Vacation????

Okay so while everyone else was enjoying themselves this weekend we were working....granted it was on our own time, but man were we working.

We have a wood burner in our large shop/garage/pole barn that we have to keep above freezing in the winter....sometimes higher if hubby is doing a project or someone is working on a vehicle...and we, okay hubby, refuses to pay for wood when there is plenty at the cabin (the inlaws "resort").

With all the recent rains (6" in two weeks) we had to get up the wood that the FIL had left to weather up there from the straightline winds that blew the trees down 5 years ago when they were working on the house (I've got photos to prove it).

Well the dealy was that all they were concerned with at the time was moving the trees out of the way and not actually cutting it up, so these were full tree trunks that just had the branches cut off with outactually cutting up the trunks into smaller chunks.

Well, the guys had the idea of just cutting up the trunks on Saturday and us ladies had to go too to push the logs out of the way...but as I watched the pile of logs growing and growing more and more disorganized the more I thought "this is going to get dangerous, real fast".

My FIL is not steady on his feet, he suffers from Minier's disease and he is not a canidate for surgery so he has his good days and his bad days. So any sticks or wood chips on the ground can be very dangerous for him...but then put a chain saw in his hands and you've got the makings of a horror film...if it weren't so serious, it'd be funny.

So my hubby had a chainsaw (smaller than FILs) that kept dulling out on the oak...yes oak is a very hard wood....so he soon ran out of blades. Well, when he ran out he got out the wood splitter...since FIL was being too stubborn to give up the chainsaw. Well as long as he was splitting I was going to stack them instead of just standing there and trying to figure out what was the "good" woodpile and which was the "bad" woodpile (the rotted stuff that could cause problems in the woodpile)....so I started a cord.

I chose a spot that I thought was going to be a good place and started stacking it all up. Well I stood back and looked at the first couple of courses and it dawned on me that we wouldn't be picking this wood up for at least a couple of weekends if not an entire month so I needed to make this thing as strong as a regular wood pile like we would have at home. So I started making the end caps.

If you've never done an end cap you can think of it as a mini log cabin at the end of the cord.

A Cord of Wood is 4ft high, 4 foot deep, and 8 ft long....don't get them mixed up if you can help it because trying to stack wook 8 ft off the ground is a real bummer. So I got the first "cord" done and I realized that I had made a Long Cord (about 9ft) and it was a little over 4ft high, so I was rather proud...after all I am just a city girl making her way in a Country family (even after 19yrs in the family) and then hubby has to point out that I piled it in a not so nice spot.

I had accidentally ran dangerously close to trapping in a boat lift where it couldn't be retrieved at the end of the month (we pull docks a couple of days early this year since 10/1 falls during the week)...so they made sure that they got the lift out during a "break".

I got two cords in and sat down to rest and grab some lunch when hubby tells me that he doesnt consider it as two cords only one because the logs were not 4ft long only about 18inches. I could have pushed him off his lawn chair, but had been working hard so I showed him pity...and technically he was right...they weren't really full cords. (notice in the photo the top is starting to tip? the logs were getting bigger and hubby had a tough time balancing them on the log splitter)

well we had started about 10am and stopped about 530pm and we still had a LOT of wood to cut.

We were so sore...if you even want to find muscles you don't know about pile wood....for instance, did you know you have muscles that actually run acrossed the front of your shins?? Boy I do. I could not figure out all night Saturday why my skins hurt so bad...after all you think of it as all bone there with just connective tissue to keep the skin on, right?

Boy did I figure out what it was on Sunday when we went up to do the rest of those trees. You use the muscles on the shin to (a) bend your knees and (b)they connect to the calves...and boy will you feel it!

So we stacked another couple of cords of wood Sunday...full cords that is...but my beautiful cords which were nice and straight, even and soundly stacked suddenly took a turn for the worse. It got to about 85F and muggy on the hill with little to no breeze and I began to over heat...whenever I bent over to get the wood I would get dizzy and begin to have a tough time breathing, I had a side ache too that I figure was from lack of potty breaks (you have got to keep those toxins out of your system)...so I took a lot more breaks and the teenaged girl was helping me this time with the stacking.

Well it was going well until she decided to start stacking some of the smaller logs that come from the thicker parts of branches...since they were of varying thicknesses and shapes she just started piling them in...some were 2ft some were 18"....some were straight, some had awful curves....next thing I know my lovely straight rows are coming in at two seperate angles! I had about a foot difference between the two ends and we were too far along to restack, every thing I tried to straighten it out just made the whole thing worse....UGGGGHHHH!! Well she did try and I was taking a lot of breaks and it had to get done.

So the solution we came up with was to start a new course that was straight, then fill in the sides with good strong end caps and then fill in the center between the mismatched cord and the new cord with the odd shaped/odd length peices whichever way they would fit and we made the whole thing about 4 1/2ft tall.

It wasn't pretty by any means and hubby was worried about the end caps blowing out, but dang if they didn't hold...hubby said he was very impressed with my end caps....hubby is very fussy with compliments on such things so I know he really did mean it.

Now you would have thought that after sitting there for 5 years that the wood would have been dried out...but it was packed and stacked so tight while it laid there for processing that there were several trees that were still weeping after they were cut. Amazing! I though maybe it was just water or condensation but no it was actually sap that was still in the wood.

So Sunday was a 9am - 6 pm job. We had a ton of loggage that needed immediate burning and we decided not to gather the bark because we really had to get rid of that bad wood ASAP while the bark could wait until the next time we get up there.

So all the work was done. Monday would be a free day for all day knitting, right?? Have I mentioned my FIL before? He feels that if you have time to sit you are doing something wrong. He lives on a lake and I have never seen him wet his fishing line once...not ONCE in the 20+ years I've known my husband. MIL yes, as much as she can, but FIL? No way.

He likes boat rides...they are quick and they seem to give him another excuse to tell my hubby what to do. No he's not really that bad with my hubby. But if he is going to take a break it is usually because he his falling asleep in a chair and/or he wants to watch the national big-box news stations (just not Fox).

So Monday....Labor day...well he figured it is named Labor Day so he put us to work. Actually I think part of it was hubby volunteered so FIL wouldn't do it himself...earlier in the year they had a tornado come across the lake and pop over the house, well when it went over it pulled up the underdecking...the under decking is used like gutters on a house, it keeps the area under the deck dry for sitting during the rain and directs the water where it can flow safely without wearing out the ground surrounding the pilings.

While they are nice in this respect, they do not tell you how much maintainance are needed with it. Not only does the water get between the decking into the gutter system, so does everything that effects your regular gutter systems...leaves, twigs, animal droppings, etc. only it has the added benefit since it is dank and damp of being a prime spot for the development of bees nests!

Luckily we did not run into any nests this time but plenty of gunk...yuk. so the underdecking had gotten sucked up from the tornado (of course it happens anytime they get a really strong wind off the lakeside) and there was some damage to some of them...it practically split one of them down the middle! So hubby is up there with this cotter-pin puller (think of a button-hook only with a larger hook end) pushing up the V shaped channel of the inner-gutter and pulling down the underdecking panel and hoping they will fall into place, all the while standing on a ladder on a gravel covered unlevel ground looking up and crap falling into his face.

Well us girls were really hoping it would be a nice quiet Monday with plenty of time for knitting...but FIL came and got us...looking up aggrivates his Minier's and he couldn't help hubby at all. On the ground we had to not only hold the ladder steady but we had to point out which panels were out of place, which side they were out of place (north or south) and whether it had been pulled to one end or the other...he can't see it from on the ladder for some reason and I don't think the crud falling in his face helps much either.

So long story...okay, tome short....no time to knit. By the time we got done I had enough time to undo the washcloth I was making for a partner of another exchange (ACX) because I was trying to design a special Equinox pattern of my own and realized that I had the numbering way off...its not like crochet where a single crochet can be designed as a square...knit stitches are more rectangular with a side ratio of about 3:4 or 3:5 depending on the stitcher (I'm a 3:5, that is the measurement of 3 stitches is equal to the height of 5 rows in garter stitch....I haven't checked in stockingette). SO I'm working on a sun/moon picture to pop up out of the cloth and it just isn't doing it.

Normally this is because I'm using a varigated which doesnt lend itself well to pictures...it is best used for repeated patterns where there isn't alot of detail work. I was using coral but the pic just wasn't popping...figure it was because I was doing detail work on the right side and then purling across the pic on the wrong side, making a washcloth that was non-reversible. These pics can usually be seen best at a slight angle so I tilted it.

Oh my gosh was it ever off! Instead of being a nice curve I had managed to make a point...sigh! I didn't have my computer with me figuring I was going to work on my partners sock the majority of the weekend {well lets not get me going on that now}. so in the 10 rows I did get done (quick pick up put down work) I got the basic idea for the pattern down...but it really sucked so I had to pull it ALL out for easier travel home.

Normally I can whip off a washcloth off in part of a day, maybe two if I get interupted a LOT...but I couldn't get anything done at all this weekend.

And my nails...oh my beautiful nails. they really took the beating this weekend...I'm surprised they aren't all broken back to the quick. Somehow I managed to save the pinky's from disaster but every one of my other nails took some sort of damage. So my lovely 1/4inch long nails (measuring the white area only) are down to less than half on the thumbs and my index fingers broke at an angle so they are now lobsided but I hate the thought of cutting them off...neither ring finger has any nail to speak of and the middle finger nails are just barely off the tips of the fingers and blunted. Sigh....I waited so long to get long nails back. Waited for the kids to grow up enough where I wouldn't have to worry about accidentally scratching them while grabbing a hand away from something hot, or digging nails into skin when emphasizing the meaning of "we are going now.", waited until I knew that I would not have to do mad dashes to catch the bowl of food before it hit the floor.

I never spent the time to paint them unless it was really special....after all, I'm mom. there is not reason to primp....its all going to get worn off anyways.

Oh well...I've got Hogwarts homework to finish. I thought I was finished but got interupted by a computer crash last night so I've got to get it up ASAP so I can get back to knitting now that the coffee is made, the wood is in a different state and the kids (well the two neediest) are back in school--yes there will be knitting today!!!