Just like that ... it's done

Summer that is.

Well, not really, it just feels like it.

Last week was the final week of day camp for my son. The open house for school was on Thursday.  He will have his first school day next Tuesday. 

I'm going to miss having him with me on my morning and afternoon commutes. He usually read during the drive and anything he found funny in the books he would read out loud to me.

I've heard the same thing from a lot of people: "The summer is going too fast."  It did this year.

The last month and a half has been full of chicken wrangling, processing, drought, then LOTS of rain, humidity and sudden cool weather.

This guy gobbled for the first time last week.  It was so unexpected that it didn't compute at first.  Then he did it again. He is such a sweetheart and very good with the other chickens.  Whenever he hears one give a distressed call he immediately goes running to see how he can help.  He runs so gangly, it's comical. 

The other day, shortly after I let the big girls out of the coop, they decided to sun themselves a bit. I'll never get tired of seeing how goofy they look sprawled out, with a leg jutted out and a wing up in the air. 

A little bit of crafting has been done.  Nothing much worth sharing.  I've been practicing shuttle tatting.  I'm not very good at it.  The piece I was working on got tossed into the garbage after I made a huge error.  I've been knitting a pair of vanilla socks with afterthought heels. Not very exciting.

At the beginning of August I finally admitted defeat when I developed runners knee.  Yes, you read that right.  I had been running all summer up until August.  I did something different at the beginning of the month (still no idea what I did) and as a result I can't run until it heals up. Which is a bummer because I finally worked up the nerve to sign up for a 5K with my son.  My son will still run it and I will walk it. He is really excited to run his first 5k.  The 5K is set for mid-September.

To keep me going all winter my DH got me a new elliptical machine.   It kicks my butt on a daily basis right now.  I rested for about a week before using it.  I've gradually built my time up and now I'm going 30 minutes on it, each day.  Books help me a lot when I'm on the machine.  I don't stare at the timer.  My brain doesn't wander and fret about how tired I feel or focus on how much time I have left.  I do prop the iPad up and watch the occasional show but usually I have a kindle book going.

There has been no bit announcement at work about someone being appointed to our diocese. It will be a year come November. My coworkers and I figure there will be no appointments until October at the earliest. Now that I think about it, I'm not sure I even wrote that our bishop was appointed to a different diocese. He was. We've been whooping it up since then.  No, not really. We've been staying the course and keeping things running smoothly.  It only feels like we've been whooping it up because there seems to have been an awful lot of luncheons and office get-togethers in the last year. 

I'm making a mental list of all the stuff I want to get started, get done, or what I'd like to do this coming month. Not sure if I'll get it all done, but it is nice to have goals.

Hibernation

All quiet on this front.  Why?  Because there hasn't been much going on.  My area got a bit of a cold snap, though nothing like last year.

Things have settled down since the holiday season. Well, the boys were sick at the end of January but nothing that lasted days and days.  Just days.

Since there has been no projects going on I have been hanging around the woodstove when it's running. 

It's hard to NOT want to sit in front of it and be cozy.

The girls are still producing eggs.  Production has slowed slightly. We've had two broody girls and we lost a few girls this winter.

The roos are feeling just fine and dandy.  They are all trying to show off and impress the ladies.  I don't think the ladies are impressed much. The orange homegrown roo still gets his butt handed to him on occasion. 

In the evenings I've been doing some crafting still.  Though I'm not producing much.

These poor socks still have no heels.

Meanwhile, I've started another pair of socks.  One has a heel and I'm almost done with the second one. 

I did finish my shawl. I am so pleased with it.  I wear it around the house when there is just a bit of chill in the air.

I've made this shawl several times.  This was the first time I did the crochet edging.  I'm so happy with how it turned out.

I'm slowly getting comfortable with the tatting. This cross is my first "big project." I haven't blocked it or anything yet.  I'm don't know how tatting should be handled once it's done.  Not too bad for a first project and I had to interpret the instructions a bit.  I know I made mistakes in it but I don't care.

I decided to make a little flower with beads.  I added a jump ring so it could be worn on a necklace. 

My current project is the "Amusement" pattern.  I'm needle tatting it and it's been a slow process. I'm just starting row three of four. I like how bright the colors are.

I've been practicing a bit with the tatting shuttles and I'm getting the hang of it.  A little bit.  There is still a bunch I need to learn but I think I've got the basics down.

Other than that  I've been daydreaming a bit of warmer weather, weekend fishing trips, baby chicks and starting the garden.

I can feel the sun's rays are stronger. I'm feeling the first stirrings of spring fever. It will hit me hard next month when the temps, hopefully, start hitting the 30s F.

Threads that bind (and all that good stuff)

Today at work I was chatting with one of the gals in the work building. Turns out she's been doing some knitting.  More recently, she went through the yarn she inherited from her mom and she's got a decent-sized stash.

When she was going through UFOs she remembered one thing in particular and went looking for it. She found it, and also found some handspun yarn that had been made by her aunt (I believe) and it was made back in the 1970s. 

Here it is 2015 and she is now using that handspun to make socks for her sister.  How cool is that?  I can't think of too many crafty things that can span across time and generations like that. I'm so excited for her and I hope she brings the finished object in so I can see the socks.

I mentioned to a few friends today how I decided to order a few piano lesson books for my son.  He got a keyboard from his aunt and uncle.  I may have mentioned this already. Anywho, he's been slowly learning to play songs *but* he doesn't have any proper books to learn from.  Last night he decided he wanted music from the Forrest Gump soundtrack.  Specifically, this one.

We have found music but it may be a bit above him.  He's slowly figuring out the first few lines of the song, however. But that's mostly from listening and picking out the notes. I don't know how he does it but he can.

I also told my friends how my son was getting frustrated because he's been waiting quite a while for the second level of recorder karate from the school.  Something's going on with the supplier, I think.  No one in the school has it.

He comes home with this today.  It's a preview because the books, or whatever the kids are getting, isn't ready yet.

He's already working on the Wedding March and he might have it memorized already. He was thrilled to see that Jingle Bells is included.  He already knows it and can play it on both the recorder and keyboard.

After work I drove over to Duluth to do a pick up at Acme Tools.  Since I was over that way I decided to head up to Hobby Lobby and get myself some new tatting thread.

This is the thread I have been practicing with.  Found out today it is #3 crochet thread.  Wow. I thought it was #10.  I don't know where I got that number from. 

This color is "water lily" and is #10 thread. What a difference between the two. I got to use a finer needle when I practiced with it tonite.

I'm feeling a wee bit proud of myself. I made this butterfly tonite. From a pattern.

It's a bit wonky and I have no idea what to do with it, but I did it.  I figured out a written pattern.

I spent time on my lunch hour looking up tatting patterns.  The majority of what I found called for tatting shuttles and/or beading.  I'm still not ready for shuttles.  I'm pretty sure the patterns are interchangeable. I haven't learned how to place beads yet.

Weekend doings

Weather was somewhat decent this weekend. It's almost a shame we didn't have any pressing outside projects that needed to be done. 

Almost.

*Ahem.*

I took advantage of the slightly warmer temps and did some chicken chores out in the chicken shack.  Shoveled out under the roosts, add more pine shavings to the floor, etc. I did this all while being shadowed by CeeVee.  She hangs out right next to me when I'm in there.  She wants to be near humans but not actually handled are anything. 

When any of us go out to the chicken shack the chickens always come running because they have certain expectations of the humans having food. 

I went out there with a bowl full of cooked vegetables and dumped it out on their tray.  Then I set the bowl up on the nesting boxes and started my work.  

I noticed Miss. Greedy-Gut, the Wynadotte, had jumped to the top of the nesting boxes and had her head in the bowl. 

When it was determined that the bowl no longer had food in it, she decided to hop into the half-bale of pine shavings I had stored up there.  She scratched around it for a bit and then hopped out. 

When we hauled feed in to fill up the buckets a few of the ladies came running over.  I suppose they expected we were filling up the chicken scratch bucket.  

The ladies hung around a bit because they were so sure we were going to give them scratch.

This is one of our homegrown roos.  He is so pretty.  The bird in the back with the reddish neck is also a homegrown roo. He's got Americauna genes.  He's pretty in his own way as well.

Miss Elvis is broody, *again.*

In the nesting box next to her Grandma's baby has taken up residence.  She's broody too.  She's not quite as crabby as Elvis.

And in other news ...

Seeds are for sale at the local Menard*s.

It was a fairly quiet weekend otherwise. I did some knitting and spinning. I'm still trying to wrap my mind around tatting.  I've been watching videos here and there.  So far I'm finding more videos for shuttle tatting than needle tatting. A video series was recommended to me but the gal is Italian and there are 40-some videos in her how-to series.  Needle tatting is already feeling familiar and comfortable to me.  Shuttle tatting is looking intimidating now.  What I need to do is work through a pattern on my own.

A crappy thing happened on the way to work

It was a bit of a rough morning at the homestead. My son told me earlier in the week that he had been picked to participate in the school's spelling bee.  He said he didn't want to participate but got picked because of a "fluke." If I understand correctly, four students from each class were chosen to advance to this level of the spelling bee. 

Anywho, he *really* didn't want to do it. There was a little gnashing of teeth and maybe a few tears, mixed with a whole lot of "I don't wanna."

I promised him I'd pick him up something special today.  He was appeased slightly. 

Off I went to work.  I was cruising along on the highway when I saw something brown-reddish out of the corner of my right eye.  I glanced over just in time to see a bird the size of a chicken fly into the passenger window of my car. 

Not cool!

Never in my driving career has a bird decided to fly into my car like that. Ugh.

When I got to work I inspected the impact area. To my relief there was no damage.

And then I shifted myself and looked at my side mirror.  Oh-em-gee! The whole outer shell of my mirror is gone.

 When I took a second look at the mirror when I was in my car I realized the whole thing has shifted some how.  I haven't tried to adjust the mirror yet and I can't see if the defrost works. 

Grrrr.

I spent most of the day fretting over the potential cost of  having to replace the mirror. Because, the more I thought about this, I figured I would most likely have to replace the whole thing.

Fortunately my guy has good google-fu when it comes to finding deals.  He was able to find a replacement part for much less than I thought it would be. There is a youtube video where someone explains how to replace the mirror. Fingers crossed for me please.

Work was fairly quiet. I made myself go out at lunch time and the sun was out.  The temps were over 30 degrees F and the snow was a bit melty.  If I didn't know better I would have sworn it was spring time.

The special goody I got my son?  A brownie box mix. He was a happy camper when I pulled the brownies out of the oven.  I had only a small nibble.

 My son told me tonite that he didn't make it all the way through the spelling bee.  He got flubbed up on the word "truffle." I'm proud of him.

A few days ago I started my shawl. I'm four repeats into a 10 repeat pattern.

I've tried doing a little bit more tatting but I haven't been successful with anything yet. The pieces haven't turned out right or something weird happened while I was pulling the thread through the stitches. 

I'm feeling very TGIF-y for tomorrow.

New hobby (I told you, I collect them)

I'm not doing so great with the writing this month.  I'm still trying to get back into routine and it hasn't been easy after having so much time off of work and school. It's a weak excuse but it is the truth.

Last Wednesday we had our first no school day due to the cold temperatures. Thankfully the day was my work-at-home day. It made for an interesting time.  I'm so thankful my son knows how to entertain himself.

I'm finally on a week where I don't have to worry about getting stuff ready for the following publishing Monday.  Gives me a chance to catch up on a few things and have grand delusions of long range plans.

Some knitting has been accomplished.

My stripey socks are almost done. All that is needed are the afterthought heels.  I'm going to let these marinate for a bit before I wrap them up.

I think the next thing I pop on the needles will be a shawl. Not a complicated one.  Something made from LionBrand homespun yarn.  I *heart* that yarn for big comfy shawls.

This week I decided to try my hand at tatting.  Yes, you read that right. Even though I told myself "oh no, I won't get into tatting," I did.  A few months ago I purchased the necessary tools. A few shuttles and a set of tatting needles.  Someone suggested to me that I try needle tatting first. 

I scoured the interwebs and got a pretty good idea on how to do the stitching.  It's the joining of the chains and circles which has me a bit frustrated. A few websites were suggested to me, as well.

Last night I found this youtube video.  I liked how clear and even paced the video was. But I wanted to *make* something.

I settled on following the tutorial by TotusMel over on Instructables. I couldn't quite follow the instructions and the video went too fast and had no sound.  I did find out that she loaded the same video with audio and I followed it while I made the project. 

After a few false starts I got something.

Woo hoo!  I think it's pretty great for a first project. 

Yesterday I stopped at the store and picked myself up a little case for carrying around any tatting projects I might be working on.

Many years ago I got a gift from a friend in a cool gift box.  I've been holding onto the box.  The tatting tools I'm not using will go in it. 

I haven't read any more of Wine of Violence (Medieval Mystery) because I got Cat Trick (A Magical Cats Mystery) from the library. I got Scrap-N-Craft mystery for my kindle from the library.  I'm a glutton for punishment when it comes to books.

Weather people are assuring us that temperatures will hit the 30s F by the weekend. Right now it's cold and windy.

Our little Elvis is going broody again. She's starting to guard the fake egg with a vengeance. 

I didn't realize until today that we have four roos.  It sort of slapped me in the face when I saw them this afternoon.

Hens are doing all right.  We are getting 10-12 eggs a day. We've developed a taste for hard-boiled eggs on our salads.