Weekend Full of Activities

This past weekend was a whirl wind of activities.  I don't think we got to truly sit down once.  Saturday began early with a trip to the Waynesburg Sheep and Fiber Festival just south of Pittsburgh.  This was my third year attending, but the first with out my husband.  He's been so busy taking a class and working full time.  He needed to stay behind and get caught up.  This was okay, as I headed down with a friend who we've met up with the past two years at the festival anyway.  Last year I rode back home with her to 'chaperone' the two pygora goats in the back of her car.  Oh the adventures we have!  I'm really not much for garage sales (I've got enough junk I'm trying to scale down), but we stopped at a few along the way.  I did managed to find this wicked broom!  

I think I'm going to hang it on the wall in my craft room.  Perhaps it will get some use one day, but for now, I just want to admire it.  I attended a broom making seminar last September at the Mother Earth News Fair in Seven Springs, PA.  I couldn't believe what all went into making brooms, especially if you grow your own broom corn.  I guess that's why I couldn't pass this one up - for a whole $2.  What a deal!

The Fiber Festival was actually rather small this year.  Perhaps people were still getting over there fiber shock from the recent Maryland Sheep and Wool festival.  Still I picked up some roving to spin.  Here's the before and after.  At least for the purplish one.  I've a ton of fiber I need to process and dye.  I'm hoping these beautiful colors will give me the motivation to get some art batts made to spin.  I've yet to really try some of the core spinning.  There were some amazing handspun yarns at the festival.  We refrained from bringing home any goats this time, but my friend did find a great little loom.  So it wasn't a complete bust, but we didn't stay as long as we have in the past.  


The remainder of the day was spent working in the garden.  We've really been working hard the past few years to try to build up the soil.  We even brought our own compost pile when we moved down here.  Sound silly!?  Well it took at least a year to establish those beneficial microbes and attract the worms!  How could I just leave them behind.  It was only a large Rubbermaid container-full, but we made it, and I wanted to bring it.  Now our pile is 20 times that size (or more).  We're working on building semi-raised beds within the area our landlord has offered for us to garden.  It's just a corner off of his corn/soy field, but I appreciate it all the same.  The only downfall has been that the soil has been stripped over the years from growing just those two crops.  So we've been building the compost to help rebuild at least our little section of the field.  We'll see how it goes this year.

Here's a small section.  We used grass clippings to lay out the plots
for this summer.  We move them every year.

Notice that there is some growth already?  The garden was full of weeds two days ago.  When we went to weed-wack, we discovered that our Parsley and Cilantro came back from last year!  I was really excited to see that. We'll let some of it go to seed.  The Cilantro is already flowering.

Cilantro!

Parsley!