Monthly Archives: April 2012

Cape Hatteras Lighthouse

Posted on April 2, 2012 by | Comments Off on Cape Hatteras Lighthouse

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Mondays Are For Photography

Posted on April 2, 2012 by | Comments Off on Mondays Are For Photography

It has become my Monday morning routine to photograph all the yarns dyed and / or spun in the previous week and post everything to etsy. Every Monday I am astonished at how much work I did over the previous week. Sometimes I forget how much I get done because dyeing and spinning yarn doesn’t really seem like all that much work. I remember all the work on the computer I do (which is a lot) rather than the actually production aspect, so when I pile up the yarn for the photo shoot, I am always satisfied with the stack.


You can’t quite see everything in that photo, but the sock yarn on top is my favorite. I called it dino hide and that as much of the color makes me giggle with joy.

I worry during the week about having enough inventory for the farmers market, but then I look at my apartment overflowing with yarn and fiber, and I get over it. Frankly, I need to get some of this stuff out of here.

Some of the other photos I took this morning:

Handspun local Lincoln yarn


carrot juice sock yarn


ember worsted yarn

And a bonus FO:

Yesterday afternoon I finished Ebbtide. (Raveled here)

This pattern was the most recent Knit-A-Long hosted by the Knit Knit Cafe Podcast. It was actually my first KAL, but was announced right as I was giving in to a shawl-knitting fever. As soon as I saw the pattern, I knew which yarn it had be made out of, and I cast on that same day. The shawl is knit out of my Protoceratops Yarn, which is my absolute favorite. There was just enough yardage to make the larger shawl size (I did bind off one row early.)

I will have Ebbtide on display (not for sale) at my farmers market booth this summer, so if you live in the area, you can stop by and see it in person so that I might enable you further.

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Week #5 Mosaic …

Posted on April 2, 2012 by | Comments Off on Week #5 Mosaic …

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Pop-up Yarn Shop!

Posted on April 2, 2012 by | Comments Off on Pop-up Yarn Shop!

We have been such busy bees that ages and ages have gone by since any yarn has found it’s way into the dye pots. Zac and I rectified that this weekend and we’re excited to share the results with you.

Fall Back Sock Yarn

We’re trying a little something new in our online shop. In addition to selling single skeins, we’ve put together two collections- The Sweater Set and The Sock Set- that give you a discount when you purchase several skeins at a time. Check out each listing for the full story.

Peacock Feet Sock Yarn

We dye all of our yarn in small dye lots because we think it improves the quality of the yarn. The batches are small, and we generally don’t repeat color ways, but if we are sold out, don’t despair! We’ll be adding new colorways from time to time.

Lady Sybil Worsted Weight

We also still have some Yarn and Fiber CSA Shares available, although they are going fast, as always.

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March Catch – Up

Posted on April 2, 2012 by | Comments Off on March Catch – Up

If you’re a farmer (even a small – scale one) you’ll know that spring is the busiest time of the year.  Garden patches need tilling, seeds need to be started, coops and run – ins need to be cleaned and aired out for summer, and baby animals need to be prepared for.  This year I have felt the busy-ness and anxiety more acutely because we’ve had one of the warmest Marches on record.  The bugs have exploded in population and things are sprouting and blooming well in advance of normal.

One of the things keeping me busy (and exhausted) is my new vegetable garden project.  I’ve mentioned before I fenced in a plot out front that’s just under 1,000 square feet.  Since we have really terrible soil, and since I’ve had issues in the past with too much moisture pooling around the root systems of my plants, I’ve followed the example of Juniper Moon Farm and made raised bed rows to plant in this year.  They are raised and rounded so that excess moisture flows off.  I have 5 long raised beds to plant in now, thanks  to weeks of digging, a load of compost, and a day of tilling.

Right now there are three kinds of onions, Rainbow Chard, two kinds of beets and little finger carrots sprouting out there.

An onion peeking through the straw mulch.

Now that it is April things are getting a little more exciting because it means it is almost our safe window for planting the seedlings we started indoors, such as our tomatoes, squash and herbs.

They’ve had a nice sunny spot in the house waiting to be garden – ready.  Soon we’ll be receiving blueberry and raspberry plants that I ordered along with sweet potato and purple potato plants.

If all of this isn’t enough, we’ve got plans for a honeybee hive this spring to help pollinate our plants and increase our vegetable yields, and we have landscapers coming out next week to start clearing our woods for fencing. The goat shed is slowly being cleaned out to be ready for its once and future occupants.

The chickens are in full egg – laying mode and we are seeing about 2 dozen eggs a day now. I’ve been giving eggs away to anyone who’ll take them and even sending dozens off to two local restaurants, and I am still drowning in them.  I am thinking I will make a bunch of freezable quiches and cookie doughs one of these days to use up some of the surplus.

Unfortunately we won’t have fresh goat milk this summer – Milkshakes aborted her babies.  It turns out she had in fact been bred by the sheep in the fall and was therefore unable to carry the pregnancy.  They were tiny, amorphous blobby things that were never meant to live.  As I said, goat/sheep crosses aren’t viable.

Most likely I will try to breed her again this fall, for babies and milk next spring.

As you can see it is very busy outside right now in preparation for summer.  Once the hot weather hits I hope to be able to spend some time indoors fixing the wallpaper Oona destroyed and touching up paint and other things we’ve been neglecting.  But let’s hope the hot doesn’t come around too soon.


Tagged: Farm, food, Garden, Pets

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Blanca and Fresca

Posted on April 2, 2012 by | Comments Off on Blanca and Fresca

The new doelings born this morning are super cute and very vigorous. A few people asked in the comments of my last post why we were feeding them with bottles rather than having them nurse from their mama. Very observant of you to notice! While we generally avoid bottle babies at all cost, dairy goat kids are born to be bottle babies. By bottle feeding the babies, we are able to milk the mamas to make cheese and raise baby goats that will be far more valuable to the farm later in their lives.

Caroline and Zac are going to be training our new baby goats to be hiking companions! We’ve been reading Practical Goatpacking for the past few months in anticipation of kidding season. Basically, training goats to pack involves getting them to imprint on humans from the moment they are born. Blanca and Fresca will spend their first 48 hours in the house, listening to our voices and getting cuddled and petted regularly.

So far, it’s a lot of fun and a lot of work!

In between cuddle times, the peanuts are sleeping in a hay-filled box in what ever room we are in at the time.

I was nervous that Sam might  be troubled by us taking her babies away from her, but I should have known better since this is her second kidding. The dairy farm we purchased Sam and Bertie from had bred them both before and milked them while bottle feeding their kids, so Sam had zero interest in nursing her babies. She looked at them like they were from outer space!  When we lead her out to graze, she fussed for about 2 minutes and then happily munched clover for the rest of the day without a second thought.

In addition to food, Blanca and Fresca seem to thrive on affection which is a win-win as far as we are concerned.

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Pamlico Sound

Posted on April 1, 2012 by | Comments Off on Pamlico Sound

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Yesterday we arrived here at the Inn at Pamlico Sound for a little weekend getaway. It’s on the west coast of Cape Hatteras and Maggie the dog seems to be the official greeter and tour guide. We should be quite comfortable for the next couple of days.

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First Kids of the Season!

Posted on April 1, 2012 by | Comments Off on First Kids of the Season!

Miss Sam gave birth to twin doelings this afternoon. Warning: if you don’t like photos of goats being born, this post is not for you.

Both girls are big and healthy. Their names are Queso Blanca and Queso Fresca. More pics soon.

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In My Crafty World, 1 April 2012

Posted on April 1, 2012 by | Comments Off on In My Crafty World, 1 April 2012

It’s been 2 weeks since I’ve updated y’all on how my crafty world is going….

I’ve been focusing on spinning a bit, since I’ll be traveling in April for a conference and I know I won’t have a lot of spinning time so there’s no point bringing the wheel or spindles – I can knit during a workshop pretty unobtrusively, but spinning draws attention. And I knit on planes…so I know I’ll have knitting time, which is why I’m focusing on spinning.

Also the Ravelry group for Spunky Eclectic is doing a stashdown. I took a ton of pictures of the stash I want to spin down – mostly I want to spin down the stuff that is not appealing to spin, which is the white stuff I bought for dyeing, and some random stuff I bought to see how it spins (and sometimes it’s a combination of the two).

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Remember the BFL/silk that my friend Jenn gifted to me? If you don’t, here’s a reminder:

Floating Down as fiber

The colorway is called “Floating Down”. Well, I got a 460 yards of a 15 WPI yarn from 4 oz, which is pretty good yardage:

Floating Down as yarn

As for the Color Me Pretty Sweater for my niece, it’s coming along. But it’s knitting, so I’m not really focusing on it. I did get some knitting on it done Friday night, during Tony’s gig. The sweater is full into the body now, and it’s stockinette in the round all the way for a few more inches. It will be good plane knitting. As for Tony’s gig – it was not his usual stuff, but if you want to hear all 45 minutes of awesomeness (Tony’s the one playing the piano), just download the link on this page. It’s 432 Mb so it might take a while. I hope you enjoy it!

I also worked a little more on a baby sweater for my co-worker. The baby has been here for a few weeks already! I’ll probably prioritize finishing this first, and then finishing the Color Me Pretty sweater. All this spinning is really driving home the fact that I need to knit up what I already have! It doesn’t help that I’m part of 2 spinning clubs, and get 12 oz of fiber each month. I’ll likely drop the batt club that I’m in, I’ve found that I prefer spinning top to batts….but I don’t hate spinning batts, either! I really love the yarn I get from the batts, though…mostly because I get a lot of sparkle in them. April’s shipment will be 6 months in the club…I may wait it out and do a year, who knows?

Weaving? None. But I signed up for a bi-monthly weaving club, that ships in the even months, so in 2 weeks I’ll have something to weave. Yeah, I should probably cancel my batt club, since I’m doing the weaving club.

I also spun up some mystery wool. It was white, and somewhat of a longwool, but not as coarse as Wensleydale. I want to say it’s Romney, because that’s what it feels like, but I can’t imagine when I had some white Romney around or bought some. I did have some shetland, but I recall it being more downy than what this is….anyway, there was only a little bit of it, 11g = 3/8 ounce, and I did a 2-ply and got 38 yards out of it. Then I dyed it apricot (who knew green + pink = apricot? Not me!) and it’s hanging to dry now.

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Quiet Sunday Morning

Posted on April 1, 2012 by | Comments Off on Quiet Sunday Morning

This weekend's milestone: Ian had his first sleepover with House (Grandma, if you missed that story) last night!  It's 9:36AM as I write this sentence and the phone hasn't rung yet, so all must have gone well.  :-)

Ian has a new chore/favorite thing to do: he feeds the cats in the morning.  I started thinking quite a long time ago about what would be good chores to have him do once he was old enough, and feeding the cats seemed like it would be right up his alley.  So for months now, I've made it a point to try to have him around when I feed the cats so that he could see the procedure, and this week he decided (of his own volition, even!) that he was ready to take over: one morning as I was opening up the catfood container he came barrelling into the kitchen.  "NOOOOO!  Eee-eh do it!"  And that was that...it's now HIS job.  :-)  And I find it funny, how quickly the cats have acclimated to this slight change in routine: Gandalf now meows incessantly at Ian every time he walks into the kitchen, and this morning the cats woke me up at exactly the same time Ian normally wakes up, rather than starting in around 5am with the "feeeeed us! we are poor starving babies!" routine.

Strange side effect of motherhood: I'm on much more of an internal schedule than I used to be.  I only need to set an alarm in the morning when I need to be up MUCH earlier than usual, and I apparently cannot sleep in anymore: even with Ian gone, I was up before 8 this morning.  In days gone by, I would have gotten up, fed the cats, and gone back to sleep.  Not now, though.  WHO AM I?  I should have spent the morning being productive, but no.  Relaxation is good, I know, but I lost a day on Friday to being sick and I have a busy month ahead of me, so I need to Get Things Done.

April showers bring May flowers

This picture is cheating: it's from mid-April 2010, just before Ian's birth.  With this spring's unusual weather, I was looking around for pictures from previous springs to see when things were blossoming.  We had a week of 80-degree temperatures, and so around here most of the flowering trees have already blossomed, and our forsythia is already well past the degree of bloom in this picture.  I feel like April is going to seem kind of colorless with so many of the usual April/early May blooms already passed -- or will our return to colder weather make the flowering season last longer?  And then there's the question of my lilac: the October snowstorm decimated the poor thing, and I've been waiting anxiously to see whether it survived enough to regenerate somewhat.  

I took advantage of the weather two weekends ago to do some work outdoors -- I got my perennial beds cleaned up and pulled last year's plants out of the garden.  I'm really sort of flying by the seat of my pants with this whole gardening thing -- I really don't know what I'm doing, so I just do what feels right.  ;-)  I need to augment the perennial beds this year with something that blooms later in the summer, and we need to decide what's going in the vegetable garden this year.  It was nice to have that bout of nice weather to get a headstart on the spring cleanup, so once planting time arrives we can dive right in!

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