Well, I did it. I ordered chickens. Call me crazy, but early in the week of April 9th, I’ll have something like 28 baby chicks in my hands. (25 was the minimum order. I went with an assortment of layer hens, and then added 3 special chicks, just to be sure I got something I wanted.)

Fun.

Now I need to go lay down and try not to dwell on the fact that I am now officially insane.

From Witches’ Weekly:

Do you have any other pagan members of your family? Is there any significant pagan-oriented history of your ancestors and family? If neither of the above apply, what do you hope to leave behind for the next generation concerning your path and knowledge?

No other pagan members of my family. My brother is, I believe, somewhat agnostic, but not pagan. No pagan-oriented history in my ancestors or family at all. We’re a good Christian family through and through, but for me (though really ‘good Christian’ is a bit of a stretch, since my family is not particularly religion-oriented, never attends church, and the only Bible in the house is… well, since my parents moved, I’ve never seen a Bible in their house.)

Anyway, what do I hope to leave behind for the next generation? I don’t know. I don’t have a next generation thus far, and even if I did, I’m not certain I have any designs on leaving anything behind for them, spirituality-wise. Family traditions, however, are another story. I hope to create some of those in my time, when I have children - holiday traditions, seasonal traditions, that sort of thing. But my spirituality is really mine alone, and at this point, I’m not certain that will ever change.

Then again, perhaps it will. I’m not really at a point in my life where I can say anything regarding this with certainty anyway.

Thirteen Things About Ostara

1. Ostara is a pagan celebration of spring, normally celebrated on March 20th or 21st, at the spring equinox. The equinox is a time when night and day are equal on Earth. The Spring equinox marks the beginning of the light half of the year, where day gradually grows longer than the night.
2. The name Ostara is thought to have come from the goddess Eostre. All this probably sounds familiar - as Easter is yet another name supposedly stemming from the same.
3. At its heart, Ostara is a fertility rite, celebrating the return of life in the spring.
4. Eggs and rabbits - two ancient fertility symbols - are its main themes. Both remind us of new beginnings, new life, and growth. These are present in modern day Easter, as well, in case you ever wondered what the heck bunnies and colored eggs have to do with it.
5. In certain pagan lore (mostly Wiccan), the young God at the Goddess choose this time to mate. A child is concieved: the young sun god that will be born nine months later, at Yule.
6. Modern day Easter is always set according to the spring equinox, as well - it set each year on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the equinox, which is why the date varies so much.
7. Rumor has it that at the exact equinox (down to the minute), the world spins just right, and you can balance an egg on its tip. Curious. I’ve never had the opportunity to try it.
8. Pagans often choose this time to plant magical or herb gardens, or at least prepare for them, to concescrate their tools, and to bring balance to their lives and their spiritual workings.
9. Traditional Ostara colors: pastel green, yellow, and pink.
10. Some Ostara gods and goddesses: all love, fertility, and virginal gods and goddesses.
11. Traditional foods: Eggs (especially hardboiled), fruit, leafy green vegetables, dairy foods, apples, nuts, sprouts, hot cross buns, honey cakes.
12. Plants and herbs associated with Ostara: Acorn, celandine, cinquefoil, crocus, daffodil, dogwood, Easter lily, gorse, honeysuckle, iris, jasmine, jonquils, narcissus, olive, peony, rose, tansy, violets, woodruff and all spring flowers.
13. Decorate for Ostara with spring flowers, bunnies, eggs, and garden motifs.

Secret Pal has really begun! Well, for me, anyway. :) I got my pal’s name and address, looked up her blog, and am very excited to be her spoiler! To my own, as of yet unmet pal: I’m excited to be spoiled, too! ;-)

I got my brand spanking new knitting needles (nothing special - susan bates cheapies because I am broke broke BROKE off my tushie if you know what I mean) and could not resist snatching up a couple balls of Knitpicks Wool of the Andes and casting on Kitty Pi for my feline overlords.

It isn’t pretty - but I have never a) given my cats any sort of bedding of their own before with hopes that they’d sleep on it, and b) felted a darned thing before, not even by accident (though once, I shrunk my father’s new longjohns to the size of something a two year old might struggle to fit into), so I grabbed what I had in my pathetic looking stash - two balls of that dark cocoa color, two balls of a light milk chocolate color, and two balls of a sagey green. I have no matchy matchy fun fur, so I will not be adding any fringes, but it’s okay. Maybe next time. If the cats show any interest at all in this one.

Since I’m doing photos of knitting, I thought I’d also put up a photo at last of Backyard Leaves, which is a lovely I-want-to-stab-my-eyes-out pattern. I had to put in a lifeline. It was just too tricky to dare do anything else, and I’m glad I did, because I’ve used it once, too. Whew.

She’s purty, eh? Sorry if you’ve got one of those darkie monitors like I have at work.

Anyway, I’ve got a handful of the first ball of yarn left, and I’m 5 repeats into things. I need to get 6 more out of the next ball of yarn, and I’m stressing that it won’t happen. Though… maybe. I mean, I’ll get partway through repeat #6 with the yarn I’ve got left here. I’m wishing I’d have ordered an extra ball, though. And I’m glad I didn’t like, try to knit a gauge swatch and keep it, because I might’ve run out of yarn. (Huh? Knit a swatch? What’s that? I don’t need no stinkin’ swatches! Nosiree!)

One last shot for you.

Tsuki says: “MINE.”

So the knitting on Backyard Leaves is slow going. Incredibly slow going. I am a slow knitter by nature to begin with, granted. I love to knit, but my concentration level zeros out after about a row. Why? Because I’m a multitasker at heart, and I can’t do my usual websurfing slash chatting slash writing with a pair of knitting needles in hand, so I tend to knit a row, and set it down and do something, then pick it up again a few minutes later and knit another row, and so on. There are times when I knit several rows in a row without pause, but typically, my fingers freeze up and start waving signs of protest soon thereafter. I cannot JUST sit and knit very often, not without pause at least to rest the fingers for a couple minutes.

So anyway, even with all that in mind, this scarf is slow moving. My fingers are stiffer than usual. I’m knitting tighter than usual, and I think it’s the odd combination of stitches - the slip stitch border, the strange k1, p1 in same stitch, etc., the fact that there is no ‘downtime’ row of just purling across, or knitting across, etc. - and also, for whatever reason, this yarn feels heavy to me, and the needles, too. Maybe I’m just having a hard day, eh?

So I have the setup rows, and TWO whole repeats done. That is lousy. I should be able to do at least 2-3 repeats a night with no problem. Maybe it’ll get faster as time goes on. As the air warms, perhaps, too. Cold fingers don’t make for limber fingers…

Anyway, I’m hating the pattern. *laugh* I love the results, though, and it certainly isn’t boring. These leaves pop out like crazy! For the first repeat, I took forever on especially, because lo and behold, I was terrified I was doing it wrong. The k1, p1 in same stitch bit didn’t seem right to me, and neither did anything else, but with two repeats down, I’m pretty sure all is well.

But I’m getting some new needles on Monday and can start up my gift bags for people. Will start carrying two projects - the gift bags will be nothing but stockinette in the round for the most part, and that’ll be easy easy easy on the brain and the hands.

Will post photo after I have a couple more repeats done, I think. :)

You know how you can look into a kitchen full of food and still find nothing to eat? That’s what my yarn stash is like - full of random bits and pieces, but nothing to knit. So I broke down and spent the first money I’ve spent on myself since like, early January (the chair totally doesn’t count - that was necessary furniture not spoil-thyself stuff!) and bought this:

That would be four wine red balls of Karabella Aurora 8 (my god, it’s soft! It’s soft wool, so terribly soft, and though the label doesn’t say so, other sites say it’s superwash!!!) and two skeins of Blue Sky Alpaca’s Alpaca Silk, and on my god is IT soft, too!!! Of course, that was expected, being as it’s silk and alpaca… but yeah. Like, the wool is nearly so soft, honest!

Anyway, the wool’s for me. I’m gonna knit Backyard Leaves out of it, because though every other one of these scarves that I’ve ever seen has been green, I just couldn’t resist this fun autumy red. I debated on purple, but went with the red.

The alpaca silk skeins are for gifts. I’m gonna knit a couple of those simple bags in Last Minute Gifts (it’s the bag on the cover) and give one to Grandma R. for her birthday, and the other Mom for Mama’s Day. Ain’t I sweet? Course, I’ll have to put something in them. Can’t just give a pretty knitted gift bag… That’d be a ripoff, even if it was handmade.

Speaking of, my birthday is coming up awful quick here, and if anybody out there wants to get me something, I wouldn’t mind some alpaca silk, myself. Or more aurora 8. That stuff is lovely to knit with. Or gosh, you know, anything at all… but yarn is good.

Anyway, off to knit I go…

Hey! I found out who my hostess for SP10 is! Just when I was getting a bit concerned and actually post something about it, Shelby emails saying “Hey, I’m your hostess!” and that matches will be going out soon. Nice. Glad to see it’s all going to happen - comments on the official blog stressed similar concerns to mine, but it seems like nobody’s just got the time to update it. I understand that. :)

I’m excited! I’ve already got a few great ideas of things to do for my pal, at least one of which will take me some time to accomplish! And I’ve been doing nothing but drooling over yarn for ages…

Thirteen Things About My Family

1. My great-grandparents on my father’s side were homesteaders in Montana in the early 1900s. My grandfather went to school in this same town. My father grew up in the same house I lived in all through my schooling years. I used to live in the same apartment everyone else in my family has lived in once upon a time.
2. They used to own a dairy. We still have a lot of old milkcaps that say: Phone 10, from back when telephone numbers were two digits long.
3. It’s written in one of the town history journals/books/things that my great grandmother was noted for having had a cure for ear infection: just a few drops of urine in the ear will do the trick. Um, no thanks. I’ll suffer.
4. My father was a rebel who ran off to new york as a teenager to see his biological father (okay, so he was a stepchild - my grandmother divorced dad’s real father because he was a drunk who slept around on her all the time) and came back with long hippie hair and did a lot of pot.
5. This town has never forgotten that. And never will.
6. My mother grew up 10 miles away and was a cheerleader and the class salutatorian. Of course, she fell for the bad boy with the motorcycle and the long hippie hair.
7. My father wore his hair long until I was a teenager.
8. And he still does pot. *palmface* But I never knew about it until just recently. Because, like a smart guy, he didn’t do it in the house… until recently.
9. But hey, gotta give the man snaps - he hasn’t had a cigarette since mid-February! And he’s generally stopped drinking. Not that it’s helped his demeanor much.
10. In case you didn’t realize it, he and I… don’t particularly get along. But I have a fantastic relationship with my long-suffering mother.
11. I fear my brother is a bum. He’s 3 years younger than me and his only job is a part time gig working for my parents, even though he has a welding/car fabrication/some mechanical bullshit degree that can get him a job paying like, $38 an hour to start with.
12. My mother wanted to be an accountant. But instead, she became a farmer’s wife, then a mother, then a bookkeeper for a couple years, then… a bartender/bar owner. Thanks to my father, we now own the coolest bar in town, which isn’t really saying much, but it is a pretty cool bar. Unfortunately, we can’t seem to get rid of it… wanna buy?
13. I missed one! Thanks for bringing it to my attention. Let’s see, one more fact… Both of my grandfathers have died, but my grandmothers are still alive and kicking… They’ve both moved into the local Assisted Living center, and we’re hoping they don’t resort to kicking each other.

And that’s all, folks!

Am a little concerned about SP10. Maybe I shouldn’t be, but the page hasn’t been updated at all since February 11th. Not at all. No layout changes, no notices of anything to come. Nothing. I hope it’s still on with no trouble…

What did I do on my days off? Here’s a rundown:

• Cleaned bathroom. At last.
• Put up some decor - some shelves and sconces. Picture!

  

• Bought another book. Running With Scissors by Augusten Burroughs. Just saw it at Walmart, bought it for no good reason… I’d better get to cracking with the whole reading thing, eh?
• Bought groceries, too. Go me!
• Thawed out a pot roast from the deep freeze. Will dump it in the slow cooker in the morning.
• Began knitting a mitten! Picture!

  
  The book in the picture (Holiday Knits) is the inspiration for said mitten. However, inspiration is a good term for it, since I keep changing things. Like, I didn’t have size 5 needles (I could swear I did… where are they? Do I? Or was I imagining it?) so I’m using size 6. I thought that maybe if I just knit tightly, it’d be okay. But it wasn’t, really. It’s a bit too large. Should’ve went down a /size/. So I sort of modified it to “go down a size” after I discovered this by removing a couple stitches. And I’m doing the seed stitch patterned mitten, but with a ribbed cuff, not a seed stitch cuff. Feh. Whatever. *lol* It’s working, so far. Hopefully it’ll all be okay in the end, even if my ribbing is rather awful for no good reason.

• Decided to make a Kitty Pi kitty bed. I have a lot of sitting-around-uselessly brown and green wool from KnitPicks, and… I may as well use it. Will double up since I’m knitting with worsted instead of bulky weight yarn.

That’s my weekend in a nutshell. How was yours?