Monday, November 2, 2009

A Gift of Trust

Ashley rescued this cardinal from one of our cats and gave it to me to fix. It sat in my hand and let me check its wings and look for injuries. I couldn't find anything that appeared to be serious, so I just let him sit in my hand. After a couple minutes he got more alert and when I decided he was not injured, I opened my hand flat and he flew off into the trees. He let me hold him for about ten minutes and when he flew off I felt honored by his trust.

Sunday, September 27, 2009

Roof Repairs

The worst thing about building your own house is that when something goes wrong, you can't go back to the contractor and get them to fix it. When the problem is with the roof it's even worse.

Two inches of rain in about 24 hours reminded me that I had to fix the roof leak before winter set in. I had been putting this off all summer, now it had to be taken care of.

I borrowed a safety belt from a friend, pulled out the rope and realized I couldn't remember how to tie the sliding knot to attach the belt to the rope. A Google search found it pretty quickly and now I know the name because I'm almost positive I'll need it again, The Prusik Knot or Triple Sliding Hitch.

Next was getting the rope over the roof to tie it off. That wasn't as easy as I hoped it would be, in fact I couldn't throw it that high. Even on the top rung of the ladder I was three feet short of the ridge. Getting it over the ridge required a lot of nerve (read stupidity) and prayer, but at least I'm still alive to tell.

Once up on top, the view was great. I really do need a lookout balcony somewhere. Or maybe just a retreat back in the woods where I have the same view of the mountains from the ground.

The problem was two screws that had worked loose. Unfortunately, while I tightened anything that looked like it might work loose, I found several more screws that weren't grabbing anything, so they will probably be problems in a few years. To do it right I needed someone underneath the roof to hold a block of wood under anything loose.

Friday, September 18, 2009

Unbelievable

I don't usually do this, but when I walked past this man kicking the daylights out of this couch to get it through a door that was six inches shorter than the couch, I just had to take a picture. Too bad the video didn't get him kicking the couch.

Thursday, August 6, 2009

Wild Turkeys


GEDC0513
Originally uploaded by tormash9
For the past month a flock of wild turkeys and babies near Muddy Creek have been part of the scenery on my morning drive to work. A couple days ago they were across the road on the hill in the afternoon and I was able to get a photo. They were too far away to get a very good photo, but I counted five hens and about 20 babies between them.

Thursday, July 30, 2009

Got Curcurbits?

Doesn't that sound like some kind of bizarre disease? Actually it is the family which cucumbers, squash, melons and the dreaded zucchini fall into.

Last year the squash borers killed all my cucumbers, yellow squash and zucchini before I got a handful of vegetables from them. No relish or pickles in the pantry for us.

My sister said all her plants had all died as well. According to her father-in-law it was because she didn't plant radishes in her garden last year. According to him the radishes discourage the borers. Since no one eats them we both skipped planting them.

This year I sprinkled a few radish seeds down the row and now I've got more curcurbits than I can possibly use. I've canned dill pickles, bread and butter pickles, zucchini relish, yellow squash relish, and dill relish and they're still coming on strong. Since everyone loves bread and butter pickles I'll do another batch of them and another batch of yellow squash relish. And I think I'll try drying some zucchini chips and see how they taste.

Anyone need curcubits? Right now everyone sees me coming with a bag and runs the other direction.

Monday, July 20, 2009

Firefox "Too Much Recursion Error"

Since this is the second time this has happened I want to make note of the easy fix that I accidentally discovered, because I know it will take forever to figure it out again in six months.

The thing I like best about Firefox is the ability to customize it with add-ons. One that I really like is the One Click Weather Add-on that shows the weather in the bottom of the Firefox window.

Unfortunately this particular add-on sometimes causes an error message that reads "too much recursion" and won't allow Firefox to even open. After several Google searches and only finding complicates fixes, I decided to uninstall Firefox and try to disable add-ons.

There wasn't an uninstall menu item for Firefox, but there was a safe mode which let me open Firefox with add-ons disabled. From there I was able to uninstall the One Click Weather and re-enable the other add-ons, restart Firefox and everything was back to normal.

Much easier than creating a new profile and copying information from the old profile to the new.

Monday, July 13, 2009

It's That Time of the Year Again


GEDC0494
Originally uploaded by tormash9
Last year I didn't have enough pickles or summer squash to make pickles, so I made up for it yesterday.
  • Dill pickles in the back for Ashley from Mrs. Wages Mix
  • Zucchini Relish from page 43 of an unknown book
  • Yellow Squash Relish from Beth
  • Bread and Butter for me from Farm Journal Cookbook
I don't usually have very good luck with dill pickles, so we'll see how the mix turns out. The other three recipes I've used or tasted and they're all great.

Unfortunately the stove top got too hot and I actually caught the counter top on fire. I think I prefer a range over a cooktop or an outdoor kitchen would work, too. Keep all the heat and mess outside.

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Knitting Treasury Blog


fancable
Originally uploaded by planetdyann
Melissa and her friend Paige want me to knit laptop covers to protect their laptops while they carry them back and forth to college classes, so I started looking for really cool cable patterns last night.

During this search I ran across this awesome blog that is recreating swatches of the stitch patterns in the Barbara Walker Treasury of Knitting books. Some of these stitch patterns are take your breath away beautiful. Now I need to try to find these books.

Monday, June 29, 2009

Measuring Acres Online

I've been trying to find someone to cut hay and everyone asks how many acres are in the hayfield. I thought it was roughly eight, but the map I got back from FSA didn't add up, so I went looking for an online tool to measure the field. Google Earth and TerraServer both offer tools to measure area, but they aren't free.

TerraServer actually has satellite images from multiple years, so I could see the farm before, during and after building the house. Really cool. On the most recent photo you can see the horses in the field.

But, being poor I kept looking and found this page. Yes, the field is 8.1 acres and it took only a couple minutes to plot the corners and get an answer for free.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Local Yarn Shop Finder

No more searching for local yarn shops when I travel. Not that I travel often, but when I do it's nice to know where to find yarn for a souvenir.

http://www.knitmap.com/

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Pink Christmas Scarf

This year for Christmas I'm knitting scarves for everyone. I really liked this pattern, but didn't want it quite so wide, so I changed the pattern.

I cast on 41 stitches and worked the first rows according to the pattern. For the lace part I created this chart to make the design work out.


KEY:
K=Knit
O=Yarn Over
/=Knit 2 Together
\=Slip Slip Knit
I misnumbered the rows as well. These are the right side rows, the wrong side rows are purled. So the actual lace pattern has six rows.

The end result is here blocking.

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

States I've Visited

I just found this cool website that lets you create a map highlighting states you've visited.


visited 27 states (54%)
Create your own visited map of The United States or Best time to visit South Korea

Thursday, April 2, 2009

Spring is here!

Asparagus is up, spinach that overwintered is ready to pick, the hens are laying again and just hours after April Fools day, (when Melissa and I both got fooled by Ashley) we have a new baby. We both headed to the barn after work and school to see the new baby, only we were about 12 hours early. Ashley was proud of herself for fooling us.

He isn't a very pretty baby at this point, hopefully he will get prettier, but he had just barely stood up in this photo. It seems like no matter how stressed you are about how you're going to feed all the mouths you have, birth is still exciting and wonderful.

I joined the Flickr group " One Object 365 Days Project" to post a daily picture of him for a year, so I'll link to it when I have more to show.

We had a cold spell over the weekend, but only a couple redbuds were bloomed. I wonder if that was Redbud Winter or is it still to come?

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Knitting Obsession

Members of my knitting group just watched this video.
Here's their response:



"She reminds me of Jackie for so many reasons - obsessive knitting, knitting wherever she is, she's literally on the edge, she's determined (read stubborn)and I've even seen Jackie's hair look like hers!"

I haven't decided yet if this is good or bad.

Friday, March 13, 2009

Just When I Think Life Couldn't Get Any Crazier

Laugh of the day.

I carpool to work most days which gives me the luxury of knitting while Beth drives. This morning I got in the car like normal and about 1/4 mile down the road picked up the socks that are almost finished, but something felt wrong. Why was the yarn heading out the car door?

Sure enough the socks were in the car, but the baggie with yarn in it was somewhere out in the road.

Thank goodness I was almost finished with the socks and not just beginning. Otherwise I would have had a trail of yarn going all the way back home. Hopefully this is not an omen.

Monday, March 9, 2009

50 MPG

This weekend I had to drive to Danville, so I decided to just play around and experiment with how I drive. I filled up the car before I left, drove to Danville, watched a concert (KMEA District Honors Band, but more on that later) and drove home.

When I got back into town I filled up again. There was 75 miles on the odometer and it took 1.5 gallons to refill. 50 MPG in my old Camry with 265,000 miles on it. YES!

It has a manual transmission and all I did was clutch and coast the hills and anywhere else I could possibly coast. At 45-50mph I let off the clutch and gave it gas, but at times going down hills my speed drifted up to 60.

Now to try it on normal town and country driving to see how good I can get. Not as many hills, but I think that just by watching how I drive more carefully I can greatly increase my MPG.

Since I am totally unmechanical I don't know what kind of effect this driving style would have on my car, specifically my clutch. If anyone does know, please let me know.