am i resorting to monthly updates?
You betcha. For now, anyway. Between my new role at Liza’s shop in town (soliciting unsuspecting Etsy crafters, designing logo, website, marketing stuffs, etc) and getting Zoe ready for preschool, I had to temporarily pause my Etsy shop in order to not have a complete melt down and wind up wandering aimlessly around the streets of Wiscasset with a stolen shopping cart and a confused look on my face. I still have a confused look on my face, but I’ve managed to get Zoe to school and dig myself out of a mountain of orders, so the shop’s back up and running.
Here comes the update.
1- Zoe had a pretty low-key fourth birthday week, with lots of swimming with her dad and outside play. We didn’t do a whole lot in the way of presents (mostly because I ordered handmade toys all summer long and couldn’t bring myself to wait until her birthday to give them to her) and I honestly don’t think she noticed at all. Way too distracted trying to remember to hold up four fingers instead of three when saying, “I’m this many!” She started preschool yesterday at an amazing little Waldorf-style school, and so far loves it. Lucy is duly jealous.
2- One morning last week I was greeted by a red eft sitting on a patch of creeping veronica at the base of the yurt’s steps, so I jumped on the wagon and built a terrarium out of one of my kitchen canisters. The newt was our guest for a few hours, and was then replaced by a frog, who promptly peed on the moss. My girls are monster tomboys with the captive herps, so I guess this beats a cracked Ball jar.
3- I finally broke down and bought a new banner for my Etsy shop. Renee of Thompsondesigns did it, and I like it even better than the one she designed for knit/quilt. Awesome, genius, and rad. Before she sent me the final proof, I had been thinking about a little Nigerian Dwarf buck I had seen for sale in Uncle Henry’s, and when I saw that the kid in the banner matched him exactly, I drove to Gorham to pick him up. Meet Garbanzo.
4- We’ve had a bit of an invasion of funky-looking moth caterpillars. This one’s a whitemarked tussock moth, or at least it will be eventually:
5-Amazingly, Joe and I managed to clean the yurt at some point (it lasted maybe a day before the kids, cats, and dog descended) so I had to take some photographic evidence. See? We really do live in a yurt! Well, sleep in one anyway. Yay for workaholism…
6- Lucy has taught herself to yodel. “Lodalodalodaloda…(deep breath)…hoo hoooooo!”
Filed under: animals, farmy stuff, kids, local, soap, yurt stuff on September 15th, 2009
YAY!! Thank heavens for updates- I miss seeing those cute little faces. The yurt looks great- Timber is insanely jealous already of the girls little kitchenette; glad the shop is back open- i was in need of some soap; garbanzo looks adorable, the banner must have been a sign; and I can’t believe that Zoe is already in school! where does the time go?
Great photos of the yurt. I just assigned a yurt project to my Intro. to Interior design class. I showed them your blog (yurt entries), and read them the entry about the bird on the stove pipe…got lots of laughs!!! I was going to email you to see if you would post more photos….but you did! They all want to come visit…..I told them no. I do have a few questions….first what is the diameter of your yurt? did you use basic sheet rock, to create the walls? where do the girls sleep? a woman in the class was worried that you guys would be cold in the winter….is it warm???? is your main heating element the wood stove? and the #1 question was…..do you have internet, and electricity????? another person was concerned about security….some find the whole thing quite amazing….some are..”is she frigin’ nuts”?
Hehe!! Yes, I am frigin nuts.
So let’s see, it’s a 30′ yurt from Pacific Yurts (yurts.com), no sheet rock, it’s a combination of very heavy vinyl and air-pocket mylar insulation. The structure itself is very sturdy, the walls are supported by douglas fir lattice, which, together with a very tight steel wire, supports the beams on the roof. There’s lots more detailed info on all that on the manufacturer’s website. The girls sleep in plain old bunk beds (built with 2×4s) with real mattresses and sheets and quilts and pillows and all that. They have two straight walls in their bedroom, and we have two straight walls in ours, because we erected framing in the shape of a ‘T’ inside the yurt after it was built. The top of the T provides a straight wall for kitchen cabinets and privacy, and the bottom two compartments of the T are the bedrooms. You can see all three divisions in the photos I posted today. We kept the T open from the top and ends to promote heat flow from the wood stove, which yes, is the main source of heat. It’s actually surprisingly warm in the winter between the stove (which is very efficient) and the mylar insulation (same stuff they use in space ships, basically bubble wrap). We do lose quite a bit of heat at the windows and door though, so we have to close them up with extra panels of insulation. The biggest problem, then, is having enough light in the winter to stay sane. Even so, there’s a lot to be said for hibernating with a knitting project next to a wood stove in complete silence outside of the snow sliding off of the roof. Don’t worry about security, my Newfie, Finnegan, is at the ready to tear the pants off of any menacing Fedex driver who dares enter his territory. Uh, literally. He’s a mess. We do have internet (stolen internet) and we do have electricity, sortof. For that we use portable deep cycle marine batteries + little inverters (the kind you keep in your car in case of emergency). The batteries can be charged with a car, small solar panels, or an unsuspecting neighbor’s power outlet. The whole system only cost a few hundred dollars, which is a lot better than the 30 grand it would cost to run grid electricity up our 2000′ driveway. But really, if we lived closer to the grid we’d totally be on it. For us, living off grid is more a matter of not having a spare 30 grand than being in a yurt. Yurts can honestly have anything a square house can have in the way of utilities, you just have to find creative means to hang things on the wall. I use zipties.
me again…..my class is just enthralled with you and your yurt life……they have more questions for the “yurt lady”….. I keep telling them you name is Amanda..
how does the stove run? :0
what does your bathroom look like? (hemm)
how long have you lived in your yurt?
what does it sould like when it rains? (I told them pitter patter)
what is the average room temp. in the winter? (farenheit please).
how close are your neighbors?
do you have a plow?
what do you do for entertainment? (I can only image what your answer will be)
what do you do all day? (this question kills me)
how long do you intend to stay in your yurt?
is this your permanent home?
ok….ridiculously personal question….answer if you want….
do you think you got a divorce because you live in a yurt? (my thought would be… if he is the wrong guy, he is the wrong guy…..be it your house round or square!)
They asked me all these questions….I try to talk about the phases of the design process….but all they really want to hear about is you!
Thanks so much for taking time out of your hectic, stolen cart pushing life to answer these questions for my class!!!!!! They think you are hilarious!
They really want to visit……I told them they would each have to bring you fantastic presents!!!!!!
Oh, the divorce was decided upon loooong before the yurt was built, don’t worry. This just happened to be my mortgage-less choice of dwelling, and what I could buy with cash after paying for that stupid 2000′ driveway to be built. Going debt-free as a single mom was a brilliant move if I do say so myself, almost like I could predict the financial crisis and being too much of a pansy to enforce child support before that court order comes through. My ex and I met on the Appalachian Trail so he’s pretty good at roughing it anyway. I, however, am the first to bitch about having to boil a kettle just to wash dishes. We’re much happier with our new loves than we could ever have been with each other, and accepting that has made us pretty good friends, all things aside.
The cooking stove runs on propane. It was a nightmare trying to find a new gas stove that didn’t have an electric start, so I wound up buying an old school one from craigslist for $25.
The bathroom looks like a bucket of ash in a privy on the porch, and a big deep hole in the woods. Joe uses it, I do not. I visit my mom. A lot. She lives next door (five minute hike through the woods, how Thoreau is that?) and has a non-solar shower, a septic system, and the microwave I use to melt butters when I make lip balm. It’s the microwave I’m a slave to really, and hopefully that’ll change when wedding season finally comes to a close. Butters can be easily melted on a stove in a double boiler, but when you’re making 600 tubes a day and working with 10 different flavors at a time, the microwave is way easier.
I’ve been here about a year and a half now. The rain sounds like it’s falling on a tarp or an umbrella, that dull tapping that’s more of a pidder pad than a pitter pat. I like to keep the room temp above 65, but it’s more like 40 when I wake up to build the fire in the morning, and more like 80 when it’s cranking full tilt. I don’t have a plow myself, I pay a neighbor to dig me out like most other Mainers.
I’d love to say that I do nothing more than sit around the yurt being a yurt dweller, but sadly I’m too busy having two overactive toddlers, pulling a soap corporation out of thin air, and attempting to be a functional partner in a badass handmade gift shop in Damariscotta. Boring, I know. In the event that I’m snowed in and forced to disconnect, I’ve nested with all the assumptions you’ve probably made: a spinning wheel, an old drinking glass full of wooden knitting needles, miles of funky yarn and embroidery floss, a huge basket full of wool felt, blank journals, lap cats, and enough Saki, Haruki Murakami, and Anis Mojgani to make me giggle and swoon. And then there’s the list of things that I should be doing but am not, like working on a composting toilet, enclosing the water tank, tung oiling the floor, finishing the gardens and woods trails, building a gray water bog, building cold frames, digging a root cellar, and most of all, running copper coils through the stove pipe for hot water before winter. (Thank you, Mother Earth News.)
I guess I’ll stay here until I get bored of it, that tends to be my take on most material aspects of life. It has its little annoyances, just like anything, but as long as the good outweighs the bad, it works just fine for me. And that’s your philosophical lesson of the day, kids.
Oh, and they can totally visit! I may just get the place presentable by the end of semester, who knows.
hey you! so nice to see some news up here. i am STILL looking for some time to make it up to the shop at some point…mayhaps mid-october-ish?
everything looks great :):) love!
once again they loved all your answers. lots of LOL-ing.
It’s starting to be ritual….
I take attendance……we read your blog…..then lecture…
so, I was wondering if you have funny/crazy blog stories?
don’t give them all to me at once….I need to stretch them out over the next few weeks
Q: do your girls run through the woods to go pottie?
Your vision of yourself, confused and wandering around with a stolen shopping cart made me smile.
I love to heat with wood. It just feels warmer for some reason. Must be the whole guy with fire thing lol!
Your article is really a breath of fresh air when compared to the normal rubbish I study on solar technology. There’s a lot of scams available. Thanks for helping me out.