fire in the stove

 
Sunday morning Larissa came over and we worked on our Fair Isle Hats. Later th'Mr & I went to her house to pick up the log splitter we'd lent them. It was a nice day.

The fair isle is giving me much less trouble than I anticipated, and it's really hard to put down! I'm knitting it holding a yarn in each hand; the method I've always wanted to learn. Having Larissa, a "thrower," to watch, helped a LOT in learning how to hold the yarn in my right hand. I think I was able to help her a little bit too.

Can't believe - according to the sidebar, where I keep track of these things - I didn't knit for 7 months this year! Now that I've picked it back up I seem to be a better knitter. Must have needed the break.

Yesterday I cut up and ran through the food processor a 20-lb pumpkin we bought last week. It yielded 34 cups of pumpkin meat (one deep-dish pie takes 2 cups) ...that ought to get us through the winter! Last night I made two more pies and another sheet cake. Took one of the pies next door to Mike & Sherry.

Mike came over & helped pull the woodstove out so we could put a damper in the flue. Now our first fire of the year is burning (and I'm able to shut off the electric heat). Yesterday we also shoved the water hose down the bathroom vent pipe to clear it. When the toilet starts running slow (and when you flush you hear gurgling coming from the tub! Oooh, scary...) then what you can do to clear the problem is run water through the vent for a couple hours. This fixes the problem, though I don't know how.

Late last week I cleared the "lower" garden of corn stalks and ran the tiller across it. We still have a row of onions there. The "upper" garden still has onions and cabbage - though there are no cabbage heads, there are leaves that are nice to "graze" on. I collected a couple gallons of flower seeds and am ready to cut down what's left and till it too.

I'm seriously thinking about putting up a pvc-and-visquine greenhouse this winter and starting seedlings to sell in the spring (and to share with friends & family). The first answer (as a small child) I had to the question, "what do you want to be when you grow up?" was "farmer." As I got a little older and economics figured in to the question the answer changed to "veterinarian," but I've never lost that longing to make a living from the land. Never ever did I want to be an electrician - LOL!