Goose Free Yard

Is still in progress, but I’m MUCH closer.

I’ve got the wooden sections of the fence blocked off with wire fencing from the old garden.

The chickens are in Chicken World, complaining about it every step of the way. However, they’ve got plenty of room as long as the geese stay out. The girls are under house arrrest until they finish molting, they’ve blown their feathers and some of them are nearly naked.

I’ve seen worse – some of the hens at the Flea Market last week were in HORRIBLE shape. I never sell hens in moult. I can’t get a good price for them.

Anyways – the point of this post is that I’m looking forward to being able to walk around my back yard barefooted. Can’t do that now – I’d be stepping in something nasty every few steps.

So here’s to fences!

There is a PS to this – I can’t spin on the back porch because of the poop left by the chickens. I want to be able to walk out the door and spin without having to put down a rug or something to keep my fiber clean if it drops.

Hats, Hats and More Hats

Yes, I’m obessed with hats. I’m taking knitting lessons, and learning to knit hats. Then I’ve been crocheting hats (3 of them) using a simple hat pattern from “Respect the Spindle”. I got three different looking hats out of it. 

Then I saw the log cabin squares that I saw on a blog also made on the PBS channel. I experimented with those and had a great time.

I think I’m starting to lose my dread of making mistakes. LOL

Whatcha Up To?

I hope this picture looks better than the flashed out one. I’ve been spinning some Silver Romney – about 6 oz so far. And there is an ounce of accent yarn, silver and rose (Coopworth wool). There are 3 more ounces to spin before I’ll offer it for sale.

The rose and silver was just put on the niddy noddy today. I plied it yesterday. I still have to set the twist. It looks to me like someone could knit a scarf, a hat and a pair of mittens from all this yarn.

The fiber spun like a dream. It isn’t dyed wool, it was carded with some grease left on it to make it spin better. Carding the two fibers together was easy once I got Hubby into the act. We knocked it out in a few minutes.

An aside to anyone who has a carding machine – get a wallpaper brush to press down the batt. I used a card for it and got my fingers nipped. The paint brush works just as well and you don’t have to worry about your fingers.

Since the heat broke we’ve been puttering around in the yard. I still don’t have a goose free yard but the girls are penned up in Chicken World. So there aren’t as many chickens jumping on the porch to steal cat food. (Or leave proof they were there.)

Nothing going on the writing front. I’ve got to go hermit again, I guess. But with the weather cooling down I’m able to sleep better at night because I can be more active during the day.

That’s it for today. I’m going to catch up with all the blogs I follow this evening.

I’m crocheting a hat, a very simple pattern, which is good, because I can’t read patterns very well.

Eventually I’ll buy a set of knitting needles, expensive but a good investment since I’m slowly teaching myself to knit. I got a cheat sheet of stitches yesterday which helped me learn to purl and do a stocking net stitch. I tried ribbing, but it became a mess. I’ll try again later when I’m not frustrated with it.

That’s it for me, no adventures at the moment.

Book Review – City of Fallen Angels.

2 of 5 stars
bookshelves: everybody-read-it, hero-not-hardly, i-gave-up, paranormal-romance, young-adult-ick

Read in September, 2013

The Movie caught my attention, by the time I got to this book, I wanted to beat Jace with a stick.

I get that Clary is 16 and clueless – that’s exactly how she acts. But even she is more mature than her ‘love interest’ who is forever running off to sulk.

But Jace – what a whimpy-minded id10t! He’s a drama-boy, wallowing in self-pity ‘oh I’m a monster’ WAY TOO LONG after he knows the truth of his heritage. It smacks of the worse kind of cowardice.

Simon and Alec have both ‘manned up’ and learned to take life in stride, but not poor, pitiful Jace. Alec and Simon are much stronger characters for their ability to take hard knocks and come out stronger.

I get that the author had to keep the lovers separated, and sidestep them ‘going all the way’ – however, she did it in a way that made Jace look like a complete fool. Every little ‘setback’ throws him into a sulking fit, even when everyone else knows that he was a target.

Also, I have to comment on the poor editing in this book and the rest of the series. There are spelling errors and continuity errors than a ‘professionally published’ book should NOT have. It’s frustrating to have characters doing things in one book that are completely forgotten in the next book.

I may not read the last book in the series.