I'm another year older. (Sorry, no picture this year of my German Chocolate birthday cake; it was inhaled before I could get a picture of it! But here is a pic from another year.)
For my birthday I took a drive to the Yarn Barn in Phillips. I bought enough yarn for two practice traditional style gansey sweaters and enough self-patterning sock yarn for two pairs of socks. While I mosied around the store I came across some spinning wool from my friend Jane's farm, Autumn Larch Farm. I'll have to tell her I bought some of (her ram) Noah's wool. Then, from Interweave I bought a DVD called "Three Bags Full" about what you need to know to buy a good fleece.
The cold weather has settled in, and we have about two inches of snow on the ground. Right now the temperature is -14°C and dropping. Good for hunting! Tom went out with his rifle early this morning. A few weeks ago he shot a doe with his bow, so this morning he was going to try to get a buck for our daughter, Sarah. (Doe tags are all sold out.) Lo and behold, by the time I got up, he was already back to the house and waiting for me to help him drag a buck out of the woods. He says he thinks it is the biggest deer he's ever shot. It was a big deer, for sure. Thankfully it wasn't too hard dragging it out of the woods and load into the back of the truck. Then, Tom cleaned up and headed to Butternut Feed Store to swagger -- I mean -- register the deer.
Naturally, the feed store was already crowded with hunters shooting the breeze and checking out each other's deer. Tom's deer was the biggest one yet in the day. Ooooh. Big deer. It's a guy thing. Tom was supremely satisfied. There was a woman DNR warden there who wanted to check Tom's deer to see how old it was. She opened the deer's mouth with some contraption and checked the teeth. She said it was 3 1/2 years old. It would have been an 8 pointer, but one of the antlers was broken off. "Scottie", the butcher, (whose shop is conveniently across the street from the feed store) said he could tell the antler broke off in a fight with another buck. All in all, it was a good day.
I have been studying for my General Class ham radio license and am doing pretty well with the practice license exams on e-ham.net. I hope the weather is good for me to drive down to Wisconsin Rapids on December 14th.
I've also been working to finish sewing the quilt blocks for the quilt I started last year. Only ten blocks to go.
I got Tom to mooch some tallow from the butcher for me, and I rendered it down for a future soap making project. It was the first time I rendered tallow, and it turned out beautifully.
I am still dehydrating my tiny onions, and I bought a bag of cranberries to turn into craisins. My first and second attempts turned into an awful mess, but I am determined to learn how to make them well. So far, all of the recipes for making craisins I've found on the Internet are wanting in final presentation so I am going to give it another try and use the dehydrator instead of the oven. If I get them to turn out well (i.e., like raisins), I'll tell you how I did it.
Turkey Day is coming this Thursday and we will have a house full for dinner. I ordered a pumpkin cheesecake from Junior's in Brooklyn, NY as a special treat. If I don't get to post before then, I wish all of you a safe and happy holiday!
No comments:
Post a Comment