Things I Learned on my Bike in the past week

1. It's hard to take a picture while you are pedaling.

2. Familiarize yourself with the garbage schedule of the towns you plan to ride through. It's no fun weaving between stinky cans and garbage trucks.

3. On some roads, you need to keep your mouth shut while riding, unless you like to get additional protein from eating bugs.

4. Even with my fancy new gel-techno-padded bike shorts, I still dread the moment when I get up from the bike seat and all the blood rushes back to my butt. Ouch!

5. I'm not a kid anymore. :oP

Too Darn Hot

Fun times

I have become a very inconsistent blogger. Here I am, with another monthly update, and I find myself overwhelmed with all the pictures I have to post and the events to report. This is why I really should write more regularly.

We had a wonderful visit with Rich's family on Kiawah Island, SC over Easter. The Saturday before Easter, we were on the beach all day. It just felt so weird to be swimming in the ocean, before Easter. The water was warm. The sun was strong--too strong for this New Jersey family, apparently, as we ended up having to take dd to the doctor for sun poisioning after a few days. But still, a good time was had by all.



Some tough poker games were played.


Many books were read.


Mathboy and his cousin got pretty good at managing the ocean kayaks in the waves.



Kiawah is so gorgeous, so totally different from the shores that we are used to up here in the northeast. This is the path out to the beach.


This is what we saw from the balcony of our room.


And then we had to come back to New Jersey and reality. Mathboy and I came home early, by plane, because his school was already back in session and because he had to get ready for the AP Chemistry exam. Even though we had a great trip, Easter break wasn't really long enough to recharge everyone's batteries, though. The kids are really looking forward to the end of the year.

It was very frustrating that the kids' schools have had different schedules so often this year. At least that won't be a problem next year: dd has been accepted at Mathboy's school. Hooray! It's going to be great having them together, in the same school, for the first time in 6 years. No more OLGC school for us, only Doane Academy. Hm, that means I better get dd signed up for CCD, though, doesn't it?

The past few weeks have been spent in a haze of baseball, softball, cardboard boat building, and trying to get the garden going. Mathboy played on the Doane baseball team this year, and hopefully learned some valuable lessons in patience and realizing that one has to work one's way up in high school sports.

Everyone got to bat when the Doane team played Solebury School (yes, my old school), at the Trenton Thunder stadium a few weeks ago.

It was really neat to see the guys out on that beautiful field.

Dd has been learning the same lesson on the school softball team, but at least she has the town rec league team as well. Rich is coaching dd's rec team, and he says it is a wonderful group of girls. So far, their record is 6-4-1, which is pretty good! Dd is still focusing on pitching, which she wants to practice everyday.


The seedlings have all been planted, and Rich is woprking on finishing the fence in front. We've planted winter squash, kohlrabi, cabbage, kale, sweet peppers, edamame, snow peas, green beans, broccoli, scallions, quinoa, beets, chard, and lots and lots of lettuce. We also have 14 tomato plants, including Burbank Slicing and Japanese Momotaro heirloom varieties.

I am very excited to see the tomatoes from these plants (the Momotaro seeds were about 25 cents each!), but I am wondering if I may have gone overboard planting 14.... I may be canning a lot of sauce.

Right now, I am just keeping my fingers crossed that everything does OK, because I already have several weeks of seed-nurturing behind me already. Half of the winter squash seedlings did not look so good this morning. I wonder if they got crushed by heavy rain last night. Gulp.

The kale is for the chickens. They love it.


While Rich and I were slaving away in the garden over the past few Sundays, Mathboy and a friend from school were building this:

A cardboard boat, for a regatta that Doane is hosting next Friday. Stay tuned, and I'll let you know whether they make it aacross Liberty Lake in this conglomeration of broken down liquor store boxes, Gorilla Glue and duct tape.

Who'd a'thought?

Last night, I came downstairs from folding the laundry and Rich was watching TV. He had paused the screen, saving something for me to see. "Watch this," he said. "You'll never believe it. We're part of A Movement."

It turned out to be a commercial, I don't remember for what, but it talked about the "Home Farming Movement," and showed people happily tending a few tomato plants, in perfect rows, in perfect black dirt, with children cheerfully helping. We're at the forefront of a Movement with a capital "M." How'd that happen?

Rich said he felt like Crocodile Dundee, looking at the tiny garden plot depicted in the commercial. "That's not a home farm," he said and pointed out the window. "Now that's a home farm."

We don't have perfect black dirt and even rows of weed-free plants, and our children don't cheerfully pitch in with big smiles on their faces, but it's definitely looking like a Home Farm.

Rich has been working on the fence since last fall. The big swingset was taken away a few weeks ago by a family down the street with young children who will appreciate it. (That family deserves it so much more than we do: they spent a good week sanding it down, power washing it and painting it. I can see it in their backyard when I drive by, and it looks brand new.) And this past weekend, Rich borrowed a rototiller from a neighbor and cut up the sod and weeds within the fence. That's almost 2000 square feet of future garden space, people. (Or should I say Home Farm Space? I need to remember we're on the cutting edge.)

Now we just need to rake up all the clods of grass, get some topsoil delivered, and layout the actual rows within the fence. Gee, that's all? So far, I raked about a quarter of the space. It's pretty tough going--certainly more of an upper body workout that I am used to. This farming thing might turn out to be hard work, you know.

I did the easy part though: I order lots of seeds, and got a bunch started.
I've started seeds for tomatoes, peppers, cabbage, kale, choi and broccoli, and I have to start some more soon. But at this point, the only things our Home Farm is producing is lettuce...

...because I bought this awesome pot at Home Depot, and, of course, eggs.

All the little banties have taken a break from laying since early February, but Jackie (above) and Daisy have kept going, each of them giving us about 5 big brown eggs a week. Lenten Friday dinners have been yummy souffles and quiches, courtesy of the two Big Girls. I have to wonder what kind of sacrifice we are making, giving up meat for Friday, when the alternatives are so luxurious and delicious?

I am hoping that the banties will start laying again soon, now that the days are getting longer and spring seems to be here for real. We need to snap Lily out of being broody.

She's been sitting in the nesting box, warming nonexistent eggs, for about 6 weeks now, and I don't think that is good for her health.

For the entire month of March, both Lily and Audrey sat in the nesting boxes, while the other three enjoyed exploring the fenced in garden area. We started calling them the 3 Musketeers. Then Audrey snapped out of her broodiness and joined the group, so now they are the Four Musketeers.

Melanie hasn't done the broody thing at all, which is surprising.

I'm not complaining--I hate it when they go broody--but it is interesting that she hasn't felt the call to sit on a nest.

Now that we are getting ready to make the fenced in area into a real garden--I mean Home Farm--the chickens can't go in there anymore, so we are going to snake some wire fencing through the woods near the coop and let them wander in there. We think this will be much better for them than a fenced in pasture-type area, because there is lots of fun stuff to dig around in. Also, because we are going to attach in to the coop, they will be allowed to walk in and out, so they can go in on their own if it rains and if they need to go lay an egg. All in all, it's a much better situation than what they have had before, and it's a far cry from the confinement they dealt with during the snow of January.

Right now, I have the wire fencing temporarily placed, but I have not secured it to the ground very well. As a result, I keep looking out the window and finding Daisy outside the enclosure and trying to figure out how to get back in.

We have taken to calling her Daisy Houdini. I don't know how she is getting out, and I need to before I make this fencing more permanent!

In other news:

1. We survived two school plays. The plays were very good, but the last few weeks of practices before their respective performance weekends were completely and totally exhausting for the entire household. I am not sure I am cut out to be a Stage Mom.

2. Hot Pink shawl complete!

It's gorgeous, but will I have the guts to wear something this bright? Maybe I should have thought of that before I started knitting it?

It's Baseball time again...

Even Rudolph is excited about it.

De-Blinging

Catgirl and I have very different taste in clothes. That probably doesn’t surprise you, does it? After all she is 12 and I am … not. Of course we like to wear different things. I would be a little frightened if we liked the same clothes. There would be something the matter with one of us, if that were the case. That's not the issue that I am writing about here. We do run into difficulties, however, is because I would like her to wear different clothes than the ones she would prefer to wear. And isn’t that one of the basic issues facing all mothers and daughters?

When Catgirl was a baby or a toddler, I could dress her the way I wanted her to look. She was like a doll. A crying, tantrum-throwing doll sometimes, but that’s all water under the bridge, now, thank God. Sometime around kindergarten-age, Catgirl started to get picky about what she would wear. By the time she was in 3rd grade, I realized that it was pointless for me to shop for clothes for her without having her with me. If I bought something she didn‘t like, it would end up being a big waste of money. She simply would not wear it. Things would end up in the garage sale or donation piles, outgrown but still in new or nearly new condition.

That was the year we discovered Justice. In general, the clothes there are a heckuva lot more busy than I personally prefer, and they have a lot of animal prints which I despise. But Catgirl and I usually could find something there we could agree on. And the frequent 40% coupons they send in the mail don’t hurt. The discovery of that store marked the beginning of a period of détente in the clothing wars between Catgirl and me.

Fast forward to October 2010: Catgirl is in 6th grade. Catgirl has always been a sucker for super-soft sweats and anything with fur. Well, ok. We found this heavy sweatshirt, with a furry fleece interior, fur trim, and blingy initials on the front at a P.S. store, and she fell in love with it.
We negotiated, and it ended up being a birthday present. She wore it every day for a few weeks, and then it just got forgotten.

Last week, I pulled it out of the closet and pointed out that it’s the right season for this weight of a jacket again. Would she like to wear it?

She got that expression that all parents have seen at some point. You know the one; like they are hearing fingernails going down a chalkboard? And she said, “Mom … it’s kind of … little-kiddish.”

My little girl is growing up. She growing out of Bling.

And what a difference six months makes, hm? When we bought this jacket in October, she was still enamored of the rhinestones and sequins, like so many of the clothes at Justice. But the last few times we tried to find her some nice church clothes there, we left without liking anything. Justice has been getting more and more bejeweled lately, while Catgirl has started preferring plainer things. Plain tops are more her style now. When she was little, she loved dresses, but now all she wants to wear are pants. It's been interesting watching her tastes change.

But back to the jacket. Just like when she was little and I used to buy clothes that she ended up boycotting, I am looking at a perfectly good jacket that is going to end up being sold or donated in nearly new condition. Just like all those years ago, I am not so happy about that. So i am trying an experiment.
I am de-blinging the jacket. I got out my sharpest sewing scissors, and I am painstakingly cutting the threads holding the appliques and the beads and the rhinestones on this jacket, and, so far, so good. There will probably remain some indication that the letters were there, but at least the sparklies will be gone, and hopefully that will make it less "little kiddish."

The crazy thing is that this bling probably accounts for about half of the original value of this jacket, and I am cutting it off and throwing it away. (I just hope that this stuff wasn't all sewn on by some poor child in a Third World nation. Maybe we should have thought of that when we bought it though, hm?) But if it makes it wearable again for Catgirl, it's worth it.

Frozen Chicken Poop Doesn't Stick to Your Boots

But, at this point, that's about the only good thing I can say about winter. We've certainly had enough of it around here, and we are very ready for Spring.

The chickens hijacked the blog for the month of February. Boredom and the short days of winter conspired against us to make for some very crabby poultry. There were many demonstrations of a chickie nature, and it was much feared that the price of eggs would increase substantially, as most of the hens went on a labor strike and refused to lay eggs. I am happy to report that I wrested control back, through utter ruthless efforts to distract them with oatmeal, cabbage, and a new area to explore. The weather has also come to our aid, and the simple fact that the days are getting longer. Thank goodness.

It is so hard to get good pictures of the chickens, because they move too darn fast, believe it or not. This is Daisy, the only chicken who has figured out the "chicken IQ test" that I have been using to keep them in their new pen area (see below)

It's finally warming up around here, which is cheering us all up, after our winter's hibernation. This week, I started our first round of seeds--the plants that need to be started 6 to 8 weeks before the last expected frost. I have a bunch more to start in another 3 weeks or so. It's exciting! Is it dorky that I am so excited? Probably. Rich put a quick, temporary fence on the front of most of the garden area, so that we can let the chickens run around in there.

It gives them a lot more space to explore than they have had for the past few months. I've got the old chicken tractor propped against the open gateway, and that keeps them in, although daisy has figured out that sometimes she can squeeze around the tractor. Rich has a beautiful, real wooden gate that we probably will hang this weekend. And sometime in the next month or two, we plan to borrow a rototiller from a neighbor and get it ready to be a real garden. Sorry chickens.

I know it's been a long time since I written a blog entry, but we only had "little stuff" going on around here. Not the most exciting fodder to write about, if you know what I mean. Maybe I could make it all more interesting by writing in headlines? Or writing like those teasers they use for upcoming news stories?

Health news: Mathboy's biopsy was a stressful event for all of us, but the good news is that they did not find anything pathological to explain his protein problem. But this is one of those times when no news was good news. The doctor believes it must be "minimal change" syndrome, and prescribed medication to treat that, and we will continue to monitor the situation in case it is a precursor or a very early symptom of more serious kidney problems.

Mathboy got contacts this month, too. Actually, I should say that he got a contact, as it turns out he only needs correction in one eye. He's 20/20 in his left eye and 20/80 in the right eye. Oh, so that's why he's been dropping all those pop flies. He had no depth perception. Oops. I had to really persuade the eye doctor to give him a prescription, because apparently the one good eye does a fine enough job that she thought he could get by. But she hadn't seen him on a baseball field lately. So now he has one contact that he wears for sports only, and the difference in his ability to see the ball, and his confidence in his ability to catch the ball, is tremendous.

Mathboy also gets his braces off this month. We're excited to see him without metal in his mouth for the first time in 2 and 1/2 years.

Exercise news? Yeah, well, Mathboy and I have not been out running for a very long time. I have been making due with the elliptical trainer and Mathboy has been taking it easy. However, I do want to get back to running when the weather is better. In the meantime, when I recently visited Mom and Bill, I took their dog out for a walk and tried to get him into a bit of a run. Well....

Dear Readers: I outran an Australian Sheep Dog. He's a terribly out of shape Australian sheep dog, but still.... I guess I'm not that bad after all.

Sports news: A sure sign of Spring, baseball and Softball seasons are beginning. Mathboy is playing for his school this year, which means it is the first year he has not been involved with Mount Laurel Baseball since Spring, 2004, when he played T-Ball. It's the end of an era. On the other hand, Rich has volunteered to be coach for Catgirl's softball team. Yes, the crazy is strong in our family.

In home news: Rich and Sydney's new king-sized Mattress is super comfy, but ridiculously huge and very expensive. Perhaps it would have been cheaper to buy a kids' bouncy house to sleep in, and it might have been easier to get that up the stairs. It took 3 guys to wrestle our new mattress--rolled up like a giant latex stromboli--up the stairs. I couldn't watch; I was sure they were going to break something. Later, Rich mused that it must be a turning point in your life when you buy a bed that costs more than your first car did.

It was Musical Mattresses that weekend, as we moved our old queen to Mathboy's room (so we can use his room as a guest room when we have company) and his old twin to Catgirl's room (because his mattress was better than hers). Mathboy has been growing so fast that it's hard to keep up, and he needed something a little bigger.

More home news: I discover mad locksmithing skillz, replacing broken doorknobs. For the first time in 10 years, the family now has a key that will open the knob for the front door. Next up for me: channelling my inner plumber, as we have 2 sink traps that need replacing. I've done it before, so I know how to do it, but man, do I hate squeezing under the vanity.

Coming up in Kid News for March: Mathboy and Catgirl discover the hard way that being in a school play eats up all their spare time, and then some. They are going to have to clone themselves to be able to attend baseball and softball practice over the next two weeks.

Music news: Sydney spent the month of February loading all her parents' CDs into an iTunes library. Turns out that is quite a job. Mom and Bill never met a soundtrack or compilation that they didn't like, LOL. They now have been reunited with a collection spanning 20 years, and things sound good in their house again. Turn off that TV, Mom, and groove to the iPod.

Cat news: Rudolph is the only one not looking forward to Spring, because it means there will be no more fires in the fireplace for him to sleep in front of. The only good thing about Spring is that it is one step closer to Summer: the season when kids go in and out frequently and give him several chances a day to escape and play with his friends outside, the Ticks.

(If we could only teach him how to sit like a real cat, that would be awesome. And maybe he could do some vacuuming?)

And now to the best part, the Knitting news: I did a crazy thing recently. I have been knitting socks since I taught myself how in 2006. I learned how using info from Wendy Johnson, and I learned to do them toe-up, because that was the way Wendy did them. (She might do them differently now, I am not sure.) Anyway, after 4 years and maybe 25 or 30 pairs of toe-up socks, I threw caution to the wind this January and ... cast on a pair of top-down socks. I know, I know. Maybe I should have made sure you were all sitting down before I just came out and said that.

Here they are:

This is the Nemesis pattern from Knitty, in the Tosca colorway of Handpainted Donegal Sock Yarn, which I bought at Woolbearers. The socks turned out great! I even did OK with the kitchenering for the toes. I used to say kitchener stitch was my nemesis (an odd coincidence with the name of this sock pattern, no?), but I'm getting better. They are very comfortable and fit great. When I wear them in boots (which is pretty much all I wore on my feet for 3 months), I can feel the sides of the heel flap where I picked up the stitches, and I don't love that. But it's not too bad.

Then Sarah came over and showed me the Socks of Insanity that she was knitting for her son, with about 100 stitches around, knit in rib on size 1 needles. I was so glad she came to visit. I hadn't seen her in ages! And sometimes it's nice to know that there are other people out there crazier than you, know what I mean?

As a bonus, Sarah brought her copy of Sock Innovation, and let me borrow it. Now that I know how to knit socks top-down, a whole new world of sock knitting has opened up to me, and I think one of the undisputed geniuses of that world is Cookie A. I'd always admired her designs, but had never made any because they are all top-down. Well, I dove right in with this pair:

This is the Kai Mei pattern, and it has a very cool lace pattern that runs down and over the side of the foot. I've read that it's a "honeybee" lace pattern, but I think it looks like a heart, which was perfect for knitting in February.

I love these socks. The pattern was fun and challenging, and the yarn was very pleasant to knit, but I am kind of annoyed that the skeins did not end up matching well at all. It's Jojoland Melody, and both balls were the same colorway and dye lot, but you see how different the socks look. They are more fraternal twins than identical, I guess.

I am clearly on a pink kick lately, trying to brighten up the winter with a cheery color. I've made a hat from magenta-red Malabrigo, a pair of fingerless mitts from pink sock yarn, and I am about halfway through a shawl of pink and mango colored sock yarn that is so bright it blinds the camera, LOL.

That's enough news for today, I think. I will be back soon with more updates!

Egg Diaries: Shmelanie's Big Run

Dear Diary,

Well, I'm glad that's over!

I was just wandering down the path when someone picked me up and carried me over to the side of the people's house. I had no idea where I was, but then I saw it: FOOOOOD!!!! My buddies and I ran as fast as we could to reach the dewy grass and dirt.

We scratched around for a while, but then, to my horror, *plop*, down came Lily!

I wiggled and wobbled around the side of the house, only to find some small hands picking me up and placing me back by the grass! I shuffled as fast as I could, avoiding shiny ice and thick snow drifts to get back to the house.

When my friends came back later, they told me scary stories of a giant cat appearing in the window and giving my sis, Lily, quite a fright. (Not disappointed there. Hehe.)

Gotta go, though. More squishy oatmeal. ;)
XOXO Shmelanie
(This Diary entry was written and photographed by Catgirl, Melanie's official secretary and photographer.)

Egg Diaries: Winter, Day 45

Dear Diary,

When will this awful season end? Between the cold white stuff on the ground, the ice, the wind, the freezing rain, I am finding it hard to remember the hot days of the summer, when we huddled under the coop to enjoy the shade rather than to take shelter from the wind. In August, it was so hot that the people brought us watermelon and misted the dust down with the garden hose. Now they bring us hot oatmeal and microwaved leftovers from the dinner table.

By the way, may I say how grateful I am that the young girl never seems to finish her dinner? Yum, leftover potatoes....

I must admit that I am getting seriously bored of cracked corn and oatmeal and winter squash. I want to dig in the dirt and leaves and eat some bugs.

We did find some dirt to dig in the other day, along the side of the house. It was only about 8 square feet, and we had to walk a long way donw the path the people shopvelled from the house to the coop, but where else do we have to go? With all this snow, all we can do is walk up and down the path. After a coupld of warmer afternoons, the snow next to the house melted in a few spots, and we were able to get to the grass and leaves underneath. You don't suppose the people really wanted the grass that grew there, do you? Hope not. It was delicious.

The people put a bale of straw in our coop last week to block the wind and to give us something to play with. Yeah, that went well. It only took us 4 or 5 days to completely demolish it all over this coop. Honestly, did they think a silly bale of hay would hold up against us for longer than that?

My sister Lily is broody these days. That means she spends just about all day and night in one of the nesting boxes. The confusing part is that she does change boxes once in a while. When Audrey was broody she picked one box and stuck with it, but Lily is all over the place. Well, at least it keeps her from trying to eat me alive. I swear, I am glad I can't see the back of my neck in a mirror, since she pulled out all the feathers I had there. I do hope they grow back, because my neck is cold.

More later, Diary. I need to go lay an egg.
~Melanie

A Whole Lot of Frogging Going On

I've been doing lots of knitting and unknitting this winter. This post will cover the unknitting. I was going to write about the knitting, too, but writing about the unknitting bummed me out and I need to go do something positive to cheer myself up.

I have written about unknitting before. Last March, I ripped out a silk sweater that I had knit 6 or so years ago. It was the first time I had frogged an entire knitted garment like that, and I was surprised at how well it went. A good soaking got rid of the whole ramen-yarn effect. I did end up with a lot of small skeins, but they should be perfectly usable. As I explained last year, this sweater had been an epic fail in so many ways: the design was silly, it was not flattering for my body type, and the fit was horrible because I completely ignored gauge. This gorgeous yarn clearly wanted to be a shawlette or something like that.

It has been several months since this yarn's return to the stash, and I still don't have a plan for how to use it. But that didn't stop me from ruthlessly ripping out some more of my epic fails of the past. In fact, you could probably say that I got carried away.

I don't even want to think about how many months worth of knitting were undone in making the pile in the above picture.

Let's start with the worst and work our way up, shall we?

This was once a tunic style vest from Vogue Knitting. I have no picture of it. You'll have to take my word for it: it was very ugly. The design was questionable to begin with, but my execution was pretty crappy as well. Everything from yarn choice to my failure to finish the front properly resulted in an FO so bad that it had not seen the light of day since, oh, 2006? I had forced myself to wear it a few times, but when I realized that the weight of the yarn streched the armholes so much that I had to wear a shirt underneath to keep from giving everyone a clear view of my bra, that was pretty much the end for this garment.

This is a variegated ribbon/tape yarn made from 100% soy. It ripped out very easily. But I don't know what the heck to do with it! It's not like I was dying to have this yarn back in the stash. I got it from the sale bin at a store that went out of business years ago. I have since learned a couple things about sale bins at yarn stores. Yarn ends up in those bins generally for one of two reasons: (1) the store no longer has enough for you to be able to make what you really want with it, or (2) no one has any idea what to make with it, so it did not sell and now the store just wants to get rid of it. This yarn was in the bin for reason #2.

Catgirl wants me to "make something" for her with it. But what?

Does anyone remember this little number from 2008?

This is the only picture I have of it. I was so annoyed with it, I never did a "finished" picture of it. The lace is pretty, but the project ended up being incredibly small, even after blocking. Blocking only added a couple inches to it, but it never held the block anyway, shrinking bit by bit every day. I tried wearing it as a neck shawl with the ends tucked into the front of my coat, but it was not even a good enough size for that. Then I decided it would be a nice decoration for a table, and it has spent the last 2 years stretched over Nana's coffee table... and it was not long enough to reach the ends.

Now it looks like this.

The soaking and hanging softened the ramen factor, but it did not come out as well as the other things I have ripped. I managed to save about 80% of the yarn from the shawl, the end was too felted together and I had to cut a couple inches off. But what do I do with it now? It's not like I loved this yarn and was yearning to knit is again.

And now we come to piece de resistance:

This sweater was well made, with nice yarn--a great basic cardigan that I made at least 5 years ago. The yarn is Noro Silk Garden, an interesting silk/wool/mohair blend. Unfortunately, when I made this, I was not sure I would have enough yarn, so made it a little too short. Although I wore it a lot, I was never happy with the length. For the past couple years, I hadn't worn it because I was that unhappy with how short it was. It was very frustrating, because I loved the look of this yarn knit up in simple stockinette.

Under the influence of my crazy frogging frenzy, I got a crazy idea. What if I ripped it out and made a vest instead? The yarn reclaimed from the sleeves would help make the body of the garment long enough to make me happy. So I grabbed my scissors, and started pulling.

Now it's a pile of skeins, and I am an idiot.

This was, quite honestly, a huge mistake. First of all, this yarn has MOHAIR in it. What was I thinking? Ripping back mohair is a knitter's idea of torture. And secondly, I had forgotten how difficult this sweater had been to knit. There were several knots in the skeins, and sometimes the knots interrupted the long color runs so I had to cut and try a different skein to match it up. It's hard to rip when you have ends wound in among the stitches, so that caused lots of problems. And, because of all the breaks in the yarn, I now have a dozen little skeins of this yarn, but matching them up in the long color runs is going to be extremely difficult.

So what to do with all this "bounty"? I think I can see making it into some hats, maybe a cowl, maybe some mittens. I think it's only going to be any good for small projects like those. So much for my dreams of a long vest....

Old Man Winter is Having Way Too Much Fun

So this is what it looked like in our backyard yesterday. This was only 5 or 6 inches of snow. Easy-peasy, right? I mean, we must be getting used to this by now.

But that's easy for me to say, from the comfort of the couch in my cozy family room, with the fire burning and the new heating system cranking away. I wonder if I would feel the same way if I were a chicken and my home looked like this:

This is what it looked like out at the chicken coop, after I shoveled out the worst of the snow and spread some straw around for the ladies to play in.

Keep in mind that this henhouse, although it sports a nice solid roof and cute red paint, is little more than a wooden box on stilts. It's not heated. We placed it in a corner of the yard where we thought it would be protected from the worst of the weather, with the shed on one side and the woods and the berm of the creek on two other sides. I've hung a tarp to give them more protection from rain and snow, and I recently propped some boards against the bottom of the coop to give them an area protected from the harsh wind blowing across the backyard. But it's still darn cold out there. Even before we got this latest storm, the temperatures were very low, making for cold hard ground and a cold henhouse.

We've had some amusing moments this week, watching the girls trying to deal with the snow. They really don't like walking on it, we know that. I am very glad that I bought that bale of straw a few months ago. It was a monumental failure in the henhouse--the chickens hated it, and would not go in the nesting boxes when the straw was there--but it has been great for spreading on top of the snow. It's more pleasant for them to walk on than the snow, and digging in the straw gives them something to do.

This helps, because I think they are getting bored out of their tiny little minds out there in the coop. Every time one of us opens the door, they all come running and look out to see if we've gotten rid of all that troublesome and cold white stuff yet.

Occasionally, they will get desperate enough to venture a few steps onto the snow, and we have noticed that some of them are more daring in this regard than others. Daisy, for example, is much more willing to brave cold feet if it means a chance to walk around outside. Melanie is usually just a few steps behind her. The other three are less enthusiastic. In particular, Jackie is a complete and total coward, and she would much rather stay under the henhouse and call for everyone to come back and stay with her. It's ironic that the biggest of the hens is the most wimpy.

So far, they haven't cut back much on production. We still get 3 or 4 eggs a day, so they are doing their jobs.


With the cold, we've had trouble keeping their water from freezing. We have two bottles, so we change them out every few hours so that there is always one bottle with unfrozen water available for them. It's becoming a bit of a pain, though, so the other day I broke down and ordered an electrically heated water bowl. And a couple of days ago, I started bringing them a treat:

Multigrain hot cereal. This bowl has a generous sprinkling of flax seed, because my friend Elyse suggested it might help make their eggs more nutritious. Hey, I'll try anything. But would they?

Yep. They loved it.

If you'd told me a year ago that I'd be cooking for chickens, I am not sure I would have believed you.