A sad start to the day

This morning my little White Cheeks passed away.  I had known for a while that something was wrong and she lasted longer than I thought she would.

Here she was as a baby. 

Here she was not to long ago.

That sweet little girl will be missed.

At work we had a staff meeting and there will be an office shuffle in the near future.  My coworker and I get to stay in our offices. I'm thankful I don't have to pack my office up.

Tonite I worked a few rows on my shawl. I haven't worked on it a few days.  I've been feeling a bit in a funk, thanks to the weather.

Daily 5 of things that made me happy today

1. I get to stay in my cozy little office.

2. My zucchini cake was a hit at work. 

3. No one had to cook for supper tonite.

4. The baby chicks are fast asleep. They were pretty active just a little bit ago.

5. Listening to audio books with my family.

Blizzard aftermath

We had lots of sun today.  It was great.  It counteracted the colder temps and the wind.

Just after 7:30 a.m.

After some morning time to myself after my son woke me up we hauled more split wood.  My guy had to clear out a bunch of snow and I had to move a few things over a bit.  It was a "light" day

When my DH was looking for something he noticed something seemed wrong with the garden shed.

It's not good and we have a casualty from the blizzard. The roof on the garden shed is collapsed.  It's bad.

What makes it so much *better* is that there is three to four feet of snow all around it.  While the boys were stacking wood I tried shoveling off the roof. 

I'm too short to shovel off the roof and I couldn't haul of ladder over there.  I had the great idea to use my son's sled to stand on and shovel the snow off the roof.  It worked.  The sled spread my weight out over the snow and I was up high enough to shovel.

When I stood up on the sled and took a look I knew there is now way to salvage this.

It had a LOT of snow up there.  Even with my DH clearing off the roof before the blizzard, this still collapsed.  Not sure what caused it.

Unfortunately this shed is going to take precedence over the wood stove now as we do have some things in storage in there that need to be protected.

This was after getting about half the snow off the roof.  It was crushed like a soda can. 

What really stinks is that these sheds are not cheap.  My DH has already started pricing out what it will cost to build something to replace this.

After morning chores I puttered around the house and we went out to Old Country Buffet for supper and stuffed ourselves silly.

When we came home I went out and hung with the chickens for a bit.  Elvis was chilling on my arm for a little while.  It feels like she's gaining some weight, which makes me happy.

It was also a good egg day. 

I got some spinning in tonite.  I finished off a bobbin and now have two to ply the next time I sit down at the wheel. I practiced my longdraw a bit tonite.

More knitting happened once my spinning was done

I moved my shawl to a bigger circ so I could spread it out a bit when taking photos. Things are cranking along on it. I can't wait to see this finished and blocked.

 Daily 5 of things that made me happy today

1. The babies have entered the ugly duckling phase.  They are now half feathers and half down.

2. This song, I haven't heard it in quite a while.  "Just Breath"

3. We collected a major amount of watts with the solar panels today.  More than 900 watts at times. 

4. The clean smell of oranges. 

5. Homemade hot chocolate. 

Snow, ... snow ... and more snow on the way

It snowed for most of the day. I left work a bit early because I got a weather advisory message that visibility would be poor. Today's snow is just the first of two bands that are supposed to go through the area this week.  I told my coworker this morning that I really hope we don't have another May blizzard this year. 

I could see fine, but the roads were a bit iffy.

I got lucky, not much traffic.

Trees were pretty. Almost looked like December. Not that I want it to be December again ...

I passed to people on snowmobiles.  They managed to catch up to me and pass me.

This morning I used my bread maker, on delay, to have bun dough ready for me when I got home.  Since my man got home earlier than me he reset it so that the dough was ready sooner. I'm definitely using the timer on the bread maker again.  That worked out slick.

The evening was spent watching the Olympics and working on my knitting.

Progress has been made.

It still looks like a blob but now there is interesting texture.

I am now up to 159 stitches across. It will finish at 355 stitches. 

It felt good to get some progress done on it.

And  you know I can't let this end with out a pic of the babies.

They are growing and thriving.  I hear them chasing each other and taking dust baths. 

 Daily 5 of things that made me happy today

 

1. No negative temps today.  

 

2. Fun conversations with my coworker. 

 

3. Watching the Olympics and knitting -- oh and seeing Holcombe medal in two-man bobsled.

 

4. Fingerless mitts. 

 

5. This video: http://www.godvine.com/One-Cat-Tries-to-Apologize-to-Another-and-the-Result-is-Hilarious-4735.html

Beautiful skies and road trips

Here's the sunrise at about 7:30 a.m. today.  I used instagram to give this photo a pretty effect.  The sun shining showing through the trees was pretty spectacular.



Then about 9 a.m. this was the sky in the front of the house. A very beautiful and vivid blue.

More wood was split and hauled this a.m. It was a smaller haul so it took no time at all to split.  Today we used the truck to haul the wood from the garage to storage and and it took three trips and we were all done by 11 a.m.  Woo hoo!

Soooo, since we got the wood taken care of so early we decided to head to Rice Lake for some grocery shopping.

On the way back I thought to take some photos.  This was just outside of Rice Lake.  Same beautiful clear sky. 

Here's by Spooner. There is usually train cars somewhere along the stretch of highway that goes past the town.

This is just outside of Minong.

For anyone that eats Jack Link's jerky, here is it, on the hoof.  That's a herd of cattle on the hillside.

After we got back and since the temps were still pretty decent I went out to the coop and mucked out what I could.  I think the chickens didn't know what to make out of it.  It's been a while since I've been able to clean in there.  I also got it so that the door can be opened all the way. 

"Thanks for the clean digs!"

This was also a great time to "exchange the air" in the coop.  Chickens didn't seem to happy about cold air in there. They started flying up to the roost and I didn't dare try to clean out the nesting boxes.  One of them would be sure to drop a bomb on me.  So I went and got some scratch for them.

They dropped off the roost pretty fast.  The Wynadotte dive bombed the food bucket. Another landed on another chicken.  Brewster was so excited  that I couldn't get a decent photo of him. He was clucking and preening as if he had slayed the bag and filled the pan himself. 

My sweet little Elvis is currently sitting at the bottom of the pecking order. So she was scared to join the food orgy.  I grabbed a handful and gave it to her while she was sitting on the nesting boxes.  She weighs hardly anything so I don't want her to lose any more weight.

 

 I did see Elvis go after White Cheeks today. It was pretty aggressive, too. Considering how aggressive it was I'm wondering what's up.  While Elvis was eating she was making her mom cluck sounds.  I wonder if she thinks White Cheeks did something with her babies.

I told my DH that we need to keep an eye on White Cheeks.  She was acting a bit off while I was in the coop.  Walking away from the group, staring at corners and for a while she was just sitting in the middle of the floor.  Stuff that I don't consider to be normal.

The babies were pretty chill today. Yesterday my guy noticed that Grandma P *does* have feathers on her feet. Once he mentioned that I noticed that one of the babies has legs that are more off to the side like Grandma P than right under the body. 

I tried to adjust the color on this photo.  Since they are under a red light, it really messes with the images. 

See how chill they are? 

A couple hours ago they did have a rousing game of chase the one that has a crumb of food.  Good times, good times. 

No knitting today. No time. I've already accepted that I'm *not* going to get this project done during the Olympics.  I will just keep plunking away on it until it's complete.  Though ... if we do get the plethora of snow that is being promised this week, I make have some "bonus" time at home. 

 Daily 5 of things that made me happy today

 

1. Finishing wood chores early today. 

 

2. Seeing the babies chase each other. 

 

3. A clean, sweet smelling coop.  

 

4. How beautiful the sky was today. 

 

5. Dr. Teal's Sooth and Sleep bubble bath. 

Crocheting during the Olympics

This year I picked a crochet project.  I have wicked newbie skills when it comes to crochet. Basically I know the basic single, double crochet and triple crochet stitches and that's about it.    I picked the "Blossomy" scarf. I decided to really push myself and expand my horizons. 

I haven't learned to read crochet patterns all that well yet so I misinterpreted a few things and didn't look for clarification always and this scarf is uniquely my own.  While I was making the second medallion I worked the last few rows with the wrong size hook.  One that was teeny tiny, like 1.0 m.m.  How I didn't catch that while I was working the project is beyond me.  Thankfully, crochet is forgiving and I was able to bring it back to where I needed it and I started working it with the correct hook again.

I'm very happy with how this turned out.  It's almost a shame that it's still summer and too warm to wear scarfs. I enjoyed the pattern very much. It's well-written and the different stitches are explained.  I can definitely see myself making more of these in the future.  

Pattern: "Blossomy"

Yarn: MadelineTosh in the "Iris" colorway

Hook size: U.S. size G/4 m.m.

I didn't finish this before the closing ceremonies. Life got too busy so the first week I barely touched it.