Friday's Hunt v 3.13

Here we are again for Friday's Hunt with Eden Hills.  Today the prompts are:  Starts with M, Week's Favourite, and Water.

Starts with M
I have a few M words for today's post.  First of all, here's my marvelous husband Marc, who is outside in the garage working on his project to insulate and finish the inside walls of this outbuilding so it can be his motorcycle workshop.

Here are some of his motorcycles, all covered in dust from the wood planing he has been doing, but they will be cleaned off when the season arrives for using them.  You can see the planer on the floor at the lower right.

It is a bit of a mess in there right now.  He is using pallet wood to create the ceiling of the workshop. Here's the outside edge where he's started, but the next step is to put up vapour barrier.  He can't go further with the wood until that's done.

However, the pallets have been outside this winter so they have a lot of moisture in them.  After he planes each board, he is letting them dry out.  It's an ongoing project.  He hopes to have it finished by the fall of this year.

Week's Favourite
I took this picture of Lucky Nickel through the fence, by mistake - she got in the way of my shot. However, I rather liked this picture, even though it wasn't my intended one.

After that picture, I took another of her horns, showing the texture on them.  I like it too, so I'm sharing both these goat close-ups for my favourites this week.

Water
My birds have water in their heated birdbath.

My sheep and goat have water in their heated bucket.

Most of the rest of the water around here is in the form of snow and ice.  Here's a picture of my back deck from this week.  When I say there is snow, I mean a lot!  Although, this is far less than was there earlier this month.

I did find a puddle in the driveway, since we are a little above freezing today, and there was a reflection of a pine tree in the water's surface.

Marc also pointed out that there was a little puddle at the bottom of the slope by the garage.  There is even some green-ish looking grass around it.  That will be frozen tonight though.  We have plenty of winter left to go.

Friday's Hunt, v 3.06

Friday is upon us once again, and our prompts from Eden Hills are, Starts with F, Week's Favourite, and Heart.

Starts with F
I love to feed the birds in winter!  I have several tube feeders, but not all birds like to feed at those. I had some evening grosbeaks come to visit and they had trouble standing on the small perches on my tube feeders.  I also have a suet feeder, pictured below, which is great for some species including the woodpeckers and nuthatches, and even the black-capped chickadees use it sometimes.

Marc made me a new feeder recently!  I asked him if he could make me a tray feeder for some of the other birds who don't like the tube feeders.  He cleverly made it from some scrap wood that was part of the packaging of our dishwasher that we installed when we moved in. The bottom is a scrap piece of window screen.

So far, it is mostly in use by the squirrels (no surprise there!)

I haven't seen the grosbeaks again (yet) but I am hopeful they will come back.  I hope it will also attract other species throughout the year.  It hangs from the post where the bird bath is installed.

Week's Favourite
Marc was having some one-on-one time with Pippin today, and Pippin climbed into his zippered sweatshirt.  I love this picture I took of Pippin peeking out and Marc looking down at him.  They make a cute pair!

Heart
We had a big snowfall last night, and we're expecting more in the coming few days.  My arm has been giving me trouble lately - I have ulnar nerve issues.  I'm also extremely busy with work contracts.  I am so grateful to Marc for snow-blowing our driveway, cleaning off the cars, and also cleaning off the sheep and goat hoop-hut.  My arm was not up to helping today.  For that, and many other reasons, I love him with all my HEART!

Friday's Hunt v 2.27

It's time for Friday's Hunt again, and the last Friday's Hunt for 2016.  It has been a fun meme!  I think Teresa at Eden Hills plans on starting it again for 2017, and I'll probably join since it helps keep me blogging.  When work is busy, I can't blog as often but I do try for once a week at least! This week, we have the opportunity to choose our letter of the alphabet.  As usual, we have week's favourite, and also celebrate, as our prompts.

Starts with R
R is the starting letter of a lot of good words!  Rest!  Relax!  Read!  Recuperate!  Rejuvenate! Revel!  I tried to spend time doing these things over the holidays, taking time to also reflect on the past year. For me, relaxing usually comes in the form of doing something creative with my hands, and this past week was no exception.  I did some spinning of some blue-faced Leicester fibre in lovely muted jewel tones.

I also starting making myself a new hat.  This is the Baa-ble Hat, depicting (of course) some sheep on a snowy day.  I think it's a really cute pattern and I'm making good progress on it.  I decided to do the sheep themselves in some angora blend yarn, which is giving them a lovely fluffy texture.

So, before we rush into the new year, I hope all of you take a little time for yourselves to relax and rejuvenate.

Week's Favourite
I think my favourite thing that happened in the past week was seeing the look on my mother's face when she opened the sweater that I had knitted for her as a Christmas gift.  I don't have a picture of that moment.  My mom had bought a sweater kit from Fleece Artist in 2010 but had not quite had the time to get to it, and she had never knit on circular needles before, so it was a bit overwhelming for her.  She had taken the kit out to show me this fall, and wondered if I could help her do it.  I took the kit home with me to "study the pattern" and "wind the skeins of yarn into centre-pull balls" for her (well, those were the excuses I used!). Instead, I actually knitted it as a gift.  It was the first sweater I ever made, but it came out quite well, I think.  My mother was just so stunned to see it sitting there in the box as she opened it - she had absolutely no idea.  I can't show you the look on her face, but I can show you the sweater.  It is knit in Fleece Artist blue-faced Leicester aran wool along with alpaca bouclé yarn that is mixed into the body and also makes the collar and sleeve cuffs.  It is the Trina Jacket, from Fleece Artist, if anybody wants to look up the pattern!

The body is in garter stitch and the sleeves are in stockinette.  It is a fairly easy sweater and only involves some provisional cast-ons for picking up later to do the sleeves.  Otherwise, it's all just knit and purl (and counting).  I think I might make one for myself!

Celebrate
Marc and I celebrated our holiday with visits to my parents, to his father and stepmom, and we will be visiting Marc's mom sometime soon.  We're also hoping to see his brother's family soon but we haven't got a date for that yet.  Our time with my parents was lovely, as always.  We are a quiet family and Christmas is also quiet - which is just how I like it!  We spend time doing jigsaw puzzles and collaborating on a large crossword puzzle that is annually published by the Globe and Mail newspaper here in Canada.  Here's a picture of it - it's a full-size newspaper spread and the clues are on the front and back of another separate page.  It still needs to be finished since we didn't have time to get to it all.

In our family, we have wonderful meals together and just enjoy time to chat and relax. I've had experiences in the past with other families where Christmas is extremely busy and loud and there are so many people in the house, with the noise of TV and/or music and/or children and/or pets all at the same time, and all these conversations going on...well...it made me want to go and hide somewhere! I am definitely a quiet celebrator!  Maybe it would be different if I had grown up in a large family, but for me, Christmas is for quiet relaxation and reflection!  We wish you a wonderful new year ahead...

My handsome, handy hubby, and a few other bits and pieces

Today Marc installed a GFI outlet on the outside wall where the electric fence charger will be plugged in.  He doesn't like having his photograph taken, but since Timber and Izzy were there to help him out, he didn't mind so much.  That's the new plug just on the left of the picture.  Thank you, my handsome hubby!  I am so appreciative of his work in helping me get ready to have my sheep and goats come home!  He also installed the fence charging unit inside a weatherproof metal box so it can be put up on a post next to the fence.  What a lucky gal I am!

Now we just have to wait for NB Power to install the new power line so we can hook up the electric fence.  I spent some time this afternoon ripping old, rusty barbed wire fence out of the ground, because it was entering into the fenced area, and I didn't want any animal injuries resulting from it.  I dislike barbed wire very much, and hauling it out of the ground when it's been buried for years is not my idea of a good time.

I had another new daylily open up this weekend and it's a gorgeous plummy burgundy colour with a greenish-yellow centre.  This one might be my favourite!

Here's one of my favourite little neighbours - the chipmunk!  I managed to photograph him (or her) earlier this week.

I picked some more of the wild blueberries today, as well as some raspberries from our yard.  The raspberries are a big brambly tangle, and I would like to get that sorted out into an organized raspberry patch so that they are easier to pick and prune.  I found what I think are blackberries.  They are green and very far behind the current raspberry crop.  Blackberries are usually a later crop, so that's what I think I've got.  I hope so!

Here's my favourite moth from the past week - Habrosyne scripta - the lettered habrosyne moth.  I love the detailed patterns in its wings.  One day I'd like to have a proper macro lens to take even better photographs of moths like these.