Two weekends ago, we moved this.

It is a chicken house, and this is after Dad and I started to lift it up so we could start moving it. Moving it, we decided, would be easier with wheels. It weighs… something around 1300ish pounds. Very very heavy.

So we put on wheels!

Unfortunately, our first attachment wasn’t strong enough and they came off. Doh! So we tried another method and…

We’re off! Just pretend it’s a handpushed train car. The tracks are how we moved it, the plywood allowed for the 90 degree turn into the gate (and again once it was in the gate).

Once we finally had it in place, we had to get it off the wheels and extra boards and onto cinder blocks (because the dirt it’s on is soft and will likely sink with chicken scratching and water).

And then, level it all… and… DONE!

And yesterday, our new baby chickens came in! Buff Orpingtons (gold ones) and Bard Rocks (black ones)!

All together now… AWWWwwww!

The one sad part of this whole thing was that I was an idiot. I did this whole moving thing… in my flip flops. This was dumb, because inherently at some point something’s going to go wrong. Of course it did, and I had to lift/shove that 1300lbs more than once. Doh. Which I didn’t think about the time, but by the next day I realized what I’d done…

Pulled my plantar fascia. Ow ow ow. Acute plantar fasciitis! Ow! Taking forever to heal, which sucks (two weeks in, only somewhat better). Trying to keep it stretched enough to keep walking without tearing it further. Massaging it frequently. Trying to stay off it.

Do not want! Yay for dumb.

That’s all for now! Will try to get an update up early next week. Got quite a bit to put up. Fiber, yarn, whee!

~The Gnome

Tomorrow I’m off to MD for a friend’s b-day and the renaissance festival.

I will be there until Wednesday afternoon/evening. So any orders made will go out next Thursday.

Will be back then with a fiber update and to talk of fleece and chicken houses!

~The Gnome

So I finished the first scarf, but since I warped a couple scarves worth at the same time, it’s still on the loom. Once I get them all done and get them off the loom then I’ll finish them and show photos.

So, finishing the first scarf, I started on my second. This one will be designed a little differently, though clearly with the same threading pattern.

If you’ll remember, this is the first scarf while it was still in progress.

My second scarf, instead of using millspun Zephyr as the first scarf, I’m using 50/50 polwarth/silk I got at NH Sheep and wool two years ago, and spun myself (first ever laceweight, if I’d plied it). It was a pleasure to spin and it’s cool to finally be using it!

So I started… and… yeah…

It’s not… impossibly bad, but it’s not right. I spun finer than is ideal for this. Doh. This would be fine if I hadn’t spun the entire 5oz onto one bobbin, which makes it a little difficult to two-ply it.

So after asking Ravelry and getting a confirmation of what I already new… I unwove that. It just wasn’t right. Instead I doubleshot it, going back and forth twice for each shed.

Muuuuch better. This is the header. It took a while to weave though because of the two shots for every shed. So I wrapped a bobbin with two threads at once, and kept working on the scarf…

And we’re off! Huzzah! We’re making progress! Have one or two more after this (I used to know but can’t remember the size of my warp). The next one after this it looks like I will need to also ply or double-strand.

That’s all for now! Back to the dyepots. Finn done, dorset done, romney almost done.

~The Gnome

This last weekend my parents and I went to the Cummington Fair (the town after which Cummingtonite is named). It’s a lovely small county fair, though always funny to me to think of it as “small” when it’s half again the size of Mass. Sheep and Wool which is on the same grounds. Also funny since it takes me less than half the time for me to wander through.

It was a good time. As most times with my parents are.