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!  

Crystalline Entities

The winter is toying with us.  It's almost February, and still no snow to speak of...just a heavy dusting that's usually gone by midday.  

In the most recent "snow," the snowflakes were fantastically large...so much so that you could actually see the crystalline shape without the aid of magnification.  

I need some camera equipment that will allow me to take better, more crisp macro photos, but you can get a sense of them here:

My "winter interest" plants give them a pleasing place to accumulate.

We had just enough snow - briefly - for me to spot a mouse path by the back garden!

The temporary snow is nice.  Better than the frayed dead grass and barren fields.  Clean, bright.

Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote in The Long Winter, "Snow had blown under the door and across the floor and every nail in the walls was white with frost."  It's the same with our porch roof nails!  The frosty spiderwebs make beautiful constellations, too.

Even without snow, it's been so cold that the birds are all puffed up on their branches...

...or eating greedily at the feeders.

We have more blue jays than any other birds here - sometimes big flocks will descend and argue noisily just beyond the front porch.  Their blue color is so vibrant - and welcome! - at this time of year.

Even menace birds like European starlings have a little to contribute.  Their feathers are so beautiful in the sun!

The sky has been blue, too.

Frost makes intricate patterns on the glass of our screen door.

It's not the crystalline entity from Star Trek...

photo courtesy of massivelyop.com

...but still pretty nice!

I finally finished my Funchal Moebius cowl this week. 

It was just a matter of grafting this...

...into a tube.

The graft did not go well.  I wasn't able to distinguish between actual stitches and the "floats," or the carried strands of yarn, on the end of the tube where I'd secured with temporary stitches, and so the join was lumpy, bumpy, and uneven.

I even broke the yarn at one point, so there's a tumorous lump on one side where I tried to weave in an extra two strands of yarn.  I'm bitter, but not bitter enough to unravel the join and do it again.  Close enough, I say, and the back bit will be under my hair.  Happy to have it completed and am already halfway through my next project!

And happy coincidence...the camera strap that I just bought (made from a recycled '70s couch) mimics this pattern a bit!  I love bright colors in winter.

The cats (who still despise each other) are enjoying these sunny days...

...and we're waiting to see if February will usher in some real winter weather.

Have a great week!

snow white

 I had a fairly brilliant idea a few weeks ago.  Someone had once gifted me a Martha Stewart cookie cookbook, and I remembered her bombshell recipe:  one base dough + many varieties of flavorings = a wide selection of different cookies with little effort.  

We're definitely Christmas crazy here.  We've got the tree, the lights, the garlands, the decorations.  Every morning, we have a Christmas music extravaganza while we wake up and move through the daily routine.  We open Advent gifts.  At night, we watch a Christmas movie and do a Christmas reading (since I didn't want to pull a bunch of disjointed selections from the Internet, I decided to use my Little House books.  They celebrate Christmas in each one and they're pure and joyful).  I even simmered oranges and cinnamon in the crock pot for the "Christmas smells."  But what about taste?

There are so, so many things that I'd like to bake for Christmas, but a family of two does NOT need a ton of sweets sitting around.  I love the idea of daily Christmas cookies, though, so I took a base recipe from the Internet, halved it, and winged it.   One dough, split into 6 portions, flavored, and split again.

Daily Christmas cookies for us to eat and enjoy during our nightly Christmas movie...just one cookie each.  No guilt, no regret, and no sugar hangover in the morning.  

I took the 6 portions of the base dough and flavored each differently:  peanut butter chocolate chip, cranberry pecan, chocolate with chocolate chips, pumpkin spice, orange chocolate, and plain chocolate chip.  I split the portions in half so each of us would have a cookie, rolled and wrapped them, and stored in the fridge.  Every night I pull out a different pair, bake for 12 minutes at 350 degrees, and enjoy!

It feels like Christmas inside, but outside, not so much.  We still haven't had snow to speak of.  We had about 3/4" one day, and it was gone the next.  But that one day was glorious!

I got to search out animal tracks in the snow, like these little bird tracks:

Deer:

Coyote?

And, um...cat.

I love seeing our neighbor's bright red barns through the trees when it snows.  They're completely hidden in the summer.

I love the summer/winter contrast, like the front garden...from June and December.

You can see that I left several tall stalks standing.  These are for the birds, and "winter interest."  

These almost look like cotton with the snow!

And so...many...birds.

Even without snow, our heavy frosts make beautiful morning pictures:

We're still hoping for a white Christmas, though.  

Have a great holiday season, whether you're gathering around the tree with a group...

...or spending some quiet time alone.  Here's to a great 2021!  It's got to be better than 2020, right?

Enjoy!