A myriad of things, nothing special, though

Yesterday I went with a friend to buy chicken stuff, the straw and feed and cracked corn. The chickens are not wanting to come out of their coop at all. When I went to give them food and water this morning, I see that I have not one, but TWO that are molting. I'm concerned about them especially because of the single digit temperatures forecast. It's not a hard molt (meaning they lose all of their feathers), but STILL. I am reminding myself that these are chicken bred to be in the cold, they come from a region that gets colder than it ever does here, and they are FINE because I went in the coop and it was a very noticeable temperature difference than outside.  I am changing frozen water two or three times a day, giving them extra protein rich food, and lots of extra bedding. I am fighting my urge to bring them inside every night. I know doing that does them no favors at all. 

We went to check out the Christmas shop for ideas of things to make, and then the open air market where they sell a ton of home made candies, cookies, cakes, soup mixes, jams & jellies, tons of stuff. I never take anything home from there, but I do like to look for ideas. I'm regretting not having taken my camera. Everywhere I go, I should take that thing with

My job is to go through a ton of really REALLY old files, find the important stuff, and bring it down from the 3rd floor to be properly filed away. I am filling a 55 gallon barrel almost every day with things that are no longer needed. I am finding things that should have been put in the safe YEARS AGO but never were. I am also finding things that are things I want to bring home. Metal file boxes meant for various sizes of index cards in a variety of colors, file trays for desktop use, Rolodexes, organizing trays, all in a variety of 1970ish colors. Also, a HUGE amount of canvas, coated and ready to be put through an inkjet printer. Or painted on, depending on the day I guess. They're all samples, coated with discontinued formulas, so they are useless to the company at this point. Also, the vintage office accessories are going to be coming home with me. Because they are AWESOME and will fit perfectly with my home office space. 

Tomorrow will be insanely busy, a doctor's appointment, bread baking (banana and pumpkin), cookie baking....I know that I will need a lot of coffee tomorrow. I want to make red velvet cookies, I have never made them before and need a good recipe. Those will go to work with me. There are a lot of people I am baking for this year, and I found a bunch of packaging ideas here. Adorable stuff! 

My hair was waist length, thick, and curly. It hasn't been cut in a while, and I was ready to take a bunch of it off. What happens is, I am a busy person. My hair is often just an in the way kind of thing and I don't like to spend time on it. Unless I am going somewhere nice, I won't. It gets wrapped up in a bun. It is coarse and curly and takes more time and effort than I am willing to spend on it. So today, I decided to cut it. It was time, and I am trying to make it a little easier to deal with. I have no idea WHY I was letting it grow so long, anyway. I washed and conditioned it, combed it all to the top of my head and put it in a ponytail. Then I cut straight across the end of that ponytail. My first and second cuts didn't get rid of quite enough length for me, so I did it a third time and it was just right. I am never paying for a haircut again. If I had super straight hair, I would probably not recommend doing it this way, but the curly hair? It is super forgiving. 

It is too cold NOW, but I have a ton of knit pieces that really need to go up. I am thinking about taking a hiatus from yarn bombing until spring, and just spend the winter knitting. Also, I am thinking that I want to put stuff up in completely different places. I have spent so much effort on a particular street in my neighborhood which is where EVERYONE goes, but I think somewhere else would be a good idea. Like I said , I really think I would like to spread it around a little bit. That one particular street has become something I care far less about than I used to. There are a few other places I would like to do, like the daycare center down the street, or even something downtown. Although if downtown, it would not stay up for long.....

On Yarnbombing

I like to knit. I'm not the best at it, but it's a meditative thing for me that takes my mind of of stuff. I am always super busy, because it IS kind of like a farm here, there's a lot of work. I always feel kind of weird if I just sit around and watch a movie. There's a little voice in my head that says HEY ISN'T THERE SOMETHING YOU SHOULD BE DOING RIGHT NOW?! and the answer is always yes. But if I am doing SOMETHING, I feel alright about sitting for a while. So, the knitting.

I taught myself how to knit from a book about 5 years ago. We were living in a small town, and if you didn't go to church  or have a lot of friends, there really wasn't much to do. There were 16 churches and 8 bars in that town of 2000 people. I am not exaggerating. And that was all there was to do. Not being so much the bar type, and also being an atheist, I had to find something. I loved it so much I started a knitting group at the library with the help of one of the librarians. Once a week, I would go hang out with a bunch of ladies who were all almost old enough for me to call them Gramma, and listened to their amazing life stories and knit scarf after scarf. But you can only foist so many scarves on people, and I didn't care to learn to make anything else. Now living in the city and seeing so much street art in my neighborhood, I wanted to add something to it. SO YARNBOMBS.

I've put about 30 of them up. Sometimes, they stay up for MONTHS. Sometimes, it is only days before someone decides to cut it down, or slash it up. People are almost always happy when they walk by and see me stitching on to a post or a tree, and stop to talk. Some people just think it's weird or crazy.

I've been asked by people to do 'their' sign post, light post, bike rack, tree.....but I kind of like just stitching them up wherever it strikes me to, and not thinking of it as something that 'needs' to get done because I SAID I WOULD. I like to be a free spirit about that, at least.