The Weekend Roundup: C

Today's Weekend Roundup from Tom the Backroads Traveller has the following prompts:  Starts with C, Week's Favourite, and Clouds.

Starts with C
We had a snowfall earlier this week and it accumulated quite a bit, so there was a lot of clean-up required.  This was my car:

Here's the chicken coop (double C!), with the path that I dug to it so I could easily get out there to fill the feeder and waterer!  The chickens don't like to come out of the coop at all in this weather.

I found some crab-apples still on the branch, wearing snowy hats:

Week's Favourite
I had a slightly less crazy work schedule this week, which allowed me to take a few minutes to work on a craft project - I wanted something small and easy that I could complete quickly.  Thus, I knitted this cute little hedgehog.  That was my favourite part of the week!  (Bonus letter c:  The back of the hedgehog is knitted with chenille yarn).

Clouds
After the snow, there was some blue sky, but as usual at this time of year, there were also clouds, and within about 20 minutes of this photograph being taken, there was no blue sky to be seen at all. 

At this time of year, I get rather tired of grey, dismal, cloudy days.  Today is actually sunny, although very cold, but that's better than gloomy.  The long term forecast for the coming months suggests that by mid-February, we are going to head into a period of lower-than-normal temperatures which will persist throughout the month of March.  I'm not looking forward to that.

Friday's Hunt v. 4.06

Last night I was at my spinning group evening, so I didn't get around to doing Friday's Hunt until today, Saturday.  The prompts this week are Starts with F, New, and Self Portrait.

Starts with F
Fungus starts with F.  Here is a little mushroom that I found this week in the goat and sheep area. It has been very dry here for the past few weeks, if not months, so we do not have much fungus growing in the form of mushrooms in the woods.  This one was the only one I found.  I don't know the species and I doubt it's edible, but I liked the glowing creamy surface colour and the way that it somehow managed to avoid being stepped on by one of my critters!

New
I am really excited about my new chicken coop that is still in the process of being built.  There used to be a dog house in the yard which was fine, except that our dog doesn't use a dog house, and it wasn't useful for much else!  Here's how it used to look from the balcony on our bedroom.

And here's how it looks now!  I tried to take the picture from the same angle - the old one above was from the house listing photos from before we bought it, so the tree on the right is larger now.

I really wanted to re-use the roof, which was extremely well built with cedar shingles and proper ventilation.  This dog house was built like a fortress!  It took the guys who were building it for me several hours to dismantle the dog house enough to get the roof to a point that it could be lifted. They created a frame on which the roof rested while they built the taller walls for the chicken coop. 
This way I will have a small but secure coop that I can easily enter and clean out entirely.  The chickens will have plenty of space for nesting boxes and roosting places.  This is much more useful than a dog house for us.

Quite quickly, the new walls were up and in place.

The roof had to be put back in place using a tractor with forks on the front.  It was a delicate operation.

The guys didn't exactly follow standard safety procedures (the kind that I write about for my clients!) but they did a great job and the roof was carefully put into place and re-attached to the new building walls.

Now they just need to install the door and the board above the door and the coop will be complete.  I still need to build a few nesting boxes and roosting areas.

There is even a 3 foot square window with a screen installed, for ventilation and sunshine.

There is an electrical box on the back of the coop that used to power heated blankets that the former owner used in the dog house.  Now I will use it for the heated water bucket for the chickens in the winter.  When I opened the panel after the building was finished yesterday, I found some existing residents.  I didn't have the heart to evict them - they are so adorable!

I will try to find them a new home away from the electrical wires and re-house them.  Maybe I will build a mouse house on the back of the coop.

Self Portrait
I didn't like this category very much, because I don't like pictures of myself very much.  I took this picture in my yarn and fibre area today using the self timer.  I took it in this place because I wanted not only a picture of myself, but a picture that shows what is on the inside, just as much as what is on the outside.  Here, I am surrounded by things that I adore.  I love yarn and fibre, and my loom (to the left of the picture - my hand is resting on it).  I love colour - especially bright greens and blues.  I have rabbit and chicken figurines on the top of my shelves - favourite animals of mine.  I have some hedgehogs up there too.  In the background are things from my childhood like my mouse house (the bright yellow item on the bookshelf top in the back) and the miniature display case my Dad made on the wall.  There are mice that my mom made in the mouse house.  It's also a bit of organized chaos in my craft area, which is rather like my brain - organized chaos.  So even though I don't like self portraits, I do like the things that surround me, and the they are the things that make me who I am.