Sunday, April 23, 2006

A peek inside our Mini Farm


First, let me post my Works-In-Progress. The picture shows my red Tubey on the right and Sockotta socks on the left. As for the socks, I'm still working on the 'Forethought' heel...doesn't it look weird at this stage? Almost like the sock is sprouting a mouth! LOL

I thought y'all might like a look inside our little MiniFarm.
We love animals and have a lot of fun with them, not to mention all the free eggs we can eat! Sherlock is our bull calf and the three pygmy goats are named Kiki, Minnie Pearl, and Celie. We have more chickens that didn't come running over to be in the picture; we have a nice assortment, all purebred. The guinea's head is hidden behind the Khaki Campbell duck, but she is a character. We really like unusual birds, as I guess you tell by the Silkie, Polish, and Turken!




To the left is a shot of the brooder with some chicks and baby ducks. I'll try to get a better a cuter picture of them outside soon.

Here is a cute picture of a kid with a kid! That's my little boy, Tyler, with our new baby goat.


I do promise not to turn this into the "Green Acres" blog, but I thought y'all might like to see some of our animals, and I do like to throw in some non-crafty stuff sometime. We stay pretty busy around here most of the time, but have a lot of fun. Our kids are homeschooled, Wonderland Kennels is my small business and big passion in life (training, showing, raising, and constantly being around my dogs), and our farm animals are a nice hobby.

Friday, April 21, 2006

Spring Chickens

Since Spring is here we had to get some new chicks and ducks. They will have a fun life here because I'm a vegetarian and they don't have to worry about ending up in a Colonel Sanders dish. We like having fresh eggs, plus they are loads of fun to watch! An added bonus to having poultry kicking around is they eat all the ticks and bugs, sort of a cute form of organic pest control.

We bought 4 Swedish Bib ducks, 5 Barred Plymouth Rocks, 2 Golden Comets, and one more Araucana (these are the famous "Easter Egger" chickens that lay colored green, blue, or pink eggs. How cool is that!). The chicks are 3 weeks old now.

We're also trying our hand at incubation this year. We have a new Little Giant incubator set up with 18 Silkie eggs. I also put in one egg from our new pair of Golden Laced Polish. It takes 21 days to hatch a chick, so these little dudes should pop out around May 10th.





In Knittin' News, I am really liking the pair of socks I'm working on. They are the Ridged Feather pattern from Sensational Knitted Socks on size 2 needles in Sockotta yarn. The patterned part of the sock is really easy but looks soooo cool! I'm on the 'Forethought heel' right now which is totally new to me so it looks a little freaky, but hopefully it will turn out right.

I will try to add some more pictures soon.

Thursday, April 13, 2006

Back to Bloggin'

Well, it looks like I let time get away from me, as its been toooo long since my entry. Luckily my bad luck spell has ended and everything is back to normal.

I actually found a couple of yarn stores within driving distance!! WOO HOO! I stopped by one yesterday and was blown away by all the cool yarns and knitting paraphenalia! I can't wait to see what the other store is like. They are an hour away but well worth the drive, because just think of all the cash I'll save on shipping! (Yes, we are not going to think about the price of gas I use on the trip there....because this is happy fun yarn we're talking about....so it doesn't count because I said so!!) I was so overwhelmed by actually getting to touch all the yarn and see them 'in person' that I had a terrible time figuring out what to actually buy, but I did leave with a ball of Sockotta which I plan to start knittin' away on tonight.

In other news from my knitting bag, I decided to scrap the red shrug I was working on because I had just gotten sick of looking at it. I started on my short sleeved red tubey which I think is going to be a little more fun to knit.

The weather here is beautiful right now. Up in the 80's today! I can practically feel summer comin'!