Crafts! Lots of Crafts!

So I promised a crafting update and boy do I have one for you! Not only have I been busy, busy, busy with my little homesteading business, but I've been catching up on some crafts. If you remember, my folks were here a couple of weeks ago and during that time I was able to finish a few crafts that had been lingering for a while. First up, I was at a storage unit sale (you know, the ones where they open up the units that are behind on their payments? Kind of like "Storage Wars" meets "Yard Sale"). I found all the old diner stuff (which I just realized I never showed you!!) plus that cute goose planter above. The goose planter was all nice and faded and paint chipped off it but, gasp, I put it in the dishwasher because it was disgusting! And all the paint came off! So I decided to repaint it. It will fade with time and look all vintage-y again. For now it's in the kitchen window waiting for just the right plant. Here's my 'vintage tablescape' as I call it. I got the plates, juice glasses, and mugs from the storage unit/yard sale:

I also made some more lip balm as you can see in the same goose planter picture. I actually did a video segment on making lip balm. It's in it's editing stages now and might just make it to the blog sometime in the near future. But that counts as crafting, no?

I know I've mentioned the 'make and takes' at one of my local libraries. Back in June they made those fun flag hangers. I was teaching a class that day but knew I needed that hanger in my life so I asked if I could pick mine up and do it at home. Of course you know that means do it much, much later. But I was able to get it painted while my folks were visiting and then painted the stars and hung the fabric. Then the Mister put the twine hanger on it and then we hung it up. So I was really only a couple weeks late with it! And it matches all my other red, white, and blue decorations I have hanging up for the summer.

I finally, finally made another pie. And not just one, but two! The one with the chicken on it was for the fair. I delivered it yesterday, along with one of my photos for the contests. I'll have a whole other post on the fair, how it turned out, and what I would do differently next year. But yay for pies! The other pie is a cherry pie for the Intern who turned 21 this past week. It was made from a cross stitch cherry pie recipe that I bought at a thrift store years ago and we always wondered if it was a real recipe. Turns out it is. Oh! Our pie and coffee chat returns this month too! Stay tuned for details on that.

What else? The Mister was gifted a Traeger smoker/grill. It was pretty comical trying to set the thing up and get it going. Apparently there are a few steps you have to take in order to get it started and we ended up calling Traeger because we weren't quite sure we had it right. And then when you add more pellets and turn the temperature up, it shoots up to 500 degrees before settling back down. But we didn't know it and it kind of freaked us out! But then we pulled out a pork shoulder roast to have for dinner the other night and while the Mister was researching recipes he discovered that that's just what the smoker does. So crisis adverted. Now we know that when we are using the smoker and we want to turn it to a higher temp, pull the meat off because the temp will jump to a higher degree. Let it settle back down, put your meat back on, and you're all set. But the whole reason we were smoking the pork shoulder was so I could get some pics for my upcoming 'food preservation' class. Remember when I mentioned in this post that I take all my own pictures for my classes? Well, I dehydrated apples for that same class and we used the smoker to show the different ways of preserving food.

I've also been knitting like crazy. I am still working on the baby blanket mentioned here. I want it to be somewhat of a surprise so no more pics of it until after it has been received by the momma-to-be. I also have a hat that I am working on for a customer. Both of these projects are scheduled to be finished and to their owners by the end of the month. But just because I can't let things be, I started the retreat shawl knit-a-long (KAL) with River over on instagram. I'm using some yarn from Barnyard Knits that I received as a birthday present. River is the maker of the skein of yarn found in this post. I can't wait to use it but for now I'm satisfied with using that yummy Barnyard Knits yarn and joining her in the KAL. I suspect you'll hear more about the KAL in the very near future.

And finally, I can't not can something. So my friend picked up some peaches for me and in my spare time I'm going to can the Mister some peaches and make a small batch of peach jam. I will have another post on the preserving season, or the lack thereof as the case may be.

That's it. I think. I'm sure I'm missing something and will think of it just as I push publish. But you get the point. I've been crafting in between homesteading classes and all the other fun things that's been happening. I hope your days are filled with fun activities too!

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