Are we tired of WWM, yet?

I finished the first mitten, sans weaving in the last of the ends, and cast on the second one. Almost missed the beginning of the thumb gusset, but made a quick recovery. Frogging thrums is a messy business at best.


Someday my spinning will be better and more consistent, I hope. Until then, I just keep practicing.

I finished the pinky on the second Selbu glove.


And cast on a third. I'm shooting for a glove that will match the first one, but I admit I'll be happy as long as it matches either of them... Two half-pairs I can bear, but THREE half-pairs would probably send me right over the edge. I'll be watching this one with great paranoia...


A friend of ours gave us some elderberries. Not enough for a batch of wine (sigh...) but enough to make a lovely elderberry buckle:
Madman liked it a lot...

For some strange reason, every time I say elderberry buckle, I hear "Buckleberry Ferry" in the back of my head.

And, last but not least, the chickens are in molt. Every fall their old feathers fall out (the inside of the chicken coop looks like the site of a chicken explosion) and new feathers grow in. The transition stages make them look pretty pathetic. With most of their feathers gone, they end up looking like lizards. With goosebumps.
Last year, they molted in November - nothing sadder than seeing a bunch of cold, shivering, half-naked chickens.

Our poor rooster has lost most of his tail feathers. Lucky for him, he has a big enough ego to convince himself he's still the best looking rooster alive.
I don't have the heart to tell him that there are a dozen roosters in the coop next door that are all prettier than he is. And all better-natured than him, too. (He has turned mean in his "old-age" and attacks us on a too-regular basis.) One of them will be chosen to be his replacement...


The really sad part about the molt is that the chickens pretty much stop laying for a month or two. We've gone from 4 eggs a day to one every other day. Since we can sell as many as we can produce, this is not good news. In another month or two, the young hens will start laying, so at least we have that to look forward to.