Author: denisemor

This week’s chicken drama involved an eagle attack.

Yep- an interrupted eagle attack, fortunately.
No photos, but I’ll set the scene for you.

Heard a big kerfluffle out in the pasture monday evening, so I hustled out to see what had everyone all worked up.

About halfway out there I saw some big flapping and realized that it wasn’t a false alarm.

As I ran up to the fenceline, yelling and waving my arms wildly, the eagle attempted to take off with the buff orpinton girl in his talons, but he couldn’t keep ahold of her and she tumbled to the ground.

There were feathers everywhere. And I didn’t know how badly she was injured.
But she managed to slowly scramble back to the shed.
After giving her a little time to calm down, I gathered her up and checked her over to see the extent of her injuries.

Amazingly, she only seemed to have one major wound, on her left back quarter.
It’s not pretty, but “only a flesh wound” and hopefully recoverable.

Only the Blue Cote gives away her status as a gimp.

But for now she’s laying low in the nursery pen

Where she mostly sits up on the stool, looks out over the yard and calls to the other chigs.

I’m taking her sassy attitude as a good sign.

In knitting news, I’m really close to finishing the body of the vest. About 2 more inches to go.

And, I think that this project might have finally cured me of my fixation on that circular motif. 🙂

Hopefully very soon I’ll be ready to sew and cut the steeks, and move into the finishing stage.
Woo Hoo!

Our big apple tree is breathing a sign of relief

after giving up most all of his fruits.

This is maybe half of what we handed off to friends for cider-making

I kept some for our own use, and have a couple boxes of undamaged grounders that will be sheep snacks over the next few weeks.

And there are still some up there-

that I’m ok with leaving to the birds.

There are enough to go around. And around. And around 🙂

And speaking of going around and around, I’ve been making pretty good progress on the shawl collared vest.

About 4 inches ago I put the underarm stitches on holders and cast on the steek stitches for the arm holes. Also started decreases to shape the elongated v-neck.

So far, so good. Maybe by next weekend I’ll be ready to sew and cut the steeks!

I’m not sure if it was the smoke or some other underlying cause, but about two weeks ago our rooster #1, Trey, lost his voice.
This precipitated a ugly bit of fighting between he and Bertrand, who emerged the victor.

Poor Trey was in pretty bad shape, so I gathered him up and put him in the chick nursery so he could rest and recover.
But he didn’t make it.
I buried him with full pasture honors on Friday before work.

He was a good rooster- attentive to the girls and not aggressive. Pretty sure all this year’s chicks are his progeny.
Lost one of those this week too, though 🙁

And so we are down to one rooster for now. But we can probably count on at least one of the remaining three chickies being a boy.

In other news, I have hit upon my next sweater idea!
I came across a copy of Handknitting with Meg Swansen a couple weeks ago at a used book shop. It’s a great little book, and within it I found just the thing- a Shawl Collared Vest

It’s steeked, which seemed like and interesting choice for a solid colored sweater, and then I thought, as long as I’m steeking, I should do some colorwork instead of cables!
So that’s the plan. Going to apply my go-to stranded colorwork motif from my market hats to this sweater vest, and then do the shawl collar and other trim in a coordinating color.

After much contemplation, I decided to go with naturals so that I can wear it with almost everything.

The front and back are allover repeats of the circle motif,but they are separated on each side under each arm by a 7 stitch panel of stripes. I did this so I can incorporate some waist shaping without interrupting the flow of the pattern.

So excited to have a plan and be able to get knitting on it right away.
Many thanks to the stash for making that possible 🙂