Christmas Tonight

Such a lovely few days so far in the country. Despite all the snow and whatnot Friday, both my brother and I succeeded in getting here, if a little later than planned. We were lucky enough to miss the freezing rain on the weekend that got Toronto and other parts - not a hiccup on the part of our electricity, (and even if it had conked out, we've got a well and a wood stove, so it's not a big issue). The scenery is beautiful outside, even if you're not facing one of the bird-feeders with dozens of little finches and other birds bouncing around in a bird version of Brownian motion.

Mom and I got to a performance of Handel's Messiah by a local group on Saturday, which was really very good, and of course much more interesting when you know half the people singing, including a friend's mother who taught me to spin years ago.

Had a nice visit with a friend who came down yesterday - after she managed to get here. Due to a misunderstanding of road names, she got lost, and was delivered here by the postman. He pulled into the yard and honked like he does for parcels if you need to sign, then asks me if I'd heard about the merger between Canada Post and CAA...at which point I noticed the second car that had arrived and got the joke!

And today I got Skype set up on my computer, so we could have a chat with my sister and her boyfriend. They couldn't come for Christmas - they just bought a house in Whitehorse, and are saving up vacation days to visit in the spring when they come to move furniture back there - so this was the next best thing, opening presents and chatting together, seeing their house - we had a virtual tour, thanks to the power of laptops -  and showing them the new cat here.

Pity they aren't here to help us eat Christmas dinner, but I suppose we'll manage. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Cookie Season

The weatherman is predicting snow - there's a storm watch on. It hasn't gotten here yet, but it doesn't matter. I'm hibernating indoors today anyway, for multiple reasons.

1) It's cold out there. Even the cat hasn't been in the mood for long walks the last few days.

2) I had a little fall yesterday, and did something to one foot near the big toe. I don't think it's anything serious, but it is swollen, and walking is a bit awkward, so I'm figuring best to rest it up for a day or so, and not do something like go out Christmas shopping.

3) Tomorrow I have a cookie exchange to go to, so I've been in the kitchen all morning. Christmas cookies are all about the pretty, I think, so I always make this my excuse to do something a little on the fancy side. This year it's stained-glass cookies, and twisted candy-canes and wreaths. Now I just have to do something about packaging them.

4) Last bits of school stuff I still need to finish. Business plan details, colouring the big plan for one design project, and getting the last of a second done on the computer, and studying for first exam Monday...

Dithering

Ever get that feeling when you want to start something (like a knitting project), but no clear picture of what, exactly?

Yeah. I've got about 10 days to do 2 Christmas gift projects, and I pretty much wasted all of yesterday trying to start one. I know it will be a shawl, and with some dark brown Malabrigo fingering that was gifted to me. And I want to do it in the shallow crescent shape that's popular. Couldn't find a pattern that really spoke to me, tried starting about half a dozen times with various edging patterns to do my own thing, looked through all my stitch dictionaries...ripped out again, thought I might print something today before class rather than winging it...then ran across the Oslo Walk shawl in the only Interweave mag. I have at the apt, and decided to do that one, but in fingering and without the beads. Maybe. I might still print something today, just in case. But Oslo is cast on, and I'm telling myself to quit dithering and JUST PICK SOMETHING.

I tried to start the second Christmas project while I was debating about the shawl. Gloves. Three possible yarn options after stash diving, two of which would require dyeing to get to a colour the recipient would like, the third is fixed as to colour and pattern since I had one glove half-done and sitting around. Restarted that glove, wondered if that pattern was really the best choice for the recipient, put it down...This time I put the onus on her - emailed the fiber options and said 'Pick one'. That way I know it'll be an OK choice.

Now to the next stage of dithering...which homework assignment do I work on this morning? Xeriscape design, business plan, HR research? All that's coming down to the wire too - next week is the last week of school already. Hopefully I'm done for good, this time!

Who's Got The Button?

Finished the pair of sweaters for a classmate's twins, but I wasn't really happy with the button selection I had here, so I decided to have a hunt through my mother's button boxes when I went down.

Of course, there was other stuff going on - Christmas baking, and homework, and laundry, and I had to meet Pumpkin, the new cat. Doesn't he look rather like Puss In Boots in Shrek2? He's a smart one - the only one of the cats that has found and used the dog-door in the mudroom - and has a taste for bread. He goes out with Dad in the morning and shares the chickens' bread cubes they get as a treat.

But by Sunday morning I got down to the hunt. And a hunt it is. You see, half the fun (and half the problem) is that Mom has a number of button-boxes.

And very few of them are in any way organized.

You can find buttons of all sizes, shapes, and colours, and you will frequently find a match for a button from box A in box C.

I have volunteered to organize the boxes over Christmas, so that at least all the buttons of a given type will be in one box. It makes life so much easier. The way it is now, after sorting through 6 or 8 boxes for possibilities, you have a result that looks like this:

At that point, you can start the elimination process by removing anything you didn't find enough of, and then proceed from there. Which is what I did - cut the field down to a handful of candidates, and then discussed options, with the happy result that the sweaters are now buttoned and cute and ready to present to the recipient.

Spin-Kabobs

The current project on the spinning wheel is a multicoloured, long-repeat yarn. I was weighing the required bits of a dozen colours out, when I realized that I had no recollection of how I kept the darn things in order the last time I did this sort of thing. I thought it might have involved stacking them in a plastic bag, but didn't find anything that looked to be dimensionally appropriate.

Then I had one of my occasional brilliant notions. Possibly suggested by my new needle-case, I thought of straight knitting needles. And it is working a treat. I just threaded each neat little bit of carded wool onto a needle, in the correct order. Kind of like a rainbow-colored shish-kabob, so I've taken to thinking about it as a spin-kabob.

And since I want 2 skeins of two ply, I have 4 needles, neatly and identically adorned, one for each bobbin of single-ply. Dead easy to keep track of where I am, and what colour comes next, and they're not likely to get messed up the way a bag of roving bits would. Definitely an idea I want to keep in mind for the next time.

Ex and Sale, Sheets, and a Pumpkin

Weaving and Spinning Guild Ex and Sale done for another year, and it was a great one. My only regret is that I completely missed getting photos for a few of my things before they were sold, so now I will have permanent blank spaces on those project pages on Ravelry :(

But I did bring home a really neat something, completely unexpectedly. On Saturday I was chatting with an older lady, also of Dutch extraction, about knitting, and the patterns from various countries, and dyeing, and we had a nice time. Sunday she showed up again at my booth and gave me a huge wooden knitting needle holder. Painted and carved, and likely Dutch; she said she'd enjoyed it for years, but was trying to cut down on the things she had, and she wanted it to go to someone who would appreciate it! I was just about bowled over.

The painting reminds me a bit of the folk art my Dutch grandmother used to paint. So special, and yet kind of sad that this lady had no one in her family who would want it, and it came to me, who she'd just met. It's a common issue, though; my mother has a lot of things - vintage clothes, quilts-in-progress - that came to her from someone she knew whose family would have tossed the things out if they inherited them.

The night before the show, I was ironing my tablecloth, aka a navy-blue bed sheet, and it occurred to me that, like vinegar, bedsheets must be one of those household items that have 101 uses. My coloured bedsheets have served as chair slipcovers, frost blankets for my plants, tablecloths for shows, a costume sari for Halloween, floor covering when I'm picking or carding wool...we used sheets for tents or to mimic a canopy bed as kids, Mom uses old ones for weaving rag rugs, and my living-room curtains are patterned sheeting we bought as a remnant. Very useful things.

It seems the next time I go to the parents', there will be another cat to get acquainted with. Mom said she wasn't looking for another cat, certainly not a male, and not an orange one, since her Abby is orange. And Halloween night, an orange male cat decided to adopt them. He apparently has a big round head too, so he has been given the obvious name, Pumpkin. The other cats have done the feline equivalent of shrug and go about their business, but the dog is getting a lot of exercise, constantly needing to look for That Cat and discourage it from staying. Pumpkin just sits and watches from a higher vantage point, but doesn't seem scared, (and the dog gets tired easily), so that should resolve itself pretty soon...

Lots of Colours

I've got a new acquisition which I love. Seems one night at knitting, one of the coffee-shop regulars, Mike, mentioned he'd seen something at the second-hand store next door that some of the knitters might like. So Teresa went to check it out the next day, and decided it would be perfect for me, wrapped it up in shiny paper, and delivered it as a gift!

And she was right, it is perfect. It's a dye sampler, inscribed on the back as being from New Mexico. I recognize the plants used as southwest US, and the language as Native American, probably either Hopi or Navajo, since I know both groups have lovely textile traditions, and I think both from that quadrant. And I love the concept of using the little tapestry loom to show off the colors. In any case, I am now extremely curious to know how they got that gorgeous green from the red onion (my efforts have been more yellow-green, if anything), and whether some of these other plants can grow here... I know Johanne has a book on the Southwest dyes I will have to consult, but since she loves the dyes and tapestry weaving as well, I shall have to keep an eye on my sampler!

Not that I have any shortage of colours about. Packing up and labelling  has begun; it's only a few days now to the OVWSG Ex and Sale. Friday at 4 is door-opening, and I'm hoping it doesn't rain. The suitcases are on loan, and I don't want them to get wet or dirty. But they make a great dual-purpose carrying and display tool for the yarn.

Fiber Factor

Just to let you know, first off - we found the mouse that escaped. He was hiding behind the flour bin. One of the cats drew our attention by staring at that corner, and we saw the mouse, managed to capture him in a sour-cream container and let it out in the field. He may still be running, or he may be telling tales to all his mates at the mouse pub; we don't know, but it's a happy ending for all (except for the cat, who didn't get to eat the mouse).

Anyway, my holiday is over. Back in the city, back to school. It was a gorgeous, fiber-y week, though. Got a lot done. Two classes (spinning and dyeing) at the ranch, with enthusiastic students. And a lot of prep for the OVWSG show, which is now only 2 weeks away.

 Who says prep is work, though? It was gorgeous weather, warm enough to pick fleece or spin on the front porch, and admire the scenery.

Never any shortage of helpers for making sure my wool didn't escape, either.

Got several skeins of wool spun, and did two days of dyeing, got some lovely colors out of it (not that purple and pink stuff, but the rest is this week's work).

I did a bit of knitting also - finished the yellow and teal mitts and started the brown and white ones, and did a pair of booties in-between, except I haven't taken pics of those yet.

That is brown on the mittens, even if it's so dark it looks black. I dyed that last week with the new crop of black walnuts, and they are definitely strong. (My fingernails will be attesting to that until they grow out, probably. It looks like I've had a French manicure but in black instead of white).

Nuts, Bugs, and Other Wildlife

It's fall in the country. And in the fall, a dyer's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of...nuts.

No, not that kind.

This kind.

What with a few windy days, the butternuts and black walnuts have been falling en masse, and I'm happy that coincided with my vacation week at the farm. We've got two wheelbarrow-fuls of butternuts picked up, and I spent one morning picking up four large pots of black walnuts and hulling them. The hulls are spread out on screens to dry, and the nuts are dumped in a pile for the squirrels, since I don't consider the flavor worth the effort of cracking them.

A fifth pot got picked up and hulled today (part of what fell since the last haul), and resulted in three skeins of yarn in a colour like dark chocolate.

Hanging out in the field where I was cracking walnuts, I found a little brown frog, and Mom found a few praying mantises. Don't usually see them, but they seem to like her new hosta patch.

Harvest time here also means the apples are ripening - domestic and semi-wild. There are some random trees on the lane with fruit that taste like russet apples, some with big yellow fruit behind the house that may be the remnants of an old orchard, and little, glossy crimson crabapples that make a nice jelly.

And the squash! Pro tip, dudes. Plant your squash in the compost pile. There was an accidental one coming up there this spring, so Mom left it...it went wild and was super-healthy, took over a chunk of the field, and produced 33 squash.

Beside the harvest, there's been lots of wildlife excitement. It's tick season, so we've been checking the dog and cats daily. Record so far is Abby, who brought home three at a time. She was also behind a little fracas this morning. She brought a mouse home (which was still alive), and let herself into the house. She wanted to play with it before eating it, I guess, but the dog thought maybe it was for him, scared Abby, and the mouse ran away and hid. The dog tried to get at it (we're not sure whether a wet spot there was dog drool, or the mouse wetting himself in fear), but it escaped and is presumably at large in the house. Maybe he'll join the ones I heard in the walls last night!

Hot Off The Presses

Remember a while ago I got two patterns accepted to Storey Publishing's new 101 Wonders book? It's just about due to come out. I got an e-mail this week with a picture of the book cover.

See the red shawl at top left? That's mine! Really pretty damn cool, as far as I'm concerned.

My advance copy of the book arrived today, and I've been flipping through. There are some nice patterns in there I've got my eye on already. Worth checking out, guys, even if I do say so myself ;)

I'm guessing the book should be out for real within the next month, because Judith Durant, the editor, is booked for Rhinebeck, and they've got the same cover photo up on the NY Sheep and Wool site beside her profile. My mother's already planning to get Judith Durant's autograph on the book when she goes...

Looking Forward

Last week at school, our technician (I don't know what else to call her, but she's the one who does all the day-to-day stuff like fixing the machines, feeding the cat, and taking care of plants in the greenhouse) said she felt like she had wasted half her life.

Now, I'm sure she's younger than I am, and I haven't hit the halfway mark for my biblical threescore-and-ten yet. So I asked her what she meant. And she said that most of the people she knew didn't do much after they hit 60. I'm afraid I may have snorted a bit disbelievingly, and I told her she must be hanging out with the wrong people.

Done at 60? In this day and age? Most of the people I know who are that age are more active and involved than half their juniors (and could probably run circles around me).

It's not even a modern thing, though. A lot of great ideas and inventions and books and talent have come from people who were seniors. Last week, coincidentally, I was reading a book about Mary Granville Pendarves Delaney that I came across randomly in the library. It was titled 'Mrs. Delaney (begins her life's work) at 72'.

Mrs. Delaney was born in 1700 and lived into her 80's. And when she was 72 or 73, after she had outlived two husbands and a sister, she essentially invented a form of mixed-media collage, making pictures of flowers and plants so detailed and realistic that I had to look closely at the pictures in the book to assure myself they weren't paintings. But no, they were cut from paper in little pieces and glued to a background, and a few have leaves of real plants included. She managed to make close to a thousand of them (which she called Flower Mosaicks) before her eyesight became too bad for her to continue. Plantsmen sent her specimens to copy. The mosaicks were recognized by royalty, some were presented to royals and celebrities, and she herself was mentioned in poems by some of the writers of the age. They are now collected and housed in London, and people can still see them to marvel over.

Think of it. This old lady, in the era of the American Revolution, sitting at her friend's house in Britain and doing all this detailed dissecting of flowers and fine cutting of paper to reproduce their portraits. Think of the fine, sure cutting to get the fringed petals of a passion flower or the tendrils of a pea plant, the tiny pieces required for the spots on a lily (she even cut multiples for those to get realistically raised dots).

Nope, I think our tech's got it backwards. By the time we get to 60, there'll still be a lot of possibilities for beginning.

Fiber, Various

A week since I taught my first dye class, and I'm finally getting around to showing off the pics of the day, and the newest member of Johanne's flock. We all went to see baby Achai before class started.

It's cute to see how all the females in the pen are kind of protective of him, and they would all move in front of Achai to keep us from seeing him, in case we were dangerous. 'He has a lot of aunts', Johanne said.

Thanks to Jo and Chantal's organization, we were ready to start promptly on time, with neat booklets of information and skeins of yarn for everyone. And all the students had a great time, getting into chopping plants and straining dye baths, ending up with a lovely row of samples to go home with.

You know it's a keen class when one of the comments from a sort of survey and discussion after was "You should have dye supplies for us to purchase so we can go home and do some more!"

This afternoon there was a bit of fiber fun of a different sort. Fibrefest is on in Almonte this weekend, and I snagged a ride with my mother and a friend. What I really wanted to see wasn't even as much the vendors as the exhibits at the museum (the MVTM, textile museum). I will say right now, definitely worth the trip. Go soon, before they're finished.

One exhibit was by a Peruvian tapestry artist, and while I'm not usually big on modern work, the colours and technique were incredible, as if the tapestries were painted.

(detail of the tapestry above)

The other exhibit I really wanted to see was a display of Coptic weaving, dating from the 4th-10th centuries. And they were amazing. Most of the pictures I had seen of Coptic weaving previously was monochrome, like the first picture, so to see a few colored pieces was exciting. This particular colored piece says it was likely a piece off a curtain. Think of it, these fibers were all handspun (spindle-spun, since spinning wheels were still hundreds of years in the future), natural-dyed, and handwoven, and they've survived for 1500 years since they decorated someone's clothes or home...

Bunny!

Last fall at school, we spent some time digging a trench at the fenceline and putting a foot or so of hardware cloth underground, aimed to discourage the rabbits from getting in and nibbling the produce.

We now have evidence that we either missed a spot or have very determined, Peter Rabbit-type bunnies. A few of us went to the garden to check on things for our crop reports, and saw this little guy sitting right there.

He didn't even move until we were pretty close, even let me rummage for my camera, and just kept on munching the clover, so a daring sort of rabbit as well as a super-cute one. At least it was the clover and not the veggies!

Despite possible rabbit raiding, the gardens are producing well. We picked well over 20 pounds of beans Monday! Plus there are tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplant, greens, summer squash, and herbs. The peppers are starting also, and I think we will be pulling carrots soon. For anyone wanting to get some fresh veg at good prices, drop by the M Building at Algonquin, near Woodroffe and College, around lunchtime. We have our little garden center and produce stand open every Tuesday and Thursday from 11 to 1.

Sometimes the produce we don't sell goes to the culinary program at school, and they turn it into tasty meals to sell at their store, Savoir Fare (H Building, and definitely worth a visit). Today though, because the extra veg would all be sitting around for several days, we got to buy them at a deep discount. So I came home with a bag of tomatoes and one of summer squash and eggplant and a head of lettuce, all for under 3$, and I have some beans from earlier this week. There will be tomato sauce and bruschetta in my future this weekend!

Wild Fare and Local Fair

Had I mentioned we'll be taking a class trip to visit an enterprise that grows and sells wild and weedy edibles? A few of us in the class are already into it, nibbling purslane in the garden and such. A classmate and I walked along the bike trail near school one day and found a bunch of edibles - a whole patch of wheat or barley, just about ripe, sumac heads for making drink (it's supposed to taste a bit like lemonade, but I found more of a resemblance to iced tea), some catnip for our cats, and lots of chokecherries.

The juice I extracted from mine tastes different than the jelly my mother made with her chokecherries, so I shall be curious to see how my jelly turns out. Need to pick more first, though, since that picking gave only half of what I needed.

The last couple days, though, it's been the wild life out at the parents', in either sense of the word. Wild in the primitive sense, because the new pump they put in the well last year broke down a couple weeks ago, so we are hauling water in pails from the old well or the rain barrels, and hiding behind bushes when Nature calls. (Thankfully, it is isolated and forested enough that there are absolutely no worries about anyone seeing us.) Kenny, who is pretty much the only guy around here who can install the new pump, has been run off his feet busy, but he should come in a day or so. Doing four loads of laundry yesterday was an interesting process. It takes 10 buckets of water to fill the machine, and we used the same water to wash all four loads, lights first, then spun everything out and refilled the machine to do the rinsing the same way.

Wild it has also been in the busy sense, as it is Fair weekend. Baking and handicrafts can be done further ahead of time, but flowers and vegetables kind of have to be picked, arranged, scrubbed, etc., either the afternoon before or the morning of. Mom and I started Thursday evening about 7 when we got home, cut flowers until it was too dark to see which were the best ones, arranged flowers, tagged vases, and packed handicrafts and jams until we had done all we could, went to bed at something like 1 or 2 am, set the alarm for 6, scrambled to finish flower and vegetable stuff the next morning, packed the car full, and made it to town with about 5 minutes to spare on the 10:30 deadline...then came home in the afternoon and did the less rushed prep for the Saturday Flower Show, to bring the next morning. OK, it could be less intense, but we tend to enter everything we can, to help make the tables look full, and it's not like there aren't enough flowers around here. Plus, the arrangement categories are a fun chance to be creative within the guidelines - there'll be categories like 'an arrangement in a hat' or 'an arrangement using foliage only, in a cup and saucer'. The pantry ends up looking like a florist's shop by the time we're through!  

Summer School

Well, two days into school, we pretty much know what to expect. Just watch me disappear for a while again, I think. Lots of projects to do - at least they'll be interesting, even if they do take up a lot of time.

Our first little assignment in Urban Agriculture was to plan a garden based on the premise that we want to have a BBQ for 40 people, and get the veg and herb ingredients for the planned menu (given to us) from said garden. Not so bad, I've got most of that done already. But there will be more assignments. And, you know, the usual. ID quizzes, midterms and finals, outdoor lab time and logbooks.

The kicker is going to be the five (count 'em, five!) big projects for the Construction and Maintenance classes. To be done in the next 2 months - most are due the week before exams, so end of September.

Number 1 is a group project, which involves surveying (with theodolite and measuring rod) an assigned area of campus, drawing the scale map and two overlays, one noting possible drainage issues, and one drawing up recommendations to improve it.

  Numbers 2 and 3 kind of go together. For number 2, we have to design a front yard, using our CAD program, then do all the estimating for materials and labour to complete the project. For number 3, we have to put together a maintenance package for the homeowner in our design, with information on care for their new plantings (minimum 12 different plants).

Numbers 4 and 5 both involve creating manuals. One is a safety manual for 10 different types of equipment of various sizes, powered and not. The other is a quick reference manual for growth, description, and care of 25 of the plants we will be studying this term.

There's going to be a couple trips off campus, too. One is to a farm that grows and sells wild food - I forget what the name is, but they were profiled in the Citizen earlier this summer, so that's pretty exciting. A few of us are already into wild stuff - we were nibbling on purslane and serviceberries and stuff while weeding the vegetable garden yesterday. I think there's more purslane than legit veg in some spots; maybe we can add it to our market offerings (the class garden center is open Tues and Thurs, 11-1pm, offering plants, and vegetables as they ripen).
Our second trip off campus will be to the Cancer Survivors' Park near Hurdman Station, to do maintenance, then we're stopping at the Arboretum in the afternoon to do an ID quiz walkabout.

So, yeah. Lots to do. I think my policy is going to have to be to start on as much as I can right away, and just keep plugging. Apparently there were a lot of stressed students in the final stretch for the first group...

In Pictures

It's been a crazy month or so. Work, dyeing, getting ready for the Corn Festival back home (my first show of the season), Tour de Fleece, picking and jamming berries (made a raspberry/peach orange combo that turned out real tasty)...Tomorrow is back to school for me, so yay for not being out of the house 12 hours a day. On the other hand, now I get homework, and volunteer work, and prep for teaching dyeing classes, and Huntingdon Fair  is in two weeks, have to get entries ready...

Now, I'm not going to blither at length about everything I've been doing since my last post, and make all those imaginary blog entries I've been planning into reality. But here's a few pics and notes.

Tour de Fleece: Good choice with the Lanterne Rouge group. I was doing all right until the last week or so, when I kind of fell off my wheel, as it were. Total spun: 3.5 skeins. I finally finished the second half of the last skein (another purple one) yesterday.

I didn't show off the last dye batch, did I? It's pretty. I figured some semi-solids would be nice for a change, being more versatile than variegated.

Remember the little wrens we had raising a family in the plants at work? No sooner did they fly off than two robin families took over hanging baskets. (Next year, if I go back, I'm going to change the sign to read Canadian Tire Garden Center and Bird Sanctuary.) The first ones hatched only one of their three eggs, but the baby is kinda cute, in an ugly way. Daddy robin was very suspicious of the camera. I'm glad I got to see the baby before end of work term, though.

There's been knitting too...a baby sweater I don't have a pic of, a pair of blue-and-white mitts in progress that I think of as my 'china' mittens, since they're rather like cobalt and white dishes, a pair of cabled mittens. Now there's a shawl in progress - a commission, in alpaca/silk laceweight, dyed coffee brown with walnuts.

 Next thing on my list? Make sure all my school stuff is ready for tomorrow. Janice has us at 9am for Urban Agriculture, so it looks like we'll be digging in the veg garden before afternoon theory class. Can't wait to see how that's doing, and say hello to Ginger the cat again.

On Tour

Can you believe it? The yarn I dyed last Tuesday finished drying today. That's how damp the weather's been. Well, that's done, now on to the next project...

The Tour de France/Tour de Fleece started yesterday. As always, my start stash is perhaps a little overambitious.

Especially considering that both yesterday and today, my daily work accomplished was 5 rolags carded and spun, and a couple feet of pencil roving spindle-spun. My progress pictures for days that I work are going to have the enthralling slow-motion action of a kids' flip book.

Day 1:

Day 2:

Still, I've got Canada Day and the next day off, and I'm figuring I should be able to speed up the results a little for those two days...between catching up with gardening and such.

Oh yes, and the baby birds at work have feathered out and fledged already. They seem to have left the nest Friday or so. I kept an eye on it yesterday and this morning, and when no-one came back, I moved the nest out so the mother isn't tempted to start a second brood in the same place. A bit of a weight off my mind, not having to watch and make sure no-one started messing around too much with the stuff on that shelf of the rack.