fall

I woke up yesterday morning to see that about half of the leaves in the front yard had fallen all at once. Must have been a windy night, and it meant that I had to get out there and do some serious raking. I learned last year that if I don't keep up with the leaves our entire property becomes covered in an impenetrable slime of heavy thick maple leaves. Fall here means rain. We have lots of trees, and most of them are broadleaf maples. Beautiful shady trees in the summer, enormously tall, but their leaves are oh so very broad. Each tree has about a bajillion of them and when they fall they are like dragon scales.

It hadn't yet started raining, so I was able to get out there with my rake and my leaf-dragging tarp and get most of the front yard uncovered. Thursday night there's supposed to be a wind storm, and that should send the remaining leaves plummeting. I see more raking in Friday's future!


We also had yard visitors. Two adolescent deer meandering from back to front yard. I managed to take a picture of one of the ladies.


I worked all day on Monday on those coop plans, sitting in the kitchen drinking coffee and listening to classical music. The turkeys were antsy so I decided to let them have the run of the kitchen. It took them a while to get the hang of wood floors. They tried to keep playing their flapping games and their legs would fly out from under them and they'd plop onto the floor. Today or tomorrow I'm going to try to move them outside to the coop. It's chilly out, but with a heat lamp in one corner they should be ok. I will miss their cacophony in the kitchen, but will not miss their turkey smell. Oi.

orange box: shipped!

The reason Charlie was able to help me clear some land? The orange box has finally shipped and he has some free time again. Yay! There was a fun ceremony last Tuesday night at midnight when they pushed the button and the games went live, and then on Thursday there was a rip-roaring party where much fun was had. And bowling.

One more of the movies for Charlie's game has been released and it's awfully funny. Unfortunately they were forced to bleep out one of the great lines. Curses, you ESRB party poopers!

new aviary

the aviary plot, before

Charlie says he knew it was necessary after our first batch of chickens got killed. I held out through a few more brutal slayings, but now have come to realize that if we are to have poultry it can't be free range. And since we have two adolescent turkeys in the kitchen who are almost big enough to live outside, it has to be built soon.

Today was a lovely sunny day and Charlie helped me clear the plot of land for the new aviary. I wanted to be able to see the chickens from the house, and have them be close enough that they didn't feel isolated out in the woods. We picked a spot right next to the driveway. Once it's built, you'll be able to see the chickens from the living room, dining room, and our bedroom windows. And the front porch, of course. The location seems to get some nice sun, and there are enough trees on three sides to provide a bit of a wind- and rain-break.

bunyan action

There were only three major botanical obstacles: a big but scraggly pine tree, a scrawny rhododendron, and a big bushy azalea. We've got so many of those things all around the yard that I wasn't too pained about digging them up. Charlie channeled his inner paul bunyan and eschewed the chainsaw in favor of the axe. He felled the big pine tree and then we both stripped the branches off and dragged everything over behind the shed and into the ravine ("nature's compost bin").

the aviary plot, mostly cleared

Then we just had to rip up a bunch of brambles and one gigantic fern and it was cleared. Gladys hung out with us the entire time. At one point she decided to dig a hole next to where Charlie had laid the axe and have a furious dust bath.

dirt flies!

what are you looking at? I'm just sitting here.

Now that Charlie has finished the preliminary design sketch, I have to figure out how to build the thing. The ground isn't perfectly level, so if any of you out there have experience with pouring concrete to set posts, I would love help with how to build the foundation frame. Hopefully I'll be done within a month, before we leave for Australia.

childhood promise to self: broken

Sarah, age 8:

"When I am a grownup I will NEVER make anyone ever take Robitussin. Never ever! That stuff is so disgusting."

Sarah, age 34:

*cough cough*
*cough cough cough cough cough*

While leaning over the kitchen sink, downing a shot of syrupy goodness...
"Aw, hell. Mom was right all along"

Crafty Painting

crafting is very stuff-intensive, obviously

There is a particular color that shows up a lot in sewing and craft rooms. If you search on Flickr for craft room, you'll see the recurrence of the theme. The tones range from robin's egg to turquoise to tiffany's blue. There is something about the color. It makes anything that you hold up against it look fantastic. Piles of fabric look positively delicious. I've longed for the color for ages.

what a change!

I've also coveted Maggi's metal shelves. Since she was doing a re-organization of her own craft space, she passed them on to me. Yay! There had been two gallons of blue paint sitting under my sewing desk for months and it was their time to shine. First everything got yanked out of the room. I was quite honestly stunned at the sheer amount of crap that I have for making things. Dutifully I went through everything and managed to get two trunks full of stuff to take to the goodwill. With some tricky packing I managed to get what remained organized and put into boxes and bins and jars and shoeboxes and rinsed out lychee cans and make some sense of it.

oh, those lovely metal shelves

Then the painting. The original wall color in there was a very soft blue-white. So boring! On went the new blue and it turned out even better than I had hoped. The color looks it's super best in bright sunshine, but you'll have to settle for pictures taken at night. It's been raining for a week here anyway. Time to sew now!

cork board, crammed with ideas

I just love my thread holders

the cat-proof plant enclosure

My, what big ruffles you have!

My last project has been received, so it is safe to post pictures of it. I found a rather old fashioned pattern a few months ago that seemed perfect for Calliope. It looks a bit old fashioned... a ruffled dress with a pinafore. I actually learned an awful lot while putting it together. I'd never made proper collars and sleeve caps, let alone ones that had a trimmed edging. The pattern unfortunately only came in toddler 2-3-4-5 sizing, so I had to do a modification to get it to fit. I scaled down the entire outfit by an iteration of the sizing (I took the space difference on the pattern between size 2 and 3 and decreased the size by that) to make it more of a size 1. Then luckily I had exact measurements of Calliope's shoulder to ankle length. That saved me, I think. Everything else can be a little big and still look cute, but if the whole thing drags on the floor then that isn't very good.


I picked simple white for the under-dress, and found a subdued red floral patten for the pinafore. Then I started thinking...this could be a party dress. And this could also be a halloween costume! So I picked up some very drape-y red velour and made a cape. It was surprisingly difficult to figure out how to make a lined hooded cape with no pattern. In the end I just closed my eyes and cut the fabric and then forced it all to fit together. It does not hold up to very close scrutiny, but it definitely is good enough for a costume.


All in all my most enjoyable project yet. I didn't even grind my teeth at having to put on about 20 teeny weeny pearl buttons. Holding that dress in your arms is such a luxurious sensation. It's rather heavy, with all of the ruffles and the fabric. I can't wait to see it on her!

Best halo review ever

I played Halo for about seven minutes and decided it was tedious. My story isn't nearly as entertaining as the one of this game reviewer:




If you are having trouble looking at the video, try turning off your popup blocker. It also seems to have some issues with Firefox, so in a lovely bit of irony I had to view it in microsoft Explorer to get it to work.