Chain mail

Among his many talents, my husband can make chain mail. He taught himself this skill in his youth, and from time to time, he still likes to do a project. He has made five shirts, but these days, his projects are much more modest!
This morning after breakfast, we dug out his tools and materials from the storage area in the basement, and he introduced Owen to some chain mail making. Owen was really thrilled with all the wonderful stuff explore while Daddy started some Christmas gifts.
First he selects a wire and a rod. Here he is rolling a spring from 14 gauge stainless steel around an 11/32" rod. He has a variety of rods for different wire gauges. The springs roll up pretty quickly, so he can do several in a few minutes, but he is careful to keep the wire fed smoothly and evenly so the rings are uniform.






























After he has a roll of rings - a spring - he breaks each ring off using ferriers' nippers. This evening he watched several episodes of Stargate while clipping rings. Even a small project often takes hundreds of rings.
Once he has enough rings to begin work, he will open the rings slightly, slip them together, and close them grasping each end of a ring with a pair of pliers - hundreds of times.
Here are some past projects. The key ring is hexaprismail - Abram's term for a 6-sided tube mail pattern. The change purse is one I made after Abram's pattern. He once taught me the secrets of chain mail making, and I succeeded in making a grand total of 2 small purses!
I think the recipients of the items he has planned will be just as pleased with their Christmas gifts as I have been with my change purse which has lasted for many years and always gets compliments when I pull it out!

Sauerkraut

Shhhhhh. . . it's nap time. Today, I started a load of laundry, got a beef bone (from a local grass-fed cow and purchased at the Central Market) in a pot to start more stock, got some ground beef and ground beef heart out of the freezer to thaw for supper, and chopped veggies for the soups for lunch and dinner. And. . . I still had some time, so I started some sauerkraut. I've been making sauerkraut for about 4 years now, and love the crunchy, salty, sour taste of real, live sauerkraut - not the kind that has been killed by high temperature processing.

I have been using the recipe from Sally Fallon's Nourishing Traditions cookbook, but for this batch I am using the recipe from Sandor Ellix Katz's Wild Fermentation. So far, it seems much less labor-intensive. I sliced two small/medium, organic cabbages on a mandolin slicer; this is not only a quick way of cutting the cabbage; I also like the long, thin shreds it makes. As I shredded, I packed the cabbage into a 1-gallon jar tamping it with a wooden pestle and alternating with layers of sea salt (about 4 T, total). I weighed the cabbage down with a wine bottle filled with water and covered the whole thing with a towel. Now, I'll just wait. The salt is supposed to pull enough cabbage juice out to cover the cabbage; if not, I'll add a bit of water to cover it tomorrow. We should be able to try a bit in a week or so, but it gets better with time.

Ah, nap time seems to be drawing to a close.

I am just now getting around to uploading pictures from July and August. We've been a little busy lately.
Owen really loved swimming at Lake Cheston.


He also loved helping in the garden. The last day we worked in the garden we picked musk melons, a variety of heirloom tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, yellow squash, patty pan squash, Mexican gherkin cucumbers, variegated mini popcorn, sweet corn (silver and golden), lettuce, arugula, dill, cilantro, green beans (several varieties of pole and bush beans), sweet peppers, Tabasco peppers, sunflowers, and a Moon and Stars watermelon.


A few more words for the list:
oil (as in cod liver oil)
rain
sticker (ticka-ticka)
ladder (new today)
high

Baby Talk

They tell you to watch what you say around your kids because they will repeat whatever you say. Well, one - or both - of us must say, "Daaawwwwg," 'cause that's one of Owen's favorite words. He was sitting on the couch one day reading a Lynley Dodd book, Harry McClary's Bone; it went like this: "Dawg, dawg, dawg." Turn some pages. "Dawg, dawg." Turn a few more pages.
We've been meaning to make a list of words he says for a while. In May we counted over 35 words he knew. His first and only "sentence" was a while back in July: "Go, pool, water!"
ball (bah)
cat (cat, kiki)
dog (dawg, dawggie)
fan
box
hat
walk
go
pool (poo)
stock
socks
peepee
poop
diaper (dipe)
apple (ap)
butter (but)
hi
bye
mama
dad
Anne
Pa
Roman (Moman - this one was new today)
Owen (very fast - It's new this week.)
baby
Zo
piggy
horse (hors)
chicken (chick)
cow
tractor (track)
car
truck
block
call (for a phone)
mint (min)
bird (bir)
belly (belly, beddy, baby)
nose
eye
ear
hair
leg
pants
bike
pump
rock
slide
mine
bug
butt
broccoli (brock)
juice (He loves to make carrot juice in the new juicer.)
water (wat, water, wader)
cup
beef
hot
cold
out
outside ('side)
five (fi)
play
park
bath
wash
clean
ow!
no
up
down
on
off
foot
toe
shoe
Hulk
man
barn
read
book
soap
coffee (coff)
open
junk (the stuff by the check-out at the stores!)
happy
hide
fire
fork
spoon
spatula (pat, patty)
fish
bow
stop
nurse
milk
more
food
butter
ride
crow
hawk
bacon
soup
moon
star ('tar)
plane
that (dat)

Now that I try to write them all down. It seems I can't remember them all. I'll keep a running list. This is not nearly all the things he says every day. He seems to say new ones more than once a day now. He's such a clever fellow.