There’s a riot growing outside my front door and it’s slowly moving into the adjacent studio…

I hear you’ve been wearing the wool beanie a lot (the first beanie that I ever knit, which wound up being too short, that I nonetheless gave you for Christmas). Well, although it may be very sentimental to you, I insist you try this one that I knit the other night. It’s the perfect neutral Shetland virgin wool, and it’smells so rich with lanolin, you’d think they built the wool from the extract up. It’s soft and I didn’t make ANY mistakes either. It’s so genius. And it’s all YOURS. Enjoy!

We aren’t! We, being everyone in this household besides myself. We like to carry little palm-sized circuitboards around all day, clenched in the grimy sweat of dirty boy hands; we have a pizza box full of different sized circuitboards in the boy’s room (the brains of a computer mouse, calculator, motherboard, to name a few); we leave them at the center of little robot crime scenes across the living room floor (and it really hurts to step on them, DAMNIT FORD).

All this deconstruction has led to a massive reconstruction project of knee-patching, due to all the time Ford spends on the floor laboring over his electronic hardware. Of all designing I could put into a knee patch, I never would have guessed he’d ask for circuitboards. Never in my life. So here we go:

Git yerself 2 layers to quilt with: fleece makes it squishy, cotton is a nice outer layer. Kids pick the colors if they’re lucky. Cut to size (to cover at least an inch around the perimeter of the holes? Use your judgement). I used the regular straight-stitch foot on my sewing machine to embroider the circuitboard design thingy, then I sewed around the perimeter of the patch. I then overlapped the edges with the cotton, ironed everything flat.


Next, I cut a piece of Heatbon UltraHold iron-on adhesive to match the shape. Affixed it to the bottom of the patch.

Then I ironed it onto the pants. I had to REALLY IRON that puppy down, with so many layers. A real pain because I’m pretty impatient. That’s why this isn’t much of a craft blog but I’m learning to find a quiet meditative religion in the whole craft process. Anyhow,

I decided to blbindstich (is that right?) around the edges, to really secore those edges down.

And viola

they turned out pretty cute he thinks, I think so too

I could shop for new pants. This rubs me the right way, though. Who doesn’t like being rubbed the right way?

It’s midnight and I can’t sleep. The shelf above my desk retains a wall of towering fabric scraps, folded in assembly and ready to be all cut and sewn up. Into what? Perhaps a glow-in-the-dark circuitboard horse? Why not!

Cutting through thick wool felt is so satisfying, like the slow and steady joy of learning to cut through paper in preschool. And the way it sounds, like horses chomping on warm hay.

The surplus yarn in the office here is Fall-friendly and begging to be touched, wishing it were warm enough to get all knit up into scarves and pants and hats. Otherwise, it makes great manes and tales. But do you notice that Chas is wearing fleece?? After eight months of flip-flops I found myself wearing wool socks under my Air Jesus’ and I felt so…back in northern California. Layering is fun. 60 degrees F feels so nice, so much better than 90 degrees in mid-October.

A circuitboard made of white foam and leftover yarn that Ford’s friends made during his birthday party; Chas’ wild volcano painting, originally with volatile sound effects; A featherwreath adorned by Betty and Boo; Ford’s rock collection: “magic rock,” amethyst geode, coral from Galveston, birthday geode from CZ…

Our Fall nature table. Little Ivy Elizabeth Walker, Ford’s favorite character last year from The Village, sitting on the resting rock in the middle of a little Hill Country glade; Burr oak and Post oak acorns from around town; Edwards limestone; Ball moss from everywhere around town; chickenfeathers and unknown native grass, what I pretend is a White-Tailed deer…

at Ivy’s feet: “HEXAGONS!” that Chas found on our walk through the neighborhood (courtesy of a sunbleached, long-dead armadillo skeleton)…

Gretel, another storybook favorite, plays cavalier atop Big Billy Goat Gruff; and no nature table in our house is grounded without a chicken.

The chicks are hardy in the heat. This has been the hottest week this summer and they’ve spent the whole time outdoors in their new tractor. I’ll return home at noon from the gym, walk barefoot to the edge of the deck, and peek down on them. Looking back at me are three chicks that are always an ounce heavier, more feathered and panting with open mouths. Every few hours I give them cooler, fresher water. I love the way they peep quietly as I move about, rinsing and rearranging.

We’ve been terrestrial lately, despite the heat outside, tending droopy plants, cultivating the soil, digging. We have a few good books to inspire more curiosity and garden-play: Diary of a Worm, by Doreen Cronin, and Thumbelina, by Hans Christian Anderson. Ford digs Thumbelina. Yak yak. We haven’t yet made it to Microcosmos yet. Then, of course, we have all the nonfiction we could need at home. The huge sci/nature nonfiction library in our bedroom: that would be my fault.

This afternoon, Ford and Chas helped me pin together a 3x4ish compost bin out of some remaining galvanized builder’s cloth. Once we’d finished, they helped me rake leaves and pile them into the compost bin. Somtimes they’d run through the piles and the lawn would look no different than it had before I’d organized the chaos, and a fuse would blow in my brain, but I’ve been more mindful of my wiring today. I’ll have to write more about that later, about what it’s like lately, ramming horns all day with the four year-old rebel. But right now I’m slipping like mercury through planks of burnout. And I’m falling asleep. But god, he has his Hallmark moments, too:

I’m sensing that a few of you may be brewing a little chicken ideas in your mind, dreaming up having a backyard brood of your own. After all, it’s a great idea. Pest control. Companionship. Eggs. That cute sound of gossiping hens in the middle of the day. It’s really cute. Well, if you are thinking about housing options, let me share a few links I’ve used.

We’re building what they call a chicken tractor. It’s a henhouse that you can move throughout the yard, so the chickens always have a fresh patch to scratch on. They’re just as safe as a regular henhouse.
I like the ones below, which obviously required more time and labor to build. We don’t have much of that around here, which is why ours is, well, amateurish. But the hens will love it anyway. Here’s my thirty second link list:

Chicken tractors
Chicken tractor project idea
& etc

And here’s an article about the benefits of using a chicken tractor to benefit your soil.

I’m sure you can google all you want and find a good clutch of ideas out there. I say go for it. And let me know if you, too, decide to get a few chicks. We’re having a blast! Now, off to add the chickenwire…

I got a blob of paint in my hair. On top of my head it looks like green bird poo. How does one get exterior water-based latex paint out of hair? Or maybe I’ll just have fun explaining to people how it got there. Any suggestions? It’s just not silly enough that I got it while painting a henhouse.

edited to add: the paint came off after I washed and dried my hair. I was able to slide it out gently, running the globs down the strands of hair 😉

Damon thinks the chicks will be gone in less than four weeks. Such shallow hopes! Still, he spent another day grunting in the oven outside, throwing lumber around like an ogre and eyeballing his way through his final weekend project. Which was more a honeydo than a “project” in his queue. But the reality was that I was too preoccupied doing God-remembers-what inside with the kids, probably sitting inside under a ceiling fan with a child on each lap, sipping iced tea, laughing about how crazy Daddy was to be outside in the sauna, sweating over a heap of lumber.

When he’d thrown in the towel for the day, after completing the first phase of construction, I stood back and grinned at the expressive fabrication. I’m usually a perfectionist, but I found the artsy, passive-aggressive unevenness oddly charming. Or maybe I was just very grateful that he had spent his entire Sunday afternoon laboring over my whimsical chicken fancy.

This design is an A-frame chicken tractor. It has hanndles on the bottom so you can move it around the yard. Encircling this frame that he built will be chicken wire, even on the bottom, for predators. We’ll find some scrap wood and I’ll get the kids to help me nail together a ladder, so the hens can scamper up to the little roost at the top. And looking at it now, this will certainly be a feat–can you see what I mean? Look how steep that grade is going to be?! Oh, dear. And hopefully there will be enough room for three hens, but we can always add another loft, if necessary. We, meaning Damon.

So, this evening at the local DIY megaplexx he helped me wrangle children and pick out a buttery avocado exterior paint that will weatherproof the lumber. Such good taste. And all for a mere four weeks. P-sha!

There’s a Storm Trooper maintaining his aquatic fleet.
Waiting for Chas to finish napping so we can go out to play. These short, quiet little projects are sweet fillers in a day jammed with chaos, amped-up play and an onslaught of noise.