Hello everyone!

It's always a busy here! I have been spending a lot of time behind the looms!
Please stay tuned I will do my best to update new stories and photos of all the new and exciting things happening around here!

Over the winter update 2018

Wow............how time flies! It is now May 2018!

Working at the school as Principal Aide still. Working with great teacher/principal couple!

Christmas break: Daisy stayed with Gramma Pam, Angus and the chicks stayed home. We put in a fenced back yard area and dog door..........my other neighbor came twice and day to feed, water and get Angus outside. They also got to enjoy all the fresh eggs they wanted for taking care of the girls.

So we went to North Carolina for Christmas. It was nice............no need to move there LOL!

Drove back to Alaska................Stopped in Frankfort Kentucky............just a few hundred miles out of our way so that I could purchase my own Christmas gift from Jon. A new Flip rigid heddle loom! Woot! Can't wait to make dishtowels! Larger width items. My other loom is only 12" great for scarves and cloths............

After that we went to (10 hours?) Michigan. Packed up some things we just couldn't live without.............such as more yarn, fabric and drum carder! Oh and to spend time with my Dear Daughter who I miss so much even though we text most every day.

From there we went straight through to Montana (23 hours) where Jon's daughter and soon to be son-in-law live. Stayed with them a couple of days. Oh how I love the blue skies of Montana!

Next stop was Kamiah Idaho (6 ish hours) to visit a friend. Stayed there a couple days and then on our way we go to Fort Nelson BC (20 some hours) to stay with Daisy's gramma Pam's daughter Heather.

After that it was a straight through drive to Fairbanks...........(yup you guessed it another 20 some hours). Spent the night. Got a good rest then the next morning got up had breakfast and a lot of shopping to get done! Then we had to go to pick up our truck that we drove to the airport when we left.

Home here we come only 3-4 hours to go!

I think we were gone almost a full 3 weeks. Boy that is just a long time to be away.

Came home to quite a lot of snow. Luckily we had another neighbor plow the driveway so that we could get in.

I will catch you up on more story in the next entry!

Catching up some

So this is how the story goes………..
Several months ago I saw a posting (yes it was originally my fault) a few months ago I saw a posting by a major oil/gas company Schlumberger (pronounced slumberjay). Jobs are hard to get up here and Jon wants to buy a plane…….so he will have to work for it right?
Anyhow they along with the State of Alaska were offering training for work up here. This is pipeline work. Cold and hard work. 12 hours a day 7 days a week and depending on contract could be 2 weeks on 2 weeks off or something similar.
So in order to be accepted to limited training and certification you had to send a resume and cover letter, that was a few months later followed by a phone interview and then a trip to Fairbanks for drug tests and physical fitness testing.
Jon who will be 55 this December passed it all. So yes he will be attending this training.
You are responsible to get yourself to Fairbanks (160 miles and in this weather 4-6 hour drive) then they will drive you to Delta Junction about 80 more miles away. There he will stay for 14 days of 12 hour a day 7 day a week training out in the freezing cold. I am sure it will also include some classroom training.

Then there is Miss Whoopsie Daisy. She is an Alaskan sprint race dog (which is a husky mutt). She was from a litter of 5. If you do the research Joee Redington https://www.adn.com/sports/2017/08/16/breeder-trainer-rac... or this is my favorite http://jukebox.uaf.edu/site/interviews/joe-redington-jr
Anyhow Daisy came from the last litter. Joee was in poor health for a number of years and decided for one last litter. I received a phone call one evening to come up and help his wife Pam get a temp on the mother. They told me that the mother had killed one pup. 4 left and not doing well. Stayed there most of the night hand feeding 6 day old pups. As it turned out 2 more didn’t make it over night. The next morning we had another musher Brent Sass bring one of his bitches over to see if the remaining 2 pups would nurse. One did and the other kept trying. So after he went home later that night we put a muzzle on the mother brought her into the house in a kennel and let the pups nurse. Somehow the mother got the muzzle off and killed another pup. That leaves one. One after a day or so was thriving and taken back out to the dog welping area. Next day they found that pup had been bitten in the head and had excessive swelling and possible infection.
That was it. I ran home and told Jon that I would like to give that pup a chance, she was just 10 days old and unable to nurse. Jon (Dr. Doolittle) said sure we can give it a try but…….you are not keeping her. Wean it and send it back.
I brought her home, and we only had some cattle antibiotics available so Jon did the math and for a pup that size it was a ‘drop’ of antibiotic given intramuscularly(yes in an insulin syringe in her hind quarter). She only had a small chance at that point for survival.
After administering said drop, within just a few hours time the swelling had reduced almost by half. At this point we were not able to try and nurse her with a syringe. We have a farm about 30 miles away that has fresh goats milk and there was NO puppy formula in this tiny town of 70-ish people. So according to the internet goats milk is about the best.
Next day we administered another injection. Swelling almost completely gone by bedtime!
One of my neighbors was in Fairbanks and on their way home soon, stopped at pet supply for a large can of formula and bottles as the syringe thing wasn’t working so well.
Ok bottles in hand now and puppy is nursing better! I forgot what having a baby was like! Every 2 hours feeding. I think that I lost a couple of months time……..tending to puppy.
Next hurdle was that her eyes started to open and one was tiny (damaged?). The mother had bitten her head remember and one canine was very close to her eye. So either she already had a ‘problem’ or mom just created one or …….the swelling created one. Anyhow, blind in one eye puppy. Ok we can deal with that.
As she became more and more mobile we noticed her balance was way off. No problem there I will just be giving her more floor time each day to strengthen and improve her ability to compensate.
We are now at a point that she needs a human bottle……..no one in this darn town had one! Again someone was in Fairbanks and picked a couple up for me. Took her about 2 feedings to get the hang of eating from that bottle……..Now she has become a champ!
Moving right along……..we think that she may even be totally blind. Oh my now what? Well as time went on she has shown that she does indeed have partial vision in her good eye. Whew.
She got her name do to the fact that she was always falling over, up the stairs and even on a blade of grass LOL! Whoopsie Daisy!
Today…..she is just 17 weeks old. Getting around fine and knows ‘come’ ‘sit’ ‘stay’ and is totally potty trained. She has one strange quirk though. When she needs or wants something she paces and it is in a circle…….always to the left. LOL.
My biggest fear through all of this is that Angus wouldn’t keep her. But to our surprise he is very tolerant of her and even teaching her when he has had enough.
After just a couple weeks with Daisy……Joee Redington passed away. Very sad. Great man and family. So Daisy is ours to keep. A puppy……..man they have a lot of energy! I am hoping that later this winter she can go hang out with another local musher once in a while and just run with his dogs. She can’t pull until she is about a year old but if she can learn she can pull me on skiis or small sleds just not for a really long distance being the only dog.

Rewind to May-ish I got chickens! Chicks really but I have always wanted my own chickens. Bought 21, 6 meat birds and the rest layers. That won’t start laying until like September. But eh it will be fun!
Lost one as a fox threatened the chicken run. She must have been stuck in the corner a few minutes too long as after a week or so had to be dispatched as she was not thriving. Next one to leave was a hen that I am pretty sure got taken out of the run by another fox that climbed the fence! Both of these Foxes have been dispatched.
Ok so now I needed a rooster from the same farm I got the goats milk for Daisy.
And now I have 2 roosters and 12 hens. Eggs started coming in mid September and I will get between 8-12 eggs per day now. I am able to sell them almost faster than I am getting them. And now they can at least buy their own food! LOL.

Next entry will be a little catch up..............over the winter.

12-1-15 Tuesday

Today I will run into town on the snowmachine and pay a few bills......return some dvd's and a bowl, visit a bit too.

Not much on the schedule today. Need to finish Lisa's second cloth as her birthday is Dec 2 then I wlll take a photo.......

Tomorrow we might be heading to Fairbainks. Have a list of supplies for building etc to get and I will pick up a few additional groceries. Nothing we need yet but will need and if for some reason we can't get to Fairbanks in the next several weeks we will be all set.

Last night we had left over moose back strap with mashed potatoes, left over stuffing and I made some brown gravy to put over all of it. Was fabulous

One thing that is really awesome about having a wood stove going all the time is you always have warm water, and a super easy way to warm dinners..........as we have no microwave here. No Keurig and no toaster either. Coffee is a slow process with the perk pot.....but before bed I use Jon's grandpa's coffee grinder and fill the basket and get the water ready so the first one up just has to turn on the stove to get it going. By the time breakfast is ready, coffee is too!

I did however ask 'santa' for a toaster for christmas. As we have a really great generator now and it can totally handle a toaster.

I can say one thing, my biggest fear of being here in the winter was to be cooped up in the cabin with him.......and ya know what? It isn't bad at all. I do my crafts and he has his own. We listen to audio books or watch silly old tv series shows and next thing you know the day is over!

A weird thing to get used to is waking up in the dark at 8:30 with the moon full out and illuminating the sky just like it was sunrise or something. And by about 10:30 or so you can watch the sunrise. Now it getting dark at 4-ish not my favorite for sure, and the moon doesn't peek over the trees until about 10pm. So there is a time of real darkness early on in the evening. Sorta makes you find the time to see if you should be hungry for dinner yet! LOL

Phot below of Jon digging out our truck!

11-30-15 Monday

Today is Monday and the temps over night and all during the day hovered around -14 degrees.

brrrrr chilly for sure, but snug as a bug in a rug in our house!

Jon spent most of the day again sewing, ran to town to get water and just staying warm.

I did laundry with me new panda washer! Socks and undies, t-shirts and hoodies. Will resume laundry in a day or so. We only have enough room in the house for a small clothes line and drying rack. Works out great! You only do as much laundry in a day as you can hang to dry. I did it early in the day so by the time it was dry we where ready to hit the sack!

I made one and a half face cloths today along with a bit of knitting on my stocking. Lisa's birthday is on the second so I will give her a few face cloths and a bar of soap that I made.

11-29-15 Sunday craft day

So we spent the day crafting and stayed home all day. It was a good day......a lot accomplished.

Jon got all the fur and leather bits all cut out. He had to hand sew most of it as my little machine just wouldn't sew it well.

I worked on my stocking kit from Annies Woolens. I figure that I can take a photo when I have the his and hers hanging by the fire!

For dinner we had Moose backstrap broiled along with baked potato wrapped in foil that stuck in the front corners of the woodstove......free oven right? And some canned corn.

Oh the meat was spectacular! I encrusted it in all kinds of seasonings and black pepper before broiling. I cooked the hunk whole and got it about medium rare. So as you cut into it.....was looking a lot like prime rib. 

I should try to take more photos......Everyone likes food photos right?

So in a nut shell we pretty much stayed up till midnight as he was on a mission to get the outer portion of his hat finished so he can spend tomorrow Monday finishing and attaching the liner.

11-28 and let the sewing begin!

So Jon dug out his beaver hides that he trapped a year or so ago and we sent off for tanning. We also brought up a deer hide that his grandpa Dyer shot and killed then sent off to be tanned.

We got out the scrap fabrics and pattern for a trappers hat. Jon traced off all of the pieces and cut out a sample hat from polar fleece and a discarded pair of carhardt pants.

TaDa! 

Yes he even sews on a machine and by hand...........

We made it safely to Manley Hot Springs.......our home

It was quite a drive in from Fairbanks for sure! Jon drove the first 80 or so miles of the paved roads....some slipping and sliding included.

I drove the last 70 some miles to town. In the dark, pulling the trailer.....with snow drifts and blowing winds.

Got into town about 8:30 pm and came right to our place. We hadn't been home long when one of the townspeople pulled in on their snowmachine. Snowmobiles are called either snow machines or snogoes here in Alaska.

Once we got all the shutters off the windows and door we got a fire started promptly! The thermometer in the house registered about 20 degrees.

After that we carved a path with the snow shovel to the house from the truck to unpack clothing and groceries. Snow was about a foot or so deep.

After getting the house all warm I whipped up something to eat and pretty much just passed out.

And that is the beginning of our time here.......first Alaskan winter.

Black Friday

Nothing special planned for today. Jon fixed breakfast and I did the clean up. He spent some time re-loading ammo for Heath.

I finished the peace fleece hat and of course he had to have it. I will get a pic of it tomorrow if I remember.

Got out my stocking kit/pattern and wound a ball to get it cast on.

More cleaning and organizing.......in such a small place it is hard to one keep clean and two to find places for everyday stuff.

We had smoked salmon for dinner with mashed potatoes and brocolli.......shhhh don't tell but Jon cooked the dinner! Woot!

Tomorrow is Diane's retirement from the Road House party at noon so I am making a batch of brownies and also whipped up to dish/face cloths on the pin loom to gift with a bar of my handmade soap tied with pretty yarns.

Amy popped in to say the guys where again playing poker tonight......so he took off to play.

I am watching some dvd's and baking the brownies.......should do dishes......I have the water on to heat up......it's hotter than heck in here when you fire up the oven! Whew maybe open up the front door for a bit.

Thanksgiving

Got up this morning and Jon cooked breakfast of pancakes and bacon. I made the coffee. After breakfast clean up I got started with the stuffing for Amy's turkey. I have to assemle and then take over to her house by snowmachine........it's kinda fun. Wish we had two machines. Our truck is movable but it all depends on the temperature. If it's too cold you have to start the generator and plug the heater for the truck in before starting it. So it is just much easier to ride the snowmachine.

I think that we will start looking for a second one......he says this one isn't the best for breaking trail etc in this deep of snow.

In the last day or so we got an additional 12 or more inches on top of the about foot we already had.

Had to have our drive plowed twice and Jon borrowed a snowblower and sorta blowed the yard. Made it easier to shovel a path to woodshed, outhouse and shed.

Dinner was great! Amy did a great job. Lisa brought pies, she is like the best baker! We hung out for a few hours and watched tv in our turkey comas! 

Great new family of friends! Heath and Amy, Lisa and Shane, Jack, Jon and I. 

After a great visit we came home watched a show and fell fast asleep! What a great holiday!

Wednesday, before Thanksgiving

We woke up about 8:30 seems to be "our" time to wake here.

Breakfast, coffee and dishes......More unpacking.

Guys had another poker night and Jon left up $60! yay

I sauteed sage sausage, onion and mushrooms to throw together the stuffing for Amy's first Turkey. 

I have been working on a Peace Fleece kit hat and almost done!

Finished Jon's Christmas stocking from Annies Woolens kit. And will soon be starting mine so we will have at least 2 new and only Christmas decorations in our new Alaska home.

Maybe we will cut down a charlie brown tree and string some pop corn and figure out a few other decorations for it.....

Tomorrow is our first Alaska Thanksgiving! 

Tuesday.........

Got up and into work today........spent most of the day doing online courses and training. Boring! Long and slow.

Snow started around 3pm and we expect that it will go thru until tomorrow at 3pm.

Nothing much else, dishes, sorting and organizing.....cooking etc.

Monday first day back at post office

Well I got up at 7:30 ish and made coffee had a bowl of cereal and fired up the snogo. Had to be at work at the post office by 9. 

It was a good day of remembering what to do! Oh and we did not have mail delivery last week. We only get mail in by plane monday, wednesday and friday. I guess before we got in town there was no mail on Wednesday or Friday due to snow conditions. The plane couldn't fly. 

So Monday, my first day back......there was over 800 lbs of mail and packages! Yikes welcome back Lorrie! 

All went well and I was able to get all mail and packages scanned in by 1pm. That is the requirement.

After mail sort and all it was time for lunch. We just stayed at the post office for lunch and checked all of my logins etc.

Finished off the day on a good note to ride the snogo home and make dinner, do dishes etc.

Then it was movie time and good night! So tired and still not adjusted to the time difference. And just when you think that daylight savings of 1 hour time change is a lot to handle........4 hours takes time.

Also you have to figure into that it doesn't get daylight until like 10 or so am and starts getting dark at 4;30 pm!

Day one after a really good rest at "home"

Today is sunday and we worked more on unloading and taking a good ride into town on the snogo.

We were very lucky to find one used but in excellent condition in Fairbanks before we headed home.

Went into town and visited, checked in and got our plans.......my plans for Monday and Tuesday from the post master Amy. My boss. I am to work 9-5 both days for some re-fresher training.

Then the guys all got together and spent the day out on the snogoes checking out trails for the winter moose hunt that I believe starts December 1. That was a long day for Jon out there he played with the guys for about 10 hours!

I stayed home and unpacked and organized some.......lots to do.

Made it to Alaska

Well we made it to Fairbanks. It snowed some last night. The plans for today are to get groceries and supplies. Look at a snowmobile or snow machine they call them here. And start the 150 last miles to Manley. 

Very nervous about pulling a trailer all the way on those roads. 

I am going to try to blog this experience of our first winter here. 

Stay tuned. 

Ok So

Well I know it has been a while..........I know I know I still need to take some time to write about the Alaska trip right?

Well after our return I was offered a part time job..........so I took it. That has taken some getting used to!

But I am trying to get back to the dyepots and here is the teaser for today's shop update at 6pm est.

Shop North Cabin Fiber Crafts

And this one was a tiny update from last week in case you missed it.

And just when you thought the fun was over?

here is some Ugly Dog Distillery racing footage! LOL

Amazing!

Look at all the beautiful colors! Fiber purchased from http://fiberaddiction.etsy.com

 Done! Now to rinse and set twist and dry! Time to get the rest of the day rockin!

Episode mini version 9 is up live

So I decided to play some today and recorded a mini sode on the iPad mini! Lol

You can watch here http://youtu.be/BpEOirVvPPk

And I think it also let me sent to iTunes yay! Go check it out. If podcasting is this easy with minisodes then live from Alaska might not be that bad eh?

Nice elk antler button shot here

Pretty huh?

Friday June 21

Well tying up loose ends and cleaning house. Sure hope its just the way I left it when we return in August!

Reminder that the shop will be in vacation mode tonight probably by midnight est. so if there is anything you've been pining over stop in and get it!

Http://northcabinfibercraft.etsy.com

A new bag maybe?

Or some self striping sock yarn?

Stay tuned!