Back in the Saddle

It's been forever since I've blogged. I blame work and just a clear lack of motivation on my part. I have been giving my hobbies (chickens and fiber arts) the back burner for too long. With fall weather in the air the last week, I have a sense of renewed vigor and zest for life. Add to that some occasional exercise (biking) and I've gotten a burst of energy coming out of the summer doldrums.

My chickens are doing great and I've got two and a half flocks now. Flock #1 is the laying flock with Black Australorps, Barred Rocks, Easter Eggers, White Leghorns, and a mut or two. Flock #2 is assorted bantams (Silkie, Easter Egger, Old English Bantams, Cochin). Flock #2.5 is a Salmon Faverolles Rooster, Partridge Silkie Hen, their babies hatched from eggs, and some standard sized Salmon Faverolles (SF) chicks, which the hen was kind enough to hatch and raise along with her own eggs. Here are pics of some of the SF x Silkie crosses.

I'm wondering if this one is an Old English Game bantam (OEGB) hen X a White Silkie roo. I've got an OEGB hen with that same grey lacing on the back and red lacing on the breast.




I think the white one on the right with the grey hood and feet is a hen.
I'm fairly certain the darker one on the left is a rooster.




I managed to capture one of these quick little boogers today. Here's a closer look at one of the Silkie X Salmon Faverolles chicks. This is the one that has similar coloring to the Salmon Faverolle roosters. So I'm betting this one is a Roo, too. He got his poofie hairdo from his mother the Silkie.





With respect to my fiber pursuits, I've actually taught someone to spin with a drop spindle in the last several weeks -a friend of my wife's from Ravelry. I love creating spinning addicts. I've also done a fall cleanup of my fiber workshop. The cobwebs are gone and I sprayed for insects. I spent yesterday (Saturday) morning hand combing some fiber (Romney) - not the softest but I will find some use for the finished yarn. I did spin on my wheel in the last few weeks. I need to do more of that since it is so relaxing. Also, I have new knitting project in the works. I'm making a thank-you shawl in purple mohair for the lady at my bank who just helped process our new car loan.

The new car is a Volvo C30, in Brilliant Blue. We purchased this car mainly for daughter to drive to school once she gets her license, but for now its fun driving for the whole family. I must say that I'm impressed with Volvo. Although the C30 is at the bottom of their line, everything is the same quality as you find in their more expensive models. We are considering this our starter Volvo with the intention of upgrading our other vehicles to Volvos when it's time replace them. Unfortunately, I drive a 2006 Honda Civic (only one more year of payments) and it's probably going to last at least another 8 years. :( Wife says that she is next in line for a new car. She has a 2000 Ford Explorer which I despise, but she loves. In another year or two, this Ford Explorer would probably not be worth more than $1000.00 in a trade-in, if that. So my best hope is to sell it to someone for a fishing/farm vehicle when the time comes to replace it.

Leaping Lizards and Lemons !!!

I haven't blogged in a while, but I since today is a beautiful day for a Christmas Eve here in SC, I couldn't help but share some photos.

First an update on project incubator. Yes, baby chicks did hatch as planned on December 13th - 16th. Broody Betty my buff cochin bantam hen hatched hers first as she began to set her eggs a day earlier than I had placed my half in the incubator. The final count was 10 out of 12 eggs hatched into beautiful chicks. Although I lost one chick post hatch due to a stupid arrangement of a bale of wheat straw in the outdoor coop, we still have 9 happy, healthy Silkie bantam chicks. These are going to turn into big balls of fluff. Go here to see what grown Silkies look like.

Here are some photos of my baby Silkies.





















Here's Broody Betty with some of her newly hatched babies. The colors in this photo turned out with the red tint because of the red heat lamp in the brooder/coop. Now you know what live chicken would look like under the fast food heat lamps. :)



Now for the the photos which inspired the title for this blog post.

This is Lizzie, the green anole lizard who wandered inside a few weeks ago. Wife rescued his little fellow from the jaws of death (the mouth of our cat) and released it outside. I brought the lizard back in on a houseplant when we were expecting a hard freeze last week. When I discovered this little guy, I didn't have the heart to dump him from the balmy 70 + degrees in the house back into the freezing temps in the garden. So this lucky lizard got a five star winter resort in the form of a terrarium that I put together from an old aquarium I had in storage. Lizzie looks happy basking under the light from a 60 watt light bulb. The funny looking black thing on the cord in the photo is the temperature probe. Notice Lizzie's missing tale from the cat encounter a few weeks ago. The plan is for Lizzie to spend the winter indoors and be reintroduced to the wild in the spring where he can once again become part of the food chain (as predator and prey).



This is my lovely dwarf Meyer Lemon that I purchase last spring at the local Lowes home center. It was in bloom when I bought it and it developed little green lemons this summer. When I brought it indoors about a month ago, the lemons had started to turn yellow. Now they are much bigger and bright yellow while the plant has started to blossom again. Encourage by my success with citrus, I now have a blood orange, kumquat, and key lime trees on order and they should arrive in about another week. I can't wait to grow more pretty fruit and enjoy the fragrant citrus blossoms indoors. These small trees can be wheeled in and out of the sunroom on those rolling plant trays. They'll spend the spring and summer outside.



See how well endowed my lemon tree is?

Project Incubator

Just recently one of our little bantam chickens has gone broody. Meaning she wants to hatch some eggs really badly. My wife has nicknamed the little hen, "Broody Betty". She's been setting on air for the last week or so and she will not give up on the nest until it produces something. So, I went yesterday and secured some fertile chicken eggs for her to hatch. The hatching eggs were sold by the dozen. Even though the eggs are smaller ones (Silkies), I don't think that Betty could cover all twelve eggs. So I gave Betty six of the eggs and purchased a Little Giant egg incubator to have a go at the other six. So, now we have nature vs. technology.

So far, Betty is winning the contest. She barely moved as I slipped six eggs under her, one at a time. Since then she has been vacuum sealed to the nest. :) I did try to rouse her today to encourage her to get food and water, but she is taking her job seriously and refuses to be distracted. Perhaps she had already been up early this morning for food and water and I just didn't catch her on a work break. I noticed that she had arranged and even stacked one egg on top of the others. So she is apparently doing okay at turning the eggs.

With the incubator, I am still trying to get the set up right with a steady temperature and humidity before adding the fertile eggs. Here's the photo of the incubator:


Here's another photo of the modification I made to the skinny thermostat control knob. I simply added an alligator clip to make it easier to tell how much I was twisting the little knob to increase or decrease the temperature.


Lastly, here's picture of the hygrometer (measures humidity) inside the incubator. Also, along the bottom of the photo is the Water Wiggler (rubbery tube toy) with the temperature probe inserted in the middle tube opening. This is supposed to give a temperature reading that approximates the temperature inside the incubating eggs.


The goal is to have a 99.5 degrees F. inside the egg (as tested inside the water wiggler) and a 50% humidity to start out with in the incubator. Humidity will be increased the last three days incubation to make it easier for the chicks to escape the shell. Total time to hatching is 21 days.

After I get the temperature and humidity stabilized later this evening I will add the eggs. I'll be at least a whole day behind Betty in the hatching race.

Chick Pics

Here are pics of those spring chickens all grown up now. The big girls have been laying eggs since sometime around the end of July. At the peak of first season laying I was getting about a 10 eggs a day from my eleven full sized laying hens, plus a few here and there from the two bantam hens.

Charlie the rooster


Black Frizzled Bantam Cochin rooster and a bantam hen (unknown breed)


Laying Hens, "Minnie" the Americauna is the black and white one


Another photo of laying hens


Thinking inside the box - Red hen in the nest box preparing to lay her egg


"Fran" the Barred Rock hen


Guys hanging out - The buff cochin bantam rooster and the black frizzle cochin bantam rooster


The chickens have turned out to be so much fun to watch. The eggs are a great bonus. I am now spoiled to fresh eggs and store bought eggs seem tough and tasteless in comparison to the fresh ones.

Here are some more pics of fall color in South Carolina at the moment.

Maple Leaves


More Maple Leaves


Pic of the entire red maple tree

Indeed...Life has been busy!

I realize that I haven't posted a blog entry in months. Well, there are several good reasons. #1 is that my employer has been rightsizing the organization since mid-April, 2007 and I feel almost like I've been a contestant on the television show "Survivor". I've managed to avoid the unemployment line for now, but I've had to go the extra mile everyday at work to ensure that I'm worthy of retention. Blogging, along with many other fun things, just hasn't been a priority.



However, I'm now getting some of the balance back into my life and have picked up my much enjoyed spinning, weaving, and knitting again. We just returned from SAFF (Southeastern Animal Fiber Fair) in Asheville, NC this weekend and I feel a little rejuvenated and motivated in regard to my fiber pursuits.


I've renewed my efforts at getting some of my floor looms (purchased in the spring) back into shape and ready for weaving. I ordered some replacement parts for the Harrisville 40-inch loom (they came in the mail today) and I'm making the list of replacement parts for the old Leclerc Fanny loom that I received as a give-a-way several years ago.


It's been a long road with the Leclerc Fanny refurbishment involving painstaking stripping of the old lacquer finish from all of the wood and scrubbing rust from all of the metal. I couldn't have ever done the stripping without a product called Soy Gel. The Soy Gel doesn't produce the noxious vapors of turpentine or the variety of other stripping compounds. Still it took lots of wiping to get all of the dissolved and gooey lacquer off the wood. After the removing the old finish I oiled down the wood repeatedly with mineral oil and lemon oil, followed by a final coat of Howard's Feed N Wax with Beeswax and Orange Oil. The aged maple wood of this loom is so beautiful now. I can't wait to get it all assembled again. Luckily, I labeled all wooden parts and bagged and labeled all screws and hardware before disassembly. Also, Leclerc has their loom assembly manuals online for many older looms. There's no exact manual to match my ~1945 Fanny, but it's close enough. Soon enough all of my looms will be functional again and I will have no excuse for not weaving. :) I think the Leclerc Fanny (45" width) wants to weave rugs. The Harrisville 40-inch loom wants to weave wool blankets or wraps.

The chickens are all grown up now and started laying eggs this summer. They outgrew the chicken tractor contraption and have moved into two 10 x 10 ft kennel-type pens where they live full-time. Unfortunately, I can't let them free range all around the yard because of the hawks, foxes, and stray dogs which are constantly on the prowl. Although the new pens are stationary, we can go inside the pens and interact more with the chickens. Now, most of them get picked up and cuddled on daily basis. If you want a pet bird, I would recommend chickens over parrots or other exotic birds. The chickens are friendly (dont' bite your finger off), they cost much less to buy ($2.00 chick vs. $500.00 plus for a parrot) and feed, and you can eat their eggs. Now my chickens can't mimic human vocalizations, but they can cluck,"bock", and crow to let you know what's on their minds.

Well, I'v designed a little weaving pattern for a Christmas scarf project for a friend's granddaughters. I plan to weave it in 18/2 Zephyr Wool/Silk with the weft also having a kid mohair/silk laceweight run along with the Zephyr. I am hoping this project will turn out as I've envisioned it. Here's pic of the fabric I've designed from the weaving program I've been trying out.

It's a 4-shaft, advancing twill pattern that I generated/adapted after studying similar weave structures in the book, TWILL THRILLS by Madelyn Van der Hoogt. The section of the book on advancing twills , 'Snowflakes and Stars' was written by Laura Fry.

Life can be so busy

I've been so busy over this few weeks. Part of that is volunteering at my local yarn to help out the owners while one of them is having some minor surgery. Fortunately, we have a wonderful group of volunteer supporters for our local yarn shop who help to hold down the fort when needed. I am learning about all of the hard work that it takes to keep a yarn shop going. It's certainly not sitting around all day knitting, chatting, and ringing up an occasional sale. There is all of the backroom accounting, ordering, receiving, and problem solving which is seldom seen by the average customer.

Being around all of that yarn in the shop does have a hypnotic affect. The temptation of looking at yarn all day can be a little overwhelming. I couldn't resist the constant siren song coming from some Rowan Kidsilk Night. It's basically Rowan Kidsilk Haze with a subtle, yet glitzy metallic thread running through it. The Kidsilk Night which I got was in the Moonlight color. The photos on the Rowan website just don't do it justice. I have designed and am now knitting a nice little rectangular stole using the simplest lace knitting stitches with one of the Barbara Walker Treasury books as inspiration. The goal is to create a beginner lace project which won't be so intimidating, yet still be a rewarding while looking more difficult than it really was to knit.

I apologize for having no photos this week, but I'll get some posted this weekend. There will be pics of the chickens and their new habitat, a.k.a. Chicken Tractor, to come. Building the chicken tractor has been fun. If you don't know what a chicken tractor is, then visit Backyardchickens.com to see photos of different chicken coop designs. The whole idea for having chickens in my backyard will be to produce eggs while being able to move the chicken habit around to new ground each day. That way, the droppings don't accumulate and create a yucky, stinky, chicken yard. Also, the chickens can help with weed control along the transition zone between lawn and wooded area. The chickens might even help cultivate and fertilize new areas for raised gardening beds. The whole process sounds simple and environmentally friendly. Hopefully, we will reap the benefit of having fresh, organically produced eggs in by the end of this summer. I have been spending quite a bit of time planning and building my chicken tractor to, hopefully, make it predator resistant. I don't want raccoons, coyotes, or wild dogs eating up my egg machines.

Reorganize, Reorganize, Reorganize!!!

The new outbuilding was finished last week. However, because of other commitments and weekend company on Saturday, I was unable to make much progress in getting my fiber studio back in order. I've decided that Rome wasn't built in a day and it's going to most likely take at least a week of evenings to get things moved to the new outbuilding and get my fiber studio to even look like a studio again. The biggest things that have slowed me down are the installation of screening over the open soffits of the outbuilding (to keep out wasps, bugs, critters) and the installation of locks on the garage doors (to keep out two-legged intruders). Once the place was secure, the I was able to start moving into the new outbuilding.

The goal is to first remove everything that does not belong in the fiber studio. I feel like a child doing one of those worksheets which has one identify "which one of these is not like the others". :) The last two nights, I've managed to move many things out of the fiber studio including the riding lawn mower, bicycles, chemicals and house paints, camping and gardening supplies, window screens, empty coolers, and assorted junk. I've still got a few power tools left to go along with some things which will need to come back to the house and go into the attic. With persistence I will eventually be reorganized and have a working fiber studio again.

In the meantime, I have not given up on doing at least some simple knitting. Here are some quickly snapped photos of my simple lace knitting project (lavender stole) in a mohair yarn.