fully bullies

Yikes, did I miss last week?  It's been so busy here that it's hard to stay on schedule!  We had an amazing Valentine's Day hike at Eagle Creek.

When the trees are bare, you can really see the bird nests!

We had a small celebration at home, with fudgy brownies...

...and lots of board games.  I decorated the whole downstairs in streamers...Frances was a huge help in taking them down!

We continue to have a bounty of birds in these late winter weeks. I've been at the window so much that I've tried to justify it as a "bonding experience" with the cats...

You can usually find them on their window perch.

We see bluebirds daily...hopefully they'll inhabit the new nest boxes soon.

The big pileated woodpecker comes every day too.

We've had some trouble with the European starlings that live around here.  They're invasive and definitely "bully birds." A flock will descend on our suet feeders and they'll be empty within 2 days. They fight with each other...

...and with our other birds.

When the suet feeders are empty, they stare accusingly through the window.

There are ways to starling-proof your suet feeders, but that would make it difficult for the woodpeckers to feed.  We've just resigned ourselves to refilling the feeders...a lot.

Yesterday it got down to 27 degrees, and tomorrow it will be 70.  As I wait for temperatures to moderate, I'm inside baking...

chocolate cupcakes with sweetened peanut butter filling and vanilla frosting

...and finishing up some last-minute knitting.  I haven't been knitting too much lately...just a pair of socks for a Christmas gift...

...and this cowl for myself.  I love a very tight two-loop cowl and found a great pattern right before Christmas.  I knitted over the holidays and finished in January, but as usual, I drag my feet on finishing.  The cowl was a tube that had to be grafted together like the toe of a sock.  The graft was a bit clumsy, but I'm really pleased with the final product.

I love chevron stripes!

Todd modeled it for me.

It probably won't be cold enough to wear it this winter, but I packed it carefully away for the end of the year.  I love finishing projects, especially ones where I dread the finishing.  Hooray!  

Have a great week!  

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!  

battle of the scale

 Ice!!

We had another dire forecast ("Eight inches of snow!  Sleet!  Ice!!") that turned out to be basically nothing...rain, a freeze, and then a fairly rapid melt.  But before the warm-up...magic!

Closer inspection of the frozen drips revealed a tiny drama within...intricate shapes that almost looked like flowers, caught in the ice during the rapid freeze.

It was so pretty that I almost hated for it to melt.  But, winter is passing.  Here's a reminder:  with an odd juxtaposition to the ice, our daffodils are starting to poke up, despite the crunchy top layer of soil.

While I would say that mid-May through June is the absolute peak garden time for beauty, I absolutely love early spring.  Despite the cold temperatures and frequent dustings of snow, these green tips pop up all over.  It's a reminder that I need to start clearing out the old growth on warm days.  It's nearly time to start sowing late-spring flower seeds, too!  I love having four seasons and right on time, just as I'm getting tired of the cold, we have red-wing blackbirds, spring peepers, and green tips everywhere, reminding me that the new season is just around the corner.

Some tiny drama inside, too!  I noticed odd barnacle-like lumps on one of my tropical plants.  I recognized it as a type of scale, which is a parasite that sucks moisture out of plants and can rapidly kill them if left alone.

I looked it up and indeed, it was barnacle scale!  Their little babies are pretty remarkable-looking, like gigantic cells run amok.

photo courtesy of Ben Faber, UCANR

These little creatures secrete layers of a waxy substance for protection.  The only way to get them off, really, is to scrape them off with a hydrogen peroxide-soaked paper towel. Then watch...they will come back!  It will take several scrapes to rid your plant completely.  

I spotted another little creature this week...a possum is continuing to come to our porch to clean up the leftover cat food!

I'm so glad to see these little guys around.  He's a big one...and soon he'll be filling his belly with ticks!

In other news, I finished my socks.  

Socks are a bit frustrating to me.  Some patterns have you casting on 80 stitches, and some as few as 60.  The standard seems to be 72 stitches with a size 2 needle, and sometimes that works.  For example, I knitted these socks with those specifications, and they fit like a glove.

Todd accidentally washed these and they felted/were ruined, but I am almost over it!  ;)

But when I knitted these recent socks with the exact same specifications, they initially wore well, but became loose after a few hours.  It's fine, because I can wear them around the house, but I do like a well-fitted sock.  

Otherwise, in my free time, I've been working on my painting...

hitting the mediocrity sweet spot! 

...and puzzles, if I have access.

Work has been incredibly busy, and it's about to get busier here, with a big seeding push and yard clean-up.  Spring comes quickly here.  I just have to scroll through same-month photos from earlier years to see that very soon, EVERYTHING will be sprouting!  I can't wait.

Have a good week!