windthread

ok.  i am about to attempt my first milk session with all willing does.  that might mean 6.  Yesterday, THIS came:

it's a Maggiedan's hand milker.  and the counter has been cleaned with bleach.  and i searched for the little notebook that Lisa Check  (from my old online writing circle) had made me seemingly so long ago.  it will be my Milking Journal.   go see Flyinggoatfarm.com   Lisa created a Whole World.  and lives in it.

but because i am so nervous, i first made macaroni and cheese.  ate it.  and just now…took that twisted and clamped  bundle out of the walnut, un clamped, un bundled and look what we have here

it's pretty much the same.  but i wanted to remember, record it.

on a lizard this small, the tail is hard.  such almost non-existent stitches.  and i ended up actually liking the spaces between stitches on the legs…gives a striped effect which works well enough.  lizard's body is an inch and a quarter.  it couldn't be bigger, and the others will need to be smaller…how will i do that?

 

 

maybe my personal calendar,  as in, an interior calendar,  has only two "pages"… maybe August.

August has always been, since a child,  a very intensly felt month.  No matter where i've been.  and this morning, the URGE finally came to get the dye pots going

Mexican Elderberrys in copper

my first bundle ever.  in Walnut juice, cast iron pan

Mexican Elderberry leaves with iron ring for good measure in copper pot

and the Indigo vat.  the vat that sat. 

 

 

i stitched some things to the Deb Lacativa piece at the top, the Sun/Moon.  and i stitched down the birds.  i don't know if there will be more.  and i made Saag Paneer with the paneer that came from that quart of goat milk.  While snipping the stems off two large clumps of spinach leaves and becoming restless with it,  i said aloud: " I am preparing these leaves to make a most delicous meal"  and everything became ok.  and it WAS so so delicious.  i added a handfull of currants.

then i went out to work in the Albatros, moving the pallets so the new 2nd side of the indoor pen could open and close.  It's all a catch-22.  to accomplish one thing, 3 more must be done first.  I let Magic out as i usually do, her being "special".  She puttered and spent a lot of time in the wire rolls as she does because they are bouncy.

I kept working.

all the stuff you see on the right, needs to come out.  it's the second indoor pen.

this is the shelves with all manner of potentially useful stuff.

more important stuff.

and somewhere here, i got hooked by everyone else deep in envy about Magic being so special, so, i suddenly decided to let them ALL out.

and i thought i fixed this pic, but i guess not, but really, it's kinda how it felt, with Everyone milling.  and i think this also was when i decided to have a glass of wine.  or maybe when i saw Chinche feeling a little left out

this posture is a request for a stomach pet.

and then i came in, after i got them all back and added a lizard.  it's the wine.  i'll need to take most of it apart tomorrow, but i liked doing it anyway

it was a really nice day.

 

 

 

 

it's late. (for me) and this is on the ironing board.  under the sewing lamp.  but here, the beginning of the birds…from a piece of green/blue linen that i overdyed today with walnut.  perfect.  how ravens are, how crows are.  so these pieces are just set.  i want to get that feeling of how they are when they ride the Thermals and show me how it CAN be, if i let it.   These are the same shapes as in the Magic Diaries cloth.   i brought them over.  

I cannot say how glad i am that i kept going.

 

 

 

August is disappearing.

Very soon, by October, all the babies will have been born.  All that will Stay, will be waiting.  Daily, out there for me.  All that will go, will be gone.  So, i am thinking.  Things are easy for me when it's Hot.  Cold, not so much and really cold, NOT.   What i begin now will carry through those cold months.  There will be ice to break on their water bowls.  Wood to split and bring in.  A house that heats slowly in the morning.

So, this morning, i am entertaining thoughts about how i might do it all.   And i made myself a little scenario of how a day might go to mull over as i go through these Beauty days of Summer Going.

Wake.  put coffee water on to boil.  Start fire in wood stove.  ???Sitting meditation now???  Look at cloth to seed the mind for the day.   Out to break ice, fill bowls, feed.  Maybe milk now, but being realistic about my limitations, i might go back in for a while till maybe 8 or even 9 oclock.  Prepare food for the day, if so, milk after that.  There will be 7, maybe 8 does to milk.  Ona, Onday, Lucky Star, Ginger, Grace, Barbara, Caroline and maybe Arctica if i can tame her enough by then.   ???Sitting Meditation now, instead?????   So, This finished between 10 and 11. 

The milk can be frozen.  The routine for cheese making is completely unknown now.  It will depend on how much milk is given.  But it won't happen every day.  I can't know anything about this until it all begins.  So, it's penciled in.

And now the house is warmed.  CLOTH from say 11 til 2 or 3

And then 3 till dusk, back out to feed for the evening, care for living spaces and Love, Touch, Talk. 

The Cloth and Goat Love will of course vary, depending on the weather.

So.  I sit looking at this Possible Plan and thought to go look at Picasa to see what i'd been looking  at last year.

Water Canyon in search of walnuts and acorns     Sept. 11, 2011

September  24, 2011  Dye Pots

September 28, 2011   What was given,  plant to cloth.

October 14, 2011  The angle of light changing

November 3, 2011   Fire every day.

the end of November through somewhere in February

Easy days again,  March 14, 2011,  the Apricot Tree

So.   

LOOK.

last eve, jenny and i, mostly jenny,  milked out Onday's uneven udder.  her daughter, little Mercy Now prefers one side and being an only,  this creates a Situation for Onday.

so we got a little more than a quart, some went to the dogs.  this morning after sitting in the refrigerator all night i couldn't believe my eyes.  can you see at the very bottom of the jar?  there is about 1/4" of actual "milk",  ALL THE REST OF THAT QUART IS

CREAM.    cream.  oh, the cheese this is going to make.  oh, the BUTTER it can make. oh,

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

 

this cloth i gave to Acey…the Rooster Flower       A different kind of face

 

Can you see her hair?

in her hair.  that's where the birds and lizards are.

at almost dusk, i am thinking, feeling, that maybe…maybe….i am starting to be a little ahead of the game?  i knock on wood.

Today,  after some days of just looking, i am trying again.  i really want it how i want it.  and am determined to do whatever i need to to find some middle ground between drawing faces and making faces on cloth.  so…here:

the face has shifted left to right (or right to left, really) .  and is stitched.  just this much so far.  i'm looking.    the color of the pic is not true but i wanted the single stitch of the line of the face to show up a little.  i have no idea where to go from here, but as i said, i am determined.  tomorrow.

and the goat update:

Sunny Ray, sharing shade with the big boys.   There is little comotion there now on day 4.  He seems to have forgotten or given up the thought of his mother, of nursing.  he has been through his gauntlet of orientation and they are adjusting.  Soon, though, hopefully, even tomorrow, daughter will deliver the 4 little bucklings/wethers to their new home.  Life is BIG for young goats.

Onday and little Mercy back into the outside pen.  This is the shelter thingy that took me seemingly forever to construct.  i am not an architect.  but it serves.  at the back you can see the added 2×4 that creates just enough of a small skinny space for a little goat to save herself from big goat comotion.  i remembered from Jenny talk, and put it there.  Mercy uses it.  it's her escape place.

and when i was out there, Darth Vader posed.  and i had to take his pic.  if it were different circumstances, he might be sold whole…as a buck.  he really is very very fine in all ways.  but as it is,  no, he will be a wether.  and gone with Sunny Ray soon.