Sink Bathing

Every now and again I think you need to be reminded of where you came from, I got one of those this afternoon. Because of circumstances beyond my control (you'll have to ask PB about that LOL), I had no water coming out of my faucets, we had water, it was just below the level that the pump hose can reach. I have class at church today and a very head full of dirty hair. So, in honor of how we lived when we first moved here, I grabbed a couple of 1 gallon pitchers, filled them with the water from the bottom of the water tank, I poured half of each pitcher into a big stock pot and heated it on the stove then poured it back into the pitchers, it didn't make it very warm, it was just enough to take the icy chill off of the water.

I poured some of the warmish water into a plastic bowl and added some shampoo, I poured that over my hair at the sink, I washed, rinsed, conditioned and rinsed with just a little less than a gallon and a half of water, nice to know I can still do it :)

Now I can go to class with fresh clean hair, and hopefully by this evening I'll be able to take a full on shower.


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Wretha,

Thanks for visiting!

Talk of Another Bug

Primitive Bob, or PB as he is known in these parts, posted a new post about our new bug, see it here:

http://primitivebob.blogspot.com/2011/11/moma-bug-and-new-baby-beetle.html

We got it delivered right to our driveway on Friday by our good friends J and M from Odessa, thanks so much!




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Wretha,

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Happy Thanksgiving

Here's wishing everyone a happy Thanksgiving day. Since we can't be with our family on this day, we are doing the next best thing, having good friends over to share this day, life is so good! :)




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Wretha,

Thanks for visiting!

Thrift Shop Deals

I am amazed at the items and deals I run across from time to time, yesterday I was in town, on the way home, my friend and I stopped at a local thrift shop to drop off some clothes, we drove to the back of the building and I spotted something that had a wringer attachment on the top, other than that, I had no idea what this thing was.

I hopped out to look at it, it appears to be some sort of washing machine, it's a Hoover and is clearly marketed for Mexico (based on the Mexican language on the label). It does plug up to electricity, apparently you fill it manually with water and laundry soap, it agitates the clothes, then it drains, I'm hoping it's a gravity drain and doesn't require the motor to pump the water out.

I went in the thrift shop and asked about it, they didn't know what it was except that it appears to be a washing machine, they hadn't brought it in yet and hadn't cleaned it up yet. First the lady quoted $12, I didn't respond to the dollar figure, we just kept talking about the machine, then she said how about $10? SOLD! Another couple of friends of mine were inside the shop, I asked D if he would load the machine into my friend's truck, I paid and just like that, it was mine.

I am still looking up info on this, it appears to be rather old, it does have wheels on the bottom, and other than needing a bit of cleanup, it appears to be in pretty good shape, if nothing else, I can use it just for the wringer, and I can use it inside the skycastle.

The knob on the front is a timer, I haven't been able to read the model number on the label very well, I think it says 4005.

Here are a few pix

 

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Wretha,

Thanks for visiting!

Mosaic Scarf Pictures

For anyone who had trouble with the video or just want to see more of this crocheted scarf, here are a few pictures, I have misplaced my camera so I had to make do with the web cam on my laptop, I even went outside on the second and third picture to get better light :)

This is done with the mosaic crochet method, I used 2 colors in Caron Simply Soft, one is a soft gray, the other is a medium blue, this is done with a single crochet stitch, I did a long I drop on every 5th stitch, once I completed the main part of the body, I added a slightly ruffled border in the gray. On the first row, I didn't use a chain stitch, I used the chainless foundation, it makes the first row just as stretchy as the last, you can find chainless foundation on YouTube.

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Wretha,

Thanks for visiting!

Mosaic Crochet Scarf Video

OK, I decided to make a video of the scarf, sorry it's a bit dark, but it's the best I could do at the time.

Enjoy


Whew, could they have picked a worse spot to use as the beginning??? They do give options to choose from but believe it or not, this was the best of the 3. :p

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Wretha,

Thanks for visiting!

It's Time For Crocheting

I've started crocheting again, I've had the itch for a while now but didn't have the time all summer, now that I do have the time, I'm crocheting a scarf for a friend who is having a birthday at the end of this month, she doesn't have a computer so I don't worry about her reading this. :) She surprised me this summer with an entire set of crochet hooks for my birthday, they are nice hooks too, including all of the small steel ones, all in a nice zipper case, so when it started getting closer to her birthday, I decided I would crochet something for her.

I am learning how to do mosaic crochet with Mosaic Crochet with Lily Chin, it's quite complex looking but easy to do, I'm hoping to impress my friend with my new found crochet stitches :)

I started a scarf, did the chain then the first and second row, then started the mosaic part, I didn't like what was happening though, the scarf was curling around the original chain, what happens is the chain stitch doesn't have the same stretch properties as the following rows, I decided to pull out the whole thing and start over. I had heard about a chainless foundation for crochet that makes the beginning row just as stretchy as the following rows, Lily Chin also demonstrates that stitch in the beginning of this DVD. Here is a video of another crocheter demonstrating the chainless foundation:


I now have the initial row created with this stitch, it took some fiddling to get it right, but once I got the stitch down, it worked just fine, now I have to continue with the scarf.

After pulling the whole thing apart a couple of times, I finally got the scarf going well, I had to decide how to do the pattern for the mosaic crochet, now it's nearly finished, I just need to put a border on it and I'll be done, it looks really great, I'll post a picture of it when I'm finished.



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Wretha,

Thanks for visiting!

Shower and Visit

Lots of things to report, my shower is finished, well it's finished enough to take a shower in, be sure to click "read more" below to see the entire post...

I'm Still Here...

Hi everyone, long time no post... I'm still here, just been busy with family, my dad and son came out for a visit at the beginning of the month, so I've been playing the host role and doing some tourist stuff... they are leaving tomorrow, so things (and posts) will return to their irregularly scheduled schedule... I have lots to report on, so stay tuned. :)



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Wretha,

Thanks for visiting!

The Ultimate Guide to Homesteading-Book Review

Homesteading, it’s a buzzword that means different things to different people, back in the day, it meant getting land for free as long as you lived on it and improved it for x number of years. It was a way to get people to move west (in the USA), back when travel was slow and painful, even dangerous.


Today it usually refers to someone who is living more like our ancestors did, in a more self sufficient manner, on a plot of land, often raising livestock, growing their own food, living more independently. Most of us are more than one generation removed from those who lived on a farm or homestead, so we don’t benefit from the knowledge of our family members who lived in a more self sufficient manner. I know in my family, it was my great grand parents who had lived on a farm, my grandparents and parents lived in suburban neighborhoods with small yards and animals no bigger than a dog.

Because of this, those of us who want to live closer to the land have to resort to alternative methods of obtaining  knowledge. I continually scour the internet for books about living off grid, gardening and such, I found this book The Ultimate Guide to Homesteading: An Encyclopedia of Independent Living (The Ultimate Guides), actually I didn’t find it, I was offered an opportunity to review it and I jumped at the chance, it was a book I had been looking at previously and was more than happy to review it.

I keep getting distracted from writing because I keep finding more and more interesting things in this book to read, I just read about growing cotton, then picking it, cleaning it, and spinning it. Since I crochet, this is especially appealing to me, and something I think I can do with little trouble. For now, I’m not set up to raise wool bearing animals, but I can grow cotton and process it.

This book has a lot to offer, it doesn’t go into extreme detail on any one subject, but gives you enough information so that you can decide if that particular thing is something you really want to try.  Nicole Faires (don’t you just love her name?) the author, has certainly lived the life, she is not just spouting theory, she grew up on a hobby farm raising chickens and growing her own food among other things.
While not an exhaustive list of homesteading subjects, I believe it covers the majority of them quite nicely, such as:

• land-buying, communities…
• water-getting it, purifying it and such
• food-finding it, growing it, preserving it…
• animals-livestock, domestic…
• shelter-various home styles, barns, fences…
• financial-making money from your skills…
• health-medicines, herbal medicines,
• and lots more

There is a great  dictionary in the back so you will at least sound like you know what you are talking about when chatting with the old timers at the feed store, LOL, seriously, I have had a good time reading the terminology and their meanings. Such as “butt-up”, before reading this book, I would have said that is how one lands when tripping over a rock and doing a face plant, now I know that is a type of roof ridge made in thatching which forces the straw together from both sides of the roof to form a peak. “Flying change”, I would think it’s what happens when you lose control of your change purse, but it really has to do with horses.

Near the back of the book, just before the index, the author’s bio and several blank pages (perfect for adding your own notes), there is a great bibliography with tons of resources, mostly in the form of internet links. These will send you to more detailed resources for the subjects found in this book. This alone is worth the price of the book.

The book is easy to read, well made, with lots of color photographs and diagrams, nice thick glossy pages ensure this book will last for a long time, that’s a good thing because once you have this book, you will be referring to it over and over again throughout the years.

PB (my hubby) has been trying to steal this book from me ever since I received it, his comment on it was that it is a good all over resource, not detailed on each thing, but a good book and he’s glad we have it, he has also been going on and on about how well this book is physically put together, the binding, the paper quality and the pictures. Now that I’m finished with this review, I can safely give the book to him, I’ll not see it again for a while. :)


See my other book reviews here:
http://wretha.blogspot.com/search/label/book review


Honesty disclaimer:
I did receive this book free from the publisher for the expressed intent of giving a review, that in no way influenced my review, all of my reviews are honest and from the heart.



All written text from this blog are copyrighted and owned by Wretha unless otherwise stated. All rights reserved, You may download or copy for your own personal enjoyment, but please do not distribute without written permission. You may post a portion of this (or any) message from this blog on another site as long as you include a link back to this site and the original message.

Wretha,

Thanks for visiting!