Farm Life

I went for a walk this evening and took some farm animal pictures. It was a beautiful day today, especially after all the crazy winter weather we had yesterday.

Drama

I have been having a nice relaxing weekend. No big plans or pressing tasks. I was watching a movie when lo and behold a SHREW ran across my living room floor. "What are you doing in here??" I shrieked. I took a deep breath, paused my movie, and grabbed a tupperware with a large diameter to aid in capture and tracked the sucker down. Luckily he was in my bathroom, the room with the least amount of clutter and a door. I chased him around the toilet a few times and finally capped him, so to speak. I had to go outside for a breather at this point as I was sweating and my heart was pounding. I went back in to complete the mission, almost allowing it to escape, twice. I am embarrassed, but will admit, I did scream like a girl once when this happened. I took the little guy out to the chickens, thinking maybe they would take care of him for me. Boy did they ever! The shrew was not on the ground for more than two seconds before a black and white chicken was upon it. I was both laughing and horrified by this. The chicken grabbed the shrew and ran with it (as chickens commonly do with something good to keep the others from taking it), I could hear the shrew squeaking as the chicken began to pummel it back and forth. I do feel a little bad, but it's nice to know that that shrew will not be visiting me again. Oh, education for today: Shrews are not rodents, nor are they even closely related. They are in a different family, they have one more extra toe than rodents, and their teeth do not grow forever as rodents do. They have a poisonous bite, and my mom reminded me our cat would catch them but never eat them. I hope I didn't kill that chicken.



In other news, I was at Fred Meyer yesterday and they had all this Easter candy on sale. I was kind of feeling like I had missed Easter this year. Probably because I did, and I was regretting I hadn't had one of these:

Every year when I was little I got one of these "Milk Flavored" bunnies in my Easter basket. So I got one for .54 cents. I ate so much of it I made myself sick yesterday and finally had to throw the feet out so I wouldn't eat that too! I'm probably good on milk flavored rabbits for at least 2 years.

Luckily fajitas can make anything better

Oh man I had a fiasco at Ross that I don't want to relive, but moral of the story:
KEEP YOUR RECEIPTS

So I finished my first hat this week!!! Very exciting, I might start another this weekend. With all this snow we've been having, it's perfect knitting weather. Now I was warned when I started this hat, that I probably wouldn't have enough yarn to finish, especially not with ties and a topper. Well I proved them wrong, and you will see how much "excess" I ended up with.






I just made some fantastic fajitas with just chicken, taco seasoning, olive oil, red pepper and onion. Super good. I need to start cooking more for myself. I have gotten out of the habit since it's just me.



I have been getting these tortillas at the Coop, they are everything the perfect tortilla should be and more.



Well off to make some very important decisions...What's Eating Gilbert Grape or Jumanji...

Batik

I met up with my old friend Amber and went over to Kathy's house on Saturday so I could get back to my high school roots of batiking. Here's Amber putting wax on her piece.


Kathy blow drying her work.

This was supposed to be darkish purple with light blue underneath. This is before the wax was removed. I had ironed the wax out of my two other pieces and wasn't happy with the grease spotting it left. The big piece I did in high school was solid wax, so I didn't have that problem, the whole thing was spotted. I wanted to try to boil the wax out of this piece.

Amber tried boiling at Kathy's and was not successful. I researched it a bit, and discovered a few key things:
Add soap
Keep the cloth submerged until the water cools and the wax can be removed
This was messy and as you will see I lost significant color from this process. It is a learning experience, and I'm so glad I made up "practice" pieces. The bonus to the boiling is how soft and wonderful the cloth is, and it can be washed and dried when ironed batiks can't.


Instead of purple and baby blue I got pink and white. Eh, I've learned never to expect anything when dealing with dyeing textiles. It does what it wants and it usually still turns out cool.


This was another experiment, I took straight dye powder and threw it on the fabric that had been soaked in soda ash. It was really cool how the different colors pulled out of the powder.


I then dripped wax over it


And dyed it green. I think next time I will make the dyes stronger and leave them in longer. The colors weren't as vivid as I had hoped.


The finished product on the left. I am going to go back in with wax and touch up the non-grease stained areas so it's consistent and bright all over.


Amber making up the yellow dye



My yellow fabric ready to be waxed


After waxing


The dye bath


The ring on the right has been ironed, the one on the left has not. I haven't decided if I will go back with wax to make it all saturated or not. I think if I boil it it will fade too much.


It was really fun to get together and to get in touch with my creative side. I have several more projects on the way, and since I'm cutting back my work hours a bit, I hope to have more time to do things like this.

Lambs

I drove out to the lambing barn today, I've been meaning to go out all month. I go every year and never get to see a birth. This year was no different in that respect, although I JUST missed 2. 2!! Ah well, I still got to see quite a bit. It was hard to get a good picture in there between the darkness and the movement.

Brand new


This baby looks like he's wearing eye liner


Hahaha
This mother was quite unsure of me.

I'm loving...

Kathy's whole wheat bread with pumpkin seeds!!

Sneak Peak...

More to come :)

Cute

I love the spring babies :)

Unlucky Box Elder, Lucky for me

I found this guy in my door jamb, he had obviously had a mishap, but I think his red body showing is beautiful.





I never noticed those extra two red little eyes, I'm guess they are ocelli. I was reading that some bugs only have 2, as opposed to bees and flies that have 3 so they can maneuver better when they fly.

Assorted

Lately I see a new bug and I get excited to photograph it. So finding some half groggy cold wasps was pretty exciting. I took them home, froze them and had about 2 minutes of awakeness before I had to pop them back in the freezer.






I interviewed at Pacific University this weekend and was super impressed by their program. I will find out April 11th if I am in or not. I think I'm ready for a big change, so I'm anxious to see what happens.

I had the best burrito for dinner, I cooked up mushrooms, zucchini, onion, kidney beans and a little taco seasoning. Then put in couscous, steak and cheese on these tortillas I got at the Co-op (Carmen's), soo so good.

I am crashing hard right now for some reason so I'm going to get to bed. I wanted to write more but I feel many errors and incoherent sentences coming on.