So much has happened lately that I’m so full of things to share that I hardly know where to start.  Well, take a deep breath, Dianne from Creatively Dyed Yarns came and stayed at my house for a few days.  She got here Monday and just left today, and boy we did some dyeing, a lot of sharing of ourselves, our love of knitting, dyeing and everything in-between.  I wish I’d gotten some pictures of her and Princess while they were here.  So many things were happening, that I didn’t even think of it.  She took some pictures of me milking my goat.  You can see those on her blog.

She taught me some tricks about handpainting with acid dyes on some superwash Merino that I had for experimenting.  I did some natural dyeing and explained how I do it, answered questions.  I hope she learned half as much from me as I did from her.

I’ve been dyeing all day today and this is what’s outside on the drying rack as I write.  I also have some more cooling in the dyepot.  They are logwood and cochineal.  I dyed some of the cochineal on some superwash Merino sock yarn.  I’ll share those pictures later with you, when they’ve dried and they are hanging out to dry.

My order from Zeilinger’s Wool finally came today!  I got back some gorgeous Finn roving from my ravatar, Daisy and my white Finn ram, Randy.  I also had some lucious combed top from my white Romeldale, Dakota done and it’s to dye for.  Daisy is in the front of the picture, as usual, hamming it up for the camera.  She’s my Ravatar on Ravelry, except I cropped the picture for her lovely head shot.  Dakota, my Romeldale that I had done in the lovely combed top, is in the back of the picture.

I haven’t decided whether to sell the roving and the combed top undyed or dyed.  If dyed, do I do it with natural dyeing or should I do some handpainted acid dyes?  So many questions and so few answers, at least for now.

 

Dianne taught me a lot of good tricks for handpainting with acid dyes.  I’d handpainted rovings before, I’d used the microwave before, as well as I’d done some solid dyeing and some monochromatic dyeing in my big turkey roaster crockpot.  When I thought about it later, I realized that I hadn’t done any handpainting on yarn!  Can you believe that?  It’s true, and so I was all ears, a few thumbs and slower than Christmas, but having a blast with Dianne.  I tried some colors that remind me of Key West.  Dianne and I had both been there, so I guess it was on my mind when she asked me what colors I wanted to use.  When she said that I kind of panicked.  I hadn’t thought about which color combinations I would use and then bamm, I was supposed to come up with something.  I laughed and told her that it probably wasn’t what she would have picked.  She told me that she had some of the very same colors on her first handpainting as I did.  I dunno, do you think great minds think alike?

What do you think?

   

             

 

Not to bad for a first attempt

 

I went to an local auction last month and scored big time.  I bought this huge antique spinning wheel.  I’m going to refinish it and seal it so I can put it out by my drive.

I got this at an auction last month

I also picked up some antique wool balers.  I’m hoping to find some pictures of these online so I get a better idea how they were used.  Mine came partially disassembled, and I want to put them together correctly.  If you know of any photos online of antique wool balers, please let me know.

Well this is a short post today, I’m late getting everyone fed in the barn and they are all baaing out there.  See ya later.

I just learned something new today and I think it’s so cool.  It’s a new way to display photos online. Here’s a collage of the animals being there amusing selves.

Everyone posing for the camera

My last post of making Feta cheese had a lot of pictures and I noticed how they were here and there.  Even though I tried to stagger them so they all didn’t line up on one side of the page, it didn’t look as professional as I would like.  I was inspired by Mary Heather on Ravelry (aka rainydaygoods) to do a better blog.  I liked how all her pictures are so neat and tidy.  Then I checked some of the Forums on Ravelry and the Tour de Fleece 2008 group had Day #12 posts and what did I see, someone who posted a picture like I wanted to learn to do.  I asked, “How you do that?” ….does that sound familiar??  It’s a program that is free software from Google, called Picasa.  It’s easy to use.  I found it, downloaded it and had my first collage made before she was able to repond back.  I answered her with this collage of the Betsy Valley Garden Walk, 2008 that I went on a couple of weeks ago.

Do you see the bottle trees in the photo on the right?

Then there is another way to get interesting photo effects without downloading any software.  You can do this online with your Flickr account.  First log into your Flickr account, then go to Mosaic Maker.  I made this little collage of my socks.

Take a look at some of my latest socks!

So I’ve shared some of my new found knowledge with those of you who haven’t found these cool applications.  For those of you who already have found them….why didn’t you tell me?

Last time I tried to make Feta cheese I almost blew up the house with my son inside.  No, it wasn’t intentional, it was an accident waiting to happen.  I use a gas stove and I had the window opened, not realizing it could blow out the burner.  It did and I got distracted and was out of the house.  My son, who is 20 years old, appeared at the door asking, “Were you trying to kill me?”  Talk about a low point in my life.  Well, he’s fine, the house is in one piece, and an important lesson learned.

The first time I tried to make Feta cheese, I made a bunch of mistakes.  I learned what I did wrong from my neighbor who has many years of experience making cheese.  See, she sold me my first two goats, Shannon and Sipsy.  Let me introduce you to the girls, who without them, I wouldn’t have my Feta cheese.  Here’s Shannon

An Alpine and all round goofy goat.

I don’t think I have a picture of Sipsy to share.  I’ll have to get one.

Anyway, on to what to do or not to do with Feta cheese.

1.  Always pastuerize (144 degrees F for 30 minutes) the milk.  Then cool (if necessary) for specific recipe.

144 degrees F for 30 minutes

Next step for Feta cheese is to chill it to 85 degrees and let rest for 1 hour.

85 degrees F for one hour

The first mistake (of many) I made the first time.  I didn’t wrap the pot with towels.  It is necessary to keep the cheese at as close to constant temperature.  This is an important step with making cheese.  Keeping the temperatures right is half the battle of making cheese.

Wrapping with towels

Another mistake I made the first time.  I followed the recipe, which said to use cheesecloth, doubled.  I did that, but I found out later that cheesecloth, even doubled allows to much of the liquid (whey) to drain off.  I started out with a gallon of milk and didn’t even have a handful of curds at the end.

Cut the curds and let rest.  Don’t forget the towel.  When you come back the liquid (whey) will be working to the surface between the cracks.  You want to separate the curds from the whey.

Run knife through cutting one inch grid.

Stir gently

I use a pillowcase now.  Thanks to my friend’s suggestion.  It works better than even double up cheesecloth.  It allows the whey to drain out without taking most of the curds with it.

Pillowcase is better than cheesecloth.

Tie ends together and let drain for 5 hours.  The recipe tells me to tie cheesecloth in a knot and insert chopsticks and suspend from pot.  The pillowcase isn’t as easy to tie, so I use a rubber band.  I put chopsticks through the rubber band.  But when I try to suspend it over the pot, it touched bottom.  That wouldn’t work, so I used my mesh strainer inside the pot which allowed for drainage that kept the pillowcase above the drained whey in the pot.

Two different approaches

Pressing and rolling out the remaining whey.  This is a trick my girlfriend taught me.  Put the cheese wrapped up flatly in pillowcase and then wrapped in a towel.  Roll and squeeze out extra moisture.  It’s just like rolling your knitted handwashed garments.

Wrap cheese in pillowcase, wrapped in towel

The finished cheese!  Now it will stay refrigerated for 4-5 days.  Can’t try it until Saturday.

Refrigerate for 4-5 days.

I want to wish all of you a happy 4th of July, may you all travel safe and enjoy family, food and fireworks.  I thought I would share the flowers from my garden.  I made this as a centerpiece for my neighbors 4th of July party tomorrow.  I’m going to bake a Southern Red Velvet cake with cream cheese frosting topped with some blueberries to spell USA.

Delphineum, Verbana and Babys Breath

The St. John’s Wort is in bloom and it’s blooming everywhere on my property, especially in the full sun.

I went out and gathered a quart sized baggie this morning and you can’t tell that I’ve picked any. I’ll be harvesting more over the next several days and should have plenty to play with in my dye pot.

Later when DH gets home we’re going out mushroom hunting in the woods.  We have a state forest behind us and there are plenty of coyotes, cougars, bear, etc. that I’d prefer not to run into by myself.  If there are two of us talking we’ll scare them off before we see them.  When I walk in the woods without him, I take the dogs with me.  However, I don’t want the dogs around when looking for mushrooms because they will either trample them or try to eat them, neither are good ideas.

Did I tell you I tried to blow the house up and kill my son?  Well that was the other day, everyone and everything is fine.  That was the day I forgot I was making Feta Cheese.  I’ll have to tell you that story when I share my Feta cheese making in a future post.  Stay tuned…

Melissa has challenged me to identify a plant she showed on her blog, the prize is FREE sock yarn! How awesome is that? Well, I spent about an hour doing some research on possibilities and came up with quite a few. See, the picture she posted was just the plant showing the leaf formation, no flowers to help as clues. Well, I decided to get some pics of the plants in my garden that I chose as my top educated (grin) guesses.

Melissa’s picture

The first thing I thought of was that it belonged to the mint family, it has the opposing leaves that mints are famous for. Here’s a spearmint that I have growing.

But the leaves of Melissa’s plant didn’t look as thick as most mints do.

So, I thought for sure it was Lemon Balm, and I think that’s what it is. But someone else has already guessed this AND you never know…

The other possibilities, and also in my garden are

Bee Balm - but Melissa’s doesn’t seem tall enough

Lantana - mine have pointier leaves

Well, we’ll see if I win the sock yarn or not. I do know that I’ve already won the beautiful plants that I have in my garden. I’d like to show you the showstopper that’s blooming right now.

My honeysuckle is exploding with flowers. The other picture is the hostas that are growing just in front of the honeysuckle.

It looks like the hosta plants need dividing next year. Next year’s project will be a shade garden along the long drive. A gardener’s work is never done, it’s always a work in progress.

Summers here are short, so you won’t find me inside knitting as much.  I’m usually playing in the dirt…I mean gardening.  I get up and go to bed with the sun.  Daybreak is around 6 AM and sundown is around 10 PM.  Tomorrow will be the Summer Solstice, which means the days will be getting shorter from now on.

I snapped a picture of my Columbine that was full of blooms.  I thought I’d share a quick snap of my garden.

I’ve put the lace aside for awhile and working on my Bellatrix socks.  I have to finish them by the end of June for them to qualify for the Sock Knitters Anonymous, May-June challenge.  I started them BEFORE I started my Forest Canopy Shawl or the Heartland Shawl.  Well I’ve gotten a few more rows since this picture, but here’s how they look so far.

I also have to come up with my own sock design for the June-July challenge.   I have to cast on before June 30th.  These girls don’t let a sock knitter sit idle, that’s for sure.  You can join the group on Ravelry…come on over the water is fine….

I’ve started the Heartland Lace Shawl, by Evelyn Clark.  I got through the first repeat and now I can’t, for the life of me, get past the second repeat of the first chart.  I’ve frogged back to my lifeline three times already and maybe doing it for the fourth time.  I’m going to try tinking back first….but doggone it….I’ll never finish it at this rate!