1st Day of School

 I haven't gone on my walk this morning because it's been so blustery the last couple days!  All night, too.  We've had at least three power outages in the last twenty-four hours.  Possibly more, because I know there was at least one overnight.  So I'm a touch stressed, and woke up with knots between my shoulderblades and at the base of my skull, and am hence taking today easy.  Except for the part where it's Squiddle's first day of school!

The wind knocked down eight apples from the trees, so I collected them and turned them (and a softening apple from the fruit bowl, as well as another one that Jazzy only ate a quarter of) into applesauce last night.  A little lemon juice, a little sugar, and it's very tasty.

Well, brief post, but it's now just about time to get the boys up!

Counting... Ah-Ah-Ah!

 As I walk my laps around the block in the morning, I count things.  What lap I'm on (5 laps make 2 miles).  How many bunnies I've seen (least: 5; most: 30).  How many squirrels (record: 3).  How many doves (record: also 3).  Anything unusual (that one time I saw a pair of quail who quickly ducked into the brush).  How many times I've heard that rooster off in the distance crow.

I count houses (25 in the tract).  I count cars.  I count who has a large outbuilding behind their house (5).  I wonder, judgmental as all get out, how in a tract with two and three car garages, there are only three homes including us that don't have (usually multiple) cars left out in their driveways.  It's not quite as bad as it was in Anaheim, where we quite literally had people think we weren't home because our cars were in the garage not the driveway, but still!  I guess most people, even here, use their garages for storage and workshops, not car parking.

Squiddle starts school on Tuesday.  We've got his desk and a side table set up in his bedroom, and we'll see how a more intensive schooling schedule over Zoom will go, compared to this last spring.  We've been working with him on lessons most days over the summer - writing a sentence, doing some math or maps pages in his first grade workbook from Costco, going through a stack of vocabulary flashcards, reading books or pages from the workbook, and we're fairly sure he's ready.  Well, save for maybe the reading comprehension... he's been having a bit of trouble with those workbook pages.

But since he's going to need at least light supervision, I'm going to need to be at home, even after Jazzy starts developmental preschool again (2 days a week) on the 21st.  No more thrift stores for me for quite a while!  So I went on a brief jaunt up to Port Orchard on Friday, as a last huzzah.  I found nothing at St. Vincent de Paul, got only what was on my list at Joann Fabrics, but actually found some things at Goodwill: ten canning jars ($2), which I haven't seen at a thrift store in months, another mirror for my wall of mirrors ($1.40), four quilting stencils ($4), and a quilt top ($2).

Gardening-wise, my tomatoes are finally starting to come ripe!  Yum-yum.  I took half a dozen over to my parents' yesterday, along with a few zucchini and some of the radishes whose growth has been stunted due to living in the shade of the zucchini.  As for the inevitable sneaky monster zucchini, the chickens have realized they're most tasty.  So, win!  And yesterday I also finally finished putting the weed-suppressant circles around the new fruit trees and blueberry plants, and weighting them down with a thick layer of mulch.  Hooray for a slightly tidier garden!

A week of leisure

 Chickoletta was delivered to his new owner last week, who seemed quite happy that Chickoletta was (a) in such good condition, and (b) quite docile during the transfer.  Though given that in the week since, I've noticed a lot fewer shed feathers in the chicken tractor, I have to wonder if Chickoletta was in fact a bit of a bully, or if having six chickens in the 4'x8' space was simply a bit of overcrowding?

Wonderful Husband has taken this week off, since it's the last week before Squiddle (remotely) starts school.  We went to the Point Defiance Zoo on Tuesday, which had timed entry tickets, direction flow arrows on the ground, and required everyone over the age of five to wear masks.  Despite the play area and the goat feeding station being closed, a good time was had by all.  At the exit, we bought Jazzy a 6' corn snake toy, and Squiddle a small Lego-esque elephant to build.

Yesterday, we drove up to the Olympic Game Farm, since Wonderful Husband had never been.  We drove through, feeding slices of bread to llamas, yaks, bears (behind fences), deer, buffalo, and reindeer.  We were ignored by the elk and zebras, as well as by the predator animals (lions, tigers, wolves, and probably a few others that were hiding from view).  Not as many bunnies roamed the grounds as in previous visits, but there were still plenty of peafowl about.

After the game farm, we sought out some lunch and as it was right by a quilt shop (which is apparently closing later this month), I popped in and found some fabrics which will become the boys' Christmas quilts.  Then we drove up to Marymere Falls and did that brief hike.  Not as crowded as last time!  But by the time we got home and dinner finished... well, we all ate after 8pm.  Long day!

Chicken Woes

 This morning, as I got back from my walk, I heard something distressing: one of our chickens, making its first attempt at crowing.

Chickoletta, the French Wheaten Marans (ie, the expensive [$15] chick) is now confirmed to be a rooster.  Which I'd been wondering at, as she (he) was not the right colors to be a hen.  But I'd hoped maybe she (he) was a different colorway of Marans.  She (he) doesn't have spurs... but no.

Even though all the lots are a full acre, as opposed to the 1/5th acre we had in Anaheim, we still live in a housing tract.  And even though the HOA (which forbids poultry and livestock) seems to be defunct, it's terribly rude to our neighbors to keep a crowing rooster.

So I took the above picture and put a free ad up on Craigslist.  And I have a taker for pickup tomorrow morning.

But I'm still annoyed.  I really wanted some dark dark brown eggs. :(

Some Stitching Has Been Done

 Squiddle had his eye exam last week, and the eyepatches have helped his amblyopia quite a lot - his vision in his weaker eye has improved to something like 20/40!  So not all the way there yet, but good progress has been made!

Also last week I went on a digging through bins expedition in the garage, and found a few projects.  First up was a couple bundles of pirate themed things I'd been collecting together.  Part of one was thirteen ship blocks I'd won in the Orange Grove Quilt Guild a couple years ago.  And there was a remnant and a yard of fabric that went well with them, so I checkerboarded them together:

The ships were sailing two different directions, so I put the east-bound ones on odd lines and the west-bound ones on even lines.  Then I did a 2" border from two fat quarters that were in the bundles:

A closeup of the border fabric so you can see why I needed to include it.  Ship's wheels!:

And for the finale, a 12" border of three different JoAnns remnants and a thrift store purchase, all of the same skull and crossbones material:

The quilt is about 87" square, if memory serves, and I have enough leftover of both the skull and crossbones fabric, and the nautical fabric, to make pillowcase borders, though not enough for them to be the full pillowcases.  The extra block can go on the back, as a label.  Squiddle thinks this quilt should be for him, but Wonderful Husband and I both think it should be for my dad.

The next project I found was leftovers, sort of, from a quilt I made for my mom when she found out she had cancer.  I'd made 100 blue/white 16-patch blocks, and used 49 of them in that quilt, so I still had 51 left!  I pulled other fabrics in the yellow-to-orange colorway, and laid this out:

In hindsight, I wish there had been more of a color difference between yellow #2 and yellow #3, because in this picture they seem to be the same.  But they look quite different from less than six feet away, and since they were already cut I didn't want to dig more for something better that I might not even have.  I've got the rows half sewn, and after this is all together (about 79" square IIRC), I'm planning a blue/orange/blue six inch border.  The yellows and oranges have enough left over for pillowcases, and the two extra blocks can go on the back.  Not sure yet who this one is for.

In other news, I picked enough blackberries the other day that I made a pie, which we're still working through, and I also turned a large zucchini into chocolate cupcakes, but the recipe made 34 of them!  So I gave a dozen to our neighbors who have three kids.

Ugh

Around 5:30 this morning, Jazzy came into our room, wanting to be tucked back into bed.  Around 6, he came in again and just ended up snuggled in between Wonderful Husband and myself.  Which I don't mind that much, in theory, but he doesn't stay in the dead center, no, he has to sleep on Mummy's side.  Which means Mummy gets half a pillow and half the amount of duvet she had before, and, really, I did not sleep well after that point.

Today was also a run-around day.  After my walk/run and shower this morning, I put chicken sabzi in the crock pot for dinner, then went to Stokes Auction to pick up the items I'd won (a bedside table for me, a rug that turns out to not be the color it was on the listing, some hanging pots that were a lot smaller than I thought, and a vintage Fantasia coloring book).  Then I headed to Michaels to get a framing issue dealt with.  Then to Wilco to purchase a 6' orchard ladder since they were on sale and having one will be most helpful with the wall of blackberries on the west side of our house.  Then I put petrol in the car, picked up a prescription refill, and went home for lunch.  And that was my morning!

This afternoon I picked up my order from the farm co-op: blueberries, peaches, nectarines, and a couple varieties of garlic to try.  I figured that since there was a playground at the civic center (where the pickup happens) and I've never seen kids playing on it at that time, I should take the boys with so they could get some time outside the house and with a change of scenery.  They ended up doing a lot of running around and finding dandelions to blow on.  And I also knew at the back of the green area behind the playset, there were blackberry bushes....

With a bit of help from the boys (who have both decided they love blackberries, though Jazzy will not touch blueberries, go figure), I picked this:

I figure that will keep us in nibbles for a few days, and maybe a pie, who knows?

Walking and Stitching

 About two weeks ago, I moved the bathroom scale out of the corner where it sat hidden and neglected, and to a spot where I would actually see and step on it daily.

I did not like the number it gave me.  I did not like it rather a lot.  So that, combined with jeans fitting too tightly, or not at all, has spurred me into a new habit: I get up, feed the cat, get dressed, feed the chickens, and go walk five laps around the block, which theoretically adds up to two miles.  It takes about fifty minutes, and I'm giving myself one morning off a week.  Today, now that my body is used to that routine, I kicked it up a little and jogged the downhill stretches, which added up to about half a mile.  I am so woefully out of shape, but I know if I dive in head-first I will (a) regret it, and (b) not stick with it.  So a little bit at a time, and minding what I eat a bit better, with that daily weigh-in for me to keep in mind.

I also actually started doing some sewing again yesterday!  I attended Costume College's virtual retreat a week ago, which was essentially three Zoom classes, and picked up a couple interesting tips and tricks, but what I started sewing yesterday were quilt block pieces I had already cut out.

I finished these two yellow Crown of Thorns blocks.

And started stitching on another six blue ones.  Plus a 4" pine tree block because I've decided I'd like to get that wall hanging done by Christmas.