The next chapter in our lives is forming, and as I look back on all we have been though over the last six years, I say “hell yeah” its time for a juicy new chapter! When a family loses everything they own, it can tend to leave a hole in the soul that isn’t easily filled or healed. Family heirlooms, things you thought you’d pass down to your children, baby pictures, and small treasures created by little hands that made me cry because they were so precious are gone. Among my destroyed treasured possessions was an irreplaceable video of my third daughter Shoshannah being born and her sisters doting over her. While losing everything isn’t the sum total a person’s life, it creates a stark backdrop that leaves a family bewildered and wondering if things will ever be the same again. Unfortunately things are never the same after a great loss, but there is always the opportunity to move forward with your life and create new memories, new heirlooms, and new traditions.
The cavernous hole that seemed never ending in our lives is filling up fast. Rushing back to the forefront of my mind are the years I spent sewing, painting, repairing, designing, sculpting, baking, creating new art, quilting, floral arranging, wreath making and on and on. There was only one thing that I swore I’d never do throughout my life, and that was knitting. It seems that maybe I should have learned that too. I always dreamed of learning to use the loom, and my fingers would sometimes twitch when seeing a beautiful knitted scarf or sweater, but I stayed away for one very good reason. What was the reason? I knew that if I learned to knit or even to use a loom, it would spell disaster for my family! I could easily see myself addicted to knitting, and then make everyone wear my creations. Can you imagine wearing a heavy sweater in the middle of the hot summer? I thought knitting would be a dangerous pastime for me, and one that I wanted to spare my family from. But here I am at this next chapter in our lives, thinking about knitting more than anything else in the world. I only hope that I will be able to control my desire for my family to wear my creations 24/7.
More than even knitting, however, I think of the whole process from start to finish. Not just picking up some knitting 
needles, purchasing some yarn and having a go at it…no, I’m thinking of the angora goats, sheep, alpacas and angora rabbits. To start from absolute scratch in creating that sweater, hat, scarf, or anything else. I’m thinking of what plants I’ll have to create the dyes, raising the animals, shearing them, combing and spinning and so on. The whole process has me enamored. I know it will be a year or more before we actually have some of the animals, but for me, everything is in the planning. We’ll be observing our property over the next year before starting anything major. Most of our improvements this year will be getting our home updated and functional for us, creating our raised keyhole mandala kitchen garden and getting a some fruit trees planted in the fall. There will be a lot to do before we even consider getting any animals, and of course chickens are the exception to this rule.
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