flint and steel

I saw Levi head outside with the flint&steel kit on Saturday by himself & followed a little while after to watch.  Here he's working on creating a spark holding a piece of charcloth on top of the flint while striking it with steel.  In the middle picture you can see his little bundle of dry cedar bark waiting on the ground ready for when he gets a spark going.  He also had a little teepee of fatwood waiting.  Awesome.

piggies

over the weekend

Chatting with Pops.
You can't see it well but she's gnawing on a stick of butter she lifted.

knapping

I've got a hen that's breaking & eating eggs in the nestbox before we gather them.  I'd read advice online & had tried a few things - one of them was putting golfballs in the nests so that when she tries to break them, she can't & gets negative feedback.  Also, we'd tried gathering eggs multiple times a day to decrease the availability.  Neither of these worked very well.

I'd thought about butchering the hen, but they've become pets & the particular offending hen is one of my two blue-egg-layers.  So, what I've come up with, which is totally working:  I've draped a blanket over the nestboxes.  The hens come & go, but while they are in the box its dark.  I suppose dark enough that the eggs can't be seen well and the egg-eating has stopped.

This is the problem child.

Nearing the end.  This is the back.
I've got to put a 2 inch border of gray on the bottom & then its done.

Front

Getting ready to go to the farm at Reno for the afternoon.

Valentine's Day Homemade

a luna moth for Alexandria

Keeping with our yearly tradition, Levi made homemade valentines for the kids in his class.  It gives him a chance to sit down & think about each person.  He drew a picture of something he thought they each would like.

on his 7th birthday

Levi turned seven yesterday on Feb 11th.

I always like to remember that he has the same birthday as his great-great-grandfather Appenzeller.  I remember Grandma liked that too - that it was on her Daddy's birthday.

I took cupcakes to school, and got to listen to the children read their journal entries for the day to Levi.  They all began:  Today is February 11th, 2014.  Today is Levi's 7th birthday.  And then they each wrote a little something about Levi.  I learned that he helps some of them with their reading & that everybody thinks Levi is a funny guy (class clown?).

He opens a special card waiting for him in the truck:

His Mama drags him outside for a birthday photo op:

Gotta get some good shots before those two front teeth reappear.

German chocolate cupcakes.  Love you Levi.

Earthskills Gathering

We're headed south this weekend to attend the Florida Earthskills Gathering in Hawthorne, Florida - about a 3 hour trip down.  We'll camp out & take classes throughout the weekend.  Indi will tag along with Joe & I, but Levi can attend the kids classes on his own.  Now, just the hard part of picking which classes - so many choices!

sunday

This is the first time while living in Cairo to have an over-wintering beehive.  I visit the hive often and see what's going on.  Sit.  Watch the activity & number of bees arriving with pollen:  yellow, gray, & green.  Part of my routine also is to lift up the back of the hive to feel how heavy it is - over time this gives me a relative sense of how their honey stores are holding out.  The bees are working our camellias & it seems from the amount coming into the hive that there's a pollen flow happening now.

Still working on this shawl.
Nearing the end - ready to be done & working on something new.

of an afternoon

a little black racer we ran across in the firebreak
Levi was proud = he gently reached out & picked it up, for the first time, all by himself

had to get out of that house, crazy kid disorder everywhere
Here's my Zen time today
lovin' my new handmade bow
Thanks Joe, love you