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.

Chickens of Nepal

Back in June I went to Nepal, and of course was interested in the chickens I saw. It's interesting how chickens are chickens no matter where you are in the world. There were subtle differences, but it was probably more a fact that these chickens acted like normal ones, not like my spoiled hens that are picky about what they eat.

This chicken liked hanging out with our stuff

Teaching how to dust bath

A pretty awesome chicken coop. The roof says, "Guest House" hehe

He's tied up

St. Chickens' Day

Yay, we definitely spread our green around the yard today.

A shamrock and a "pot-o-gold" for the chickies

Susie just picks out the "good stuff" and flings out the rest

Then the other girls came. Ku'u Ipo likes looking at me.

I haven't really blogged about anything other than the chickens, but I'll mention these things too:

These are my sprouts to grow indigo for dyeing yarns!

Here's a cool ceramic head I made in college, I LOVED that class! So hard, but I always felt awesome afterward. Oh, that's an artichoke plant to the left.

Here's our other green we had this St. Patrick's Day.

Japanese pumpkin, they didn't sprout last year, but they did this time!

Acorn Squash

Moon & Stars Watermelon, looking sickly but we've had a little too much rain lately.

Blue pumpkin, that tasted so yummy last fall, I'm glad we have more than one plant this year!

And BUTTERNUT SQUASH TAKES OVER THE WORLD!

All those little guys in the ground!

I have a sprout on my raspberry bush! I didn't kill it! Yay! (Susie in the background)

Susie girl, she's so pretty.

We have to cover this plant with a bird cage so the chickens don't destroy it

Happy March 17th!