Spooning

Sweet kitties!

Hey! I'm shocked at you...who did you think I'd have on here? :D

This 'n That

The Basic Chic Hoodie is really coming along now! Even Claus had to check it out...

I thought the hood was going to take forever to finish. But the hood is done! Finally! Yay!

Here is a better picture so you can actually see that I have both sleeves finished...

Oh! And a big Thank You to Kym for putting in her notes on Ravelry, about the Hoodie she did for Erin, how many stitches she picked up. (Not good sentence structure but I can't think how to improve it right now.) Amazing amount of help for me...cuz I made mine longer too.

I've got one side of the button band picked up and have done a couple rows. When that is done the next question will be how many buttons do I want and then to figure out the buttonhole placing...I don't really like the buttonhole part...

And the kitties are again bird watching or maybe squirrel or gopher watching. Both squirrels and gophers come right up to the window so the kitties get a really good look at them. There are tails really twitching then!

It is so sunny and calm out. I should get out and whack down the flowerbeds for the winter. And I should go do quarterly reports at work. And I should clean the kitties' litter boxes. But what I really want to do is work on my cardigan.

Another farming post - winter wheat version

On the day that I rode along for soybean harvest, 3rd DS was planting winter wheat on the same farm. If you squint and look really close you can see his pickup, the tractor and air seeder way off in the distance. He had just finished the field. I think if you click on the picture it will get bigger...
The crop in the front of the picture is the soybeans we were combining.


Winter wheat is planted on a field that had another crop on it this year that has already been harvested. It will germinate and start growing.

You hope for good cover of snow to protect it during the winter. You also hope that you don't get a thaw and freeze cycle because it can start growing during the thaw and a freeze at that time would kill it.

It will be the first crop to be harvested because it will have a head start on everything else. Rye is another winter hardy crop that can be planted in the fall.

This is a better shot of the seeding outfit. The tractor is 3rd DS's and the air seeder is DH's.

The yellow tank in back is divided and holds dry fertilizer and the seed.

The middle section, which is in transport position on this picture, has shanks that work the earth and hoses that drop the seed into the opening left by the shank. The soil is then closed again and packed to retain moisture and have good seed to soil contact.

When in use, the wings that form the triangle are lowered to the ground with hydraulic cylinders.

It is called an air seeder because there is a fan that blows air and moves the seed and fertilizer along the hoses at a rate decided by the operator to get the correct amount of seed planted to optimize production. The air seeder is used for all size crops from grain to soybeans.

I thought this is a "romantic" farming picture...with the clouds, hazy background and a sharp shot of the equipment.

Corn will be the next crop harvested. The freeze killed this too. And with the windy and unusually hot weather (80s in October for pete's sake!), the corn will be drying out so there will be a better chance of harvesting it dry and not need to dry it either in a grain dryer or an aeration bin....either one is an added expense.

'Bout ready!

Soybean Harvest

Since I hadn't ridden along much during harvest this year, I went yesterday afternoon to get a ride and keep DH company for a while.

The soybeans are dry and ready to harvest. The freeze from 3 weeks ago did a thorough job of killing them.

Not very pretty to look at any more...but very good for combining!

I was sitting in the buddy seat but leaned over in front of DH to get a shot from the driver's seat.

The header goes around and the ugly, dangerous looking teeth help lift up any crop that is laying down and feed it into the sickle bar that cuts the crop. These soybeans are standing up quite well.

Right behind the seats in the cab is a window so you can see into the hopper where the soybeans stay until they are unloaded.

When the hopper is empty the beans hop and jump as they hit the metal. It's quite a dance!

And this is the little auger that brings the beans from inside the combine and into the hopper.

As the hopper gets full the window gradually gets covered and all you can see back there are the soybeans and the pods that escaped being thrashed out.

You can't set the combine to get all the trash out of the beans or it will be too hard on the beans and there will be broken ones and that will affect germination. Almost all of our beans are grown for production and will be cleaned and bagged for seed for next year.

If you step out of the cab there is a little door to open to get a better idea of the job the combine is doing and what your crop is looking like.

This picture has a bit of a green and red tint to it...that is just wrong! They are the usual yellowish/beige color.

When the hopper gets full the grain cart is pulled up close to the combine to unload "on the go". There is very little stopping during the day since we got the grain cart. They unload as they drive and continue to combine.

It takes some talent to drive close enough and not hit the header. And sometimes they even unload while going around the curve of a slough.

The auger on the combine is moved forward hydraulically to unload into the cart and then is moved back along the side of the combine when they are done.

The grain cart unloads into one of the trucks which is then driven to the chosen bin site to unload the beans into a grain bin.

Here is DH going back to work after he dropped me off. There were unforecasted rain clouds that went through. Thankfully they only looked interesting and didn't drop any rain on us!

It was the end of the field day for me but everyone else kept combining until they had finished the field we were on here and moved to another field a few miles away and finished that one too. It was maybe 11:30 p.m. when they quit for the day.

There is rain forecast for this coming weekend and they are hoping to be finished by then.

I'm crossing my fingers!

Kitties, fall harvest and knitting*

The kitties have been closely watching the birds that are hopping around the backyard these days. There have been robins, flickers and assorted sparrows.

Claus & Teddy are quite the team. Always checking out what the other one is doing and then deciding if it is interesting enough to participate.

We've been having wonderful Indian Summer the last week or so. Temperatures in the 70s and even 80s yesterday and also for today. But there are signs that fall and the unavoidable winter is on it's way.

The county road crew has been getting ready for the winter snows.

They have shaved the roadsides down as close as a new Army recruit's first haircut.

The freezing temperatures from a couple weeks ago has turned the leaves yellow on the trees and killed the soybeans and corn.

In the next day or two the late fall harvest will start. We could have really used more time for maturation of those crops but Mother Nature can't be deterred from her plans.

The wheat harvest was bit disappointing. The amount of straw suggested a big crop but the amount of grain in the heads was a different story. And the quality wasn't the best either. This summer just wasn't the best for any of the crops. It was too many things. Too cold. Too hot. Too wet. Too humid. But farmers are basically eternal optimists. Next year will be a whole new chance to try again.

And I'm doing another Iceling Cardigan. This time it is for a niece's partner who is expecting a little boy in December. The yarn is acrylic which I'm not totally happy about and I'm not sure about the colors either but the new parents are inexperienced in the baby department and I thought it best not to burden them with a sweater that needs special care.

I hope to not wait quite so long to post next time!

*This post brought to you by a suggestion from Cookie! Thanks Cookie! :D

Why oh why??

The weather has turned. To fall. Overnight. We might get 50 for today's high. There's a killing freeze warning for tonight. It's windy, too. Brrr.

And I have a cozy, soft sweater that I could be wearing. Notice I said could.

If it wasn't missing a sleeve.

And only had part of a sleeve on this side.

And still needs it's hood and button bands. I'm knitting furiously so that by the next cold snap I'll be ready. But why oh why didn't I finish it last spring so it would have been ready to go NOW!

Interesting contruction

A few days ago I finally convinced DH to go through his sock drawer and get rid of the old ones. I could barely squeeze all of his socks that he owned into that drawer! No. They aren't hand knit ones. They are store-bought cotton ones.

Anyway, we came across these hand knit slippers made by DH's Gramma. We've had them for years and years but I'd never really looked at them very closely.

Side view.

Top view. They make me think of mukluks.

The interesting part to me is the seam down the bottom of the foot....

from the base of the toes....

to the heel and up the cuff. It looks maybe like it was knit flat and then seamed. The toe and heel construction are different than anything I've seen before, from my limited sock knitting knowledge.

But they are very special to us because they were knit by Gramma Stein who was an industrious little German from Russia with a big personality. She raised 7 girls and 2 boys and lived to have a 60th wedding anniversary with dear Granpa Stein.

Keepsakes.