Then it’s on to Mom’s house where we visit, have lunch, run errands if need be, and I give her computer a good once over, performing any needed maintenance.

Today I had a special mission to accomplish before I headed home and that was to check out a new-to-be bead store, The Artful Bead in Carrollton. How had I missed this store for the last two years??? It’s beautiful, and they have great beads!

Now let’s get one thing straight — I’m not a beader. The only reason I was hunting a bead store was because I wanted to purchase some beads to work into my next knitting project. Beads that will be incorporated into knitting are different in one significant way: they have to have a larger hole in the center to accommodate the yarn they will be knitted onto.

In any event, once I arrived, I was mesmerized by the beautiful beads in the store. When you walk in the door, you are enveloped with beautiful colors.

Staff member Lindsay greeted me warmly and showed me to the section of the store containing seed beads, and then on where cube beads of all colors hang twinkling invitingly.  I picked two coordinating vials of beads. Staff member Michelle and I looked through some other beads on another wall as I hunted for a specialty bead, and then she checked me out with my treasures while Lindsay talked beads with a customer.

This is a gorgeous store, with lots of tools, books, and beautiful beads. I even found some rayon cord that i may use for plying the next time I want to ply with thread because of its wide array of available colors and its size (a bit larger than sewing thread which can be abrasive on your fiber).

I would encourage all the spinners and knitters out there who want to incorporate beads into their work to visit this neat shop.  They have a full calendar of classes, a dazzling assortment of beads, and knowledgeable, friendly staff in Lindsay and Michelle to help you with your project!  I will definitely be back!

Even back before cell phones (yes, there WAS a world before cell phones), once they started driving, they were tasked with errand running. My errands, not theirs.

Now that my children are grown, having kids has gotten even BETTER. They have spouses or significant others or men folk in their lives that can come WITH them to Mom’s house to do the chores!  Life is REALLY good!

And so it was that today I was graced with the presence of DD#1 and her DH who pitched in their time and power tool know-how to get rid of the unsightly lumber junk pile that was created when we tore our some wierdness left by the prior owner!

Mandy wields a mean crowbar (notice unsightly pile at bottom of picture, and small pile of wood in back of picture – we’ll come back to this.)

Bo was the steady hand on the circular saw.  The saw was a birthday gift to me from The Welder, but I haven’t been properly trained on it yet, so it was necessary to bring in an expert.

And in the end, there was a much smaller pile of remnants that I need to get rid of, and a wonderfully tall pile of useable wood!

Child labor — it’s a good thing!

I’ll go back in the morning and get the remaining 13 bales I contracted for to make an even 100. That will be it for a while.

First, we set up a temporary pen and hooked up the livestock scale. Have I mentioned lately how much I love moveable pen panels? They are perfect for this sort of thing.

Then we ran some of the animals into the pen. Everyone needed to be checked so it didn’t matter who went first. The two Shetland wethers we were able to catch both needed their hooves trimmed. One of them decided just to lie down for it.

While we had them, we put ear tags on them. The tags are bigger than their ears, but they are wonderfully easy to see, even from a distance. I made notes in my Farm Journal of all the pertinent information. When we were finished with the group, they were run back out into the pasture.

The plan would have gone a lot better if I hadn’t sliced into my left thumb with the hoof trimmers [my bad for not wearing gloves], but we did get a few animals . Now that my thumb has (finally) stopped bleeding, we’ll pick up where we left off tomorrow.

In addition to the herd health activities, we also watched Bear and Princess escape from the backyard. This was actually helpful because we were having a devil of a time figuring out how they were escaping! They didn’t go far or stay gone long. Once we had them back, we closed off their escape route.

On that note, we decided to take in some baseball on television. There will be more herd health activities tomorrow morning, and in the afternoon, picking up hay in the field!

This morning we are celebrating two new metal additions!

First, The Welder put a new metal roof, complete with flashing and drip edge, over the (leaking) shingled roof of the Bunny Barn.

Wood strips are attached to existing roof

Metal is attached to the wood

Flashing directs the runoff from the higher section

Our second metal installation was a new carport out in front of the Bunny Barn and beside the house. This will give us lots of shade on Dye Days — either for us or the rabbits! I’ll have to take a better picture when the sun is somewhere else,

Finished carport

These guys were pretty amazing.  They showed up about 7:20 this morning, and were finished and gone by about 8:00 a.m.  I’ve never in my life seen anybody put in screws as fast as the guy did when he was putting the pieces together. And then when he started climbing the ladder balancing a 20 foot piece of metal on one hand, I just knew he had been a circus performer in a prior life!  Here’s how it went….. (Sorry for the dark pictures — the sun was behind the building.)

This photo album personalized with Smilebox