Tiny brown eggs and something sort of french...

The rhode island red hens have begun to lay eggs this week and they are tiny compared to the Easter Egger's eggs!  At least I can tell the reds eggs (brown ones) from the Easter Egger's (greenish).

The hens are about five months old so that's right on time.  The first couple of their eggs we found had been laid out in their enclosure yard but since Thursday which ever one(s) are laying them have discovered the nest boxes because they have all been in there since.  The two flocks are combining well and no one looks like they are being picked on.  

I was looking at knitting patterns on knitty.com (a free source of unique patterns - go look right now.  I will wait.) and found one called Clapotis (french name) by Kate Gilbert.  It is a scarf pattern and I cast on using Malabrigo Silky Merino in Stone Chat (softest, most scooshy stuff ever and knits up so pretty).  I hope to have the scarf finished by the time the weather finally cools here so I can use it :)

A couple of new projects and a finished chicken coop.

My husband, the fantastic man he is, finished the chicken coop this week and put the whole flock in it.  We still need to paint it and put some nest boxes and wood chips in but otherwise it's done.

One little issue has cropped up.  The rhode island reds wont go in the coop at night.  Silly birds huddle together next to the fence of the enclosure and sleep there.  Also, one of the reds might be a rooster and not a hen.  I guess we will know if he/she begins to crow.  

I began a new crochet project (yes I know the tagline of the blog says I'm a knitter but I crochet, quilt, sew, draw, paint, ans sculpt to so let's not be picky now, shall we).  Sorry.  Ranty pants will get to the point.  The pattern of an owl basket has been hanging out in my favorites on Ravelry for some time so I finally broke down and bought it and some yarn to get started.  The pattern is by Deja Jetmir and can be found here.  I am using Lion Hometown U.S.A. super bulky yarn in Aspen Tweed.  You crochet two strands at once and it is turning out to be a quick project.  I might be crocheting at too loose a gauge and I might need to re-do it.  We shall see as I get further along. 

Speaking of quilting, I am getting ready to assemble a strip quilt for the baby made ot of some bright flannel.  The photo makes the orange a brighter shade than it is and the coral looks way more red than in life.  It will be a crib size quilt when I'm finished.

Lego Ninjago Cake and Crochet.

Sorry the blog has been quite lately.  It's been a busy time between work and home.  My son has recently discovered the Lego Ninjago cartoon series.  When he discovers something he goes all in for a while and watches the episodes on Netflix repeatedly.  He had a birthday recently so I attempted to make a ninja cake.  If you check out some of the google images results for a ninjago cake search you will see that the sky is the limit for making a complicated cake design.  I choose to do a more simple version.  I made a double layer, 10 inch round white cake using a box mix.  Some people may be able to make a cake from scratch, however I am not one of them.  The one time I tried to do that, it came out hard as a hockey puck.  Little dude loves the color green so it had to be the green ninja.  I used Wilton food coloring in leaf green to get his green.  I think the yellow was labeled lemon yellow.  I free handed the eyes so they are a bit wonky but overall the end result came out ok. 

Usually when he discovers something new (or in this case new to him since the series has been out for a few years) and doesn't have a toy related to the series and asks me to make him one.  He did this with oogey boogey from The Nightmare Before Christmas made from fleece (with a Velcro pocket to hide glow in the dark bugs), the lorax, a viking hat like Hicupp from How to Train Your Dragon, the little cheese curl guys that chase the veggie tales characters in the veggie tales Jonah movie...I could go on. 

I made up my own pattern to cut out oogey boogey and just crocheted a cylinder to make the cheesy guy from Jonah without following real patterns from someone else.

He hadn't expressly asked for a stuffed ninja but I knew he would like one.  I found a crochet pattern to use to make one. Even though I don't care much for crochet I attempted it anyway.  I have issues with loosing count of stitches and things coming out shaped completely wrong.

I did a Ravelry search and found a pattern for a ninja.  I finished him in about a week and surprised him with it right before bed (right after I finished off the last stitches on his black belt thingey he wears.  My son was very surprised when I presented it to him and asked for a couple modifications: to give him hair and to attach his hood to him so it doesn't fall off.  I will get right on that...

New Chicken Coop or Chicken Mansion...

We finally finished the new chicken coop.  More to the point, my husband and my dad finished it.  I didn't actually help build this one.  All I did was search google for plans to give us an idea for a design.  My husband took those plans and made the footprint for the structure larger so we would be able to use part of it for a storage area for the chicken feed, our wheel barrow, a ladder, etc.  We still need to build nest boxes, cut out a door for the chickens to come in and out of their run through,construct the fenced run for them to be outside in, and paint the exterior.  Lots of chicken wire to buy.  The chicks are fully feathered now and are still being housed separate from our older hens partially because of a lack of space in out main coop and partially because I want to introduce all the chickens into the new coop at once so no one thinks they have a prior territory claim on it since it will smell unfamiliar to all of them.  We still need to take the small pen with the younger chickens off our back porch and set it next to the run with the big hens so they can see each other and get used to each others scents before we fully introduce them all.  Sometimes we can hear the younger ones chirping to the hens and the hens answering them back.  I hope that means they will all get along.  One of the older hens keeps trying to play the broody hen not wanting to get up off the eggs that have been laid during the day.  My husband keeps suggesting we get a couple ducks to go with them.  I'm not sure where we would house them nor that having ducks is something I want to mess with at all.  Anyway, here's a picture of the (almost) finished coop.  

The chicks are getting BIG!

The chicks are getting big and are almost covered with their adult feathers.  

(Sorry for the red tone to the photo but their red heat light was in when I took their picture this morning.) They always seem to look like they have been through a wringer when their feathers are coming in with patches of down, patches of real feathers, and patches of skin showing under pin feather sprouts.  Poor things.  The coop we made for the original flock is not going to be big enough since we are doubling the amount of birds housed in it with the addition of the new hens.  We don't want to have any territory disputes or overcrowding so it's time for us to start deciding on a larger coop design and to start building it.  I would really like it if we could design it in such a way that it would allow us to keep their feed and scratch cans inside it, be big enough for us to walk inside it, and allow the girls lots of room to flap their wings.  We live across the highway from national forest so in order to keep raccoons and opossums out of the chicken feed we use large aluminum trash cans to hold it.  All bets are off if a bear tries to break into the cans.  I'm sure they can open the cans and I'm sure I will not get in their way.  It would absolutely be safer to have the cans in an enclosed building rather than on my back porch.  I recently saw a black bear along the side of the road on the way to drop my son off at school.  The bear had been hit by a truck.  The area we live in is known to be where they pass through occasionally.  Odd thing to see regardless.

Baby leg warmers

To me, little babies look funny wearing little baby pants.  They always look like they are wearing old man pants pulled way up to their chest.  I like the look of a onesie with baby leg warmers instead so I found a free pattern through a Ravelry search.  I realize it seems strange for me to be decking my baby out in wool while living in Florida but, since we are in the panhandle, it does get chilly during the night in the winter and in early spring.  The one I used is called Woolies by Jenny Raymond.  I am about 80% finished with knitting my first one.  It is a very easy pattern to follow. It probably wouldn’t take someone else long to knit a pair of them, but I am a slow knitter and have way too many projects started at once and not enough knitting time to hand out on any given day.  I am using Lion Brand Baby Wool in English Garden.  

It knits up very nicely and is suppose to be a superwash, but since I haven’t washed mine yet I can’t comment as to how well it does yet.  I will post about it once I do.  Incidentally, I am geochick on Ravelry.  

A craft project and an over acheiver...

So, just to see if I could make one, and to see what it's like to use them, I found a couple free patterns online for a cloth diaper cover to sew in order to try out using cloth diapers on my 4 month old.  I took a bit of instruction from both to sew the diaper cover I made.  The base pattern came from here which shows how to sew a fitted diaper with absorbent layers built in.  This one is what I used to cut the fabric with, mostly because it used velcro and has little tabs to fold over the clingy edges before it goes through the washer so it doesn't snag on everything.  I didn't want to spend the money on a snap applicator tool if I wasn't going to be making very many of these hence the velcro.  One still needs a waterproof outerlayer over the diaper this pattern makes.  I did not sew in the absorbent layers as I intended to use old fashioned flat cloth diaper squares that need to be folded to fit the baby.  I also visited a craft blog here that shows how to sew the basic cover I was looking for with a waterproof inner layer and a soft outerlayer.  Her design uses snaps to give the covers an adjustible fit which I did not do.  Here is my end result.

It is a bit big through the legs for our baby right now but I put a cloth flat diaper on her with this cover over it to try it out.  She wet in it within five minutes while sitting on my husband.  The good news is it didn't leak and was super cute on her.  Not sure if I want to go through the time and energy to make more but the option is always there.  At least I know I can make them.

Our adult hens went through a very harsh molt last summer and their egg laying slowed significantly through the fall and winter months to the point we were getting about 4 eggs a month.  We normally get between four and six a day.  Well, within the last week they have started to lay again.  Alot.  Somehow, in two days, we got fourteen eggs from six chickens.  Someone is an over-acheiver.