Where Have I Been?

Hi there,

It's me. Yes, I'm still here. I just haven't been posting to this blog. What have I been doing instead? Well! I'm glad you asked, 'cause I've been busy.

First there was all the extra inventory that needed to be dyed or spun for upcoming events: the Tomato Festival is next Saturday. We're doing a pop-up at New River Fiber Company the following weekend. And Wilderness Trail Festival the beginning of September. Lots of venues lots of yarns needing to be dyed and spun... and I wish I had time to find the batteries for the camera take some more pictures and get them uploaded so you can see all the new stuff!

Then, last weekend I was demonstrating spinning and carding at an 18th century encampment. So there was also much sewing of things to wear that would be period appropriate. Do you know none of my 18th century costumes still fit.... something to do with making them when I was still a teenager and having learned to cook and bake really yummy fattening foods since then. Oh well. Good thing I can still sew. Now, I also wish I had a photo of that to put in here -- but do you know? I forgot my camera. Still, I know at least 3 people took video of me spinning, and more than a dozen asked if they could take pictures ... maybe I'll run across a photo of myself somewhere online someday.

And then (I said I've been busy) we've been working on the website. It's not done yet. But I'm pleased to announce that Best Friend Fibers is officially online at bestfriendfibers.com. So exciting!

Later this month I will be looking into getting myself cloned so that the housework doesn't get as neglected as this blog.

Bathroom, Part 4

Indoor plumbing. I have proven one can live without it, but oh by golly, I so much prefer living with it.

Flush.

And the sink next.

A wiser person might have painted the whole room the night before instead of painting just what had to get done and then going to bed. I was not a wiser person -- but I thought I was pretty clever to figure out I could put the ladder half in the tub.

A few more finishing touches.

Even the bath shy Simon approves. He's a huge fan of the new bobbley bath rug.

Bathroom, Part 3

And so the new floor goes in. Or rather, what goes in is the leftover flooring from when I re-did the studio and there were two boxes extra and even though a couple of the boards were warped a bit I still made it work for the bathroom with just bits and pieces and only one and a half planks leftover from this job. Oh Yeah!

Thermal layer under floating hardwood/laminate. I used actual duct tape to tape it to the duct -- Did you know Duck Tape, and Duct Tape, while supposedly the same thing, aren't. Duct tape is shiny silver and has a much stronger sticky.

Did I mention I had already primed (2 coats) all of the new drywall and painted (Benjamin Moore, Dove White) the wall where the toilet and sink needed to be installed. I had. If I could get everything done in time the plumber would seat the toilet the next day -- if not it would be maybe another week before he could get back to me. It was getting finished that night!

Oh, and the power was off to the bathroom, so I was pulling a late night with only a trouble light to see by.

My version of a "Dove Bar" in the freezer.

Here's a handy tip I learned ages ago: If you are only going to be taking a break from painting and come right back to it in the next day or two then don't clean your paint brush. Freeze it instead. Wrapped in aluminium foil and frozen the paint brush or roller will last up to a week even. This will save you all the wasted latex paint you get when cleaning out between uses. It takes a little while to thaw out but it works really well.

So while the paint brushes and rollers full of primer and Dove White paint waited in the freezer the floor went in.

I am proud of how well I managed jigging into the corners and such.

The power was still on in the living room so that was the staging area where I cut all the boards to size. There was a lot of sawdust. A lot!

Those boxes on the left are the sink and toilet waiting to go in.

Eventually the floor was done, and with aching bones (slightly warped boards take a lot of pounding to be convinced to lay flat properly) I went to borrow the functioning plumbing at the Wise Woman's house for a hot shower. After all, my hair may be going grey, but it really shouldn't be going Dove White!

The vent grate had to be trimmed down with metal cutters to fit since the duct was flush with the wall.

To be continued...

Bathroom, Part 2

Meanwhile, in the half-emptied living room, the new tub has arrived and the shower surround warms itself by the fireplace.

The plummer I found to help with the work recommended a durable fiberglass tub with horizontal seams in the surround. It's supposed to not get as gringy. (You know what that word means right? Even though I made it up?)

Progress is being made. Okay, the new tub is not hooked into the plumbing yet, but at least it's in place!

Fiberglass bat insulation now fills the space between the studs of the exterior wall. Eighth inch ply sheaths the floor for a clean level surface, and the new tub finally wandered in from the living room. But what do I see in that photos? I'm not loving those oddly ornate pulls on the cupboard -- I think I have some old white porcelain ones somewhere I can use instead. (I did. Happiness!)

Still needs a shower head... and drywalling in.

The tub just squeaked in. Any tighter and we'd have had to move the window, not just the window trim.

But doesn't the new drywall look good? There's something about freshly spackled drywall that always seems so hopeful to me. Like I imagine artist feel with a freshly gessoed canvas.

To be continued...

At Last

At Last I am getting around to updating this blog and At Last showing pictures of my bathroom redo from February.  (Also, "At Last" the song will be my earworm for the duration of this post if not the rest of the day. Thank you, Billie Holiday.)

I could blame the delay on the two (Two!) times my supposedly immune laptop got virused and had to be wiped and reset, but I suspect the delay was more along the lines of I just didn't make the blog a priority and was busy doing other things. Sorry about that. Photos of "other things" will be forthcoming. (No really, I promise.)

Let us begin with the bathroom demo:

Evidence that the bathroom was once tiled with real tile.
Was chipped, mismatched, poorly installed "faux tile" board really an upgrade?

While I realize that circa 1950 tile means that that plaster was probably once back of pink and black, powder blue, or mint green tiles... was that really so bad that some previous owner needed to remove it and do a crap job with crap wallboard? (I'm blaming the "flipper" who took cheapo shortcuts in the kitchen too.)

Dealing with what's left -- the plaster -- that's a lot to rip out, so we'll be using a 1/4 drywall later floor to ceiling to evenly cover the whole wall with a clean surface.

For the next couple days the only bathroom in the house won't be usable.
Which is a problem because after creating this sort of mess one really wants a shower!

This is the old tub. The hairline cracks around the drain had reached about to cause serious water damage leaking into the basement stage. Grey water's all very well in theory, but it's not so great puddling in front of the dryer.

Under several layers of floor there's another floor. It was like a stack of pancakes in there!

We did remove the plaster from the end wall, in order to insulate it properly as it is an exterior wall. Previously it was un-insulated, unless you count the single layer of brown paper thinner than a paper bag, which I don't.

That's original wood flooring under the lino glue and flooring staples.
 I could cry over having to cover that floor back over.

To be continued...

Something With Pictures

After several posts of mostly words, how about a post of mostly photos? Sound good? I finally got around to downloading the photos from my camera. Ergo, in no particular order, here's my photographed look at this past month or so.

Mums

Calendula (Pot Marigold) Seedhead

Soup From Only My Own Homegrown Vegetables
solar yellow carrots, parisian carrots, german butterball potatoes, ronde de nice,
yellow chambray green beans (and chicken stock, which I admit did not grow in my garden)

A Brown Moth

A Yellow/White Moth

Using Clothespins To Train Limbs
in my new seckle pear tree

Russian Banana Fingerling Potatoes
not a good return on the planting, and all so tiny, very disappointing

Yukon Gem Potato
now that's a potato we need to grow that variety again next year

Spice Bush Berries

Goldenrod Wreath (On Honeysuckle)
my goldenrod jelly did not get its picture taken, but turned out quite well anyway

What I learned from YouTube

I was assigned the appetizer for a group dinner -- that's easy right?  Or you can make things hard on yourself.  You can google things.  You can have a great veggie dip (take a jar of pesto and a block of cream cheese and add enough milk to make it blend smoothly in the mixer and you get dip that people love and rave about) and you can begin innocently enough thinking you want to make one little vegetable flower to garnish a tray of cut veggies.

Be warned:  YouTube will suck you in with fantastic amazing demonstrations of vegetable (and fruit) carving.  There are some truly talented people doing amazing perishable art.  That's the first thing you learn.  The second thing you learn is that most of these people don't speak English.  Which makes the third thing a little harder to learn -- the third thing you learn is how to make some of those veggie flowers yourself. 

I am particularly fond of the way my carrot flowers look almost good enough to be recognizable as flowers.  By the way, some of the things you learn from actually making those carrot flowers?  Carrots will stain your hands yellow if you work with them for three hours straight.  They really do get stiffer and crisper in a bowl of ice water just like the lady from Thailand says.  And seriously, if it takes three hours to make five sad little carrot flowers like that how amazing must God be to have created real flowers and carrots in the first place!  :)

The Least of These

You've seen those birds, right?  The ones in the dried flower department, made out of mushrooms and lichen.  The ones that look like this little guy.

For almost twenty minutes my little mushroom bird flitted from one weedy herb garden bed to another, feeding on seeds while my zoom lens tried to capture a good photo through the glass of my back door.

And then my mushroom bird flew away.  Last night my sister helped me identify my feathered friend, we looked through the field guide and after much consultation over warblers and finches dismissed all of those possibilities when we discovered the Least Flycatcher.

The range is right, the markings are right, the size is right... Meet Empidonax minimus the smallest eastern flycatcher.

... And We're Back

Summer is drawing to a close and morning comes with veils of fog.

Sorry about the lack of posts this summer, turns out dropping my laptop was not the best thing for it; but let me just say I love being able to use a coupon on top of a discount to a reduced price (plus a store credit) to purchase my spiffy new computer for less than half price -- even though it meant waiting a couple months for the new laptop.

Friday Finds

This Friday I found a view. A view that I first saw in a photograph hanging in a local art gallery. My photo lacks the dramatic light of an approaching storm, but I love that I found the same spot -- that I saw God's handiwork laid out for myself. (And I sort of also love that I didn't pay $250 for my picture of that spot.)

I also found an overlook where no buildings, no rutted scars, no power lines -- no trace of humans could be seen in the valley below -- unless you went all the way across the narrow ledge and craned your neck and then you could see one little white spot that was probably some one's house, but that really doesn't count.


... found out my friend Heather can tame butterflies. This beauty crawled right up onto her finger and posed for a picture.

... found rhododendron in bloom,

...and rooted in the cleft of the rock.

... and found trees. Old trees forgotten in a ravine and left to grow, their trunks too large to span with our arms, dead and fallen, live and hollow, standing, being, dwarfing us as we hiked the small winding trail.


Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy before the LORD, for he comes... ~Psalm 96:12b-13a

Summer is Upon