I lit a candle tonight for Salem, an orange and white kitten who passed to the other side of the veil today. He wasn’t mine, but I wished he was. He was a beautiful, loving kitten, and though his life was short, I know he made A’s day brighter just by being there when she walked in the door.

We’re both missing him tonight, but she’s missing him more.
Here’s hoping tomorrow’s a brighter day.

You’d think vacation would be the perfect to get some serious knitting done - but it’s just not happening. Maybe because the Luna Moth shawl’s rows are getting a bit longer than my multitasking mind prefers. 199 stitches takes me several minutes to knit through, and I find it hard (read: scary) to put it down mid-row to, say, pet my cat, or drink my tea, or tell someone online something that just popped into my head.

So Luna is creeping along, and will not be done by October 31st. But she’s coming along, nonetheless. I’m just about to start my third ball of yarn, meaning I’m half done, or close to it, anyway. Two repeats left - with longer and longer rows each time.

It also doesn’t help that I only had a 32 inch circ, and aluminum needles (when I’d prefer wood with this yarn), and it’s just so… pain-in-the-ass to work with. The cable is never quite right, never quite comfortable [By The Way: actually boiling the cable needle freaking works wonders to straighten it! Screw steaming it - just toss that puppy in a pot of boiling water for a few minutes!] and the needles just seem strangely heavy an slick and wrong for this project. Wrong, I tell you.

But I’m dealing.

Looks nice and autumny, doesn’t she? Well, here’s an impulse buy that I made with some extra money received from a rummage sale:

Make that two impulse buys:

And the household altar that I’ve put them on.

No, your eyes are not deceiving you - the altar pic was taken before I’d purchased these. Also, before I filled my cauldron with leaves - which dried beautifully in the air.

I’m a regular ol’ Martha Stewart these days, eh? Too bad I don’t yet have a /bit/ of Halloween decor up yet. *sheepish* Better get that done in the next night or two! Really! Maybe I’ll leave it up through mid-November, just to make it worthwhile? Naw.

One last picture today:

That’s the day’s eggs. 12 total, out of 17 chickens. Not bad at all! The fat brown one on top is my favorite. I always like the brown eggs, though. They seem so darned country.

Sebastian got a haircut and a bath today (today is relative: it’s 6:30 a.m. the next day, technically, but I haven’t yet gone to bed) at the groomer’s, and he’s not happy.

He’s been shaved before, which doesn’t usually bother him, but the bath was new and unhappy. And the lion’s tail is new. He seems to be a bit puzzled by it, and prefers to hide the poof under himself. I think he’s a bit embarrassed! I don’t blame him. He’s fat, hairless, and with a poof at the end of his tail - pretty damned undignified. But in a day or two, he’ll be a lot happier - free of mats, and with less fur to hold him back.

Tsuki got a haircut, too.

She likes being groomed, and I doubt any of it bothered her too much. But man, she’s tiny - about half Sebastian’s size all around. Sebastian’s been hissing at her all day - I admit, she does look a bit like a drowned rat! But the trip to the groomer made for a long day, nonetheless. She’s plum tuckered out.

Weekend Cat Blogging (schedule here) hosted by Tuxedo Gang Hideout this week! Thanks, gang!

So I didn’t exactly get any photos up as planned. But finally, I got some sockiness for you! The shawl isn’t feeling up to facing the paparazzi today, so no shawl pics. She apologizes.

A sock:

Moving on, I finally got all my gardening finished for the year. Potatoes dug. Onions dug. Carrots dug. Look at all this good stuff. The carrots were huge. The onions were tiny (Underwatering and a whole garden full of weeds contributed to that, I’m sure.)

The potatoes… Well, see for yourself.

What the hell? Spots? All over them?! And doesn’t that black-spotted one look nasty?! Freaky, man. I don’t know what happened. Google did me no good whatsoever. The flesh on the inside is good. But the skin… it’s like got acne or leprosy or some biblical plague. Disturbing.

PS: Hey Janna. You buy me some nice sock yarn, I make you some socks. Deal? ;-) Hey, there’s a shop in Billings called The Wild Purl. Supposedly. Look it up, ne?

Okay, so the socks aren’t finished yet. But number one is! But… I forgot to upload the pics from the camera, so, that’s that. I’ll maybe post later tonight with a picture of that and the latest shawl photo!

But for now, a stolen meme from Chaotic Crafter.

What kind of soap is in your bathtub right now? Some citrus smelling green bar of mysterious origin that I received from my boss as a Christmas gift. I’m hoping it’ll last till the end of the year, because I stole developed a new custom last New Year’s on ridding myself of all (most) of the disposable products like that at the end of the year, and starting fresh at the beginning! Hate to do that with a fresh bar of soap. Though, I have some shower gels I keep just for the hell of it, mostly, that I could use if I run out too soon, though. I really prefer bar soap, though. Wow, I’m tired - what a long answer on soap, of all things.

Do you have any watermelon in your refrigerator? Gosh, no. Not at this time of the year.

What would you change about your living room? Currently, and most likely to change in the near future, my ‘curtains’. I say that with ‘ ‘’s because what I have now is a very grandmother valance over a dropdown shade, and I’d really like a not so grandmotherly valance. After that, a television bench, as opposed to the gigantic entertainment center that doesn’t suit me anyway.

Are the dishes in your dishwasher clean or dirty? That is a very good question.

What is in your fridge? Lots of leftovers. Tons of bagged herbs I just cut yesterday and need to work out how to dry. Cheese. Apples.

White or wheat bread? White. Don’t get me near that brown shit, please. I don’t care how healthy it is.

What is on top of your refrigerator? A teapot. My recipe box. A couple empty cookie jars. Occasionally, a cat.

What color or design is on your shower curtain? White background, pink/purple/green/blue dragonflies.

How many plants are in your home? None, currently. I used to have a ton. Then the spidermites came… That sounds ominous. And believe me, it was horrible.

Is your bed made right now? Naw. I hardly ever make my bed.

Comet or Soft Scrub? *cringe* Neither, please. Too much evil harsh bad chemicals for me.

Is your closet organized? Vaguely. Not real well. None of them are organized real /well/.

Can you describe your flashlight? Sure. I can even describe where it is, thanks to a lesson learned during a very long power outage in the middle of the night, during which I tried valiantly to find them and could not. Blue flashlight, heavy and solid plastic, sitting next to my computer monitor, where I will probably /be/ when and if the power goes out. Got a second flashlight by my sliding door, black, with a white button, and ridged.

Do you drink out of glass or plastic most of the time at home? Plastic for water (only because they’re my largest glasses), glass for everything else.

Do you have iced tea made in a pitcher right now? Sadly, no. Until yesterday, I didn’t have any room in the fridge. Now, I still don’t have room in the fridge.

If you have a garage, is it cluttered? ‘Cluttered’ is too mild a word for my garage.

Curtains or blinds? Depends on the window.

How many pillows do you sleep with? Four. I surround myself with pillowy goodness. One under my head, one on either side of me to… prop me sideways or cuddle or whatever, and one for my knees.

Do you sleep with any lights on at night? No. But I sleep in the daytime, so my room is definitely not dark, despite all my efforts to block the light from the room. Yes, it’s a bitch. A real, real bitch.

How often do you vacuum? Not often enough, but more often than I used to. How’s that for evasion, boys and girls?

Standard toothbrush or electric? Standard - electric ones scare vibrate, and I don’t like vibratey things.

What color is your toothbrush? I think it’s a faint clear purple, but I could be wrong. Might be a faint clear blue instead.

Do you have a welcome mat on your front porch? No. I don’t welcome people into my home. *snerk*

What is in your oven right now? Not a damned thing.

Is there anything under your bed? Cat hair. Perhaps a sock or two. Maybe a cat.

Chore you hate doing the most? Toilet cleaning. Dishes. Cleaning the kitty boxes.

What retro items are in your home? Eh. I don’t collect much ‘retro’, but I’m sure I’ve got some retro stuff. Nothing comes to mind.

Do you have a separate room that you use as an office? No. Since I live on the computer, that would separate me from the rest of my house for 99% of my day.

How many mirrors are in your home? Five large ones. Probably some small ones.

Do you have any hidden emergency money around your home? Usually, but it’s gone by the end of the week most times.

What color are your walls? They are all the color of ugly. Textured wallpaper, 30 year old wallpaper in the kitchen, poorly painted paneling, more ugly wallpaper…

Do you keep any kind of protection weapons in your home? No. Not /as such/. But I know right where my pointy knives are.

What does your home smell like right now? Nothing in particular right now. Generic ‘cat’ scent, perhaps.

Favorite candle scent? Spiced scents - like cinnamon and pumpkin and autumn spices and stuff.

What kind of pickles (if any) are in your refrigerator right now? Claussen quarters. Mmmm.

What color is your favorite Bible? My favorite Bible? The heck?

Ever been on your roof? Nonononono.

Do you own a stereo? Not no more.

How many TVs do you have? One. But it’s not hooked up to, you know, tv or anything. It’s just there for decoration, mostly.

How many house phones? Two.

Do you have a housekeeper? I wish.

What style do you decorate in? I’ve been aiming for Asian, somewhat, but mostly, my style is “cluttered”.

Do you like solid colors in furniture or prints? Solid, mostly.

Is there a smoke detector in your home? Supposedly. I’ve just bought a new one, but have yet to put it up.

In case of fire, what are the items in your house which you’d grab if you only could make one quick trip? Cats, and if possible, I’d seize my main computer, slide open my huge living room window, and toss it out to safety, too. Not necessarily in that order. My cats are cowards, and I’d have better luck saving the computer than seeking out and trying to grab hiding kitties. Practical, but true.

Thirteen Things About Chickens

1. There are hundreds of breeds / varieties of chickens. Big chickens, little chickens, chickens of all different colors, chickens just for meat, chickens just for eggs, chickens for feathers…
2. Chickens can lay brown or white eggs. The color of the egg depends on the breed of chicken, and you can tell which color egg it will lay by looking at its earlobes. White earlobes mean white eggs, brown earlobes mean brown eggs. There’s no nutritional difference between the two.
3. Actually, chickens can lay blue or green eggs too. The shell, that is. But only a special breed of chicken does this - naturally, it’s called “the easter egg chicken”.
4. Chickens eat everything - bugs, grass, weeds, fingers, toes… well, they would eat the last two, if you let them.
5. Chickens can fly. Not far - perhaps twenty feet - but they can. And do. But most of the time, they strut around on the ground.
6. Handling chicks frequently makes them friendly. Mine follow me all over the place, though only some of them allow me to pet them. I didn’t handle mine /quite/ enough.
7. Chickens lay an egg approximately every 25 hours. Many of the breeds bred to be great layers will lay an egg a day for many days in a row, before they skip a day and start over. Some breeds only lay an egg every two days. It also fluctuates depending on the time of year, health and food quality, and age.
8. They begin laying eggs at approximately 4.5-5 months, and will lay very small eggs at first! Then they gradually get bigger.
9. Egg production is dependent on light. In the winter months, without supplementary lighting, chickens may stop laying eggs altogether, as they need a good 15-17 hours of daylight a day to produce eggs. This mechanism is what prompted chickens to lay eggs in the spring and hatch them when the weather was favorable, and stop reproduction in the winter, when chicks would most likely die of exposure. Supplementing light (just a lightbulb will do) will keep them laying through the winter, though the cold may slow production a bit.
10. Chickens do not need a rooster to lay eggs. Egg production happens whether there’s roosters around or not - they just aren’t /fertilized/ eggs. (Rather like a woman menstrates every month, whether she has sex or not.) There’s no nutritional (or visual, or taste-ual) difference between fertilized and unfertilized eggs. The only difference is that if incubated (either in an incubator, or under a hen’s warm body), a fertilized egg will hatch into a chick. Most commercial chickens never see a rooster.
11. A hen is born with as many egg yolks (tiny, undevloped yolks) as she will ever produce. If she uses those up, she’ll never lay an egg again.
12. A hen will lay her best in her first year of laying. Then her production will slowly dwindle.
13. 22 chickens provides way too many eggs for a single gal and all her neighbors, too. *drowns in eggs*

1. Dorothy 2. Nicholas

3. Working at Home MOm 4. Games,Video 5. You're next!

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So today was Columbus Day. A rather uninspired holiday, if you ask me. Columbus tries to sail around the world, or at least, to India, and fails, and ‘discovers’ a continent that a great many groups of native peoples have known and lived on for probably at least a thousand years or some shit. We actually close our banks and our stores for this guy?

Hoi.

Anyway, as far as holidays go, Columbus Day is rather pathetic. Nobody gets together for Columbus Day Feasts, or gives little columbi-gifts, or even acknowledges that the man existed, except maybe in gradeschool. What do we do on Columbus Day? Close shop, and throw up a flag. Because, uh… yeah, I really don’t know why. Most of the time, we everyday joes here in the States ask each other, “So, what holiday is it supposed to be today? President’s Day? No, can’t be. Memorial Day? Veteran’s Day? Ohh. Right. Columbus Day. Haha.”

Aside from the fact that the dick didn’t deserve a holiday to begin with (bless my blasphemous soul), what is it that makes a holiday a holiday? What makes Columbus Day and President’s Day so different from the other holidays of the year, like Christmas, or Thanksgiving, or even the 4th of July?

Connections. Personalization. Nobody knows Columbus, and in this day of modern feats, where you can jump from New York to Australia in a matter of hours, nobody really cares what he did. President’s Day? Nobody knows any presidents - at least, not any decent ones, and nobody really cares about those dead and gone. What do we care about? Family. Religion. And fun. We celebrate Christmas and Thanksgiving and Easter for religious or familial reasons. We celebrate New Year’s and Halloween simply because it’s a blast to dress up or go out and party. We celebrate the 4th of July because it’s got fireworks, and it’s in the middle of the summer, when everyone wants a vacation anyway. Memorial Day and Veteran’s Day aren’t big in my family, but if you’ve got a vet in the family who needs honoring, or you’ve lost those close to you, they become more important.

As a pagan, I’ve found celebrating the pagan holidays damned difficult. Yule is easy - it’s right next to Christmas. But I don’t know any pagans in real life - not close to me, anyway - and it’s not like I throw a Yule party. Nor do I get so much as an acknowledgment from anyone I know that it /is/ a holiday. I don’t send out Yule cards - I send out Christmas cards. Everyone I know celebrates Christmas. I follow their customs. I don’t have a nice family dinner that day. I don’t do /anything/ except small personal rituals.

And that’s the easy one of the year - well, perhaps next to Samhain. Halloween is pagan from the get-go and that can’t be denied.

The others? Much harder. Holidays are difficult without family. I’ve got a religious reason, but it’s difficult without the support backing of family - of friends. What makes a celebration, except people? People - in the plural. One person makes for a difficult celebration. More of an acknowledgment. A reverence, perhaps. You can have a good reason for a holiday - religious, thanks, fun, etc. - but a holiday still isn’t much without a celebration of sorts behind it.

If I wasn’t surrounded by people who celebrated Christmas and Easter and Thanksgiving, I don’t know that I’d do that either. Throw up some deco, maybe. But (to me, at least) holidays are about getting together with the people you love.

I don’t have a pagan support group in real life. I may never have a Beltane feast. But at least these holidays have a place in my heart that Columbus’s ‘discovery’ ever will.

I feel like I need a bit of unconscious inspiration in life. So here we go. Go here to play.

1. Cluster :: Fuck
2. Announcement :: Important!
3. Respect :: Is Earned
4. Incident :: Critical
5. Accordion :: Bad
6. Drunk :: Bar
7. If :: Only
8. Dexter :: Psychopath
9. Wedding :: White
10. Gambling :: Problem

Clusterfuck. Heh. I need to use that word more often.