Quietly

After the busyness of getting ready for the holidays (see, we did decorate these houses, although Oona kind of wandered far afield from the whole "sticking things on cookies" theme), things have gotten very quiet today.

Math with a nearly-asleep dog in one's lap.

Reading with a chewing dog in one's lap.

What happens when the kid gets the camera. I had hoped to feature the knitting I was doing -- knitting I wrapped up as a gift, still on the needles. It will be done, really, soon. I promise!

When I was out making pointy mulch piles flat with the help of my inexplicably broken rake, I remembered that the chickens needed water and probably food. Look what was waiting in the nest box! The days are lengthening, but I didn't know the chickens had noticed yet.

Tangled Up

An unprepossessing mess, no?

It's what is passing for my knitting project these days. Having misplaced my almost-done project and the project bag it was in, my knitting mojo took an enormous hit.

It's metastasizing all over. I can't seem to get anything done. Drafts of writing due, essays to edit, gardening projects (heloooooo, mulch), nothing. I've got nothing.

So, I figured instead of launching into my next big colorwork sweater project, which would involve, oh, designing a sweater, I'd find some sort of mindless make-a-sweater-without-thought project. This bag of vintage yarn, given to me by Sainted Betty, my Knoxville knitting teacher, has come along and seemed appropriate.

Alas, it's a mess of mild tangles. Technically, I don't even think it's tangled. It's just that yarn has stored energy and if it's allowed to twist, in, oh, I don't know, multiple moves from state to state, it needs undoing.

So when I can't engage my brain enough to do anything, make anything, finish anything, and I've done the housework and the kid wrangling and carpool driving and dinner making and dinner cleanup, well, working on these twists and turns feels as though I'm accomplishing something.

It's not going to get Christmas sorted here, though. Bleah.

Finishing Things

Some of us are better than others at seeing projects through. I find myself doing a fair amount of puttering -- a bit of this, a bit of that, and not a lot gets done. But if you make things for growing kids, they have to get done or they get left behind.

Although it took a ridiculous amount of time to finish these fairly easy sweaters, they did finally get done, and I assume will actually be worn. Thank goodness for superwash wool and cotton!

Someone didn't really want her picture taken, although she did give me permission this morning to post pictures.

 
Tor actually sort of got into the photo shoot. Had I thought, I would have channeled my inner fashion photographer and asked him to "gimme love."

He wasn't the only one in a silly position. Ahem. She seems to be announcing that she's ready for her breakfast.

Peter Pepper's got nothing on me

More jars of pickled pepper rings. Again, I sure hope Eric ends up liking these; the plants are ramping up production as we're into what passes for high summer here.

Even though it's summer, it's sweater weather! I just finished the first of three that were all on the cusp. The other two need zipper and trim, and just a zipper, respectively. I used to keep my knitting blog separate from this one, but I'm starting to realize that I'm happier with everything in one place, so I've tried to append all the posts from my old blog onto this one. If you're into spelunking, you can read much more about knitting than you might have wished once I get it all straightened out. In the mean time, here's the front view of my newly-completed Tea Leaves Cardigan.

The multi-headed sunflowers are going gangbusters. It's going to be a pretty week.

Also, I should pull my stomach in when I stand up.

Back view. Were I to make this sweater again, I'd modify it with a narrower neckline (maybe another repeat of the ruching pattern), and I'd make the body and arms wider. It fits like a dream from the back, but it doesn't button well -- lots of gaps. And those arms are very narrow for someone who is doing as many pushups as I have been lately!

Made in Miss Babs "Vlad," and very pretty in color.

Knitting is super-streaky for me. Either I'll leave it alone for months or get all happy and race through things. Maybe I'll get a zipper or two tomorrow and finish the other ones. That would really clear my mental decks. Maybe I could even make some more pickles!

Add one, subtract one and get one done

What could my kids be looking for


yesterday, in the cold, on the beach?


Elephant seals!


Everyone knows a family who lives somewhere great but doesn't take advantage of their opportunities, right? Generally, we're that family. Fortunately, I have much more organized friends, and every year, they trundle down the coast to one of the very very few places that elephant seals come ashore to pup.

Imagine only spending a few months a year on land, and the rest hunting and swimming in very cold water. Walking near them was cold enough, thank you very much. They are awesomely big up close. They said it was safe, but I couldn't get a good picture of my next-oldest child; she was staying very close to the rest because she was wary of these huge pinnipeds.

Speaking of enormous mammals, Mikey got to play with his neighbor, Star, today.


She's so much faster than he is that it's mostly a chase, and eventually he gives up and just watches, making halfhearted feints as she careers around him. He enjoys it mightily. He does most things mightily, come to think of it.

I'm mightily glad to be nearly done (save the thumb) of mitten the first, aka the second.


The real first is now poised to become the second. Hooray for looser tension. It fits less like a glove and more like a comfy mitt. Still, it is a little daunting to be right back where I started, more or less. Oh well, if one has to stay in place, having one warm hand is something.

When I just couldn't face the thought of starting more colorwork tonight, as it got later and later at my friend's knit night, I decided that I could definitely face winding a plying ball. Turns out that laceweight baby camel and silk makes for a slow-winding ball, but a pretty one:


Alas and alack, the "wobble" on my Bosworth mini spindle turned out to be due to a rather substantial crack in the whorl, just at the base of the central "throat":


I guess we're going to try to clamp and glue it. I love this spindle. In fact, I have a huge bunch of baby camel and silk roving rooting for it to pull through.

Tomorrow is certainly enough time to worry about it.

Progress without pictures

A few rounds more on the mitten today. My sister asked how many hours I thought it took per mitten, and I once again wished that I had a portable chess clock for my knitting. Apparently I could use a downloadable app to do so!

At any rate, I estimated 13-15 hours a mitten (I'm a painfully slow knitter, alas). The sobering realization is that I knit maybe 30 minutes a day, even though I'd like to do more. Seems that between chauffering, and cleaning, and cooking and feeding and homeschooling and working, there isn't a lot of time to knit.

Tonight there was no knitting because it was Spinning Night at the library. I wish I'd brought my camera (and if my friend sends her pictures I'll edit them in) because my Grafton Fibers batt looked so lush laid out I almost wanted to just leave it as is or felt it for a lap robe.

Instead I spun it, and then decided I liked it best without the neon yellow and orange. It's going to be a tweedy brown. Maybe I'll make enough as a long-draw single to make a teeny girl sweater. If not, the standard hat, I suppose.

The dog appears to be standing guard. It's an illusion. He'll follow me upstairs as soon as I go. Definitely a mama's boy.

Doing yoga with a stuffy nose

It's kind of hard to feel on top of things when you wake up to your spouse saying, "The alarm didn't go off," and you thought he was saying, "The dog has to pee," so leaping from bed is the only sane option.

I dragged on my comfy clothes and ran out front with the dog (who did, in fact, very much need to go) and then watched as Eric almost sprinted out of the door, on the way to his new year.

Even though we were later than we'd hoped, it was early enough to feed Mikey in his crate and use that relative peace to do some yoga. Kristin is my inspiration here. I don't have a fancy yoga/honey house like she does, but now I am the proud user of a deck of yoga cards. Nothing quite like easing into a down dog and realizing that there needs to be a box of Puffs as part of your practice.

Waking up is hard to do. . .

Darn you, Neil Sedaka. What else, I ask you, fits this kind of morning?


I've learned that making children go to bed early is relatively useless, but waking them up early eventually works on the other end. They think I'm cruel, and they might be back asleep, but baby steps will do us all.

At the halfway point?


The second first mitten is now halfway done. That has to be some kind of milestone, right?


Breathing in the wave

Just before I woke up, I was finishing a long dream about being at the beach with the homeschoolers. I know I was with them because there was much discussion about which glass lasagne dish was whose, and we hadn't even started with the Dutch ovens. I finally announced that even if no one else was, I was going swimming. The water was perfect -- still and clear, and there was another shore across from us. It was some sort of bay!

I struck out across the water, and then a giant wave rose up under me. I could feel the power as I kept on swimming. Looking at where the wave was going to land after it crested, I knew I was in trouble. Growing up in Southern California, I spent a lot of time riding waves, and landing this one was going to be a doozy. However, in the dream, I had my face right at the level of the water and kept breathing in and out, deeply and calmly. I thought, "As long as I can breathe in the wave, I'm okay."

Since we can't predict the things that happen, it seems as good a way to proceed as any.

As you mean to go on

Resolutions and new beginnings just seem to go together, as do the concomitant disappointment when keeping them is more difficult -- the pounds won't come off, the photos don't get organized, those pesky weeds just keep coming up, and who said twelve pairs of mittens in a year was doable?

I've managed this in years past by not making resolutions, other than the most general: "Eat breakfast. Walk occasionally. Eat kale a lot."

This year, though, I'm brimming with them. Maybe it's tipping well into my final half of life; maybe it's not having a truly little child of my own any more (thank goodness for a new niece!) that's freeing up some space in my head. And this blog is part of that. While researching when we got the cats for a pet insurance application, not only did I discover when we got the cats, thanks to the blog, seeing the pictures of the kids and reading about what we were doing was so pleasurable and not having it was an actual ache. So I resolved to post at least one picture of one kid per day and blog something. Alas, that's only one thing I want to do.

Some of my plans involve the kids in other ways:


And, as any parent knows, rearing kids means limits. Screen time is an ongoing struggle here -- in fact, many things about this child are struggles. Rarely do parents blog honestly about their challenges with their children, and the line between exploitation and sugar-coating isn't easy to find. I hope that this year, we're going to unlock some of the more difficult puzzles with our son, even though paying for the professional help to do so is going to be painful.

I'm also embarking on a self-taught course of dog training. Mikey, who recently joined our family, was trained to be a show dog and not much else. He's big, and mouthy, and not quite sure what's expected of him. He's also very lovable.


I love the look he's giving the kid here. "Squirrel? You call that a squirrel? Take me outside!" In researching training methods, I've fallen completely for Karen Pryor and her positive reinforcement classical conditioning clicker training. Her Reaching the Animal Mind book provided hours of entertainment for us, and then gave me a place to start when Mikey came home. As I've delved more into training, I'm feeling overwhelmed, so finding this website with its structured instruction has been a boon. I think it might also save me a few hundred dollars in private training lessons.

So what else? Um, study Italian, teach my courses, keep homeschooling as effectively as I can, walk briskly a few times a week - that leg is still not at all run-able - do some yoga, keep decluttering the house, and oh, yes, knitting.

I started working on the second of the Norwegian Snail Mittens a few days ago:


This would be great almost-two-years-to-a-finished-object stuff if I didn't also bite the fit-bullet and do this:


And it's not done. That "first" mitten was just enough too tight around the thumb area to make it not up to snuff. In a moment of strength, I figured, "I can do this" and just started ripping. When I get down below the tight part, I'll set it back on the needles and start over. By then the "other first" mitten will be done, and I'll be halfway to the first pair done.

As I mean to go on, I mean.

On the go, go, go

I was thinking of writing up my day yesterday and seeing if it made the top of anyone else's head lift off. It went something like this:

Up at 6:30, graded papers.
Showered.
Woke kids, fed kids, made lunches.
Got Eric to drive kids to school.
Decided what to make for dinner; made shopping list
Woke up Sarafina.
Woke up Sarafina.
Woke up Sarafina.
Suited up, got bee stuff together to take to school.
Got Sarafina to take pictures.
Took bees out of hive, put in carry box.
Got Caterina and bees in car.
Went to school, got stranger to close car because I was holding bees and a hive box.
Did presentations about bees in three classes.
Got call from Sarafina; needed an emergency ride to class.
Got home, put bees away.
Regular ride showed up.
Got shopping bags together.
Realized Tor's doctor appointment wasn't at 5pm, it was 2pm.
Got in car, called back up to pick up Ellie after school.
Picked up Tor, got him to doctor.
Walked 6 blocks to get tea with Cat.
Knit on baby sweater.
Walked 6 blocks to get Tor after appointment.
Tried to get ice cream, they only take cash.
Nice lady offered to treat.
Cat said she'd rather have ice cream in Alameda.
Thanked nice lady, drove through afternoon traffic to ice cream shop.
Talked to Denise on the phone about getting together right then.
Got ice cream.
Drove to grocery store, got milk in recylable bottles, asked about the honey which is all gone.
Drove home, put away groceries, cleaned up kitchen, put beans on to boil.
Denise came over, we picked vegetables.
Cleaned and weighed veggies, chopped kale.
Denise left, Italked to my mom on the phone while I made soup.
Eric home, talked while I made rest of soup.
Ate dinner. Eric made me laugh so hard I almost shot soup out of my nose; Sarafina followed suit when he made a crack about that. Tor dramatically fell over "dead" because he had eaten kale.
Tor and Cat began to kick a large ball back and forth.
Eric and I and Sarafina cleaned up.
Tor ate a bagel.
After multiple tries, got Tor and Cat brushed and in bed.
Ellie came home.
Got her in bed.
Read bedtime story.
Turned off lights.
Knitted while Eric drew shelf plans.
Cat got up saying she was hungry. Offered her soup. She took it, therefore she really was hungry.
Put Cat back to bed.
Went upstairs and got read to while knitting on sweater.
Collapsed.

Today seems much calmer, although I realized I've repeated the get up/lunch/drive routine, plus taking Ellie for an 8am tooth extraction, then grocery shopping and driving the teens to writing class. Now I'm going to make lunch for park day and pick up some baseball supplies. Maybe I'll finish that baby sweater today! And maybe, just maybe, I'll do some running of the sweaty kind today and tomorrow.

The check is in the

. . . not the mail, but my sister's hands.

Denise sweetly went all the way out to the fair to claim our goods. She picked up a sweater, a skein of yarn, and some marmalade for me, in addition to her award-winning jam. There were envelopes with our prizewinning ribbons in them.

And. . . checks! Apparently the powers that be aggregate your winnings and cut one check. So that sunflower bread? I won $10 . . . in addition to the free tickets and such. A nice bit of fun, that.

The sweater got $10 also -- whee! As Turltlegirl pointed out, they don't seem to care that the wondrous colors are the responsibility of the dyer, not the knitter. They did say my stitches were nice and even, though. And not a word about the horrifying seams.

I'm just delighted with it all. It seems like one of the most fun things to do in a summer.

The other one is picking blackberries, and lo how the season is upon us. In my refrigerator rests a bowl of macerating fruit, to put into jam tomorrow, and in the oven rests a blackberry silk pie -- seedless puree plus a custard. I'm already thinking of how I can alter this for future attempts. I've never felt that I had enough berries to cast away the leftover pulp, but this year? More berries than I think I've ever seen.


I have almost every day picking plans, in addition to dealing with my ongoing fascination with the idea of a harvest hovercraft and/or elastic arms. Today I realized how lucky I am to be picking fat, luscious berries without the humidity I associated with picking as a child -- Tennessee was the only place I knew you could go and pick. While we possibly could have found them in Southern California, no one I knew did that sort of thing. I'm hugely grateful to be that sort of person and to have the berries to indulge her.

Boring, with exciting mistakes

This is how far I've gotten in my new sweater project. Miles and miles and miles of 3 by 3 ribbing. It's the bottom portion of a seamless saddle shoulder sweater I'm working up. I think I'll block it so it's not the completely body-conscious shape it fits as now, but still slim. Araucania Nature Wool, in the gray multi that the hood for the little elf green sweater was knit with. Size 6 needles, and occasionally I'm finding a purl stitch at the end of the knit part. There's one right about the middle of the sweater. Fixing those with crochet hooks is about as exciting as it's gonna get for a good number of rows more.

Another race tomorrow morning before the small town parade, then Sunday is the cheesecake competition at the county fair. I get to find out about my rainbow sweater and bread and jam without having to deal with the kids, because Eric's going to keep them at home (thank you!!). As I said, I don't expect to win, but it's fun to see them there.

Going, going, almost gone

More of the needle cases are gone, off to new homes to make their owners very happy. My father in law has a new set, based on Australian hardwoods, that are coming available, but you can see here which ones are still around.

Haven't cut the sleeve steeks yet, because I had a wild, wild day in the beehive yesterday, followed by many household responsibility-before-going-camping sorts of things. I did discover that Costco sells bagels that I love and the balance bars my spouse eats at work are less expensive there than at Trader Joe's. The things you learn.

Finish Line in Sight

Sometimes I wonder if folks get tired of slow as molasses knitting pictures. I know I prefer ones where it seems as though the knitter has a bunch of "Shoemaker and the Elves" helpers, buying yarn and then having it seem to magically knit itself up into exquisitely finished garments, presto-changeo.

My knitting is not like that. I don't knit much, and I knit slowly. This is a theme in my life, apparently.

But, even a slow knitter makes progress. Sometimes, that progress is even serendipitous. For instance, when I chose to knit the sleeves for my current project at the same time, planning to steek and sew them later, it was to make the color runs approximately the same size as the body.

I didn't know they would also be a close match.

And now, despite having absolutely zero elves of the helpful-in-handwork category, the sleeves are almost done.

All that's left is to bind off the steek stitches, and then figure out whether to connect the remaining stitches into two separate rounds, and knit the cuffs before cutting the steeks, or cut the steeks, sew the sleeves into tubes, and then knit the cuffs. I think I had better ask around -- I'm tired and can't quite figure out what order to do them. I want it to be done well ahead of the fair, but also done well.

And why am I so tired, you might wonder? Remember how I don't think I knit much or fast? Well, I know for a fact that I don't run much, and that not very fast.

Nevertheless, I ran my first (and perhaps last) 5k today with two really good buddies. Even with approximately 2500 other women running, it felt like it was just us, and Eric and Caterina, who came out to cheer me on. The slower of us in the threesome had dubbed today the "Chasing Grace" day, and it was. I lost her quickly at the beginning and never caught up. I know I ran a faster first mile than I would have thought, because I heard someone call the time. I paid for it, and finished the race with an average of (wait for it) -- ten minutes a mile! So a fast first, slow second and medium third. Sheesh. I could have done that without the crowds and tags and electronic timing.

Oh well. I figured I deserved a little something (although the free massages afterward were wonderful), so I drove my friend's yarn store and picked up some treats for my feet.

Saucon Sock in "Forest" and Rio de La Plata Multicolor Sock in some combination of "Wood Thrush, Crimson, Posy Green, Chestnut, Indial Teal and Black." It's pretty, anyhow. They'll make cushy socks.

And after this sweater, I'm going to want something a little smaller to work on.

Finish Line in Sight

Sometimes I wonder if folks get tired of slow as molasses knitting pictures. I know I prefer ones where it seems as though the knitter has a bunch of "Shoemaker and the Elves" helpers, buying yarn and then having it seem to magically knit itself up into exquisitely finished garments, presto-changeo.

My knitting is not like that. I don't knit much, and I knit slowly. This is a theme in my life, apparently.

But, even a slow knitter makes progress. Sometimes, that progress is even serendipitous. For instance, when I chose to knit the sleeves for my current project at the same time, planning to steek and sew them later, it was to make the color runs approximately the same size as the body.

I didn't know they would also be a close match.

And now, despite having absolutely zero elves of the helpful-in-handwork category, the sleeves are almost done.

All that's left is to bind off the steek stitches, and then figure out whether to connect the remaining stitches into two separate rounds, and knit the cuffs before cutting the steeks, or cut the steeks, sew the sleeves into tubes, and then knit the cuffs. I think I had better ask around -- I'm tired and can't quite figure out what order to do them. I want it to be done well ahead of the fair, but also done well.

And why am I so tired, you might wonder? Remember how I don't think I knit much or fast? Well, I know for a fact that I don't run much, and that not very fast.

Nevertheless, I ran my first (and perhaps last) 5k today with two really good buddies. Even with approximately 2500 other women running, it felt like it was just us, and Eric and Caterina, who came out to cheer me on. The slower of us in the threesome had dubbed today the "Chasing Grace" day, and it was. I lost her quickly at the beginning and never caught up. I know I ran a faster first mile than I would have thought, because I heard someone call the time. I paid for it, and finished the race with an average of (wait for it) -- ten minutes a mile! So a fast first, slow second and medium third. Sheesh. I could have done that without the crowds and tags and electronic timing.

Oh well. I figured I deserved a little something (although the free massages afterward were wonderful), so I drove my friend's yarn store and picked up some treats for my feet.

Saucon Sock in "Forest" and Rio de La Plata Multicolor Sock in some combination of "Wood Thrush, Crimson, Posy Green, Chestnut, Indial Teal and Black." It's pretty, anyhow. They'll make cushy socks.

And after this sweater, I'm going to want something a little smaller to work on.

Strike up the bands; more needle cases

I keep saying, "I only have to do the sleeves," and Sarafina keeps muttering, "You keep using 'only' and 'sleeves' in the same sentence, and I cannot think of one instance where you haven't knit each sleeve at least three times. So you actually have six sleeves left."

Pish tosh, is what I say. I'm pleased with the fit, I'm pleased with the bands, and I do need to figure out where in the color sequence to start the sleeves. I think I'm going to make two at a time, with an in-between steek, to keep the color repeats similar in length to the body. Fortunately, even before I began knitting at all on them, I realized I'm going to have to have a selvedge to sew into the arm holes, so I should make a few extra rows before the pattern. See? That's two sleeves' worth of mistakes I don't have to make!

Still, it's something of a long road between here and finishing completely.


I sewed the bee buttons on just today, while watching "Life in Cold Blood," lent to us by Susan of Homeschooling in the Kitchen fame, using a needle from my olivewood needle holder.


Unless Rosi G. and Kim M. release their claims on the walnut burl and the Shiro plum, these are the seven needle cases I have left until the Australian Hardwood series hits my mailbox. I was thinking that, while these pictures are nice, sometimes it's helpful to see them up close. So I took individual pictures.


This is the maple burl. It's very smooth (he does lovely finishing work).


This is a pecan burl.


This one is taken.This is one of the dyed and laminated wood ones. When I look at it in sunlight, it's mostly gray and red. The Knitpicks laminated wood needles use the same technique.


Also gone.This is another of the pecan heartwood burl ones.


All gone.The last of the blue acrylic. I like the silver findings on it.


These are the red acrylic ones. He's calling these "uncut rubies." They look like a pile of crushed red glass, but of course are very smooth. One has thirds turned into it, the other is more bilaterally symmetrical.

So, if you want them, you can paypal the maker at drhpang AT verizon DOT net, and we'll get them out to you asap.

Buttons before bands

At least when I finally get the button bands done, I'll be able to close it up. This one is sitting on the bottom band for size comparison purposes. I just couldn't resist these when I saw them on ebay.

What was I thinking?

Fortunately I could, if I wanted, take both the band and neckband off and redo them. I'm leaning toward just undoing the front band and knitting it with the yellow/bluegreen combination that the neck band is in.

Arguments for? Easier to redo only one, and I want to pick up 2-4 more stitches than I did the first time around. So doing it over would not only harmonize the colors, but ease the lack of good fit.

I'm really glad, really, that knitting is an easily-redone craft. It's not like sculpting in marble or woodworking, where the material is quite difficult to repurpose once cut or shaped. And I'm glad, on one level, that I can learn from my mistakes.

But still.

Sigh.

Front Bands

One's picked up along the left of the Kauni cardigan and I'm noodling along on it.

There had been some discussion about whether or not I wanted a zip or buttons on this sweater, but I found some lovely pewter buttons with bees on them and thought it might be fun to have those, since they had a nice geometric feel to them, to go with the squares on the sweater.

Busy couple of days. I got to play with someone else's bees, and got dinner out of it -- thank you so much, Esperanza! Finally did some gardening, and I'm looking forward to finishing those bands. Slow, but I see progress on the horizon. So much to knit, so little time, such a messy house to do it in.

Steeking in Public

My Kauni sweater came with me and my swollen hands to park day today. Partly, I wanted to work on it, since I'd just finished the neckband on a ride to and from the snow yesterday (thank goodness for friends who drive) and partly to cut a steek dramatically in front of a group.

It's all part of my "demystify life" paradigm. Do it right in front of people, a lot like John Cleese showed many years ago, right? Well, not quite like that. But I do try to obviously create and do and show other people that life isn't a matter of perfection, or fixed rules, and that just jumping in rarely creates disasters -- often it's a perfectly reasonable approach.

Anyhow, I used regular sewing-up needles to sew guidelines, then got out my scissors. A friend yelled, "Come look! She's going to cut her sweater!" A few of the other homeschoolers gathered around. I didn't ask their permission, so I'm not going to put their faces here, but Sarafina snapped some pictures of them recoiling in horror. Gasps all around. Poor Sarah just said something like, "I couldn't do that. I'd just knit a regular cardigan." It made me laugh.


Then I got to demonstrate how well this whole "cutting up your knitting" thing works -- "Look!" I said, "it fits really well, and it holds together nicely."


A young friend, a relatively new but already very adventurous knitter, said, "Why doesn't it unravel?" I showed how the yarn was "sticky," and had good inter-thread adhesion, and also that I wasn't pulling on it.

I didn't get the bands picked up, partly because I was wavering on the zipper/cool pewter buttons decision, and partly because this morning I tried to give the bees sugar water using my new Zen beekeeper persona. This involved lifting the covers, putting in baggies of sugar water, putting on a new empty box and replacing the cover.

I got as far as lifting the first cover when the first bee bumped my nose. Apparently it wasn't the accident I thought, but a warning shot. The next three bees didn't bother bumping.