Woolybuns

Eyes Open

Bunivere's babies are now 12 days old, their eyes are open, and their color is evoloving: two self chins and 3 black silver martens.  My early guess on gender: one boy, one girl self chin, at least one boy and one girl marten, and one marten not yet willing to hint.  At this age, those are definitely just guesses.  But I like to guess, keep track of my guesses, and compare final results.  One self chin is definitely a pet wooler, possibly already promised.  That's the one I think is a girl, and she is the one I am most confidant on the guess.  She has a big splotch of white on her nose and a white strip on her forehead.  She is also the biggest in the litter, and the most adventurous.  The other self chin so far is all black. He (?) is also available as a pet wooler because Bunivere apparently got a bit too vigorous when cleaning off birth sacs.  The tip of one ear is chomped off.  The three silver martens are correctly marked and have not been chewed on.  I will be keeping one of them, but I'm not yet sure if I want a buck or a doe.

Wednesday WIPing 7/29/09

My garden grows, my knitting does not.  Before I started the heel on Lucy's Socks, I wanted a fit check.  It was more a reality check.  As in, of course, there was no fit.  While the stitch count is good for her skinny legs, it does not accommodate her big heel.  I have started a new sock for Lucy but only just barely.  It's not even photo worthy yet.   So I distract you with summer veggies and a garden update.  I put in a variety of tomatoes, including early big slicing type, heirloom, plum, and cherry.  Those two puny maters are the early big ones.  Nature must be supported by nurture.  I'm doing my part but Sun Goddess took a vacation (to Texas, I think) and left her grumpy sisters Rain and Humidity in charge here in the northeast.  So I get puny tomatoes and green peppers. Silly size, but still a great addition to scrambled eggs.  Squash apparently will grow no matter what.  My heirloom tomatoes are showing more promise, and pretty shape.  I'm also starting to see activity in the plum and cherry tomatoes, both setting out fruit.  The plums even seem to be reaching normal size, though so far, not quantity.  I hope I get enough for a pot of spaghetti sauce. 

Eat My Dust, Darth Vader

Four kids, two horses, a beautiful day, and a wide open riding ring.  The kids cut loose and whooped it up.  The only words we could understand rang out every time they raced from one end to the other: eat my dust, Darth Vader!  Ahhh, the crazy days of summer when you're a kid left to your own devices.

Eeeee Haaa!

Three of us mounted up yesterday and took the short but oh so sweet ride through the woods to the town riding ring, where we had a productive and fairly uneventful ride.  (Yes, CC lives in a horse friendly town which maintains two large, open to the public riding rings).  I did not ride CC.  She is a stubborn beast who has developed a fondness for kicking up her heels.  Kimmie rides CC and the woman plants her butt deeply in the saddle and It. Does. Not. Leave.  Strong strong legs, just what the stubborn beast needs.  Maybe someday I'll get there.  I rode Honey, Kimmie's 11 year old daughter Jessie rode Snickers, and a newbie to the barn rode Maggie.  Maggie and Honey are pretty bomb proof.  Snickers is part chicken, and definitely a follower not a leader.  But Jessie is the experienced rider in that little trio, so trainer Lucy decreed Jessie in the lead.  Well.  Three horses returning home single file on a wooded path.  Add one bounding deer.  Instant rodeo.  Ok, ok, so I exaggerate a bit.  Snickers was the only one who saw the deer,and he whirled and sought the safety of the back of the line.  Except with trees and brush lining the path, the only way to the end of the line was straight through first Maggie, then Honey.  Maggie started backing up right into Honey.  Honey tried to stand her ground on only her hind legs, but I decided retreat was the order of the moment.  We reassembled on the grass around the riding ring and sorted out what just happened.  I had caught a glimpse of something but neither Jessie nor the newbie saw the deer.  We decided I should take the lead and headed down the path again.  Sure enough, several yards off the path there was a deer standing there, presumably wondering when the real fireworks would start.  She looked awfully satisfied with herself.  Honey and Maggie just ambled on by,  and Snickers found his comfort zone as follower. 

Caution: Color Genetics Ahead

What with gray drizzly subdued light and a very protective mom, getting good baby pictures is tough.  Mom and dad were happy to pose, though.  Mom is a pure German angora, Lady Bunivere.  A first time mom, she's doing a wonderful job caring for the babies and they are thriving.  The dad is a very friendly fella, Sir Hop A Lot, a German crossbred buck, color blue silver marten.  That color is a relatively new color pattern introduced into angoras first, I believe, by Jan's Giants.  She has a nice explanation of tan pattern on her blog here.  Basically, tan pattern includes tan (which involves wideband genes), otter (no wideband), and marten (which requires c(chd), the chinchilla gene) There are no white babies in this litter, and Sir Hop's sire did not carry the gene for white, so I believe Sir Hop does not carry it either.  That would make his color genetics a(t)aB-c(chd)c(chd)ddE- .  I don't yet know Bunivere's color genetics, other than the obvious: she is what is referred to as ruby eyed white, which is ----cc---- .  Two of the babies appear so far to be self, which is a recessive trait so both parents have to have it.  That means Bunivere would be -a--cc---- . If those two are self, then they are self chinchilla, aaB-c(chd)cDdE- , a not entirely correct color type, but useful if the goal is to breed silver martens. Three of the babies have agouti markings (light bellies, inner ears, under tail, under nose, and eye circles),  but that could be either agouti pattern, coded as A- or tan pattern, which is a(t)- .  If the babies are agouti, they will be correctly typed chinchilla color.  If they are tan pattern, they will be silver martens: a(t)aB-c(chd)cDdE- .  If I want to try to get otter pattern, I have a self black doe I can breed to Sir Hop, which could produce otter.

Ok, ready to clear your head of genetics and go for cute puppy pics?
  Murphy is quite a scamp and loveslovesloves rope toys.  He' quite skillful at stealing them from Kiri.  Amika has decided Murphy can stay, but she does not welcome him in her bedroom.  We don't yet know if she will allow him to play in her living room, but she's happy with him on the deck, and on occasion, for brief times, she will even play with one or both of the pups.  She does insist the two puppies play nice and will interfere if either gets a bit too vigorous.  Kiri is delighted with Murphy, and once the Young Adults move out with their dogs, she will need a puppy of her own. 

Hike Ho, Hike Ho

Off to the woods we goed.   I'm on a hiking kick these days.  I've always loved being in the woods, surrounded by peacefullness, the greens and browns sheltering all manner of critters.  When I was a child, if my mother wanted to find me, she usually had to look up a tree.  I think a perfect vacation home for me would be a tree house looking over a lake.  Especially if I could dive off the house into the lake.

 Wow.  That thought just took me into lots of fantasies.  No, I'm not sharing.  Make up your own.  And you over there?  If I'm in your fantasy... well...

Ok, enough digression.  The hike on Sunday was at McLean Game Refuge.  No fantasies involved.  As hikes go, it was an easy one.  A titch over 2 miles of mostly flat walking, it's a good conditioning hike for people like me just getting into hiking.  Most of me can do a more vigorous hike but my right foot, that slackard, is a bit of a grump, so easy is more compatible with it.  This hike is also good for Kiri, enough space that she can learn to walk quietly and not jump on other people.  The man who organized this particular hike is a bit of a naturalist.  He narrated our walk a bit, promising that if he didn't know the answer, he'd make up a good one with enough latin words to sound smart.  Our walk took us to a small cabin in the woods overlooking a manmade pond with a couple of islands in the middle.  The house is  not open to the public but the back porch is quite inviting.  We sat and snacked on apples and healthy, tasty trail mix while watching inactive geese lazing by the spillway.  Refuge, indeed.

I love the history of why this refuge exists.  A senator and a governor, George McLean turned to the woods to counter the pressures of politics.  He wanted his 3400 acres of woods to live on unmolested, and to be available to the public.   I think I would have liked him, even if he was a Republican. 

Shhh! It's Peacefully Quiet Here

For a little while anyway.  Overnight, not so much.  There is a new member of the household around here.  Right now, he's sleeping.  At midnight, he was not.  Nor at 1 am, nor 2 am.  He was announcing his dislike of solitude.  This fella, 11 week old boxer pup whose name I think is Murphy, is my second granddog.  We hope the first, Amika, aka Grumpy Old Goat, will accept him.  Amika has social skills issues.  She does not have dog friends.  Instead, she has acquaintances whom she does not bite, which is why Murphy got to meet her from behind the safety of bars.  The Young Adults got Murphy last night.  They've been agonizing over the decision for a long time.  I of course egged them on.  Well, sort of.  Amika is a big concern.  She's happy with Kiri, at least as long as Kiri does not  invade Amika territory and respects the times Amika just doesn't want to play.  Amika loved her former roommate, even curled up with him to sleep.  But she's quite particular and there's no telling who she will like, human or canine.  She grew up with Gromit with no problems but three days after she and my daughter moved to a new home, she came back for a visit and promptly tried to kill Gromit.  The two can NOT ever be together, attended or otherwise.  Makes it interesting when Gromit comes for a visit, which, when my Baby About To Turn 21 (!) heads to a new college next month could be often.  The YA are looking for a house of their own to buy and hope to find one in time to qualify for the tax credit.  That was one reason to go ahead and get Murphy now. Since puppies need to go out often, getting him while the YA still live here means I can take care of his work day out needs.  Of course, part of the deal is, if Amika flat out refuses to let Murphy share her people, Kiri and I will take him in.  And no, we do not intend to produce any Poxers or Boodles.

Here at Woolybuns, the babies usually look like this.  These little bits also arrived last night, a few hours after Murphy did.  They were due on Friday and the doe gave no sign of pending babies.  Late yesterday afternoon, she surprised me with some nesting behavior.  When I got home around midnight last night, I peeked in her hutch and found an attempt at a nest, a nice nest bowl and pulled wool - just not in the same location - I poked through the hay and found 4 babies, a bit cool but not dangerously so.  As I put the nest together and tucked the 4 in, I heard the distinct squeals of a baby in distress, not with the others.  At great peril to my hands, with the doe grumping and stomping, hissing and leaping at me, I searched through all the hay and finally found another one, much colder than the siblings, but still quite alive and determined to stay that way.  I bundled them into my shirt and brought them in for a bit of a warm up, then tucked them all back into the nest.  This morning they all seem fine. 

WIP Me Wednesday 7-15-09

How about that?  I actually have a WIP to post about.  A mindless kind of boring you've seen this kind of thing everywhere WIP, but a bona fide WIP nonetheless.  Lucy's Socks, a simple yet satisfying 3x1 rib on size 0 circs of some unremembered not quite so satisfying brand of circs but they are the only size 0 circs I could get that aren't the awful new design of Crystal Palace (wtf were they thinking???).  I know.  A good excuse to head for a LYS.  The yarn?  SW merino hand dyed by me, colorway Periwinx.  I so creatively named them Lucy's Socks because ... well... yeah.  I'm knitting them for Lucy, my horse trainer and riding instructor.  They are her birthday present.  She knows about them already.  I gave her the yarn and the promise it would turn into socks.  I keep the yarn in my sweet JessaLu bag (lovelovelove that bag!!) so it's always ready to go with me should a traffic tie up or other moment of inactivity present a knitting opportunity.  I've got a bit more than 4" of leg knit.  By next Wednesday, I hope to have turned the heel and have the gusset going.  And speaking of the lovely JessaLu, she's having a birthay today, so pop on over and wish her a happy getting older birthday!

And now, because as much as the bag and the flowers improved the sock photo, it's still just a boring 3x1rib sock, I'm tossing in some seriously more entertaining puppy pics.  I'm sort of the unofficial aunt with this pup.  On Mother's Day, Lucy's standard poodle died when hit by a car.  She's been saving and looking for a tiny pup without a lot of success (the purebreds from breeders are too expensive and a pet shop is not an option).  Since I'm sorta good at connecting folks with furry friends, I started looking for a pup for her and on Sunday, off we went to look at a litter.   We walked into the  house and 6 puppies were scattered about.  One instantly came running straight to Lucy.  Could you resist this face?  Bella is 8 weeks old, a Shih Tzu Maltese cross who will probably grow up to be about 10 pounds or less.  Kiri will love having a puppy to play with, once Bella's a bit older.

I Can Haz Pichurz!

I found the battery charger for my camera.  Turns out, actually looking for it is much more effective than glancing around at the usual spots and thinking, huh, it's not there.  So now, you get pictures.    This is my deck garden.  With the onslaught of rain, gray, drizzle, and cold of June and early July, I needed brilliant color.  The flowers that did flower out in the gardens did so under that blanket of gloom and I didn't get to enjoy them.  So the day my daughter and I finally got back to the plant place, I was pretty primed for the dazzle of dahlias.  If I have a favorite, it would be Mystery Day, a dramatic huge purple edged in white dinnerplate dahlia.  Or perhaps "Lisa" with her sumptious shading from palest pink tinge to mauve.   These two paired in my small globe vase with a bloom of white dahlia, a few sprays of white statice and small green leaves grace my coffee table so I don't even have to go outside to enjoy them.  There is no question which dahlia the bees prefer.  That one doesn't have a name tag so I call her Spike.  And the other dahlia which doesn't have a name tag didn't get a picture on her own, either.  In the group shot, she is the pale pink behind Mystery Day.  I like to group a bloom of each of the 5 dahlias in another, taller vase for my dining room table.  Outside, I added a couple of bright zinnia, pastel Gerbera Daisy, and some New Guinea impatiens to fill in the plant stand.  My little lunch table sits in the corner of the deck opposite the plants, shaded nearly all  day by the roof over hang.  It makes a sweet spot to sit n sip in early morning's crisp while the birds flit about and twit to each other.  Kiri hangs out there with me.

Contented Sighs

Right now, I'm comfortably seated on my deck, feeling quite content and relaxed, second cuppa tea close at hand, song birds giving voice to the joy of a happy sky.  I've done my morning puttering.  All the animals are fed and other wise tended.  Belly checks on two does suggest there may be some wee little nekkid wigglers the end of the week.  Deck plants are watered, fading blooms snipped, vases inside refreshed with new blooms.  Honeybees happily buzz through the plants.  Two freshly-harvested-from-my-own-garden yellow sqaush await sauteeing in olive oil with onions.  Weekend gardening by the daughter and her BF was quite productive. The over grown ugly yews at the back of the garage are now on their way to compost, their freshly vacated plots now sporting vibrant zinnias, dahliettas, and black eyed Susans, with plans for an upright curly que weeping blue atlas cedar to join them soon.  There is now a nicely stacked field stone wall encircling the old pine tree, offering yet another garden plot.  And the gleam in the daughter's BF's eye while holding a chain saw and considering a couple of ancient, straggly, annoying trees suggests I may be rid of those trees come fall.  Over the weekend, I attended a very silly, very fun Herman's Hermits concert in the park next town over, got a ride on someone else's Harley, took a riding lesson on a striking chestnut leopard Appaloosa mare named Honey who will teach me much, introduced Kiri to the woods and behaving around strangers, and fullfilled my horse trainer's desire for a new tiny puppy.  As life changes around me, times like these are  indeed welcome.  Now if I could just find the camera battery charger to show you the sights....