There were these awesome wrist warmers (which I put to use as soon as I took the picture of them!).

There was an awesome pair of socks which fit perfectly!

There were yarns!

There were even BUGS!!!!!

There was a beautiful project bag.

And a scarf knit from handspun yarn, with a skein of the same yarn!

There was a tiny mitten keychain so little it barely fits on my thumb!

There was 2 different chocolate bars along with a package of tiny dog themed buttons, a hand painted heart ornament, a ceramic fox button and a little tractor themed pot watcher!

This one is white chocolate and blueberries!

Near the bottom of the box there was an amazing kit from Riihivilla yarns.  This is a Finnish yarn company that specializes in using Finn sheep wool and using only natural dyes to dye it.  I bought a skein of their sock yarn when I was in Helsinki with Malin a couple of years ago and it is lovely, lovely yarn.  (BTW, the instructions are both in English and in Finnish in case you were wondering!)

And the thing that my mom tried to claim for her own (but I didn’t let her) is an amazing shawl.  The pattern is the Red Dragon Shawl by Tuulia Salmela.  You can find more information about it on Barbro’s Ravelry page about it.

I already want to make one.  Mom really wants me to make one!

Thank you Barbro.  It couldn’t have been more perfectly timed!

So, I was in SC for a week.  Not a whole lot to say about it except that somehow I ended-up mere feet away from Rick Santorum who was at a Fudrucker’s down the hill from my hotel.

Also, since I had a little bit of downtime in a Hilton hotel room to myself with no dogs or cats wanting cuddling nor baby goats to be fed I had a little bit of a girly party and painted my nails with some fun nail polish that I snagged at Target while watching the SyFy channel on cable.  I also took a bath each and every night!

There are 2 polishes going on here.  The darker one is called “Give Me Moor!” and it’s from OPI. The silver crackly coat is part of the Nicole Texture line by OPI in Silver.  It was fun to paint on as it crackled nearly immediately.  It’s lasted quite well considering how hard I usually am on my nails.  Only today have a couple of chips formed on the tips of the nails.  I’m going to have to take it off this weekend as I am going to have some important meetings over the next couple of days and need a more (cough) neutral, professional look for them.

I arrived back in Iowa right before the first real humdinger of a snow storm that we’ve had this season.  I was pleased that my car started right away in the airport parking lot despite an outside temperature of about 0 degrees Fahrenheit (about -18 Celsius).  I got back to the farm around midnight and there was about 4 inches of snow on the ground by the time I got up in the morning to feed Red.

I started-out suffering through snow in my shoes and wet socks but then remembered that I had hiking boots that are a little taller than my regular shoes.  However, if we get much more snow I’m going to have to get actual snow boots.

Red missed me I think.

I think you need to see this shot a little closer-up.

God I love that little goat!

However, she has grown even in just the week that I was gone.  Her lead over the other 4 babies is remarkable.  She is getting big fast!  Red has gotten so big that it’s getting hard to pick her up anymore.  Definitely no putting her in my coat!

This is not snow falling. This is snow failing to stay put!

Because it is so cold and windy outside, it is a tad more brisk than it normally is inside.  This is an old (by American standards) house and it is reasonably good about staying warm, but no house is perfect especially when facing a full-on Arctic attack from the North-West.

Thus, it’s time to do laundry!  The washer and dryer in this house are in the kitchen (it’s a pretty big kitchen [it was designed to be able to fit a bunch of LARGE hungry men in from the fields for lunch]) and the kitchen is right below my room.  Are you seeing a pattern here?   Since the dryer is downstairs and heat rises… well, let’s just say that clean clothes aren’t the only benefit that I get from this today!

Moon over Iowa farmland

Meara says, "I'm cuter than that stinky goat!".

Mama Cat in full squirted milk action

Half the pictures don't show her tongue! It's amazing how little milk she usually gets on her face with this method of consumption!

One of those nights where you step deep into the icy puddle because you were too busy looking up at the sky. And you don’t care.

One of those nights where many droplets of warm milk replacer were sprayed around the feedlot (much to the joy of the barn cats) because your eyes were pointed heavens ward not downward at your hungry charge.

One of those nights where the glow of the moon makes everything silvery and slightly ethereal and casts shadows.  The barnyard, the dead weeds fluttering in the breeze, the cats slinking about, the goats in their pen, even the farm equipment parked for the season are all slightly magical.

One of those nights where even the animals seem awed by the beauty of the dark.

One of those nights that, when you see the lights of a plane flashing overhead, you feel sorry for the people missing this wondrous evening.

One of those nights that, despite the promise of a hot shower and a warm bed inside, you stay outside a few minutes longer.

One of those nights that you are happy to be alive.

I hope that you are having one of those nights.

Little Red in the Big World

However, once I am inside for a few minutes, she gets afraid and starts heeding her mama’s bellows (believe me, mama is BELLOWING at this point) and runs baaaaaaing back to her.  Actually, it’s uncanny how much it actually sounds like, “Maaaaa!!!” in little Red’s case.

Mama bellowing to Red GET YOUR ASS BACK HERE RIGHT NOW!!!!!

She is utterly unafraid of any of the animals around her much to her mama’s consternation.  She only wants to find out if they have milk and if she can get some.

Some of the animals are naturally a little wigged-out by this.  Especially if they are boy animals (doesn’t really matter the species).

I call her “Little Red” but really that is a complete misnomer.  She is little in comparison to me or to the adult goats but she is by far and away the biggest baby despite being several days younger than the Christmas twins.

I can't get a picture of her with the other kids as she always comes running for me whenever I'm near. So here's a gratuitous bottle shot!

I am just waiting for the night or morning that I step out of the back porch to find her waiting for her meal!

Somehow, I ended-up on the Committee of Committees.  I agreed to be on it simply because I loved the name.  I didn’t take any pictures because, quite simply, there weren’t enough people there and I would have been inclined to ask everyone if it was ok to publish their picture.  I just didn’t feel that it was worth it, ya know?

The Republican caucus was one of the closest ones in history.  I have to admit, I’m sort of glad that Rick Santorum did well, if only for the fact that he put in a lot of time in the state talking to people one on one driving around in his pick-up truck.  I don’t actually want him to become president mind you, but it does go to show you that putting in the time, not just running tv ads like Rick Perry did, will get you a long way here!

Please excuse the flashes of gold, pieces of a Christmas bow were the only thing that I had handy to mark the meterage onto that was waterproof!

These skeins are a nice 3-ply DK weight yarn totaling a little over 640 meters total.

The two all blue/grey skeins were each 150 meters for 300 meters total.

The two pink/blue skeins totaled about 340 meters.

I have immediate plans for the two blue/grey skeins while I am still pondering the fate of the pink/blue skeins.  They may end-up being made into something for a certain blue-eyed and blonde Finn that I happen to know:-)

The pictures that I took don’t honestly do the skeins justice.  However, I was battling 30mph wind gusts, sub-freezing wind-chill and the fact that the sun was departing the sky rapidly in order to get these photographed.

Now, just so you don’t miss a day of goat-y goodness here is a completely dorky picture of me feeding the baby in the middle of the night.  In the cold.  And the dark.  I have finally figured out how to hold the kid, feed it, and take a picture with my iPhone.  Or scratch my nose.

Best Live Volunteer:  By far and away, Newt Gingrich wins this one hands down.  Newt’s phone volunteer was absolutely lovely and nearly had me changing my party affiliation!  She spoke with my mom for several minutes and not once went into bashing the “other guys” simply asking that my mom take a look at his website to get some more information.  If other candiates had armies of volunteers like this lady this would be a lovely caucus!

Worst Live Volunteer(s): I fielded 2 calls from Rick Perry campaign workers and both of them were terrible.  Not polite, barely understandable, and when I asked a question, downright sanctimonious.  I’m not going to be voting for a guy with a name like an 80′s pop star anyway, but I have to tell you that if I had been thinking about it before those calls, I wouldn’t have been afterwards.  Both guys needed to be sent to a school for basic phone manners.

Best Recorded Message: Oddly, the animated Susan for the Romney campaign with her helpful tips about arriving early for the caucus and telling us where exactly we (the Republicans in the house) are going to caucus were the most positive of the recorded messages we received.   She was sort of like what you would expect the Butterball turkey hotline folks to sound like!

Worst Recorded Message:  Any of the calls with state senators or people who had to give their entire resume before starting on their spiel were pretty terrible. I’d swear that on one of these calls the guy ended his resume with “Eagle Scout”. Candidates, if you find the person giving you an endorsement has to remind everyone on the phone who the hell they are, then their endorsement probably isn’t going to mean all that much anyway.  Stick with the big names, ok?  Nearly all the candidates fell down in this category.

Most Tempted to Stay on the Line:  The auto calls that said, “Stay on the line for a live discussion with Michele Bachman,” because I actually would like to ask that woman a few questions, but I’m pretty sure I’d get hung-up on!

Most Confusing Call:  I answered an autocall from Dan Quayle which made it sound as though he was running for president.  I’m pretty sure he’s not, right?  If he was stumping for someone else, it sure didn’t make it through on that call!

Best Candidate Autocall: Rick Santorum.  He just sounds so spry compared to the others!  Clear, well spoken and didn’t sound so… angry.  Not sure that I want to vote for him but I would date him from those calls (ignoring the content of course!).

Worst Candidate Autocall:  Newt.  He was scarcely understandable.  I’m not sure if it was because of the quality of the recording or if he just normally sounds like crap or if he was drunk or something but get that man away from the phone stat!

Most Phone Calls Overall: Mitt wins this one hands-down.  At least half of all the calls were for Romney.

Least Phone Calls Overall: That Utah Governor dude.  I think he’s making a point.  Not sure what it is other than, “I don’t really want to be president.”

Now, for the record, I won’t be taking part in the Republican caucuses tomorrow night as I am a Democrat.  I could change my party affiliation for one night but I would really feel like a fraud doing that as I sincerely do not like any of the candidates that the Republican party has fielded this year.  I was hoping that both of the caucuses were going to be held in the same location so I could pop over and catch some of the hot Republican action for y’all (there’s a porn movie in that phrase somewhere), but alas I just found out today that they aren’t.  So, I will see if I can get my mom to snap a few photos of the process and I will be recording what goes down at the Democratic caucuses because, I’m sure, y’all are on the edge of your seats for that one:-)

*As decided by a registered Democrat.  Who answers the phone.  A lot.