If we were having coffee ... I'm feeling so unorganized lately

 This type of blog post is for when I have a lot of little things I want to share, or when I feel the need to catch up. 

So, grab your coffee/beverage of your choice and join me. 

If we were having coffee ... I'd talk about how fast this month has gone. I realized a few weeks ago that I haven't written anything, anywhere, for a while. Oops.  Though, to be fair, I haven't spent much time on social media or the internet. Plans. I had so many plans and aspirations.  Then time goes by much faster than anticipated and before I know it, a month has gone by. 

Things are still a bit busy for me. Not as busy as a few months ago, thankfully.  I'm enjoying this little bit of a lull before things pick up again. 

If we were having coffee ... I'd give you an update on the chicken flock. We have the roosters separated from the girls. The roosters are finally realizing they are boys and were harassing the girls too much.  The hens seem happy they aren't being constantly chased around. The roosters are now busy harassing each other and pulling each others tails. They will be heading off to the freezer sometime next month.

Let me tell you about the roo who has turned into the dominate roo. We call him Mangle because he has something going on with his feet that I didn't spot until after it was too late. Apparently he's grown up on the mean streets of the farm yard and has learned how to take care of himself. The other boys are scared of him.  It really is something how he handles himself. I still remember helping him out from a corner he got himself stuck in back when he was a young chick. Now he's ruling the roost. He's pretty tame around people, so that's nice.  

If we were having coffee ... I'd tell you about the rabbits.  We rehomed Loki and Thor. They were sweet rabbits, Thor in particular, but it was getting to be a bit much. After we had 14 baby buns born in one day I decided we had to do something to prevent the pregnancies. I had Feffer and Thor together, and Shadow and Loki together. Shadow was being mean to Loki. (The big bully) When the opportunity to rehome some of them came up, I grabbed it. 

Feffer is now by himself, and Shadow and the baby bun are together. Still don't know if the baby bun is a boy or girl.  My son is thinking it's a girl.  I've been calling her "LB." 

If we were having coffee ... I'd share that Furby is still in the house with us. She's learned a new trick.  When she's outside and ready to come back into the house, she finds her way to the deck and calls until someone hears her and goes out to get her.  Spoiled much? Those grand ideas of integrating her back into the flock -- I don't think it's going to happen.  

Yesterday she was running around with a hen and I thought for sure that was going to be it.  Nope.  Furby went off on her own and then meandered a bit until she heard my voice, and came running. 

This photo is from a while ago.  She was really feeling it that morning and was bawking up a storm.  So I pulled her over by me while I was working. 

If we were having coffee ... I'd blather about the weather and the garden. We are in the midst of a drought and high heat. At the beginning of the garden season I was prepared and expecting cold weather and potential frosts. Instead, we got extreme heat and my cool weather crops didn't fare well. The weather keeps switching from extreme heat to cooler temperatures. 

I've been doing a great job keeping up with weeds. I get out there almost every day and I take care of them and enjoy the flowers and the butterflies.  What I need to do is get out there and take care of some things like I've been wanting to do since early spring, but have either been to lazy or too busy to go out and mess with. 

On July 15 I took some video clips of the garden. I want so very much to have videos of the garden throughout the summer.  This go-round I decided to chat about the plants. Before I knew it, a couple weeks went by and the videos were still sitting on my phone. Until the other night. I've got the clips together and then it took me a bit to remember how to compress the video and get it to a decent file size so it wouldn't take all day to load to youtube. It's been a learning curve all over again. Please bear with while I figure this all out again. 

If we were having coffee ... Crafting.  Crafting!  I've been doing some crafting. 

Tour de Fleece happened.  I did some spinning at the beginning and finished up my first two pounds of grey Corriedale fiber.  

I have no idea on yardage.  I spun four bobbins worth.  

I had a ply party one evening.

Then.  Nada.  I decided to be dedicated to a cross stitch project and get it wrapped up. 

I ordered the "Happily Ever After" Stitch-along kit back in 2016, for Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery's 2017 mystery stitch-along.  I got overwhelmed by the border and header and put it away almost right away.  I pulled it out later and did the first square, got overwhelmed and put it away again until last year.  I looked at it and told myself "I'm going to work on it this year."  Then didn't touch it until a few months back. 

Well ... I'm done! It's so pretty! 

I completed it on Saturday, July 24, at 10:35 p.m. Years in the making.  I didn't dream that I would take years to finish this sampler. 

Then what did I do?  I grabbed the cross stitch kit my SIL gave me for my birthday last year. This one is a bit harder for me. The colors are so close that I was struggling a bit.  And, you guessed it, I put it down.  

I guess I'll be dedicated to this one for a while. I'm breaking it down into sections and focusing on one flower bit at a time.  Which is good. Even with the cheaters, the line keepers and whatnot, I'm still goofing up a bit. Fortunately I see the mess-ups right away. And as I was proofing this blog post I realized the project itself is upside down in the photo.  See, so easy to get mixed up on this one. I've got a feeling there are going to be a lot of unintentional customizations on this one.  I'm worried about running out of floss, since it's a kit and it feels like I don't have a lot of leeway. 

Sock knitting happened. When my son was playing chauffeur to my Miss Daisy, he kept commenting that I needed, *needed* to bring knitting with me.  

I knit socks. I found the sock yarn at a shop over in Ashland.  I looked at the colorway and thought "Oh, those are nice summer-y colors."

Really? Wool socks in summer? 

Well, yes. In my area they are sometimes necessary. 

Project: Vanilla socks

Started:  June 2021 (I think)
Finished: July 2021 (I think)
Needle size: U.S. 1, 2.5mm
Yarn: Patons Kroy Socks yarn (Cherry Pop Stripes)

This is most of the excitement that has been happening on the homestead. There are some days where I still feel like I'm struggling to catch up on the to-do list. What I need to do is take some time off of work and make myself tackle some of those things on my mental to-do list. 

Well, let's hope it's not another month before I update again. 😁 (One of the very few times I'll use an emoji on here)