That Seven Things Meme

I'm so bad at these, but kitsapFG has tagged Denise and I and Denise insisted that I fulfill the requirements, so here goes.

1. I'm a morning person. At about 9-10 pm, I pull a complete fade. I can stay up late, but really, I'm much better if I'm up with the larks.

2. My life is partially defined by having a sense of persistent underachievement. Eric says that my perspective is skewed, but I consider myself a Jill of many trades, mistress of none.

3. I read voraciously and have since I was three years old. It's been an utter constant in my life.

4. I have a teenager's fondness for speed metal punk music. Loud and bouncy, that's me.

5. For years, I considered myself a wild extravert with almost no need for alone time. Then I had four children and discovered that that might not in fact be true. Just not that much, but not none.

6. I consume Snickers bars, when I eat them rarely, in order: chocolate off the sides, chocolate off the top, caramel off the top, chocolate off the bottom, nougat. A good friend once said that I eat like a 5 year old. I assume that is confined to this example only.

7. That newspaper thing. Writing about this almost makes me shudder. I want my morning paper in perfect order. Even if someone else has read it, I want the sections in the order I want to read them (front page, local news, garden, food, entertainment, real estate) AND I want them perfectly stacked. My eldest child leaves the paper turned back to the comics and Eric strews the sections. Ugh ugh ugh! I tend to be proprietary about my turn, too. You'd think, reading this, that my house would be clean all the time. . .

Now I've done my duty and probably won't again soon. I'm passing the pain along to
Esperanza at Pluck and Feather
My good friend and fellow urban farmer at West Vista Urban Farm School
Small Goat Garden
The Gumshoe Gardener

And now I'm not going to keep going.

Sweet Stages

Spinning and knitting continue apace. I now have a 3x3 rib halter sweater in charcoal. That's what I'd have if I stopped and added straps to the saddle shoulder hate to knit/love to wear sweater. There has to be a name in that somewhere. Baby sweater for neighbor #1 (I've heard tell there is going to be a crop of the baby kind here soon, so I'm planning more) is coming along nicely. Lately, I've put evening knitting aside for paid work, and daytime knitting aside for yard work. Whew! Someday, I'll sit and knit in my yard, and won't that be the bees' knees?

I don't want to embarrass anyone or cause family friction, but right now I'm finding my eldest child easy to enjoy. Thoroughly. A wise friend told me to enjoy it but not assume it will stay. Said child also reminded me that five years ago I thought frequently and longingly of boarding school for her, so there is hope for the younger set at home. She's right.

But she just emerged from her bedroom and said, "Gleaves go over your boots, right?"
I must have looked owlishly at her, because she said, "Leg armor?" hopefully. I said yes, I assumed that over made sense.
"Right," she said, and disappeared back into her room.

Finished things

I realized that I didn't explain the helmet hair in the last post. We've been riding our bikes and we all have wonky hair after pulling off our super-duper bike helmets. Oh well, small price to pay, I guess. Plus, my hair is often damp so I just do some heavy-duty finger fluffing once I get home.

The latest hat will probably mash hair much more thoroughly than a bike helmet, though. My own 3/2 rib design, quickly put up in Lamb's Pride worsted, in the same color I knit my very first sweater for me in, about 12 years ago. I have got to get this yarn all used up! Maybe I'll knit feltable potholders or something.


I liked the decreases when I was done:


The yarn dyed with indigo has been humming in my head ever since it was dry: "Wonder what I'll loooooooook like? Wonder how I'll spinnnnnnn. . . " I may not be able to resist heedlessly starting new knitting projects as the whim takes me, but I can wait on spinning, partially because I only have a few bobbins and it's hard to spin over other yarn. Besides, I had to finish that lavender wool that I had 3/4 spun up. So I did.


618 yards of two-ply laceweight. I haven't figured out the wpi yet, and it clearly varies. I'm toying with the idea of replying it. It's nicely balanced, but it's very loosely plied. I obviously need some remedial spinning help.


The color is sort of all over the place. Some of the white appears yellowish to me, but the lavender is kind of appealing. A swatch would tell a truer story.


Maybe when I finish the two sweaters just hanging about on the needles, that's just what I'll do. Or else I'll spin indigo. . .

Mysterious eggs, tomatoes in traction

I've been getting such a kick out of the chicks' gifts of eggs; it just tickles me that I can go out there in the morning, open the nesting box hatch, and find a few eggs---nature's vending machine. I often beat the kids out there it's such fun.

We have six chicks, three or four of whom we think are laying. So imagine my surprise, my delight, indeed my amazement, when I opened the box the other morning to find this:


The kids and I ran through the possible calculations: Did three hens each lay three eggs and one laid one? Two hens each laid two and two laid three? It was a chicken mystery.

Then Kevin sent a message: "I assume you found my little joke..." Joke? What joke?

Oh.

No, I hadn't noticed the eggs were cold, suspiciously cold ... refrigerator cold.

Okay, so maybe I'm gullible. It's probably the same quality that allows me to appreciate the wonder of natural variety.


Kevin made two nesting boxes for the chicks, which is supposed to be plenty for six. The other day, though, Big Mouth---our first producer---was dismayed to find both boxes occupied. She protested so long and so loudly that I went outside to find out what the ruckus was about. There she stood, inches from the poor hens trying to lay, squawking her head off, while the interlopers studiously ignored her.

So now there are three:

Nesting boxes aren't the only things Kevin's been up to. Instead of a sprawling pile, we now have a firewood shed:

The compost piles are up and running:

(As an aside, man alive, I never thought I'd end up cheerfully taking pictures of my compost! Life is anything but dull.)

Here's the whole back corner, with the chicken coop, compost, and shed, all built with salvaged wood.

And here's where we keep the salvaged wood now, tucked away on the side of the house (read: happily out of the way) waiting for future projects:

The wood shed is where the mushroom logs used to be, but we kept forgetting about them, so we moved them to the other side of the yard, by the walkway. Now they'll get more attention---and hopefully more water.

The squirrels are wreaking havoc with our sunflowers.

Apparently they can't climb over the thick honeysuckle to reach the sunflowers there. Next year I'll plant more in front of the vine-covered fence.

Then there was the tomato implosion. I've mentioned before that Early Girls are pretty much my reason for gardening. Well these plants grew so thick and heavy that they fell over, so we went into tomato triage:

Yes, that's a hastily constructed bamboo/redwood/rope/green yarn tomato scaffold, or, as the squirrels like to call it, the sunflower seed--eating platform.


It was a tough call---sunflowers or Early Girls?---but of course the tomatoes won out. More of the sunflowers live in vases now, brightening up the interior.

And the Early Girls? Their color takes my breath away:

There you can see green heartbreak: tomatoes broken during triage. Sniff.

In other parts of the yard, forget the corn---the pole beans have conquered the apricot tree:

I'm trying to figure out when the Lakota are ready to be harvested:

and we're getting ready for our biggest raspberry harvest yet:

My oldest always gets them before I do, so I'm hoping one of these has my name on it.

Just Can't Stop

"We're jammin'
To think that jammin' was a thing of the past;
We're jammin',
And I hope this jam is gonna last."

Apparently I can't stop. The fruit flies are back, and our neighbor keeps dropping off bags of fruit.


Denise helped me turn fruit fly bait into Cinnamon Vanilla Nectarine-Peach jam last night.


Indeed, we are jammin'.

Helmet hair and a lump in my throat

I deliberately sent two of my always-homeschooled kids off to school today.

See if you can guess which one is the focus of this effort:


She didn't quite get what her brother was doing:


He's still homeschooling in his head, I think:


But it's an experiment he's willing to go along with:

Maybe I should stop now

In between regular life today, 27 half pints and two six ounce jars of jam got made. Almost two gallons of plum, plum with Ollalieberries, and Ollalieberries with plum, and much of my holiday gifting is taken care of.

Even so, I don't think I can eat enough toast before next year's jam season. Nor can I shove enough PB&Js off on my children. I'm going to have to deal with the siren call of the blackberries in some other way.

I wonder if I could can pie filling.