If we were having coffee ... The end of January

 This type of blog post is for when I have a lot of little things I want to share, or when I feel the need to catch up. 

So, grab your coffee/beverage of your choice and join me. I'm currently drinking a hot chocolate with cinnamon. 

If we were having coffee ... I'd marvel at how fast January has moved. I've been in my head a lot this past month. I thought after the holidays were over I'd be able to take a break, catch a breath.  No. I feel busy, busy, busy. I'm not exactly sure what it is making me feel this way. 

Anywho, I blinked at here we are, at the end of the month. 

The month has been fairly mild, weather-wise, and I really appreciate that.  Just a handful of very cold days. I started writing this post on Friday evening, Jan. 29, I'm not sure when I'm going to finish it.  So, as of this paragraph I think I can safely say we are supposed to get snow this weekend. There hasn't been much snow this year, compared to last year.  Oh my gosh, I don't even want to think about last year.  It was daily snow movings and plowings. So. Much. Snow. Ugh. 

If we were having coffee ... I'd mention our wood splitting project.  We have knocked the pile down pretty good. I believe my husband said we have 30-some logs left. We aren't going as quickly as we did at the beginning. In fact, we still need to think of a place to put the last bit. It's not easy to scope out a spot now that snow is on the ground. 

Here I am in front of the wood stacks. I'm in awe of how much wood we've moved in the time since we got the load. 

I don't have any current photos of what is left to cut and split.  Saturday my husband cut up 17 logs, or so, and we have about that many left needing to be cut. 

If we were having coffee ... I'd talk reading, or the mostly lack thereof. I'm sort of mad at myself.  I said "Self, you are going to start up with books again." Very little reading has happened in the last year. And even less listening to audiobooks. Last week I picked out an audio book for my hubby and I (I think. I'm not actually sure who picked it out.) Defiance by C.J. Redwine

Dystopian book about a girl who's super brave, tough, can take care of herself, yadda, yadda.  More to it than that, of course.  The main character, Rachel, really bugs me with her "I'm so smart and clever and capable." Yet she gets herself in to bad situations. It's a type that just bugs me to bits. Not very clever, but thinks they are super smart. 

I'm at the tail end of the audiobook.  It finally got to where her behavior didn't bother me. Then I discovered the library doesn't have the rest of the trilogy in audiobooks.  I hate when that happens! 

I'm thinking I'll listen to "Revived" next. 

It sounds interesting. 

If we were having coffee ... I'd talk crafting.  Another thing that has not had much attention. My head is just not in the game, lately.  It wasn't until the end of the month that I started feeling the urge to do anything. 

At the end of last year I participated in the "Cozy Things" quilt along hosted by Pat Sloan.  I have the quilt top done and sandwiched.  Thursday I started cross hatching it. I don't know what took me so long to get going on it. I'm not ready to share a photo of it yet. 

I've been slowly working on my Halloween cross stitch. 

I was so happy when I finished the house.  Then I printed out the next part of the clue and was surprised that I wasn't done with the house.  I forgot there was a first floor.  I'm slowly chipping away at this project. 

I have a sock on the needles.  I started it so I'd have something to work on in the car. I haven't been going to many places, much less be a passenger. 

 I'm currently working on the heel.  The leg is a 1 x 1 ribbing. 

I did dust off my rigid heddle loom, and made myself some towels out of peaches and cream dishcloth cotton. 

This one was a mix of colorways. I think they look fun!

I made of the green ones two different sizes, by mistake.  I'm still learning tricks to measure the fabric as I go along.  

If we were having coffee ... I'd share that I've been daydreaming about springtime, gardening and seed starting.  I've been hitting the homestead and gardening youtube videos pretty hard. For as many videos I watched last year, I'm still learning things. With so many people getting into gardening this past year, I think that's driving the Youtube content to expand a little bit.  I've organized my seeds, saw what I had from last year, and I already purchased the seeds I want for this year.  I've also put my first order in to Baker Creek for Ghost and and Carolina Reaper pepper seeds. I'm super stoked to give those a try.  I'm debating on when I should seed start for them.  Maybe try one seed each and see what happens. 

I've got a calendar printed out and all my seed starting dates noted. As soon as I wrap up the quilt, I think I'll say farewell to the sewing machine for a bit and set up one of my seed starting stations.  Last year I started out sharing the whole seed starting journey and I went off the tracks.  Unexpected life things happening.  I'm thinking about giving it a try again. I realized I enjoy looking back at the photos and videos for the plants from last year. 

Which got me thinking about when I tried video podcasting and then almost right away Covid hit and I no longer had quiet time at home.  I can't remember what brought it up a while ago, but my son said something about my videos and I said I don't have anywhere to do it, and he said "You can close the door to your craft room." Yes, I suppose I could. ... I'm still thinking about it.  It took a lot for me to record that first video a few years ago.  Speaking of podcast videos.  Well, flosstube, my friend Leann started a flosstube and she's fun to listen to.  She gets so much done on her projects.

Okay, I realize I just blended to subjects together. 

If we were having coffee ... I'd let you know that all the animals are doing just fine.  Especially Miss Furby.  

She spends her days close to me, and she is so spoiled that when I'm not watching television, I leave it on for her, so she doesn't feel alone.  I feel bad that I still haven't told Furby's story, like I did Porkie's but I want her to have her own entry. Did I mention Furby lays an egg almost every day? She does!

The ladiess are starting to really crank out the eggs, which is great! We are starting to fill up the incubator so we can have chicks in about a month. 

Thor and Loki, and Shadow and Feffer are all doing well, too.  They are enjoying this mild weather. A little too much, maybe? Ha ha ha! 

Speaking of Porkie, I have some news that may bum some people out.  Some one took one of my Facebook posts about Porkie and sent it to the DNR. I got a talking to and was informed about what can and can't be done.  I'm hurt and upset that someone would do that, specially if it was someone on my Facebook friend  list.  Most likely it was someone in the "What do you see from your window" group. I keep reading the rules on feeding wildlife and know what I can and can't do.  Suffice to say, I won't post about Porkie on my social media anymore, unless it's like general update, like "he's still alive." It's a bummer because so many people enjoyed seeing his updates. Many people have contacted me and said seeing Porkie updates was a bright spot in the pandemic. I wrote a post to the group, to let his fans know why there would be no more updates and as of 1 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 30, it hasn't been approved.  My guess is the post will sit in limbo because someone taking groups posts outside of the group is probably against he spirit of the group and people would be more reluctant to share. I know I feel like my trust has been violated and I'll be even more wary about what I share on Facebook in general. 

The law is hard, but it is the law. I will respect it.  

Porkie, the humble internet star

 I have not shared about my little friend who lives in my woodpile. 

Back in April my husband and I spotted a porcupine in the back 20. We were out there taking down old trees and clearing an area. Something up in a tree caught my eye. Lo and behold, it was a porcupine.  It is the first one we've seen on our property and the second one I've seen in my life. 

Over the summer my husband saw him, off and on, when he would go out to the back of the property, checking out feed piles and making sure the trails were clear. I saw him on occasion, too. We were always mindful of him and gave him his space. My husband would stop and chat with him a little bit.

At some point during the fall this little fella decided to make his way up by the house. Back in October I was in my craft room, doing work for pay, and I heard a commotion going on just outside of the house. 

I went out to see what it was, thinking it was the chickens trying to find a new spot to take a dust bath. To my surprise it was the porcupine. He was a little tangled in my garden hose.  I think he was trying to climb up on the hose box and lost his footing. 

I called out to my son that there was a porcupine outside and he and went outside and spotted the porcupine waddling his way over to the garden area.  We spooked the poor little thing when we walked outside

After that we kept an eye open for him.  One day he was up by the house again and my son tossed some corn out to him.  The porcupine accepted the gift and decided we were good people.  

At some point - maybe just before this - he moved into our woodpile.  

Throughout the month of November he kept visiting around the house. He started out visiting in the backyard. 

One day I was washing dishes and spotted him on top of the rabbit hutch.  I was so surprised to see him there. 

He was going after the suet cakes on my shepherds hook that is right next to the rabbit hutch. 

We decided to give him some corn and fresh water.  He seemed very thankful. 

I was worried about him making his way back down off the top so we started giving him corn on the ground. 

He started showing up in the evening. We had to have a light on so we could take photos. By this time we started calling him Porkie. 

At some point he started making his way to the front of the house. 

And at some point he managed to wiggle his way in to the house for visits and dinner. 

That sweet little face! 

Furby is not too happy about having him in the house.  She wants to be an "only." 

Porkie's first visit in the house, he ate to his little heart's content and then went over by Furby and her tote, and fell asleep. Furby was NOT happy.

You can almost hear the "MOM! He's in my space!"

Furby can see a little bit.  She's got one good eye. She pays attention whenever Porkie is in the house. Heaven forbid he get close to her.  

He comes to the house about every other day, unless the weather is really bad. There's been only a few of those days. On the really cold days we worried about him and would go check on him.  He'd follow us back to the house.  Usually making happy little grunt sounds. 

He's got a lot of fans with the people I'm friends with on the book of faces. They look forward to seeing the videos and photos.  

I belong to a group called "What do you see from your window" It's really fun to see all the different photos from around the world. I've contributed a few photos of the area and a few videos of our sweet little Porkie. The videos of Porkie have gone over well. 

The group does have strict rules on what can be shared in there, so most of the videos of Porkie haven't been shared in the group, because they are interior videos. I've started loading videos of him to my YouTube channel. 

This past Friday Porkie came for a visit.  By this time he's figured out to come to the front door and tap on it and one of us will hear him and let him in. 

I heard the tap, tap, tap and went to the door and saw how adorable he looked that I decided to grab my phone and take a photo. 

Cute, right? 

I posted it to my Facebook feed and a lot of friends said how cute the photo was. I submitted it to the "What do you see from your window" group, sort of as an afterthought, thinking other people would get a kick out of it. 

It usually takes a while for submissions to be approved by the admins of the group.  A little while later I opened my app and my notifications were blowing up and constantly refreshing.  I didn't understand what was going on.  I thought people were still commenting on a video I had shared a few days prior. 

Nope. 

People were liking and commenting on the photo I shared of Porkie.  They were commenting and liking SO FAST that my app couldn't keep up.  I went to Facebook on my browser and it couldn't keep up either. 

In less than 20 minutes the photo had 3,000 likes and hundreds of comments.  By the time I went to bed, around 10:30 p.m., CST, the photo has been in the group for about 2 and a half hours and there was 13,000 likes and 2,100 comments.  

By the time I logged on the next morning there were 23,800 likes and 3,600 comments. 

I never dreamed that a photo of a porcupine would go viral. I'm still in awe when I think of how popular this photo became.  I still haven't been able to go through all the comments. Yes, comments are still trickling in. As of right now, 8:16 p.m. on Jan. 11, 2021 there are 37,000 likes and 6,000 comments. 

I think this sweet little guy was just what the doctor ordered, after the crazy week that was last week. A lot of people commented that Porkie was just what they needed to see, after what happened the day before, or that they were sick in bed and needed something "happy" to see, or they were having a low day, for various reasons, and seeing his little face gave them reason to smile. A lot of people tagged other people to come see him too. Another thing people commented on was his little paws.  

Can you blame them? Those are some seriously cute little paws.  When you hand feed him -- yes, you read that right, we hand feed him -- he grabs on to your fingers and it's so sweet that you instantly melt.  He has us wrapped around his finger. My sister-in-law came up for a visit and she was thrilled to meet him and be able to feed him and love on him as much as one can. 

One thing I haven't really talked about yet is Porkie's serious love of oats. We've offered him so many things to eat, including various fruits and seeds.  He turns away from it all.  He only wants oats. We hold out our hands and he comes sniffing, hoping for oats and turns away when he realizes our hands are empty. We looked up what porcupines eat and tried to find things that would be comparable to what he'd find in the wild. Right now he would be eating wood, bark and pine tree needles. 

Last night he showed up for his visit.  I snapped another photo of him before I let him in. 

We talked to him a little bit and said how we shared a photo of him on the internet and 37,ooo-plus people thought he was the cutest thing ever, and that he should have his own instagram, facebook page and tik tok.  He listened to what we said, while looking thoughtful.  He seemed pretty humbled by it all.  Then he gave us a look that we are pretty sure meant he was asking "Do you think they have any oats they would like to share?"