Barely Back in the Saddle

 After nearly two months of no riding, my physical therapist (for my knee) cleared me to get back in the saddle, albeit on a very limited basis.  Like "only do 25% of what you would normally do while riding" kind of limited.

After much thought, I decided that was rather a tall order, to keep things at 25% or less, especially as just the motion of mounting was rather a stressor on my knee.  The way I saw it, mounting was about 50% of the workout, but I was determined to try to obey.  So, my current plan is mount, do elementary walk work, get off after 15-20 minutes and build slowly from there.

Which is what I finally got to do this week.  I found that a) mounting does still create a brief twinge in my knee during the moment of springing up and swinging my right leg over the saddle, and b) 15 minutes of walking my horse on the very minimum of contact (ie not allowing his head to be in the air or at his knees) tired my knee/leg out very quickly.  After 15 minutes I was more than ready to get down for fear of reinjuring my knee.

Honestly, I was rather paranoid about maybe all ready having pushed too much--with my idea of mounting being a huge percentage of the work-- and after also having to clean stalls that morning, my knee was more sore than it's been in weeks.  Not nearly as sore, and not swollen, as it had been most of the summer, but there was definitely discomfort there that I hadn't felt in a while.

Still, the physical therapist, upon me reporting on my experience of riding again, encouraged me to get on again, but wait 3-4 days between rides.  So that is the plan for now--riding only a quarter of an hour, at walk (definitely no posting trot for a while) every 3-4 days and increase only as my knee dictates (like, no more pain on mounting, and not tiring so quickly).

Meanwhile, Camaro still gets longed a couple of times a week.  And the weather has turned cold (and wet) enough that he now sports his waterproof turnout sheet.

I also, in a super dressage diva kind of way of worrying about rebuilding muscles unevenly, sprang for a brand new pair of stirrup leathers.  My old ones were OLD (2+ decades old!), and uneven.  So I decided that in the interest of starting riding again with proper balance as much as possible, new leathers were a must.  

Ironically, my totally identical to each other brand new leathers, while looking like the right iron hung a titch longer, feel like my right leg is shorter than my left.  After consulting others for their eyeballing of my irons both with my feet in and out of them, we decided to trust the holes on the new irons.  It's very likely I'd been riding uneven most of this year and now having my legs identical feels weird.

Sewing/Stitching Update, October

Zero sewing has been done in the past month, despite my intention to start working on a quilt that is planned to be a Christmas gift.  Nothing like putting pressure on myself to whip off a large throw sized quilt in just two months!

I do have the pattern chosen, and the fabrics pulled from stash.  I'm using 10" neutral precuts as the background, and going with just two other colors (that I need to cut into 10" squares), so hopefully once I actually get my rotary cutter slicing into fabric everything will go quickly.

I wish the colors were truer in the above photo, the white-looking fabric is actually ecru/natural tones and the greenish is much prettier than pictured.

I'm going to use the Disappearing Hourglass pattern by Missouri Star Quilt Co., altering it a little to make the quilt slightly smaller.  My plan is 5 rows of 5 blocks each, and then the borders widths as written.

While I wasn't sewing at all, I did do a whole lot of counted cross stitch while Faline napped on my babysitting days. She's taking an hour to hour-and-a-half afternoon nap these days, so that really gave me lots of crafting time.  

I finished the Nordic Santa I was making as a gift for my Mom.

Then, since that went so quickly, I decided to see if I could start and finish another perforated paper beaded cross stitch design before DD2's birthday in early October.  Yes, I could, and I did!  And she loves it.  It reminds her of the study abroad she did in Peru back in 2017, which was what I was hoping, as it is an Andean Santa.

I have to confess that I might be slightly addicted to these little cross stitch kits.  I found many more on Amazon and Ebay, and have about 4 more waiting to be made.  There's another 4 on my wish list and watch list. . .   

At first, I was intimidated by the thought of doing the beading, but the directions are very clear and once I started stitching on the first bead, all fear went away. It really was easy (although it definitely requires me to wear my reading glasses while handling the beads!)

Knitting Update, October

 Whole lotta knitting happening lately.  Mostly because I've still been under restricted activities so that my knee can rest.  Ha.  I'm getting rather tired of going about 40-50% of my normal daily anything and not having my knee be all rested and better by now.  But, that's a subject for a different post.  This post is about knitting!

DD1's Christmas stocking (#2 of 3 for her family) is done!  Well, the knitting anyway.  It still needs embellishing with button and beads, but that won't take nearly as long as the knitting did.

Faline's Christmas stocking (#3 of 3) is about 1/4 completed. I'm through her name and ready to start the part with the wreaths and Christmas trees (one tree front, one tree back).  Should definitely be completed by the end of this month.

When I don't have the elbow room for a big basket with multiple colors of yarn feeding out of it into a Christmas stocking, I've worked on the Rubia socks for my Dad. I'm doing them in sort-of Detroit Lions colors; light gray and a royal blue and decided to do the leg and foot in gray with blue in the colorwork, heel, and toe.

In August I had gotten the colorwork on the leg done, but it seemed too tight for a man's leg, so I unknit it back to the cuff, went up to a size 2 needle, and began the colorwork again. Ahh, much better.  It looks huge and loose in the picture, but in person (in sock-son?) it is not gigantic and baggy.  I decided, for the sake of time, I wasn't going to learn the heel included in the pattern, and subbed in a regular ribbed heel flap (in blue).  Currently I'm about six rows into the gusset.  This morning I have to drive DH to and from a medical procedure, and should be able to complete the gusset and at least an inch or two of foot while waiting for him.  That's my plan, anyway.

Reading has been way less than in the previous update.  I gave up on Murder at the Cherry Festival, just couldn't get into it; the writing was a bit jumpy--like just not smooth or well edited--for me and it was interfering with my being able to concentrate on the story line.  So I gave myself permission to set it down and read something else.

Turned out I read three something elses instead:

Lost Hills by Lee Goldberg sucked me in and I read it quickly.  I'll definitely be looking for more in this series.

Things You Save in a Fire by Katherine Center was another just plain enjoyable book by this author.  I like that her books don't have flashy characters or ritzy settings. Rather, they are like ordinary people in real-life situations you might come across.

Piece by Piece by Laura Bradford, I found a little predictable, but not too bad.  I'm rather a harsh critic, but I might look for more by her.  Or not.  Depends on my reading mood, I guess.

Right now, I'm between books. I have several on request at the library, one of which came in today.

Chickens Love Tomatoes

Something I never knew until I had both a laying flock and a fairly successful garden, is that chickens love tomatoes.  In a totally bad way, if you have an unfenced garden (me!) and free range chickens (me!).  Along about the time that the tomatoes start to get orange on their way to red ripe, the chickens, without fail, rediscover the garden and proceed to help themselves to my beautiful almost-ripe tomatoes.  

Repeatedly chasing them out of the garden doesn't deter them; they just come back when I'm not looking.  

The only sure-fire way to keep them out of my garden (since fencing it would be a large expense and make it really difficult to work the garden with the tractor) is to keep the chickens shut in their coop all day long.  Or, for most of the day, until there's not enough daylight left for them to venture over to the garden.

But that's not really how I want to manage my chickens: shut in for 8 weeks or more.  This year, chasing them has been difficult, what with my knee being jacked up.  So sometimes they are shut in until a few hours before dark, and sometimes--usually a weekend--DH has to be on tomato guard duty, watching for the chickens to stealthily meander across the front yard and toward the far side of the garden.  Between you and me, I think he secretly likes chasing them out of the garden with his 4-wheeler.

Ironically, in a twist of fate, this year the chickens sort of planted their own tomato patch.  The terraced bed behind the garage and accessible from the patio, the bed I usually plant garlic in each fall, sprouted rather a few tomato plants this summer. At first, it was 2 or 3, and I didn't pay them much attention. I didn't think they would actually produce any tomatoes, being volunteer plants in a climate where tomatoes have to be started indoors months before the ground thaws outside if they're going to have any chance of bearing mature fruit.

And then my knee happened, so the terrace went to crap with weeds because I couldn't keep up and DH hadn't yet decided that he was going to have to pitch in.  And next thing we knew, we had a tomato jungle that crowded out the garlic crop. Not just big bushy tomato plants, but this whole trailing wall of tomato vines.

Where the heck did they come from?  It's not like someone spit tomato seeds off the deck and they landed in the terraced bed to sprout the next year, like has occasionally happened with watermelons.  The only thing I could think of was that tomato seeds must have been in the chicken litter that I'd dressed the bed with last fall in order to add lots of nitrogen to the soil.  You know, litter that had chicken manure in it, chicken manure produced by those tomato stealing chickens last summer.

So we started referring to that rogue patch of tomatoes as the "chicken tomatoes".  And left them there, hoping this tomato patch much closer to the coop might deter them from eating the ones I'd planted in the garden.

It didn't.  Now they had two choices of where to eat tomatoes.  And, interestingly enough, the chicken tomatoes have been prolific and ripe almost at the same time as my plants (started from seed in early March) in the garden.

Most of the plants are producing cherry tomatoes.  Very extremely delicious cherry tomatoes.

There's one plant that had made a few large heart-shaped reddish orange tomatoes, and another that has dark pink brandywine type fruits.  Which is interesting, because I haven't planted any brandywines in a number of years, and the coop gets shoveled out way way more often than that!

I'm not sure if I will allow the chickens to plant tomatoes in the future. They've been a really tasty bonus this year, but not exactly the best-behaved plants.  

Horse Update, September

 Unfortunately, I don't have much to talk about when it comes to progress in my riding goals.  I did ride Camaro a lot in July, and we cantered just about every single ride.  That there is progress.

On the other hand, I hardly rode at all in August it was so blasted hot and humid the majority of the month and I just didn't have the strength (or the stomach, high humidity coupled with heat seems to just liquefy my guts and/or make me nauseous, sorry to be graphic) to do barn chores and ride, plus do garden work and canning at home most days.  So, the riding, as the only activity on my plate that wasn't about saving money for the household, had to be lowest priority.  I did longe him at least twice most weeks that I didn't get in the saddle, and I have to say his trot to canter transitions on the longe line are pretty much instantaneous and balanced now.

So far in September, I've been in the saddle once.  We cantered that ride too, in fact, Camaro very calmly and willingly offered it (when I was actually wanting him to collect his trot more), so I asked him a few more times for canter during that ride.

Overall, though, I'm not very happy with the last two months.  So many lost riding opportunities I could/should/normally would have just pushed through.  

And then there's my knee.  My left knee has been acting up the majority of the summer.  Don't know what caused it to start, still don't know exactly what aggravates it, and finally I've been prescribed physical therapy by my primary care doctor (2x weekly for 4 weeks) to try to rebuild the muscles in and around it because for many weeks I couldn't even bend it at the walk, so of course certain muscles went unused or were torqued by an abnormal gait.  It mostly bends now, but not 100%, and I can't jog or run or hop or pivot on it. Stairs range from slightly slower than normal to "this hurts like hell and I hope I don't fall on my face" depending on the day.  So, sometimes just getting into the saddle even from the mounting block is painful and risky.

The show I wanted to go to this month has come and gone, without me.  There's no way I could have taken care of Camaro at the show, or ridden tests well (damn knee).  Honestly, I'm rather bummed out over that.

Well, that's my downer of a horse-related update for this month.  Not even a single picture to share.

Sewing Update, September

 I actually finished one sewing project in late July/early August (honestly I don't remember the exact date, but it was before Aug 2nd), and then started a stitching project in mid-August.

The finished one is the red-white-&-blue wall hanging (banner? decoration?) that I wanted to make to hang on the door that goes between our garage and mudroom.  That is the door we and our family and friends use the majority of the time, so it is the one I'd rather seasonally decorate than the front door. The only people who typically get close enough to my house the see the front door, but don't actually go in the house (via the garage-to-mudroom door) is the Amazon, UPS, or Fedex delivery drivers.  I doubt they're much thinking about whether or not my front door is decorated.

So, anyway, I now have a nice Memorial Day through ?? Day (haven't decided yet, probably Fall equinox) decoration for my garage/mudroom door.

On August 10th, DD1 and the other teachers in her school district had to report back to their classrooms to do some PD and get ready for the start of school on August 16th. This school year, I will be babysitting Faline on Tuesdays and Thursdays (at her home, more often than not), and I wanted to have a small, portable stitching project to take with me to work on during Faline's afternoon nap.

It took me until the second week of school to settle on what that project would be.  I chose the Mill Hill Nordic Santa kit that I'd purchased in late Spring with the intent to make it and gift it to my Mom for Christmas this year.  It is going very quickly and I will probably be done with the cross stitching by the end of next week.  My plan is to do the actual beading at home (in case I drop the tiny beads; they'll be much easier to see on my hardwood floor than in DD1's carpet.)

I have a few more different Mill Hill Santa kits, so my plan is to start stitching a new one on 'Faline days' while finishing the beadwork at home in my spare time.  Now that we've only got maybe a month left before killing frost takes out the garden for the year, my spare time should increase exponentially pretty soon.

Knitting Update, September

 Another month gone by just like that.  I think the best description for my August is "overheated, overworked, overwhelmed".  

So, here's to September with (hopefully) cooler weather and no more nights with a low temperature of 80 degrees with humidity running between 70-95%.  Also, the promise of the garden coming to an end (and less canning) sometime in the next four to five weeks.

I knit a little bit in the latter part of August. All on the stocking (#2 of 3) for DD1's family.

This stocking MUST GET DONE in September so that I have all of October and most of November to knit the third one and then stitch on the embellishments (like star buttons on the tops of the Christmas trees and colored beads for ornaments) on all three.

I did manage to do a fair bit of reading, mainly because I've been having continuing problems with my left knee and my dr ordered me to elevate and ice it at least twice a day for several weeks.  So, what can you do while laying on your back with your leg in the air for up to an hour each day?  (Well, what can you do in front of others, anyway, for those of you whose minds wandered in that direction!)  READ, of course!

These are the books I read while icing my knee:

Amish Midwives by Amy Clipston, Shelley Shepard Gray & Kelly Long.  My rating on this is "meh".  I wasn't too impressed with the quality of the writing by any of the three authors of this compilation of short stories.

Bone Canyon by Lee Goldberg.  First book I've read by him, and I now have a new addition to my Favorite Authors list.  If you like mysteries, you should read this one!  Well, being as this is the second in a series, you (and I) should read the first one, then read this one.  

Tin Camp Road by Ellen Airgood.  I've been looking forward to reading this second adult novel by this author, and it didn't disappoint me at all.  It's gritty, and heart wrenching, and so very true of life in many communities in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

A Simple Murder by Linda Castillo is a compilation of short mysteries involving Kate Burkholder.  Not set in any particular chronological order, they don't give away anything going on in the series, so don't worry about reading this new one before you read all the Kate Burkholder books.  If you've read the first one, you're good to go with this newest publication.

Four Legs Move My Soul by Isabell Werth and Evi Simeoni. I've been slowly reading this one for a while as my horse-related book from my own personal library, and finally just sat down and read solely on it until it was finished.  It was an interesting book, as I've been an off and on follower of Isabell Werth since we were both young dressage riders in our 20's back in the early 1990's. (Well, she was a famous dressage rider and I was a young mom with ambition to get into the show ring again someday and hopefully make it to her level of riding before I'm done.)  Lots of memories brought back to me reading through her tales of her career and the people she's trained with as well as competed with as well as the horses that have been her partners.

Xenophon: the Art of Horsemanship translated by M.H. Morgan.  Another horse book of mine.  Not exactly what I expected, but it was interesting from a historical perspective and to see how many tenets of horsemanship have been around since at least the fourth century B.C.

Currently I am reading Murder at the Cherry Festival by Richard Baldwin. The writing is a bit simplistic for my tastes, but it's not a bad book.