Full Participation.

I don't know if it's ever happened since we've had our current coop of chickens, but today all four of our girls laid eggs. They've been in various stages of broodiness and molting so for the past few months there's always been at least one chicken laying, but not all of them. They were all laid in the same nesting box and the silver polish Anastasia was standing guard.
The girl who held out the longest is our silkie, Pudding.She went broody a while ago and stayed that way for over a month, then didn't lay for a few more. Many people get bothered by a chicken that's gone broody because they aren't being productive (since I'm the only egg-eater in the house, this doesn't bother me) or because they look quite pathetic while sitting on the nest and rarely eating or drinking. So lots of folks have remedies for making a chicken unbroody, but I'm kind of hoping that one of my girls goes broody soon because I think I have a resource for fertilized bantam eggs...how fun would Easter be if we had an egg getting ready to hatch?? The fact that Anastasia was hovering over those eggs makes me think she might be ready to go...!

In craftier news, there's LOTS of sewing going on over here. I'm sewing many, many skirts for the play that I'm in in a few weeks. In between circle skirts I'm trying to fit my own projects. So far: mother and daughter Easter bonnets. No pictures yet because, interestingly, bonnets don't photograph well if they are not on a head. I tried to explain this to Bean, but she couldn't be coerced into photographic cooperation today. Maybe later. Or not.

Oh, and also, I finally submitted an entry into a Spoonflower contest! See it here and remember to vote for your faves!

Feathering the Nest

Literally.I've rainbowized the bookshelves and now I'm hanging all of the stuff that we've never hung up. Well, some of it has been hung up, but I've changed the paint enough that everything has come back down and needs to be rethought. My goal is to try to create little moments around the house that are more than just a picture thrown up on the wall. For me this is a long, slow process that involves lots of hang-able stuff laying around the house for many months while I "think" about where to put it. I wish I was a more effective interior decorator, but my good ideas are few and far between. I will probably, therefore, never live in a house that is entirely put together. But I am finally happy with this tiny part of a wall in the entryway. I found this little shelves at a yard sale last summer and finally got around to painting it (them, actually, but now the second painted one will have to lie around for another few months while I figure out where to put it). I decided that the fistful of feathers that I've been collecting from our chickens needed to be displayed more prominently as did this lovely little bird sculpture which I did have hanging up, but in a really wrong spot. I like.

Oh! And I'm a winner ! I know I've already mentioned it, but if you don't already know about The Bright Side Project, check it out. I won this! It made my day and I'm getting a necklace with our (me, my man, and my babe's) three initials on it: ask. Yes, we spell word. Or, rearranged, a music genre. We are very versatile.

How Much Bed is Too Much Bed?

Well, with two months of baby-growing to go, I've been grounded. As of two weeks ago, that is. Yuppers, bedrest. It's taken me some time to wrap my head around this crazy turn of events. I had imagined that I'd be working right up until the first contractions, a sort of living laboratory for my students (and as a bonus, a really good reminder of why it's OK to wait on the whole sex thing, kids). But alas, I won't be getting much more mileage out of my cute maternity shirts (or the blank ones that I'd ordered with plans to freezer paper stencil them). Instead, I've finally caved on the years-long debate we've had running in our home over whether or not to get cable, and I've discovered that there IS such a thing as Too Much Bed.

So, while I can't go to work and my social interactions have been limited to Andrew, my cat (the master of how to do bedrest), the occasional visitor who doesn't mind hanging out in my bedroom, and the entire cast of designers of HGTV, I've been trying to keep moderately crafty. The problem is that I have almost no patience for putting together nice photographs. This has made blogging seem like no fun. What a dilemma - - much in the way of crafty goodness to show, yet no drive to actually get the camera out and show it. I'll try to find a way to take good looking photos from bed, and then maybe I'll post some of the handmade goodness.

For now, here's a fantastic shot of the silver polish, doing her punk rock thing. We are acclimating Kateski to the new girls, and things are going smoothly. Kateski isn't pecking much, instead, she shows her authority by insisting on pushing the chicks out of the way and pecking the ground that they were working on...even when we've thrown food all around the coop. It's sort of like siblings fighting over toy turf or something like that (never having had a sibling, I can only imagine that there is some parallel between humans and chickens in this respect).

And with that, back to bed and the land of 30 minute room renovations (man, do I have big plans for our kitchen now...)

Busy Busy

There has been lots going on in our house lately! I've been growing a baby, we've been raising new baby chicks (in what will be the nursery...yes, I currently have livestock in our future nursery...), there has been crafting and baby shower planning and a new gym membership so that I can get my bloated self into a swimming pool. Yuppers, lots going on. With all of the activity, I haven't found the energy to photograph much. However, today is the first real beautiful Spring day on a weekend and we took the new chicks out to get their first taste of outdoor life.

You may remember that our white crested black polish, Kateski, had a severe injury a while back that required local anesthesia and stitches (which, like idiots, we agreed to go ahead and pay for on a chicken). Kateski's absence from the coop caused the other two non-crested chickens to forget about her and then peck her relentlessly upon her return. So those two were relocated to my mom and dad's coop where they are happily integrated. Poor Kateski has been by herself and being the wee chicken that she is, we've had to bring her inside each and every night during the cold, cold winter we've had (I already mentioned that we're idiots, right?) We needed more chickens and they needed to be of the crested variety so here we have the newbies:

Anastasia on the right, the silkie on the left (it's impossible to get a single shot of the silkie because she's constantly glued to the hip of one of the other chicks...that sounds like hen behavior, right?!)
Amelia (foreground) and K2. Little punks.
The mohawk money shot.

Anastasia is the only one who is currently named and she's the black and white one with the fantastic black mohawk. She's a silver polish. There is another white crested black polish (we've been calling her K2 for Kateski the second, so maybe that'll stick), and a black silkie. The silkie isn't crested, but we got her and K2 because three of the four crested chicks we ordered died right after delivery (and we couldn't get to them fast enough to get them hundreds of dollars worth of general anesthesia and stitches). So, technically two of the three chicks we have right now aren't sexed and could be roosters. Oh my. We are sending some serious XX chromosome vibes to these chicks every day, so hopefully it'll all work out...we spend a lot of time trying to analyze chicken behavior ("hey, K2 is wandering off on her own, do you think that's because she's a rooster?" or "that chirp didn't sound very dainty...do you think it's a rooster chirp?").

So those are the new girls. That's right, I said girls.

In baby craft news, I've finished the quilt top for the baby quilt (no photo yet, coming soon) so I'm deciding whether I want to try to do the quilting myself or send it out. In either case, I'm trying an eco-friendly bamboo batting which I'm excited about. I've also got some blank maternity shirts ordered and I plan to try out freezer paper stencils on them.

Stay tuned (or not, I know I can be slow about this blog thing...)!

Because what else would you do

with your chicken's first eggs but gild them?

I bought the materials to gild some drawings in my China journal (which I still haven't put up on the blog, have I?) but then lost track of the project when school started. Thank goodness I had it on hand because I REALLY needed to blow out the first eggs and make them pretty. And, oh my, is gilding fun. It's that same satisfying process as taking a shiny chocolate wrapper and smoothing it obsessively until it all the wrinkles come out. The egg shape was a little tough because you have to have some of the gold leaf overlap itself and then it gets a little messy, but the smoothing process is sooooooooo worth it. I still need to smooth these guys a little more (!) and then apply a sealant, otherwise the leaf is pretty flaky.

I blew the eggs out without any tools which involved a lot of huffing and puffing and Baby Banana (week 20!) was probably wondering what the heck was going on. I went ahead and ordered an egg blower today because I foresee not being able to crack many of Kateski's eggs and/or the need to continue on this gilding path (if I stick with eggs, that should keep me from gilding everything else in the house).

Up next: I think I might play with some Wee Wonderfuls embroidery patterns because I'm starting to think baby blankets...

Something I didn't make.

Today is an incredible day.

After having raised her for 8 months, spending an ungodly amount of money on her when she needed stitches from the vet, removing her feathered roommates when they rejected her after she returned from recuperating, then keeping her as an only-child (who has needed to be brought indoors every night because she's too small to be left alone overnight in the cold), our chicken Kateski finally laid an EGG!

Two, actually.

It's been an insane saga with this chicken and I believe we may be the very last members of our coop group to actually get an egg. Our other two chickens (the ones who ganged up on Kateski when she returned from her surgery) never laid an egg for us, but promptly started doing so a few days after being relocated to my parents' coop. She really does spend her evenings indoors in the computer room, roosting on the edge of her plastic carrier tub or, if she really wants relax, on the massage office chair. Andrew had given up hope that she would ever lay an egg. I was skeptical, but was afraid to admit it. We both agreed that she was probably aware that we'd spent a small fortune to keep her alive so that her chances of going to the soup pot were slim...so why bother with the annoying task of actually giving us eggs??

We are expecting more chicks of her kind (docile, mostly blind because of the feathers in their face) in February who we are hoping will grow to be good coop-mates and bona fide egg layers, but I'm happy to say that, in the meantime, I can go out to my coop in the morning and get myself an egg to soft boil.

Endless Mountain Fiber Festival

I drove up to beautiful NE PA today to go to a fiber festival which was small, but satisfying and involved:

Alpacas with big, brown eyes,

Skeins and skeins of fiber,

And angora rabbits.

Truth be told, I took the trip to check out rabbits because I'm interested in getting an angora. I think I'm leaning towards an English angora only because they have extra tufts of hair on their ears so they look extra ridiculous (normal looking animals need not apply in this household) but the French angoras were pretty cute too (the picture above is a French). Too bad for Andrew, but it looks like rabbits are pretty simple to care for;)

Off to look for some hutch designs...

An Old-Fashioned Chicken Coop Raising or When Fences Come Down

We had our first chicken fright last night. In the early evening, we ran out to the coop in response to the loudest racket we've ever heard the girls make. Andrew made it outside first and came nearly face to face with a raccoon (which, I've just learned, can be spelled with one 'c' or two) on the lower deck where the girls hang out (but not where their coop is). The raccoon bolted under our deck and we found Amelia and Flora squawking up a storm by their coop. Kateski (the polish with the feathers in her face who can't see hardly anything and is often left behind by Ameila and Flora because she can't tell when they've left...you see where I'm going) was nowhere to be found. We looked all over the chicken run and couldn't find her anywhere. We grabbed a flashlight and looked under the deck, half expecting to see her being devoured by the raccoon. We were in searching-for-feathers-and-blood stage when Andrew though to look over the tall fence to the neighbor's yard, to find Kateski looking safely clueless. And so we called on our faithful coop members to help us construct the larger pen around the coop that we'd been wanting to build. We've had a very dry summer here and digging post holes in the dirt has been quite like what I imagine digging post holes into concrete might be like; and since digging post holes even into plain old dirt isn't the most spectacular task in the world, we were waiting for some long, heavy rains to do half of the work for us. But the rains never came and raccoon did...and so we spent the entire day today digging post holes into concrete.

Well, not really into concrete, but certainly around it. We started by removing a part of a fence that runs between the upper portion of our yard and our neighbor's yard. One of the fence posts was stabilized in concrete. It was a joy to remove, and even more fun to hurl insults at once we really did have it out.

I generally have an uneasiness about anything we do around the house for fear of ticking off the neighbors. This probably stems from the fact that I'm ticked off by them very often (as they must be about me), but am too afraid of having an ongoing subtle war with my neighbors, and so I rarely talk to them about what my concerns are. My two current pet peeves are smoking outside the house which funnels right into our house and feeding the feral cats in the neighborhood who are now taking advantage of my frequently swept front porch by pooing on it. But I figure I'm the weirdo with the chickens in the back yard and I don't want to ruffle any...well, you know...so I've never been brave enough to raise my concerns.

So as the fence between our yard comes down today (I say "fence" but really it was just a sadly aged suggestion of a fence which, to wit, was pulled apart by our bare hands) and I see my neighbor approaching (the only neighbor on the street who I haven't officially told about the chickens for fear that she'd freak out) comes over, plops herself down on the little wall that is now accessible due to the missing fence and proceeds to tell me that she's worried about the cat food on her porch because it may be attracting the raccoon and she hopes our chickens are OK. She points out a few more places on her evergreen that I could cut...the evergreen that I'd been tentatively trimming back so that we could build our coop, because I'd been so concerned she'd be mad about us cutting anything. I'd also been worried that she would flip when I started trying to trap the feral cat colony so that we can get them fixed and vaccinated, but she was thrilled and offered her porch for a good cat trap location. And all of this misunderstanding (which was really just careful avoidance) disappeared because a rickety fence came down.

And because our friends and family deserve to see what we couldn't have accomplished by ourselves, here's the coop-raising progression:

The coop gets a fenced bottom to keep out the raccoon.

Post hole digging is fun!

Mom feeds the troops.

The first fencepost gets leveled.

The girls help by making sure all of the worms around the felled fence are taken care of.

And they make sure to stay hydrated.

Working around a temporary door to nowhere.

Chicken wire saves the day!

Almost there.

Finished coop (still missing netting on top and beams across the top, but it'll do for now!)

The girls are happy in their new digs (with evergreen roost).Whew!

Chicken Scratches

I found a fantastic set of cookie cutters at a yard sale yesterday. They cost a dollar and included the all-important chicken, so they needed to come home with me. Here are the girls sizing up the new chick in town.

Flora always needs to be the first to know what's up and Kateski has no idea what's going on because she can't see anything anymore, poor thing.Amelia is all about recycling.

Bovine Backrubs and Chicken Coops

When I first read Omnivore's Dilemma, I know that I was ready to hear about the problems with the US food industry and our eating habits. I was ready to make changes in how I thought about the food that I ate, but I had no idea what I'd discover along the way. Eating grass-fed meats is not so difficult in my area, and the resources for finding good, local products seem to be growing each day. What I didn't know is that I would be saying goodbye to non-pastured meats entirely. Once I'd wrapped my head around where meat comes from, I couldn't look at a restaurant burger in the same way again. The more I think about it all, the less I'm able to eat out, which is a bummer. But the upside is that I have all of this energy that I now focus on how and where to get good food...from animals that were treated well.

My grass-fed obsession has been passed onto my Mom and Dad (thank you, Mr. Pollan) and earlier this week, I took a ride out with my Dad and friend Debbie to visit Hendrick's farm. This is where a lot of my meat comes from during the winter when I do Farm to City, but in the summer we go to the farm to pick it up. Joel Salatin says that you should never trust a farm where you aren't allowed to just walk everywhere and interact with the animals and people. Indeed, on the way to Hendrick's, we passed a large meat facility with high walls and windowless buildings. They clearly don't want the average consumer to know what's going on in there. But at Hendricks, we pet the dairy cows, checked out the pigs and piglets, and peeked into the chicken pens. The best part of the day was watching the diary cows queue up at the automatic back scratcher attached to the wall. They'd bump into it and a roller brush would rotate and they'd walk under it to get a back rub. Those are some happy cows, I tell ya.

Recently, I've stopped eating eggs when I dine out. I just have no idea where they came from or how those chickens were raised. My parents have had their chickens for about a year now so that's where my eggs come from. They are infinitely better than store bought eggs, and if you can manage to get your hands on a fresh, pastured egg, I highly recommend it. I'd wanted chickens prior to reading Omnivore's Dilemma, and now that I finally have three I'm pretty darn happy about it. Like: sit and watch the chickens peck around for worms for hours on end happy about it. And so, as soon as we brought the coop that my Dad built to our house in pieces, I put it together. The next day, I intended to chip away at all of the tasks that needed to be done: prime and paint the coop, seal the unpainted wood, measure, cut and install wire around the base, and apply flashing to the top seam (which didn't work out - we caulked it instead). What ended up happening is that I obsessed about that coop for 12 hours until it was done. Andrew left in the middle to play a tennis match which, of course, ended up being lengthy and with no one to tell me to stop, I finished the whole damn thing by 6 pm. Andrew came back as I was wrapping up and helped me install the final screws and to clean up. He also insisted on taking a photograph, I think mostly to commemorate how insane I can get about things when I obsess. So here I am, 12 hours later, unwashed, sore from head to foot, with not quite enough energy to get all of my smile muscles into gear. But, man. Look at that coop!

Adapting

Ooo, I hate that word....or at least our misuse of it. For the past 11 years I've been telling kids that individuals can't adapt in their lifetime- you're born with what you're born with and that's that. But at the moment, I'm trying to adapt. In the most perfect mishandling of the concept.


It's really, really hot here right now. And I really, really hate the heat. Really. Truthfully, I really hate the cold as well. Ask Andrew and he'll tell you that the only time I'm not complaining about the weather is when it's 72 degrees outside. But alas, it is so far from 72 degrees in Philadelphia right now and it's going to be that way for a few days. Which will be perfect when I give final exams in my classroom with no AC, but I digress.

The point of all of this complaining is to say that I'm going on a fantastic trip this summer. My Dad and I are going to China for three whole weeks. In the summer. When it's really, really hot i in China. So my plan of attack now is to survive the heat waves at home as they come so that by the time I'm in China, I've adapted to it. See? Individuals can adapt...or at least, that's what I'm banking on. I made it the whole day without using AC in the car and I haven't pestered Andrew about lugging the AC unit into the bedroom. It's only the first day of the heatwave, but still.

Anyway, I didn't do much today except lie around and read. All I really have to show for myself in the way of photographs are these latest Kateski portraits and a video. She was furiously picking at her new feathers and her pouf was wobbling like mad...it's almost like it has a life of it's own. I made a short, sometimes focused video...Francis Ford Coppola I am not, but you'll get the idea.

New Digs

Wow. Chickens get big, fast. My dad has put his into their outdoor coop already and since my coop isn't completely built yet, I needed a bigger brooder. We dismantled my dad's old brooder (built out of a cardboard box) and reassembled it for our chirping trio. They are pretty psyched about the added square footage, but seemed most happy to just roost on the edge. We've fashioned a lid out of netting so don't worry, they won't be going for any midnight romps around the computer room.

And I couldn't get a good shot of Kateski because she insisted on climbing up my right arm...so these are left handed shots while balancing a chick on my arm. Still, you can get a pretty good idea of how insane her hairdo is getting.

In craftier news, I've finished the turtle and the butterfly from the Wee Wonderfuls pattern. I have the escargot all cut out and will start sewing it up tonight. Besides the fact that the patterns are pretty delightful, thinking up a fun sewing project that can replace my knitting-in-front-of-the-TV habit = genius. I'm happy with how the turtle came out. After much hemming and hawing, I decided to ditch the crown because, although Andrew and I both agreed that the crown made him super-cute, we knew that if it wasn't sewn on it would be lost in a heartbeat and sewing it would just look messy. I also changed the eyes up so that they aren't in mask form anymore (I needed the turtle to have eyes on the sides of his head since he's prey not predator and because these are the things I need to dork out about), and I needle felted the black part of the eyes on (since a new baby will be around, I wanted to avoid buttons). I'm feeling like the butterfly eyes are walkin' a fine line between cute and creepy, so we'll she if she passes muster with the 3 year old who's getting her.Oh, and I also included the wing cutouts on the back because I thought that part of the design was so sweet and I wanted the back to look fancy too:) In retrospect, I didn't need to do the cutouts on the back of the smaller part of the wing since those are hidden, but the wings are moveable so I guess with some peeking the detail will be seen.

Portraits of the Ladies

Now, look: how could you not love this face?Kateski's pouf just keeps getting bigger and more unruly and every time I look at her I think of a really bad case of bedhead and it cracks me up.

I tried to do a little photo session with waning light, dwindling batteries, and subjects that were, well, chickens and here is the result.

Flora, the austrolorpe:

And Amelia (she was the first in flight and the most daring and practiced of the bunch), the wyandotte:

Printing Press

I've spent a leisurely morning "watching" my favorite weekend TV show (Sunday Morning) and printing up a gocco storm. With chickens on my brain lately (sorry, can't stop thinking about them), my doodles have often been poultry-related. I burned a screen of a few of my chicken doodles a week or so ago, knowing that I wanted to turn them into stationery. And this morning, I awoke with the memory that I had just the vintage paper to turn into note paper. This lovely bunch of grade-book sheets was found last year at a yard sale. The woman who sold it to me told me that she'd kept it around, trying to sell it each year (with her husband requesting that she just chuck it, already) knowing that someone would want it. It was as if I was adopting her family pet, she was really happy it had found an owner who would turn it into something new. I was thinking about binding some more books at the time, so I thought these would make great pages...but this morning it struck me that I could just cut them up and make stationery sets out of them.So some precise cutting (perfectly soothing activity early on a Sunday....making neat little stacks of paper), a little gocco magic, a latte, and Charles Osgood; and here they are! Poultry Paper Stationery Sets:)

Oh, and I don't know why it's taken me so long, but I just finally realized the beauty of epicurious yesterday. I needed a potato salad recipe that Andrew would eat (no mayo - - it's a wonder I stay with this man) and used ingredients that I already had. Well, when you have 15 pages of potato salad recipes to choose from, you're bound to find what you're looking for. And the fact that someone has developed the technology so that I have the option of printing recipes out on 3x5 or 4x6 cards makes my heart flutter.