Here knitty, knitty!

Wildlife and knitting

I've come to a stopping point on Kyoto. All the yarn I had balled up is now knitted up. The rest of the yarn is still in skeins, so I have to go to The Yarn Place tomorrow to get it wound up. That LYS is right by my beach, so I will kill two birds with one stone in the morning- beach and errand!

Speaking of yarn, YarnFinders hasn't found my matching yarn, and I am fearful once again that I will not have enough green to finish Kyoto. This is due entirely to the fact that the pattern calls for sleeves that are about 3 inches shorter than my own personal arms, even when measuring from the somewhat dropped shoulder. I'm not terribly horrified, I'll just have to get creative with the pink and white band at the bottom. It's going to have to grow about 3 inches to accommodate the sleeves taking up more green. I think I have more than enough pink and white to do that.


I have been working in my yard today. I'm trying to dig out these mammoth geraniums in the flower bed. They are like 5 feet tall and really ratty looking. Some of the stems are a couple inches across, and very woody. I kid you not, I am having to use an axe to dig these puppies out. Ohmigosh, and guess what else? I have figured out where the Brontosaurus-sized snails in my yard are coming from. They are all living in these geraniums. They are literally golfball sized, and there are ga-jillions of them. They make a very satisfying crunch when I step on them or smash them with my gardening tools. I love pesticide-free pest control.

In other news, the birds are finally starting to come in and hang out here. There are a whole bunch of little red-headed finches that are spending much time at the birdfeeder on the patio, and hanging out in the lemon tree and perching on the other plants on the patio too. Funny enough they also enjoy swinging on the Christmas tree lights I put up in the lemon tree for a little festive lighting at night. The birds like to peck at the glass bulbs too. The hummingbird that lives in the eucalyptus tree out front has started hanging out in the back yard all day, not just mornings and evenings like he has been doing the past few weeks.

And the best of all? Doves! I love doves, and I was sad that there were no doves in my neighborhood. But today I heard one, and then I realized that I heard it a lot. I kept an eye on it and saw that it is building a nest in the palm tree! It’s been working on it pretty steady for a couple of hours, and I have really enjoyed watching it come and go. It’s a big dove too, bigger than the typical doves I see here I the San Francisco Bay Area.

I will have to find my bird book and see what kind of birds these all are. I like to know the official names of things like that.


Oh, I know what else I need to put up around here: bee boxes! Orchard mason bees don’t live in hives, they build little nests in holes. I can make some really easily- pretty much all you do is drill some 3 or 4 inch deep, 5/16" wide holes in a chunk of untreated scrap wood (scraps salvaged from old fence posts are great for that) and hang it up in the yard. If onKyotooto was that fast and easy Maybe a I’ll make a butterfly house too, but I’ve never had much luck with butterflies using those. They always seem to be full of spider webs though, so at least someone likes them. Always a first time, though. I'd like to try a bird house too, but I think that is pretty much out of the realm of possibility for my attention span. I'll just find a pre-built one or a kit somewhere.


Ok, kool-aid break is over now. Back to the monster geraniums and my tiller!

posted by KackieC @ 2:08 PM