So my eldest was taking pictures in the back woods for a school art project and found fish in the tiny stream! I’m not sure how the raccoons haven’t caught them; there isn’t but a couple inches of water. In fact, as she was looking, one of the fish beached itself trying to get away. She helped it back into the water.
For my next yarn color it was time to use Donna Bella’s fleece (a fawn colored alpaca from Alpacas of Aledo). I was not planning on blending this round, but as I was carding I noticed a distinct color difference in some of the rolags (the roll of fiber that comes off the carder). So I separated the lightest and darkest colors and will spin them separately. I’m also going to reduce the number of rolags I spin per spindle to 10 to lighten the weight when I ply the last bits. (I used 12 rolags per spindle for the dark brown and fawn blend.)
I’m so excited. There is nothing quite like starting on a new journal! Brand new pages, an open slate stretching forward in time. I use the journal as my memory, not to record every moment, but to recap events so I can look them up. It is not a diary, not a bullet journal (although I do sometimes have a doodle or two to make entries easier to find), and not a lab notebook (although that point could be argued about my past journals).
My new journal has a beautiful tree embossed on the cover and is the first one I’ve purchased online. It is more the size I usually use. When it was time to get my last journal, I had a terrible time finding one I liked. I ended up with a book twice as big and it took me over two years to fill it. The fabric cover wasn’t as durable, and the spine broke. Since the brick and mortar method of shopping failed me, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to risk an online journal purchase. We’ll see how it goes!
I saw the grass spider in my houseplant and honestly it was just too cute to have a spider in the spider plant. He was catching and eating the irritating gnats left over from a failed indoor herb planting, and he was not in the way.
However, when his web started extending past the plants and over taking the window, and he was looking a little gaunt because all the gnats were gone, I gathered him between two cups and released him outside.
Not just hard boiled, I suppose, but cooked in an Instapot for 5 minutes, pressure released, then the eggs placed in ice water. The eggs I cooked were laid within the past 5 days, and I peeled them an hour or so after they went into the ice bath. Not every egg peeled as easily as this one, but I didn’t have a single egg where the shell stuck to the white. They all ended up beautiful and smooth. Perfect for deviled eggs!
Critters and Craft 