Dinner for the knights and fairies.

My dad is visiting and today we went to Flock and Fiber to see some of the animals and a lot of wonderful yarn and wool and spinning. My favorites were the Icelandic Sheep and of course the Alpaca and then some lovely Pygora Goats. Really, there were so many different goats and sheep and alpaca it is hard to choose a favorite! Oh! and we got to see a couple of soooo soooo soft angora rabbits. Amazing! The woman said you could just brush them every day and have enough to spin! I bought some eggplant-colored-ish mohair yarn (15% wool added) and am hoping to make a shawl with it. It should be fun to knit along with the sweater than I am knitting, which is really just stockinette around and around for now. The little t-rexes are nearly complete!

Brandywine tomato



Eva's newest baby made from a hazelnut (for her head) and flowers and leaves for her body. Eva told me today that she came from a regular flower but she wasn't receiving the love that she needed there. Everyone wanted her to be just a pretty flower so she took off on her own to find her way. "Now she loves for herself so then she gets the exact kind of love." She spends her time out on boats in the water with all of her friends.

recent look-ups

aardvarks
how to make a citizen's arrest
how to stop being a werewolf (my favorite is to "scold" the werewolf out of it)
how the solar system was formed
is ginormous a word (still under contention but I say yes)
some stuff on Hawaii because Eva wants to go there

buddha on the computer

Eva put the Buddha up on top of the computer monitor so that we can all feel peaceful when we sit down to use it. I usually don't put anything up anywhere because Maxwell just knocks it all down and where is the peace in that? I watched, today, however, as Maxwell jumped up on the monitor and walked around the Buddha statue. Imagine that? I had to take a picture for posterity. Who knows when that will happen again. And I do feel peaceful thinking about it all. And a little amused. And maybe a little incredulous.

Illness struck and I spent some time sitting on the patio with Maxwell, watching the birds, knitting (well, I knit) and checking out the squirrels (well, Maxwell kept track of the squirrels).

And the kids worked with Sculpey. Samuel was working on his business idea and Eva was making dolls.



And for dinner, we had ricotta apple-pear sauce pancakes and watermelon and cucumbers and Eva wanted crisp, so I made a pear-blackberry crisp with the rest of the pears and then she wanted pickles and Samuel had a corn cheese taco, but of course. And now I am taking more Vitamin C and drinking a little Kombucha, just to mix it up a bit.

today

Eva painted on the cement with ice water. The pictures evaporate eventually but it is quite satisfying painting this way. Eva painted herself and a butterfly and another picture of herself eating cake! I painted a spider!



We cleaned up the yard quite a bit today and part of that was taking care of a couple of dead limbs that dropped from the maple tree out back. After breaking up the limbs, we realized we could toast marshmallows! Samuel can get the fire ready by himself now and he loves it. He was also in a much better mood after getting the fire going- very satisfying and purposeful.

buggy

Just be(e)

I found the closeup on my camera finally! I mean the real closeup that lets you take picture of bees and spiders and such. I wish I had found it earlier in the day because I saw a spider yesterday that I have never seen before. She was a huge black spider about the size of the Orb Weavers in October (Banded Garden Spiders, etc) but she was not an orb weaver. She was more along the lines of a tarantula, but of course, not nearly as large. Still, she was large enough that when I typed in "giant black spider in Pacific Northwest" I found her and there was no mistake about it. She turned out to be a Female Mouse Spider and she was about 1/2" in her body with her legs making he seem much larger. I have to say that the warnings about her (or really the male's) potential bite actually gave me pause. They are not aggressive spiders and will not chase you but the male has a nasty bite if provoked and I assumed the female could be provoked as well. I could just imagine our cat Magoo going out and chasing her around, that is how big she was.

I actually saw her stuck in another spider's web and I went and got a large stick (because even I did not want her crawling on me) and freed her from the web before the other spider could wrap her up. Then I used my knitting scissors! to cut the very strong web that was on one of her legs to free her so she could run away. Then I went in to look her up and then I was little um nervous about her being out on the porch. But I have lived near black widows (in San Rafael) and brown recluses (in Kansas City) and of course the aggressive house spider in both San Rafael and here (I just saw one in our bath tub recently and one out on the patio) and I think the thing that made me pause about this spider in particular was that she was so BIG and BLACK and really just so substantial walking around out there. I left her alone and when we came back from the upick she was gone- off to burrow or hunt or lay eggs, whatever a female Mouse Spider does on a fine autumn day.