Misc. Stuff From Being Behind in Blogging

Last year I spun up some misc. wool in red and green, plied it with red fun fur, spun in some plastic candies, and laid it aside wondering what to do with it.

This year, Des wanted us to card some green and red merino for her with some white angelina nylon sparkle. She spun it up into a self-striping yarn and hated it.

She gave it to me, Diantha and I knitted it up into this wild and funny scarf, listed it in my HeartFeltFun Boutique, and it sold in 3 days.

Funny how life works sometimes.

Des knitted these Eliza Doolittle type gloves out of the same sock yarn she had hand dyed and knit my piebald (now blue and purple) socks. Then she overdyed them and came up with this lovely maroon shade. Very pretty.

We've been pretty busy, trying to fill orders for Christmas. Artemas got featured on Springtree Road's blog with his knitting needles and sold 6 sets of them last week. You should go to her Etsy shop and check out her handspun yarns. Gorgeous!

Richard's soaps are selling almost as fast as we can make replacement batches. His shop has some nice, small gift sets in it, so stop by and see him sometime! Handmade soaps make great tips for teachers, hairdressers, or anyone who has served you exceptionally during the year. Great stocking stuffers too!
We did Thanksgiving early, because my parents were down from Ohio the weekend before. So I cooked a meal fit for a king, including the best from-scratch gravy you ever tasted, and homemade pies. No, folks, I do not buy pie crusts. My kids say store-bought crusts are an abomination. Are these beautiful or what?

For actual Thanksgiving day, we went up to Greeneville, TN to be with our SIL Tony's dad's family. We all had a great time, ate, did some shooting out in the field (very cold & windy though), and had a safe trip up and back. They are terrific folks to be "related" to.

A couple days later, we went up to Des' house. The ham she baked for Thanksgiving had disappeared up in Greeneville like Houdini, so she made a turkey, just to have leftovers.

We helped her wreck it in true large-family style.

And I cut my hand doing the dishes. No alcohol was involved in this incident, despite the Pure White Trash shirt that looks like a Pabst Blue Ribbon label.

Flying Shelters, Oh My

We went out last night and did our preliminary setup at the Smoky Valley Rally. We had a 10' x 15' metal-pipe frame shelter with canvas roof, and a 9' x 13' screen room for our personal stuff (chairs, cooler, and projects to work on). The "rules" state that vendors must be on-site by 10 AM and must remain open and on-site until 9:30 PM. Why til then, I will never know, as it gets dark at 9PM, and there are NO lights in the field where they have us set up. hmmm. This morning we showed up bright and early, finished the setup, laid out all the displays, Richard left Diantha and I there on our own, and we and sat down.

It started to rain.

We moved all the displays to the center of the shelter, covered the moisture-attracting soaps with a quilt, and waited. For over an hour.

The rain quit, the sun came out (thank you for the faith, Annie). We moved the displays back into position and secured them, and waited.

We knitted. We carded a couple batts, one to sell, and one for Diantha to spin. She did a little spinning. We took Portolet potty turns. We each ate a sandwich. We got bored and did a circuit of the field, probably about 4 acres, with 12 whole vendors.

We had ONE retired biker and his brother wander thru about 1:30, waiting for the group motorcycle ride to start at 3. They were very interested in the carding and spinning. We had the 12yod of one of the vendors come over and also be very interested in the carding and spinning.

At 3 PM, it started to thunder. We moved the displays back to the middle of the shelter, the chairs to the center of the screen room, put away anything we weren't working on right this second, and sat down.

THREE minutes later, a gust of wind picked up our 10' x 15' metal-frame, canvas-roof shelter and sent it flying.

I caught one pole, Diantha the other, and we held it. The guys who had been setting up a band in the band shelter came running and helped us carry it back to place and set it down. No stakes. One guy says, only way this is gonna stay put is if we take the legs off and set it on the ground.

The flying shelter had knocked over the stacking shelves, rack with the quilted bags, table with the soaps. We took the legs off and set it down, making a giant pup tent. I crawled around on the grass in the rain, picking up soaps that I hope aren't ruined. I threw them all on the tablecloth, wrapped it up and pitched it under the tent. I crawled around under the tent and picked up bags, knitted items, and yarns, so they wouldn't stay on the ground and get damp.

While I was doing this, the wind tried to blow the screen room away too. I told Diantha to hang on while I got the car. She threw in bins of more soap, the bin of "stuff," and climbed in. I took the poles off the screen room, set the domed roof down over the chairs and we got the HECK out of Dodge.

Rules or no rules, I got 3 hours sleep last night and this was the 2nd storm of the day with NO customers. I was done. So done.

The National Weather Service is predicting rain until early afternoon tomorrow. So, rules or no rules, I am staying home until the rain stops. Then we shall go out, try to repair the damages, and see if we can make some money!

Yarn and Soap and Cookies, oh YUM

I am not getting enough SOCK done.

But I did get several new items listed in Richard's Rossoaps Shop at Etsy, including his SHEteam May Challenge, Misty Mountain Rose.

Would you like to see a picture of our very sophisticated and well-engineered Soap Drying Facility? Here it is. These are shelves near the ceiling on the far-from-the-tub (which we don't use because I don't have the shower tiled yet), narrow end of the room. At least our bathroom always smells nice!

I also went walking. Despite dieting and exercising, I was only down 4 pounds in the last 5 weeks. That is all I ever lose, 4 pounds. But in the last 2 days, I am UP 6 pounds!! What the heck?? How does one gain 6 pounds in 2 days?

I got a recycled yarn done, finally. Mine is my SHEteam May challenge (theme is Flowers), Second-Hand Rose, an "Old Floozy Girl" yarn from a wool-blend sweater. Desiree says she thinks I might be a little much for SHEteam. ~~sigh~~ I wouldn't be surprised, story of my life. Seems I am a little much for a LOT of people.

I also got a little spinning done. This one I think will be Diantha's May challenge in her Fluff4ewe Shop. Now that I have got it started, I will probably have her spin it. I was just too curious what it was going to look like! And, for now it is a secret!

Beverly says that cookies are NOM NOM. Tonight we made cookies. We made Civil War cookies, which are simple sugar cookies with a little nutmeg in them. Very light and good. Then the girls frosted about half the batch with lemon frosting, and that was good too.

Then just to keep Richie happy, because he insists that ALL cookies should have chocolate in them, the girls made Chopped Chocolate Cookies. Basically Toll House cookies, but I was out of chocolate chips. So I took a brick of semi-sweet chocolate and chopped up about 6 to 8 oz. of it for them to use. Again, very light and good cookies.

I also got several loads of laundry folded, sorted, and cleared OUT of my bedroom so that we have more than just a little path to the bathroom.

Veronica decided (after 5 on Friday, when I couldn't call the place) that for her birthday, she would like for us all to go and tour the Mayfield Dairy Farm and Ice Creamery about 30 miles from here. Since my parents are in town for the Street Rod run in Knoxville, until tomorrow, I have to get up at the crack of dawn to call there to see if 16 of us can get in for a tour. And since it is 2 AM, I ought to go to bed.

Goodnight, everybody!

What We Did and What We're Gonna Do

Yesterday I made homemade salsa at 1AM. Then even Wonder Juggs Woman has to sleep sometime. Up at 8 and fried Cinnamon Crispas to take the the last 4-H meeting of the year. I made enough to fill a 5-quart plastic ice cream bucket. They were light and crispy and good, not greasy at all.

On to the meeting, where we had a Mexican food brunch and drilled the kiddies on questions from the Clover Bowl (which I am still not quite sure what that is, something like a spelling bee I think). Number one son calls me and says, are you heading past where I work? Cause I broke my belt buckle...

Home again, to get said belt buckle. Oh and he left his money on the desk. Oh and his gray cards on the floor... can you bring them? Make everyone use the bathroom while we are home. BACK in the car... up to WM where thank God, Diantha is now old enough to send in the store with a list and money, while I go across the parking lot to the UPS store for soap label coopies. Pick her up and hit the road...

Stop in Farragut at the Super-Duper Grocery to drop off son's stuff. Stop at the Goodwill for baskets. Go into Knoxville to Sam's for bags for the craft shows (I was SO disappointed, they no longer carry white paper bags) and gravy for tonight's hurry-up supper. Oh and school books while they had them. And, Mrs. Ross, your membership is expired...

BACK to Dollar Tree next to WM for tissue paper and stickers. Then HOME! We got home just in time for Des to pull in behind us, and my dh who was now off work for the day to pull in behind her.

Cleaned off the table, where Des laid out and pinned 2 lap quilts. Then she and Diantha bagged up and tagged about 150 soap samples for the show. I spray-painted baskets and made a new soap label and untangled 117 yards of the most tangled handspun yarn (not ours) you ever saw, and cleaned off kitchen counters. Then we made dinner (enchiladas).

After dinner we tagged all my HeartFeltFun shop items for the craft show. Richie sat at the table and wrapped soaps. After that I was too tired to do anything else, and it was after 11 PM anyway, so we called it a night.

Today we have to:

finish wrapping soaps

make muffins for tonight's 4-H regionals

Write recipe for muffins and print for judges

make biscuits for tonight's 4-H regionals

Write & print recipe for biscuits for judges

finish 3 items for the craft show

card wool and alpaca fiber

go get copies of one more soap label

take some samples to the PO

buy a change bank from the bank

call the lady about the craft show tomorrow

find the stand to the other dress dummyfind clothes for the dress dummies

be at the 4-H regionals by 5:30

Judge biscuits, muffins, cookies, and cakes for the regionals

come home and load the car with table, shelves, dummies, totes of merchandise for the craft show tomorrow.

I need some caffeine.

Soap and Second Sock Syndrome

Beverly likes poptart-type toaster pastries. See? Mostly she wants me to break off all the crust with no jelly in it. Then she likes to eat half the body of the pastry and then get little blobs of indeterminate flavors of jelly on the floor. On her hands. On the soles of her feet, and on the side of the refrigerator. Oh and on her face. See?



I FINALLY got a new listing up. "Misty," one of the Floozy Girls. Misty's parents named her for the morning mist rolling in off the ocean at Cape May, where Misty liked to play under the boardwalk when she was little (and a little bigger too!). She is aptly named, because that is about what she has inside her head. She makes up for it by the size of her bust, which she stuffs into fluffy, pastel color sweaters that are 2 sizes too small.

Yesterday we made Lavender Baby soap. Mmmm! This morning I cut it into bars, and took a picture, because it was pretty. Smells pretty, too. Baby fragrance with just a little Lavender EO. This is my daughter's favorite to use on her kids. Available in Richard's Rossoaps shop in a week or two, when it's cured. I love it when we make soap, because my house is a good-smell-o-rama.

Ok just a little more stuff about soap. Richard decided we should do a plain Lard and Lye soap, just for the tourists and ignorant people. Not that it is ignorant to make soap out of lard. On the contrary, lard actually makes a very hard, white bar of soap with a creamy lather that is soft to the skin, and, unlike beef tallow (which is in ALL commercial soaps... the label will say, "sodium tallowate"), does not contribute to eczema or acne. What I mean is for the tourists who come here to Eastern TN and expect all of us to be barefooted, wearing our hair in a bun with a long dress and apron (or bib overalls), and chickens running around in the yard. Hey, just because I have chickens doesn't mean...

But I digress. We will go to craft shows and people will pick up our wonderful, beautiful soaps, and the conversation will go like this:

THEM: "Don'tcha have any of that there LAAA soap?"
US: "All soaps have lye in them. It is what turns the oils into soap, and isn't active in the final product. All our soaps are just soap, with no remaining lye in them."
THEM: "No, I mean, you know, LAAAA soap, like Mee-maw usta make, with lard 'n' such."
US: "No, all our soaps are made with vegetable oils and goat's milk, which has amino acids like human skin, and so they are very good for your skin."
THEM: "Waaaaall, I don't know about all that stuff. I jest remember ma Mee-maw makin' Laaa soap, and I shore would like to get hold of some of THAT stuff."

So we made lard and lye soap. We were going to call it Granny's whatever whatever, but the grandkid that can talk calls Richard "Grumpy," so we called it Grumpy's Back Porch Lard 'n' Lye Soap. Actually he mixes the lye on the FRONT porch, where this picture was taken. But who wants to split hairs? This is the label I came up with. My daughter says he looks demented, which should suit the local crowd just fine.

On my last note of the night: I am knitting a sock again. Last Spring I knitted a pair of socks for Diantha, which she loves. Then I started on a sock for Veronica, and knitted it in June and July. I might note that I would knit on my daily walk but no other time because I just don't have much sitting-around time. Anyway I finished the first and started the second, and had to lay it aside to do Christmas presents in order to get them done in time. Which I didn't, for all of them. ~~ sigh ~~ Anyway, in all my delay in getting back to knitting the ssssssssSSSecond sock (do I actually have Second Sock Syndrome? I think I do! Horrors!), some little person around here took my needles out. Size ONE needles. In Tofutsies yarn, which is the splittiest little yarn you ever don't want to knit on. So I have understandably put off messing with it.

The other day Veronica, my good-naturedest child in the WORLD, walked thru the kitchen and somehow her completed sock was laying on the corner of the island. She picked it up and looked at it, then wistfully said, "Mommy, I LOVE my sock. And I will love the other one when you are finished, even if you don't finish it in time for my birthday."

Her birthday is May 5th. I am knitting quickly.

Dude, Someone Blogged Me

Today I went to the firing range with my friend (and my daughter's MIL) Cheryl. We had a nice time shooting. My Lorcin .380 misloaded every time I tried to fire it, so I put it away. I don't get it; Richard thoroughly cleaned and oiled it before I went. oh well... Afterward we went to Wild Wings for lunch, which was more fun than shooting guns together. She didn't want to take home the targets, because ex-hubby-slash-SO, a retired Highway Patrolman, gets nervous about guns. She sent them home with me. I said I was going to Blog about them so the whole internet could see them. She just laughed and said, "Don't BLOG me!" So for tonight, I didn't post the pics. Tonight. Muahahaha...

On the way home my little old Suzuki was misfiring also, like one of the spark plugs is fouled or something. A project for tomorrow, maybe. So I have had a Bad Mechanical Day.

Someone did Blog me today! She wrote about recycled yarns on Etsy and included me! Thanks!

I snagged a main Treasury last night in Richards' Rossoaps shop at Etsy. Here on the left is a screen shot... it is called Cardinal Sins. What fun!

EmptyNestEgg also included my Blue Bell flower pin in her main Treasury, called She Stopped to Smell, which is all items from the SHE team. Thank you!

On to something we actually did. LoL. For Diantha's birthday last week, I gave her some random lavender and purple wool balls (I spun my felted slippers from them, passed some on to another knitter, sent some carded with other fibers to Japan, and gave Diantha the rest with some lavender Cashmere yarn bits mixed in), some cleaned and dyed orange Corriedale fleece, and some teal Merino. Yesterday she carded them together. She didn't divide the merino quite evenly, so ended up with a little extra purple and orange. She spun them up together last night and got 28 yards of the coolest, funky yarn! It will be great trim on something.

Yesterday we made Great Grass soap. It has hemp oil in it, and minced alfalfa... and the soap is actually colored with grass! We used lavender, cedarwood, and spruce essential oils for a deep, herbal fragrance. Wonderful!

2 Pink Ladies

Des kept Artemas last night so sometime today we had to go get him. But first (I have that syndrome a LOT)I did some yarns for my my7kids yarn shop at Etsy. Here is a peek at a couple of them... on the left we have Size Doesn't Matter, Baby (a mini skein of course, LoL) and on the right we have Date the Smart Girl. There are a couple more, but you will just have to go see!

This morning I caught Beverly with the camera. She took a 2-yr.-old's eye view of... something. When I asked her, I think she said Feet. I don't take pics of my own feet, but it seemed important to her. I can see a real artist emerging here, can't you?

Richard and I also made a new soap... it has chlorophyl for color, finely minced alfalfa, and is fragranced with essential oils of Lavender, Cedarwood, and Spruce. Very herbal and deep! And since it also has a little bit of hemp oil in it, we are calling it Great Grass.

I have been working on a TOP SECRET project... my Weird and Ugly Fabric Challenge Quilt. My online group has this challenge twice a year, and it is really fun! We have to sign up for the challenge and receive the fabric without knowing what the HECK it is going to look like. Then we have about 5 months to make anything we can out of it (one lady even duct-taped hers to cardboard once). You would not believe the artistic quilts that come out of this! We get menial prizes for arbitrary categories. It isn't the prize that matters, it is the stretching of our quilting muscles! Well anyway, it has taken the place of the block-a-days for the time being, since I have 3 other burgeoning quilters to help out with this... and it is due Apr. 1st. I am not allowed to show my quilt until after the voting, but here are 2 sneak peeks. LoL!

This evening at Des' house, we had homemade waffles and sausage for dinner. The two babies (my Betsy at age 2 and Des' Hannah who will be 1 on the 10th of April) happened to be wearing the same color pink, along with pink cheeks from being out in the sun Friday. Beverly was playing under the table, to be close to big sister Des, who was sewing at the table. Not to be outdone, Hannah had to venture under also. So I took pics of the two Pink Ladies.

And if that weren't enough fun for everyone, Des decided that Jeremiah and Hannah should have a bath, and naturally Betsy would NOT be left out of that one. So last of all, here are the Three Redneck Babies in a Tub. Gooooooood night, everybody!