Home, Sweet Coop

The Feathery Ladies Audrey, Lily, Melanie, Attila ("Allie"), Daisy and Jack would like to announce that they moved into a spacious new home alongside the shed in our backyard yesterday.

Their lovely new home is painted a bright and cheery red, and decorated with pine shavings, last Sunday's comics and sports section, and a thermometer so Sydney can keep an eye on and periodically worry about the temperature in the coop area. Landscaping consists of wonderful sandy soil with some mulchy bits, perfect for dust baths, and populated by many delicious daddy-long-legs and ants.

They are still getting used to having so much space, and have trouble really believing that they don't have to be put to bed in a box in the stuffy garage at night. Last night they cried under the coop until they were finally round up and placed in the coop against their will. They quickly settled down in one big pile in Nesting box #2, for a sleepover.

They are pleased to note that their new home is consistently in the shade of the New Jersey jungle. They are still figuring out who gets to sit where on the perches.

Housewarming gifts are welcome. The Ladies particularly enjoy hotdogs that were allowed to cook too long (unlike children, they are not finicky about exploded hotdog ends). They are not very fond of strawberries, unless you let them sit in the dirt and they attract bugs. Yummm.

One Man's Garbage

...is another chicken's home. Mathboy and I bonded over garbage-picking this weekend. You know, not every parent is lucky enough to expose her child to such a time-honored tradition. ;o)

It all started when I saw three wooden framed crates out by the curb on a nearby street. It took me a couple drive-bys before it finally occurred to me that they would be perfect for making some chicken things from. It got to the point where I would say somehting to the kids about how perfectly useful they would be, every time we drove by. Finally, I said to them, "If those things are still there tomorrow, I'm grabbing them."

They were there.

I zipped home to get all the baseball and softball junk out of the back of the car to make room and went back to get them. In the end, I needed two trips because they were bigger and heavier than I expected. Mathboy came to help with the bigger one.

With some plastic poultry netting and some more boards added for reinforcement, look what we made: A bigger, better brooder box! (Try saying that 10 times fast)

And the best is this, our chicken "tractor."

This will give the chicks a play-pen so they can go outside and be safe from predators. We can put it in different areas, so they can dig for bug and eat stuff and not ruin one particular place in the yard. Mathboy has come up with a plan to put wheels on it so that we can move it around more easily. I have told him that I am completely leaving this part of the project to him. I am not sure he really believes me yet, however.

The chickie-doos seem to like their new play-pen.

And I like that they are not in the garden anymore, for several reasons. For one thing, they were starting to eat the lettuce, which I just could not tolerate. Plus a couple of the chicks are now able to fly over the fence. Instead of making a break for it, they cry and cheep to get back in with their friends, but it was still a sub-ideal situation. And the final reaons I wanted them out of the garden? One word: poo.

Enough said.

In sports news, Catgirl's softball team stunned the league and the parents by winning two playoff games this weekend. They lost last night, though, so their season is over. They should be proud of themselves, because 4th out of 7 teams is quite a respectable finish for a team that went 2 and 12 for the regular season. Catgirl finished by successfully bunting for her last at-bat. Rich had been begging her to bunt all season, and she finally did it!

Mathboy's school finished on June 10, and so far his summer vacation has started off slow. At the school closing ceremonies last Thursday, we saw him get several awards of which he should be very proud, including the math and science award and an award for having the highest GPA in the grade. Go Mathboy!

I finished the Brandywine Shawl. It is gorgeous.


Great pattern! The yarn, though.... It took 14 rinses with woolwash to get this thing to stop bleeding dye. My hands were blotchy pink from the dye for a day or so. The needles are permanently stained pink. I was annoyed.

I have one skein left of this soft and lovely handpainted alpaca and silk yarn, but am not sure that I want to keep it. I've had this yarn since 2007. Every attempt to use it before now was aborted because the dye bleeding was so annoying. I pushed through this time, because I really thought it was the best yarn in my stash for this project. But now, with only one skein of 220 yards left.... Beautiful as it is, I don't know if I want to deal with the drawbacks of this yarn for another project. Ever.

OK, off to start party prep!

May: Blink and You Miss It!

I don't think this is the first time that I have forgotten to blog in May. May is such a strange month here. Softball and baseball season seem to take up so much time, and it feels as if we spend the whole month in a frenzy of running to ballgames and practices. My car looks like we have lived in it for the past several weeks. We do our homework in the car, we eat in the car. I can't even count the number of meals we have gotten over the past month or so from our favorite "restaurant" (Wawa, since the kids have been thoroughly convinced that McDonald's is evil).

Then June comes, and we can take a breath and we realize that school is almost over. That's about where we are right now.

Mathboy was on a very good baseball team this year. They made it to the semi-finals of the playoffs, but sadly they lost in the last inning of this past Saturday morning. Mathboy ended the season on a high note personally, however, getting some really nice hits in the last two games. So he leaves the season without any real regrets.

Catgirl, however, is having a painful season. Their team has 2 wins and 13 losses. Enough said.

In other news, Catgirl and I picked up these little girls this past Friday afternoon:



Four bantam cochin chicks. The partridge (reddish color) is Audrey. The black one is Lily. The silver blue one is Melanie. The mottled one with the star on her head is a Barred Rock, and her name is Attila the Hen. They are also known as the Chickie-doos. They were from different families when we got them--you can tell, for example that Attila the Hen is a little bit older than the others--but they are clinging together like sister now. We hope (fingers crossed!) that they are all chicks and not roosters-to-be. We'll find out eventually.

Rich and Mathboy have been building an enclosure behind the shed to surround the coop we bought off craigslist. For the time being, however, the chicks are sleeping in a tub in the garage and they get to play in my fenced in garden areas during the day.


It took Rudolph the Cat a day to notice that our family now contains another bunch of animals that he would consider to be prey. You have to wonder what is going through his head. First we bring a rodent, Hairy Potter the Guinea Pig, into the house and taunt Rudolph by keeping the pig behind bars where a cat can't get to him. Now we are adding birds to the household? He must think we are crazy. When the chicks were in the garden on Saturday, he kept running back and forth between the kitchen and dining room windows, whichever gave a better view.

Oh boy. It won't be fun teaching Rudolph that the chicks are "friends not food." You would think a cat who lost his vision in one eye after being pecked by a wild turkey would have the sense to stay away from anything with a beak.

In knitting news, I have discovered the joy of patterned sock yarn. Look at this sock:

Isn't it charming? It's so funny--there is so much beautiful handpainted sock yarn out there, and right now I am enchanted with this basic Regia Jacquard. I got this yarn as a giveaway from a company several years ago. I had no idea how addictive and fun it would be watching the pattern develop as you knit.

The other thing I am working on is my Brandywine Shawl:

It looks like a mess now, but I know it will be gorgeous. It's the perfect pattern for this beautiful hand-dyed alpaca silk that I bought several years ago. Unfortunately, the yarn leeches dye terribly, so the needles are pink, and my hands and fingers turn pink every time I knit it. This is the reason why I hadn't used this yarn yet, even though I've had it for so long: the color bleeding is just so annoying. But I think this shawl is going to be spectacular, and I can't wait to see it finished. I wonder how many times I will have to rinse it when I am blocking it, until it stops bleeding color?

The gardens and veggie planters are doing well in this warm spring weather.


The second pic is the new garden I dug this spring. I have lettuce, green beans, potatoes and zucchini growing there. The old garden, which I apparently forgot to photograph, is only tomatoes, peppers, carrots and herbs this year. Zucchini had been doing worse there every year, so I decided to do zucchini elsewhere this year. I also added new garden soil to both garden areas this year, because I was concerned that the soil was tired. We need to start composting--it will give us something to do with the chicken waste we are going to have and will be good for the gardens.

I have already harvested enough Swiss Chard for one meal, I had enough green beans for another, and there's plenty of lettuce. I have 9 tomato plants, which may be overkill if they all produce well! But I also have a good supply of jars and I want to can tomato sauce for the winter.

Anyone want to see what has been taking up my dining room for the past 2 months?

War and Peace. A game that averages 40 hours of game play. Rich and Mathboy started before Easter, and they still are only about 2/3 done. Somehow they have kept the cat from jumping on the table this whole time. It's a miracle.

Blogging Slacker

You know you are a blogging slacker when your own son starts pestering you on a daily basis to update the blog. I tell him he doesn't need to read the blog to know what's happening in our family, but he doens't care. Ah, well. It's nice to know that someone's reading it, even if it just someone hoping to see pictures of himself.

Hey, you know what? Since he's the one who really wants an update, let me write about him first. Should I post a picture showing the state of his room? No, that would be cruel. I can show you that he finished the root of his carrot.

This is something he started last August before we went to Disney. Obviously, he put it down for a long time. Now he is working on the leaves which will be sewn on to the top. We have been teasing him that his carrot is ridiculously fat, but it's not his fault. Everyone on Ravelry who has made this pattern had the same problem. Oh well, it's a good lesson, I guess to check Ravelry first!

Over Easter break, we spent a couple days in the Poconos at a resort called Skytop.

It was incredibly beautiful, and we had a very nice time. There were tons of cool things to do, including archery:

We hiked up the mountain for a gorgeous view:



We also hiked down into the valley to see some lovely waterfalls:


The guys got to play golf one morning while Catgirl and I played some tennis and then relaxed by the stream:


All in all, we had a nice time. I am sure that it is even more fun to go in the summer or the winter, because there would be lots more to do, but we did enjoy it.

In my own knitting news, I finished the Twist cardigan, and it turned out very nice.

I have no complaints about the pattern at all--it was very well written and worked perfectly. The only modification I made was to lengthen the body a little, because I like my sweaters longer. The yarn, however, I have a lot of complaints about and will never use again. I regret using it for this sweater. It is very soft and all that, but I think I would be much happier if I had made it out of Cascade 220. That being said, it is a gorgeous sweater, and I may have done my best finishing work ever. Check out the awesomeness that is this sleeve seam:

Not too bad, if I say so myself.

Another regret: I bought the most perfect buttons at Woolbearers one day. I brought the sweater with me, I brought Catgirl to give me her opinion, I asked ladies in the store for their opinion, and ended up with totally beautiful buttons that would have made this sweater sing! Then I got home, and put them somewhere safe while I finished up the knitting.

Where are they now? Not on the sweater, I can tell you that. I put them in such a safe place, that I could not find them when it was time to attach them to the sweater. I practically ripped this house apart looking for them. I still have no idea where they are. In the interest of getting the sweater done, I decided to use some buttons I had left over from a project I made several years ago. They are boring and a litle too small for the buttonholes, so they have a tendency to come undone. Someday, I hope the perfect buttons will turn up and I can change them out.

The sweater seemed to take forever. After I finished it, though, I zipped through a couple small shawls, because, like, they're uh, smaller than sweaters? I have no idea how, but they just flew off the needles.

My Traveling Woman, made with Ella Rae Lace Merino.

This was a great pattern. The only things that bothered me about it was the first sentence of the pattern, which reads as follows,

"Being an indecisive individual, this shawl is named after two things."

Unless the author meant to say that the shawl was indecisive, I believe this is bad grammar. Infact, it bugged me so much, that it almost turned me off the pattern altogether--that's how nuts I am. I know it's a free pattern, and I shouldn't be so churlish. Being a bit of a grammar stickler, I can't help myself. (See, that's how you do it. Go ahead, hit me.) In the end, I was able to control my craziness, and get beyond that first sentence to a truly well-written pattern.

Here is is the other shawl I made:

My Andrea's Shawl, made with Jojoland Melody Superwash and K1C2 Crockodye. They both turned out great and I love them.

Catgirl ended up wearing the Traveling Woman shawl when we went to my nephew's first communion this weekend. We had rushed out of the house and forgot sweaters or jackets for ourselves, and the day was a lot colder than we expected. We had just been having some lovely, warm days, and got a nasty suprise from the weather on Saturday! Luckily I had the shawl in the car, so she ended up wrapping that around herself and it kept her arms warm. :o)

Mistakes Unmade

I am in the home stretch on my Twist cardigan. I am knee deep--or should I say elbow deep?--in the sleeves at this point. I have to say that, for me, sleeves are the biggest slog of a sweater project. For one thing, they are deceptive. They start all nice and narrow, but then you have to increase every specified number of rows so they get wider and wider. They are really boring, because every row is just more of the same as the row before it. And they need to be a lot longer than you think. This one needs to be 19 inches long before I can start decreasing for the sleeve cap. YAWN.

You know the worst thing about sleeves? Once you triumph and finish one...you have to do another one. Ack.

I am trying a couple of new strategies in my efforts to stave off sleeve ennui this time. First I started the second sleeve already, and have it going on seperate needles. When the first sleeve just seems too monotonous, I will switch to the second one and work on that for a while. So far, it is not providing any real excitement. However, I think that, when I finish the first one, it will be nice to know that the second one already has a good amount done on it. Hopefully, it will give me that "light at the end of the tunnel" moment that would encourage me to keep working and maybe even pick up the pace.

I also am blocking the body pieces of the sweater. There is no reason why I can't seam the shoulders and get going on the button bands and the collar. Hopefully, that will provide a needed change of pace.

Another one of my strategies for combating sleeve ennui is to take some breaks and knit something else. Rocket science, I know! Anyway, I caved to spring startitis and cast on a shawl in a beautiful bright color.

The color is much more fun to knit than the sedate taupe/khaki of my Twist. At this point, I am still in the super-dull stockinette increase section of the Traveling Woman shawlette, which makes even a Twist sleeve seem interesting. I am not sure if this is good or not. I am almost up to the lace part, which will be more interesting.

Spring is definitely here, and I am so glad. I switched around all the closets this week and cleared out the shirts in Mathboy's closet that don't fit anymore. Honestly, how is it that he can wear these things and not recognize how short they are? He had a couple turtlenecks that almost looked like crop-tops when he wore them. He came down for church this Sunday wearing one of these shirts and he was rather annoyed when I made him go change. Aside from the simple fact that wearing a turtleneck is ridiculous when it has been 75 degrees out for couple days, the hem of the shirt hovered right at his pants' waistband. He could not have tucked it in.

So this week I confiscated all the short shirts from both Mathboy's and Catgirl's closets, moved the t-shirts into the fronts and the sweaters and such into the backs. Then I moved on to my own closet. I was switching the contents of the shelves around when I came upon a sweater I knit for myself many years ago.

It was made with silk fingering weight yarn in a gorgeous bronze. The yarn was spectacularly beautiful. I had gotten a good deal on eBay, but it still wasn't cheap. I used it to make a pullover sweater with a deep V-neck and knitted ruffles around the V and the bottom of the sleeves. I had worn it once, right after I finished it, and never wore it again. It had spent years languishing on the shelf in my closet. Why would I neglect such beautiful silk so shamefully?

Because it was a train wreck--a knitted train wreck.

First of all, choosing this pattern was a mistake from the beginning. For example, I am a firm believer that bikinis should not even be made in sizes that have more than one digit in the number. If you need something bigger than a size 8, you should not be allowed to buy a bikini. Sometimes clothing manufacturers need to save us from ourselves, you know? Similarly, I think this sweater should only have been offered in small and extra-small sizes. The designer could have gently explained the limited sizing:

"For those ladies who do not fit into the measurements set forth in this pattern, please find another pattern to knit. Be assured that we are not impugning your body shape in any way. We simply want you to know that if you spend many months knitting this sweater on size 3 needles and using expensive silk yarn, you will be very unhappy when the result not only fails to flatter your body but instead emphasizes parts of you that you usually try to hide. Please don't be insulted; we have only your best interests at heart. There are much better uses for your time and money than to knit something that you will hate.

Sincerely, The Designer."

Would that have been so hard?

Maybe I should have known that I would look ridiculous wearing a deep-v neck with knitted ruffles all over the place, but I did not have that wisdom yet. I plunged on in and knitted it. The body and sleeves of the sweater were all stockinette, and then the ruffles were added on by knitting up from the cuffs and v-neck. It took several months of knitting, using tiny needles with this slippery silk.

I made a size medium, but I had my usual gauge issues so the actual size is a lot closer to the large and the stitches are a bit loose and sloppy. The sleeves were supposed to be 3/4 length and relatively tight. Mine ended up being way too long and wide and floppy, with the cuff ruffles hanging over my hands. By the time I was done, I knew that it was bad. My finishing work wasn't even very good, probably because I just wanted to have done with the montrosity by that time.

I pulled that sweater down from its exile in the top reaches of my closet this week and I faced the horror of it with honesty. I hate this sweater. I will never wear this sweater. Even more: I should never wear this sweater, because it is that bad. And I thought to myself, What a waste of really top-notch luxury yarn. If I had this yarn now, I could make something much better with it.

And then, just as I was preparing to throw it in the garbage--it was too bad even to force it on Goodwill--I had a thought. Why not try to rip the sweater down and unknit it?

So that is my newest project: unknitting the silk. This is going to take a bit of time. Fingering weight silk doesn't knit up too fast, and it doesn't unknit too fast, either. The crummy finishing work doesn't help matters at all. The seams are messy and hard to take apart.

So far, I have one sleeve and the neck ruffle undone. I tied what I have up in hanks, soaked it in some cold water to relax the ramen noodle effect of frogged yarn. Then I wrung it out, and it is currently hanging in the shower to dry. It's actually drying very quickly. I was a little nervous that soaking it would harm the yarn, but I figured that it anything I reclaim from the sweater is a bonus, anyway. If it's ruined, it can't be any worse off than when it was in Ghastly Sweater form.

When it's dry, I'll wind it up into balls. Meanwhile, I have to pick a project to make with it--something better suited to the yarn. I am hoping I can get a good 500 yards or so out of this thing. If so, that would be enough for a nice lace scarf or shawlette, or maybe a shrug or a vest? Any of these would be good summer knitting!

Signs of Spring

The last of the snow melted this weekend. The million inches of rain we got this weekend may have been the deciding factor. So, yes, it is kind of squishy outside these days, but you can definitely see signs that Spring is on its way!

Bulbs are poking their heads out of the ground all over the place. On the drive to church and school, I can see that carpets of little white flowers are popping up in many places. Can spring be far behind?

In another sign of spring, Rudolph emerged from his days of snuggling in his fuzzy cat bed to luxuriate in a sunny spot in the playroom.

I thought he had a great idea to enjoy the sunlight today; after five days of heavy rain, the sun is a welcome sight today. I would like to go lie in a sunny spot myself.

Poor Rudolph did not get much time to enjoy the sun this morning before his person rudely manhandled him into a pet carrier and dragged him off to the vet for a teeth cleaning and his annual shots. Rudolph is a F.O.U.S., or a Feline of Unusual Size. Weighing something over 20 pounds, he is not easily squeezed into a pet carrier designed for normal cats. Unfortunately, they don't really make pet carriers for his size: you got your small carriers (for cats and small dogs) and then you got your large carriers (for large dogs). It's ridiculous to put him in a carrier for a large dog, so it's the small carrier for him.

Some time ago, after Rudolph's infamous and unsuccessful attempt to bring home a dinner of wild turkey, we bought him a fancy canvas carrier for the multiple vet visits he had to make at that time. I got it out of the basement to use today for the first time in about a year. After I wrestled him into the carrier, I tried to zip the end closed, without any luck. Not one, but BOTH zippers broke and I could not zip the end shut. I had to think fast, as the F.O.U.S. was doing his darnedest to escape, cat hair was flying everywhere, and I didn't want to be late for our appointment. In the end, I resorted to safety pins. It took six big brass safety pins to contain my vicious beast. He is at the vet's for the day today; I will pick him up after the kids get out of school. I hope the vet doesn't lose my safety pins...

We've actually had a lot of spring projects going in the past couple of weeks. My seed order finally arrived this weekend, so we planted lots of seeds. We have the seed starters all crowded close to the window that gets the most morning sun.

I want to improve the vegetable garden greatly this year. Last year, my fence did keep the bunnies out, but the deer reached right over and treated my garden like a buffet. So I need a better fence, and I need to improve the nutritive quality of the soil. Last year's just did not have the yield I have gotten before.

Catgirl and a friend in her Girl Scout troop have been working on their bronze award project. They have a goal of making and collecting 100 Easter "baskets" to donate to Catholic Charities. The "baskets" are made by cutting off the bottom half of a milk carton, punching holes around the edge and threading yarn through the holes. The yarn serves both to protect little kids against the sharpness of the cut plastic and to make the "baskets" look like more than just recycled plastic.

Catgirl's friend's mom (who is the leader) organized a big "basket" decorating event on Friday, where they got help from a troop of Daisies and a troop of Brownies in decorating the makeshift "baskets" with yarn. At one point, I looked around at all these little girls working hard threading yarn through milk cartons, and I said to the friend's mom, "We are running a Girl Scout sweatshop!"

The girls plowed through about 60 "baskets" in one hour Friday night. Admittedly, we did have to spend a few hours fixing many of them on Saturday, but it was still a great help.

These baskets, in addition to the ones the girls whave made over the past month, get them very close to their goal. Now Catgirl and her friend have to fill them with Easter grass and the treats they have collected and we will deliver them to the church this coming Saturday.

This past Sunday was Pi Day, of course: March 14th (3.14, get it?), so Catgirl's math teacher asked kids to bring in pie for Monday. Catgirl decided, for some reason that neither of us has figured out, that she wanted to make Key Lime pie. She had never even tried Key Lime Pie before, but she had it in her mind that that was the pie she wanted to make. I happen to have a good recipe for it that I used to make when Rich and I first got married. It's pretty much the same work to make two pies as one, so we ended up making one for us to enjoy at home and one for Catgirl to take to school.

Unfortunately, only a couple kids were game enough to try Key Lime pie. Most of them went for the chocolate cream pie that one girl brought or the ice cream pie that another one brought. I hear the teachers liked it, but in the end a lot of it came back home.

So now, we have a lot of pie in this house, people. This morning I had a piece of pie for breakfast. Not exactly the breakfast of champions, I suppose. I am going to try freezing some pie. It sure will be tasty in the summer. Mmmm!

In knitting news, I have finished the back and one front side on my Twist cardigan sweater.

I reallyreally want to wear this, so I am seriously motivated to knit it up fast. The yarn is very nice: soft to knit and a classy khaki color that will look great with everything. I am enjoying the pattern, too.

Kitchen Adventure on a Snow Day

It looked like this outside again yesterday.


Nothing new, right? Ho hum. Snow on snow. This time it snowed sideways most of the time, so we have over a foot in some places, while in others you can see the grass. We did play outside for a while, as it was great packing snow. Mathboy rolled a snowball around the entire house. When it was up to his chest and wouldn't move anymore, it became the cornerstone for his new snow fort. Catgirl's snowball is becoming a comfy chair. What does this say about my kids? Fort vs. comfy chair?

After we all had enough snow yesterday, it was time for indoor stuff. I won't tell you the story of my personal worst Scrabble game ever. Instead, let's talk about my grand idea to make homemade soft pretzels, as documented in a photo essay by Mathboy.

Kim gave me an awesome cookbook for Christmas: Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. I love this cookbook. In fact, I love it so much that I was shocked yesterday to see that I have gone through an entire 5 lb bag of flour since New Year's, and I don't know how much whole wheat flour in addition to that. That's a lot of flour, folks. Most of the time I have been making the basic white bread recipe, but I also have made pizza dough and long rolls for meatballs subs. May I just say how AWEsome it is to have meatball subs on rolls fresh and crackling from the oven? Oh. My. Goodness.

Anyway. Today I thought it would be fun to try the recipe for soft pretzels--which are a favorite for all of us. I made the dough and then left it to rise while we were outside. Now, I do have to admit that I had to use whole wheat flour for about 1/6 of the total amount, and for dusting while we formed the shapes, because I had exhausted (!!!) my regular flour supply. So this recipe is not faithful to the book, and I probably should not blame the book for our results.

Here is Catgirl forming a pretzel shape.

She actually turned out to be the best pretzel shaper in the house. She's the most artistic, so maybe we should have expected that.

This recipe had us drop the pretzels in simmering water for a few minutes, like bagels. Here are some waiting to go into the water.

...and here are some in the pot.


Then, after they dried a bit on a floury towel, we brushed them with an egg wash and dusted with some chunky salt. Then it was into the oven on a preheated pizza stone for baking.



Ours were a little big, I guess, and they took a while to bake. But here they are, in all their toasty golden glory:

Am I the only one who thinks they look something like what an animal leaves behind? Well, I won't say it again, because I'm trying not to think about that. Just get that thought out of your head.

Needless to say, we will not be opening our own Philadelphia Pretzel Factory anytime soon. And I have new respect for the Amish at the Reading Terminal market who do the handmade pretzels. It was so hard to shape these things! The dough was very sticky, so we had to use a lot of flour to keep it from sticking to our hands or the counter. Also--or maybe because of all the whole wheat flour we were using--it wouldn't stretch well. Once we finally were able to wrestle the dough into something approximating a pretzel, it wouldn't hold the shape. The dough rose and obscured the pretzel loops, or the joins came apart in the pot of water. They just look malformed.

After all that, the taste really reminds you of a... a salty roll. Not that we really mind salty rolls. Not that this is keeping us from eating them, mind you. They taste good. But they don't really taste like pretzels.

And the cleanup? Oy.

Snow Math: 21.5 Saturday + 14.5 Wednesday = 36!

Whatever way you look at it, there's a heckuva lot of snow out there.

The snow forts have reached epic proportions.


I have a lot of pictures, but many of them look just like the pictures from Saturday so I won't post those here. I am trying to give you some different views for today.


It's hard to show the sheer volume of snow with my pictures. Imagine someone has taken a giant can of shaving cream or spray whipped cream and spread it in a lumpy, wavy manner all over our town, and you have the idea. It's just crazy.

Last night we saw thundersnow--which I actually would say is a misnomer. What we saw were lightning flashes in the sky, not really like the lightning bolts of summer thunderstorms. They were much less defined, resembling perhaps the Northern Lights. There was no thunder. Maybe it was muffled by the volume of snow everywhere? At first, I thought there might have been a fire somewhere. As you all might imagine, that made us pretty nervous. All in all, the phenomenon was a little unsettling.

Catgirl has been re-reading the Little House on the Prairie books, which has been giving me a lot of thoughts about how lucky we are we don't have to tie a rope between the shed and the house so we can find our way out there in the blizzard to milk the cows.