About Tricia

I am Tricia. Momma of nine, homeschooler, artist, foodie and maker of all kinds of things. It's a pleasure to share here our family homesteading adventures, the things we make, and what inspires our days. Read more about my family and work here. Thanks for visiting!

Author Archive | Tricia

Hand dyed fun at home

This weekend, 3 of our big kids went away to their first sleepover.  Erica could not go because she continuously forgets to do her chores and also being the momma of the abandoned baby bunny keeps her closeby to do the three daily feedings.  Being a great big softy (though I try to never undermine Poppa’s authority) I decided we girls that had to stay home would have just a little bit of fun.

I have been meaning to make Matthew a new pair of longies for sometime and started the waist band from the skeins of Peace Fleece in my stash.  When I got to the body,  I longed for some colorful hand painted yarn, the type that costs more than I would feel OK with spending.  I did have two natural colored skeins of Peace Fleece and so we got to work.

After Matthew was put to bed, we covered our wooden butcher block counters to protect them from getting dyed, mixed up our dyes from cake decorating  dyes and got to work.  We just let the colors fly without worrying about the outcome.  The yarn was the steamed, carefully rinsed and hung to dry inside since we are having all rainy days of late and when we were finished, this is what we got.

I balled up the dyed skein using my thickest knitting needle as a nostepin.  I am planning on making a nostepin to use for winding up my yarns though I will wind them flatter so the ball stays together better but I do love the way this one turned out and already have used half of it on the longies.

If we get more rain today then I will be working on the longies but if the sun comes out we are continuing to work on building the milking stanchion and my diapers could use some sunning : )

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or follow me by email at the top right hand of the screen to have future posts sent to you. Tricia (Crunchy Catholic Momma)

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Farm Security

Thank you all for your opinions, comments and encouragement.  Though more than half of the comments were slowly eaten by Blogger (grrr) I did read each one.  I truly am grateful to each and every one of my readers, you all mean so much to me…you know that, right?

Baby animal duty has us up pretty early lately around here.  Luckily, baby animals grow up quickly, and baby humans do not : )  As much as I am cherishing every minute of my own sweet baby being in my arms, I do need him to sleep a little more at night so that this farm momma can get going a little quicker in the morning (more complaining about that in the near future I am sure).

One of our new farm babies is Fiona, our new Great Pyrenees puppy.  She is a livestock guardian dog and will be in charge of farm security.  She might look small now but she will grow to fill the big shoes of head of security!  We are so excited to have found her after looking for quite a while and not finding a pup that we could afford.  She is now being trained by walking with me the perimeter of our farm every morning and she hangs out during the day with the chickens who are her main customers.  Hopefully having a farm dog again will mean losing less of our chickens to predators.

I am now off to work on the new cow pen.  I expect our cow to be here in another week or two at the most.  The wonderful woman we are buying her from will be teaching me to hand milk on Monday morning….soooo exciting!!  I hope to buy a milking machine soon but until I can afford another big investment like that, I shall be a milking farm momma!!  (hmmm sounds kind of like a blog name haha just kidding)  though I wonder if Farm Momma would work better than Farmish Momma.  Yikes, this is kind of like naming a baby!! or rather renaming a baby! or a five year old.  I hope you all have a great Saturday!!

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or follow me by email at the top right hand of the screen to have future posts sent to you. Tricia (Crunchy Catholic Momma)

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