So I tried to show her how the shrubs were blown flat in places and stuff was flying and you couldn’t see but maybe ten miles for the dust.
Suddenly I hear ‘A wee mo whap, a wee mo whap, In the Jungle…’
In the sun but protected by the sagebrush, the owner of the property (here before we moved here). We think she is a female, just in case we ever get the chance to see for sure, she is either Jasmine or he is Jasper.
That’s the best picture of her so far. She looks like our indoor cat, Teddy.
Who has run away from home and found outside was a horrid place. Now he spends his days on my bed, purely serene in the warmth and comfort. He loves that I put on the old pink blanket to protect my bed as he thinks it is just his special place.
A beauty like this guy struts in my yard every day. He is not ours. Neither is his matching hen or a white hen. They wander our yard like they own the place. That’s okay with me as I think that cock-a-doodle-doo protects our three quieter hens.
Our three look like this one. We had four but a hawk got one of them. My brother had them all named. But I don’t know them that intimately. I do take care of one of their meals of the day. I have two peanut butter toasted sandwiches for breakfast. Kali gets one little corner and the chickens get the crusts. I am a vegetarian by nature. I am allergic to egg whites to the extent that I can’t get the flu shots or others that are based in albumin. But I love the sounds of the clucking and crowing all over my yard. They do their part to scratch out bugs and fertilize the soil. And my husband and brother enjoy the eggs. Me? I’m hoping for wee peep-peeps! But our girls attack the rooster if he comes near. Yay! Hens-lib! ??
Oh, that grass seen in the above pictures? That is truly greener on the other side of the fence. Our neighbor has managed to make and keep a beautiful lawn. We barely manage to keep the sagebrush away from our house.
Other animal sounds we hear around here lately are coyotes and their pups.ย One poor girl here was followed to the bus stop by a coyote. She was smart and stood tall and yelled and it ran away. But they can be quite dangerous for people and pets. We have to keep our gate closed and watch carefully for those who might jump over into our yard. Kali and the chickens are in danger. As are the two stray cats that have been here even before we moved here. Rosey and Teddy are indoor felines. Meow!
Our other neighbor has turkeys. When we gave ours away he got some of his own so the gobbles are still a welcome sound.
What doesn’t make sound, that we can hear here are the alpacas that are across the way. They are cute. I wish I had one. Can you imagine the yarn I could get if I got good at alpaca husbandry?
We have seen bear droppings at the campground twelve miles away. That is a sound I don’t want to hear! GRRRowl!
Oh, I just thought of the deer and antelope that play around this here range. Kind of like the baaing of lambs or goats that some neighbors have. There are a few horses. Neigh, not a lot. Ducks and geese quack their honks and especially at sunset as they settle down.
The most annoying, yet cute sound? Oh, my goodness. This mildish winter has brought in the mice. We have cute mice with shiny coats. The other day I was reaching in a cabinet for a can of beans and I heard a high pitch bunch of squeaks. It is no fun to live in the country when you find things like that.ย My brother found them and the chickens ate them up. Yes, I have tears in my eyes as I think of it. Soon after he caught a few bigger mice in traps.
I thought you might enjoy what our outdoor friends do that I have seen happen.
I just remembered the wonderful sound of last summer. We had some frogs somewhere between our yard and the nearest neighbor. The co-roaking was so cool! I hope we get it again this year, By the way, the weather is getting warmer and my son and I have made plans to start walking a bit. We spell out the word W-A-L-K so Kali doesn’t get too crazy. Her whining can quickly turn into barking lectures of great magnitude!
Per Linda:
Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is โanimal sounds.โ Write about the sounds animals make and how you experience them. Have fun!
When I was young and spent the night with my grandparents I felt so lucky. First of all, because my mother’s parents and my father’s parents lived two doors down from each other. Even my other cousins weren’t this lucky. And on this road, I had a great aunt or two. The second fun part of this convenience was that if my folks were visiting the one set of grandparents I could run and be at the other grandparents’ home.
Both of my grandfathers were carpenters. Mom’s dad was more of a cabinet maker. But when mom was young he actually built a wooden roller coaster and a Ferris wheel. There were pictures in the local paper with mom and my aunt as girls in these rides.
My dad’s dad was more of a home builder. When these two close families moved from ‘back east’ they bought land near each other and mom’s dad copied nearly every nail strike from my dad’s dad. Thereby their homes were very similar. I can still see and smell those two homes. Mom’s parents’ home smelled of cedar. Dad’s parents’ just smelled clean like wind-dried laundry. Mmmmm!
That doesn’t include all the food smells. Mom’s mother specialized in pies and cakes. Dad’s mom was best at meats and dumplings. Not to say they both weren’t great cooks! My mouth is watering at this vision.
But back to spending the night. The walls of both grandparents’ homes were textured with stucco, a kind of relief feeling and then painted. I remember laying on their beds and finding pictures in the textures.
As a mom of four, we had a house that had a bathroom with fake marble lined the wall. As you would sit on the ‘throne’ you could see ‘angry dad’. Beard, mustache and all. Yes, he was an angry cuss at times back then. (Not my current husband.)
Here in this house, I have found another set of Rorschach tests in this bathroom. One in the fake wood panel of the door. The others are from spackle patches that we still need to paint over.
Anyway, here are cell photos of the muses.
The only picture with true color is the wooden door one. These other two are white on sky-blue. I don’t know why they turned gray.
Anyway, do you see pictures? I have been meaning to capture these by drawing and seeing what characters I feel as I draw. Here are my first renditions.
Those were only quickie sketches. But for some reason, I felt nearly obligated to draw them out. It is like they want to be in a story or something.
Does this happen to you? Do you see pictures in tree-bark or leaf patterns against the sky? Do you feel they call to you to be represented? What do you suppose it means?
So this sock is on its third remake because the loom had a broken peg. I had Gorilla Glued it but yesterday, as I was finishing the ankle part and heading for the cuff it broke again.
Ugh! See the broken peg attached by a rubber band to the loom?
Yeah, I can’t toss something if I think I might be able to use it again sometime. But I did order a new KB His and Hers set. Trouble is, even though I ordered off the last order this set of looms is smaller. The same amount of pegs, but I think the pegs are slightly closer.
And then I had to move all the stitches on the broken loom onto the new equivalent loom. I used the circular knitting needles to capture the loops and then move them to the new loom.
These are ChiaoGoo Red Lace 47 inch Stainless Steel Size 1.5. They did an excellent job for me. I can’t wait to try and make sock on them.
So my daughter’s first sock is nearly finished. I suppose I could give it to her and she can take turns on which foot she’ll keep warm that day? Kidding!ย But those purple looms are for her boyfriend. Can you see the difference between the purple on the lower left and the bigger purple above? They are supposed to be the same size. If they turn out to be too different in size I will make the decision of which loom I’ll make the second one on.
Oh, and that sock with the mermaids on it? That is on my foot. Those were a gift from my friend. They are so fun I thought the girls wanted to be a part of the sock party. Okay, back to knitting.
Look. I get it. I’ve been carrying around reusable bags attached to my purse for more than a decade. But by outlawing these plastic bags, my reusing of the bags as trash can liners or plarn items will be over as soon as the “bag bag” chair is empty. That chair was to be a laundry bag made of plarn. But when we moved I stuffed it with our extra plastic bags. Once here the cats and then the dog found that bag the best seat in the house. So let’s see what ideas others have about this soon to be small dilemma. Ideas?
This is my presentation to the Escapist Coloring Club. Sorry I’ve missed the last few months. I like to color. Why is it I put it off?
Here’s the before:
I used a combination of crayons, color pencils, and gel pens. Oh, that brownish stain on the right side of the page, that I remembered to put the blank white paper over in the before, It was on my husband’s side of the table where I kept the book. I think it was coffee. I tried to erase it or cover it up with a white pastel. Now I will keep it in my little lap-desk!
The quote below the picture didn’t show up all that well. It says:
The mysterious and elusive fairy dragons are often mistaken for large butterflies or dragonflies. They were favorite companions and mounts of the ‘wee people”.
So I had a lot of yarn in little bits. I thought, ‘Hmmm, maybe I can make some scrappy socks. But I made oopsies and needed to tink. That didn’t work out right. So I left these two-toned tube socks in their project bag until I felt like dealing with them. Suddenly it came to me that they would make sock dolls.
The other bright idea that has to do with socks is, I wondered if the Kitchener cast-on could be used to make hats without a bump or knot on the top. So, here is the result of that cast-on on the small Knifty Knitter (blue, 24 pegs):
It is a little bumpy on what would be near the big toe and the little toe, like a dimple or pimple? But it does seem smoother than the normal doll head or hat. Then I thought well, I have enough yarn to make a doll, upside down. Usually, using LoomAHat’s Tiny Doll pattern, you knit from the legs up. With the head done I decided to finish with the legs. It worked!
I like how the combinations of yarns gave an interesting pantsuit for this guy.
My sock babies turned out like this:
It makes it look like they are in cocoons with their arms out of the binding.
Just because they begged for a selfie together:
It looks like the little ones are falling asleep while the bigger kid is in charge. Or is that just me and my crazy imagination?
Oh, how I miss proper English. Oh, how I miss people who care for others and not just themselves. That is what I found in this audiobook. A person who can read their own words in a book with such elegance was so beautiful I didn’t want to stop reading. I was awake until four in the morning two or three nights.
It wasn’t as if most of the story was new. We all lived through those eight years. I didn’t know about much of Ms. Obama’s life before the White House. So that was interesting.
When I was young, I loved spending the night with friends or cousins. It was fun to see how other people live their lives. I think that is why I like honest memoirs like this one. Michelle didn’t try to pretty it up and sweep the bad parts under the carpet. This was her life. Period.
Most of the story was pre-election, before children. She is a confident woman. Her parents’ influence was the basis of her life along with extended family. The love she felt for and from family gave her the strength to be herself. Being raised financially challenged gave her the wisdom to deal with money properly. Knowing that politics was the least of her aims in life, makes her all the more interesting.
I think it was that deep love that she got as a child that made her the loving adult she became. It was evident in how she treated people of all ilk. I am so interested in what Michelle Obama becomes now that her life is closer to what is her kind of life.
This is a book I highly recommend as an audiobook. Her voice is rich and brings the words to life.
My stream takes me from songs that talk about cheek to cheek to cheeky. I took a nap thinking about this. When I nap I try to leave on the TV so that my mind won’t think it is night time. The best sleeping shows for me have David Attenborough talking about nature and the world we live on.
I woke up laughing at the cheekiness of his narrative of a commercial about The Walking Dead. He was explaining about the whisperers and what their habitat was and what they needed to survive. I almost thought it was in my dream but it was an actual commercial. Does that define cheeky? It was funny.
I hope you are all having a nice weekend. We woke up to snow today and it is supposed to snow again tonight. Our poor plants keep having a hard time with these weird weather surges. Our mesquite bush is already leafing out. The trees have buds. I don’t mind the snow if it stays as it makes everything look pure and clean. But quick melting snow leave us with a muddy mess. Oh, well. I’m glad we didn’t have a -40 winter.
Okay. the stats: These are made on the KB 24 peg, 3/4 gauge.
I have the markers set up for the heel. Oh, and yes, a couple of those pegs are bent forward. I need to run the loom under warm water and see if I can fix those. The loom got caught under the rocker recliner when I wasn’t looking. Oops! But they didn’t cause too much of a problem even as is.
Draw-string Cast-on to make the toe. Knit ten rows. I used the flat-knit stitch. Then between the first peg and the twelfth peg, I did the Russian short rows (heel). Eight rows of flat-knit stitch for the ankle. Then a two-by-two e-wrap/purl cuff for eight rows. Just the regular bind of, the one that you wrap two, knit first two. Then bring second loop to the first loop. knit bottom over top. Move that loop to the number two spot. That is now the number one peg. E-wrap number two. knit over. Move number two to number one. knit bottom over top. Repeat to end wrap last. knit over. Cut end (about two inches) pull through the loop. Hide ends. Voila!
Working on my series: Haven.
Doodler (zendoodle.com)
Music major: voice and piano
Mom of four great adults
Reiki II practitioner
I have been on disability/retired for 10 years now from depression, anxiety and fibromyalgia.
Hi! my name is Sebastian (You can call me Seb!) ...welcome to my Blog. I'm a photographer from Worcester, Worcestershire, England. Thanks for dropping by! I hope you enjoy my work.
Books, games, music, and life โ filtered through the mind of a writer, drummer, and philosopher who thinks too deeply about all of it. If it moves something in your chest, I'm interested.
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