Laffing Horse Crafts

The title of this post comes from the email that inspired this post… on one of my email lists, there is an ongoing conversation about good appliances gone bad and how there seems to be an epidemic of it right about this time of year. Freezers thawing food, heaters not heating, dishwashers not washing dishes, and water heaters exploding and flooding basements and kitchens. Someone said something about Mars being in retrograde, someone said it was Saturn… I’m sure it’s Whirlpool or Kenmore, but then I know very little about astrology… I couldn’t even ever use the “what’s your sign” line to pick up girls.

Oh, we do have our share of problems. But maybe I just expect less, or maybe I’m blessed, or maybe I’m just lucky… maybe I’m inviting a curse on myself for saying saying so, so I’ll take a moment and hammer on some wood with my fist… and, with that preface, I’ll say that December has actually been pretty good for us.

I haven’t used a dishwasher since my son thought that doing dishes meant putting them in the dishwasher and turning it on… without emptying the dishes first…. It takes a long time to clean a pan full of overcooked rice from a dishwasher, let me tell you!

I’ve never used a trash compactor unless smashing cans with my feet counts.

I’ve had more than one water heater go out, but I’ve not been truly flooded (knocking on wood again) by a water heater mishap. I’ve had the washer hose go when I wasn’t looking and flood the kitchen.

Sure, our water pressure here is so low I can drink a pot of coffee as fast as the coffee pot fills up, but we knew that when we moved to Meadowcreek. on the plus side, this is spring water and it is SO good! That means that showers are kinda slow… seems like it takes forever to rinse under a drizzle.

This is my first experience heating the house with wood, so no worries about a heater going out. I do have to cut and split wood and I’ve singed my hair starting the fire on occasion and it means getting up in the wee hours of the morning and stoking the fireplace if you want the house to stay warm. Fortunately, it’s not been getting too cold… several rains and only one snow and no ice (pardon me while I knock on wood yet again).

Our cook stove works on three burners and the oven’s about 200¬? off (if you turn it on to 150¬? it heats to 350¬?), but we’ve lived to learn with that… or something… The refrigerator cools, but doesn’t freeze and goes out about once a week… gets clogged with ice and starts heating things instead of cooling them so we’ve been defrosting weekly. Fortunately it’s been cold enough to just set things in an ice chest on the porch… where we’ve had several strays and a coon get at ‘em… We don’t know if our refrigerator works. It was too large to fit in the shop we rented when we first got out here (and we had the idea we could build a home in a year HA!) ans so it spent the better part of an Ozark summer and fall under a tree with a tarp wrapped around it. Did you know that plastic will grow mold under the right conditions? Its cleaned up – mostly – and waiting in the horse trailer for us to get the bunnies moved into their new home so we can move it from the horse trailer to the house… the bunnies are blocking the path doncha know.

We moved from a place that taught us to store every drop of water because of drought to a place where we can’t keep up with the flow… the spring’s storage tank is overflowing. The spring’s overflow tank is overflowing. The spring’s overflow valve is overflowing. The springs’s overflow overflow (aka, the pond) is full and the water keeps on coming out of the ground. Weird.

Speaking of water, the roof leaks like a sieve, but only over the porch… seems the flashing on the chimney was put on late or poorly or both and so the roof over the porch is rotting away. I guess wood rots when there’s a lot of water… who knew…

I’ve since had several people suggest ways to fix the oven and the roof and the water pressure problems. And I have put their suggestions on my list of TO-DOs. Now if I could only find the time and the funds… heck, if I could only find the list…

Here’s wishing all of you a healthy and happy and prosperous New Year with no appliance problems!

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I got back from the woodshop last night about 5:30 p.m. It’s long been my habit to check email and news and other schtuff right before I leave and right after I get home, so that’s what I did… I did say it was a habit and I am a creature of habit. Sometimes wish I weren’t…

What I saw thrilled me! Our sales for December were pennies from being the best month we’ve ever had!

I could have got up and walked away and come back to check on things later. I could have. Really. But it was exciting… I was watching a long anticipated moment unfold before my eyes.

Or maybe that moment was constipated. I watched the browser window and clicked reload. Nope… nothing changed. I clicked reload… still nothing. Maybe when I click reload this time, I thought… nada. Kinda like watching paint dry.

I’m ashamed to admit that this pitiful display went on for about two hours. I’m also happy to say, we’ve reached a new plateau! We beat the old record!

Of course, when I told Jen the good news, she said “Congratulations… now we just need to make [way too much] more to make the next goal.”

Jeez! A guy just can’t win!

Now, if we could only find a way to make the meager amount I’m so thrilled with pay all the bills…  hmmm…

Meanwhile, the sale’s still going on! What sale? Look at the bottom of this post. If you haven’t got that perfect thing yet, there’s still time… and, I’ve still got a to-do list that gets built up as quick as I whittle it down.

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Jen had to run to town today. And not just any town… she drove all the way to Little Rock!

Why? Was it for Christmas presents? No (although she did get some – Thanks, honey!).

While she was away, Lena and I went topside and caught some more of the chickens, checked on the bees, loaded some hay, checked the mail, re-tarped the hay stack, wished some folk a happy holiday season and headed back down.

We turned the chickens out and they found their missing friends, unloaded the hay, and then turned our energies to fencing. Yesterday, we put up a roll of 33o-feet woven wire fencing for the sheep – clearing the area, driving the T-posts, rolling and wiring the fencing. Today, we took all the cattle panels we salvaged from the old sheep fence and, much to the delight of the caprine critters, doubled the size of the goat pen.

At one point, Lena looks at me and says “I don’t think this is how most people spend Christmas Eve.”

Yeah, maybe, but they don’t know what they’re missing.

Here’s hoping you’re missing nothing this holiday season!

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I made a new website a couple days ago: www.artisansmarketonthesquare.com. I didn’t choose the name – that was a committee decision. I’m pretty happy with it… I know that it’ll grow and evolve (and mutate).

Then, in the same I’m-in-the-club-and-how-can-I-best-serve-the-club vein, I made this: Ozark Woodturners Prototype. This one has a LONG way to go, but again, I’m happy with it knowing that there is more to come.

Of course, I’ll always accept critiques… see something that doesn’t work, send me a note or make a comment.

But I wasn’t done after making a couple of websites… no no no.

We celebrated Yule last night and tried to push the boundaries of common sense by staying up all night. Longest night and all (funny, though, today doesn’t seem any longer than yesterday… maybe it had something to do with sleeping until noon). We invited over some friends and put together some activities. We thought that if we stayed busy, the night would pass faster. Gus and I made a nice fire that weathered the overnight mist and drizzle and kept the Yule Log burning through the night! Between excursions to check the fire (in shirtsleeves and light jackets… I don’t think the temperature dropped below 55¬? last night) we managed to get a 3 gallon batch of framboos lambic beer into the fermenter.

We made beer!

But it went far too easily, was done way too soon, and didn’t make near enough mess.

By now, our decision making skills had been honed by sleep deprivation and a sip or two of a local vintner’s wine and way too much sugar (in the cookies, on the cookies, around the cookies, cookies cookies cookiescookiescokiesahahahahahahahahaha) to an edge that would easily cut through air if you sawed back and forth enough.

We decided to make mead!

It’s amazing what 18-pounds of honey looks like in a kettle and how sticky it is when you miss! Some four hours and not many mishaps later, we had a nice batch of sack mead in another fermenter.

We made mead!

Meanwhile, Jeanette and Cynthia were making living wreath and then Jen went to work on a loom (not one of mine this time, but an Ashford 24-inch rigid heddle) but she can tell you what she made in her blog.

Let’s recap, then, shall we? I made websites, we made a fire, we made beer, we made mead… anything else? Ah yes! We made quite the mess in the kitchen (and we did clean it up… mostly). Yesterday, I made things cost less… does that count?

I’ve been busy in the shop, too, and have about 24 crochet hooks of various shapes, sizes and styles just about finished and there are 2 smaller trilooms almost done. A larger 7-5-3 modular triloom just got ordered and will be started tomorrow… or the next day.

Right now, I have to make myself presentable. A friend of mine is tying the knot today and we’ve been invited to the wedding.

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I know Colorado’s beautiful. I lived there most of my life. It’s impossible to live there and not appreciate the beauty of the mile-high state. I know I was just unlucky in choosing to start gardening and raising livestock in a state right before a seven year drought. I know all this. I even lived in New Mexico as a child and dealt with the scorching summers and mild winters there.

Even so, it’s hard to get used to this:
 









These were all taken yesterday. There’s still some green grass visible. The mushrooms on the logs sprouted overnight – I hadn’t seen this batch before yesterday. The moss is just the brightest green I’ve ever seen, and the lichen looks like coral growing on the rocks. There are even some ferns growing in the swampier places – still green and vibrant.

I always wondered why Christmas colors were red and green… now at least I know where the green came from – Growing things!

Speaking of growing things (see, that’s a clever segue doncha think?), my productivity has really grown since I got myself moved into the new shop space. To celebrate, I wanna offer a sale on just about anything I make – 10% off. Of course that means I’ll have to make it… I can’t ship it right out… there’s a reason we say it’s hand-crafted

Jeanette will be busy posting listing in our ebay store, so take a look there. If you don’t see what you’re looking for there, drop me a line and I can probably make something for you. Oh, and if the item you wanted is in the store, but it doesn’t look like it’s on sale, drop us a line or make an offer.

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I finished my orders yesterday and took today off.

No, really! I did nothing.

Nothing except write this. And respond to about 765 emails. And help Jen with a wee little bit of shipping. And walk the llama to the garden. And twiddle with my website or my homepage or read my news and get caught up with world affairs. I did prep my agenda for the next few days.

I also went walkabout. Not too far. Maybe a mile upstream and back. Beautiful! There are streams – springs – gushing from the rocks and winding their way down the leaf covered hillside and under natural stone bridges. There are rock formations that are both weird and wonderful.

There’s a guy out in these awesome Ozark mid-December woods on walkabout reaching into his pocket for his camera and realizing it’s sitting on the nightstand next to his bed.

That’s not to say I don’t have some pictures to share! It’s just to say that they’re not mine and they weren’t taken today. Some of ‘em aren’t from Meadowcreek or Foxbriar at all.

Wanna see ‘em?

First, there are the pictures taken the day after we got about 5 inches of rain. ‘Lena took these.

Crochet hook stress test?

One of my customers called to request a replacement hook. Seems her dog had bitten her old hook and snapped it. I carved one up for here and shipped it out. Since she had called and I had her on the phone I had to ask. “What have you made with the hook?”

She emailed me the answer. Wow!

Well, maybe I didn’t not do nothing (gasp! isn’t that a triple negative?), but I did not go to the shop and I did not generate sawdust.

Now why do I feel so guilty?

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Or taking some time off to learn…

These last two days I have not been in the shop. Gasp! Oh, the horror! However will I get caught up?

Not to worry, I made an agenda and I am current with my agenda and anyone promised their goodies before Christmas will get their goodies before Christmas (if the postal service can make good on its timetables).

There… now that that’s out of my system, I can tell you about the past two days.

I took a living history workshop at the Ozark Folk Center. The workshop was presented by several very knowledgeable people and a lot of good information was divulged. I spent a lot of time worrying, though, that I wasn’t getting my thought… what I want to achieve… across. I don’t want to research a character, or create a composite character, so I can be an actor and tell people about the past. I want to live it! I want to know the tools and the methods and live that way (with a computer in the back room with a broadband connection. I’m not a savage ).

I thought that and struggled to convey that for most of the two days and it just seemed like the presenters weren’t getting it. Then one of them handed me a business card. At the bottom of the business card was this phrase: Preparing for the future by preserving the past.

Yes! That’s what I want to do.

Needless to say, (why is it that every time someone uses that phrase, they go ahead and say the thing anyways?) the remainder of the day was much better for me. Turns out I’m not the only one and that these folk go way way beyond learning phrases and mannerisms. They learn the skills, too. Just like I want to do… just like I am doing.

Ah, well…

The course is over and I am heading back to my shop tomorrow. Seems I’ve got some goodies to finish and get shipped. Turns out that Santa’s elves can’t seem to manage large crochet hooks, square knitting needles or modular trilooms. And, we all know what Santa’s schedule is like this time of years…

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