The Weekend Roundup: K

The prompts for this weekend from Tom the Backroads Traveller are: Starts with K, Kids, and Favourite.

Starts with K

Knitting starts with K.  I bet some of you could guess that's what I would choose for K.  I haven't had as much time for knitting lately as I would like, but I try to keep on going with at least one or two projects.  I always try to have a "mindless" knitting project that I can knit while Marc is driving us somewhere, or while I am having a conversation.  That kind of project has to be simple and repetitive so I don't have to think about it too much.  My current mindless project is the Verdant Shrug by Gina Bonomo - her picture of the final item is shown below in green.  It's a free pattern, too!

Image copyright:  Gina Bonomo

It is essentially long sleeves connected with a knitted section across the back.  It's for times when you don't need a whole sweater, but maybe you have short sleeves and you need a little extra warmth.  Or you can wear it over a sleeveless item for an extra bit of cover.  Here's mine so far. It will just be continued flat knitting for the full length until the other cuff.  Then I will seam up the arms about 15 inches or so.  

I am knitting it in "Gale" colourway of classic yarn from Fleece and Harmony in PEI.  I do love using locally grown and milled yarn!  The mix of light blue-grey and pink is like the sky after a storm.  

Kids

We have lots of fur, fleece, and feathered kids.  To be precise, we have 2 rabbits, 2 guinea pigs, 1 rat, 1 dog, 2 cats, 2 sheep, 1 goat, and 22 chickens.  Here are most of them, except for the chickens, of whom I have shown 3 examples!

Favourite

Here is a favourite little friend whom I often see outside my home office window.  I took this through the window last week during a snowstorm.

Moulting Squirrel

In recent weeks I've taken a few photographs of a squirrel who lives in my yard.  I never really thought about squirrels moulting (or molting, if you live in the US!) before, but after looking closely at the photographs I took, I realized that the moulting process is quite distinct, and also takes quite a long time to progress.

Here was my squirrel friend on March 18 after getting a peanut treat.  At this point, her coat is still quite normal for winter.  You can see the reddish tone along the top line of her back.

I first noticed that the squirrel was looking a bit "ragged" in mid April.  Here you can see there is a faint line on the foreleg where the fur has begun to moult - the line is caused by the longer "winter coat" hairs.  The shorter summer fur is on the lower leg and paw.  This was on April 15.

I didn't get a lot of great pictures of her in May, but here you can see the line of moulting fur is progressing down her shoulder somewhat, and on her rear leg.  This is on May 5.

I'm calling this squirrel "she" because when I was taking pictures in May, I noticed that she was most probably nursing babies, based on her appearance here.

Here she is on May 29 - now you can really see that the moult has progressed over much of her body and the winter coat is still stubbornly holding on at her shoulders and rear haunches.

This shot shows how the winter coat has a much brighter red tone in a stripe that was down her back from shoulders to tail.  You can see the remnants of the red on her shoulders and also still at the tail, but the summer coat in between the two areas is just a regular brown colour, without the rusty red tones.

It was most obliging of her to show me her back!

Look at that red stripe!

So here she is on June 7.  You can see she still isn't quite finished the moult, so it's been about 6 weeks since it started.  Another thing I notice is that she now has a dark stripe along the side of her body where her brown fur meets the white belly fur.  That wasn't so distinct in winter, if you go back and look at that first photograph.

You can also see the dark stripe on her side in this shot.

I'll be watching her tail over the next few weeks to see if those vivid red hairs come out and are replaced by less vibrant tones for summer.  It has been interesting to watch the changes in her and to document them in a series of photographs.  I'm hoping that one day she'll learn to take a peanut from my hand!

Friday's Hunt v 3.17

Here we are....I have no idea where the week went, but it's Friday again!  This has certainly been a busy one.  I hadn't thought about the blog all week so I had to do a bit of quick thinking this evening to get my ducks in a row.  Our prompts from Eden Hills are:  Starts with Q, Week's Favourite, and Evening.

Starts with Q:
Q is a tricky letter, but I decided to talk about quilts.  I have made a few quilts over time, although I haven't made any lately.  I made a quilted wall hanging many years ago that I recently found when I was unpacking some boxes of things that had remained packed for many years of moves.  I'd like to put it up on the wall again somewhere.  It needs to be washed and ironed since it is all wrinkled from its storage time.  I like the colours in it and the shapes.  It was a sort of random quilt hanging that I put together in a short time frame, just for fun, so it isn't perfect.

Last year (2016) I decided to do a block-of-the-month quilt project.  I decided it would be good to make a quilt block each month and give myself a craft project to look forward to each month.  I bought all my fabrics and I was really excited about proceeding.  In January of 2016, I made the first two of 6 pieced triangles required for the January block.  I realized that I made a mistake and that the two orange small triangles in the left triangle panel should have been overlapping, like they are in the triangle on the right.  I decided I needed to fix that before continuing.  That's as far as I got on my project.  The rest of the year, I was unable to continue due to us trying to sell Marc's house, having things in storage, and then not having the space yet set up in the new house.  I thought I'd start again this January.  It's April.  I haven't gotten to it yet.  Someday...

Week's Favourite:
I managed to get some really cute shots of the red squirrel last weekend.  I think that it might be a nursing or pregnant female.  In this shot, you can really see her teats, which I don't think I've really noticed on a squirrel before.

I also noticed something else that I hadn't noticed before - she appears to be shedding a winter coat.  I didn't know squirrels did that, or at least not as noticeably as this.  You can really see the line where the winter "fluffy" coat is shedding, just behind the foreleg.

Here are a couple more of my favourite shots from my squirrel photography session!

Evening:
I had to think quickly for this one.  I don't often take evening pictures.  But let me tell you a little story about a few evenings ago.  I heard a fearsome growly-squealy noise outside, and I went to peer out the window with the aid of the standing lamp in the home office.  A raccoon was hanging off the bottom of my bird feeder and swinging on it.  This was the culprit who has been bending my feeder pole over time.

A couple of mornings later, I came downstairs to the home office to enjoy my morning coffee.  I looked out the window.  "Hmmm," I said to myself, "that's interesting.  I'm quite sure there used to be a bird feeder there."  That was when I realized that raccoons not only have an interest in the contents of bird feeders, but apparently they have a desire to take them to their little raccoon homes and possibly use them as decor items, because clearly, my raccoon had carried it off somewhere.  I have wandered through the woods looking for it, but to no avail.  He left the lid, which we had replaced after he chewed through the plastic one.  The tube that held the seeds has entirely disappeared.

He has also displaced the screening from the tray feeder, which you can see hanging down in this picture that I took this evening.

I need a taller pole, not to mention adding a raccoon baffle to it.  In other news this evening, the bunnies are resting comfortably.

Friday's Hunt 3.12

Our prompts from Eden Hills this week are:  Starts with L, Week's Favourite, and Antique.

Starts with L
L is for loom!  I have a few.  Looms are for weaving.  On occasion, when I have been at a public spinning event, using my spinning wheel, I have heard people say to one another "Oh look, she's weaving."  No, actually I'm spinning.  I've heard a mother say to her child "That's weaving" when I am spinning.  It's a bit frustrating.  Looms have a warp (threads that are vertical and fixed in place while you are facing the loom) and a weft, which is the thread that you use to go back and forth, across the warp.  That is how woven fabric is made.

My largest loom is this Nilus LeClerc floor loom.  I got it second hand, and I confess, I have not yet used it.  I really want to do so!  But I need to clean it up and get it warped before I can use it.  I got it about 5 years ago.  It's on the list of things to be done!

This is my table loom - a Rasmussen 4-harness loom.  The Rasmussen company doesn't exist anymore.  They were purchased by Montana Looms, who also went out of business.  It's a good quality table loom and I have used it.  Once.  Ahem.  I intend to rectify that.

 It has a floor stand too, so it doesn't have to take up table space.

This is my rigid heddle loom, leaning at the bottom of a shelf full of weaving yarn cones.  It's a vintage Erica loom made by Northfield Loom of Minnesota. They don't exist anymore either.  It's a great little loom and I've made several projects on it.  It's easy to warp and use - probably why I've used it the most.  As you can see, I have a lot of weaving yarn available.  I really need to use my looms more often!

This is my Majacraft circle loom.  These are currently in production, and a lot of fun to use!


I also have a DA Looms sock loom and a pot holder loom.

There are no more looms looming in my future!

Week's Favourite
My favourite picture from the past week is this one I took of a squirrel outside on the brush pile.  I really like the way the red colour of his coat highlights ties in with the branch colour.  I also love his assertive look - you can see he's watching me!

Antique
I have a couple of interesting antiques from my father's mother, who was from England.  Her name was Rose Lillian Towler, and she became Rose Lillian Moxon after marriage.  I have this lovely antique grandfather clock that lived in her home for many years before I inherited it.  It has a lovely, mellow Westminster chime.

The face has the Latin phrase "Tempus Fugit" above it, which means "Time flies" in English.  I put one of the cat's mouse toys up there, to look like the Hickory, Dickory Dock nursery rhyme!

I also have this interesting antique medal that she won in her younger days for the sport of push ball. Push ball was a sport that began to be played in the late 1800s.  It was played with a large, leather ball that was the height of an average man.  It was constructed from four leather hides placed over a wooden frame. The two teams had to try to push the large and heavy ball through a goal for a score.

I thought it needed a bit of cleaning when I got it out for the photograph, so I took to it with a toothbrush and some Silvo.  It turned out quite well!  I think she would be pleased with the clean up! The push ball match was sponsored by the Daily Mail, which was a newspaper.  I think it's still in existence today.

As you can see, it was awarded to her in June of 1927 in the town of Hanwell, which is a town in the London Borough of Ealing, in West London.

The original box is still with it and it shows that the medal was made by Fattorini and Sons, in Bradford, England.  I was inspired to look them up and found out that they were a jewellery business established by a family of Italian immigrants, originally opening their shop in Harrogate in 1831. The Bradford shop was opened in the 1850s.  Remarkably, the business still survives today, having been handed down over the years through the family. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fattorini_and_Sons)

It's lovely to have these old family heirlooms to admire and to think about the history of my family members over time.

Friday's Hunt v 3.11

Yet another busy week and a day late on Friday's Hunt.  We actually went out for supper last night, and I forgot that it was St. Patrick's Day, so we had to wait 1.5 hours to get a table, and by the time we got home, it was too late for blogging.

Our prompts from Eden Hills are:  Starts with K, Week's Favourite, and Drink.

Starts with K
My father recently took on a restoration project of one of my mother's well-used kitchen knives - one of her favourites.  It is a good quality Sabatier knife, so it was worth fixing.  It was so well used that the wooden handle finally gave up and cracked.  My father began the project by removing the blade from the broken handle.  You can see the blade has been sharpened many, many times by its rather tapered blade angle.  It's a very good steel so it has held up to many years of sharpening and is always as good as new!

My father then shaped most of the handle, and drilled the hole, before cutting the handle to length. He had to purchase a special bit to accurately bore the hole into the end grain of the hard-grained wood he used for the handle.  That type of bit is usually used for making hand-crafted wood pens, such as fountain pens.  Here's the handle before being cut to length, and you can just see his planned shaping line.


He the put the blade back in the new handle with epoxy putty to glue it into place, and made a small hole at the outer end of the handle so that any excess epoxy had a place to squeeze out. He later filled that hole.

The final shaping and sanding was followed by 3 coats of polyurethane.  What a great job he did! My mother's kitchen knife is ready for many more years of reliable service!

Week's Favourite
Marc did some repairs to one of the bird feeders - the plastic perches had broken this winter - probably a combination of bitter cold making the plastic brittle, combined with squirrel activity!  You can see in this shot where the squirrels also chewed around the feeder openings.  Marc glued some new wooden dowels in place for new perches, since the birds couldn't perch any more.  I took this shot of a squirrel back at the repaired feeder.  I think the wood perches will hold up better than the plastic ones.  I love this shot because it really showcases the red coat of the squirrel - he just gleams in the sunlight.  I enjoy their antics at the feeder.

Drink
Pippin and Mitten share the same water bowl, although they don't drink at the same time.  Pippin also has a water bottle in his crate, but he seems to prefer the bowl.  I've noticed that he sometimes puts a foot into the water first - not sure why he does that!  I doubt it makes the water taste better!

We used to use a plastic orange water dish for Mitten, which worked well until Pippin joined us.  He thought the water dish was a fun toy.  He began picking the dish up by the edge, and dumping the contents.

Not very helpful!

Now they both drink from a heavy glass dish - Pippin can't tip it over and they both drink happily from it.

Friday's Hunt v 3.07

I have been tremendously busy this week - feeling rather unable to keep up with everything at the moment.  Work is extremely busy, which it is sometimes, and I appreciate that, but it doesn't leave much time for photography and fun!

Our prompts today from Eden Hills are:  Starts with G, Week's Favourite, and Pink.

Starts with G
Goodness gracious, we've had a lot of snow!  Great, gleaming, glistening, gargantuan piles of it! Mostly accompanied by gloomy, glowering skies.  I'm getting very tired of it.  So is poor Marc, who is doing the snow shoveling because my arm is very painful these days due to ulnar nerve problems. Here are some images of our ghastly weather.  We think we might need a larger snowblower for next year, if we can fit it into the budget.  Or we might give up and sleep from January through March!

The route to the sheep and goat area was not easily passable when I opened the door earlier this week.  We've since had another couple of feet of snow, so you can just imagine how it looks now.  Carrying a hay bale through this from the garage to the fenced area is not an easy job.  The snow was at my hips in some places, and I am 5'10", so that is a very difficult path to navigate.

Here, just for fun, is a "find the GOAT" picture!

The snow has already covered the bottom of the bird feeder and the new tray feeder that Marc made me is almost covered.  Can you catch a glimpse of a little face peeking out in this picture?  Maybe the next picture will give you a hint.

Week's Favourite
I managed to capture this image of the squirrel taking seeds from the bird feeder.  I love the way he's hanging on, but looking in my direction.  You can see snowflakes on his face but he still looks like he's smiling.  Now you can go back to the last picture and see his little nose peeking up just at the bottom of the tube feeder, if you missed him the first time.

Pink
Pink is one of my favourite colours in the flower garden.  We are a long way from gardening season, so a pink cat tongue will have to fit the need for today!  Mitten the cat and Pippin the rabbit share this water bowl on the window sill, but they don't drink at the same time.  I tried, unsuccessfully, to get a picture of rabbit tongue.  Maybe another time!

p.s.  If you didn't find the goat earlier, here's a hint.

If you're still really stuck on the goat, let's zoom in a bit...yep....that's Lucky Nickel peeking through the snowy trees.