What's up in the yard?

gWell, it has finally stopped raining and there is no more standing water in the yard. Finally. We have radishes and carrots up and still alive. They were underwater for about 2 days, but seem to be fine, even if they haven't grown in a week.

The peach tree and lavender are both blooming. I need to cut the lavender back again, it takes just forever and I put it off, making it all worse. Of course. We haven't seen a hummer today, but they love the lavender too. If I can just get it cut back it will bloom even more.

And of course, the lesser goldfinches are everywhere. They eat the niger, they eat the sunflower chips, they eat dandelion seeds, they are hungry, beautiful, singing little guys. I'm hoping to get some good pics of our other birds, but they are so much more skittish.

We need to do some more planting, but the ground is so saturated that we can't plant anything right now. And the ground is so saturated that with the last storm one of our downspouts sent water into the garage instead of the lawn. We'll see how long it takes to dry out!

Another day, another road...

...and track system. Am I the only person over the age of 10 who was thrilled to find the Plan Toys road piece that links into Thomas tracks? Our guys had just about outgrown Thomas (OK, T-bone had), but being able to integrate actual 2-way roads in (Mr. Infrastructure never could handle the 1-way only Thomas roads) has extended the use of Thomas tracks for months and months. Yay!

I hope I don't step on this later.

It's not camping season yet, but...

...we're getting ready!

The boys and I finally made fire starters today. I've been meaning to do this all month. A great project for yet another rainy day. This is something I first did in girl scouts more years ago than I'd care to admit. Pete laughed at me when I first made them; now he is a convert. They are great, and use nothing you don't already have. If you need wax, don't go buy paraffin or wax for making candles (it's crazy expensive). Go to goodwill or garage sales looking for candles or candle ends. Ugly is fine and probably cheaper! One 6-in pillar candle is enough for about 48 fire starters.

Ingredients: dryer lint (cotton with limited pet hair is best), paperboard egg cartons, old candles and candle ends, 1 empty tin can, saucepan, range, popsicle stick to stir with (or anything else you don't care about), cookie sheets to put cartons on, oven mitts.

First, put your dryer lint into the egg-places of your egg cartons.

Be sure to put your cartons onto your cookie sheets. This will protect the surface underneath.

Next, melt your candle blobs. Put an empty tin can (I like a 28 oz crushed tomato can myself) into a saucepan with about 2-3 inches of water. Put your candle blobs into the can. Don't overfill! You don't want wax dripping into your water, too much will just make it messy now and harder to pour later. Bring the water to a boil, then turn down to medium so it's still simmering. Use a popsicle stick to stir a bit if you want. Don't leave the room--just keep watching. It takes awhile to melt. 

When the wax is all melted, it is time to pour it. Put your oven mitts on. Carefully lift the can out of the water and pour onto the lint in the egg cartons. You want a fair bit of wax in the lint--it should soak through the carton a bit. Try to cover all the lint in each egg spot, but don't pour too fast. When you are done, it should look about like this:

Now leave the cartons to dry. It takes longer than you'd expect, put doesn't need supervision. When they are done, they even have their own handy storage/carrying cases!

To use them, just tear off 1 or 2 egg spots. Put them under your firewood, then light the carton corners. You will still need some kindling, but these burn for awhile (like candles!). We use 1-2 for a fire in our backyard table firepit, 2 for a fire camping in a standard campground firepit. 

Enjoy your s'mores!

Rain, Scouts, & Stitching!

We're supposed to get another big storm tonight, so T-bone decided today would be a good day to check the water level in his rain gauge.

Almost 2.5 inches! He made this and we taped it up 5 days ago. It's actually pretty cool. I saw it in a magazine somewhere (can't find it again...). You cut the top of a standard water bottle off, turn it upside down and put it into the bottle, making a funnel that you then tape down. Anyway, he watered the houseplants (nothing outside needs water!) with the collected water and we taped it back up.

Pete took the boys to the Lowe's Build and Grow this morning, and then it was off to the Petersen Automotive Museum for a cub scout event. Needless to say, they had a good time and stopped at Pann's on the way home for lunch. 

Lucky me attended El Segundo Blue's Superbowl of Stitches, with a new project by Margaret Bendig. I nice day of stitching and lunch. I would like to finish this project, but we'll see :)

Crochet crochet

This is E-man's Turtle Sweater. The back is done, the front is done, 1 sleeve is done, the other sleeve is started. I might actually get this done while it's still chilly! Of course, then I get to start one for T-bone. Both are out of Knitpicks' Swish Superwash DK. E-man chose a dark and light blue (there is contrast trim), T-bone picked green and red.

This sweater is actually pretty neat, because it is done side-to-side, which gives it a fair amount of horizontal stretch. It has some variety, with a pattern of sc, flo sc, dc (which I changed to hdc to get gauge), and flo dc (hdc if you're me).

I have also made a lot of progress on the doily I'm doing to see if I can (using size 30 with a 10 hook). I have no idea what I will do with it, not being much of a doily person and all. They are pretty fun to make, though. I nice change of pace from yarn. I also finally started a long-overdue baby afghan, but I can't discuss that here. Though since I haven't announced this blog, no one is reading anyway!

Hoping to get help on the progress bars from some Ravelry genius.

Argh...progress bars (or not)

So I have spent way too much time today trying to add Ravelry progress bars to my sidebar here. Even Pete tried tonight. And we have gotten nowhere, unless you count error messages as being somewhere.

Progress bars are these cute little...bars...that show how far you are on crochet (or knit, but that's not me) projects entered in Ravelry. I've got my API. I copied the code, I pasted the code in the head, I got an error message. I searched the forums for more info. I found a patch. I found the offending code. I removed it. I pasted the patch at the end as per instructed. I got an error message.

I don't have time for this. I remember back, before kids, when I actually knew my computer inside and out. When I deleted/changed code to save corrupted files. I now realize this was a good twelve years ago. How embarrassing. Now I can't even get a section of "copy this" code to work. *sigh*

And now it's jammie time, story time, bedtime, and crochet time. I can handle these.

It's raining...

it's pouring. And there is no better time to SCOOTER. E-man and T-bone could not resist the lure of the rain. Meanwhile, I can't get warm after spending 2.5 hours in a cold room sewing crayon holders at school this morning. I think we will be having minestrone for dinner. Nothing like hot soup on a cold damp day.

T-bone made a rain gauge (for a cub scout belt loop) on Monday, and he is very very excited about all the rain he is collecting. Yes, he was steered to this week for a reason...

Lettuce

Yum. Fresh, organic lettuce right from the garden. T-bone will actually eat lettuce on a sandwich as long as it's from our yard. So at 6:45 this morning I was in the rain picking lettuce, in my jammies. Unfortunately, lettuce is one of many things E-man has decided he no longer likes.

Even better is the fact that we didn't even plant this. It reseeded from the lettuce we planted last year. I used a lettuce mix from Renee's Garden. Their seeds do really well here. All in all, a happy success--the boys and I love to suddenly discover lettuce growing amidst the weeds. The weeds have now been pulled, several times! 

Eagle Rock

Yesterday was a beautiful day, and we managed to get out. After a bit of a detour to Solstice Canyon (closed til May), we ended up at Topanga State Park. Where we should have gone first, since it is so much closer and really nice. We took sandwiches, saw some deer hopping fences, visited the nature center, and then took off on the nature hike. And then to Eagle Rock. Yes, both boys walked all the way to and from Eagle Rock. With a bit of whining, but they thought the shale outcroppings were way cool.

It was such a nice day we weren't the only ones to have this idea, but we did get a spot in the lot. And of course, this is one of the parks good old Arnold wants to close. It already doesn't accept the state parks pass (what exactly is the purpose of a pass when it's not accepted by the same dept selling it?). What is this guy angling for? Other than slashing public school funding, again, I mean.

On a completely different note: the radishes T-bone and I planted last weekend are up!

Finches and more finches

Oooh...my first entry. And how exciting it is.

Anyway, T-bone and I chose this bird feeder when we were up in San Jose for the holidays. It took me a month to get it up, but they like it. It is usually covered in Lesser Goldfinches and House Finches, except when the Coopers Hawk is around. The Mourning Doves and White-Crowned Sparrows enjoy everything that falls. 

Our chubby squirrel (wonder why?) likes it too, but he is so funny to watch it's OK.

The boys counted seven birds on it at once. Or one chubby squirrel.