We don't talk about that...

This morning, I went in to check on my five 2 week old cheepies. Sometime in the night, they had tipped over their water and it was bone dry. I sighed, cleaned it out and filled it back up. For the next 5-10 minutes, all five crowded around the waterer, making no noise, and just drinking greedily. After a few minutes, I noticed that one of them (my favourite, of course, who has fluffy cheeks) was quietly vomiting the water right back up, with a bunch of bubbles. Basically, they had grown tall enough that the little platform (a candle box) that the waterer was on wasn't high enough, and they were starting to swallow some air along with the water. Since chickens don't burp, the next logical thing to do to get air out of their stomachs is to vomit.

There was exactly nothing I could do (aside from switch to a slightly higher platform for the water) than sit there helplessly, thinking that if that chick died, it would be my fault. It would be my fault for not checking their water before going to bed the night before, so who knows how long the container had been knocked over. It was my fault that they were so desperate for water that they stopped their normal tiny chicken behaviour of running around cheeping and jumping on each other to stand quietly and gorge themselves on said water. And it was my fault for not lifting the waterer up high enough for them not to get air bubbles along with their water.

It was a bad time. Even though they are "just farm animals" and not pets, they are helpless and they are in my care. And that little life would be on my conscience if she died from it.

After watching over them for another 15 minutes, they seemed to perk up a little bit, and resumed tearing around their little enclosure, though "Cheeks" wasn't as active. When we got home tonight from hiking, I sent my husband in to check on them, because I just couldn't bear the thought of finding that little fluff ball dead. I lost several chicks last year and they all were upsetting, but none of their deaths were directly related to anything I'd done.

Thankfully, they are all alive. They have all gone back to eating and drinking and playing "Chicken kamikaze"; a delightful game of climbing to the highest perch they can get to and jumping on their neighbour. Since there are so few of them, they are currently living in a very very large Rubbermaid container in my downstairs bathroom, right next to where I sit with my computer. I know when they are playing this game when the consistent cheep cheep cheeps are interrupted with a most indigent "CHRRP!" as one of the chicks gets landed on.

That which we nurture binds us to it. Neglect that attachment at your peril.

*knit geek*

I was following the instructions provided by a well-known knitting resource, and when I looked at my knitting, it didn't look like theirs...but mine actually followed the directions, whereas their swatch was messed up. Nice catch, guys.

*is stupidly pleased by this*

Wherein I am self-referential.

So, for those of you who may or may not still read my updates who aren't on other lists, I started yet another blog. This one is specifically for yakky updates; with Yak-A-Day photos and yak factiods on a daily basis. Or, at least the photos, if I can't think of anything clever. It is still new, so not very fleshed out, but more pictures will be forthcoming. Maybe I'll do another video, if we can get the yaks to do something interesting.

http://thesillyyaks.blogspot.com/

A tenuous relation to fluff, at best.

Daven and I were discussing the flock, and how we are going to cull another 4 roosters. (We have an UNREASONABLE amount of roosters, still.) Sadly, somewhere in there will be Henry, who stopped being friendly and started being a bit of a bastard. I honestly can no longer identify him, but I still feel sad since he was so friendly before. This will finally allow the girls to outnumber the boys, and hopefully stop looking so beaten up, since the barred rock boys are the worst of the remaining flock in terms of jumpin' the girls. (They are no where near as bad as the first ones we culled, who had managed to kill our two best layers. Roosters are jerks.)

In the midst of this, we were talking about the roosters we are going to leave behind. 2 light brahmas (they of fluffy bellbottom feet, one of whom is named Raptor), the golden rooster who is at the very bottom of the pecking order (I have uncreatively been calling him "Goldie", which isn't a very masculine name), and the 4 fluffy silkies. It turned out that all four of the buggers are boys, much to my frustration. Not only are they roosters, but they are LOUD roosters...or at least one of the black ones is. So, since they will be sticking around, they needed names. Because, hey, this is us, we've gone with the following:

Loudest black silkie: Ozzy
Other black silkie: Sabbath
Two white silkies: Dio and Zakk.

Oh, yes.

We have heavy metal fluffy chickens.

\m/ >_< \m/ *headbangs*

Happiness is...

Spinning something soft and sparkly in a sunbeam. Also, alliteration.

Photos of stuff I've made lately will come when I have a living room floor and thus an office and thus a damn desktop again.

Crafting continues!

Oh, yes. String!

After posting on FaceBook about the pleasure I gleaned from seeing Daven wearing three knitted items at the same time (it was cold in the house), one of my cousins requested a hat. The one she chose is a fun knit, though the colours requested weren't in my stash in acceptable weights, so I got to do a little run to my LYS. When I came up to the counter with 7 100g balls of worsted weight yarn, the lovely lady behind the counter asked if I was knitting a lap blanket.

"Nope. Hat."

"...That will be a very large hat."

The problem being that I needed approximately 2 oz of the most prevalent colour in the hat, and the rest needed about an ounce each, but funnily, super wash worsted weight yarns don't come in "snippets", so I've got a whooole lotta yarn now. On the upside (as I said to the woman, later, when we were resolving a charging issue), I've now got lots of yarn for socks for my dad, since his feet are too big for sock yarn. Worsted weight is the way to go with size 12s.

Once said cousin got me her head measurement last night, I was off and running. The swatch I had done lied like a lying thing, so after tearing back the hat band, I switched to a size smaller, cast onto DPNs (which I apparently knit more tightly on than circular needles) and started over. I just finished it, and now all I have to hope is that she likes it and that it fits.

The coolest thing for me (and I may be really late to the game for this) is that some weird little switch in my head finally went and now I can cheerfully do stranded knitting with an active thread in each hand, so I'm knitting both Continental and English styles at the same time. Much quicker than my previous "Drop yarn, pick up other yarn, do a stitch. Repeat forever." strategy. Enh, I don't care if it took a long time to arrive, this is fun. Also, for straight knitting or purling, I find that I kind of prefer Continental, suddenly, after knitting English for my entire life. *shrug* I just do what my fingers tell me to do. :)

Photo of the hat will come either after she says she wants to see it before I mail it, or after she has received it.

Pictures! And a story!

Because pictures will totally distract you from the lack of content for the last month, RIGHT?!

...Well, maybe not. At any rate. Look! Finished Objects! (That I totally already posted on Facebook, but not everyone is on my Facebook and really, you can probably deal with them a second time because I am proud of myself, alright?)

My first quilt!

The back of my first quilt! Hand quilted, baby.

My first real lace shawl, because I always would bugger them up, get frustrated and wander off before!

The local hippies will love this shawl.

Pointy edges!

Now I'm working on more quilts. Yes, plural, because this is me and you know I can't possibly only have one project of any type going on at a time. There's a long term scrap quilt that I'm literally only going to be working on when I finish other quilts, so they get represented in said scrap quilt, and my main lap quilt. I went into Joann's with A Plan (TM) but it was so not crowded that I ended up poking around and swapping out the planned fabric for another that I totally fell in love with. I still giggle about finding beautiful fabric, bringing it home and cutting it into little pieces. Quilting is weird, yo.

Whilst shopping, I had a really fun little encounter. Daven and I were standing at the fabric counter, waiting to get all of our stuff cut out, when an older gentleman and what looked to be his 10 year old grandson walked in. The grandfather had a scarf and some knitting needles clutched in one hand and asked the girls working if they could help his grandson, since he'd knit a scarf and now he wanted to knit a hat, but needed different needles. After the reply of "Oh...I don't knit..." was emitted (LAME, CRAFT STORE WORKERS. AT LEAST ONE OF YOU SHOULD KNIT.) I volunteered my services. I brought them back to the knitting aisle, talked about DPNs vs. circular needles and he decided that circulars sounded less scary. I grabbed him a set of size 10s, to match his straight needles and off they went. It really made me happy to help someone, and it reminded me how much I miss teaching. (I spent a year or so as an Event Coordinator for Michaels, which involved making a lot of displays and teaching some classes, including a weekly kid's craft class. It was fun, though hard on my knees, since when I wasn't in the classroom, I was working the floor.)

Also, because this is me, I'm second guessing everything I did. I told him to cast on and make sure that the stitches weren't twisted, but does he know what that looks like? I totally should have grabbed the scarf and made admiring noises at it, though I did say it was really awesome that he was learning how to knit. Ah, well. I hope he's knitting on 'em and isn't too frustrated. They were so thankful, it was really touching.

In other craft news, I gave my mother 4 pairs of socks that I'd hoarded over the last year and she still wants more. I think I'm going to be trying that sock-a-month thing again, just to keep Mrs. ColdFeet in socks. :) I'm still working on Daven's never-ending cabled sweater (just a few more inches on the first sleeve, then all of Monkey-Arm sleeve 2). Let me tell you, learning how to cable without a cable needle was like discovering fire. So. Awesome. And it save so much time! There's also the great big knit blanket that I'm doing the second tier of cabling on, a pair of fingerless gloves that I cast on in hopes they'll help me whilst at my computer and my purse sock, which gets worked on whenever I have to wait anywhere. Oh, and the weaving, which I have sorely neglected due to general malaise towards it. The same applies to spinning, which hasn't been worked on in a while. It'll happen. But first, I'm going to go quilt some more. A girl has to have some variety in life! *grin*

Because I don't have enough hobbies, right?

In addition to the knitting and the weaving that were already on-going, I dragged my cross stitch back out, and over the weekend, started quilting.

Since Saturday, I washed and ironed and cut and sewed and ironed and sewed and ironed and sewed and cussed and ironed and sewed until I have a baby quilt basically together. It needs the binding put on, but aside from that, just the tracing of the stencil and the hand quilting is left. I know, that's the long part, but I really enjoyed using the sewing machine, which is astonishing. Way back when, I learned how to sew by hemming sheer silk in a costume shop as part of my theatre major ways. Sheer silk has no sense of humour, and it left me with a terror of sewing machines. Thankfully, the last couple of days has helped a lot with that, even if the first sewing machine I used ended up breaking three times and now needs to go into the shop. The second workhorse, which is much more powerful and aggressive (my poor lightweight cotton!) got me through, even if it isn't ideal for such work.

The quilt is very fall-coloured, and I think it looks nice, if a little 70's-retro. Photos will happen eventually.

I also finished up the actual knitting on the Maelstrom shawl of psychedelic colours yesterday evening, and just need to block it. That will likely happen today. I'd been pouring most of my hours into this, so hopefully there will be forward momentum on other projects now that it is done.

My weaving has been sadly neglected, since I got distracted by many "ooh shiny!" things. Today is Wednesday, so it is for weaving, dammit. I shall get some work done on it. (The problem being that I'm not sure I love this project, and it is hard to work on something you're "meh" about.)

The cross stitch is hilarious. This is a sampler that I started...well, there is a notation on the pattern about buying my sister's 25th birthday present, and she's 35 now. Yeaaaaah. I also immediately remembered why I had put it down. It is done on 22 point fabric, generally over two blocks. The parts I have left are all over one thread, so this is reaaaaally fine work. I'll do it, but you can only look at something that closely for small amounts of time before your eyes start stabbing you in the brain. There really is not very much left, and maybe I'll eventually finish it. I also dug out all of my previously finished, but un-framed cross stitch projects. I really need to get those framed and up somewhere; there are some really beautiful pieces in there.

Turkey Day

As I was posting this enormous comment on the Pioneer Woman in response to the question "How was your Thanksgiving", I realized I should really make it into a blog entry on its own. So, here you go:

Well, the meal was a little hit or miss. And it inspired me to wax poetic and become rather verbose in the description thereof.

I was up until 01:30 the night before, waiting for the brine to cool because we forgot about the darn stuff until midnight, and it takes a while for things to cool off. Even when sitting outside in the 10F CO night, it took a while. But the end result was an amazing turkey.

Due to my husband and myself being on some rather strict diets, we only cheated a little bit...the "cheat" involved about a cup of homemade applesauce (no sugar, organic apples from our local CSA...SO GOOD) and a couple of pieces of my homemade bread. The bread was challenging, as I made a double size loaf and forgot to take that into account with the baking time. The first time I cut it, the knife came out...gooey. Ew. Back in the oven it went, and was the last thing to be served, but was by far the most popular item on the table.

My mother in law handled the gravy (I am not a gravy girl, so I don't try), whilst my husband took care of the turkey. The turkey, that was supposed to have a coating of canola oil to give it a beautiful brown glazed appearance. My intrepid love realized we had none in the house, so used Pam.

...

So, whilst the in-laws and the husband were out giving the yaks treats, I was babysitting a turkey that set off the fire alarm constantly due to the unfortunate flash point of Pam. I also had a neighbour's cat underfoot, as she randomly showed up yesterday and decided she wanted to be with us for the holiday.

But though the food was beautiful and made from scratch, with only the veggie stock in the brine coming from a box, the one real downer was over napkins. For, you see, three days ago, I had in my hot little hands about 3 dozen cloth napkins. They got "tidied", which means they will never be seen again. I was tearing around the house with the one solitary napkin I could find in my hand, getting unreasonably worked up. When I was told for the four thousandth time "it's FINE" I had a little explosion of noise that startled the heck out of my in-laws. So. Aside losing my mind and yelling at everyone over napkins, we had a great meal, and were pleased that my husband's folks were able to fly in from the East Coast to join us.

Finish-it Friday

Part of my grand scheme of having thematic days includes Weaving Wednesday (which didn't work out this week due to...I don't know. I was distracted in the morning and in pain in the evening. I failed, but I'll climb back on the weaving horse, promise) and either Finish-it or Forgotten-Object Friday.

This one has been working out pretty well. Basically, either I finish something that has been sitting on the edge of completion and just needs that last little push, or I work on something that I haven't worked on in at least a week.

Today ended up combining the two, and I finished two hats that are gifts (for a mother and daughter) that have been sitting on my desk for the better part of a month. It was the pom poms that stopped my progress.

I hate pom poms.

I like the look, but making them irritates the piss out of me. These managed to finish off one of the teeny tiny balls of yarn I had left from making the hats, so that was semi-useful, but as my sister can vouch (she called me mid-pom pom creation), I swear a lot when I'm making them.

I'm sure some people enjoy these, otherwise they would have fallen out of favour. I am not amongst that population.

Right. Enough bitching about pom poms. The upside is that I finished the hats, and I should be able to ship them out tomorrow. I hope they fit!

Related to this: last night I finished the fingerless gloves I was knitting for Daven. They match a hat I'd knit him a bit ago, and he'd requested them since hands get cold when using keyboards. Between those and the house slippers I knit him a few weeks ago, he's slowly getting kitted out in hand knit goodies.

Now, if only I'd finish his darn sweater. The hold up? Not pom poms, but good guess. No, it is that he has these monkey arms that go on forever, and though I've got the body finished, it has no arms yet. I'll get to it. Maybe next Friday. :)