Yesterday's Walk and Snow Day Activities.


 Bella and I took our walk yesterday morning in the creek bottom.  No strange dogs in sight, but I always keep my pepper spray in hand.  It wasn't too terribly cold; temps hovered around mid-30s, but the wind was awful, driving the snow horizontally.  You can't really see it from this picture.  It was that dry hominy snow again, little pellets that would go up my nose in the wind.  

You can see it better in this picture.  I had her leashed because we were headed back up the hill to the house.  

We only got maybe a quarter inch all told, but it still blew and snew all day.  Yes, I am aware "snew" isn't a word, but it ought to be.  I mean: "blow-blew" "throw-threw."  "grow-grew."  What happened to "snow-snew?"  English is forever a frustrating mix of nonsensical rules, to which there are endless exceptions.  

Yesterday evening about sundown, after 5 PM-ish, the temps finally started dipping below freezing and the roads started getting slick.  Ellen and I could tell because suddenly icicles started forming on the tree leaves outside the front window.  

At the moment it's 22 degrees out, at 6:30 AM.  They school district cancelled school again for today, due to road conditions this morning.  It is supposed to get up into the mid-40s by this afternoon though, so they will probably have school tomorrow.  

Our little beef herd is faring well.  The calves are growing.  These temps don't seem to bother them much.  They tend to stay huddled in the thick cedars at the back of the field, so that Gary has to go check on them when he puts out hay.  But they are doing well.

 I am working on a small group of loom knitted gingerbread men.  I forget if I posted him on here already, but this one was my first and Ellen claimed him. 


I glued in a set of plastic button eyes for her on this one, but my other ones are all going to have yarn eyes.  I do that because I did so with the first set of dolls I'd made. When I was set up at a vendor event one lady checked them to see if she could give them to her baby to play with; no small parts that could potentially be bitten off and choked on.  Now I try to even knot off the yarn when I make eyes, buttons or other features, so it can't be easily pulled out and chewed on.  

For my next set of gingerbread boys I made the mouth smaller, though I see pics of them with wide smiles like this all the time.  I am going to try and improve upon the buttons as well.

Gary keeps busy with chores, his ham radio setup, and random things around here.  On Monday he installed a new sink in our big bathroom.  The old one was plastic and had become yellowed, pitted and very brittle.  It had developed little stress fractures in the bottom at one place and was sure to break soon.  I am thrilled to have the new one, it's porcelain, but the cat isn't as happy about it.  That is a story for another day.

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