French knitting

I had been thinking recently, like just before our nieces visited, that how great would it be if I could find some wooden cotton reels and teach them how to do some good ol' French knitting.

Not long after the girls went home we had lunch at TJL's Mums home, for his fathers birthday, and she had wooden cotton reels, and they were all French knitting at the table.

She gave me two reels.

I love her!

This is actually my second go as one of TJL's nieces took the one I was doing during lunch.  I'm not sure what I am going to be doing with it, just using up woolen scraps at the moment.

And then I went onto TradeMe and bought 5 more reels.  Obsessed, I become, very quickly.

With the weather being awful today, I also got around to finishing knitting this hat.  It's actually a lot more purple than pink in real life.  And it's rather tiny, so I think I will be dropping it (and an identical bluer one) off to the SPCA shop.  I am sure there are small local babies/children that could benefit from them.

I now need to find a knitting project that I can make use of.  I was thinking a blanket, but that might be a bit ambitious for my beginner skills.

NAIT Tagging

We had a big job yesterday, NAIT tagging the vast majority of our herd.  NAIT is all about having traceability for our animals - paddock to plate.  Because we are shifting to a new farm on June 1st, we had to make sure all of our cows were tagged, otherwise the trucks wont transport them.  Out of our herd of 170ish cows we ended up tagging 108. 

Ok, so when I say 'we' I mean TJL does the physical stuff and I did all of the recording of NAIT numbers to cow numbers, which then meant I had the fun job of entering onto the computer today.  The actually tagging was a bit stressful.  While the cows are totally used to being handled in their udder region, having TJL handling their ears was a whole other ball game, and the farm we are currently on does not have the best yard set up.  Fortunately there were only a few mishaps, and TJL didn't get hurt (which was my biggest fear).  I am definitely glad that this is one job over and done with.  As from two years ago, with the introduction of NAIT tagging, we have tagged them at the calf stage, which is a heck of a lot easier and relatively stress free. 

I certainly didn't have time to get any photos of the job, but rest assured, there was a LOT of cow poo to clean up at the finish.  Not to mention the super loud mooing and bellowing as they wanted to be out of the yard and eating some lovely fresh grass.  The pet cows were by far the worst, as they have exactly ZERO respect for us, and if they don't want to go somewhere, they'll just push past, so we had a wee bit of trouble with a couple of them - Georgia in particular, she was being super naughty, but she was super annoyed at not being fed.

And now it's back to packing boxes, and trying to get the blasted oven clean - TMI but it's just nasty!

Knocked around

Man have I been knocked around the last few weeks.  Turns out that my 'man cold' was a virus that really lay me low.  The first week I just lay around on the couch, with little energy to do anything.  I just felt really awful, developed a cough, and had a ton stuff to cough up.  The second week we had 3 of our nieces to stay for the holidays.  I continually thought that I would get better 'tomorrow', so I went over to HB and picked them all up, and drove back home.  The next tomorrow I was worse.  I couldn't get an appointment to see my doctor for 3 days, as the clinic were short a doctor, so I took a punt and went to the emergency room.  Unbelievably my wait in the emergency room was an hour tops!  I had thought I would be lucky if I was seen within 3 hours, so I was super stoked.  Dr told me I had a 2 week virus, so should be better in 4 days time.  I felt relief as my mother had put it into my head that I had a chest infection and might get pleurisy.  Dr gave me a prescription for antibiotics, even though they wouldn't 'cure' the virus, he said I could take them if I wanted to.  I wasn't going to but then my ear blocked, so I figured why not.  I can't remember the last time I had an antibiotic, aside from one I had to take prior to our last IVF.  My ear stayed blocked for the week.  Oh joy!

So, for week two I struggled along with the girls.  I feel really bad, as usually I do arts and crafts with them, etc, and for the week I just didn't.  It also meant that they got away with staying up a bit late, and with being totally messy kids, as I just didn't have the energy to get after them to make them behave.  They weren't too bad, but the mess, ay ay ayyyyy!

So week two looked like this:

Monday - travel from HB to Taranaki with three talkative girls

Tuesday - emergency room visit, took girls to pools

Wednesday - girls painted mugs, took girls for a riding lesson

Thursday - took girls to The Croods 3D, which was fantastic.  Loved it!

Friday - took girls to the pools, let them build a fort in the lounge, which they slept in

Saturday - took girls to speedway at PN to watch TJL race, and stayed late for fireworks, then drove them home to HB - arrived at midnight

Sunday - returned home to a very messy house

Current status, slept a lot Monday and Tuesday, feel better today (Wednesday), but unfortunately have pulled a chest muscle due to so much coughing so every time I now need to cough I am in intense pain.  Suck!

Girls playing on stage at Wanganui, Monday

Girls running down hill by stage at Wanganui, Monday

G riding Toddy, Wednesday

K riding Willie, Wednesday

T riding Reddy, Wednesday