Out And About: Our Own Backyard

Death Valley National Park

4/22/16 - 4/24/16

(It's a Guy Thing)

Sequoia National Forest

Southwestern Entrance, East of Glennville

5/19/16 - 5/21/16

Rhymes "Campground"

Snow flurries at the summit, Alta Sierra 7000 ft

 To be continued . . . . 

  

Tread Softly

The Man has been hard at work trimming weeds that have flourished from the winter and spring rains. We've got nearly seven acres - that's a whole lot of weed whacking.

Several times over the past few weeks he's had a quail explode out of the tall grass directly in front of him. Upon closer inspection he's come to realize that it's a defensive maneuver by Mama Quail.

iPhone Pic, The Man

As a safeguard The Man has marked each found nest with a little orange flag.

Tread softly
because you tread on my dreams.
W. B. Yeats

Knitting Heart

Yesterday I mailed a box of 8 completed Comfort Scarves to Handmade Especially For You. I think this time it took me about three months to knit up the fluffy colorful yarn kits.

 

Leslye Borden, founder of Handmade Especially For You, and her volunteers send out the Comfort Scarves to Women's Shelters in California year-round. As you can imagine during the Holidays the Made-by-Me-for-You gifts are especially needed and appreciated.

Last Thanksgiving the Man's Mom completed 15 Comfort Scarves while she visited: Truly amazing and awe-inspiring since it was only a week-long visit.

Sunday Brunch

To You, Yours, and Ours - Happy Mother's Day 2016.

Fluff Piece

Call me crazy but I like to knit cotton dishcloths.

Why? you may ask.

Well, they make great little Made-by-Me-for-You gifts. Secondly, they're all-purpose, recyclable, and when they get too grungy - disposable. I find dishcloths to be easy-peasy potato chip knitting, which means, mindless auto-pilot knitting and you can't knit just one.

But the best reason of all: The Man gets so embarrassed when I give them away and the giftee is trying to figure out what the heck it is. Um, gee, yeah, well, um, thanks.... (Cracks me up all the time.)

This past Christmas I knitted up a whole bunch of dishcloths.

Which brings me to my story. All those cotton dishcloths I've been making over the years have generated little leftover cotton yarn balls and we all know that fibery folk will not (can not) toss out "useable" yarn no matter how small the amounts.

A couple of years ago I hung up a round bird feeder and stuffed it with 4 inch strands of the cotton yarn for birds to use for their nest building.

From my kitchen window I've spied an occasional bird helping themselves to my yarn scraps but not as much activity as I had hoped. This past rainy season the cotton strands turned into a moldy mass of wetness.

I threw the yucky yarn out and reloaded the nesting ball with soft fluffs of fiber from the goats as they shed their downy winter undercoats.

Looks like I'll need to find another use for my cotton yarn scraps.

Deja Vu

So here's a previous post, a rerun, for this week's entry. It is apropos.