twelve22

Little Getaway

September 1, 2024 Anna

Well, the girls’ wish is my command, so in August I popped up our little camper and got it cleaned out and ready for use. We towed it with the truck, and our whole set up looked very “retro”, even though the truck and camper are ONLY both 20-some years old. Hey, if it still works, why replace it! The girls had to get used to manual locks and crank windows on the truck (I hadn’t realized that rolling down a window was a skill, but M was impressed by how quickly I could do it!), and there was a mini panic the final morning of our trip because M hadn’t slammed the door shut quite hard enough, so I had to plug the truck battery in while I packed up.

Anyway, we went to one of our local state parks for a few nights, and it was a good camping redemption trip. We’ve all been spoiled by camping with other people so often — the girls were bored off and on, and I missed having other adults to chat with. But the weather was very mild, and we really enjoyed being in the camper again. It’s so much easier to enjoy the entire trip when you have somewhere comfortable to sleep/lounge.

The dock was the big attraction this time. The kids made fishing poles out of sticks and reeds/grasses, and the curious fishes would come up to see what they had. We went into town one day and found a nice fishing rod (left-handed, but it’s not like any of us are used to using a right-handed one!) for only $2.00. I hammered back the sharp point of a hook, and the girls used it to feed pieces of cheese to the fish that evening.

With this truck success under my belt (you never know how an older car will behave, especially when it’s not driven regularly!), I’ve booked us an autumn trip in early October. The leaves should be really colorful, and maybe we can convince some friends to visit while we’re there. I hate to see summer go, but at least it’s pretty when it does!

Summer Heat

July 29, 2024 Anna

We got back from our annual cousin camping trip yesterday. I brought my nice camera along, meaning to take photos somewhere other than immediately outside our house, and I did, but they were all of the kids. So I’ll post this photo of the amazing sky from several days ago, along with one I took of M shooting hoops one evening.

We got a pop-up camper in 2021, and we spent the next three summers LOVING camping. We went a ton in 2021 and 2022, less in 2023, but it was still a joy to be in that little pop-up. But we got a new-used car at the end of last year, and while I love the car itself, it can’t tow the camper! So we’ve been tenting it this year.

The weather has also been less than cooperative this year. Our first two trips were rainy and cold. I don’t mind a chilly camping trip — more reason to sit by the fire and feel cozy! But it’s a bummer in the rain. Everything feels so dirty and (naturally) soggy. A rainy morning could be nice when we had the camper — we’d stay inside and do a puzzle at the dinette and listen to the radio. There was enough space that waiting for the rain to end was pleasant. There’s no joy for me in being inside a tent! I’ve also found it harder to stay warm when we’re sleeping on air mattresses. There are only so many extra blankets that fit in the car (and cargo topper)!

This weekend, we had the opposite problem — it was HOT. Almost 90˚F during the day, and the humidity felt like it was off the charts. Uffda! (The nights were very comfortable for sleeping, though!) I’ll admit that the camper wouldn’t have made this hot trip *much* easier. But the shine has come off the whole thing a bit, for me. It’s worth it for the people. I love seeing my cousins, and giving the kid-cousins so much time to be together is priceless. We don’t get to see them very often.

I told the girls that this was probably the end of our camping season, and M was a little disappointed. She asked if we could take the camper out with the truck (a 21yo Ford Ranger that almost always stays on our property, since the rear seats are tiny). I won’t rule out the idea! We have multiple state parks within a half-hour’s drive, and we miss the camper. For now, I’m still reveling in our climate-controlled house and running water!

Around the Yard

July 21, 2024July 21, 2024 Anna

The flowers I didn’t plant this spring are continuing to be my garden favorites. Rabbits must not like calendula or chamomile, because they’ve tried eating everything else but haven’t touched these. I guess marigolds are on the list of wildlife-safe flowers, right? And calendula is the original “marigold”, though they don’t smell the same. The chamomile surprises me, because it definitely DOES smell like something tasty, but who knows. Maybe the rabbits can’t afford to get too relaxed, lol!

Last year I planted Seed Savers historic pansies mix, and some plants never died out during our mild winter, and the rest self-seeded. I love them! Such pretty colors. I pressed a bunch last year but haven’t done anything with them yet. You can see sage leaves in the pansies photo above, another plant that overwintered well (also grown from Seed Savers seeds last year!).

Nova and I went out the other morning to take photos and pick raspberries. And chase chipmunks! We’ve never had so many bunnies or chipmunks running around here! I think it has to be down to the lack of outdoor cats, but this strange weather year might be boosting numbers, too. I wonder if we’ll get an uptick in predators next year. We’ve seen coyotes out in the fields a few times (we often hear them, rarely see them). We used to think we had a mink in the pond — until we saw it running across the yard and realized it was an otter!! But we’ve also had bobcats and foxes in the past, and we haven’t seen them in a while now. I imagine the drought years are hard on all the animals.

Anyway, Nova is clearly descended from a long line of fierce hunters — rodent hunters. She has been LOVING the chipmunks, though she’s never going to manage to catch one. She’s determined, though! I lifted her up to the girls’ tree fort/deck when she was in pursuit, because she thought the chipmunk had gone up. She was in focus mode!

I only have one pear tree, since my other died last autumn (something stripped the bark the previous winter, and it managed to survive one more summer, putting out dozens of fruits). They’re supposed to need a partner tree for fertilization, so I was surprised to see that the remaining tree has set about ten pears. Half of them are out of reach, of course! For all the pears that grew last year, we hardly ate any — they seemed to go from rock hard to rotting/mealy overnight. I haven’t figured out the trick for getting to them while they’re edible.

And our beautiful pond. I love seeing the reflection of the trees. I try to tune into our surroundings as much as possible during this time of year. There are more months of naked trees than leafed trees here! I want to soak it up. I think eight months of green and four months of snowy white-brownness would be a better balance. I would happily take winters like last year’s every year (it was so mild, hardly any snow), except I think it would eventually be hard on everything living and growing here. And listening to the snow-lovers complain was almost as bad as the snow itself!

Watching Wildlife

July 15, 2024 Anna2 Comments

Yesterday morning was very pretty! The sun has been so red-orange as it’s come up lately. And the windows were covered in condensation yesterday — it’s been very humid here, especially at night. I never really tracked how much the position of the sun changes throughout the year until I lived out in the country. Right now, it comes up a bit north of due east, I’d say — almost in line with our driveway. But in the winter, it comes up south of our barn, which is quite a difference.

A little while after sunrise, I saw a group of deer come into the yard. They often travel in gangs (unless it’s a mother and fawn(s)), but this was six bucks, and I’ve never seen that many males together! It was interesting to see the range of antlers they were sporting. The one in the last photo had the biggest rack, and he seemed to be the boss. They were on guard a bit, but the younger ones were goofing around a little. Seeing animals who feel safe have fun is one of my favorite things.

Speaking of, our deck has been very busy with juvenile birds! Our biggest bird feeder is on the deck, along with suet, and I have some tall branches in a planter for birds to perch on. And I put out oranges for the orioles every now and then. Yesterday, a mother and juvenile oriole visited, and the mother must have told her kid to stay there while she left to hunt, because he just hung around, investigating. I’m not sure how long I watched him for! He was so curious about everything, checking out the chamomile that’s in a pot and a pile of logs in a wagon. Even when he was preening, it was like watching a creature who was still getting used to his new bird body and was fascinated by it. The best bit was when a big moth flew by — he gave chase but lost it pretty quickly, and he spent several seconds literally turning in circles, trying to figure out where it had gone. Eventually mama bird came back with an insect for him, and then they left together.

Busy!

July 12, 2024 Anna

I don’t quite understand how we get so busy in the summers. Although it feels like a running joke with some of my friends that “we’ll be less busy once it’s autumn” — and then autumn hits, and we’re twice as busy, and then it’s the HOLIDAY season, and now it’s spring and we’re rushing to get everything ready for summer, and whoops an entire year has slipped by. But summer does feel especially chaotic.

A few years ago, we bought a pop-up camper, and we spent the next two summers camping almost every other week. Last summer, I decided we had to stay home more, so I could work on the gardens and spend more time doing… not camping. Now our new-used car can’t pull the camper, and it turns out most of the magic is lost for me when we have to tent it. We had a couple of camping trips in May and one later this month, but we’re just sort of doing our normal thing most of the time.

Part of it is that we’re just busier in general. We’ve made extra homeschool friends over the past year, with groups that have weekly meetups, so that usually takes up two or more days a week. And the girls are getting more interested in other activities again. We had done gymnastics/dance when they were younger, but I decided to take a year off, going into the 2019 fall season. And then covid, which ruled out activities for quite a while. Frankly, I was happier avoiding all that as long as the girls weren’t overly interested. But it’s all creeping back now! So we have several summer evening activities on the calendar now, and who knows what autumn will bring.

After a week of running around, I’m looking forward to staying home and tidying today. Has anybody ever figured out how the house can get so messy if we’re always out and about? I have a lot of decluttering to do (luckily I can hide boxes away in a room for now), but I can’t even contemplate it until our living spaces feel more sane. It’s a happy chaos, at least!

Morning Stuff

July 8, 2024July 8, 2024 Anna

I moved a few more things up into the studio yesterday and did some tidying this morning. I usually wake up early, between 4:30-5:30am, but the kids aren’t up until around 7:00, so that’s my time to myself. I’m not one for the revenge bedtime procrastination thing — I’m TIRED at the end of the day. But I like a slow, quiet start in the morning.

This morning I watched the newest video from Roaming Wild Rosie, one of my favorite YouTubers. We watch more YT than anything else around here, and I have quite a list of channels I enjoy. I always look forward to Rosie’s videos — she tackles so many projects and is very thoughtful about them. I’m a big fan of learning by doing, but there are several YTers I watch while repeating, “That’s not how you do that!” I doubt I’ve been 100% in agreement with ALL of Rosie’s methods, but they always make sense and seem solid. So it’s more the joy of thinking, “Huh, I wouldn’t have thought to do it that way!”

Once the girls were up, I made breakfast, and we let the budgies out (after securing the cats!). The two in the photo, Pickle and Gemmy, are usually the only two to come out. There are two others, Ivy and Snowy, and Snowy can’t fly. So she and shy Ivy tend to stay far from the open door. But Pickle and Gemmy like to sit on top of the cage and lick the wall (???), and sometimes they do a lap or two to around the living room, to exercise their wings.

After breakfast was math and chore time, and then we went for a short walk across the field. It was too wet for F, but M and I had rubber boots on and didn’t mind. Nova loved bounding through the field, but she was a soggy doggy after a few minutes! (She was still damp in the photo.) She’s so short that the wet grass that was hitting us in the shins was getting her in the face. She’s twelve years old now! But, like Beany, she hasn’t really slowed down. There’s just less energy for naughtiness. But she sprints down the driveway like a greyhound and Pepé-Le-Pews through the field like she’s still a pup. Henny passed away in January 2023, at the age of fifteen and a half, and her decline was mental (dementia), not really physical. I’m hoping Nova makes it to eighteen — the vet says she could!

The “Olden” Days

July 7, 2024 Anna

I’ve been thinking a lot about the good old days of blogging. What a shame that we’ve all but lost that form to social media. I use Instagram a ton, but it’s not the same. There’s not the sense of community and sharing that I (and I think a lot of us) used to feel in the early 2000s. I started blogging in 2000 and moved into the craft-blog sphere as that started to grow, sort of right around 2005. What a time to be on the internet! Blogs really were about community, not commerce. I miss that.

There are definitely still regular or semi-regular bloggers out there, writing about their lives, not just producing a string of sponsored posts. I pulled out one of my old DSLRs (the one I used for the photos in this post is only about eleven years old and is not my favorite, but I’m waiting for a new battery for the better camera!) and took some photos yesterday to remember what it used to be like before I carried a pretty-okay camera in my pocket, wherever I went. (I have an iPhoneSE, so it’s not The Best.)

Our garden this year has been beset with fluffy bunnies. It’s the first year where all of our cats stay indoors the whole time, and the neighbor whose cats used to wander onto our property has moved away. Apparently this hasn’t gone unnoticed by the rabbits! My raised beds are fenced to keep the deer out, but of course the rabbits just squeeze on through. I wrapped two of the beds with chicken wire, which seems to be working, and I put our old chicken brooder pen (basically a big frame wrapped in hardware mesh) over our blueberries, which are nearly ripe.

By far the biggest garden successes this year are the plants that self-seeded themselves last year — chamomile and calendula in one bed, a couple of sunflowers in another, along with un-pictured pansies in all sorts of colors.

We have plenty of cats INSIDE the house (I will not say how many, to avoid embarrassing myself). Beany is the queeny, as always. She’ll be eighteen at the end of summer!! I feel like the luckiest person ever to have enjoyed her this long, and she’s barely slowed down.

We’re down to just three chickens. Poppy is the gray bird, and she has been on death’s doorstep a couple of times now… and then she just recovers. Tofu, the white hen in the front, is Poppy’s sister, and Sylvie (behind — her head is a bit grayer that Tofu’s) is probably Tofu’s daughter. They’re getting on, in chicken years! Poppy and Tofu are seven years old now, and Sylvie is only a year or two younger. But we’re still getting eggs! As our chicken numbers dwindled, I thought when we got to this few, that I’d see if a friend would add them to their flock. I’m over taking care of chickens! And it’s harder to travel and keep them safe. But I can’t stand the thought of uprooting them and dumping them into a whole new flock, so they stay with us.

I am perhaps SLIGHTLY less crafty than during the craft-blog heyday, but not too much. I do a lot more knitting now, which is convenient when I’m bringing the kids to homeschool meetups. I’ll have to make a post with the things I’ve knit this year. I keep saying a can’t possibly need another sweater, but…

I’ve been in the process of moving my sewing stuff into the room above the garage, which colloquially we call the skyroom, but which I’ve been trying to rename (at least for people who don’t live here) my studio. Hauling stuff upstairs has taken a while, and I’m not done yet! But I finally got the sewing table set up, and I used it to make some reusable snack bags out of PUL. These ones are actually made from the outer layer of the girls’ old cloth diapers! A friend (who currently cloth diapers) thought that sounded gross, but they’ve been clean and sitting, all cut apart, for years and years now. These ones are only big enough for crackers or nuts or whatever (diapers aren’t huge, after all!), but I found some new PUL in my stash that I’m going to use to make sandwich bags. We have silicon reusable bags, but they’re such a PITA to wash and dry!

And some real life. This is a table in my studio — MY studio — but it seems to be covered in a puzzle and drawings and a dish that I know I told its child to take back to the kitchen. Oh well. Are these photos too big? They look massive on my monitor, but less so on my laptop, and I’m sure they’re just phone-sized on a phone. We’re all getting old now, so we don’t want to strain our eyes too much!

F’s “New” Room

September 17, 2023 Anna1 Comment

When I turned the guest room into our storage room, it meant I could clear a lot of boxes and other clutter from the girls’ playroom. They’ve shared a bedroom since F was a toddler, which has meant there’s been a spare room for (most of) their toys. They don’t actually play with a lot of toys anymore — just stuffed animals and doll accessories that they use with the plushies. So I was able to empty out quite a lot from the playroom.

It had already been housing a queen bed, ever since F traded the queen in for a twin (the girls used to have a twin-over-queen bunk). So once the room was tidied up and had a nice bed in it… it looked a lot like a bedroom. My plan was to keep it like that, and then, if a rare overnight guest should emerge from the woods, we could sweep away the toys and let them sleep in there. Convenient!

But F saw the room, and all her wildest dreams unfolded in front of her eyes. She loves to think and talk about what her house will be like when she grows up, and for months she’s been wishing she had a room of her own to decorate. I *had* pointed out to her (multiple times) that this could easily be achieved if she and M stopped sharing a room, but I guess that wasn’t appealing until she saw it IRL.

To be honest, I thought that if either girl were ready to start sleeping away from the main bedrooms, it would be M, who turns ten next month. F is seven and can still be quite a young seven at times, but once she’d made her mind up, that was that. Well, actually, she told me that she’d give it ten days, and if she still liked sleeping there after that time, she’d THEN start moving more of her belongings into the room. Quite sensible!

But she really wanted a dresser in the room, so I wheeled in the one from the guest (now storage) room. She wants her clothes in it, but I don’t sort between hers and M’s — they wear the same size, though not many of the same items. I told her I didn’t want that extra task (separating her clothes from M’s) added to my laundry chores, and she said SHE would take over washing and folding them because she’s “ready for more responsibility”. I’m highly skeptical, but you never know!

Luckily, “decorating” seems to mostly consist of putting things where she wants them, NOT painting over that triangle wall! I suppose it won’t last forever, but I’d be really sad to see it go.

Changing Seasons

September 15, 2023 Anna1 Comment

The changing leaves are pretty, but they do make me feel anxious! They’re colorful for only such a short time, and then they fall off, and then all we have to look at are naked trees for SO many months. We’re feeling the squeeze to get our fill of warm-weather (and even cool-weather) activities before winter sets in.

We have a good circle of homeschooling friends, but they’re quite a drive from us (that’s what I get for living in the middle of nowhere). It’s mildly inconvenient during summer, but when the winter weather is bad, there’s no way we can make the trip regularly. So we met up with two other groups — closer to home — this week and actually had a great time both days. I hope we can keep that up!

Storage Room

September 12, 2023September 13, 2023 Anna1 Comment

Whew! We had a group camping trip that fell through last week, so we took our pop-up camper up to a friend’s house for a couple of nights. We know this family through our homeschool friend-circle, and it was lovely to sit and chat while the kids ran amok out in the fields (country kids know how to have fun outside!). I came home ready to tidy!

The changing seasons — we’re already getting color on the leaves here — seems to have triggered a big nesting drive this year. I feel like I need to get the house ready for us to be stuck inside all winter long! I had a revelation while we were away: our guest room was a waste of space. I can probably count the number of times we’ve had overnight visitors on my hands, but there’s a whole ROOM dedicated to them?? And let’s be honest — junk got stashed in there most of the time, but it stressed me out to know that it wasn’t “supposed” to be in there. No more!

There’s been a queen-sized bed in the girls’ playroom for a while now (it used to be F’s, but she switched to a twin bed last winter, I think). So when we DO have a guest, the playroom can get tidied up to house them. And now the old guest room is our STORAGE ROOM. What! We have a big house, but since it’s a split-level, with the “basement” completely finished, there really isn’t a lot of room to store things. No more!

It would be great if we just didn’t have anything that we didn’t actively use, and probably half the stuff in the storage room is kid junk that does eventually need to be gone through and weeded out. But none of us are in the mood for that right now. The other half is made up of things that we DO need/want but which didn’t have a dedicated home. Camping gear, grow lights for seed-starting, musical instruments in cases, etc. Also some furniture odds and ends that I don’t want getting dusty/mousy in the barn. It felt so good to go through the house yesterday, clearing out all the problem areas from other rooms. It turns out a huge part of our clutter issue was all this stuff that needed to go SOMEwhere but didn’t belong ANYwhere. And now it’s hidden away! What a concept.

The photos: I came across the Baba Yaga hut illustration on Pinterest and clicked over to the Gorgonist’s Etsy shop. I’m in love with their style and want pretty much everything, but I limited myself to a couple of prints, a few sheets of stickers, and a pin. I thrifted the frame last week and took out the dusty, old, kitchen-themed “art” that was inside. The frame cleaned up really nicely, and I already had a mat, and I’m so happy with the way it all looks together. The photo doesn’t quite capture it, but both the wood and the print are so warm and glowy and go perfectly together.

The socks are from the Tin Can Knits Rye pattern, except I skipped the garter panel down the front. It’s a super easy worsted-weight sock pattern. The yarn was two skeins of Cascade Superwash 220 Wave, which I got on a group camping trip that WASN’T cancelled, earlier this summer. We all piled into cars and drove into Hibbing to go to the yarn store (Knitting Knight), since obv camping friends should also be knitting friends. I very quickly knit up the first pair during the trip and then took my sweet time on the second pair. I don’t want to think too much about my planned-projects list (too overwhelming), but I did get a skein of Malabrigo worsted to make another pair. They’re so quick and use so little yarn — very satisfying!