What's going on here?

I am allowed to brag about my kid, right?  Bear with me here.  Because the thing is: My ten-year old has been bringing home the bacon... uhmm I mean... the salmon. He and his Dad sneak out of bed in the wee hours so they can fish at the river just at day break. That's when the salmon bite, I hear. Not that I know anything about fishing. All I know is that the guys come back from some of these excursions with big, bright smiles, and a salmon in their arms. Literally.

Typically, it goes something like this: I sit bleary eyed at the breakfast table with little Eva and our eleven-year old son who doesn't care much about fishing. A car pulls up, the door opens, I jump up to see if they caught anything. If there is a fish, I yell and scream. Lukas always gives his Dad a knowing look and says, “I know she'd freak out.”

Then I run to get the camera, snap a picture, and drill the guys about every detail of their adventure. I'm so proud of those two providers. We've had some good meals lately.

Talking of meals: We smoked our the bacon from our last year's pigs the other day. We've never done it ourselves, and I will write a separate blog entry about how we did it and what recipe we used. The end result was good, albeit a little salty.

We smoke it with alder chips and don't use nitrate, so it's healthier.  Since we don't want to die from the ever so slight chance of botulism, we freeze it after it's smoked.  On the other hand, we might not even freeze it but eat all of it immediately, since our four pigs will get slaughtered on Friday, and we need to make space in the freezer.

Aside from bacon makin', we are free to pursue other interests, since it has been raining non-stop, and we can't play outside much.  That means that this here Mama spends a lot of time in front of her spinning wheel and behind the knitting needles, even when other people in the family do fun things like carve pumpkins.  I'm glad my knitting portable, so I can move where the action is, if I so desire to spend time with my noisy children.

The fiber in the picture below comes from an angora rabbit, and it is softer than a baby's bottom.  I got the fiber from my friend when we visited her last week.  If you want some of her awesome fiber, visit her website here.

While I knit and spin and avoid cleaning the house, my kids spend hours making noise music.  They are getting pretty good and are involving little Eva, letting her take over the microphone every now and then.  Our friends gave us a drum set.  I don't know what I was thinking, agreeing to this.

And Steve?  Well, Steve does manly things, like hoisting a 300 pound cast iron claw foot bath tub up into the second floor window of the new addition.  Or scouting out new fishing spots.  Or cleaning out gutters 25 feet off the ground.  Smoking meat.  Rounding up escaped pigs in the dark.  You know.  Stuff like that.

And you?  What are you up to these days?

I'm leaving you with some autumn-y images.  Stay warm, hear?