ankle biter blighter

 Green at last!

Right on schedule, signs of life.

Claudia has been so tired of her hard toil on the porch...

...and is happy to resume her warm-weather duties.

Our muskrats are swimming, goz are visiting the front pond...

Once again, the spring peepers are calling, so loudly that they drown out all other sounds at night.  The red-winged blackbirds are back, too, but it's a strange situation.  Because of a combination of mysterious flooding and muskrat-chomping, the five-foot deep band of cattails around the pond's edge is basically a bare fringe now.

The blackbirds, who've been nesting here for years, are confused.  They perch on solitary cattails, but have been unable to find even a small pocket of protection for their nests.  I hope that they can find another place nearby, because I love their calls and jaunty attitudes.

We've had a bit of a tumultuous week here!  We "borrowed" a cocker spaniel for a week-long trial run,  to see how she fit into our household.  She:  howled nonstop; managed to nearly rip my arm out of its socket the very first day with a leash tug, a tug that resulted in a strain that left me unable to use my left arm or turn my head for a week; growled and lunged at the cats; busted through our screen door (twice); jumped on our coffee table and couch and seemed impervious to treats or instruction; sailed over an embankment behind the house and landed in the pond; COULD NOT hold still for brushing of any kind...in the end (mainly because of the cat aggression), we decided that she was a little too rambunctious for us.  But Borga had fun while it lasted!

Well, Borga is still pretty happy with her OTHER playmate.  :)

Calliope...sigh.  What is it with our animal struggles this past year?

She's always nipped, and that's been manageable.  But she's graduated to out-and-out biting, and HARD.  I have a big bruise on my right arm from her last attack.  She comes out of nowhere, bites hard enough to draw blood, and dashes off.  She's an ankle-biter too, and it's a mystery.  She has tons of play time with and affection from me, but has turned on me. I'm afraid of her, so we keep her locked in a separate room at night and watch her warily during the day.  I still fuss over her and pet her, but from a safe distance.  Meanwhile, although she's still chasing Tabitha and they're constantly hissing at each other, we had a bit of a breakthrough yesterday.  

Calliope commandeers Tabitha's perch.  Tabitha is outraged.

Calliope warns her off with a single cold, withering stare.

Accepting defeat, Tabitha naps in a nearby bed.

A NEARBY bed!  Oh, this gives me hope that even if Calliope can't be a snuggly, loving cat to us, at the very least, maybe someday soon the fighting will stop and we can have an uneasy peace!  For someone like me, whose anxiety issues MANDATE a calm and harmonious home environment, this gives me great hope.  

Have a great week!

a tale of three sweaters

Now that we have bona fide cold weather, I thought I would mention some recent discoveries.  I'm always pretty cold, so when we've winter-hiked in the past, I've bundled up in sweats and bulky jackets and still felt chilly.  It took a little research to figure out what I was doing wrong.  Now I start with very close-fitting thermal underwear.  I layer running tights and then felt-lined tights over the top.  Very toasty.  100% wool socks and Columbia hiking boots, both reasonably priced.  Over my close-fitting thermal top, I layer another thermal shirt in a size up.  Finally, I put on a fleece pullover.  Now I'm much warmer than when I was wearing a ton of loose layers before, and I don't feel like that kid on A Christmas Story in his bulky clothes, despite being so layered. 

I wear silk glove liners under fleece flip-top mittens. Silk wicks away moisture, and the flip-top mittens keep my hands warm but still allow me to take pictures when we hike.  I knitted a 100% wool cowl that I can wrap three times around my neck.  I wear a hand-knitted hat, 100% wool, and ear muffs OVER the hat for easy removal if I get warm.  We hiked this weekend in below-freezing temps and I was extremely comfortable.  I just ordered a pair of fleece-lined but slim-fitting snow pants to wear over my 3 pairs of tights when it gets really cold.  Do I pile on more than probably 95% of the people who are out there winter hiking?  Probably.  But I have to work with my comfort level.  This works for me. 

I'm glad we got out this weekend, because it was really nice.  Most of the leaves have fallen, except for a few stubborn trees. 

We had a bare dusting of snow that remained in some places.

I spotted some tracks on a log.  Some squirrel dashed across at some point in the night.

Ice!

With ice comes the customary trapped bubbles.  So what causes this?

Believe it or not, these bubbles are flammable.  Methane gas from decaying plant material at the bottom of the pond rises to the surface and is trapped by the ice.  These bubbles are small, but I found a great video that shows what happens when you release and ignite the gas from much larger bubbles.  So cool! 

There's a marshy area near this particular trail with lots of cattails.  They've reached the seed-spreading part in their reproductive cycle, hence the fluffy tops.

I've seen plenty of cattails in my lifetime, but I never realized that they had so many uses.  Parts of the leaves, stem, and immature flowers are edible.  They've been used as torches in the past when the cattail top was dipped in oil/fat, and are great to start fires with because they tend to stay very dry at their core.  The fluffy bits you see in the photo above are similar in quality to down, and so have been used in clothing and bedding as insulation...even in baby diapers!  The stems have been used to weave mats and baskets.  This is a pretty useful plant!

After a below-freezing hike, there's nothing better than a hot meal and some cozy knitting.  This weekend I pulled out some old sweater projects recently liberated from a storage unit.  These sweaters have been in my to-do stack for YEARS. 

These two sweaters were knitted in the past five years.  For reasons unknown, they were knitted in a size small.  They are still too snug to wear comfortably, and the blue/white one, in particular, is uncomfortable - wonky shoulders and an improperly-knitted neck.

It's painful to do, but I knew that these sweaters had to be frogged.  The purple one was, unfortunately, knitted in 4 pieces and seamed together, making it almost impossible to take apart.  I ended up using scissors to cut out the front and back panels.  I'll use this knitted fabric to make a pillow.  Because of the odd neck on the blue and white one, I had to use scissors to cut the arms off at the arm holes and cut across the chest at the same location.  It took a while, but I was able to salvage quite a bit of yarn.  Not sweater-quantity, but I can do something with it.

I knitted this flower yoke cardigan a few years ago too.

Before I even had a change to wear it, it developed a big hole in one arm.

This is the hole in its infancy.  Two years of being moved from box to box had caused the hole to almost double in size.  I'd watched youtube videos on re-knitting swatches of fabric to cover holes, but it was very confusing and I never had any luck with the results.  This weekend, I impulsively decided to use mattress stitching to close the hole.  Mattress stitching makes a pretty seamless join when you're working with 2 equivalent pieces of knitted fabric, but since I was covering a jagged hole, it left a definite line.

I don't care.  It's on the bottom of the arm so I won't notice it much, and at least this way the sweater will be worn instead of stored in a box.  Victory!

I also finished weaving in the ends on the cowl worn in the first picture and a hat that I made last year.  It felt pretty good to finish up these lingering projects and I'm glad that these clothing items are finally going to get some use.

Have a great week!