Fiberaddict's Fiber Fumblings

I got a buckling from Trillion! :lol: AND a doeling from April and a buckling from Inara (granted, those 2 were Friday evening, but hey - I'll take it!) Only 2 does to go.....

Yes, Friday evening was...eventful. I had just hung up the phone from my FIL when I looked outside and saw April in a weird, hunched position. Ran outside....got to her just in time to keep the little girl from hitting the (very dirty) ground. Got Lyra cleaned up, mom sorted, and was gathering up my kit to head back to the house when Inara started yelling at me. (Inara is the typical Nubian - very, very mouthy. Yells about *everything*.)

I went to pet her - that's usually what she wants - and saw goop. :sigh: Drug her outside; 30 minutes later she delivered a very large bucking in my lap. (She crawled into my lap and refused to move. Whatever....weird goat! :lol:)

SG is FINALLY seriously looking to replace the machine for me. See, he has to come hold April - she's a first freshener, she has TEENY teats (she and May are charter members of the "itty-bitty-t***y-club. Seriously - their udders are between grapefruit and cantaloupe size, with teats the size of my pinkie finger's first joint. Say - half an inch?.. TINY. Hard to milk.) April fights, so someone has to wrestle her to a stand-still so I can attempt to milk her out. He threw out his back yesterday....this AM was NOT fun for him.

Or me, because my wrist can NOT take this. Out of the 5 does I am currently milking, we got almost a half-gallon of drinkable milk (Zoe) and *13* bottles from the other 4. 13 9-oz, FULL bottles. Multiply that by 2x/day.......yeah, I think we need a machine STAT.

:sigh:

Anyway. Yesterday was clean the milk room day - it needed it. It's currently empty; everything is outside waiting to be washed down. The old machine......honestly, I really just want a new bucket, one that's smaller than the Surge one. It's too big and heavy for me. We need to replace the inflations and lines (you do that every year).....so SG tried to start the pump. It's a no-go, and he's not sure it's worth getting it fixed. He can buy a new pump for under $200...this one is an old medical-grade liposuction pump. I don't care, as long as we do something SOON.

But! Current goat count:

Boys: 5

Girls: 1

They all appear healthy, so that's good.

Have a great day - I need to check on the 2 holdouts. Maybe I'll get more babies today! :panic: :rofl:

Boys: 3

Girls: 1


Went out to milk Zoe at 6:30, like normal. I walked behind my Studio, as normal, to check on the goats, and noticed May was down in an "odd" position. (I can't describe it, but it's fully recognizable when you SEE it.) I did a quick look - no babies apparent, so I made the quick decision to milk Zoe before checking on her.

Got Zoe sorted, and went into the pen. May had turned around, and had *2* heads out. :panic!: I shot up a quick prayer, yelled for SG (who was still asleep and DID. NOT. HEAR. ME), then took a deep breath. I grabbed the head that was the furtherest out and gave it a gentle tug - out slid a good-sized, apparently dead baby. I dropped him on the ground - he started breathing! - and turned my attention to the other head.

I was missing feet. I remembered what the vet had told me years ago - don't worry about presentation in a case like this, just do your best to get 'em out quickly - so I grabbed baby behind the jaw and worked my fingers in to try and get a little more space. Very quickly, SHE slid out and started breathing. :whew!:

I was wearing a hoodie (I ALWAYS wear a jacket/sweatshirt/hoodie during kidding season), so I took it off and wrapped both kids in it. I got them outside and plopped both on the grass, then went back to quickly check on May - she was fine. Off the kids and I went to the house, yelling for SG all the way.

Long story short - all 3 are doing OK. Bodie (the boy) is already standing; Jen (the girl) is weaker, but fighting. Both have taken 4 oz or so of colostrum. May is sore, but seems OK. She's not bleeding, so I think she's OK - it's just both kids wanted OUT right then. I did give her some antibiotic, just to be on the safe side, and I'll give her another dose tonight.

Both look like mama - brown and white. Bodie is HUGE compared to Jen, but both are on the smaller side of Nubian newborns.

Poe and Finn have been evicted to the goat barn; Bodie is in the playpen while Jen is in a garden trug, all wrapped up in towels with a hot rice pack helping her stay warm.

May looks to be a good milker - she's not fighting me at all. This is her first freshening, which means small teats......SG PROMISED me he'd order me a new milking machine. The old one.....the pump needs work. Yes, it'd be cheaper to try to fix it - maybe - but we can't run the bucket thru the dishwasher as it's a cow bucket and too big. I'm looking at specific goat milkers....we'll see. Either way, I'm going to need a machine soonish - I still have *5* does (I think) to go. :deep breath: God is good - we'll get it sorted soon enough.

So. How was YOUR morning? :lol:

then I took a HORSE to the face. :sigh:

Let me explain......about 2-3 months ago, we noticed a growth on Boots' left hind leg. It was...about the size of a grapefruit, and it was grainy. I tried to NOT assume tumor; I assumed proud-flesh on a wound, so got SG to dump lime on it every morning. Only, he isn't so good at daily follow-up; this Monday he told me it was getting bigger. :sigh:

He finally called the vet yesterday (what? She's HIS horse - he should be on top of this!); Dr. A came out yesterday afternoon. I met him at the gate; I told him, "Good news - we have a halter and rope on her. Bad news - she won't lead." (An aside: these horses are basically pasture maggots/lawn ornaments. I am getting too old to risk myself with silly, stupid horse-antics.) He said, "Hm. OK, let's see what we got."

Turns out, it was NOT a tumor (Thank God!) - it was fly strike. DO NOT GOOGLE. Basically, she got a cut, a fly found it, then invited all it's friends for an orgy. Trust me - don't look it up. It's nasty. NOT life-threatening, really, but if it gets big enough, it could become so. This one? Not the largest he'd seen, but up there.

Anyway. He went back to his truck to get the meds - he said he could do field surgery on it - and SG and I tried to get her thru the gate, onto the grass.

Here's the scene: SG is in front, holding the lead rope and belly band rope (another quick explanation: a belly band is usually soft cotton, about 1" in diameter, with a fixed loop on one end. You run the loop-end over the back, about where a saddle would sit, with the loop on the belly. The free end goes thru the loop, in between the front legs, and thru the halter ring to your hand/solid-set post. It's a lever-system; when the horse fights the rope, their head gets pulled to their chest. They quickly learn that they are fighting themselves, and quit.) I, being an experienced horse-person, was on her left side, tapping her to get her to move forward.

She wasn't budging, so I decided to reconfigure the belly-band into a come-along; I pulled it off of her, ran a large loop behind her rump in between her tail and knees (OK, her hocks - trying to keep this understandable to non-horse people). Both ends of the rope (which was actually a flat nylon lunge-line - it was the longest strap/rope I could find) were in my hands, and I was still on her left side, at her shoulder.

At this point, I should tell you that she was about 3' from the fence - on her LEFT side. I am so accustomed to working horses on the left (it's Tradition!) that I didn't stop to consider the situation.......

So. SG starts tugging on her head, I am pulling on the come-along. She takes 2 steps forward (:huzzah!:), then realized her head was no longer tied to her chest, and decided to pitch a fit.......only, because no one told me she was about to throw herself backwards (to get away from the head-pulling), I kept pulling the come-along....and tipped her over sideways.

On top of me.

Into the fence.

Thank God she only hit my face with her left eye-socket. She knocked my glasses off and me into the ground. We ended up with me sprawled on my right hip/shoulder, with a horse head in my chest and my left shoulder/hip squished into the fence post. Also, Thank God that barbed wire is NOT used on horse fences! :shudder:

It took a few seconds for me to figure out how to get myself extracted; her legs were on top of mine, with her head curved around into my chest and her shoulder/back sort of....on top of but not touching me. My glasses were - again, Thank God! - not broken.

We got ourselves sorted before Dr. A came back (again, Thank God! I've had this vet for over 30 years....and I really didn't want him to see me under a horse. :sigh:)

Long story, shorter: The "happy shot" knocked her flat out, so we saved money not needing the "knock out" shot. Dr. A whacked off the growth and got her bandaged up. We were able to get her into the breeding pen (with her buddy, Leah), where she will remain for...a while. The wound is about the size of a silver-dollar; she has to have it wrapped until it's smaller than a quarter.

Me? I have a nasty bruise on my right cheekbone. I'm pretty sure it's not broken - it hurts, but doesn't make me nauseous. I have a bad laceration in my left armpit, where the arm meets the shoulder. Hurts to move, and sleeves are Right Out. My back.....looks like road rash. From about my 3rd rib down to my waist, it's all scraped, and cut, and bruised. I am bruised from my shoulder to my knees, the worst being where my left side scraped down the fence post. Moving is quite painful, but do-able.

I'm glad I don't feel worse; trying to explain what happened to a concerned ER staff would be fun, but I think they'd not believe me - especially with the facial bruising (small, but obvious. You can tell my glasses were shoved into my face; not sure "took a horse to the face" would be believed.)

I am going to try to take this time to actually get her ridable. Why not - she's contained, she's going to be slow...and Himself really, really wants to work with a horse. I'm not going to complain - and he's not going to argue with my safety rules. He can see the damage a horse can do accidentally - I don't think he wants to see what they can do deliberately.

Y'all have a Happy Shabbat - I'm going to be on the couch with ice packs. Pesach is going to be FUN this year.....:sigh:

spent yesterday with the grandparents. They're getting old, and starting to slow WAY down. :sigh: I keep consoling myself that at least the kids had them until their late teens. (Grannie is 84, and Papaw is 86. I think. Both are in their '80s, that I know.) We'll be going back on Sunday - they had a tree cut down, and SG wants the wood. Unless it's pouring rain again, of course. :lol:

Today we (Herself and I, and some SG) "fixed" the chicken run. It's now...well....Ugly. We had a layer of chicken wire on the bottom, then garden fencing...the chicken wire has been attacked by cats and hens and was worthless, especially around chicks. Of which we have 6 that need to be OUT there, and 6 1 week old chicks and 9 1 week old guineas (we lost 1 yesterday. :sigh:) So. Now we have a row of roof tin all along the bottom of the run. Ugly, yes - but effective. I managed to smash my left forefinger with the sledge hammer.....:sigh: Fun stuff!

Passover is Friday; next week is our Spring Break. I'm printing out all our Torah Class books for next year - we'll be finished with Joshua this Friday, and we'll start Judges week after next. We'll FINISH Judges end of August, it looks like (I haven't put in our holidays yet, so it might be a little later - but not much!), then it's on to Ruth, which will take....a month, maybe? - then on to 1st Samuel. I'm printing it now, but the printer JUST borked. :sigh: Ah, well - I have a little over half of it printed, so...that's good. I'll be dropping them into PlanBook next week.

Not much else to report - except we're waterlogged and need to evolve webbed feet. :Quack!: :lol:

Friday we ran out to pick up the new-to-us furniture. It's...well. It's MUCH nicer than the pictures on CraigsList showed; I was thinking it was simply 2 plain display units with a shelf. What it actually IS, is 2 French Provencial (or thereabouts) display units, with pawed feet and beveled and curved glass (the units are sort of trapezoidal. Hard to explain!) and wood shelves, and the shelf on top has fancy-smancy iron filigree. It's.....Oh goodness, it's GORGEOUS. And totally over-the-top. And ALL my to-keep books FIT in the shelves, behind the doors!!!!!!

We have all our SciFi collectibles on the shelf, with Yoda on the very top (many, many Yodas. I....kinda like the little green guy! :lol:) I'll get a few pictures when we get the artwork on the walls - right now, the art is on the piano and it looks bad. The room itself is nice and relatively tidy (but...cluttered, because I have NO place for my wheels to live. :sigh: The studio is on my list, after the Master Bedroom.)

As of right now, the public areas of the house are nice and tidy. I just have the studio and Master bedroom to go...and I'm only doing half the master bedroom. Why? Because my husband keeps saying "WE" need to clean it...only by "we" he means "ME"...and I'm tired of being the only one who cleans. He complains about the mess all the time, but won't help - well, he "helps", if by "helps" you understand it to mean "makes a bigger mess, gets tired and leaves it all until *I* get fed up and clean it up". Yeah - not happening this time. I'll clean my half - which includes the bathroom and closet - and he can do HIS half. Or not. His call.

Anyway - I need to start on MY half, then go get hay. And finish school. Laters! :lol:

Let's see.....we skipped all the Black Friday horror, but did do a little shopping on Saturday. Mostly for SG - he decided he NEEDED a PS4. And Battlefront. He's been watching Himself play it on his PC...at first, he wanted a Windoze gaming laptop.....I reminded him that he HATES MS with a passion. This....well, it's sorta scratched *that* itch. For now.

He got the Battlefront edition (NOT the Star Wars LE...it was $50 more, which wasn't a concern - but the GameStop we were at didn't have any in stock. The Battlefront edition came with Battlefront (duh!) and 4 older Star Wars games to download.), and he's a happy camper. At the moment...

Yesterday was Hanukkah prezzie shopping. We are at about 60% for both kids; seeing how we were at 0 when we started, this is pretty good! :lol: Yes, both kids know what they're getting...but they don't know which gift will come on which night. :snicker: And...we needed the input. Herself is getting mostly plushies (Build-A-Bear. We scored the Halloween Werewolf for her - FINALLY! - so I don't have to listen to the whining any more. :whew!:); Himself is getting Legos. Star Wars kits, natch. And the Battlefront Season Pass.

I got my birthday present - a Fitbit Charge HR. I have a Flex right now...it's....OK. It isn't very accurate; it loses about 25 steps out of every 100. :sigh: And all it does is track steps and miles. The Charge HR does that (but with more accuracy, supposedly), plus is monitors your heart rate, it has a watch built in, and it can be set up with caller ID. (Whatever. I want the watch!) I've put it up until my B-day, though...because I like getting presents. :lol:

My Hanukkah prezzie? A check. I have a spiral notebook with my wish lists (categorized, even! WITH website info!), but no, SG doesn't want to mess with it. He claims he's not sure he'd pick the "right" things...um, if they're on a list, they're "right". :sigh: and :lol: I'll be picking up some patterns, fabric, and attachments for the Rocketeer. I've already bought the first present, though - I renewed our Perot membership. They had a Cyber-Monday discount today - 25% off! How could I wait?? :lol: (And how funny is it that *my* present is a family membership? :snicker:) I'll be purchasing the patterns probably Wednesday (the check will be deposited tomorrow); the fabric shopping will happen next Monday, I think. I want to hit the Outlet Stores again. There's some books and CDs I want, but they can wait - I need new pants! :lol:

I almost got a puppy......the ASPCA has an area set up at the mall. :sigh: They had the CUTEST Blue Heeler girl yesterday..she looked just enough like Snips that 3 of us melted. (Himself was the sane one.) We managed to leave her there....but it was hard. (Repeat after me: "We do NOT need another dog. We do NOT need another dog. We do NOT.....)

Anyway, back to school for us. Hope your holiday was a good one! I have enough leftovers to feed us for another week, I think......

because boy, have I got photos for you!!! God is good - and I'll show you THAT in a minute! :lol:

First up, let me catch you up on the sock knitting front. (Because I am ALL about the socks, right? :lol:) Let's start with the Yaacov socks, V.2.0 (which Herself STOLE from me. :humph: :lol:)





Except for the spots where the colors ran together, I am *very* pleased with these. We dyed the yarn ourselves, and it pretty much worked out. I figured out where we went "wrong" (and, let me say that the original socks, the ones in the book, have areas of colors running together. So, in that respect, we HIT it out of the park. *I* however, want a pair with NO or very little blurriness.) You'll note that they match *exactly*, which was also part of the plan.

Herself is totally enthralled with them, so they are still a win. :lol:

Next up, the current sock - I give you Socks to Knit While Bored (aka: Sherlocked!) :lol:



I am...not following the pattern exactly. I know, I KNOW - but...I really, really HATE trying to purl color work. I can do it, but...I don't LIKE it. And I'm not really sure I have enough of the black yarn dyed up to do solid-color heels (the toes WILL be solid, because I think it'll look better.)....so color-worked heels were always the plan. I knit 2 rows....and decided to sub the heel from Maurits (remember the neon lizards? THAT heel. :lol:) You knit the heel flap and gusset AND instep at the same time; you decrease all the added stitches away and get a triangular thing going on on the foot. I think it'll look cool, so....there ya go. :lol:

And now.......well. I browse CraigsList quite a bit, usually just the Free and Arts and Crafts areas. Thursday I hit A&C, and saw an ad for "Free Clay!", so I clicked on it. It was from a teacher about 1 hour away who is moving, and decided she didn't want to move her pottery clay. I called. She said "Well, it's only about 200 pounds of clay, but I just don't want to bother moving it. I'll just buy new once I get settled (? Um.....that's still moving 200 pounds of clay, right? Whatever....). We made arrangements to pick it up yesterday, and Herself got moderately excited.

Well. Um. We got there yesterday AM, and...um....well, here - have a peek:



This, my friends, is "200" pounds of clay. Plus 50 pounds of Air-dry clay, 2 5-gallon buckets of pre-mixed slip, and.....oh my gosh, probably another 10 gallons or so of colored slip. And some tools. And some plaster of paris to make molds. And....I honestly don't know what all else. I just know that the back of my Jeep - which can hold 25 bags of horse feed, or 2 square bales of hay (with some room left over) or a wolfhound, or a full-size pregnant Nubian - is FULL. Today I HAVE to rearrange the Studio - SG is going to bring home a set of shelves tomorrow to put this stuff on - because....well, it can't stay in the Jeep. :lol:

The lady also gave us a lead on a consignment shop that sells artwork; we went and had a good long talk with the proprietor. Herself is......mildly anxious, excited, and scared about this. I have a contract that we are going to look over......this could be good for us. The proprietor is also interested in my soaps and handwovens...so. We'll see. I HAVE to get the loom unearthed so I can get back to weaving...it's been far too long.

Anyway, what a HUGE blessing this is! Clay isn't *that* expensive, but.....it's not super-cheap, either. All of this is the same firing temp as her porcelain, so she can make stuff out of both and fire them at the same time. And the glazes will work on both. :happy dance:

Guess I'd better get to work - we have a LOT of rearranging to do!

But BlueBell is back in stores. Sorry, folks, but BlueBell Ice Cream won, hands down! (It's been off store shelves since April. Longest. Summer. EVER!). (Also, best ice cream EVER.)

We have had an....interesting weekend. Friday, we ran to pick up/drop up work. Himself noticed it was "Force Friday" - the day when ALL the new lines of Star Wars merchandise was released - and asked if we might be able to stop at Toys R Us. Sure! So, off we went.

He didn't find anything he HAD to have, so we started to head out....and he came to an abrupt stop. "Mom! It's OUT!" "Um....what's out?" "Disney Infinity 3.0!" "Um...GameStop didn't TELL me! We need to stop!"

See, back in May we had put a deposit down on the just announced 3.0. With STAR WARS characters. GameStop is usually really good about notifying me of release dates.....but not this time. Last I had heard (3 weeks or so ago), it was looking like December. NOT August 30 (which was the actual release date. :sigh:)

Long story short, Himself had just enough money to pay off the game, and we took it home. I told the kids, do your chores early and you can go ahead and start playing it......they did. :lol:

We have spent the entire weekend (and part of this AM, before school), playing 3.0. Yes, the ENTIRE family. It's a 2-player game, so we've been swapping out...but. IF you have 2 consoles and 2 copies of the game you can network and play 4-player co-op. We have the 2 PS3's.....looks like we'll be getting another copy of the game on payday. :lol:

I stink, but I've managed to level up Ahsoka to Level 11. Herself has focused on Iron Man (because, see, you can play ALL the current Disney characters in 3.0. So, we've had some interesting combos...) - he's almost level 20. Himself likes Anakin, Hawkeye, and Black Widow, while SG has been messing around with the various other characters (Wreck It Ralph vs. Darth Vader in a boss fight. It was HYSTERICAL!)

This is our first version of Infinity - I like it. There's a toy box mode where basically anything goes - any and all characters can interact, you can set up battle areas to level up faster, you can explore.....at one point this AM, Himself had set up an arena to level up Black Widow. He put in an enemy spawn button; the idea was that Black Widow or Ironman would press the button to spawn more enemies. Only.....he had it set to spawn Clone troopers, 6 at a time. He and Herself were busy fighting, and the enemies kept coming. He couldn't figure out WHY there were over 100 troopers...so he worked his way over to the button, and discovered that some of the troopers had decided the spawner was an enemy...and they were pressing the button, spawning MORE troopers, who decided it was an enemy, thereby pressing the button again....it was hysterical! :lol: And why Black Widow leveled up so quickly. :rofl:

It's a fun game! Worth the money, but be warned: the characters are about $15/each, unless you take advantage of GameStop's frequent offers. We stocked up on older ones when they ran a buy 1 used/get 1 half off deal. Right now, it's buy 2 used/get *3* used FREE. We...don't need any more older ones right now, so we'll pass - but I WILL be buying Star Wars characters soon. I need Obi Wan, and Yoda, and and and...:lol:

which is normal, right? :sigh:

Herself had a doc appt last week...she's got something going on with her thyroid. She has an appt with an endocrinologist on the 9th to see what we need to do. Fun - and worrisome! - times!

Goat kids are doing well. We have dried up Annie - leaving me with 3 on the stand - because she couldn't get on the stand by herself, and she got diarrhea, which is BAD for goats. Her milk production had dropped to nearly nothing - which is unusual for her - so, I made the call. I put her on some loading doses of antibiotic, and have been forcing hay and grain down her. :sigh: She's out right now, eating weeds. I'll put her up shortly - it's Not Raining now, but it will rain soon.

We currently have a very pissed off sparrow fledgling in the Studio. He (she?) fell out of the nest yesterday morning and Chloe grabbed him. We got him away from her, but it seems like his leg may be broken. So, into a shoebox in the Studio he went. He's active - he got out of the box for a few hours last night - and has his first flight feathers, so maybe he'll make it. I hope so.....

I will have photos later - they're on my phone, not my laptop. :sigh: I'll transfer them over at doe point soon......