In Which We Get The Entirety Of Winter, In Three Days

The day before Christmas we got a pretty fair snowstorm, it laid down around four to six inches of snow.

Most of it on our cars, of course...

Later on that day, things took a turn for the weird as the wind kicked back up again, blowing shrieking gusts that blew the snow around like a scene straight out of National Geographic show on Antarctica.

I stuck my head out just long enough to snap a couple of pictures, hollering, 'Ow, ow, OW!' as tiny ice pellets peppered my face. So ridiculously painful that I couldn't help but laugh.

The neighbor's house had a cool, wavy drift on the right hand side of the roof...

Before the entire house almost disappeared under a windy onslaught.

But how are things in the chicken yard, I hear you ask--how do the chickens feel about this weaponized snow?

I dunno, 'cause I ain't goin' out there!

We know when Mother Nature has won, and wisely decide to stay in the house and admire the sparkly tree.

The kid put her snowbound time to good use by constructing the gingerbread house kit we'd gotten her.

 

Don't all gingerbread houses feature a crime scene?

 

She says the other penguin committed the murder, but that house is looking awfully angry...and has a biblically-correct angel hiding up under the eaves.

'Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house...

Came the sound of two parents hauling a truly gigantic Yamaha keyboard out to the living room!

Pardon the murky pics, I took these in the dark.

 

But at last, Christmas came!

I got the husband these two pins from Roamin Bison Workshop on Etsy, and they are GORGEOUS.

 

He got me two novels by John Scalzi--although 'The Kaiju Preservation Society' is a preorder, gonna have to wait on that one...and I'm gonna have to wait on 'Redshirts' as well, since I'm 1/3 of the way through 'Going Postal' by Terry Pratchett right now. Bonus pic of the Effin Birds coffee cup I got last year.

I also got some nifty pins and stickers! A geometric dragonfly (which fits in nicely with the origami I make) by Mary Capaldi, along with a cute cicada sticker. The 'Chaotic Good' pin is from Look Human and I can't wait to wear it.

And then there's this wonderful brass spider hair fork from Bronze Smith on Etsy.

All the way from Wales, the kid got this jaw-droppingly cool Mari Lwyd coloring book from Skulls And Sheets.

 

Bonus envelope art, yay!

A can't decide which page I like best!

And lastly, I forgot to get a pic, but I got the kid this great, 'Be Crow Do Crimes' patch, also from Roamin Bison...because everyone needs a patch depicting a knife-wielding corvid, don't they?

So now, three days later, we've got another snowstorm moving in, which is supposed to dump anywhere from three to seven inches of fresh snow on top of the stuff that is still layin' around from the other day.

Looks like an excellent time to stay inside, make cookies and remark, 'Isn't that pretty!'

Chicken Bomb

 Oh...terrific. Pele, one of two hens in the house right now due to all the wildfire smoke, has decided that now, yes--NOW is the perfect time to molt. Pele has a congenital respiratory issue that causes her to wheeze very badly when it gets smoky like this, so for the time being she's in the house, occupying one of our bathrooms. The other hen is 9 year old, mostly blind Wiggles--the rooboys have decided that she is a GILF and have been after her too much, so she's keeping Pele company. This super-heavy smoke is expected to last at least another week, lucky us.

So here's what we woke up to this morning, which prompted a loud, involuntary 'Oh, God!' from me...feathers creeping out into the hallway.

Pele has chosen her spot (as humans we have -zero- say in this, the chicken will simply return to the chosen spot again and again like some sort of weirdo farmer's perpetual motion thing the minute your back is turned), up on the counter so she can admire herself in the mirror--chickens love gazing at themselves. So more feathers adorn the countertop.

The rest of the bathroom is beginning to swim in feathers, all we can do is clean them up and wait for the inevitable Pele-bomb to come...because Pele is one of those chickens who only indulges in a HARD molt--we're talking uber-creepy, naked chicken here.

Going by what she's done in the past, this is what we'll have to look forward to in a week or so:

YEAH--can't wait.

Hey, A New Project!

This time it's a crocheted afghan from a kit, the Northern Lights afghan from Herrschner's. The yarn is nothing fancy--not spun from the hair of female French goats fed exclusively imported grasses from the foothills of Bordeaux, and then dyed using only organic nuts and berries, or anything like that... It's just your basic, 2 ply acrylic afghan yarn.

But it's pretty!

Anyone who does any kind of fibercraft, knows that making something from a kit is like cooking from a recipe...usually you can't resist making changes. I wasn't especially thrilled with the pattern that came with the kit, so I went with a basic ripple pattern, and also made it wider & longer than the 40 x 53 the kit calls for...which means I'll have to order extra yarn, since these kits are notorious for giving you just enough yarn, and no more.

The nice part about crocheting an afghan in winter, is that it keeps you warm as you make it!

Drawbacks, though? Yes, please!
Since you work with two skeins of yarn at a time, and switch colors every two rows, you have to pay *close* attention to the color changes, working in the new yarn at the correct spots. Also, I'd like to throttle whoever is working the machines that make the yarn skeins--every single skein had lots of places where the yarn had been cut and tied back together, and they all had some pretty serious tangles, as well. I had many opportunities to practice finding my zen while spending loads of time untangling yarn.

Outside of that, it's a fun kit that works up fast, and the frequent color changes keep you from getting bored.
I love the colors, my daughter says it looks like green hills, with the ocean and a sunset.
I have to agree!

Applesauce & Anniversaries

In our travels the other day we ran across a neigborhood sign...'Free Apples'. Cue Bat-Turn onto the street to follow the signs!

The man handing out the apples had two trees that had produced a truly gargantuan number of apples, he had them in large brown grocery bags lining his driveway--Red and Yellow Delicious varieties. Most were smaller because he said he hadn't gotten to thinning the fruit off the trees that year (been there, done that), and combined with a bumper crop year he was anxious to get rid of the things while they were still good.

After we got done petting his cool old Basset mix dog and visiting with him, we bagged up a bunch in exchange for a promise of more bags (he had run out and still had a ton of apples to bag up) and some eggs from our hens. So we trucked home the apples and ran back over with the eggs and bags...

Next was to set to work making applesauce! It came out great--I peeled and cored the apples and popped them into the slow cooker for about 6 hours with a few spices and a bit of vanilla. The house smelled wonderful! We kept some of the finished products out to eat and froze the rest of it, applesauce is terrific for adding to cookie dough to sweeten and moisten it. Yay for neighbors who share their windfalls!


Also this week was the 20th anniversary with that darling husband of mine, double yay! I wanted something a bit special and unique for an anniversay gift this year (anyone who hangs with me for that long deserves a prize) so the kid and I went shopping and found ourselves at Cheshire Antiques, a cool multi-seller antique shop here in town. After wandering around the store a bit I got an idea--to create a '20' out of various objects, kind a build-it-yourself 20th anniversary gift!

I scavenged a large number '2', a road sign number set with reflectors...but could find nothing to serve as a '0'. The staff pitched in to help me--the store has a second story that I cannot access since I can't climb stairs due to chronic gimpiness. Two employees went up there and one of the ladies came back down with several objects and I settled on a HEAVY glass and brass porthole cover.

Great, I've got my 20!  Hmmm, now for something to mount it on...a bit more prowling and I discovered a box full of fruit crate end pieces, including one with a 'Pure Gold' paper label on it--perfect! To top it all off I had a gift certificate in my purse that I'd been hauling around for about 5 years--in the past everything I've wanted at Chesire has been either $4 or $400 so the certificate had gone unused. Today was it's day to shine, and I ended up paying 35 cents out of pocket. Thanking the store staff for their awesome service we left.

Now off to Meek's hardware store, also here in town, to put it all together! Luckily the number 2 and the porthole cover already had perfect mounting holes in them, I figured if I bought the hardware, the folks at the store might be kind enough to drill a couple of holes in the fruit crate box end so that I could take the parts home and assemble them. Figuring out the hardware we needed was a bit tricky since the '2' was MUCH thinner than the '0' so would require shorter bolts. And the brass-and-glass porthole cover for the '0' was MUCH heavier so would need beefier hardware to hold it on...The kid and I were standing in front of Meek's wall 'o hardware bits juggling parts when one of the employees happened by and asked if we needed help...boy did we ever! I knew what I wanted but couldn't reach some of the stuff--their display had been designed for people taller than I so OF COURSE I couldn't see the exact parts I needed...ain't that always the way?

It was a slow time for the store, so by now several employees had appeared. One of the guys kind of took over the project and hauled all my stuff to the front of the store where he spread everything out on a worktable so we could assemble everything. I'd asked if they could just drill three holes for me, but the guy ended up actually building my 20th anniversary gift to completion! Once they started and ran back and forth getting the right hardware they got so enthused I didn't have the heart to stop them, they got so into it...plus they know their products best so I went with their recommendations. They even had lovely brass hardware to match the porthole cover! The Meek's folks were so kind, I explained that because my hands were messed up I couldn't hold a drill any more so they just charged me a few bucks for the hardware--small towns are wonderful!

But damn if between all of us if it didn't work out, go together in the end and turn out AWESOME!
And here's the finished gift!

It was just one of those times where fate smiled on me, people I didn't even know went above and beyond the call pitched in to help me and everything just kind of weirdly fell together.
J. likes it, now to hang it on the wall!

Club Flamingo Gets A Makeover!

So the other day I drug out and dusted off all of our Chickam supplies.

When I got to the flamingo lamp, our go-to traditional baby chick keeper-warmer and pseudomama...well, let's just say that the last 38 or so years have not been kind to it.

 Yeah...YIKES. My favorite part is the burn-yer-house-down spliced wiring.

It's current state is entirely my fault. I originally bought this delightfully gaudy thing around 1980, and it sat proudly on my desk for many years as a desk lamp. It's attributed to George Kovacs as its maker, and I recall when I bought it at Lamps Plus or someplace similar, it was part of a collection of other animal-head deck lamps. Well, one day the ceramic flamingo head shade suffered a catastrophic incident and got broken into a dozen pieces.

Heartbreaking.  Oh well, that's why epoxy exists...Sadly, the gap in the shade where the initial impact powdered the ceramic proved too annoying to work with while writing, and the flamingo lamp was banished to the garage, where it became a servicable lamp for my work bench. Eventually the plastic cover on the gooseneck also crumbled and my husband replaced it with a length of heavy-duty plastic tubing he had handy. Not pretty, but servicable.

And there it stayed until 1998 or so, when we ran our first baby chick hatch without a broody hen for a mama--and I realized that the battered ol' flamingo lamp, with it's adjustable gooseneck and who-cares-if-it-gets-pooped-on style, was perfect for keeping baby chicks warm.  Not to mention it was also perfectly hilarious.

Once we created Chickam and started webcasting the hatch and subsequent 8 weeks of the chick's lives, Chickam fans found the flamingo lamp entertaining and dubbed the chick box 'Club Flamingo'.

It wasn't long before Chickam fans started creating fanart...

So yeah--the flamingo lamp was lookin' beat, I knew it was time to revamp it!

And presto--a few days later (and a heaping helping of cussing when the new wiring proved to be just the teensiest bit too thick to willing go through the metal gooseneck and had to brute-forced into cooperating), Club Flamingo lives again!

Sadly, nothing could be done about the various chips and cracks in the flamingo head, but overall the flamingo lamp just looks heaps better! Not to mention not such a scary fire hazard...

No. 22 In The Series, 'Things You Do NOT Want To Touch'

Apparantly, 'Fall' to our chickens sounds a klaxon that screams, MOLT NOW! MOLT NOW! MOLT NOW!

The chicken yard is awash in feathers, and while most of the birds are --eh, kinda molting--while others refuse to...

Some take things way too far.

Tonight I went out to pass out some goodies and nearly screamed at Cluckadorkle--normally a fairly fluffy girl.

Yeah, right now she's a beige pincushion.

Then there's Pele, who molts heavily every single year.

She's working on her usual: molting out white feathers and growing in lavender ones.

When she realized I was taking pictures she ran and hid behind Milton.

Then there's nearly 10 year old Beauty, whom I swear has NEVER molted. Her feathers wouldn't dare fall out.

Although she looks pretty irritated to have everyone's molted feathers stuck to her feet like the rest of the chickens do...

New Origami Models!

I was inspired by the Stewart Indian Pow Wow we attended lately to make some new models.  I also got out my white paint to add little pointillist accents, just for fun. First, feathers!

There were actually more of these using various kinds of paper, but I neglected to get picks of them.  This model needs more practice as the little fussy folds are tough for my crappy hands, but I'll work on it. I'm also going to try other feather models.

Next, some dreamcatcher-ish modular models I came up with. I fiddled with this one when creating it, the fun part of modular unit models like this is that if you change the individual unit a bit, you get a different look.  In addition to the white paint I also hauled out some of my little doily hole punches. 

So here is the double layer 'Flower' version...

...and the single layer 'Starfish' version, both front & back sides.

 These will all be finished with ornamentation to become hanging models.

Then there's this slightly bigger one, with the cut-outs on a different edge.

 Still having fun mixing & matching different models to come up with new things...I've got an idea flitting around in my head for a peacock using a few units of these models along with another model!

Spring And Poultry...

Some of my new landscaping has shaken off Winter it seems...

Especially the Cameo Scarlet Quince!

Pretty little things!

Meanwhile, the annual Shearing Of The Chicken Dignity has swooped down upon the chickens.  Dirty looks abound.

They actually got off light this year as I've honed my chicken butt shearing technique and they don't look *quite* like they've been attacked by a rabid blind woman with hedge shears.

But hey, we have fertile eggs!

Jellybean isn't convinced I'm done however, and keeps her butt firmly up against the wire to ward off further indignities.

...and gives me some fierce 100 proof Kraienkoppe Chicken Glare to seal the deal.

Meanwhile, Fran and Silver, two of the 14 year old ladies who don't have to worry about such things any more, dustbathe in the sun...

...while for mysterious reasons known only to her, Tingle stands there fascinated with her foot.

Hopefully broodiness is ramping up for Chickam.  Here, Bubbles attains Chicken Zen and practices her 1000 yard stare.

But Pie remains skeptical of the golf ball Broody Boosters.

In the end, the golf balls were carefully and dutifully tucked under themselves by each hen and happily sat upon.