September Yarn Along

Linking up for Yarn Along

Last year (or maybe it was the year before?) my friend Debbie sent me some yarn from India. She was working in the same yarn over there and she thought it would be nice to see what we both came up with using the same colours.  When she visited recently she brought her blanket and here they are...

 Debbie's on the left, mine on the right

Debbie's is a mood blanket, where each colour represents a 'mood/feeling', each row represents a day and each squares a week.  Then the weeks are sewn together into months and the months...  

She's still working on it.

That all sounded like too much hard (mind) work for me, so I just made mine up as I went along.

Interesting how using the same colours and yarn can turn out so differently!

My cardigan is coming along...

And I'm reading THIS book by Lena Yoder.  It's not fiction, but a true diary of a real Amish farm wife and mother.  I'm really enjoying it because I can relate to much of what she says, not because I was Amish, but because I was a farmer's wife and lived and worked on a dairy/cattle farm for 13 years.  

Amish or not, some things just don't change :)

I could particularly relate to this entry (p8):

"...The cow decided it was not necessary to be forced into a place she did not long to be.  I was appointed to stand in a little alleyway that leads to the motor room.  The cow was to go in exactly the opposite direction.  She got downright evil as she came toward me and decided I was nothing to fear.  She politely shoved me along... 

She shoved me into the diesel room...  

Glass, pipes, bolts - you name it - were flying all over the place.  I bailed out as soon as I could sure that my husband wasn't happy with me...

Shakily, I started picking up pieces and apologising, wanting to say sorry and how worthless I really am a hundred times.  I stuck with just a couple times because I knew that didn't impress him either."

One of my experiences was with helping(?) The Farmer pick out/separate beef steers to go to slaughter (apologies to all you vegetarians out there) that often weighed 900lb/400kg (I weigh around 48kg!!)  My job, with the help(?) of the farm dog Dusty, was to turn the steers (that The Farmer let through the laneway) into the side yard.  Yeah...right...   Mostly if you jumped up and down, yelled a lot and waved a big stick, they would turn, but sometimes they just weren't intimidated by little ol' me.  Dusty wasn't much helps, he would mostly slink away and hide behind the stockyards (smart dog!).

I usually tried to make sure I had some cover (like the stock loading ramp) to jump behind if a steer decided I was not a force to be reckoned with.

Anyway, this one steer (BTW a steer is a castrated bull for the uninitiated) decided it was going to go where it wanted to, which was straight ahead!  By the time I realised he was not going to turn, it was too late to run for cover, or even sidestep because we might have both moved in the same direction.  I don't think he actually had it in his mind to flatten me, but if I was in his way...  

So what could I do but stand there, shut my eyes and scream (maybe the scream was just in my head, I don't know if I actually screamed out loud), as I heard his hooves thundering by and felt the wind as he charged past inches from me.  

When I realise I was still alive, all I could do was collapse on the ground in a shaking, crying heap.  That's usually when Dusty decides to re-enter the picture and come and sit beside me.  

It's right about then that you get yelled at (me and the dog), so we both hang our heads in shame as The Farmer goes to rectify the problem.  But Dusty and I have an understanding (both being used to getting yelled at), so we just look at each other and shrug, and are thankful we live to work another day!

Whoever said life is dull has never worked on a farm!!

xx