Gotta Love Free Books!

 Two years ago, a friend of mine organized a community book swap.  It was held in the resource room at her local library.  The premise was that people brought books to swap--minimum of one book required for admission, attendees could take home as many books as they wanted, and at the end of the swap all 'homeless' books were donated to the library for their annual used book sale.

I ended up being unable to make it to the swap, because K2's funeral ended up being scheduled for the same day.  My dear, dear friend, when she heard of this conflict, told me that she'd had numerous people give her boxes of books they no longer wanted and wished to donate to the swap without attending, and invited me to her house to check out the donations.  I found about a dozen books in those pre-swap boxes and being able to take them home even though I wouldn't be able to be at the swap itself helped brighten up a really dark time.

Her book swap was such an overwhelming success, and she had so many requests for another book swap in the not too distant future, that she did!  It needed a larger venue, so that had to be obtained before setting a firm event date.  Ended up being in the Fall of that year.

That one I did attend.  It was another, even larger, impressive turnout of people and books.  Such a big turnout that there wasn't enough table space for all the books brought to be swapped.  And thus was born a semi annual event: the community book swap.

Last year, there was a Spring swap (which I attended and stood in line for almost an hour to get into as there was so many people wanting to swap that the room was at maximum human capacity and people had to be let in only as other people left) and a Fall swap.  The Fall swap had some changes made, such as you could buy an early admittance for $5 and get in an hour early for 'private shopping' before the masses were let in.  That helped a bit with shortening the line, but the turnout was still bigger than the event venue.

This year, the Spring swap was at another new, even larger, location.  The 'early bird special $5 admission' was again offered.  Frugal me, I went for the (free) general admission time and had no trouble getting right in.  I went with only six books to donate (apparently I didn't read much at all between October and March), but came home with sixteen.

Some are for the grandkids to read, some are in brand new condition that I will probably give as gifts, but mostly they are for me!  I was especially excited to spot this book:

Back in 2013 & 2014, when I was learning to knit, I learn to how to knit socks on double pointed needles, and also the Magic Loop method using a circular needle.  At that time, I found that I prefer double points.  2015 or so,  I first heard about the Two at a Time (TAAT) method, and it intrigued me but not enough to seek out more information and give it a try.  I even heard of this exact book, but there was so much stuff going on in my life at that point that I was far from trying anything new that I suspected might require my complete attention to learn.

But now, it's 2025 and I'd actually recently been thinking about maybe adding this book to my list of things I wanted to request from the library. To see it sitting there, in front of me, on the "Crafting" table at the book swap surely was a sign from above!  So I grabbed it and stuffed it into my bag.

Imagine my complete and utter delight when I got it home, was showing off my prizes (new books) to DH, opened the book and there, tucked inside by the previous (now unknown) owner were two sizes of needles needed for some of the patterns in the book!  Woo hoo!  A book teaching the method, 17 patterns and two sets of needles for knitting with!  WINNER WINNER!!

Gotta love free books!

Yeehaw, Hang on to Your Hats!

 We had quite a storm blow through yesterday evening.  Not unexpected at all, in fact, it hit just about the exact time the meteorologists had been predicting for two days.  So we were ready for it.

As dinner was cooking in the oven (Husband's Delight, I'll put the recipe at the bottom of this post), I ran out to the barn and put evening feed in the horse's stalls, anticipating that I would need to bring them in a little early.

Ran back to the house as the timer on the oven was just finishing up.  DH and I sat down to salad and Husband's Delight, me keeping an eye on the darkening sky to the south.  

I gulped down the last few bites on my plate, then jumped up and headed out to the barn.  Just as I got there, my phone went off in a tornado warning alert.  Of course it said to seek shelter immediately, to which I replied (yes, out loud) "I will, just as soon as I get horses in." Because that's how it works when you have a farm.  Livestock first, then yourself.

I was to the mares' pasture gate (as the Poetess is always the first horse to come in--alpha mare that she is), where both mares were standing to meet me, when I heard the storm sirens in the village (6+ miles away) go off.  And then the wind kicked up.  Oh boy, here we go!

DH met me part of the way to the barn and took the Poetess from me so I could run back and get the LBM.  By the time I got to the same spot with her, he met me again with both of the geldings' halters.  I went to the their pasture, and quickly haltered one, pulled him through the gate and DH was back again, ready to receive the lead rope.  The last horse was anxious to get in by then, looking worriedly off to the south and waiting practically smashed at the gate for me to come in and grab him.

We got all the horses in their stalls and the barn shut up tight, then speed walked into the wind back to the house.  I had just pulled my muck boots off in the garage and decided (fool that I am for a good storm), to head out onto the front porch in my stocking feet to watch the front roll in, when it hit.

And man, did it hit good!  Straight line winds right out of the south and driving rain coming completely sideways.  Forget going on the front porch, it was like walking into a firehose!  So I went into the house instead, just in time to see (through the kitchen windows) the little side table go scooting across the entire length of the front porch (about 30') driven by the wind.  

Looking out the other windows, you couldn't see hardly anything the rain and wind were coming so hard.  I did notice that we were missing the little plastic toddler sized playset that sits in the backyard closest to the house.  It had been in the yard a few minutes ago, when DH and I entered the garage, but now it was missing.

The electricity blinked off and back on twice, then went off for good.  As of this writing (over 17 hours later), it is still off.  

About fifteen minutes after it hit, the leading edge of the storm had passed and the wind let up enough that we could see through the rain, I located that playset.  In pieces, starting out near the chicken coop and ending towards the field, about 50 yards from where it had originally sat.

playset pieces scattered from the backyard to the shop

Later, once the wind had died off and the rain slowed to a drizzle, DH and I went out to check on the horses and chickens (stubborn chickens had not wanted to go into their coop before the storm), and to assess damages.

Horses, horse barn and fencing: Fine.

Chickens and coop: Fine (all chickens huddled on their roost by then, LOL).

DH's shop: lots of water inside because the south facing door had been damaged by the wind hitting it full force.  South door has a huge dent and was raised about 10" by the force, and the east facing door is bent outward from the pressure inside the building.  We're going to have to put in our first ever claim on our homeowner's insurance.

House: lost a long piece of fascia of  the peak of the South gable.  Also several pieces of soffit partially ripped off on the front porch and the piece of soffit closest the door that goes from the garage to the front porch is all mangled and punched up into the garage attic (again, extreme air pressure).  A window screen ripped off a living room window is bent up and seems to have a piece of the window edging itself still attached.  Add that to the insurance claim.  A wooden chair that lives on the front porch was thrown up against the railing by the wind so hard that the backrest broke off.  All other porch/deck/patio furniture moved around, some flipped, but nothing else damaged.

Shed and garden/grape arbor: Fine

Trees: all the trees around the house and yard look fine, including the dead one leaning towards the utility pole that the electric company was supposed to have their contractor remove last Fall. In the northeast corner of the field, near the entrance to the 'north road' in our woods, a very large, tall, tree has the top completely broken out of it.  We'll have to examine it close up to determine if we need to take the entire tree down or let it be and see if it recovers.

This morning, the temperature is almost 40 degrees cooler than it was yesterday, with winds now coming from the north.  We have the generator on at the house so DH can have internet to work from home, and we have heat, lights, water, and the fridges and freezers can stay cool. We'll run the generator all day (or until the power is restored) then shut it off at bedtime to save fuel and have quiet for sleeping.  

There's no power in the barn though, so I strapped on my handy headlamp and cleaned stalls by its meager light.

selfie with headlamp

not the greatest stall cleaning light, but it does the job

(note shadow from my phone while taking the picture!)

HUSBAND'S DELIGHT

(recipe originally found in a magazine by my aunt in the early 1980's)

1 pound ground beef

6 ounces sour cream

3 ounces cream cheese

1/4 tsp garlic powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 Tbsp sugar

15 ounce can tomato sauce

1/2 cup chopped onion

10 ounces wide egg noodles

1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese

1. Set cream cheese out in a small bowl to soften for an hour (or soften on warm setting of microwave)

2. Cook ground beef and onion until meat is browned.  Meanwhile, cook the egg noodles until tender.

3. To the meat and onion, add seasonings and tomato sauce.

4. Drain noodles.

5. Add sour cream to the softened cream cheese and mix well.

6. In a greased 9" x 13" baking dish, layer half the noodles, then half the meat sauce, then half the cream sauce.  Then layer remaining meat sauce, remaining cream sauce, and remaining noodles.  Top with the shredded mozzarella.

7. Cover dish with foil and bake in a 350 degree oven for 30 minutes.

Fourteen Years?!?

 Today is 14 years since I started this blog.  Wow.  So much has happened, my family has grown, and changed, and life is so different (but yet, also the same) as it was back in 2011.

There have been many times, in the last two years especially, when I've asked myself why I have this blog still.  I feel like I don't do right by it; that I don't post as often as I want, nor do my of my posts in recent years have the tone I'd like them to have.  A lot of them, to me anyway, feel like I'm giving a report rather than chatting with a friend.

What to do? 

Pull the plug and stop blogging?  Am I just done?  Am I out of things to say and share?  Is blogging dead anyway?  (I find it harder as time goes on to find blogs that I'm interested in--real people not selling products or faux lifestyles.)  Does everyone just prefer photos and not much meaty (as in substantial) talk these days?

Or try to find time (and topics I find fun/appealing) to post about much more regularly--like weekly as a minimum?  Set a schedule and do what is necessary to stick with it (even if I'm not feeling it?)

Give myself grace and just let the timing and topics be what they may?  That was my original intent, really, just to share what comes through my life, good and bad, interesting and dull.  Just an everyday average person, not some super hyped-up-always-bright-and-sunny version of womanhood.

I started this blog more as an outlet for myself (I've always loved writing, but hate writing on assigned topics) than anything else.  It's never been a financial thing, it's never been a popularity thing, and for the most part I never talk about politics or current social hot buttons because those just aren't me.  I do still want to write posts.  I do still want to share thoughts and ideas and happenings and creations.  I'm definitely not out of things to share.  If blogging is mostly dead, well, it's not completely buried yet, and I'm fairly sure there are people like me out there who want to read not just look at perfect pictures and witty captions.

So where do I/this little place here go from here?  Well, we shall see what the future holds.  Life is busy, but it's always been busy.  I'm trying to learn to be better at self-care (a totally foreign concept for most of my life) and writing, for me, is a form of self-care.  

I need to sit on my porch swing more and write.  I mean, that's why I always wanted a porch swing--to sit and relax on--and why my kids bought me one a few years ago. 

Would you like to join me?

Lucky

 Grandbaby #7, whom I dubbed Lucky for referring to at this little place here, was born at the end of January.  

DS2 and Surprise had kept the gender a secret until after the birth, so until I got the proud phone call from DS2 announcing baby's arrival, I didn't know for sure that Lucky is a little boy!  (Confession time:  I'd really been hoping that Lucky would be a boy.  DS2 and Surprise have been trying to start their family for a while, and I just really hoped that DS2 would get to have a son. Daughters are good too, and hopefully God will give them one of those in the coming years, but if it was/is going to be just one child for them, I was rooting for a boy.)

Given that I was supposed to be making a 'gender neutral' quilt for this grandbaby, whose gender was top secret, I really had a hard time.  Surprise had said yellow, green, gray, some blue, maybe a tiny bit of purple.  I wanted to stick with that palette even though it wasn't one that I was drawn to.

I knew what pattern I wanted to use--square in a square--but as far as what fabrics, well the ones that kept speaking to me leaned toward the boyish. 

It all started with the feature fabric, which is a Disney print.  As soon as I saw that fabric online, I knew it was the one for this quilt--DS2 and Surprise met by accident at Walt Disney World 10 years ago.  So the Disney themed fabric absolutely had to be for Lucky's quilt.  Had that chance meeting between a New Jersey girl and a Michigan boy not happened at Disney World, there would be no Lucky.

After that, I just went through my stash and found fabrics I all ready owned that coordinated with the colors in the Disney Fabric.  Yellow, green, gray and some blue. 

For a day or two I debated throwing in a light pink or purple which also looked okay, but in the end I omitted those two colors because they just didn't 'feel right' to me. I sewed the quilt, the whole time hoping it wasn't going to turn out too overtly saying 'boy quilt' and have Lucky turn out to be a girl and then have Surprise not really want to use the quilt made specifically for that child because it wasn't girlish enough.

So it was kind of a relief when DS2 called and said that Lucky is a boy.  Now I didn't feel quite so nervous about gifting the quilt I made.  It's still pretty much gender-neutral, especially bordered in the yellow fabric I chose.

Lucky's very gender neutral quilt (heavy on the yellow)

Gender-neutral backing (heavy on the green)

The day Lucky was born, I had finished quilting but hadn't yet sewn on the binding of the quilt.  Which didn't end up being a big deal, because DS2 and Surprise requested no visitors for at least the first week after Lucky's birth.  So that gave me time to hand sew the binding down.

Lucky was 8 days old when DH and I got to see him.  He's a little skinny bugger, weighing in at less than 7 pounds at birth and being 19.5" long.  But he's really strong all ready and has pretty good neck strength/head control for a newborn.  Both DS2 and Surprise are fair skinned, so odds are good that Lucky will be too.  We'll have to wait several months to see if his eyes will be blue like DS2, or greenish like Surprise.  Right now they are the typical newborn bluish grey and he has thin dark brown hair (which, if it's anything like my kids and several of my older grandkids as babies, will fall out and come back in blond or sandy colored for the first 5ish years.)

Requiem For a Rooster

 

This is Stuart.  Stuart came to this little place here as a 'free mystery chick' in an order from McMurray Hatchery back in 2018.  He was a little bitty ball of fluff, and, as a day old, I thought he might be a bantam of some sort.  In fact, his size is what gave him his name: Stuart Little. As he grew, and his adult feathers came in, and he displayed an atypically luxurious tail of long black/green feathers, I finally figured out that he wasn't a bantam at all, but a Silver Phoenix.

Stuart got to stay at this little place here partly because of his unique breed with it's long flowing tail (visitors always complimented me on my beautiful rooster) and partly because he was, for the most part, a very friendly and non-aggressive roo.  Very occasionally he would challenge me, typically the first time I'd wear shorts in the Spring and he wouldn't recognize my legs, but usually he was a mellow guy and would even walk up to greet me.

Coming to see me on the patio.

Stuart got to sire a bunch of the chicks that hatched out in DD2's science summer school classes in 2021 and 2022.  We even kept a couple of his 2021 daughters here (who laid lovely green eggs, being half Ameracauna and half Silver Phoenix) for a while.  He was great with his hens, very protective.

Unfortunately, a week and a half ago, Stuart went out with his ladies to forage in the corn stubble on a nice late January day.  That night, when I counted chickens to shut them into the coop for the night, Stuart was missing. I searched high and low, even following chicken tracks out and around in the field, but found no sign of him.  Not a carcass, not any feathers, not even a speck of blood.  And since Stuart has always returned to the coop, every single night, I had to face the fact that he's gone.  Most likely carried off by a hawk while he was out in the field having fun rummaging in the corn stubble for kernels and calling his ladies to come enjoy the feast he'd found.

RIP Stuart.  You were a good rooster.  One of the best, one of my favorites of the last 21 years.

Buck and Papa

 Buck is in a phase where he absolutely adores his Papa (DH) and asks to see him.  He's a few months past his second birthday, and yes, he actually asks to come over to this little place here and hang out with his Papa.

Almost two weeks ago, he got to do this solo for the first time ever.  After a rocky few minutes right after getting dropped off and then realizing it was just him, Papa, and I, which evoked some tears and calling for his Daddy, he settled in.  

The first thing he wanted to do was have a snack. Papa is always up for a snack, so they had venison summer sausage (made by Papa this past hunting season) and cheese.  I forget the exact conversation held while snacking, but it included Buck gesturing out towards our woods and saying that Papa sits in the trees.

The next thing he wanted to do was do some puzzles.  We tried to interest him in the easy toddler puzzles we have--the wooden kind with less than a dozen pieces, but he had his heart set on the 48-piece Frozen puzzles we have.  With Papa's help, he was able to match up the colors and designs on the pieces and put the puzzle together.  I snapped a picture during the twenty minutes or so they took to work on the first puzzle.  Once that one was done, he insisted on doing another (we have three Frozen puzzles).

Like Papa, Buck has a stocky build and thick hands.  He's also got Papa's blue eyes.  Hopefully not Papa's hairline, although they say guys inherit that trait through their mother and to look at the mother's father to see if they will be balding or not, so poor Buck is probably doomed since his mom is DD1, daughter of Papa.

Buck hadn't had a nap before arriving at this little place here, despite his parents' best efforts.  Unfortunately for him, that meant that he fell asleep while sitting on Papa's lap and having Papa read to him.  After sleeping for an hour, he woke up ready to play again, with two goals in mind:

1. Ride on the tractor with Papa (who let him 'steer' )
2. Ride on the 4-wheeler with Papa (who didn't let him steer as his arms are still too short to span the handlebar).

We had an inch or so of snow on the ground, so Papa got out the sled with the long rope on it, and pulled Buck around on the sled behind the 4-wheeler for a little bit.  He biffed it once, Buck having gotten to rocking the sled from side to side and flipped over when he rocked a little too far.  That got him a mouthful of snow, but when Papa circled back around to him with the sled he was game to climb back on and go again.

Once the sled and 4-wheeler had been put away, he told us that he wanted to "go home and eat with my family" rather than stay for dinner.  (Buck doesn't talk a lot, but when he feels so moved, he has lots and lots of words.  And opinions.) So Papa took him home.

It's a Dry Cold

 You know how people talk about the summer heat in the southwest or desert part of the US as being not as bad as the heat in the more wetter parts of the country?  How they say the high temperatures are more tolerable there because "It's a dry heat" with low humidity?

Well, right now the Midwest is in a cold spell.  So cold that the area schools (at least those of several counties around this little place here) are closed because it is 'too cold' to be safe for the kids to go to school.

I kind of get it, if you don't have adequate clothing (heavy coat, hats, gloves, scarves, boots, etc) for the winter temperatures.  That can be bad.  And unfortunately it seems that more and more parents don't provide their kids with insulated boots, warm coats, sturdy pants that block the wind, hats, gloves, etc.  My feelings on that lack are rant-worthy.  However, that's not what I'm posting about today.

Because if you do have adequate gear, these zero and sub-zero temps aren't all that terrible.

I actually like these temperatures (barely above zero this morning when I was out doing chores, with moderate wind bringing wind chill to around 5ish below zero) better than when it's in the mid thirties or the forties here.  

Because it's a dry cold.  

There's no component of dampness, and I stay warmer in my layers in frigid air than I do with warmer temps, less layers and higher moisture in the ground and air around me.  Layer up, and keep moving; that's the secret.

Despite the 'dangerous' cold today, I'm wishing I was outside on a pair of cross-country skis.  It's a great day for gliding around, enjoying winter.