The Spring wildflowers are showing off in our meadow.
Now, down the hill, hidden by those flowers is mostly grass. I’m not sure what happened to the flowers that used to come up there, although it could have been the heat, or the freeze, or the wet, or a grass roots take over. I might throw some extra seeds down back there and see if we can’t get something more started.
In November of 2005 I made a wood and nail jig and produced several styles of wire snowflake ornaments.
It is quite satisfying the number of permutations that can be achieved with a single jig just by skipping an element or doubling the wire or adding beads in different places. I did move away from the black velvet for photos, but was having trouble with white balance using the cream colored felt. Yes, I could break out Photoshop and adjust them to all match, but I think the varied backgrounds are appropriate for a Throwback Thursday.
I don’t have the jig anymore, but it was a simple affair with nails driven through 1/8” or 1/4” plywood. I didn’t make any more wire snowflakes after this round because it was a pain and a twisting nightmare.
We have started the integration process with the two new chickens with our existing flock. The first supervised mingling was a bit traumatic (there were in-flight, talons-out attacks), so we have initiated a very slow protocol. We’re swapping the flocks, so the new hens can explore the old coop, and the existing hens can explore the new coop. The Black Star hens will be dominant over the Faverolle hens (Faverolles are typically at the bottom of the pecking order), so we give treats to the Black Star first to let them know we know, and to try and reduce their need to physically establish dominance. A few pecks here and there is just the chicken way, but we don’t need any feet involved.
After the swap, we let the hens to back to their own sides, with careful observation of interactions, and some herding and guarding if necessary. We’ll continue this process until we can keep all the doors open all the time. Or not. The two groups can see each other through the poultry wire, and if need be will stay separated when unsupervised.
I excel at overthinking. I have gone through many contraptions to hold my full spindle so it wouldn’t skitter across the floor while I wound the yarn off into a ball. Before I headed off for a walk, I saw that I didn’t have enough fiber to last the walk, and I would be at the point I needed to wind off mid-walk. Throwing caution to the wind, I stuck a rolled up piece of card stock in my pocket and headed out. Within 10 minutes I had spun all my fiber and was faced with winding a nostepinne style ball without any of my spindle holding devices except my hands.
It turned out brilliant. I could rotate the spindle around the tube, keeping consistent tension by lightly gripping the shaft, and slowly rotating the card stock tube. I had been stuck in thinking that the spindle or bobbin needed to be set down in order to control the tension to wind off. I’m glad I broke through the “I have to do it this way” barrier, for this is now my preferred method.
Critters and Craft 