Busy December

It doesn't feel like it was a whole 10 days since I last wrote! I suppose I've been busy and too cold to write. I'm convinced now that there is very little insulation in my craft/computer room. When it gets really cold there are these wet looking spots all over the eastern wall in here, which is odd. If I open my closet door it feels very cold in the winter and very hot in the summer. All year round it feels only slightly cooler/warmer (depending on the time of year, of course) from outside. So, when we got a week of 5 degrees to 20 below 0 I just didn't feel like coming up here! I felt even more like staying on the first floor of the house when one night the heater wasn't cooperating (something to do with a filter and gelled up fuel oil) and it got down to 38 degrees in the house. Brrr! It took awhile for this room to warm up enough for me to type.

Christmas is just around the corner and I'm a bit behind on everything. However, I decided I don't need to follow any unwritten rules of only making and giving gifts for Christmas. I mean, they don't have to be on time, right? Everyone likes getting gifts and I don't think the time of year is all that important when it comes to giving. So, I've decided to make my own rule for this year and that is to stretch this giving time of year until sometime in January. The gifts I'm making just take too much time to have them all done by Christmas! I really need to remember to begin my crafting in October next time. As for cards... I should probably make them about a year in advance! I'm a last minute person, so I need to learn to work with my own personality and have the cards ready so that people get them by Christmas instead of New Years Day! I'm usually making them around the time I should be sending them. Anyway, I wanted to show everyone the one 7-10 hour gift I did get done so far:

Front view of slippers I made for my sister, Kara. She was a great foot model!

Back and side view of the slippers. The bottoms were already getting a little dirty on my floors and I'll give my excuses shortly as to why my floors weren't perfectly swept.

(For those of you who could care less about the process of making these felted slippers you can go ahead and skip this one paragraph.) To make the wool felted slippers I first called my mom to find out how many inches long Kara's feet were, then I drew out a pattern. I felted three separate pieces for each slipper before felting them together. I felted the bottoms (which you can't see in the photos), then the front/tops, then the strip that wraps around the sides and back of the foot. After felting the pieces together I searched my house for suede. I had decided they needed suede on the bottom to make them more durable, but I wasn't about to drive all the way to the nearest town that would have suede for sale (about 25 miles away). It was already around dinner time by that point anyway, so going out wasn't an option. My husband was the one to find me some good suede in the end. He had a suede folder type thing for storing saw blades in that he had decided he didn't need. So, I traced out the bottom of the slippers onto the suede, cut them out, then began the time consuming process of hammering holes around the edges with a hammer and nail so I could sew the suede to the felted slippers. There's no way my needles would go through the suede without some pre-made holes. It worked, but since then I've thought of a quicker way to make holes in leather. After making the holes I used hemp thread to blanket stitch the suede to the slippers. After everything was sewn together it was time for decorating. I used one felting needle to make the dark orange wool petals, then stitched them on with the hemp thread. I think it would have been nice if I had added some bead work to the slippers, but it was already past 10 PM when I had gotten that far, so I decided enough was enough. The following day was going to be too busy to work on slippers. Here's one last view of them:


The following day (Wednesday) I got to work as soon as I rolled out of bed. There was a lot to be done, because my whole family (Mom, Dad, and sisters - Kara and Mariah) were coming over for Greek food, a trip to the hot spring, and an early Christmas gift opening party. I already had the gyro meat prepared (that takes quite awhile from start to finish, so I try to have that done the day before company is scheduled to arrive for gyros). I also had the Tzatziki (Greek cucumber yogurt dip) ready - it's best to have the spices in that marry overnight. However, I still needed to mix up the dough for pita bread, roll them out, and pan fry them. I needed to make the baklava, which I started first. I also needed to saute onions, cut up tomatoes, and clean my whole house. Yes, minor details. When I should have been cleaning my house the day before I was making slippers. I tend to always count on last minute energy to kick in. It often does, but when I'm in the first trimester of a pregnancy my body doesn't always cooperate. Not only was my body not cooperating, but as I was in the middle of pita dough my husband walked in with a sheep. An ewe had apparently gone into labor the night before and we hadn't even known we had any lambs due! I quickly cleaned the dough off my hands and went to inspect my new patient. I didn't need to go far since she was right inside my door on the front rug. Her uterus was bulging out - not good. She also wasn't dilated enough. All this took a bit longer than I made it sound. Sheep don't usually like you poking around back there when they're in pain or EVER. Completely understandable, too. She wasn't contracting, which was also a bad sign. I knew there was nothing I could do as soon as I realized I could only reach two fingers in - certainly not enough room to pull a lamb out of. I called the local vets that are able to treat sheep, but there was no way they could take her. It took us awhile to decide what to do with her and in the meantime plenty of blood and manure got on my floors. Finally, my hubby took her outside to tie her up. Company was due anytime and there was nothing we could do for her except end her misery, which we didn't have time for before lunch. As tough as I like to be I cried as I cleaned the manure and blood off my floors (see, at least that wasn't all over the floor when Kara was walking around in her new slippers!). That ewe just so happened to be the most friendly ewe we had on the farm. The one that would walk up for attention and food. I can't even remember if her name was Rosy or Petunia. We had two ewes that were friendly and look basically identical, but the one that had the problem was the most friendly one. I never did know which one was which.

I'm sure I have better pictures of her, but this is the last one I got of her.

I got the dough for the pita ready, but it wasn't fully risen by the time my family arrived. I was behind on things again. Everyone stepped in to help, but still lunch wasn't served until 2 PM! At least we were able to munch on baklava while we worked. :)

We had a great time with my family and really enjoyed the hot spring.

On Thursday when I went out to check on the ewe who had the trouble the day before she wouldn't eat, was bloated, and just wasn't looking good. I called around to the vets and still no one could help her. I quickly got my hubby and we prepared for butchering her. I'm glad to report she had a very quick death. I can't seem to decide whether to spare everyone the details or not. Hmm... well, as it turned out the lamb in her was completely rotten. It was probably the most disgusting thing I've smelled since I was a kid and came upon a rotten pile of beavers. It had been dead a long time, so was a miscarriage. I'm not real sure why the ewe's body wouldn't cooperate and let the dead lamb out. It was definitely near the end of her pregnancy, because the lamb was getting to be a decent size. It really was a sad ending for that ewe, but it's all over now. It was the first time we had to deal with a miscarriage on this farm, much less a miscarriage gone bad. I hope I never have to deal with another one, although realistically I probably will.

Well, that's probably more than enough for now! This turned out to be quite a long post. I hope everyone is having a very joyful and peaceful holiday season!