yes, i survived the rat incident.

i can't do any fiber posting at the moment as any fiber thing happening now is a gift and i don't want to spoil any surprises. what's up here???? we've been sick and busy. i'm a snot machine right now.

life has been consumed with homestead issues. we have had a horrid problem with manzanita taking over. i'm talking fields of it!! meadows of it. manzanita is a hardwood shrub that burns at an insane high temperature. and since we live in fire country-it is a scary thing to have more than an acre of high fuel tinder that you can't even walk thru that also harbors ticks(creatures from hell) in the rainy season.
this is what it looks like-this is how tall it got:
we have been pulling it out with a hand tool- before it got this big-it grows effin fast! the tool is the best $100 hand tool for land clearing you could ever wish for-it's called a ''root jack'. we got it from peaceful valley farm supply. we own 2 so 2 folks can do it together and get some good talking done while your you are clearing the land.( i.e. my kids-hee hee) no, i do my fair share of root jacking too. in fact some times my hands are so sore i can't knit or practice banjo.
well, the meadow got away from us-there was just too much of it. and we realized it wasn't gonna happen by hand as it was already too big. we needed the "machine." we found this awesome guy ''tim" who did this horrendous chore at an afforadable rate-worked well over 5 hours but only charged us for 4 hours. thank you tim!
we've also been busy with burning slash piles(another fire hazard)-left over from the previous owner-thank you very much! but we have to get these fire hazards out of the way!

hubby made it fun-he found some champagne in the fridge-from LAST years "new years". remember- we love beer here-champagne is like some unknown thing growing in your fridge-we only noticed it cause we were out of beer- AAAAHHHHHOHMYGODHOWCOULDTHISTRADGEDYBESTOWUS! but we still managed to enjoyed the bubbly grapes:

okay-i.m sick and need to go to bed and i can't get the damn picture to post above-damn the computer! good night!