gnome butts and insualtors

geez! where did the time go? in fact....i started this post quite awhile ago. let me finish and move on to more current stuff!! i guess you can call it springtime. but one of the best things about spring is the beginning of yard sales!!!!! liam and i found a few scores up the street from the post office. liam scored some insulators and i found some chicken fabric and my very first garden gnome that was not stolen!(someday i may confess on a blog post) i have many kitchen window gnomes but this little guy named "hoppy" is my first garden gnome here in california. check out the score:

here's some recent spinning: no time for details(remember it's spring) but here is my cottage creations all plied and another skein- my first 3PLY! a very soft merino!!!

here's my latest spinning project....BFL from Lisa Souza i purchased at stitches!


gorgeous! hopefully i have enough for a small shawl.

on the chick front- we lost lost the other "hamburg." she was so tiny!!!! i will post soon about the chick adventure but yes, it is spring and here is the family's weekend to do list:
1. rack beer
2. fire pack....pack important stuff ready to go at a moments notice
3. garbage
4. work on banty bungalow
5. garden
6. rocks at the base of the new chicken fence
7. put up shade cloth on front porch
8. weed wack
9. trim tree
10. put up screen door
11. suzie- chicken butt bath
12. clean nesting boxes
13. camptonville courier

heavy sigh....yes, it's spring! have a great weekend!!!!

R.I.P. little one!

let's get the depressing stuff over with first. we lost our first chick. she was one of my favs too! we've lost older chicks(more pullet size) in the past-due to a neighbor dog-in fact it was our first flock- he killed 7 out of 8 our teens....devastating after raising them from newborns. we still have lucie the lucky....the soul survivor-she's our special gurl.....remember she's the one that used to ride on my shoulder till she pecked my eye!! (steven king needs to jump on this!)

here's the one we lost. it's hard for me as i feel i did something wrong. she is.... the speckled one. she was a golden penciled hamburg. a breed native to holland-just like my first spinning wheel.

she was so tiny! smaller than the bantums!!!! (see below.) we separated the bantums for breed identification-as we seem to have some ufos in the batch.

on a lighter note.....i had a great mother's day. liam and hubby made me huevos rancheros for breakfast--yum yum!!!

we worked on the bantum bungalow..i love building-hubby and i managed to do it without too much fighting. more like small bickering. sorry no pics...but the bottom frame is done and the linolium laid!!!!

then we went on a walk-down the road at the reservoir. that last rain really filled it!!

here's liam by our favorite ponderosa!

my favorite part of the day was liam woke early and picked some wild lupines and made me a card.....the best!!!!!! he put the flowers in one of his old bottles! i love my boy!

thanks for a great day roy and liam!!

i leave you with a picture of ..........my laundry room spy!

i think he was sent out by Tide. i despise that crap! i use natural stuff(unscented for sure!)....i'm so sick of getting clothes at thrift stores that i need to wash a million times and hang them on the line for weeks cause the smell makes me effin sick!!!!!! i'm sorry...but there is something really wrong with laundry detergent that has to leave a scent that lasts till the next century. what is it made of???? what's with those nasty stinky dryer sheets...we are killing the planet and ourselves!!!!

gee....okay, i said i'd get the depressing stuff over first...i'm sorry. have a beer and a cigarette instead of doing laundry. :)

i'm a new mom!!!

on friday, may 8th at 9:33 am i received a phone call from post master Bo Salisbury! i had been anxiously waiting for this call......as i was soon to be a new mother. liam and i rushed to our beloved post office and Bo played stork and delivered to us our new bundles of joy!!!!!
all 18 of them! but wait....when we got home and opened the box we counted 22 chicks.


when we read the invoice it said-"males included for warmth." great!! i also have 4 baby roosters!!!!! noooooooooo! i don't want any roosters. if anyone out there wants any roosters-they are cute and free! here's liam with one he's named Columbus-as he likes to explore!

i believe them to be white leghorns. remember foghorn leghorn? yep! they are that kind. maybe one should be named kellog. please help me!!!!! take these cockerels and give them a good home-hey sue don't need another named "enchilada?"

we noticed one of the bantums looked a bit shaky and had weird eyes. we taught all the chicks to drink but this one wasn't thriving. i dropper fed her for about 30 minutes and put her in with the rest and hoped for the best.little did we know-she was just so young her eyes hadn't opened yet. in about an hour her eyes were open and she was fine. we thought she was born without eyes and we'd have a blind chicken-liam named her "keller."

besides the 4 deposable male packing peanuts here is what we got:
2 cuckoo marans
2 rhode island reds
4 buff catalanas(we have idenified 2 of these-i think we got substituted 2 other mystery chicks!)
2 golden penciled hamburgs
8 buff wyandotte bantums

more to come !!!!

unwanted visitor

okay-i'm trying to play catch up as the satellite has not been working thru all these rain storms. it used to only go out when the dish filled with snow. hmmm-maybe you are right ken-ufos!

here's my gaia shawl-coming along!

i'm not to thrilled about this noro sock yarn though. next time i would choose a different yarn. remember this BFL fiber from Miss Babs?

it was a delight to spin and i wish i had more. here's the skein: oops! pics a bit dark!

a few weekends ago hubby and i deciced to watch steven king's "the storm of the century." we had gotten it years ago at flea market or garage sale for a buck. what the hell, right? the feakin movie turned out to be 248 minutes long. do the math. that was one long movie, but compelling enough to not turn the damn thing off. we don't usually sit for that long! anyway- as the suspense was increasing hubby jumps off the couch totally freaking out-ripping his sweater off yelling there's something BIG and ALIVE in his sleeve! he throws his sweater out the front door- i'm thinking tick or spider. he says no-his sleeve was pulsating and moving of it's own accord. what babies we were! we were too afraid to look thru his sweater till the next morning. it was cold enough to know whatever is was would probably still be there.
this is what i found inside his sweater the next morning! it had crawled into his sleeve with out him knowing...till it got possessed by mr. king.

i hope to get some pics up from the nuno felting workshop last weekend. very cool technique indeed!

life's hard part 2

sometimes you're the cat:sometimes you're the bird:

if kitsie can catch a finch-why can't she handle the mice? remember blue took over that job.