Where else would you go when you’re contemplating living in a 320 square foot space?  While in Orlando we hit our favorite tiny-living store…and had some Swedish meatballs of course.  Oh, how I wanted to pack our van full of fun new stuff for the bus, but Sean reigned me in–reminding me that we still need to empty our house first before we bring anything else into it. Here are some treasures we took pictures of and made notes about for when the time is right:

Hanging storage--KNIT! Lightweight and can hold lots of toiletries.

Possible tiny sink for bathroom

Funky mirrors for our bedroom door

LOVE this rug! We think 2 of them for the narrow walkway going all the way down the length of the bus

I really like the orange/grey combo.

We will put these everywhere to hang everything--curtains, photos, washcloths, whatever.

To hold the fridge closed--the one thing he let me buy that day

Shoe boxes that velcro shut--good for storing all manner of things. You can see what's inside and open from the front so stacking isnt a problem.

For the past couple weeks for school we’ve been focusing on sheep.  Lessons from a Sheepdog by Phillip Keller was our favorite read–and Lass (the children’s version) was  excellent.  Of course, being of the knitting/crocheting persuasion, we really wanted to get our hands on some raw wool to take all the way through the process from sheep to scarf (or whatever else took our fancy).  A sweet friend (I consider her my fiber art mentor) was kind enough to send us some raw wool she had received from a local farmer in her area. Oh, happy day when that box arrived!  We opened it right up and recoiled immediately.  That stuff stinks.  And it wasn’t pretty.  I don’t know what we expected, really.  Just never gave much thought to how dirty a sheep gets.  Well, we were all in at any rate.  Here’s what it looked like to start with:

First we had to remove all the debris and cut off any parts that were just too nasty to think about:

Then we filled the washing machine up with hot water and lots of Dawn dish soap.  The wool went into a mesh bag and in it went.  We lifted it up out of the water and it looked like someone poured a Yoo-Hoo in the machine.  Disgusting.

After three sessions of filling the machine up with hot soapy water and draining it, the stuff finally came clean.  We dried it in the sun on our fancy drying rack:

It smelled so clean and felt so nice!  After it was dry we carded it.  Instead of spending about $75 for “real” carders, I went to Walmart and got some dog brushes.  They do the job just fine.

A few swipes in the dog brush gets it like angel hair fluff:

For those of us who don’t own a spinning wheel, a drop spindle works quite well.  This is a small, hand-held tool that will spin the carded wool into yarn.  We don’t happen to have one of these, either.  No worries–we made one out of old cd’s, a dowel and a screw hook.  Of course we did.  And they spun like champs:

We thought it appropriate to card and spin while watching a few episodes of Shaun the Sheep.

Bertle has been spinning in all of her spare time.

Here is the hank of yarn she produced:

<sigh>  Living the dream, baby.  Can you just picture us at the KOA with our wool drying on the hood of the car outside the laundromat?  Drop spindles by the camp fire…knitting daddy a steering wheel cover for the bus…

A friend from church had asked me a several months ago to be her doula (be with her during labor and delivery, offering encouragement and support to her and her husband in order to increase the likelihood of her having a natural birth without pain medication or epidural).  The day finally arrived and I had the privilege of being with her through it all–ending with the arrival of this little guy:

My husband asked me if being there made me want to have another one.  No, it really didn’t.  But it did make me want to do this again every day of my life!  Seriously, such a thrill to be present when a baby comes into the world and takes that first breath.  Then to witness the sheer joy of the mother as she gets to hold him for the first time…no better way to spend a morning.  I was on a high for the rest of the day–much like I felt after jumping out of a plane.     I think I’m gonna be a midwife when I grow up and catch all of my grand-kids.

Well, the bank giveth and it taketh away.  They approved us for a short sale–even gave us an amount they would accept from a potential buyer–and then after we submitted our offer, they said, “Oh, you can’t do a short sale…you haven’t missed any payments.”  At what point did you miss that when we supplied you everything short of our first-born child in the application process?  No rewards for good behavior these days–I guess we’re playing by a different rule book.  Anybody have any experience with this kind of thing?  It really goes against everything in us to skip a mortgage payment, but we’ve heard from several sources that if we do, the bank will allow us to do the short sale.  We’ve even been counseled that that’s just the way it works.  It’s just a box that needs to be checked off on their form before they will proceed.  At any rate, that’s what we’ve done.  We’ll keep you posted on how it goes.

Meanwhile, I’ve gotten a request from my mom, who wants to see more pictures of the grandkids.  So I added my Instagram feed to the side of the webpage.  Check it often, Mom–I take pictures every day!  For now I will just be posting about stationary turtle life.  Not as exciting as mobile turtle life but we do still sneak out of the pond regularly.

Sean continues to work on the bus when he’s not out of town working.  A friend from church came and tore out the bathroom for us!  He’s also made plans to fly some nice man in from California to give me driving lessons in May.  Oh, THAT is gonna be a fun post.  ;)