summer | I live on a farm ...

It’s beginning to feel a lot like … autumn

August 21, 2014 at 3:19 pm | Posted in country life, family, flowers, inspiration, knitting, Lace Shawl Knitting, Life, love, summer, Vintage, women | 2 Comments
Tags: farm life, knitting, lifestyle, love, Upstate New York, women

August, so far, has felt much more like early autumn than end of summer. We have hardly used any air conditioning this summer because it has been so very cool even during the day.

We have been going out to Point Breeze by Lake Ontario weekly to enjoy free outdoor concerts in a beautiful park out that way. I most always take some knitting with me, we run into many friends and neighbors, and everyone has a delightful and relaxing time of it.

This week it was so chilly at the concert I was able to wear a light weight wool sweater and one of my new shawls (one I knit mostly while relaxing at the other concerts, pictured here in the second photo down) and I still had to pull a blanket up over my lap to stay warm.

The early chill inspires even more knitting, and these days I am very hooked on knitting shawls and coming up with ideas for more and more of them.

If you didn’t already see it, I published a pattern for one of the shawls a couple of weeks ago. This week I have published a second shawl pattern, one I had promised earlier in the summer (the one pictured in the next paragraph and also in an earlier post.

This new pattern is presented in charted format, not written directions. I do plan to create written directions as well, but that takes a bit longer. I also have in the works a tutorial on how to knit a top-down triangular shawl from a chart because what I have found is that, once you understand how to doit, it is actually much easier than following text directions. So, I would like to teach any of my readers who are not yet familiar with following charts in general and how to knit a top-down triangular shawl specifically, how to do both.

Well, summer beckons … and today it does feel a bit more like summer. We have an adventure to get on with, so I will “talk” to you soon.

Have a beautiful day.

~ firefly

Oh, P.S. The newest pattern is available in my Etsy store and in my Ravelry pattern shop. Get 30% off at either store with this coupon code: GRATITUDE now through Saturday Aug 23rd.

Knitting, and painting, and writing …

June 30, 2012 at 5:16 pm | Posted in art, country life, faith, family, gardening, gifts, health, inspiration, knitting, Life, love, marriage, photography, relationships, summer, travel, women | 9 Comments
Tags: art, country living, faith, family, home, inspiration, knitting, Life, love, photography, relationships, spirituality, travel, women, writing

Good morning … I hope you are having an enjoyable summer so far.

I give mine mixed reviews.

I spent the first part of June in Denver visiting with my parents, which was wonderful of course but not without some bittersweet feelings as well. I love living here on the farm in New York, an I would not trade my life here with my dear husband for anything. We enjoyed our sixth wedding anniversary this past April and continue to feel amazed and blessed that our 3-month online courtship and subsequent marriage worked out so very, very well.

It is, however, not fun at all to be 1,500 miles away from my parents. They have always been two of my very best, dearest friends as well as parents who I cherish, respect, and love. I wish circumstances were such that we could all live close together so that I could help them more. Dad continues to give prostate cancer a run for its money, and Mom does an incredible job taking care of him through that battle. When we all lived in California, very close to each other, my kids and I were on hand to help them if needed … and of course during all of the years when I was raising my kids my parents were very nearby and always on hand to lend a hand, a hug, or a listen whenever it was needed by us.

We have a dream that by some miracle the universe aligns and Dad and Mom are able to come and live here with us. Miracles can happen, and we will continue to pose that dream to the universe and see what we along with the universe can make happen.

Meanwhile, there is love and there is a wealth of technology for staying in touch at least.

I came back from Denver with bronchitis and then had the fun of that segueing to a sinus infection back in New York. I am much better now, but much of June was devoted to the trip and the recovery.

I did manage to take a brief little vacation, right in our own backyard, with my husband last weekend. I shot a number of photos during the vacation using the Instagram app on my Android phone and shared those on Facebook and Twitter. That little app is so amazing, and quite fun to use. I am planning on creating an Instagram chronicle over the course of this summer as a photo journal of a summer living in vacation.

Every year I am stunned all over again at the complete, innocent and rustic beauty of this place and the environment around it.

Creatively, I am enjoying a very productive time these days. I created two small oil paintings while on the mini-vacation, am almost complete with my watercolor of the swans, and have started writing my first novel. I am determined to write at least 500 words each day for the next several months until my first novel is complete. I realize 500 words per day is a tiny little writing target, but making sure I do at least that much work on the novel will ensure I do produce a full-length book over the next year. I have also been knitting: I completed a Biscuit Blanket as a mystery gift to someone I have not met as of yet, am making another attempt at a summertime blanket for myself, and am working on a new design for something I am calling a Friendship Square … more on that later.

Oh, yes … I also managed to make a triple batch of strawberry-rhubarb-cranberry preserves that resulted in a 26 jars of some very delicious jam. The strawberries and rhubarb were locally grown, and the cranberries were from a stock of frozen cranberries I always have on hand. Oops, I just remembered another thing … my husband and I got this year’s Sincere Pumpkin patch going.

I also have been creating some new art prints for knitters … I posted two of my new designs this morning in my Etsy store. They are philosophical, and slightly humorous. I hope you will enjoy at least taking a look at them and enjoying the sentiment as well as the pretty colors I am using.

That is about it for me for now. I want to work on some more paintings today, because I have the August Art Trail to prepare for and a beautiful day to thoroughly enjoy.

Warmest wishes to you and yours.

~firefly

I wore a wool hat

September 20, 2011 at 5:47 pm | Posted in art, country life, country living, faith, family, free knitting patterns, health, inspiration, knitting, Life, love, marriage, photography, relationships, shopping, summer, Vintage, yarn | 6 Comments
Tags: art, children, culture, faith, family, friends, home, inspiration, knitting, Life, love, personal, photography, spirituality, women

It has already been chilly enough recently, I wore a wool hat a couple of times last week. AndiIt is just now the last day of summer. I remember the first year I was in New York, we went to my husband’s nephew’s farm–a couple of hours south of us– for a pig roast in mid-August and camped out a couple of nights. It got down into the 40’s both nights and we were freezing all night long; mid-August.

That funny little hand knit skirt I was making last week for Sweet Pea is finished now, but she didn’t want to model it today. I’ll have to catch her in a modelling mood later this week so I can share that with you all. I will also share the pattern with you for free — it is very simple and a quick knit. She looks so adorable in it, you just have to see it! I’ll be sure to include directions for making it as a little girl’s skirt, not just a toddler’s skirt. I was going to call it Sassafras, but now that I have seen it on her, it makes me think of it more as a Flintstone skirt. Anyway, soon as I can get her to wear it for a photo shoot, I’ll share the photos and the pattern.

Have you heard about the HBO show, Boardwalk Empire? It is going into its second season in a week or so, and HBO did a very cool promotion in NYC using vintage subways they ran in certain neighborhoods. The story line (which takes place during prohibition era Atlantic City) and the promotion in NYC were of particular interest to my family because of my son’s vintage-look subway sign business. I guess he knew about it for a while, because he designed a very cool set of Atlantic City subway roll signs, paying homage not only to Atlantic City but giving a nod to HBO’s excellent production as well.

Today is beautiful; I am looking out the dining room windows as I type and I see blue skys with huge puffy white clouds dancing along. We had gentle rain over night, but now it has cleared out leaving the trees and lawn looking rich and dazzling against that beautiful blue sky. Summer is already a thing of the past for us this year, but we are looking forward to a couple of months of beautiful autumn. One sugar maple tree on the bank of the river has started turning colors, but otherwise the trees are still green for the most part.

Our pumpkins never did take hold this year, which is sort of sad. However, our favorite local farm stand already has a beautiful assortment of pumpkins out for sale and we bought a couple of huge ones the other day. They look like standard field pumpkins, but are the size of a big moon over-sized pumpkin. Very nice, and they have gorgeous huge stems on top.

For Sweet Pea’s Sincere Pumpkin Patch, my daughter and husband and I will buy a number of pumpkins from the farm stand and scatter them around where ours should have grown. We will do that the night before Halloween, and hang a few ghosts in the branches of the old dead pine tree who stands guard over the patch. It will be so fun to see how she responds to it all now that she’s older.

That pumpkin patch has been on my mind quite a lot recently, not only because fall is here but also because of a book project I have been working on with my Dad. We created a book (hardback, eBook, and Kindle editions) combining some of his inspirational poetry and my photography of our farm.

Shortly after I married and moved to this beautiful farm, my parents came for a Christmas visit along with my son and daughter (they are young adults). My father brought a folder with his poetry, and we read through some of his poems while they were here. He and I talked about how lovely it would be to publish a book sometime with his poems and my photography, and so the concept of this book took root.

A couple of years alter they all came here again for a vacation in June, and we all spent a very magical week together with the most perfect, spectacular weather you could hope for.

At that time, my father was undergoing chemotherapy; he was diagnosed with prostate cancer about eleven years ago. When he came for that visit, none of us knew how the chemotherapy was going to turn out, and we all wanted to make sure that we lived that one magical week to the fullest while we all had the opportunity to be together.

My father got to drive my husband’s tractor and help tend to our large lawn — my son also had a hand at driving the tractor during that visit. My father had not been on a tractor since he was a young man living on a farm in North Carolina, so it was wonderful for him to have that opportunity.

While they all were here we worked together to plant our first-ever pumpkin patch, with six varieties of pumpkins. We also built a crude but artistic signpost, which we put up over the pumpkin patch. My son and daughter and I hand painted, “Sincere Pumpkin Patch” on the sign in a childish hand, to make the signpost look like it was put together by children.

The pumpkin harvest from the Sincere Pumpkin Patch that year was gorgeous, and we all felt it was a great reflection of those magic days we shared in June.

I am determined to make certain that my father has an opportunity to be a published author while he is still living, and that he will experience the joy of knowing that people are reading and enjoying his creative works, and feeling inspired and uplifted by his lovely words. The book contains thirteen of his poems and fourteen of my specially selected photographs.

You can order the eBook directly from my website here, you can find the Kindle version in the Kindle Store by searching “J. L. Fleckenstein” — the title of the book is “The Measure of a Man”. Or, if you would like a beautiful, full-cover hardback version of this book you may purchase one for $26 by contacting me (email editor101 @ ILiveonaFarm.com).

The hardback book is small (6″ x 9″) and rather slim, but expensive to print. There is very little profit on the hardback book, but is is so lovely I want people to have it in their hands and on their coffee tables or desks — so I am making it available that way by special request. I have to special order them one at a time for now, so there is about a two week lead time between when you order one and when it can be shipped. Worth the wait, in my humble opinion.

My father is doing very , by the way … turns out he is much, much more durable than cancer is.

I put together a reader survey this morning to get some feedback from my readers. It would be great to hear from some of you … would you be willing to take a couple of minutes to help? If so, click here.

I hope you have a beautiful, almost autumn day.

~firefly