May Dusk

We are currently growing artichokes; they're small but tasty.

Today I let the girls in the garden right before their bedtime.

 Below is a picture of looking up a hollyhock plant. Something's eating the leaves, but it has created a nice silhouette.

 The chickens love going under all the leaves

The chickens love going under all the leaves

Does anyone else's chicken sometimes lay down to eat things?

 ^Afro puff and  vfluffing her feathers

 Time for one last dip in the food bucket before heading to the coop. I love the rosy light on the girls.

March Trio

First I'll start off with some night shots I took while playing with my dog. I'd like to experiment more with photos at night time!

^^ I think she looks like Zero in this one ^^

I dyed some yarn with old pokeberries from last summer. We froze the berries, not knowing if they'd be usable for dyeing, but it worked. Fresh is better, stronger color, but I got some results I can use. It was mostly an experiment and a time to over dye yarns I didn't like. Some of them are acceptable, others I still am not satisfied with the color.

^^We also got an awesome dye pot from a friend moving away! Never used an electric one before! Kinda nice to be able to turn it on and walk away, not like an open flame.^^

As for the chickens they recently had a treat of all the snails we could find in the front yard:

P.S. Happy 3rd birthday Susie and Bea!!

Ku'u Ipo and 'Apelila celebrate their 3rd birthday April 1st!

^^Anybody ever seen a snail like this?^^ I've never seen one like that in California.

February Olio

Birds are migrating

Aside from a particularly cold winter we've had quite a bit of sunshine.

View of Sacramento:

View of Mt. Shasta:

For some reason Roxy didn't seem thrilled to pose with my snowman.

I've been knitting, as usual, and made a hat inspired from Hermione's in Harry Potter 7, Part 1. She wears the hat in the scene of Godric's Hollow. The moment I saw it I knew I had to make one for myself. A friend of mine got me a skein of the perfect yarn when she went to New Zealand a couple years ago. It's Zealana Rimu DK Possum Yarn, 40% New Zealand possum fiber mixed with 60% N.Z. merino. So soft! And the perfect color to match Hermione's hat!

I also made some legwarmers using some pokeberry dyed yarn. I'm currently trying to exhaust my dye bath I started 3 days ago using pokeberries I'd frozen from summer. It's not as good as fresh, but it works. The color is leaning more towards orange-red, which I'm not too fond of, but I'm also overdyeing lots of yarns I hated so it's a step up, but not completely. The legwarmers are of yarn using fresh berries so this color is one I love.

I'm hoping I can use some of the overdyed yarns to finish my blanket I've been working on for a year. It's only taking so long because I ran out of pink. That's why I'm exhausting my dye bath so I can hopefully get some pink.

And of course while I was taking pictures of my knits the chickens were curious. Bea's tail is back, everyone's laying again, spring is on it's way!!

My clay-head guy has a spider living in his nose.

January Jettison

In January both Susy and Bea molted. I didn't get many photos this time of Susy looking lousy, she looks fairly normal here:

Enter, Bea to the scene. There's no tail! Both big girls lost their tails during molting. Last year's molting photo of Susy shows a few short tail feathers, I don't remember if she lost her tail completely, but this year she definitely did.

This isn't the greatest photo, but it shows Bea's yellow neck due to molting. I don't remember this much loss of plumage in past years. We did have a particularly cold winter, so I felt bad for the little chickies. Why do they molt during the winter? Don't they need their feathers to keep warm?

Ku'u Ipo eats a grapefruit segment:

And has been attacking me. She really hurts when she pecks my hands! I don't know why she's so agressive with me, not with anyone else. I'm hoping I can change this somehow.