The chickens are growing up fast! They’re eight weeks old today. They will spend long periods of time some distance from their momma, although they still tend to hang out with her when the other hens are around, and she’s still feeding them and gathering them up into the coop at night. We’ve quite […]
Chris got me a new camera for our anniversary; a Canon T2i. I’ve been playing around with the new camera, looking at some hatchling silkworms. This one’s in the process of hatching. They bite through the egg shell, bit by bit, and then crawl out. The lenses on the new camera are working for […]
I’ve seen articles and reports on some of the amazing stuff coming from TUFTS University, and now there’s a TED talk about it, here. Fascinating stuff! A link to his lab is here.
The Sammons Center for the Arts, the amazingly cool place where I work, is part of the Refresh Everything Pepsi Challenge. Our idea is a Family Arts Festival; we want to introduce people to the Arts. You can vote online here, and you can also text 106158 to 73774 from your cell phone. If you […]
We’ve got peeps. I had tried putting fertile eggs under Sue back in December. Unfortunately, I made a rookie mistake, and so did she. I didn’t change her food when I put her in the broody box; a sitting hen needs a leaner diet than a laying hen, to prevent diarrhea. What she did wrong, […]
The tomatoes are doing well. These were planted the 23rd of January. They’re doing quite well in their four-inch pots. I kind of wish I had started them earlier, but by the same token they’re easier to manage when they’re not huge… and there are a lot of them. I’m going to share some with […]
Our Phoenix hen, Sue, laid a witch egg. Chris found it by the food bowl. From reading up, they’re called “Witch eggs,” “Dwarf eggs,” “runt eggs,” and “wind eggs.” Some people call them “fart eggs.” We think that it may have been her first egg back on the cycle – she had stopped laying for […]
Monday, I was working on cleaning out the chicken coop. Rawnell decided that she needed to lay an egg. In spite of the whole top of the coop being open, she walked up the plank and plopped herself on the nest. I respectfully left her alone; a girl needs some privacy for these things. Apparently […]
I’m working on twisting up a LOT of silk for a project. This is a bobbin nearly-full of twisted singles. It’s a Very Fast Flyer bobbin on my Lendrum wheel. I haven’t done a count, but I’m guessing in about the 1500 yard range. The camera is not off its white balance; the silk really […]
A friend of mine recently asked me how I go about throwing (twisting) my filament silk yarns. Throwing is needed to turn the totally-flat raw silk into tram and organzine; it’s a little like spinning, and a little like plying, but it’s really its own thing. To start with, I wind all the filament onto […]