Way out in the Middle of Nowhere

I'm determined to not let it get me down, but then it pretty much did. Last Saturday I was out doing night chores and slipped on the ice. I went down carrying to canisters of water. My arm was not happy to suffer another injury. The left knee has a bruise and oddly enough; my stomach muscles were pulled. Aleve is my friend this winter. A quick look at the chickens that were hatched last weekend. We had 8 hatch, and another two are expected today.  This is the 1st week of the 3 week long hatching fun that will culminate in us having 30 chickens to raise to butcher and eat next fall/winter. They're doing well. I have one that hatched last night that is a bit more tired than the others. As you see in the photo, we first stuck them in the bathtub after realizing the usual spot in the laundry room was not going to work. There is little heat in the laundry room, and the heat lamp was not putting out a consistent temp. **Normally, the weather outside by now is consistently ...

Yep, there are few patches of land out there under all this snow. The last few days helped out quite a bit. I got to  muck out both the goose pen and the chicken coop. We ended up having to do a deep-bed type bedding for the animals simply because it was 1: Warmer, and insulates the floor and 2: we really couldn't get the stuff up until it defrosted a bit. 6" of wet, smelly, poopy straw was under the nice upper layer. It's a decent way to go for winter, but it makes mucking take hours. And my elbow still doesn't like it. However, I do appreciate the effects of Aleve in getting rid of much of the pain and swelling. I've started the last sleeve on the gray sweater. Once that is knitted up, I'll block it and see if it fits me better. It's a close fitting thing now, but hopefully the blocking will give me a better fit. The cabled shawl is longer, with many cables on it. I finished up a hat for my seatmate, Cody who wanted one for his Dad. A test in C...

So sometime in the last month, I hurt my elbow/bicep/lower arm area in my left arm.  Probably toting those stupid cans of water out to the animals. Writing notes makes it hurt, reaching out and grabbing my ipad makes it hurt, any effort to bear weight on it makes it hurt. So I sit here with a heating pad wrapped around my left elbow to see if I can get relief. So far............meh The weather has turned warmer...meaning it's now over 10°F instead of under.  Our eldest pair of mating geese have left the flock and set up house in the garage next to the dead van.  Ron and Sissy were in there one night as I was getting everyone ready for bed. Both honked and honked and would not move. OK, fine. You get to stay in the garage. A heated bucket of water, a tub full of food and some cushy straw and they're all happy. Yep, our old van bit the dust during that last cold snap. We found a Jeep Cherokee to replace it. Old, loud and full of electrical issues, but hey...it runs a...

So far, the coldest winter on record here in WI, officially.  Each winter there is one article of clothing that I grow sick and tired of wearing. This year, that would be my full-length powder blue goose down coat. Yeah, it's a great coat. It's warm. But if I have to endure that thing for another month, I'm going to scream. About a year ago I purchased some 10 skeins of blue alpaca yarn off of eBay. Last weekend it finally told me what it wanted to be. It's a farose shawl in cables. The pattern is entirely made up in my head. Right now I'm going to get down to a rant, so plug your ears. I'm sitting here with my ipad on my laptop, with photos in my ipad that refuse to be shared with my laptop. I mean, it's on the same flipping network, it's supposed  to be sharing on the icloud but no.  I went to 3 different websites, including Flickr to put this *ONE* photo on so I could share it with my blog. None of the sites would allow sharing with blogger, ...