We have a pan cam working in the coop again! So I could see a hen get off the roost at 4:30am and blindly make her way over the nest boxes, hop up, and settle in. She isn’t broody, as when the sun was up she was off the nest and out into the runs. I guess when she has to lay, she has to lay.
4:30am in the coop
I reinforced the back screen door with hardware cloth so I could leave it open at night in the summer heat. It helps the cooler night air circulate. Now the camera should be able to see if there are predators peeking in too.
The holes drilled through the ballister to hold the spindle on my mini bike spinning wheel (still with me? Good, let’s move on) worked fine for a time, but the stress of the spinning maladjusted the holes and the spindle was binding instead of turning. Taking my engineer husband’s advice, I made an axel. I installed a tube for the spindle rather than just two holes. I had to open the existing holes a bit to fit the tube, and the only tube I could find locally that was small enough was square, but I was able to affix the tube and the spindle shaft fits well.
Tube installed to stabilize the shaft
Because the axel has metal on metal, I needed some lubricant to ease the motion. I found my youngest’s old valve oil for her coronet. Works a treat. Another benefit of musicians in the house.
After wrapping my two-ply yarn onto a PVC niddy noddy, I rinsed the fibers and left it to dry. When it was dry, I used my yarn swift and cake winder to get the yarn ready for use. This 100% alpaca yarn will join the other yarn I’ve spun from Sugar Plum’s fleece in a knit lace shawl project.
Yarn on a niddy noddyYarn cake (center), swift (top), niddy noddy (right), ball winder (bottom)
The PVC niddy noddy is an easy DIY. The swift and ball winder are good investments for yarn enthusiasts, although your local specialty yarn store may have a set and be willing to help wind skeins into cakes.
She landed on the sidewalk right by my feet. That is an open invitation to take a picture! (That is practically begging for a photo shoot, for me.) The iNaturalist app community identified this as a Whitetail dragonfly. I had to go do some additional research because I’ve seen Whitetail dragonflies, and the abdomen is quite bright. Turns out it is the males with the flashy derrière; females have a brown abdomen with white markings on the side. Learn something new every day.
Today’s theme is if something doesn’t work one way, try another. I started plying my alpaca singles with my upcycled spinning wheel.
Plying ball and upcycled spinning wheel
The converted mini bike worked OK for the first two of three center pull balls, but the third was too much for the spindle supports (two holes through a ballister). So instead, I used the spindle as a supported spindle, used a serving spoon with the handle tucked under my leg as the spinning bowl, and was able to finish plying the third ball.
Plying with a supported spindle and a spoon (Missy would like me to throw the ball.)
The spindle was too heavy to rest back on the upcycled wheel supports, so I looked around the house for something to hold the spindle while I transferred the yarn to a niddy noddy. I found that the wrought iron (or at least imitation wrought iron) legs of a side table were the perfect distance to hold the spindle shaft. So I flipped the table over and was able to wind on to the niddy noddy. The curves of the legs actually did a fantastic job of keeping the shaft from jumping all over.
Using curved table legs to hold a spindle to load yarn onto a PVC niddy noddy
Sometimes it is not what you can buy, but what you can repurpose.
Critters and Craft 