A couple of the hens have decided the corner of the coop needs a nest. The pine shavings pile up there, and they made a nice indent in the top and laid their eggs. I only have six other nest boxes. At least it is an easy place to check for eggs.
I felt the need to card my washed cream alpaca fiber. All of it. I don’t usually do it all at once, but go as needed because the rolags are the most airy and open right after carding, which makes spinning easier.
It is therapeutic to turn the chaotic mass into fluffy white clouds. Even though I washed the fiber, it still has a significant amount of dirt and vegetable matter, most of which comes out as I card it.
Carding also increases the volume of the fiber because the clumps and locks are opened up. The mass of fiber about tripled in size with carding.
Now to figure out a good way to get to spinning all these lovely little clouds. Although I can’t go for spinning walks yet, I do get some reprieve from the boot, as long as I’m walking on smooth even surfaces. Standing for long periods is also still problematic. Hm.
My sourdough bread needs work, but one of my readers suggested a sourdough cracker recipe for the discards. It works wonderfully! Much easier than unleavened crackers, as well as lighter and crispier. Because of our relative humidity, I do leave my crackers to cool in the oven and this time forgot to crack the oven door, so the crackers are dark, but still taste good.
I left out the herbs this time around since my kids aren’t always keen on added flavor, but there are so many possibilities to explore with additions! Yum!
In looking for fidget rings to stick in easter eggs I saw a few guitar string rings. I have used guitar strings since my kids play, so it seemed a neat project to try. My strings aren’t aged much, we were having trouble with tuning one string and tried changing out all the strings. It turned out the issue was a broken washer in the tuning mechanism, and I had to replace the whole mechanism. Still, it left some wire wrapped strings with which to experiment.
I found some beads in my stash that would fit onto the guitar string. I used one of the beads as the anchor, gluing both ends of the string into the bead. The other beads are not glued and can be rearranged, although they are quite stiff.
I rather like the look of the beads on the guitar strings, but they aren’t as fidget friendly as I’d like. I think maybe a tube bead with a wider inside diameter might work better. Time to sift through the stash again!
Setting up the live trap and leaving it for a couple days worked to desensitize the cats to its presence.
I used a prop to hold the trap open, with fishing line tied to the bottom so I could control when the trap closed. I had at least three already fixed cats circle in and out of the trap before an unfixed torti finally went in far enough for me to close the door. She was not happy, but I got her in to be fixed, so no kittens from her.
I saw three more unfixed while I was watching. So we’ll run this setup again. We are up to 12 fixed in the colony.
