Of alpaca fleece, not black wool. Ha. There is an alpaca farm 20 minutes from here (we visited not long ago). I requested fiber and the owner contacted me and said she had some! So we went over and I selected three colors so I could experiment with color and spinning. So excited!! It is raw blanket (the fiber sheared from the back of the alpaca), and from animals whose fleece has won blue ribbons in competition. Yes, I know their names: Dawnabella, Sugar Plum, and Aimee. Squee. Interesting fact: alpaca fiber is not covered in lanolin, so I will wash it, but I don’t have to scour it like I would for wool or mohair (and worry about temperature getting too low and the lanolin redepositing on the fiber).
I have other projects to finish first, though, before I can play. #Motivation
I’ve been holding onto a few of the chicken’s first eggs, not the whole egg, just the blown out shell. Not the very first egg, I didn’t think of blowing out the eggs until the next day. They have been sitting on my counter for a few months and then I thought making ornaments would be a great way to preserve them!
32 gauge wire looped and twisted
I took about 10 inches of 32 gauge wire, looped it, and twisted the ends together to make a straight section longer than my egg.
Wire strung through blown out egg shell
Getting the wire through the tiny hole on the end of the blown out egg was a little tricky, but I got there eventually.
Ribbon threaded through egg with knots to hold it in place
I had some thin ribbon in my stash, so threaded some of that through the wire loop, then used the wire to pull the ribbon through the egg. I used over hand knots to keep the egg from sliding off. I used alcohol based ink (aka Sharpie) to write on the egg, and I coated the egg in matte Modge Podge glue for extra durability, and let it dry.
“Our first egg” ornament next to another pullet egg
I’m not that keen on the Modge Podge coating. It makes it look like a plastic egg, even though it has a matte finish. I’ll have to run some experiments to see what I can do about that.
Wearing a glove to protect my ring and my skin from my chickens (but that picture looks strange)
Long title, short answer, and one that is so simple and straightforward that it hurts I didn’t think of it sooner. I tried three different colored silicone bands (I wasn’t risking any gemstones!), and have three wounds on my ring finger for my efforts. Checking the chickens one cold morning I pulled on my gloves and sighed. I love simple answers.
I do have a little solace in that when I googled the problem, other people suggested not wearing rings or jewelry around chickens. No mention of gloves there either, although one suggested tucking necklaces into your shirt. Getting there.
When I bought the basket for Sophie, the outside cat, it came as a two set. Our inside cat Izzy enjoys the larger basket as it fits her perfectly. She has a towel instead of a hand made mat because she likes laying on towels.
Cats are liquid, but it helps when the basket is cat shaped
Alternate titles: Birds go wild for Beetles. Beetles final tour. Fowl turn for the worm. Bugs cry “not fare”.
Ok, so if you’ve made it through the puns, here’s the scoop. I’m done with growing mealworms. As the weather got colder, we started to have some beetle escapes. Then some more. I adjusted the wire mesh on the beetle drawer, but still they found a way out. The corner spiders moved down and tried the help, but only caught a couple.
The final straw was accidentally mailing my folks a live mealworm. They were good sports about it (they have chickens too, but one mealworm isn’t going to go far for 5 chickens), but that a worm escaped is a no go. The shallow drawer idea seemed good, because we could switch out drawers frequently and in theory have a steady stream of meal worms instead just of a glut, but alas, even the harvests every two weeks were meager.
To dispose of the experiment, I am taking a drawer at a time out to the chickens, starting with the egg producing beetles. The chickens were wary at first (it was an unfamiliar container), but quickly figured out I brought them treats. Interestingly, I have a couple chickens who do not like beetles. Huh. There were plenty of hens wild about them, though, so it didn’t take long to empty the drawer. There were even some mealworms for the non-beetle eaters. The left over oatmeal and cornmeal mix went into the compost bin.
Darkling beetles and mealworms in the top drawer
It was an interesting experiment, and I can now pick up beetles and mealworms alike without squirming. My kids saw the lifecycle of the darkling beetle, and now I get back the square foot or so of floor space the drawer tower occupied. The price of the freeze dried mealworms doesn’t seem so bad now.
Critters and Craft 