Farm Fresh Eggs

Finding chickens on Craigslist has been an interesting process. Some of the ads are very, very vague. "Free chicken" is not nearly enough information. Is that live, egg-laying chickens, or pieces that are breaded and ready for the oven?

A couple of days ago, I saw an ad that listed how many chickens there were, what town they were in, and what breeds they were....and the guy answered my call...and he didn't want to weirdly screen me to make sure that I'd provide a proper home for his flock... (I totally will, but I'm not inviting a stranger to come look at my property to see if it's suitable for his chickens.)

Wednesday night, the boys and I headed out into the boonies -- not the same ones we live in -- to pick up chickens. We had to do it in the evening so they'd be in the coop and although I've been to that town before, I've never driven there from here.

Now we've got eleven more chickens in the coop and I'm checking out Jo's recipes that use eggs so I can figure out the best way to enjoy the gorgeous brown and green eggs they're laying.

Shadowy Stripes Shawl

Here's my eighth shawl of  the year, Shadowy Stripes...

 Yarn: Loops and Threads Madrid, Slate  

No Pattern

Back in November I bought some sale yarn at Michaels that looked like it would make fun shawls. One skein became Hufflepuff Lace  and another became this shawl. I think I'm done knitting from big 350 yard skeins for now because they're so awkward to deal with. The yarn wanted to slither off in big tangly loops.

This skein had three knots in it, so I didn't even get the advantage of not weaving in more than two ends. (For non-knitters, when I say a skein had "knots" it means that the yarn was broken and then knotted back together during the manufacturing project. It's not uncommon to find a knot in a skein, but three in the same skein is a lot.) Between the knots and the splitty yarn, this wasn't a very fun knit.

I do love those subtle black stripes.

Let's Make Baby Quilts! {6/15/18}

Let's Make Baby Quilts Linky Party Rules: 
Link directly to your post or specific Flickr photo. Your post can be about a baby quilt that's finished, or in progress, or you can be writing about what you have planned,  as long as it's about baby quilts. You're welcome to link to baby quilt posts that aren't brand new, but please don't submit the same post or picture more than once. I'd love it if you linked back to my site, either with a text link or the Let's Make Baby Quilts! button.

Not Planning Our Summer

My social media feeds are filled with posts about how to schedule summer for your kids and what to put on the summer bucket list and how much fun it is to sit down with the calendar and the schedule for the local library...

None of that is happening at my house. I don't plan summer activities beyond making sure everyone has a swim suit that fits and there's some sunscreen on hand.  Unless we're using the time share, we don't even schedule our real vacations much beyond knowing which days my husband has off from work. I pick up a fresh set of AAA Travel Guides and we decide which direction to head on the highway.

So I'm not planning out summer for the kids, not even a week in advance. Maybe this is a homeschooling thing -- this is the chunk of the year where I'm not supposed to have to keep track of everything. We do what we do. Last summer, that meant bowling and/or playing in the river pretty much every day.

There's this fantastic program, Kids Bowl Free, that gives kids eighteen and under two free games per day at the local bowling alley. If we're going out for the day, we stop to bowl. (Our local bowling alley isn't on the site this year, maybe because they're charging a dollar for shoe rental and not following the official rules? It's still a phenomenal deal.)

I haven't checked out the swimming hole yet to see how fast the water is running and how cold it is. Over the course of the next few weeks, it'll slow down and warm up. Or the weather will get hot and we won't care. By September, it'll be like this again...

Don't get me wrong -- my kids do lots of things. They just don't rely on me to coordinate them all. I'll be swinging by the Dollar Tree on a regular basis to get balloons for paper mache and to the craft store for hot glue sticks.  Those aren't summer things, those are just life with a pack of creative kids.