Just Another Year

We’re over halfway into the first month of a new year. It’s hard to believe.

It’s also been a while since I’ve taken the time to write a blog post. I really enjoy blogging & taking photos but for a while now I’ve just not had the motivation or even the clarity of mind to come up with a topic to blog about.

I’ve been out of sorts for the better part of last year and it has taken me a while to figure out why. Menopause? Maybe. But I think it’s more because life, for me, is not as I had envisioned it upon moving to the farm and I am having to adjust and learn to be content with each day.

My ideal was to renovate the ‘ol farmhouse; have more farm animals; be debt free; be primarily self-sufficient; discover my true passion while making money creating and selling handmade/homemade & farm goodies.

My reality? An ‘ol farmhouse that rains inside with each storm from the south and numerous projects that won’t get done because there is no money; no additional farm animals because there is no money to buy/feed them and we don’t have the proper fencing in place to contain them; we renovated too much too soon but we are closer to having the credit cards paid off (thanks to my two part-time jobs) which will allow for some relief each month; we are nowhere near being self-sufficient nor do I know that we will be any closer any time in the near future; at one time I believed my true passion was to help people get healthy but, most times they don’t want to hear it and it just upsets me. We have had fun selling eggs, produce and some of my crafts at our local farmers market but I wouldn’t call it making a living. So, I wake up four, five, sometimes six days a week to go work for someone else. While I enjoy my jobs and I love all my co-workers working outside the farm is not my dream. It’s not what I had envisioned after moving here.

So this year I have not made any grandiose plans and I am determined to change my perception, my ideals, my way of thinking. Each day I have to start anew with these thoughts. It’s the only way that I will be able to appreciate what I truly have and not what I think we should have!

I have also had to make some tough decisions like foregoing my annual trip to Florida to attend a quilt retreat and visit family, as well as an upcoming family function. Those decisions were not made lightly and caused me much angst until the decision was made but in order to stay on track to get the credit cards paid off it was a decision that made sense.

Also this year I am decluttering. Several bags of clothes, evening gowns, my wedding dress, CountryBoy’s tuxedo and craft supplies have been donated to our local thrift store. I gave my great-niece the treadle sewing machine I bought shortly after moving here as well as about two-thirds of my fabric stash. My Dad’s cousin gave me her treadle sewing machine so I didn’t need two of them and I would never, in my lifetime, use all the fabric I had so why keep it? And that’s just the beginning of my decluttering plans!

CountryBoy tackled his workshop a few weeks ago. It had become a catch-all for everything that had been stored in our cistern room before we enclosed it for more pantry space & canning storage. When it looked like we would have a few days without rain he completely emptied his workshop then sorted through, tossed or relocated everything. He now has room to actually work on a project and it’s easy to find things!

We woke up to a covering of snow this morning. It wasn’t much but it was pretty.

The other day we woke up to barely any snow…

We’ve had some warmish weather for winter and I think my poor irises are confused!

I mentioned earlier about wanting to find my true passion and I think I may have discovered it in the form of a vintage loom found at our local antique & vendor mall. It was dirt cheap and begged to come home with me!

Although it didn’t have the hardware or the instructions with it CountryBoy and I managed to figure out how it went together (never mind that a clear diagram was on the BACK of the box as I discovered after the fact, ha!). I watched some YouTube videos, checked out a couple of books at the library and set about working on my first weaving project…

It’s a plain weave table runner. I was pleased with the results even though it ended up shorter than originally planned. (I did not know how much loom waste (yarn) there would be but, that’s why I’m practicing.)

I started planning another project over the weekend – a scarf using more leftover yarn…

and actually started weaving today…

I enjoy every step of the weaving process – from creating the project to planning to measuring and cutting the yarn (I’m using our stair railing to measure the warp ends)…

to setting the warp (the vertical yarn) to weaving and seeing it come to fruition. It’s quite fun and, well, I’ve always had a yarn fetish! We’ll see where it takes me. With sewing and quilting I enjoyed some parts of it and detested the rest. Not what I would categorize as a passion.

On my needles are two different brands of ‘scrubby’ yarn…

I’m whipping up some dish scrubbies to sell at the farmers market this summer. These are easy to make, don’t require any thought and are portable so I can sit at the table in front of the fireplace while I work on them – perfect!

I guess that’s about it. I spilled my guts at the beginning but I hope you don’t think I was complaining or being negative. I’ve always said I would be transparent with our readers and I wanted y’all to know why I have been so quiet and unable to blog. I had many ‘whoa-is-me’ days last year but as I choose each day to be grateful for this life I’m living I hope to have much more to blog about in the upcoming year!