We have blooms on the squash vine! Now, will we get squash? Hm.
I think it is interesting that the flower is larger than the leaf. There are three different vines, all flowering, so there is a chance of pollination.n
Maybe?
Month: October 2022
The waiting shawl
I am calling this my waiting shawl, since I knitted it while waiting. Waiting in the car rider line, waiting in the doctor’s office, waiting in the parking lot. It feels like I’ve been waiting forever, but I’ve only been knitting for six months. I started spinning the fiber over a year ago, though. So. This is made from fiber from Sugar Plum the alpaca, washed, carded, and hand-spun with a drop spindle and some on my upcycled bicycle spinning wheel. The knit pattern is yarn over, purl two together, both front and back, with knit stitches on the edges to get the stripes vertical
The amazing thing about this shawl happened when I did a light wash and blocked it. First, there was still quite a bit of dust in the yarn that came out in the wash. Second, when I blocked it, it doubled in size. All the lace holes opened up, evened out and expanded. Wow. It made my spinning seem much more even. I’ll take it.
Aren’t your feet wet?
I set the trail cam up to see who comes and drinks from my stacked fountain. I expected to see mostly cats, what I didn’t expect was how Mr Tom drinks from the dishes. He chooses to stand in one dish to drink from another. Huh? The dishes are not attached to the pots, just stacked. How he perches without tipping anything over is amazing.
But look at that magnificent tail. His winter coat is coming in, and he now lets me brush him, so he is mostly free of burrs.
Wave ghost
I found an LED light that casts wave like forms in selectable colors. What a perfect thing to set under a ghost!
I set up one of my chicken wire ghosts and draped with with fine netting fabric. This is a basic version using my wire ghost instructions (which are currently selling like hot cakes on Etsy, wow). The ghosts in the instructions are more detailed with stylized netting, this version has no arms and uses just a long section of netting thrown over the top. I tried just setting the light under the ghost, but didn’t like that I could see it. I found a dark pot (which is actually part of a helium can that I cut off the top and painted black a while back), and placed that under the ghost with the light inside. I had to adjust the lengths of steel posts that stabilize the ghost from an X formation to parallel to accommodate the can, but it worked.
The white light is quite bright, but I think the blue color is nice.
Probable cause
We have continued to get eggs, way past when the hens stopped laying last year. I think I know why. We have kept the people door open to let the breeze through the coop because it was so blazing hot this summer. The door leads out into the chicken run, which is completely encased in welded wire, which makes it fairly secure against large predators. When we let the dogs out in the morning, we turn on the back porch light, which happens to shine into the runs. This gives the hens enough light to feel comfortable getting off the roost, so they are up and about earlier than last year. Extra light also encourages egg laying. Ah. They finished their molt, had enough light, and a couple have gone back into laying mode. I could close up the door, but they really do like coming out as soon as they can, and they are safe in their enclosure from twilight predators. As it gets colder, I will close the people door to keep in the heat and keep out drafts, but I may keep the chicken door open.
Critters and Craft 