The weather this time of year is so unpredictable. Mid week it was spring like, just a light sweater needed, then it snowed on Friday, but it is gone already. It rained off and on overnight Friday, most of Saturday, and is still raining, hard at times. It was supposed to reach 58 yesterday and drop only to 52 last night. It didn’t get there, but I think the current temperature is supposed to hold overnight and reach near 70 today. But we have rain in the forecast for days and they still haven’t opened our culvert at the top of the driveway, since my report in December, my call in January, and another report this month. I may have to try to dig it out with the tractor bucket which never produces good results, even if I get the opening in the right place, the pipe itself will be at least partially blocked and I lack the strength to hand dig it out.
The 5th chick, the one I didn’t think was healthy, did not survive, however the remaining 14 are hale and hearty, active, eating, drinking, and trying to see if they can jump over the sides of the brooder. I suspect that I will have to put a lid on the box sooner than I expected. Two of the little replacements look like little penguins, dark on top, white on the bottom.
Two are uniformly charcoal gray. The adults are going to be so different from the current flock. Speaking of them, egg production is finally up a bit with the lengthening days. Yesterday, I got 5 eggs, two olive, three brown, so more of the hens are laying again. That is the most I have gotten since before the molt last fall.
I finished another square for the blanket and have it wet blocked, and another nearly done. One more and I will have used all the yarn spun for it in January and February and will have 9 blocks knit, blocked, and labelled. Tomorrow starts a new month and new breeds to spin. Since the March challenge requires a silk content, it can’t be part of the blanket and is beautiful blues and purples, so I think I will spin white breeds for the blanket challenge. There won’t be a third challenge this month, it was just too complicated to keep up with and I felt like I was not fully participating to skip over all the conversation in the thread and they were a very chatty bunch. If I can’t engage fully, I will just stand away. The Jenkins group I have come to “know” and enjoy the chatter a couple times a day. There will be more time to spin, knowing that soon the garden is going to demand more of my time and spinning will become an evening or passenger in the car activity only with less time indoors to commit to it. Enough will get done to create a square or two for the blanket, but not enough to get the entire blanket done by the end of the year.