thinning the apples

After Bill pruned my trees earlier this year, the apple in the backyard seems to have had a fortuitous year as far as making apples... There are quite a few clusters of young apples on the branches, which need to be thinned out so the ones remaining can grow up big enough to eat. My understanding is that they grow best when there are single apples with at least 6" of space between each one.


This was the most amazing "too many apples" cluster, with five young apples all the size of green walnuts crammed onto one spur. My hope is that by thinning them, that there will actually be a modest and useable apple crop this year

:::

May SMART goals

#	THINGS MADE	THINGS FIXED	THINGS GONE
1	big garden bed	front yard mowed	bin of twigs
2	Mindy underdress	strawberries planted	bin of brush
3	Laurel underdress	blackcurrant planted	random plastic
4	Norseguy embroidery design	fridge plinth drawer	bin of twigs
5	chook roost	chook house moved	-
6	nest box door	chook run fencing	-
7	-	chook shade run	-
8	-	apples thinned	-

June SMART goals

#	THINGS MADE	THINGS FIXED	THINGS GONE
1	-	-	-
2	-	-	-
3	-	-	-
4	-	-	-
5	-	-	-
6	-	-	-
7	-	-	-

chooks at the cottage!

in which our plucky heroine acquires some new livestock...

Today Tonya delivered my new chooks: three young Black Australorp pullets. Once inside the backyard hen yard, they headed for the back corner, as their new "safe place", but are making small forays to explore the new habitat This is their first time away from the big flock, but they seem quite comfortable as a small flock of three.

One hen seems a little braver than the other two...

But mostly they all stick together and gradually will find the borders of their new digs...

 

The hens discover that the other end of the shady fenced area goes somewhere...

... but this is as far as they have gone towards the sunny pen and the chicken house; they turned around to get back to where they had already been.

Exploring is exhausting; time to rest a bit more... Tonya warned me that I would need to help them find their house for tonight, since they have no idea at all where to sleep. They are, as I recall, about 10 weeks old, so it will be the end of the summer before they are old enough to start laying eggs. In the meantime, they will be endless entertainment (chicken TV) and add more resiliency to life here at Acorn Cottage

Egils XLI

in which our plucky heroine feels the truth of what a long strange trip it's been...

Camping is wonderful, and Egil's has been a constant in my life for more than twenty years; my first was in AS 27... it is now AS 50... my Caer Lutris friends and I have been camping together for a long time now. I didn't take many photos this year as last year, but these give a taste of our encampment:

The sun has gone down, and the firelight glows as folks finish dinner and gather together for the evening.

Approximately the same viewpoint, on a damp grey day...

Some of my friends, eating breakfast

path to the bath (shower tent) with some of the lovely Roman mosaic floorcloths from 12th Night...

with hammer and saw

In which our plucky heroine cogitates between projects...

...though am only ever between projects for as long as it takes to pick up the tools and supplies for the next one! The yoke embroidery for a new tunic for Mr Blue Cedar House is completed. Still need to make some complementary sleeve or cuff bands, but my cunning plan to have their whole family well-clothed by An Tir West War is moving along nicely

Have been wondering if pages of embroidery designs and variations might be a possible item to have available for purchase; don't know if there is any interest is suchlike, and probably the only way to find out is to try it and see...

no chooks today...

in which our plucky heroine feels like a kid building a fort...

This morning hen lady phoned me to let me know she has the sick and wasn't feeling up to getting out of her house, much less driving here with my new hens. So, a day with more time for getting the things done that were pushed aside by my chook habitat improvements on Friday. Starting by building a new door for the nestbox area of the hen house, since the former door mysteriously disappeared...

My big challenge is to figure out how to use what I already have around the house, instead of going out and purchasing all new supplies and hardware. The other hard part always is figuring out how to assemble pieces to do what I want them to, which is good exercise for synapses, even if it takes all day!

This was made from some old yardstick fragments, doorskin scrap, offcuts from the workroom shelving, and some old garden stakes, plus small eyebolts, a shower curtain clip, and a split ring. (new hinges are spendy, so rather than take a half day to go over to the ReBuilding Center and poke around in their hardware bins, I linked the eyebolts with some copper wire instead; I also figure that it would be difficult for a raccoon to open the clip/ring closure)

The lower portion of the nestbox door opens, with some interior wooden guides to both strengthen the door and to keep it located properly. This time I mounted the "hinges" on the side, which will make it easier to clean out the shavings as necessary (the old door hinged on the bottom edge, which meant it was always in the way at cleanout time)

:::

May SMART goals

#	THINGS MADE	THINGS FIXED	THINGS GONE
1	big garden bed	front yard mowed	bin of twigs
2	Mindy underdress	strawberries planted	bin of brush
3	Laurel underdress	blackcurrant planted	random plastic
4	Norseguy embroidery design	fridge plinth drawer	-
5	chook roost	chook house moved	-
6	nest box door	chook run fencing	-
7	-	chook shade run	-

chooks a'coming...

in which our plucky heroine becomes completely exhausted...

There should be three new Black Australorp hens arriving on Sunday, and am getting the yard sorted out to create space for them that will make the best use of their normal activity, and keep them reasonably safe and also keep the rest of my yard safe from them (I want my strawberries, and I dislike stepping in chicken poop) I suspect that today will simply be written off as a building infrastructure day...

First the roost

Earlier today I started on building a roost to put inside the henhouse, since always in the past my chooks decided to sleep in the nest box, which is not ideal. My hope is that if I give them a higher roost, they will choose to sleep there instead.

I found a child's table discarded by the side of the road a while back, and decided that it would be a good framework to build a roost for the hen house. The first step was to cut down the table legs...

The next step was to figure out *how* to attach and combine various pieces of wood to support a wooden perch for the future hens. I really wish they had let girls take shop classes when I was in school! While I can't help but imagine that someone that "knew" what they were doing wouldn't take ALL DAY to build a chicken roost, when I talk to other folks who are woodworkers, they say it does take a long time to build something with just a concept and no instructions or plans to follow... After much struggle both with the various tools and with mental effort to figure out *how* to get it to fit together and fit in the henhouse and still let there be enough room for chickens, eventually, hours later, I created this contraption.

I hope this will work. I am not a woodworker, I find all this VERY Challenging. But it needs done, since hens arrive on Sunday!! (the floor of the coop is first covered with a piece of vinyl floor protector, then the whole space has a nice soft layer of wood shavings)

...then the fencing

Last weekend the henhouse was moved to a more central spot in the yard. Incremental progress is still progress, though I could wish for all sorts of unlikely things*... Eventually there will be "chicken hurdles" (moveable fencing panels) but for now I am attempting to wrestle the old fencing which was never more than large scraps of welded wire fence, and now after sitting for several years in the backyard much older and rustier and all intertangled, into some semblance of fencing around the old raised bed that will be the new chicken yard. Mighty girl is mighty, and mighty girl is mighty exhausted...

Looking across the backyard while standing near the apple tree: closer bed has strawberries in most of it, and the bamboo poles will support bird netting to hopefully allow some human eating of berries. Behind that is one of the original raised beds; my plan is to pen the hens in there, to let them do the work of cultivating and fertilising. In the far background the corks atop the other fencing of the shade yard are just barely visible.

By cleverly positioning my fascinating assortment of fencing scraps, there is a narrow pathway for chooks to move between the raised bed and a section of the yard against the south fence, which should allow them to find shade at all times, which is very important in the summer! By the time this area is "scorched earth" I hope to have created a number of moveable fence panels that can be used to allow access to other edge zones of the yard. In the meantime, it is still possible to move the wheelbarrow to the back of the coop, so as to allow for cleaning and refurbishment as needed

A shady patch along the south fenceline was easier to get the old fencing to border; bit by bit the new habitat is coming together. So tired. And I still have to make a nestbox door... This is looking towards the hen house from the far back fence; the sharp points on the welded wire have old wine corks stuck atop, to both help prevent painful incidents and to help make the fenced area more visible

:::

May SMART goals

#	THINGS MADE	THINGS FIXED	THINGS GONE
1	big garden bed	front yard mowed	bin of twigs
2	Mindy underdress	strawberries planted	bin of brush
3	Laurel underdress	blackcurrant planted	random plastic
4	Norseguy embroidery design	fridge plinth drawer	-
5	chook roost	chook house moved	-
6	-	chook run fencing	-
7	-	chook shade run	-

little green men

in which our plucky heroine counts her verdant blessings...

Well... that was awesome! I poked my nose out the front door, to gather some greens to cook for dinner and to take out the compost, and much to my surprise, I scared off a hummingbird that was hovering in the sage blossoms! So not only are they honeybee habitat, but also hummingbird... What this tells me is that there are hummingbirds around, and should I manage to plant suitable flowering plants, I might see them more often...

:::

Our plucky heroine was feeling well enough (after being sick for several days) to sit on the front porch, eating for my supper tonight: garden fresh greens, steamed atop some already sauteed onion, garlic, and mushroom, then mixed with some cottage cheese for protein... and looking at the verdant salad/greens table thought: "this is what happy tastes like"!

You can barely tell, looking at the salad table plantings, that I cut out an entire portion of dinner greenery, since they are still really full. I mostly cut the mustard greens since they are not a favorite for eating raw, and quite a bit of the mizuna, and some tah tsai. The lettuces are best raw, rather than cooked, but it is still delighting me to have fresh greenery to munch on every day, that would be impossible to grow easily in the ground, because slugs would eat it all. The counterbalance is that it requires frequent watering, but since dishes are washed often, the water caught (while waiting for hot water) is perfectly suited.

I shall have to study Salad Leaves for All Seasons to find out which greens will be best for planting next (possibly some purslane?) and will probably also attempt cilantro, since that will be good for salsa verde later in the year. The difference between the two trays that I focused on thinning out while they were growing up and the two that were more neglected is obvious; the thinned ones, while they are just as full of greenery, are significantly easier to harvest individual leaves, contrary to what I expected. The plants in the unthinned ones are much more attenuated, and it is more difficult to choose what to pick. I ought remember this for the next sowing.

:::

Started working this week on the next yoke embroidery for a new Viking tunic for Mr. Robertson... the little Norse woodworking guys will be stitched in green floss, on some dark indigo linen

a closer view ...
because of the scale of the details, I chose to do outline stitch instead of couching, though if I'd had some more tightly spun floss, couching could have worked. I estimate this will take somewhere upwards of ten to twelve hours, as I've over an hour into it already, not counting the design work. Fortunately this is work I do in the interstices where no other useful work can be done.

:::

May SMART goals

#	THINGS MADE	THINGS FIXED	THINGS GONE
1	big garden bed	front yard mowed	bin of twigs
2	Mindy underdress	strawberries planted	bin of brush
3	Laurel underdress	blackcurrant planted	random plastic
4	Norseguy embroidery design	fridge plinth drawer	-
5	-	chook house moved	-
6	-	-	-

blindman

... in which our plucky heroine adapts a design...

As my contribution to Blue Cedar House, which balances their kindly assistance here at Acorn Cottage, I have been steadily sewing SCA clothing for three of them. This past weekend I cut out and sewed up a new white linen undergown for Mindy, which is almost completed, and only needs the embroidered yoke and cuffs to be handstitched down. I also sewed a green linen gown for little Laurel, and started on another blue tunic for Mr Robertson.

As an embroidered decoration for his new tunic, I decided (after asking him) to create a design that would highlight his interest and skill at woodworking: two "Norseguy woodworkers": one with a hammer and one with a saw*... I looked at various historical artifact designs in metalwork and carving, and combined several compatible design elements; didn't want them in armor, because crafting, and then I looked at the Mastermyr find for examples of tools like hammers and saws...

*"I see!", said the blind man, as he picked up his hammer and saw...

bizzy buzz buzz, or return of Blue Cedar House

in which our plucky heroine appreciates the amazing efforts of her Blue Cedar House pals; the Acorn Cottage environs had a whole assortment of useful improvements this weekend, in addition to the regular maintenance of weeding out morning glory and campanula and mowing the backyard lawn...


Various salvaged materials, one of the parking strip boxes, and some venerable salvaged fence boards, were recombined to make a new raised bed in the middle of the mulched area in the backyard. Mighty Mindy filled the new raised garden bed and replanted ALL the strawberries... the ones from my Mud Bay friends (Bill and Cathy and Jen), and the ones from Julia. Still need to drape it with netting, after adding some stakes padded at the top, to keep away marauding squirrels. I am determined to get at least a few homegrown berries this year, and eventually dream of homegrown strawberry-rhubarb goodness

Since the lesser of the front parking strip crates moved to become part of the new strawberry bed, the blackcurrant (that has been sitting in a pot for several years) now resides to the left of the hopeful-someday persimmon tree. Some of the sturdy sticks from pruning the ornamental plum have been used to create a support tripod, to encourage it to grow more vertically

Mindy did a bangup job of dry brick work, creating a nice tidy home for the poor blackcurrant. My hope is that with some attention and actual ground to grow in,  instead of a nursery pot, that it will be a happier plant, and maybe produce fruit in a year or two. Blackcurrant is supposedly good for jam/jelly/cordials, but I've never yet tasted any.

The kitchen fridge plinth now has a drawer, (thank you Mr. Robertson) which is a useful place to store rarely used kitchen tools and equipment, like the turkey roasting pan, and the apple peeler gizmo. This is a very gradual project, initially begun in January, and not quite finished yet. There still needs to be some sort of wood finish, probably either black paint or stain on the case, and another layer of plywood on the top to overhang the drawer would also be a help

While her parents were working inside and outside the house, young Laurel helped by using various brush and sticks and things to build an elaborate if ephemeral fairy house in my driveway. She also drew the most adorable flip book animation as a Mother's Day gift for Mindy, but sadly I had no way to document it. I don't remember knowing how to do that when I was six!!

The chicken house has been moved adjacent to the old garden bed, and once I acquire some hens, they can happily turn the bed, eat the weeds and bugs, and have a nice spot for their initial foray into the land of Acorn Cottage... I will, of course, fence off their space from the rest of the yard, and will gradually build chicken hurdles, and chunnels to allow for more rotational grazing...

The salad table, now dense with tasty greenery, has been moved out of the direct southern sun exposure to the more shady side of the front porch.

Here is the new improved summertime porch configuration: salad table more shaded, and two chairs and a small table for pleasant outdoor time in the shade. Yet to come will be a canvas sunshade on the south end of the porch; one of the last errands we ran before my pals had to hit the road for their long drive home, was to the big box hardware store to get a large canvas tarp, which I'll be configuring to match the slant of the porch roof, and will hang from the rafters. I'd also like to do some refurbishing of the chair cushions, once I look through my fabric stash and see if there is anything "upholstery" weight.

design challenge

in which our plucky heroine works on a design challenge...

A friend wants us to build a custom regalia brooch for her, featuring both the Laurel and the Pelican of the SCA. The Pelican is already completed, in the style of Limoges champleve; my initial design* interpreted the Laurel wreath as an engraved acanthus leaf foliage pattern, but we wanted to add a few additional options before making the final decision. Rather than draw the entire design again three more times, I simply drew the several wreaths, and then did some literal cut (with scissors) and paste (with tape) to sample them... the overall "effect" is clear but the actual details of a finished object would be much more precisely drawn, these are "rough" sketches:

Design A: This style is the most similar to the basic Laurel wreath that I use in my cloisonné regalia, being straightforward and readily identifiable.

Design B: This style has a more decorative leaf, tending towards the acanthus.

Design C: This style is a lot more dense, a very different look than the other two.

:::

* this is the original design I worked out; I rather like it, but it doesn't exactly read as a "Laurel" wreath...

Friday fragments

in which our plucky heroine notes a few of the many things...

The culinary sage at the start of the front walkway is blooming! This venerable plant lived for many years in a pot, as I wandered from place to place, before it was the first plant in the ground, when I found my home here at Acorn Cottage. Last year I pruned it back by a third, as it is quite leggy and overhangs the walkway to the front door. The flowers are so beautiful that pruning needs wait 'til after blossoming, but another year or two will see it rejuvenated and hopefully good for many more years of visual and culinary delight

:::

Had a bout of website foo, not sure why, and the hosting company isn't answering my queries. Fortunately my site is back up, and after much paperwork online and hours spent talking with customer service people, I at least now have access to my domain registration again. Step the first in an eventual website upgrade and transfer to a new host. Not what I wanted to spend time on this week, but needed done.  Been seven years since I did anything with the site, I've a few ideas for the future site update, and am annotating my list of things I like for future reference. As always, more to do than hours to do it in...

:::

81F on the front porch in the shade this afternoon. This does not bode well for summer... really want some very narrow vertical tower fans to put in my 3" vertical window gaps, something that does not exist as a product available for purchase. I have some minimal electrical fixit skills, can replace light fixtures and stuff like that, but I don't know enough to actually BUILD things, andam hoping to find someone who can give me some guidance. Have been unsuccessful in finding the intermediate knowledge to get from where I am to the next more complicated phase... For example there are instructions for how to combine computer fans into a larger array, but when I read it, I have no understanding of what the writer is assuming you know how to do, so frustrating!!

:::

Applied the two homemade bias bands to the grey dress hemline. The new thrifted iron I picked up recently has the exciting feature of actual steam comes out when I fill the water tank; I'd forgotten what a big help that can be! The bias tape is made from an Asian patterned cotton, in a very interesting colorway with pale cool smoke blue, taupe, dark grey, ashes of roses, and metallic gold, all on a black background.

There wasn't enough of the cotton to make a whole garment, but as an accent trim it will do very nicely, and the dark grey, taupe, and smoke blue coordinate well with the wardrobe I already have, which means that is cooler weather, this will be a good autumn layering piece; I can imagine it worn over a black petticoat and my stripey black/grey turtleneck, for example. But since the weather is trundling relentlessly in the direction of over 80F, it will do nicely for a hot weather garment all by itself!

:::

After finishing up the hem binding last night, decided to take a partway-done picture in the daylight...  Did not realise when assembling already cut out parts, just how long the dress was, and that the hemline is substantially irregular, in a symmetric way, being longer on the sides than front/back, due to the ratio difference between my shoulders and my circumference.

My initial thought was that it really needs fixed, but then I began to wonder... Steph just made a lovely summer dress with a purposefully irregular hemline, and it seems that a level hemline is not necessarily the only acceptable style option?

I still need to deal with the sleeve/armscye hems, which won't be bias bound, but will get a "baby hem" as that is less obtrusive. Not sure yet whether I will do patch pockets or faux welt pockets, but I do know that I will be using some homemade spray starch* for stabilising to make handling and sewing them a lot easier. It works like a treat for all sorts of washable cranky fabrics, as the starch can simply be rinsed away at the end, after it does the work of keeping slippery raveley or curly fabrics nice and flat and well behaved.

* 1c H2O + 1 T cornstarch, mix well and either spray, soak, or brush on...

(note: for some reason the photo has my two arms two very different lengths, trust me, this is an artifact of the camera, my arms are reasonably symmetrical)

cannot leave well enough alone

in which our plucky heroine adds new details to an old staple...

Am making slow but steady progress on the grey rayon popover dress. Most of the body pieces are stitched together, and while it is still flat is the best time to finish the neckline. (My hope is that continued 20 minute sessions every morning will turn into a habit of useful sewing and/or mending, which will gently renew my everyday clothing)

I had originally thought to do a simple neckline edging, and then took a look at my Pinterest wearable inspiration board... hmmmm.... the shape of the Washi Dress neckline is appealing, but I really dislike faced necklines. My initial idea was to bind the center portion, and then run the bias tape off the corners to make little bohemian ties, but then I remembered how much I dislike loose strings in the laundry, and this photo from a Japanese sewing book was a look that seemed really "summery"

This openwork was a little more tricky to do than I imagined, and were I to when I use this type of complex edge binding again, I'd probably change the order of how I sewed it*, but I think it gives a fun bit of detail to what is basically a Very Simple Dress. I'll be using the same homemade bias binding in a double row for the hemline, in the same way that I have done on several of my pinafores; it not only finishes edges in a durable way, but adding an extra row helps add a bit of substance, and decoration, to the hemline. Plus by putting some decoration down at the hemline, it shows off my shapely legs!

* note to self, join the final neckline bias binding at the center back, or side... not at the center front!

Saturday snippets

in which our plucky heroine makes a confession, and continues making incremental progress...

I was naughty, in the "eat dessert first" mode: instead of starting out Saturday by diving into my weekend work, a trip to the Ceramics Showcase 2015 happened, (because only happens once a year)

This small bowl needed to come home with me, the brushwork is just delightful... the bowl fits neatly in my hands, and is just the right size for a me-sized portion of a meal; inside the bowl, there is painted a wee little singing bird.

:::

There is a corner, not on my street but a block or two away, where people leave things that they don't want. Earlier this year there was a huge pile of dog bones, not the skeleton of a dog, but the sort of bones that people buy at the store for their pets to gnaw... a small portion of that pile is sitting in my yard waiting for a chance to saw slabs from them to use for making Viking style tablet weaving cards. Most recently there was a child size Ikea table and chair; the chair went away almost immediately, but the table has been sitting there almost a week now...

I ride my bike some every day it isn't either raining or unbearably hot, and while riding to the grocery store, I had the idea that this small table, not really in great condition for actual child's use, would could be modified as an excellent framework (if turned upside down)to support a chicken roost, as well as being a sort of drawer to empty dirty hen bedding... The plan being to get some young hens soon, am negotiating for three Black Australorps

:::


the pastel dress shows the rectangle/triangle construction; the last picture shows the "twirl factor"

Two of the three dresses in the photo are already worn to raveled bits, and the ones still holding together are several years old, so a new dress or several is a good idea! While looking through my fabric stash for inspiration and/or dress lengths, I found a grey rayon popover dress that I'd cut out all most of the pieces for, back in 2013, and never stitched together. Stitching this up will be my next "sewing for me" project, as having a few of these dresses hanging in the closet makes getting dressed in hot weather easy and simple.

:::

Have performed ritual obeisance this evening to the god of the short grass, which took twice the time as usual because my front yard is now full of large wood chips from the folks who took down the terrifyingly large-rooted maple trees next door, and I had to both rake and hand pick the chips, in order to be able to use the reel mower. Instead of being upset, I have tried to reframe it as "some folks pay a lot of money to go to the gym, I get to have a short grass yard, and lots of bending and pushing and walking back and forth, and I don't have to even pay extra electric for it"! The reframing worked but boy howdy am I tired!!

:::

May SMART goals

#	THINGS MADE	THINGS FIXED	THINGS GONE
1	-	front yard mowed	bin of twigs
2	-	-	-
3	-	-	-
4	-	-	-
5	-	-	-
6	-	-	-