2012 September 29 — Patchwork Times by Judy Laquidara

Log Cabin QOV Finished

September 29, 2012 · by JudyL

This will be mailed to Alycia as soon as I finish a couple more to send with it. This one is 60″ x 86″ and I hope brings comfort to an injured hero and helps them to know how much their sacrifices are appreciated.

There’s something about it that leaves me feeling a bit uneasy but I think it’s because I knew those log cabin blocks started out to be a log cabin quilt and somehow lost their way. I love the movement in the borders and the Square Spiral panto by Keryn Emmerson is just perfect. Obviously, I think that panto is perfect for every quilt. Some day someone is going to sneak into my sewing room and confiscate my Square Spiral. They’ll just have to take the longarm too because there’s no use in me having a longarm if I don’t have my favorite panto!

This quilt still needs to be washed but I’ll wait til right before I’m ready to mail it.

· Filed Under: Quilting · 28 Comments

Socks #7 for 2012

September 29, 2012 · by JudyL

In order to be up to date with making 12 pairs in 2012, I should’ve just finished #9 but I just finished #7.

These were made for Chad. I didn’t even try to match the stripes but did a halfway decent job accidentally.

· Filed Under: Knitting & Weaving · 4 Comments

Thankful for the Rain

September 29, 2012 · by JudyL

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never thought a whole lot about the rain til we experienced a drought. The old saying . . you don’t miss the water til the well runs dry . . is so true. Even though we’ve lived through some dry conditions, we’ve never experienced a real concern about running completely out of water and water restrictions from the municipal water supply. We now appreciate the rain like never before and maybe there are more of us in drought situations or I’m just more aware of it but several of my fellow bloggers are experiencing droughts and are affected way more than we are due to large cattle operations.

We’ve had almost 24 hours of steady rain, some barely a drizzle and some a downpour. I haven’t checked our rain gauge because it seems to be in the middle of a giant pool of water right now. I’m not afraid of a little water but . . the chickens have been out there and I’d rather keep all that on the bottom of my shoes and not have it flowing up to my ankles. I guess I could take off the flip flops and put on boots but . . I’ll just wait. We could get a nicer rain gauge with a remote readout but since it only rains 2 or 3 times a year here . . I’ll just keep my $2 rain gauge.

Brown County Water Improvement District maintains info on the lake level for us all to see and some of us watch it pretty closely.

A rain like we’re getting now will raise the water level in the lake over the next week probably, as run off continues to flow towards the lake. We had plans today that wouldn’t have been so fun in the rain so we’ve just stayed home. Vince is in the house . . I think there are non-stop football games today. I’m sewing. I’m binding! One quilt finished and working on a second one.

I didn’t realize how often I go back and forth to the house and what I’ve realized already this morning is . . I don’t have enough junk food out here!

· Filed Under: Home & Garden · 11 Comments

Which One is Different?

September 29, 2012 · by JudyL

There are so many differences in eggs, depending on what the chickens eat. I know . . some of you think an egg is an egg is an egg and for all practical purposes, that’s halfway true. There’s always a debate about “free range” and “cage free” and what it means and the more I read about it, the more I realize that in order to be labeled “free range” or “cage free”, it’s not always what most consumers think they’re getting. I’m not going to get into it here but you can google it and get all kinds of information. Be aware that anyone can write anything. I’m proof! I never know what I’m talking about and here you are . . reading my ramblings!

What’s important to me is that my chickens are happy. We know Miss Hattie is quite happy. Yesterday, almost as soon as I’d put her up, she was out again. She walks up to me and lets me pick her up. Roscoe squawks and struts around with his tail feathers all flipped up . . he hates it when I put her up. I love watching those two!

All of my red hens, except of course, Miss Hattie, stay in about a 30′ x 40′ pen. We take them out from time to time and I let them play in the garden when I’m out there with them when the plants are large enough to provide some cover from birds of prey, but they spend most of their time inside their pen. They get lots of treats — watermelon, cantaloupe, sprouts, yogurt — I do think they’re happy chickens. They’re well cared for, they’re not crowded. They love to sit on my lap and get their backs scratched.

The black chickens go into their coop at night and we lock them up for their own safety. (Same with the red chickens.) I let them out at daylight and they have the run of the place. When not peeping in my windows to see what I’m doing, they’re chasing grasshoppers, or digging in soft dirt, or making a mess of Vince’s newly spread mulch. They’re happy chickens too.

But . . look at this.

See the bright orange yolk in the back? That’s either Miss Hattie’s egg or from one of the black hens.

These are the bowls of ingredients for the Migas I was fixing this weekend. See the one orange yolk? That’s from either Miss Hattie or one of the black hens.

Who would ever have thought green grasshoppers could make the yolk so orange? Seriously, it has a lot to do with the amount of grass and greenery they eat. We keep feed out for all the chickens but since the black hens are eating grass, leaves off my flowers and grasshoppers all day, they don’t eat a lot of the feed we provide.

The yolks from all of these eggs are pretty yellow when compared to the average store bought egg but there’s definitely a difference in the eggs from the hens who run around eating whatever they can find from daylight til dark.