A Week Off and the Garden Started.....

This past week went well watching the new little girls.  3 days found me good and tired, but a good kind of tired!  Next week my daughter is off so I'll have a week's vacation.

With that, we decided to build our first raised garden bed today.  This one holds 4 different types of lettuce and hopefully is insect and critter proof.  We put down chicken wire underneath the soil and then used window screening for the removable top.  Rocks are necessary to hold it in place because of our high winds.

Would you believe 3 squirrels watched us from the back of the property.  I'm sure they'll try to sneak in later on, but this will be a good test before we build anymore of these boxes.

They measure 4' by 8' by 12" tall.  We'll also build some out of concrete blocks so that we can make them deeper as the various veggies grow.

After hauling dirt, lifting these heavy planks of wood and recuperating from this past week, we took our Aleve and will call it a day! 

"Grand" News............

I'm still cranking out socks on "Doris" (our antique sock machine) for the arts and craft show on April 14th.   The top pair are made with Skacel's"Step" and the bottom pair are made with Pagewood Farm's "Denali" hand dyed sock yarn.  Both fibers are wonderful to work with and make fantastic socks.

It's a good thing that I have a good inventory of socks now because my days are about to become a little busier.  Our daughter and son-in-law got the call from the social worker and came home with two darling little girls last Monday morning.  Sisters!  That now brings my grandchild count to 5! 

Tomorrow I begin watching the girls 2 1/2 days a week and I can't wait.  I haven't even gotten to meet them yet, so tomorrow is a big day.  And I certainly can't show up without a little gift, so two Barbie dolls will accompany me and of course there'll be a little something in the bag for Spencer, Mitchell and Carter, too.

I'll let you know all about our day on the next post.  -Grandma Kathy!!!

Snow Gremlins

We had quite a snow storm over the weekend with the freeway closing down Sunday night into Monday morning.  Here's the train depot downtown.

And of course with every storm, our system goes down and I'm sure it's due to gremlins!  It's uncanny how this happens.  The new glow plugs that we put in burned up because the preheat cycle is just too long.  So, yesterday the off-grid guy came and removed the panel and I had to overnight it down to L.A. to have it re-programed.

Hopefully, the panel box and new plugs will arrive by this weekend because there's a chance of yet another storm.  In the meantime, the portable generators are running all our appliances and we're doing various jobs systematically.  I run the water heater for one hour in the late afternoon and then turn it off.  Then around 5:30 I start dinner using only two burners.

Later today, I'll run the well for awhile so that we have plenty of water.  All these things take quite a bit of power and must be done separately.  When everything is working like it should, it's a joy to live off the grid.  When the gremlins show up, life becomes a bit harder.

But you know what?  It keeps us looking up and that's a very good thing!

Cream Puffs & Socks.........

If you have a Betty Crocker cookbook, you'll find a very yummy recipe for cream puffs.  It's quite a fun and interesting dough to make.

You can fill them with a homemade custard or whipping cream.  But, don't forget the powdered sugar sprinkled on top and maybe even a tad bit of fudge sauce!

After indulging in all those calories, I've had to crank out socks like crazy to use up some of those calories!  This batch is waiting to be washed and blocked and added to the pile for the arts and craft show next month.

Denali Sock Yarn

Mac Wants to Announce the Winner..........

My mom said that I could tell everyone who the lucky winner is of the current issue of "Your Knitting Life" magazine.  It's "Amchart"!  We sent you a message via Ravelry telling you the good news so please email us with your mailing address at tehachapisockcompany@gmail.com or through Ravelry.

Congratulations!

Mac