Braided Rag Rug

I started this project a few weeks ago, and sadly it's been at a stand still lately. This is the beginning of a braided rag rug, made out of old sheets and t-shirts cut into strips. The idea is to make a really long braid, then coil it and sew the coils together into a rug! It's a pretty slow process overall. It takes a long time (and a lot of wrist power) to cut so much fabric into strips, and it takes longer than you would think to do the braiding, because you have to juggle the balls of fabric to keep them from tangling. The easiest way for me to collect the growing braid and maintain tension while braiding was to wrap the braid around the post of my canopy bed, thus the picture you see here.

RIP Hester and Runt

This morning I awoke to a horror that most chicken owners are familiar with. The ground covered in blood and feathers, and a mangled chicken carcass frozen in the cold. The three chickens we have been keeping in the chicken tractor while one recuperated from a wound had been besieged in the night by a neighborhood dog. The dog ripped out all the staples that were holding the chicken wire to the tractor, on both sides.

Miraculously, one chicken, Darth Vader, survived and made her way back to the chicken run proper before daylight. I suppose she used her Jedi powers to escape the beast. Hester, the injured Rhode Island White we had been nursing back to health, was found dead at the scene. Runt, a Buff Orpington, has disappeared, leaving very little trace behind. One cluster of bloody beige feathers indicates that she was carried off.

We'll miss these two, who were both from our original flock. It makes me wonder if one of our neighbors found their pet with our pet dead in its mouth. And I wonder if said neighbor feels any remorse, and might be less inclined to let his/her dog roam the neighborhood in the future. Sadly, since that's the norm in New Mexico, we'll just have to up the security here at the homestead. The remaining girls are locked tight in the coop tonight, and chicken run reinforcements will begin shortly.

RIP, Hester and Runt.

Wintry Dinner

Last night the low here was 17 degrees. We warmed up with a French Onion Soup, made from the 200 lbs of onions we dumpster dove earlier this year. To store them, I chopped them up, cooked them down, and froze them, which makes for a quick and easy French Onion Soup. I'm pretty thrilled about this, since it's one of my favorites and it usually takes forever to cook the onions down.

Time Lapse

My day job is as a communications whiz and documentarian for a fabulous non-profit here in Santa Fe. A current project of mine requires the use of time-lapse photography. Well, it turns out that neither the video camera nor the DSLR I use have a built-in time-lapse feature. I attempted this cool hack from instructables, but alas, my DSLR does not have the needed input. So what's a girl to do?

Well, if said girl has a mac, she can use the Automator application to piece together a simple intervalometer, connect her camera to her laptop via USB, and voila!

Here's how I did it:

This won't work for all cameras, but it turned out to be the easiest/free solution for me. I thought it might be useful for some of you who've been dying to make a time-lapse of your various freaky homesteader projects.

Everyday Apron

I've been breaking the sewing machine out with more and more frequency lately. This is a skill I'm desperate to learn but usually too impatient to practice. Maybe it's the time of year--but lately I'm finding sewing inspiration everywhere. This project is directly inspired by a post on Homegrown Evolution: The Modern Woman: Things to put in your apron pocket. I was particularly sold by items number 1 &2 in the post:

2. An egg. I certainly can't put an egg in my jeans pocket.

1. My iphone. Very convenient place for this indispensable item.

I've had this paisley fabric forever, and couldn't decide what to do with it--pillow? new seat cushion for my desk chair? I'm so glad I held out for the apron. Me and my apron go everywhere together now, especially when I spend an afternoon in the garden.

Charlotte

Check out this HUGE spider on the wall in our courtyard! No way was I getting close enough to provide a sense of scale, but I'd say her abdomen is about the size of a half dollar.

In other news, I seem to have lost my new digital camera at a homesteader gathering in Truth or Consequences last weekend. I'm super bummed, and it's going to be challenging for me to blog without it. Looks like photo booth pictures will have to do for awhile. Boo.

Garlic in the ground

Finally got around to putting the garlic in the ground. I planted about 130 cloves, and I still have about another 30 left over that I'm going to have to find a spot for. If all goes well, we'll be in garlic heaven come June.