I did not Shoot My Eye Out but....

I knitted my arms off!!!!  I literally gave myself tennis elbow from knitting!!  Who knew you could do that?  I didn't.  I DO now.   Tennis elbow is pretty painful for quite some time.

I made quite a few knitted gifts this year for the Holidays.   I made a lot of the Fisherman's Wife cowl from Raverly.  I love this pattern.  Its by Kalurah Hudson.  She has a knitted version and a crochet version.  I made the knitted version.  It knit up quickly and who doesn't love Aran knittting? Everyone who received one said they loved it.  I had trouble finding enough buttons.  It called for the braided shank button and I could only find 3 sets at Central City.  I bought out one bin of yarn at Hobby Lobby so went to a polyester yarn with alpaca fiber woven in.  It seemed to work out okay.  

The cream Fisherman's wife cowls.

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Also Ravelry patterns.  The owlet sweater and Owlet hat.  See the buttons? those are the eyes of the owls.   I learned a different way to set in my sleeves with this sweater.   Gray for a little boy.

And in pink for a little girl.

3 more Owl hats for more children.

Blocking some of the cowls.

Surprisingly, I am NOT a fan of natural fiber knitting.  I find the colors tend to bleed, usually you have to hand wash and line dry and phooey! Who wants kid's items like that?  Plus natural fiber is very expensive.  I vastly prefer polyester, machine wash and dry yarn.  Even I was surprised at this since we used to raise sheep and wool.

I find knitting to be a great de-stresser and very addictive.   I love to knit.  I self-taught myself in high school (now that was a few years ago!)  Did half of a fair isle vest front and did not knit again.  I liked it but had other fish to fry at that time of my life :)   Last fall in 2014 I took some lessons and it came back quickly and I've been knitting ever since.  I really enjoyed the knitting lessons.  They have a group on Tuesday evenings I would love to attend but alas! distance is one of the limiting factors here 60 miles north of nowhere.  Very limiting in the winter.

I decided to get back into Knitting when Nancy at Wyoming Breezes sent me a pair of her hand knitted socks, which I loved.  So Nancy, YOU were the cause of my painful Christmas elbow!  

Christmas was a white Christmas here and COLD!!! very cold in Wyoming.  And it's stayed cold since with sub zero wind chills.   Weatherman says it will stay until the New Year is rung in.

As I get older, I don't get out in the sub zero temperatures much any more.   I worry about falling on the ice with no one else home and injuring myself.   I don't have chores to do since I got rid of my chickens so it works out.

Well now I think I should start earlier than September with my holiday knitting.   So have been thinking of doing slippers next year.  Like maybe felted ELF Slippers?

or

Grinch Slippers?

So many patterns!!!!!!

HAPPY KNITTING!

And a Happy New Year.

After A Brutal Snow

After a brutal snowstorm where we got 7" here at North of Nowhere and 16" where Son #1 and Son #2 Live....with winds up to 50 mph......we are talking Nasty, Cold, bad bad roads (we were snowed in till noon the first day until they got the road plowed).  And to think I thought we were going to have a brown Christmas.   Foolish Woman.

There's a car under that snow...................AND I DON"T WANT TO LOOK AT THIS SORT OF STUFF

instead let's look at:

#2 Son on his horse, Freckles when he was four years old (the boy not the horse)

#2 Son getting on Freckles by himself when he was about six

# 2 Son twenty years later on Fizzy

Hubby bringing in the mares

#1 Son on Melody and Hubby on Ratchet

Our Wedding Photo

We did not get married horseback just rode away from the church horseback.  They had ribbons and CANS tied in my horses tail.   Don't you think it would have been rather undignified if ol Pepper had bucked me off???????

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH much better than looking at snow pictures.    Thank You.

 Merry Christmas to you all.

May your snow never blow and your feet never freeze to the ground.

Autumnul Equinox Already?

Whatcha talking about Willis????

I mean I haven't had SUMMER yet....

We went up the mountain to our lot last weekend and yep, sure 'nuff the aspens were turning yellow.

There seemed to be a lot of orange showing up in the aspens this year.   This photo is from several years ago and shows the yellow and the orange in the aspens.  Apparently the color is controlled by the amount of water the tree receives and when and also the temperatures.

We started this year with a project -- a huge project in mid February.

Morton Buildings started on our barn on the 'town' lot.  This will be where we spend winters when we both are retired.  Still will keep cows and horses but since we feed big rounds, Hubby will go and check and set bales every few days.  This is the end of day two with day one spent pouring the footings.

Below is noon of Day three -- this particular Morton building crew was from Germantown, Ohio and they were so efficient and fast!

Roof on day four

Sides on Day Five

End of Day six -- Completed.

Grandson riding Jeannie the pony in the barn with Grandpa

Granddaughters in the barn door.

AND THEN we had the electrical................

Beginning the installion of the service to the lot.

Finishing wiring the barn.

Hubby and I hung all the lights (well okay Hubby was the guy in the air,  I was the go-fer for him).  It was quite the job and took up two weeks of his summer vacation.  Then the electricians ran the cable to them and wired in the switches and boxes.  

Left to do -- I have to paint the panels we bought to place in the arena, we need to complete a tack room and bathroom and maybe a waiting room.  First we need to fill in around the bottom of the barn (see the day light on the bottom?) and then spread washed arena sand to a depth of about 3".  It's usuable now though.  Just a hard landing as it's packed dirt if you get bucked off.  LOL

I bought the lights from Orion Lighting via the web as they specialize in lighting for barns.  I'm pleased with them (I got the dust proof flourescents) and boy, do we have LIGHT at night.  It's like daylight in there.  Just what you want actually.

So this sucked up all our free time in 2015 and now 2016 we have 1) refurbish the well and get water run, 3) the house.................... we can probably take a vacation about 2020 or so... maybe.

 Hopefully....

But we LOVE the barn. Something we've both wished for our entire lives and now that we are old, we have it.  Sort of like that Corvette some guys go buy...

Saturation

SNOW in May??????????????  Yep twice the most recent on May 22 just a skiff but...............snow this late?

Last post I was worried we would not have enough moisture to really bring the grass up.  Now we are considering building an ark.   We have had rain almost every day for the past two weeks.  The ground is now saturated and flood warnings are out for this afternoon.  And it's still raining.  And the grass is knee deep to a tall cowboy - which is great!

Spring in Wyoming is not typical this year at all.  Usually we have snow in March and April.  This year nothing.  It was so dry.  And the grass was not coming up well even though the temperatures were quite warm.

Then in May it became cold.  We have not had a 70 degree day yet  here North of Nowhere and it's almost JUNE!  And the rain started and has continued.  Also not typical.

Livestock is miserable.  They have shed a lot and now they are wet and stay wet.  We had horses in the corral to feed them so they did not get so fat on the new grass but it was so muddy, we turned them out.  I felt sorry for them standing in all the mud in the corral.

The Bull has not been so fortunate.  He has to stay in until it's breeding season.  And the butcher steer is in with him and we are waiting for nice weather to get him in the freezer.

I wonder if this is what global warming will look like?   I suspect we will alternating between very rainy cool years like this year, and very dry severe droughts (not looking forward to those at all!)

Just some thoughts from Muddy Wyoming!

Changes

It has been a long time since I've posted but now I'm Baaack!

The big news is I am now retired. Not exactly by choice but I was laid off April 1st due to low oil prices.  And I am soooo tired of the commute I decided to not look for another job.

We have had a new addition to the North of Nowhere family -- our 3rd grandchild, granddaughter #2.  She is a sweetie and loves her brother and sister.

 One of the my first retired projects was this baptismal dress for her.  Taken from the Sew Beautiful magazine it was a challenging project to say the least!  It was called the Winter Christening Gown.
Granddaughter #2 is six months old in the photo that was taken by her mother.  Her mom is quite a talented photographer!

This is the picture from the Magazine:
The magazine version had embroidery on the organza overdress but after trying briefly to replicate that I quickly gave up the idea thinking I would simply ruin the organza and have to start over on that layer.  I really did not think it detracted at all from my version of the dress.

I've not chosen my next sewing project yet.  I have so MANY Many many UFO's (unfinished objects) from the years of working that it might be hard to chose one!!

Next project on the list is to start a garden!  I want to do something in raised beds and am thinking about using some of the old leaky stocks tanks we have just laying around for the bed planters.  I have one friend who has tried this and says they work great!

Will keep you all posted!