Block-a-day-July Day 24

Today I sewed the two raindrop blocks to go with yesterday's umbrellas. These start off as HST and get their corners 'stitched and flipped' so are pretty straight forward to make.

Then three Churndashes, one for yesterday, one for today and one for luck —

The pattern (*here*) tells us to make some of the churndashes with two different fabrics (as well as the background fabric) so I had a play with the black/grey one; doesn't look too bad, I guess.

Today the younger twins turned FOUR so there was a bit of a do down at our local playcentre. It's a great venue as there is plenty of room for play and everyone seemed to have a fun time (in spite of the rain!).

We've long made it a policy not to 'sleep with' our cows - we don't get up several times during the night to check on the close-to-calving ones, as some farmers do. (It's just too hard when you don't get a chance to switch off.) However when we did the rounds later on this afternoon, this first-time lass looked like she was starting to calve so we thought we'd better keep an eye on her. We brought her back, close to the shed so that we could monitor her progress.

(Look how tight her udder is, too - ouch!)
So about 8pm we went out to see if anything was happening and she hadn't progressed very far. We decided to get her into the shed to check what was going on and ended up giving her a helping hand. Ideally calves are born front feet first - this one had a leg tucked back so the poor cow wouldn't have been able to do it on her own. 

It's a wet and wild night so we thought the calf would do better going straight into the calfshed rather that out onto the grass with mum, who may or may not be interested in it. 

I gave him about an hour and then went out to check on and feed him.

He was doing well, nice and strong but was struggling to get onto his front feet. 

I managed to get him up (I propped him up on an over turned milk feeder!) so that I could feed him. 

(Very hard to take a photo when you are feeding a calf!!) We had some fresh colostrum from a cow we brought in this afternoon and he drank 2litres of that all up really well.

So I've left him for the night. I'm sure he'll be up and bellowing for some more milk first thing tomorrow morning!

While trying to get a calf photo I ended up selfie-ing! The calfshed lighting was fairly kind so here I am in midwifery and nursing mode!!

'til next time,

happy stitches,

Block-a-day-July Day 23

Calving stepped up a notch with three new calvers to bring home. 

Our busiest day so far! In  week or so we'll be looking back on a day with just three new calvers with fondness!

In preparation for the approaching Heavy Rain Watch we are under, I continued on with my Raining Cats and Dogs row.

First of all I had to fix my upside down raindrops, which luckily was quite a simple matter. Unpick—

and flip —

Next was this block. Can you guess what it might be? —

Does this clue help? —

Yes, an umbrella or two!

Technically speaking these blocks aren't finished as they have raindrops attached, but I called them done at this stage. The rain hasn't come yet!

'til next time,

happy stitches,

Block-a-day-July Day 22

Friday is always my busiest day so it took some careful planning to make sure I got a block made.

I had a look through my Omigosh! box first thing and found these parts.

Oh good, one block nearly made!

So I sat down and started sewing. Of course, in order to sew it, I needed a leader-ender block (!) so I found one of my prepped churndashes and made a start on that as well.

I was at this stage when I needed to stop to feed my calves-have breakfast- shift cows and sort new calvers-and get to work.

I emerged from the calfshed to see a beautiful sky and I later discovered I had missed a beautiful sunrise - lots of locals posted gorgeous photos - while I had my head down and tail up!

All animals fed and happy I went off to work for the day.

We're very fortunate to have our son-in-law helping out on the farm, casually, at the moment. Over the last few months he has done a huge amount of fencing (flood damage as well as repairs to the miles and miles of fences we seem to have!). And just perfectly, he is here for calving as well.

So instead of having to rush home from work to do farmwork, I stayed there and got home in time to watch him feed the last calf of the day!! We've done everything by ourselves for more years than I can count so it's really nice to have the extra pair of hands around the place😀

With the pressure off, I was able to finish my block for the day, which ended up as two blocks for the day —

Then it was back into town. ED had arranged for two of our little families (plus Ganma) to go to the Whangarei Night Lights show. We didn't really know what to expect - and it was way past the kids' bedtime - but it was a pretty fun spectacle and the kids really enjoyed it. There were lots of outdoor displays and a few indoor ones,. George was fascinated by the firedancers and Lily loved the ballerina in the A-frame. There was so much to see that no-one got grumpy (although one was almost asleep by the time we got back to the car!) 

None of us got very decent photos but here are a couple of the better ones.

Odie didn't want to be in the photo but he was there as well.

'til next time,

happy stitches,