Dyeing and Spindles

I've been busy dyeing these last few days and hope to have it listed on etsy as soon as it dries completely. Dale has also been busy making spindles as fast as he can I should have some ready to list tomorrow.

If all goes as planned and something doesn't happen to change things we are going to take a week of actual vacation later this month. Usually when we take a week or a few days of vacation it's to work on something around the house or yard but this time we are hopeing to actually go somewhere. We are hoping to have extras items made so when we come back we won't have to scramble so hard to get things back up and running. I'll talk more about our plans later I don't want to jinxs anything. Hopefully there will be smoke on the mountains......not floods that's all I'll say. :) Back to work for now........

Window Shopping

I sometimes like to go to the etsy home page and scroll through the recently listed items, I call it 'window shopping'. One night several weeks ago this listing flashed by on the screen ... www.etsy.com/listing/54136939/needle-felted-cat-pinbroach it is a gold and white cat needle felted and made into a pin. When I saw it I at once wished she had made it into a calico, like my Patches. I thought about it for a couple of days and finally decided to ask the lady if she would consider making a calico pin. Now I wasn't thinking a custom order exactly just a generic calico would make me happy, to my surprise she asked for a photo. She did tell me she had never made a special order but she would try and if I wasn't happy I didn't have to buy it and she would then just go back to the original plan and make it generic. I sent her to this blog so she could see a photo of Patches (see August post). A few days passed and she sent me this photo back. At first I thought it was just 2 photos of Patches but then I looked closer........OOHH! MY GOSH! I LOVE IT! So of course I had to have it!
It took a few weeks for it to arrive form Eastern Europe......

This is what I found when I opened the package........

A pretty box and inside was this............

...... the back of the pin.

If you get a chance go check this ladies shop.......you won't be sorry you did! I love my pin and I love window shopping........

Meet Pearl

Meet Pearl, the new addition to our house of cards, she is a 3-1/2 month old rescue kitten we recently adopted. It has been 12 long years since I had a kitten in the house.... I had forgotten all the trouble they can get into. LOL!

Here she is getting between me and work on the computer. Its hard to get a good photo of a moving target, she has already moved into our hearts and into the family. She sleeps all night long, only getting up to go find the potty and then she quietly goes back to bed with Josh. She does not like to be left alone and will cry until you go find her, I think she is beginning to make a game out of it. I hope everyone else has a cluttered computer desk like mine....LOL!

We have a bridge!!

Yes, we finally have a bridge, the side rails and hand rails aren't up yet but it is usable. We will get them up over time and I am going to place some solar lights on the post so I can see at night, so it still has a few minor things to be done. Here is a photo of the creek before.....now that doesn't look like much does it!?








When they say flash floods in Creek County you better believe it looks like something. It can get from 5 foot to 20 feet across and you do not want to wade across it with tree limbs as big as you leg flashing through there. That water is moving.......we built the bridge at the narrowest point of the water flow. This is what it looks like now...

We also had a grass fire in the upper left of this photo so that is why the water hose is drug across and up the hill. Sorry about the messy yard....... that's Dale's wood barn way up on top of the hill in the back. The smaller barn to the right was his little barn but now it's the Angora goats, Angora rabbits, and chicken house. It's in 3 sections you just can't see it for the shade and trees.
Anyway, so we are back to work in the big barn working on floor inkles, wool pickers, and turkish spindles. Please be patient with us while we get caught up again! Sometimes life just gets in the way of playing.......

Best laid plans and all that...

Well we had planned on taking a week off from the etsy store to work on a few things around the house and hopefully find time to make items for the store. You know what they say the best laid plans......
We did get the yard mowed and trimmed....the trimming part was way past due... I don't think the two cottontail bunnies are very happy with us trimming all of their hiding places down.
Our main goal was to build a bridge across the creek so that when we have a flash flood we can get back home. The wood barn is on one side of the creek and the house is on the other. When we are working out in the barn (no windows) and it begins to rain we don't know it until we open the door to a big surprise. Anyway we were going to build a bridge.....we got the cement part done and then Dale had to go back to the Lowe's..... He came home telling me all about the sale they were having and I maybe we should go have a little look. What the heck it was too hot to work outside so off we went to Lowe's.
The little item he was telling me about was already sold so we looked at the others that were on sale. We came home with a new washer and dryer on order to be delivered in a week. Now my 15 year old patched up several times washer and dryer needed to be moved out so we could get the new ones set up when they were delivered in a week. The walls hadn't been painted in a while so we painted the walls, then we decided to check on the plumbing and found a leaky pipe so of course we had to fix the plumbing. Then the cabinets looked a bit dingy so we decided to replace them after ALL the building supply store was having a sale. Then we decided a new kitchen table would be nice after all our 20 year old one was beginning to split a bit at the base. Sooooo a week later I have a nice freshly painted and plumbed laundry room with a brand new washer and dryer. The kitchen has a new dining table and the bridge...well the cements dry now. Unfortunately we didn't have a chance to work on items for the etsy store so things will be a little sparse for awhile..........

Patches 1996-2010

I lost a good friend this week....... Patches was born May 10th, 1996 and died of bone cancer August 4th, 2010. What can I say ...... I can't even find words......... Patches was always a heathy cat I never had to worry about her getting sick. She suddenly went from 16 pounds down to 6 pounds, I never even thpought about cancer....... if your reading this and your an animal lover....give those pets a hug for me and Patches.

Spindles in the making

Dale is working on more spindles out in the barn. We usually work on them together but it s raining and I decided to stay in the house and get a few things done.

Here is a photo taken the other day when he brought a few to the house so we could decide what color shafts they should get.

I will be adding more things to etsy as I can, I have a walnut Kromski Fantasia I need to get listed. I also have a Sonata in the clear finish I need to list. There always seems to be something to do and the days are just too short to get them all done in...