Baby Roos Learn to Crow
I said to the husband earlier this week that it is just about time for the baby roosters to start practicing their crowing skills. They have to learn how to crow by listening to the big roosters. Sure enough, on Friday evening, I heard what sounded like a rusty gate coming from the direction of the chicken yard. And then I heard another, slightly different rusty gate sound. Oh, joy. This will continue for a while yet. The baby roos get very excited about their ability to make noise and want to practice All.The.Time.
At least now we will be able to determine exactly how many roosters we have out there.
The Buff rooster is getting better, slowly. He doesn’t always hang out behind the trash cans now; sometimes I go in there and he is wandering around inside the coop. I hope he has learned something.
Managing roosters is so stressful. So much testosterone.
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The husband helped me move my other industrial treadle into the garage so I could play with it:
This is a Singer 31-15. I bought it in Spokane about 2-1/2 years ago. It doesn’t need a lot of cleaning; I oiled it and it runs very smoothly. The bobbin case is missing but easily replaced. My Necchi BV is almost identical to this machine in design—enough that some parts are interchangeable and I used the Singer 31-15 manual to re-time my Necchi after I cleaned it. This machine has the big, heavy handwheel on it. I may take it off and see if it fits on the Necchi. I’d love to have the heavier handwheel on that machine. Although I haven’t measured the pulley sizes between the two handwheels, they look similar, so I wouldn’t be changing gear ratios, just getting a heavier, easier to grab handwheel. This machine came with a 3/8” treadle belt on it. I have 5/8” belting (in the box to the left) and that is what is on the Necchi, but this machine seems to do okay with the original belt.
We’ll see. I prefer my Necchi because it’s a Necchi but also because it has reverse and the Singer 31-15 doesn’t. A lot of people use their 31-15s for free motion quilting. That might be fun to try.
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Yesterday’s early-morning rain shower gave way to sunny skies, so we top-dressed the rest of the corn with compost. As expected, that job went much more quickly with the husband doing half of the shoveling. That was the last big garden job until crops start coming in. I am down to spot weeding daily. DD#2 always used to say that the garden looked its best in July and she’s right. After I mowed the grass in the garden the other day, I wanted to lie down out there and take a nap. All the greenery is very inviting. I am watching for a good deal on a metal park bench that I can put out in the garden. I think it would be nice to be able to sit out there and enjoy my hard work.
I picked some comfrey leaves and have a batch of comfrey salve infusing in the slow cooker (per Nicole Sauce’s recipe). I also picked a bunch of oregano and put it into the dehydrator. I’ll do more today as it doesn’t take very long, but it does make me crave pizza.
And I reorganized some sewing stuff yesterday evening and found Yet Another Bag of Scraps—not a big bag, but big enough. Hopefully this is the end of them. I half-heartedly sewed another couple dozen strips together for the next Candy Coated.
This is the Flying Dutchman block I made last week:
This block frustrates me only from the standpoint that I adore the fabric combination—it gives the block so much movement—but those fabrics aren’t available anymore. The background is a dark eggplant with that beads-on-a-string pattern and the triangles are a dragonfly print. I am pretty sure the eggplant fabric came from the quilt store north of town, but I looked there on Thursday and didn’t see any. The dragonfly fabric was a Joanns remnant.
This is one of the hazards of using up scraps to make blocks. Sometimes you hit on something really cool and can’t recreate it. The block itself is fun to make, though. Maybe I’ll use this on the front of a tote bag.