reptile style

 Even though it's been bitterly cold, we've still enjoyed a little bit of outside beauty.

Unusual for this time of year, deer have been flocking to our front yard in droves.  

I noticed that several of them had what I thought were bloody spots on their hind legs.

When I started doing some research, though, I discovered that this was the tarsal gland, present on both bucks and does.  They urinate on this gland and then rub it so that the gland absorbs certain components of the urine.  The gland then emits a powerful scent, telling others about the dominance of the males and the mating readiness of the females.  Pretty interesting stuff!

St. Patrick's Day was on the 17th, and I made my usual roll-and-cut rainbow cookies.

They're kind of a pain to make, because you have to separate and color the vanilla dough before combining it in a "rainbow log," then encasing that log in chocolate dough.  The proportions were a little off this year, making them look more like peacock feather eyes...

...but they still felt festive and tasted great!

I've been working on a few other projects.  I planted lots of sweet pea seeds in yogurt containers and left them in the attic to sprout.  We've got liftoff! 

The sprouts are pale when they first emerge, but I expect them to green up after a few days under the lights.  Then they'll go out in the garden...in maybe 2-3 weeks?  Ditto these anemone and ranunculus, which I've been pre-sprouting in the attic for the past few weeks.  I thought they might be goners, but they sent up anemic fingers this weekend.  Bingo!

I finished the front panel on my Shadow sweater.  I'm measuring it against a sweater that fits in the way that I want Shadow to fit, and I think it's a pretty good match so far, especially considering that Shadow will grow a bit when I block it.

Phew, that's a lot of cables!  Now I will make an identical panel for the front.  It's coming along nicely!

I saw a really interesting woodcut of a snake last week.  I'm not a huge snake fan, but I love seeing them depicted in relief printings, like woodcuts and linocuts.  After all, I grew up with a pretty famous one:

I've found some beautiful ones online, although the internet being what it is, it's not always easy to find the original artist:

Tyler Krasowski

artist unknown

artist unknown

artist unknown

I think they're really beautiful, and I decided to try stitching one.  I chose a chain stitch for the scales, to give them a bit more detail, and a simple stem stitch for the outline.  I went with a monochromatic color scheme.

I need more practice with "fill stitches," so I'm especially pleased with how the tail and head turned out.  It's not my favorite, but it was an enjoyable-enough small project.

Another small project...I was so pleased with how my Darth Vader Scrabble bag turned out...

...that I practiced another lined bag this week, too.  Not as scary as I'd expected...practice makes perfect!

Looks like we have a cool, wet week coming up...more time for indoor projects, I guess.

Have a great week!  

an Alien concept...

 Christmas!

It's been a busy season.  It was a rush, but I did get a couple of Christmas gifts made.  First, this hat/glove set (Beeswax)...a real delight to knit, even if knitting anything with cables automatically doubles the knitting time.

The second was a fun project for Todd.  Our plastic Scrabble tile bag is in shreds, so I decided to make a new one with fun fabric.  This bag was a real challenge for me, since I have a terrible time following written directions and there were several new techniques involved...but...I love the finished product.

The bottom has pleats (!!!) so that it will sit nicely.

It's lined, and has drawstrings at the top to keep the tiles contained.  I love this bag.

A lot of usual Christmas traditions here.  A different-flavored Christmas cookie each night in the week leading up to Christmas, all flavored from a basic sugar cookie dough:

A week of Elf on the Shelf, culminating in one of my favorites...an Alien-themed scene.  Todd and I are huge fans of the (first two) movies, and it didn't take long to stitch the basic Facehugger shape out of felt a couple of days before Christmas Eve.  Our "household Elf" is fairly sinister, so this is a fitting ending for his week!  :)

We watched loads of Christmas movies, spent Christmas day in pajamas, and had some delicious homemade sweet bread.

What we Midwesterners call Mexican Wedding Cakes, but Todd calls Russian Tea Cakes...

A slightly stuffed...but happy!...day!

The kittens loved the huge piles of wrapping paper, although we were infringing on their territory a bit.  They've claimed the floor space by the window, both cramming into a small dog bed there.  It's so sweet, though, that we don't mind a bit.  Kitten love!!

There's quite a lot to see, and always nice to have a snuggle buddy!  It's become the popular hangout spot in the house.  Even Borga wants in on the action!

Just one more day of leisure before we get back to the daily grind.  Temperatures have been cold here, although we missed the big snowfall that other places received.  Still, it was harsh enough outside to keep us inside!

Looking forward to a final vacation day today...tidying up the Christmas mess, eating leftovers, and curling up in front of the fire with a good book.

Hope you had a great holiday season!

Stitch and Itch

Things are changing around here!  Leaves, anyway.

I love, love, love this time of year.  Nights and mornings are comfortably in the 40s, and then we climb by 30 degrees during the day.  Windows open and the fresh breeze comes in.  There are pumpkins and changing leaves, but also plenty of flowers in the garden.  This means insects!  Lots of spotted cucumber beetles that, in the chill of the night, burrow deep into dahlia blossoms.

Unfortunately, I haven't been out much.  I'm entering week #3 of the Infernal Itch.  My bites have all scabbed over, and itch terribly in the process of healing.  Thankfully, days aren't bad, but nights are still pretty miserable.  I did some reading and discovered that our natural anti-inflammatory hormone, cortisol, is highest in the morning and lowest at night.  For going on three weeks now, I haven't been able to sleep through the night and have to get up multiple times to reapply lotion.  I'm already a light sleeper, and it's sometimes hard to fall asleep after an itch session.  Interrupted sleep has definitely taken a toll, but on the positive side, co-owning a business means that I have some daytime flexibility, and someone to help pick up the slack a bit.  Also, being awake for hours at night has some benefits...I read fourteen books last month!  With some assistance...

These wild kittens keep me on my toes, too.

choosing an obvious place...behind my computer...to wrestle

Barnabas, too, requires a snuggle during his naptime

We didn't have much of an apple harvest this year...

...between the dry weather and the flock of blue jays that seemed to sample each and every apple.  Plenty to make a few batches of cinnamon apple baked oatmeal, at least!  And I've been doing a little bit of fall baking.  One thing I love to do is make browned butter.  It gives a rich, nutty flavor to baked goods...and it's so easy to make!

Browning butter is simply whisking it over heat for a few minutes to create a reaction with the sugars and proteins.  It bubbles for a while...

browning too quickly around the edges...had to turn it down!

...and quickly turns a deep, dark amber.  Immediately remove it from heat and transfer it into a glass container to stop the cooking.  It doesn't take more than a few seconds to go from browned butter to burnt butter!

I put this into the refrigerator to re-solidify, and then folded it into my coconut oatmeal cookie dough batter.  Perfection!

Knitting is a great activity for a grumpy insomniac.  My favorite socks, knitted a few years ago in South Carolina, accidentally got ruined in the wash.  They fit so beautifully and were so missed...

...that I decided to knit another pair. I love brown and pink together, so I tried this combination.  

The contrast just wasn't strong enough.  I frogged the pink section and knitted a few sample swatches.  This is a pattern that begs for strong variegated yarn!  A swatch was a good idea.  The colors below were fine, but there was just too much drape in the yarn.

Ah, now THIS is a strong selection!  Festive for the season, too.

It goes well with the tan and I'm excited to see how it turns out!

Back on antihistamines tonight and here's hoping for some better-quality sleep, although Calliope will miss our occasional afternoon couch sessions.

Have a great week!  

double double toil and trouble...

 One minute I'm outside, enjoying the changing season...

...spending a lot of time in the pumpkin patch, picking the ripe ones and photographing insects... 

...and then...tragedy.  Within a day of my last pumpkin patch foray, I broke out in hundreds of bites.  They covered my feet and legs, and were also sprinkled liberally on my arms, stomach, and back.  They looked like mosquito bites...

...but the burning, intense itch was something that I'd never experienced before.  It didn't take much research to find the culprit:  chiggers.  Chiggers are microscopic mites that, in their larval stage, seek out human hosts for food.  They're found in grassy areas, like my pumpkin patch.  I had learned in childhood that chiggers burrow into your skin and must be smothered, somehow...but this isn't true.  Although some mites (like scabies) do burrow, chiggers do not.  They don't drink your blood, either.  They inject their saliva into your body and your immune response is to harden the cells around the saliva.  This makes a handy straw for the chiggers to slurp your liquified cells through.  They feed for a few days and then drop off.  By the time you notice the bites, they're probably gone.  

The experience of having over 500 chigger bites has been...something else.  I went to Reddit for some itch relief advice and found the following comments to be fairly accurate.

In my experience, not much to do but wait.  It's miserable.  --Watts300

I've only had them once, and it was the most miserable experience of my life --partialcremation

I almost needed handcuffs to keep from scratching. --saltporksuit

[You need a] medically-induced coma...or an amputation. --mutt1223

It was a week of absolute hell. --taelor

It's the worst...you feel like your body is on fire for days. --believemeiwould

The itch...unbearable. --bjeffords74

The itch was so bad that I wanted to cut off my feet.  --dupinderpaul

I had to get a steroid shot to make it through. --tater120

It's weeks of abject torture. --misterblister

So painful that I couldn't even have a sheet on.  --mamassauruscat

As a native Floridian used to mosquitoes and fire ants, chiggers are on a whole other level.  Excruciating itching and burning for days.  --cookiethump

Ditto.  I couldn't wear pants or shoes, or sleep for more than a few hours at a time, for 5 days.  The cats winding innocently around my ankles set off the intense itching, and so did a brush of clothing or even a strong breeze.  I'm coming out on the other end, thankfully, but this was a bit of a lost week.

I spent nearly all of it indoors, to the delight of the cats.  There's nothing a cat loves more than a warm bed and a snuggle.

Or maybe a disruptive wrestling match?

Since I couldn't get outside much (the whole no pants thing is a real deterrent), I baked some fall-themed cookies...

Maple Sugar Cookies from Sally's Baking Addiction

...and knitted furiously on my cardigan.  Front panels are done, now just knitting up the back and will then start of the sleeves.

I also worked on my most recent quilt, where I've made a big mistake.  I didn't know that when you are strip-cutting fabric (sewing strips of fabric together, which you then sub-cut into smaller pieces)...

...a seam allowance is NOT factored in.  Normally, when you have blocks of fabric, excess is figured in  as a safety margin and you can tidily cut them down to an identical size before sewing the blocks together.  But when I started cutting my squares down...

...I saw that the inner squares and the outer squares were basically the same size.  This means that when I sew these blocks together, the outer squares will be 1/4" smaller than the inner squares.  It also means that when I cut the blocks down, they are not going to line up perfectly, because there's no excess fabric to play with.  A real disappointment, because I like to be precise.  I sewed several blocks together and it looks very amateurish, with corners off-kilter everywhere.

I'm torn between my thrift nature ("Fabric is expensive, just finish it!!") and my perfectionism ("It's a mess, with different-sized squares that don't line up like they're supposed to.  Toss it!").  I'm not sure which will win out in the end!

At least I was able to get out for a while yesterday.  Still plenty of flowers around for some nice fall bouquets.

Meanwhile, the windows are open (and frequently occupied)...

...and everyone is excited about the cooler weather.  Three cheers for fall (and the coming frost, which will kill every pest in the garden)!