Spring Is Here

Yes spring has begun and this month has been all about the knitting.  I have finished and started quiet a lot of projects lately and have been buying wool like a made woman. hmm where to begin, OK I made this top for Nish,                                                   and this vest jacket (with a few modifications)

PJ Scored a vest (sorry no online link to pattern).  I actually did this as a knit along with my farmer friend DJ. I found this really annoying to knit and don't particulary like it cause its just too busy and like an explosion in a jam factory, but he loves it and I have trouble getting it off him to wash, which does make me feel good about knitting it.

DJ and I have also started this for our girls and this vest for our baby boys (sorry need ravelry to access this link).  I am also knitting a tee for Nish and a dress/top for Tay.  So yes knitting has been busy. 

Ian was also concerned about the growths on my trees as you can see in these photos.

 Yes they are lovely skeins of recycled yarn.  I went for a little trip to my farmer friends and she took me to a local second hand shop that does recycled yarn.  I went a bit nuts, I think I worked out there is about 70 x 50gm balls of yarn I bought. I will definatley need to do some more knitting. the yarn stash is getting a bit out of control now, I have officially run out of space in the workshop to put it.

On the farm, we also have a new sheep, her name is Cutlett and is a White Merino, so we are now up to 9 sheep in a vast aray of colours.  We also had a first shearing.  I have kept the fleeces but not sure that they will be spinable as they are all a bit short.  they sheep were shorn at all different times and were all under a year ago, but to get them into the right time for here and all at the same time I had to bite the bullet and just do it.  here's some picies.

Chastity - Black Merino

lovely black smooshy goodness

Naked Sheep

  

6 adult fleeces & 2 lamb fleeces

So now my lovelies are all immunised, drenched, shorn and tagged, so they now get to spend 6 months just eating and growing me lovely wool.

We have also taken Myrtle (one of our sussex chickens) and put her seperate with 11 eggs to see if she will sit and hatch some chickens for us - now we just wait. 

The grass around here is getting a bit out of control and we have yet to buy a tractor or ride on mower.  So I took to the patch were I want my veggie garden to be with a whiper snipper,  yeah not something I would like to do regularly, I am only about 1/2 way through and I have had enough already.

Well thats about it for now, next I plan to work on our putting in our veggie patch and orchard, so we shall see how that goes. 

Catch you later

Dell

A catch up!

I must begin by saying I have been so slack with my blog but life has been very busy and exciting to say the least. Where to start well our girls had their babies. Patience had twin boys we named Justice and Honour. we were hand feeding Justice and he was going great guns. he would spend the night in the outdoor cage that is attached to the house and then in the morning he would walk out on his lead to the grass for the day, then back in at night and spend the evening getting his bottle feeds. He was just starting to really settle in as part of the family when unfortuately he got in to the old grown over veggie patch and ate something he shouldn't - unfortunately he is no longer with us. Probably a blessing that I wasn't blogging then. his brother Honour will now become our breeding ram. Hope had a lovely little girl who is very prissy and delightful. both are with their mums in the paddock doing well.

PJ and Justice

We have also added 4 new sheep to our flock. They are an early birthday present for me. Chastity is a Black Merino and she has a white bottom. Honesty is a Black/Grey Corridale and Mercy is a Grey Corridale, and last but not least is Purity who is a White Corridale. These girls a lovely addition to our flock and will supply some beutiful choices of wool for me to spin. Both the Merino and the Corridales will also cross well with our Border Leister Ram Honour to produce even nicer wool and lovely meat - We are looking forward to lots of BBQ's with friend in the years to come.

The New Girls

Life was also a bit chaotic here with Ian away for the only trip of the year that spans 2 weeks and a weekend and in true tradition I ended up with my arm in plaster the thursday before he left. This is a trick I really don't want to repeat. You think you know how much you use your hands/arms until you can't use one and then you really realise. Nish was amazing and picked up a lot of the slack helping me do things while Ian was gone. I think the toughest thing of all was not being able to knit or spin and even typing on the computer was very restricted (I'm not very good with the one finger approach and got very fustrated). Well the good news is that the plaster is off and I am back to my normal self now.

The Chickens have been supply many a tasty egg. I have added to our chickens with a Sussex Rooster and 2 Sussex Hens - I bought them home from my go to farming info friends the Johnsons - after a lovely trip over to visit them. They were laying within a day of travelling and they seem to have kick started some of the Ilsa browns to lay too. I have finally moved the out of their temporary accomodation into the big chicken house and I am now getting on about 3-5 eggs a day!

The new chickens

Talking of my friends the Johnsons, when I went over for a visit I took Heys and Spud with me and they had a lovely time running free with their mum, dad and brother tiny. I came home in the car with 2 dogs, 3 chickens and a little sickly lamb I was going to try and coax into surviving - Gracie. She put a good fight but went to supply all our spinners and knitters in heaven after about 5-6 days. The Johnsons returned the visit this weekend and taught a couple of city folk how to heard, hold, drench, tail and tag sheep and use the dogs to heard. I was so proud of Spud he was amazing at hearding the sheep, definately a natural. Heys also had a good go and is learning from Spud. Paul says we wouldn't have gotten the sheep into the pen without Spud and I was proud like a school mum really. I was also very impressed with my city boy hubby who really took to the farm boy skills and tag and drenched Patience and Honour and even tailed Honour. He had a ball and was so excited and motivated that today he went and worked on the fences and fiddled around all day on the place.

Grace

Knitting has been a bit on hold with the plaster but is back great guns. I finished a few jumpers and a hat for a friend and have started a few more projects (will update on them next time). I have also been doing a vest as a Knit-a-Long with my friend Delvene. KAL are a great way to keep motivated and I am loving doing them with her and are forever looking to the next project.

Well there are probably lots of holes in my update but I will let you know as I think of them so I will go for now and I will try to be a lot better with my blogging.

Catch you Later

Dell

Introducing

Ok life has been exciting to say the least since our last post.  It started of with Akielah finally learning to ride her bike (only took us 3-4 years to teach her how to do it).  Now I'm not so sure it was a good idea.  4 days after having her training wheels taken off she has turned into extreme sports rider, speed racing down the driveway, testing the very steep bumpy paddock hill for bike suitability, and now riding off the garden area off the 4 steps to see if she can land the bike with out falling off!

Ian also finished the first paddock fencing so now we officially have a paddock.  And he has been off to Sheep School too!  We will be mini farmers yet! 

We also got a PIC number (property identification code) so we are really doing the farm thing now.  We also decided on a name for the Farm - Magarmhey - you will get browny points for working out why (unless I have already told you of course).  So with the these things finally done, and now look what we bought yesterday!

They are Border Leicester Sheep, and hopefully they are pregnant due in late july - mid august.  Hopefully we will have some very cute additions to the family soon.  We have decided to name them Patience and Hope -  Well that is the general consensus at the moment could change over the next day.  We got them from a lovely man at Inverbrackie Border Leicester Stud.  He also blessed me with 4, yes, count them 4, alpaca fleeces, so I am sure you will be seeing/hearing more about them soon.

I have also been knitting again as usual,   The yarn I spun up last post is now this Beret (sorry the link is only in Ravelry) but its lovely to Knit and even warmer to wear.

I have also spun up some beutiful Alpaca roving into this lovely yarn, it is really soft and squishy - I could just roll around in it.

As you can see busy, busy, busy.  Catch you later

Dell

A busy 10 days!

Well its been a bit cold up here at the moment,  The locals keep telling me it's not cold yet but my body doesn't seem to agree with them.  As you can see from these pics  its we have had a few frosty mornings.  I know we had green pasture here when I went to bed!

We have also had a little bit or rain, and what else do you do when your 7 and its wet and rainy - go an play in the mud!  Akielah was having a ball playing in the mud, she looked so happy it made me miss being young on a rainy day, Ian wasn't real sure about her playing in the mud on the driveway so I figured he wouldn't have been to happy if I joined her!

I have been knitting up a storm.  I finished Akielah's Steppe Ahead jumper that I was doing on the long weekend.  She loves it and now I have to convince her to take it off so I can wash it.

I have started a vest version for David and a Jumper version for Tycarni.  The down side if having 5 kids is that they all want one and I am sort of over knitting this pattern and am ready to knit something else. 

I have also been spinning as well.  What started out as this corridale fleece from a sheep called romeo

became 210 metres of fingering weight, yummy squishy soft yarn and now I need to decide what to make with it. Any Suggestions?

We had a bit of a messy week this week,  The good was on wednesday when my compustion fire went in.  Ian had thursday off to fix up the fences so we can get the sheep on the property but when we got up in the morning there was no water to the house.  There is at least 3 weeks of water left in the tanks, so we figured it must be a pump problem.  He spent the day fiddling with the pumps while I was down in the city taking Akielah to speech therapy. 

Her latest assesment report has come in and she has a severe speech delay (well I knew that) but it has her at about <0.1% of her age group.  Then it was off to the pediatrician.  That didn't go much better, he is not sure about her, on paper she presents as Autistic but he said watching her in the room not so much, however he is concerned that because of the work we did with both David and PJ for their Aspergers to help them with their eye contact and social skills and because we worked with them as a whole family, that we may have hidden or "coached" her how to act and therefore makes it hard to see some of the things he is looking for - although this is good for Akielah it makes diagnosis that much harder.  So now we are on the waiting list for a child development team assesment which wont probably be until April next year! We ae however going to try and sort it out privately.We will go and see the phycologist from the team privately and our pediatrician is the teams pediatrician, she has a speech therapist and we may be able to sort it out this way.  We shall see.

So then I headed home to arrive to Ian in a snoot.  He had spent $1500 on a new pump to find out that its not actually the pump but the actual placement of the pump.  Because the water level was now lower than the pump it couldn't get it out and up to the house.  So we ordered a water delivery in and now we have water again and Ian's list of things to do just got longer (have to move the pumps).  Ahhh well its all funny after the event.  We will get there and we still think that a bad day here is better than a good one down in the burbs. 
Catch you next time!

Dell

A Long Weekend

Well we have had a lovely Queens birthday longweekend.  We spent Saturday pottering around making decisions about what to do with our fences and which ones to do first.  I then spent the afternoon engaging in some ehausting work as you can see from my photo below.

This is a Steppe Ahead Jumper for Akielah, I have used this pattern before for PJ's Farm Play Jumper.  Only the sleeves to go now, and of course for such serious hard work you need a cuppa and chochie!

Sunday Brought with it birthday celebrations for my baby boy, PJ, who has now turned 9. We had a family lunch with us and both sets of Grandparents. PJ asked for a sheep for his present and a lovely neighbour has sold us a lovely natured ewe a few years old. We need to sort the fences out before he will be on the property but PJ did get to walk across the road to met her (her name is pricilla but PJ is thinking about changing it). When she arrives I will get you some picies to see and some more details about her. We had a lovely afternoon with good food, wine and family visiting, the kids spent the afternoon playing with their grandparents and dogs down in the paddock.

Monday as brought with it a day of jobs, we started taking down a wrought iron fence at the end of the pergola that we aren't sure why its there and it blocks the view of the property, so down it needs to come. Of course what seemed like a job that would be just a matter of undoing a lot of bolts hit a snag when we realised that the tap in one section has the pipe on one side the goes through the fence and there is the tap on the other side. So now we had to do some plumbing work too!. We did manage to get 1 section of the fence down and the tap is now all sorted, so the other section will be done some other time.

We also have been procrasting about emptying our concrete water tank for cleaning, which was full but the water was dirty. Ian thinks its about a 40000 litre tank, It is definately more than double the size of the 2 big tanks that service the house. Its one of those jobs that you know needs to be done - but wasting all that water just goes againts the grain. Well we pulled the plug today and lett the tank drain out into the paddock, at least the paddock will get a good water and grow some lovely pasture for the animals.This kids had a great time chasing the water all over the paddock to see where it was running too (little blighters wouldn't stand still for me to get a picture of them chasing water). 

So this brings us to the close of a lovely weekend. 

Hope you had a lovely one too

Catch ya next time

Dell

The Lurgy has hit!

Well it was inevitable moving going into winter. The cold here is a bit of a shock to my system - I have been wearing an average of 4 layers of clothing and the locals are still running around in t-shirts or 1-2 light layers. Apparently I will get used to it eventually?!?. Ian and I both came down with the lurgy this week which rapidly turned into pnemonia and a trip to the local doctor for both of us - on seperate days of course. So needless to say not much got done this week, we were just happy to have the kids feed, dressed and off to school. If I wasn't sleeping I was rugged up in a blanky, with a heat pack on the couch knitting. I did get a Play jumper knit for PJ from this blog and here is the Pattern.

I also decided to make a beanie to go with it for the left over yarn.  Its pretty simple and can be changed for any size.  Thought I would write it down for you.

Plain Beanie

do a small swatch with your desired yarn and needles (I used plain knit but you can use any stitch pattern you like just make sure you do the pattern in the swatch)
measure the head circumference and work out how many stitches you will need to end up with (rounded to the closest multiple of 4) 

To be knit in the round
inc 1 st in next st - knit into the front and back of the next stitch

I used size 5.5 mm DPNS needles with 2 strands of DK yarn and needed 80 stitches

cast on 4 stitches
next row: increase 1 st in every st (8 sts)
next row: knit 1, inc in next st til end (12 sts)
next row: knit 2, inc 1 in next st til end (16sts)
next row: knit 3, inc 1 in next st til end (20 sts)

cont in this way increaseing the knit stitches by 1 each quarter until required number of stitches
continue kniting every row until about 2.5-5cm shorter than required lenghth. 

Finish the last 2.5 - 5 cm in k2 p2 rib (or what aver edging you prefer)
cast off

More Animals

OK we are slowly becoming more "farm like" We have added to our family. We have now got 5 lovely Ilsa Brown Hens. The kids got to name one each. here is a list of the child and what name they came up with:

Nish: Lou Lou

Dave: Pecky

PJ: Calm ( I know! don't ask me?)

Kie: Sarah

Tay: Sally.

We got them at 4 weeks of age (30 april) and they should start laying at about 16-20 weeeks of age so stay tuned.

Pop and Pip,(our cats) and Flopsy Jnr and Mr Hephalump (our rabbits) have settled in well to.

We have been looking at our fences and there is a bit of work to be done before we get the sheep. I have an Idea where I would like to but the veggie patch and orchard but am waiting until the sheep come to eat down the grass (not point in wasting all that beutiful food)before I start, am also waiting on Ian getting a tractor to do all the heavy lifting.

I spend a lot of time walking around the property and am always amazed at how blessed we are to finally find a home.

The property is on a biocycle for all the sewarge and this means no antibacterial stuff down the drains. This isn't a bit deal as I mainly use a lot of old fashioned ways of cleaning anyway. Can't go past good old bi-carb, vinegar and essential oils. I have made my own washing powder for ages now and get asked a lot for the recipe so I thought I would post it her. It works wonders and is really cheap.

1 cup of grated and powdered laundry soap

lux flakes is ok but is quite expensive - I through 1 cake of laundry soap through my kitchen wiz with the grater attachement and then with the chopper to powder it and 1 cake is close enough to 1 cup

1/2 Cup Washing soda

found in the laundry isle powder not crystals

1/2 Bi-carb soda

mix together, use about 1-2 tbs in your wash.

you can also add white vinegar to your fabric softner intake instead of fabric softner. I don't always do this but it is good for those things you want soft and fluffy and there is no smell when it drys and you can add any essential oil to it you want - I used lavender, jasmine, orange or lemon gum or if I have some bugs in the house eycalyptus or tea tree. a few drops in 1 litre of white vinegar is plenty.

Oh and I got mothers day pressies this year - The school has a stall for the kids to buy stuff for their mums - much better than trusting the hubby who always forgets and then the kids get all upset with him - check out my loot

and this is what I made my mum

cheers - catch you later