Yarn chicken redo

On By CarynIn Craft
Photo description: crocheted blanket edge with scallops incomplete with not enough yarn left to finish

I lost at yarn chicken on a baby blanket edge. I needed to make two more scallops to finish and there just wasn’t enough yarn. Rather than scrap the whole edge, I ripped out just the last side and redid it so the scallops spanned 6 stitches instead of five. This gave me less scallops overall on that edge and I had enough yarn to complete the edge.

Photo description: crocheted baby blanket with scalloped edge before weaving in, showing the extra yarn

The blanket is based on Mary Maxim’s Easy Diagonal Blanket pattern, but done with alternating two rows of white, purple, and pink. I deviated on the edge too, by doing a single crochet all along the outer edge to hide yarn ends, then making 5-double crochet scallops along the edge.

I used acrylic yarn for the blanket because it is machine washable and dry-able, and new moms do not need any gift that can’t be easily washed.

Pic-a-nik table

On By CarynIn Wildlife

My eldest gave me a bird feeder that looks like a little picnic table for Mother’s Day (I *may* have laid out some heavy hints). It came rigged to be hung, but after trying it that way for a couple days, I decided to mount it to the tree.

Photo description: small picnic table shaped feeder screwed to a post oak tree and filled with seed

The tray serves a dual purpose, both as entertainment (although the squirrels don’t have proper table manners), and to catch the corn the squirrels drop from the spinning corn holder (which doesn’t spin when they eat off of it, but does hold 5 ears of corn). The squirrels drop the corn after they eat the tip off and discard the rest of the yellow part of the corn kernel.

Photo description: downward view of the squirrel feeder, showing the discarded corn kernels

Training cucumbers

On By CarynIn Garden

My cucumber plants are starting to grow vines! I have a trellis set up in the raised bed and would like them to climb that rather than drape off the sides of the bed. I found it helps to gently hook the questing tendrils around the metal. I wrap the tendril around the post, then hook it back through the loop, like a knot, but not tightened.

Photo description: cucumber tendril looped around a post, then around itself

Tiny opossum

On By CarynIn Wildlife
Photo description: small mammal checking out a food dish on wood steps, possible opossum
Photo description: adult opossum on the same steps, bowl for scale, with a tabby cat peeking out from behind the door

At first I thought the mammal in the first picture was a rat, but it doesn’t stand like a rat, it stands like an opossum.

Oh yeah, I checked the trail cams again. Downloading a thousand photos and then deleting the ones I don’t want was exhausting, to me and the cloud. So then I was using the Photos app to pick just a few remarkable pics to download, but the thumbnails are very small there and hard to see what is going on in each picture.

I found a better method this last time: open up the folder on the USB card in the Finder app (Mac), maximize the preview size, and arrow button press through single-view photos before ever downloading them. I drag the interesting pics to a temporary folder, and keep going. It is also like playing a time lapse video, I see the photos rapidly in sequence and get a better idea of the animals movements.

Circle of cats

On By CarynIn art

I wandered an antique store for Mother’s day and this sculpture kept calling my name. I have other Windstone pieces, and of course I like the cats the best. I circled back and picked it up. It was designed to be a candle holder, but I’m much too distractible to burn candles, so I thought it appropriate that the seven cats would sit around a ball of yarn.

Photo description: Windsong Editions candle holder sculpture with seven stone textured cats in an inward facing circle, nostepinne style yarn ball in the middle

I will probably change out the center focus as the whim moves me. A nice glass or stone orb would go well there too.