Safe from the stewpot

At least for now, the chickens are. I know, I know that I promised that these would be pet chickens and we wouldn't eat them, blah blah blah, oh these many years ago, but during the long dark rainy days of winter, to buy feed for them and check their water and so on and so forth, with very little to show for it weakens my resolve. "Wouldn't a nice pot of chicken rice soup taste good?" I ask.

And the children shriek. "You promised!" So I back off. But today, when I went out there just to tell myself that, yes, the kids are still neglecting their chores, I found something else that helped.


Since I can't tell who lays the brown eggs, all three of the possible suspects have a reprieve. The Americauna lays the green eggs, so she's safe too.

The warm weather (well, much warmer than it has been -- eight days I think so far without rain, sunshine is pouring through the windows and the kids are wearing next to nothing) also cheers me mightily, even though it was almost upon us when the stove guys finally got around to hooking up the heat stove. It took three tries, but it works like a dream now. Heat, indoor heat, seems like a bizarre and terrific concept.

Now that we might not need it until November. Actually, my friend Suzee has reminded me that we get this kind of teaser every February, and woe to those who believe in its lasting power and try to put tomatoes in the garden for an early start. March is coming.

It looked like summer at yesterday's ultimate match, though. Artificial turf on a parking garage, surrounded by buildings made for a warm day.


You can't really see much, but that's Thing 1 catching the disk. She's playing with the high school team even though she's a youngun, and I'm very happy for her. Thing 4 found playing on the sidelines simply exhausting:


(She actually asked me to take that picture -- strange little thing.) It was a much nicer game than the one only a week before, as you can tell in this picture from that game:


They beat the same team two weekends in a row, in very different conditions. Seems conclusive to me. Since her team is made up of middle-school and high-school students, beating the local university's team is a nice touch.

The hooded sweater isn't yet finished, but I started the hood and I will just need about 3/4 of each ball to finish it, so yes, I did have to buy more. But that will leave me with about 1 1/4 ball of each color. The yarn is so beautiful and soft I may have to make a colorwork hat for me. How many hats can one woman wear? How many do you have?

While I worked on it last night, I haven't yet finished spinning the three-ply sock yarn (bfmomma, do you still want to knit socks for me? Pretty please?). Did that stop me? No, my mother gave me a gift certificate to Loop and lookie what came for me today!



Bamboo, delightful beautiful bamboo. Perfect for socks, but wouldn't I have to ply it with wool for memory? I may, and I may just have fun spinning this beauty up. The colors are less insane than the picture shows, although unfortunately there's nothing left on her site to show the true colors. That's the "Chocolate Liquor" colorway, and then there's the "Sour Apple" bamboo/alpaca -- ha ha ha!


I'm wondering if I could eek out a little lacy something -- a tiny sweater for me? out of six ounces. Any ideas?

The weather also helped bring out the wander woman in me. I forced the kids to come along to take advantage of one of the neat weather quirks here. A few weeks of rain charges up the hills with water, but then the lovely weather makes getting to the result much more comfortable and rewarding. I'd like to come back and camp in this state park, because we only investigated one trail and there are many others that look just as fun.


For those of you to whom spring seems like a slightly stale joke these days, I wish I could box up and send you some of our reprieve to enjoy.