it matches my Pampered Chef stonewear.

Well, that’s it for me tonight. Thanks for visiting!

What’s that? You liked the rooster picture better than the tire? Well, you’re forgiven.

a different kind of snowbird

My morning view:

We all know of snowbirds – folks from the northern areas who head south before winter hits – but how about these snowbirds! Take a “gander” (LOL!) at how the birds reacted to the snowfall.

Other than the geese and ducks, no one wanted to venture out in the snow so the barn has been a bit full. I put down the last three bags of leaves we had raked (they not only make good bedding, but the goats also enjoy munching on them) to try to keep everyone toasty warm, but they quickly got trampled down. Trying to keep the barn floor clean is even harder than keeping the household floors clean!

View to the left of the main door:

View to the right:

We’ve had a cozy day that included a friend coming over to play, beans and franks for lunch, popcorn with cocoa and some afternoon TV, and that sort of “I’m glad to be inside” goodness. The only real excitement was opening the mail and finding these utterly gorgeous posters from the Beehive Collective – gifts for donating during the Blueberry Festival fundraising effort. They’re so much more amazing IRL, but you can also check them out (or order some for yourself) here.

Wishing all who celebrate it a wonderful Thanksgiving!

wet and windy

After a few days of delightfully warm and dry weather, the wind and rain have returned. When we had that freak snowstorm a week or so ago, I started doodling and came up with Snow Pig. It’s not much, but every time  Arden and I look at it  we completely crack up. I’ll finish it as a little ornament.

I’m hoping the return to chillier temps won’t include a repeat of those frigid temperatures we had a few days ago – it appears that Emily, the other adult female goat I bought this summer, is also pregnant. Since the previous owner obviously wasn’t paying any attention to the contact between her buck and does, there’s no way to know when she might deliver … and obviously, we’ll need mild weather for them to stay in the barn. (Despite how adorable baby goats are, we’re honestly hoping she’s just getting fat!) We do have a new ‘goat house’ coming later this month, thanks to a remarkable program run by the industrial arts teacher at the local high school. My friend and carpenter really let me down by continually postponing when he’d start the extra outbuilding … and then simply not doing it at all. I’ll post plenty of pictures when it arrives. Until that arrives, or we have more babies (gulp!), here’s sweet Emily begging for some snuffles – she just loves to get nose-to-nose and snuffle me, LOL!

With this better-stay-indoors weather, baking has resurfaced. I didn’t have time while my brother was visiting and I think everyone was glad I spent the day in the kitchen today. In addition to a couple of loaves of multi-grain sandwich bread, I made some amazing sourdough baguettes (recipe here). Mmmmmmmm. I could never follow a carb-free diet!!

Although I haven’t done much stitching, I have engaged in a bit of stash enhancement. I snapped these three patterns up from JJ’s Collectibles and bid on some really exciting Birds of a Feather and Mary Garry auctions by other eBay sellers, but the prices were too rich for my blood. Luckily, JJ’s was having a sale.

Hopefully the next time I post, I’ll have more stitching pictures. I’ve been reading a lot lately – I just discovered Sheri S Tepper and had to devour several of her novels back-to-back, and then I picked up Stephen King’s latest short story collection Full Dark, No Stars and tear through that. I am so glad he’s writing shorts again! The man is an amazing storyteller – and unstintingly generous as well.

That’s all for now.  Thank you for spending some time with me here. I hope the wind isn’t howling wherever you are – and if it is, I hope you have something tasty to ward off the chill.