Waiting for Thoreau

As you can tell from my recent silence, there hasn’t been much to report.

My seventh grade students have learned to knit and are working diligently on making 7-inch-by-9-inch rectangles we can sew into a blanket and give away as a service project. The eighth graders made their own kumihimo looms from cardboard boxes I saved this summer. They spent several weeks whipping up friendship bracelets made from embroidery floss. We’re also up to our eyeballs in direct and indirect objects. This week we’ll start diagramming sentences.

The farm looks the way I feel. We keep getting threats of rain, but it’s all sound and fury, signifying nothing. The most moisture we’ve gotten at one time has measured a whopping two-tenths of an inch and those showers have been few and far between. Things are dismally dry.

The cows continue to produce milk, though less and less as the grass disappears and the days shorten. I’m still making butter, though it’s not the golden yellow it was this spring. I added Ricki Carroll’s 30-minute mozzarella to my repertoire and if I get a four-hour chunk of time, I might actually make some hard cheese yet this year.

We’ll see.

Julia, the recalcitrant cow, has now become the good cow. For awhile she was the one leading the way in the morning. Now, as the days get shorter and shorter, I have to walk the fields in the dark to roust the girls out of bed. I know how they feel. I’m not exactly bounding out of bed myself these days.

Tonight’s project is the unraveling of a sweater I started awhile back. I got the body finished, but I’m not pleased with the length and fear the armholes are too snug. Starting over will keep me entertained, and it certainly helps the yarn budget to knit the same project over and over again.