So I have been sick all week.  Tom has been doing the vast majority of the farm chores as well as all of the shopping and cooking, so I can recuperate and not spread this nasty virus to others.  Despite this extra work, he has also managed to replace the roof on Steve’s dog house, fix my father’s windmill, place a new light in the barn, and replace one wall of the garage that had rotted.

new dog house roof

new garage wall half done

All of my week’s plans had gone down the toilet.  With this illness, at night and in the mornings I needed to be near the bathroom.  In the afternoons I was tired and in the evenings even more tired.  But I am not one to lay around and watch daytime TV and eat bonbons, even when I am sick.  So I had to find useful tasks I could do within these parameters.  And I explored the world of binge streaming.

On Saturday I was completely worthless so I signed up for a free trial of CuriosityStream and watched the History of Food (which was amazing!).  So on Sunday I worked on taxes and ordered my printed blog books #1 and #2 from Blurb.  That evening we watched a series about The Celts.  On Monday I finally sewed the ends of my woven placemats, table runner and Gotland cloak fabric.

purple table runner

That afternoon a neighbor came by to pick up extra canning supplies that I had.  I kept my gloves on so I wasn’t contagious.  That evening we watched Woodstock Bus.  I then cancelled my CuriosityStream trial as there was nothing else I was really interested in watching.

On Tuesday morning I spent some time surfing the Library on Congress archives and found quite a bit of interesting information and links about Skagit County history.  I felt well enough to help Tom with the chores and trim the goats’ hooves.  We were late in trimming them, and I did not want it to be delayed any further.  It did wipe me out though.  That afternoon I needle felted some loose spots on the back of Walda’s felted fleece rug as well as Diddley’s.  They are much better now, and Walda’s has likely sold.  Diddley’s lays beside my bed.

Walda rug

walda felted back

Earlier in the month I had subscribed to Amazon Prime only because I wanted to watch Anthony Bourdain’s shows about Seattle and Portland, and this was the only place I could find them.  I figured I would cancel later.  But this week it came in handy.  Tuesday afternoon I finally watched Addicted to Sheep, which I had been wanting to since it first came out.  And it was great.

On Wednesday morning I was not feeling well and hadn’t slept well.  While I was not sleeping I came up with the idea of how I could try to resurrect WashingtonWool.net.  I contacted Franna and Tina (President and Treasurer) to run the idea by them and then started developing it.  Unfortunately the web site domain is no longer available as it is an Asian online casino site now.  But I was able to secure the domain washingtonwool.org.  I started creating the webpage and added a few of my products.  I am gathering contact information from the previous members of washingtonwool.net to invite them to use this site for free.  I can also cross post these fiber products to the washington wool facebook and ravelry sites (with permission) to expand the marketing.  Franna is enthusiastic about the idea, and Tina is working on getting all the contact information.  Hopefully it will be fully functional soon!

I contacted our neighbor Paulette to get some added local history and to ask about this photo of her house from 1918 that was posted on facebook.  It turns out some of the information was not entirely accurate.  The house was built in 1903.  She learned a lot of the local history from her grandmother but did not learn who had planted the apple and pear trees near the house.  It is possible they were planted by Blanket Bill Jarmin whose cabin was just up the hill behind them.  Anyway, we will be visiting again soon to get more history and some grafts from the old Gravenstein tree there.

I also ordered a Butterick pattern to finish my Gotland cloak and cleaned the house.  Then I settled in to finish knitting Tom’s very late birthday socks and watch Victorian Farm.  This was a completely amazing series for me as it was a fairly authentic look at what it was like to be a farmer in the late 1800s.  I learned a lot from watching these episodes.  Unfortunately I managed to mess up the sock and had to rip out all my progress that evening.

On Thursday I took on the enormous task of organizing our CDs.  It was more difficult than I thought as many of the CDs were loose and had to be reunited with their cases.  It ended up taking all day, but here are the stacks in alphabetical order based on musicians’ or bands’ first names:

Afterwards I watched more Victorian Farm and knitted.

Yesterday/Friday was a rough one, especially in the morning.  All I managed to do was get the bills done and then sit down to watch the last of the Victorian Farm and knit.  I finished the 6 episode season and was sad.  But then I discovered that there is another 3 episode season called Victorian Farm: Christmas Special so I started watching that.   Tom bought me a lovely Valentine’s Day card and presents (Pink Champagne Current bush, Pink Lemonade Blueberry bush and a Little Miss Figgy fig tree) which I totally do not deserve after all he has done for me this week.  He also made us an amazing T-bone steak dinner with corn and squash (all from the farm!) and indulged me in watching Shaun the Sheep’s Farmageddon.  Here is the dinner with the gloves I have been using when touching anything in the house that Tom might touch to try to keep him from getting this incredibly nasty virus.

This was a nice Valentine’s Day considering we had to cancel our trip to our Boles where I had planned a heart-shaped Filet Mignon dinner.

I am feeling a little better today.  I managed to clean the fish tanks out and help Tom with the animal chores.  I plan on finishing the Victorian Christmas series and hopefully the socks.  We are trying to make it to a Cider Festival this evening (my Valentine’s present to Tom) with me wearing gloves.  Wish me luck recovering from this nonsense and getting back to being a farmer and doctor again.