My owls

have toes. Or maybe my toes have owls. Whichever it is, I am really happy with them.

 

 

 

On Thursday,

I had a visitor show up in the mail. Wandering Woolomena gets to be here for a short visit/adventure until she heads out to her next stop.

 

Since I was in the midst of making cookies when the box arrived, she and Astrid helped supervise and inspect the finished product.

 

On Friday the three of us went to the grocery store, and the two of them were rather bossy about what was put into the basket and where.

 

On Saturday morning Woolie went with me help with stuff at church,

 

and then she inspected the "Birthday Party in a bag" project we do every year during Epiphany for the local Women's Shelter.

 

After that we stopped off to get my hair trimmed,

 

and then went home to fill water and food dishes inside and out. Woolie was glad she was inside when the turkeys came along for a snack. From there it was a pretty non-adventuresome Saturday afternoon.

This morning Hubband

looked out our window down to the bird bath and said, "It looks like it got too cold for the birdbath to cope last night." (It was some number of degrees below zero, but I don't know how many exactly.) I came over to look, and sure enough, it looked like it was frozen over and then snowed upon. I can't say I was terribly happy about this since it meant either the birdbath was defective/broken, or that the outlet had broken or gone defective overnight. Later on I went out with a pitcher of water, my gloves and camera to document and remedy the situation. It turns out that nothing had gone belly up, nor was the water frozen over.
I have seen steam rising out of the water on some cold mornings and I think we just had a great visible example of science. I think the steam froze around the rim like it has before, but since it was so cold the ice crystals just made for a catalyst for more frost/ice to form a bridge. The ice is actually sitting about a fourth of an inch above the water.

 

Yep, there are a lot of pictures and they look almost all the same, but couldn't decide which one(s) I liked the best. Totally worth doing the embiggen thing too.(I promise, there are more I didn't share.)

 

 

The last two owls

(I am thinking maybe I shouldn't try taking their picture when I am so tired. Or maybe when it isn't so dark. Or something.)

The previously noted

hat should reach its new,picked the yarn and pattern herself, owner on Thursday. It should be done drying/blocking in the morning, at which point is will go into an envelope, be dropped off at the post office and work its way through the proper channels to her mailbox. I can be fairly assured of the one day mailing time-frame since it only has about eighty miles to go (of course, they always say two to three days, but I don't recall it ever taking more than overnight, even when mail had to go 250 miles to Duluth).
DTE picked this project several years ago and after I got it home and read the pattern, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the idea that I wasn't a good enough knitter to pull it off. Either I was wrong, have become a much better knitter in the intervening years, have more confidence in my knitting skills now than I did then, or some combination there of. I'm guessing it doesn't really matter which, DTE will just be happy to have another completed hat to add to her collection.

Outside

Inside

Somebody is on their way home,

and is hungry. They have spent all afternoon and evening moving to and through four airports, with not a whole lot of time in any one of them, except of course for the first one. Fortunately, I know how to fix the hungry problem.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Spinich Lemon Orzo Soup, except I added two poached, chopped chicken breasts and adjusted the seasonings a bit.

Early this morning,

but not so early that the sun wasn't up yet (aka about 7:45) it was cold. Well, cold is relative and a perspective thing, but it was 5°F which I decided was cold, especially when I decided to step out on the deck without a coat.

 

 

 

I think it was worth it though. (If the whole "click to embiggen" thing is still working, it is totally worth it.)

The sun

was out for part of the day. Fortunately, I was in the right place at the right time.