Daffodils and daft chickens

We have tons of daffodils that pop up in the center of our driveway loop. We don't take any care of them at all - they just grow in the spring and look lovely.


We think they might be pretty old. Have you ever seen ones with funny centers like this?


We also have some trouble-making chickens who have learned they can hop through the gate in our fence to access new parts of our yard...the grass always being greener and such. It wasn't so bad when they were just scratching around our compost pile, which is right near the fence, but now they are venturing over to the house.


Well within reach of the dog.


Fortunately, they know what a Ball jar full of chicken scratch looks like and we can lure them back to where they belong.

Scrappy yarn...

Now with pictures!

Stealing the idea from here, for the past few weeks I've been collecting the ends of yarn that I clip off my knitting. They are now ready for the birds:




We'll see how it goes.

Bees... part 1.

I've decided that I want to try keeping bees. I've also decided that I want to be as low impact and cheap about this as possible, both for me, and the bees. Today, I built my first bee hive. It is a Kenyan top bar hive. Thanks for the suggestions, Chris! This particular one is 20 inches long and is intended as a bait hive.

I have some lemongrass oil coming to use as an attractant. When it arrives I intend to hang this hive about 20 feet up in this black locust tree.

If I manage to catch a swarm, I will build a 4 foot long hive to transfer it into. If not, then next year I will consider trying to purchase some bees.

Got any other suggestions for me?

Eagles.

New birds on the farm. Here they are across the street enjoying breakfast. Once upon a time I' d have been very excited to have eagles in my yard. Now, I'm mostly worried that they are going to eat my chickens or turkeys. Anyways, welcome to the neighborhood.

Don't look!

I've been doing a lot of fibery stuff. But...I can't show you. It's gift-fibery-stuff.

This is all you can see:


And maybe a little of this:


And some of this:


I also finished knitting with some of my hand spun. Now that I have more practice spinning, knitting was pretty nice. I'm keeping the hat.


This is my January self-imposed stash club shawl. I finished it on Feb 28...

Melting! Melting!

Spring is coming! I know it is. The chickens are venturing outside. The turkeys are...mingling...in a very special way. The snow is melting to reveal layers upon layers of domestic and wild animal poo. And I am spinning pastel yarns:

Do you like how I transitioned from poo to yarn right there? I think the mention of gross poo made the yarn seem prettier in contrast. Let's try it this-a-way.

Spring...chickens...turkeys...snow melting to reveal ground soon to be covered in spring wildflowers and me spinning lightly colored yarns:

Eh?

It's even warm enough that Bernie has resumed his attempts to escape the house:

Hope it's warm where you are too!

January Goal Progress Reporting

This is a serious post about the work we've done this month.

Seriously.

Not really. It's about knitting, natch...and spinning. Knitting, of course, being the most important of the goals for 2011. (Actually, we've also been working on another goal: feeding Sugar homemade food pretty regularly. She mostly gets whatever we're eating - meat and potatoes, oatmeal, waffles. I don't think we're at 25% consistently, but I expect we'll do better in the summer when we have veggies.)

First - I've been practicing my spinning and dying so that I can knit a sweater from yarn I've spun. Here's the rovings from the previous post spun up:



I also dyed some more roving - this is decidedly more girly.


I'm nearly 4/5 done with my monthly mystery package January shawl.


Bill picked a new package this weekend for February. Another ruffly shawl! Tornando dalle Cascine in a Mohair/Wool blend from Rhinebeck.


I also worked on a house goal! We've decided that February is the time to tackle: Make upstairs landing into library nook. Toward that end, I did very important work. I took "before" pictures.

Step one is clearing the landing. Then, we'll paint the walls and floor, make a curtain and install some bookshelves.



But right now, some girly roving is begging to be spun...