Shut up, Sam.

Doctor Who Tour de Fat!

Just came back from biking in the Tour de Fat!

It was great, and we did end up managing to get all our costumes together so we went as a big Doctor Who group.

My dad was the TARDIS, my mom was a weeping angel, I was Amy Pond (I think I was the least necessary or recognizable of the group and I had to wear a miniskirt and high heels so in hindsight I wish I'd gone as a female Castiel XD) and my brother was the Tenth Doctor.

There were a surprising amount of DW fans around, IMO, and people were either shouting stuff about police boxes and police (if they didn't know about Doctor Who) or shouting about DW and the Doctor and stuff. We even met a guy who showed us his tattoo of the TARDIS going through a wormhole on his side. It was really cool, a good way to see just how many people were fans of DW!

So anyway. I had a lot of fun, I definitely want to do this again next year (without the uncomfortable and inconvenient costume).

Back home!

(This is a post from yesterday, written on the flight home, with the assumption that we would have internet when we got back, though we did not. So it’s a little late to be posting, but better late than never. Plus, I’ve been neglecting this blog too much).

Well, we’re finally (almost, actually, since I’m writing this on the plane, via Word document) home and it’s time to reminisce about the trip.

All in all, it was great. We got to go to the pool, the beach, the zoo, Disneyland, the old neighborhood, and to just hang out in California for a week. I brought my tablet so I drew a bit (though no animating got done, I’ll have to catch up on that once we’re home and I have an actual drawing setup) and I also continued to work on The Scamble, which I will talk about more in a bit, though just sort of idly messing around with ideas for it rather than trying to work stuff out since most of the time I was too busy with other things.

It was hot, of course, and I could live with the heat but it was not enjoyable. We went to the beach a couple of times, and it was great swimming in the water and being in the waves, and we went to the pool too, though that was less exciting and get-buffeted-around-by-water-y. Basically, we did plenty of water-related things to survive the 95-or-so degree temperatures.  

We visited all the old haunts, the Wild Animal Park (now named the Safari Park and unfortunately very disappointing), went on a walk along the shallow river in Fallbrook (though the paths were eroded and without Fang, who died a couple weeks ago, it was lacking) and, of course, spent a day at Disneyland (which has remained the same and was great).

Oh, and I saw a live coyote, a dead coyote, some big owl with feathery ears (possibly a great horned owl, though I’m not sure what their range is), plenty of lizards and other small birds, heard a rattlesnake, and of course saw tons of animals at the zoo.

Now I’m on the plane to home, gazing out over some dry, tan-colored desert-y place, possibly California or maybe Utah (I suck at geography, however, so if we were flying over the moon I might not know) and thinking about various creative and homestead-related projects.

I’m dreading all the processing work that surely awaits us at home (not to mention my stupid fall allergies), and the backlog of fruits and vegetables to be picked and preserved (there’ll be tomatoes to sauce, raspberries to pick and freeze, zucchini to harvest and dump on unsuspecting neighbors, and maybe even corn or onions or potatoes to process, who knows). We also have the half (or maybe quarter, I’m not completely sure) a pig that we bought from a local small farm here waiting for us when we get home, and while I’m looking forwards to being able to eat pork and bacon and ham and such (since lately it’s been nothing but hamburgers, and for the past week in California I’ve been almost 100% vegetarian*) but it’s going to be a challenge because we’ll have to learn how to make the bacon ourselves (which sounds like a fun and terrifying adventure at the same time) .

 *I’ve been eating meat only if I know where it comes from, nothing store-bought.

We’ll also be home just two days before the Tour De Fat bike race (in which people dress up in crazy costumes and bike around  town) and we have a great group costume theme thingymagig planned, all Doctor Who related, me being Amy, my brother being the tenth doctor (because he has some strange grudge against the eleventh or something, I don’t really know), my dad being a dalek and my mom being a weeping angel (with the TARDIS being pulled behind us on the bike trailer).

However, since we have only two days and we have barely anything done I expect to end up going as Castiel, from Supernatural, (this year’s Halloween costume) since I already have a trenchoat about the right color and of course a tie, white shirt and black pants are easy to come by. I probably shouldn’t be so pessimistic, but at the very least we’ll be able to go as a half-completed Superwho group.

(Sort of) speaking of Halloween, November is coming soon (though I can hardly believe it’s almost fall again) and I was excited to realize that I might have a story to write for NaNoWriMo again (which is great, because I was completely out of story ideas all summer and feeling like I wouldn’t have any stories to write for NaNo), the Scamble!

Of course, I have to finish working on the world and characters and premise and finally plot in two months but now my goal is to have the world and story (though I’m not sure how I’m gonna write it, I was sort of thinking of making it a series-like thing with separate books for all of the Scamblers’ adventures) finished by November. And I think once we get home I’ll have enough time to really work through the current snag I’ve hit! (And even if I don’t get a plotline finished before NaNo, I think this is the sort of story where I might be able to try and write it as I go, without any storyline whatsoever).

Even if I don’t get even the world finished before November, I think I still want to try to write for NaNoWriMo, and I will probably just end up kidnapping some of my half-completed characters and throwing them into some sketchily-built world and hope it works (which, now that I say it, sounds like a horrible idea but a lot of Wrimos write that way, right?).

Either way, I’m pretty excited about November, and heck, even winter (more time for artistic work, and it’s perfect timing as I’ve started to want to work more and more on improving my writing and drawing just this last week) despite the short, cold, greenery-less days it brings.

So, I suppose I should actually introduce the Scamble more now, which is the current name of a story/world mix project I’ve been working on for exactly (unless I am wrong in which case I am extremely sorry about my horrid math skills) eighteen days now.

It started out one day as one of those great flash-of-inspiration things that never actually happens to anyone (except this time it did) where pretty much the whole world and premise for the story and characters just appeared out of the blue (in the case of the Scamble, while doodling a completely unrelated  scribble of the vaguely-mammalian creature at the top of this post) on the 12^th of August at, if I had to guess, 1:00-2:00 PM (I know this because I drew it right as we were leaving to go to a concert). After the initial flash of inspiration I only had to work a bit on the mechanics of the world (which were already thought up, previous little ideas for how magic would work and for how animal-people might look that I’d thought about but never had a world to use them in) before moving on to characters (the current challenge for me and the bane of my existence) and just exactly what the Scamble is.

Ah, the Scamble. I’m not quite sure myself what it is, but I suppose I should explain the basic idea behind it.

It is a sort of, magic store. A junkyard for magical objects, Robert or Maggie might call, but really what they do is they retrieve, find, repair or destroy magical and cursed objects (find or repair in the case of the former and destroy in the case of the latter).

Yes, in the Scamble world (which at the moment is modern-day earth) there is magic (and animal people, called fen), and it is a very valuable thing (or rather, magical objects and other minor magical things like spellbinds and charms are) but also a very dangerous thing, in the case of curses, cursed objects, and pain magic, or even fire and accidental magic.

I still have yet to get all the characters worked out, or exactly what the people at the Scamble do (or what is even needed for people to do) and whether or not they are related to the government at all, and I’ve started to stray pretty close to Warehouse 13 territory, I think, so I’ve been sort of cautiously tiptoeing ahead, afraid to make any big decisions about the story or world (which is like being afraid to go out of the house in case you are locked out even when you have the keys in your hand) but once I get home I’ve promised myself I’ll work on it more, and more seriously, and I’ll not be afraid to be decisive about the world and what goes and what stays.

Basically, California is great, but it’s also gonna be great to be back home, and it’s really, really great to be finally back to working on stories and worlds and writing!

So, as I look out the airplane window over shadowy canyons and red, scrubby hills crisscrossed with winding roads obscured by the occasional white wisp of a cloud (can you tell I love flying and being able to get a bird’s eye view of everything?), I bid you few people reading this goodbye, and good luck writing (or drawing or singing or dancing or sculpting or picture-taking or sewing or anything-ing)!

Wait what when did time pass?

So apparently I am really bad at time (actually I'm convinced it has something to do with the TARDIS and amnesia) and we're flying to California! Tomorrow! I thought we were going in like a week or something but apparently not!

This is actually really bad timing because A) I have just started really seriously working on The Scamble (work that requires me to write shit down, in fact), B) I have just started to get used to my new self-appointed duties as raspberry picker and processor and C) I don't really feel like traveling at all after that trip to Ireland.

Nonetheless we are leaving tomorrow for California and will be there for a week or so (not sure how many days exactly).
I will bring my tablet and computer but I still have a feeling this will mess up my work on The Scamble (and the El Paso AMV though it was barely being worked on in the first place), which sucks because I've just gotten into the groove of this whole "writing down the mechanics of the world" thing.

Can you tell I'm not that enthusiastic about this trip?

I'm sure it will be nice when we get there, though, and I'm looking forwards to the ocean and stuff.

Bikes and Bows

Got a new bike today - finally.

I haven't ridden one in so long, years probably, so it was weird to just go out, buy one, and start riding again.
I like how much easier it is to bike and how little effort it takes to go so far, and especially now with my fall allergies it's better than running because I don't get as much pollen and crap in my lungs, but I still don't really like it as much as running - it's a bit nerve-wracking and hard for me to control a bike, and not as nice as running in that way (I almost crashed twice trying to navigate small spaces) and it isn't as fun as running, for me. I guess it doesn't do the whole endorphin release thing that running does (if running does do that, I don't remember)? But it still was a workout (for me especially because I'm way too out of shape) and it was really great biking around up to other neighborhoods with the view of the plains there.

After biking my dad and brother went out back to shoot arrows, and I joined them. It fun and challenging (and a little scary once you realize that despite the dull, practically nonexistent tip the arrows we were using could still go through cloth and probably skin). I finally got the hang of it after about maybe 20 shots and actually hit (and got the arrow to stick into) the target. I did however whack the inside of my arm plenty of times with the bowstring until I managed a good stance. I've got a nice big bruise on the inside of my elbow now. Despite that, I want to practice more - it was fun and archery like a nice hobby/skill, even if I'm only derping around in the backyard with a bow we got off of craigslist.

Well, anyway, not much else to write about. It's been nice out the last couple of days, not blisteringly hot like it's been most of the summer. I also saw the first Canada Geese since spring today, the first big sign of winter. I've just gotten into the groove of summer and it's almost fall. Figures.

I've been slacking a little less working on the rabbit cages and the first one is closeishkindofnotreallybutnottotallyveryextremelyfarawayatleast from being done, and I think I might've just managed to work out the big snarl of character creation with the Scamble (a new story I've been working on) and hopefully there won't be many more tangles with that. Art-wise I haven't animated anything in a while and I keep telling myself I'll finally work on that genderswapped Psych minicomic I have thumbnailed out and ready to go, but I don't do anything and I just keep feeling more and more guilty about not drawing or or being horrible at art. Which of course makes me want to draw even less. Ugh. I wish my inner asshole/slavedriver/nitpickingsonofabitch would just let me do whatever I want without guilting me about it all the time (even if all I want to do is watch Teen Wolf) >:I

And, uh, yeahhhh... I finished watching Supernatural a while ago and since my Tumblr dash has been covered in Teen Wolf stuff lately I decided to try and watch it, despite the name. I still feel kind of embarrassed and idiotic when I say "I'm a fan of Teen Wolf", even though I like the show and I think the general consensus is that it's a good one.

Anyway, yeah, life is average to good here. Just pretty uneventful.
- Willow

More fruit is being harvested, more work is being procrastinated on, and more chickens are being raised.

 

The first whispers of fall are here, in the form of cooler days and nights, and dew on the grass in the morning. I'm glad for a break from the unusually stifling heat but sad to know that summer will be over soon, and it's a bit of a shock to realize it's August already.

The raspberries have started to produce more, and so have the feral apple trees that we glean from each year -- and while the bounty is great it's another sign that autumn is getting nearer and nearer.

We've been picking and freezing (or jamming or eating or drying) tons of apples, zucchini and raspberries, and soon there'll be pears and asian pears to pick as well, as the trees out front have fruit that is starting to finally ripen.

Unlike nature, I've made no progress on any of my real life projects - neither the rabbit cages or the fox skin that has been sitting in the freezer for about two months have been touched since before the trip, and I really need to tan the latter and finish building the former.

I'm sort of stuck like a deer in the headlights on the fox skin thing, since I have absolutely no idea what to do and haven't yet got up the courage to pull the thing out, defrost it, and go from there. The fox was the first and so far only thing I've skinned, and it was at the same time surprisingly easy and surprisingly hard. The skin peeled away from the meat without much fuss in most places, but the hardest part was making the first few cuts into the skin, since I'm not very strong and the skin was. The fox was a young, roadkilled dog and unfortunately his head had been ruined and ground into the asphalt by cars. However, the rest of the pelt was fine so we have a headless, pawless skin in the freezer to tan now. I think I'll call him Vincent. I'm also happy to say that, aside from the pulverized and disgusting head, the only thing that really bothered me about skinning the fox was the smell, though I did feel bad for the fox at least he didn't just rot on the side of the road. Now he's been a good learning experience (and proof for me that I could theoretically butcher rabbits at home, since I was pretty much completely fine with the guts and such) and he'll make a nice little pelt to hang on the wall once he's tanned.

The tanning part is the tough part though. I'll eventually get around to it.

At least I have a good reason for not working on the rabbit cages or the fox skin -- animating! I think I'll restart or possibly just give up on the Sherlock thing, but I've started another animation, this time to "El Paso" by Daniell Ate the Sandwich, a local singer/songwriting here. I've been getting more and more youtube subscribers (I'm at 81 right now) and I hope I can finish the short one minute twenty-five second AMV before or soon after I hit 100 subs, but who knows. At the moment it's just a nice way to get better at animating and I'm learning a lot!

We're also going (more trips, yay >:I) to California in a couple of weeks, so that might throw a wrench in my plans of finishing it before too long, especially at the pace I'm going at which... isn't that fast (on the other hand, I've become a master at procrastination).

The gardens are looking great and they are as wild and overgrown and lush as usual...

 

 

...But there's not much to say about them - plants aren't the most interesting of things. 

However, there is some chicken-related news...

They are fuzzy and feathery and loud and annoying and we've actually had them for a while now but they are still so cute!

The four new chicks are Baji, Anna, Castiel and Chipmunk; A light Brahma, a Rhode Island Red, a Black Sex Link and an Easter Egger, respectively.

They have been growing like weeds and are already close to pullet stage, and they love running around the yard picking at the grass and clover, though they aren't quite sure about what is good food and what is not - at the moment they all seem to think that dried leaves and bark chips are quite the delicious and rare find, but they'll learn in time.

Well, that's about all that's been going on around here lately, and I don't ever know how to end these, so, uh...

Have a good day, everyone?
-Willow

Home sweet home.

Finally, finally, home!

It's so nice to be back, under the big, beautiful blue skies of Colorado and in our nice house with all our animals and electronics and things. And oh, how I missed you, laptop! Good lord do I hate typing on touchscreens.

So now there's a TON of stuff to do, not just unpacking and getting settled in after the insane trip but also taking care of the garden and doing all the stuff that was already on the to-do list BEFORE we left for two weeks to let everything get overrun and insane. Like tanning the fox skin sitting in our freezer, or animating, or finishing a little mini comic project that has sat around getting dusty for wayyyy too long, or making the rabbit cages that need to be made.

Speaking of rabbit cages, I came to the realization this morning that there really isn't anything keeping me from getting rabbits anymore -- no big trip overseas to use as an excuse for not getting them, nothing holding me back from starting my own rabbitry. I'm both stupidly excited and unreasonably terrified by this.

In other equally terrifying and exciting news, the garden has literally exploded while we were gone.
Well, not literally, but close enough. There are overgrown plants everywhere and the tiny sunflower sprouts that were scattered around the yard when we left have shot up and grown into monstrous, bee-attracting flowering things. The hollyhocks have also flowered, along with the lamb's ear and all of the old overwintered carrots and the weeds which were left unattended over the trip. The zucchini and such have grown so much and there's an unidentified squash of some sort that in only two weeks managed to sprout out of the compost pile, sneak through a garden bed full of potatoes and volunteer catmint, and climb over the neighbor's fence into their yard.
 The other, purposefully grown plants are doing well, too, and the raspberries need some serious managing as they've finally started to grow and fruit and have managed to escape and grow around, under or over the ropes we put up to stop them from doing just that. The potatoes, tomatoes, onions, and miscellaneous other plants in the garden have also gotten a lot bigger over the two weeks we were gone, and now the yard looks like the perfect, beautiful, fruit-bearing jungle it's supposed to be.

I've really missed the chickens and the cat and the dog (who missed us even more, the poor, separation-anxiety-stricken thing) and of course the house. And I've gained a new appreciation for deserts and arid places with warm sun and big skies like Colorado. Which surprises me because I love cold, wintry, cloudy, rainy weather (or at least, I did before we spent two weeks in a place that is like that constantly).

Speaking of Ireland, and London, I should probably talk about that for a while now, huh?

Well, the trip didn't really feel like a vacation to me so much as a mission to see as many things as possible in two weeks -- there was no real relaxing, just running around seeing things (not that those things weren't completely amazing and awesome). But it was also not very vacation-like because I, at least, didn't really need a vacation. If anything, being away from home for two weeks just made me love (and, while we were gone, miss) home even more, and realize how happy I am where I am. It's just so wonderful here, and it's a nice thing to realize that I'd rather be here in good ol' Colorful Colorado than in London or a small, quaint, Irish village.

Ireland, speaking of Ireland, was beautiful, and green, and constantly rainy, which was a godsend for us, having come from a place that was literally on fire when we left it. The grass and forests were lush and it was so cool to be able to just hop in the car and drive a couple miles to a medieval castle that you could walk around in, or to the rocky, windswept beaches of Ireland (god do I love the ocean) or to a forest full of strange new plants and animals (if it weren't for the temperature, in some of the woods we walked through you'd think you were in some tropical rain forest, with all the rain and the giant, mossy trees with their novel, strange-shaped leaves).
 In fact for the first few days it wasn't even the amazing landscape and all the crazy places you could go to that were the most interesting. It was just the fact that you were in a different country, where even if they didn't really speak a different language, they had accents and drove on the other side of the road and used kilometers instead of miles and had different electric outlets and toilets and currency and all the stores were EUROPEAN STORES and they actually sold gooseberries in them because holy fridge you were in IRELAND.

Also, did I mention I loved, loved, loved, loved being near the ocean? It was so cool to look down off of the edge of a sheer cliff to see the wave-battered rocks below and think of mermaids (the real, evil type of course) and sea monsters and sharks.
 I think I must be a Selkie or something and they just hid my seal skin really well. That would explain it.

London was also great, though by the time we got there, after a week of running around Ireland like mad, I, at least, was pretty exhausted and felt like I needed a couple days of rest, not a week of traveling around the city on foot.

We got into London late on a Friday night, I believe, so as we stumbled around pulling luggage and trying to find the apartment where we were going to stay at we passed people everywhere, forming long lines to get into night clubs and hanging out smoking and laughing and bustling around (speaking of smoking, I don't think I've ever been in a place as smoky as London! Yuck. Everywhere, cigaret smoke. I think I breathed in more smoke in one week in London than I ever have in my whole life).
 I was very intimidated by the city at first, but by the third day in London I was really liking it and was unfazed by all the hustle and bustle and people. It was so cool to see all the awesome graffiti everywhere, and all the people hanging out, and to shop in the Spitalfield's Market, and I didn't mind the grungyness of the city, even where we were (which was pretty grungy).

I also loved the pigeons there. I don't really know why, and I kind of felt like an insane person for constantly freaking out about the pigeons there, but I found the pigeons really, really awesome and fascinating, and in fact they are the only other thing that I wish we had here (the first being an ocean, of course). It's just so interesting how diverse they are, looks-wise, when they aren't even domesticated. There are brown pigeons and grey pigeons and black pigeons and white-speckled pigeons and all sorts of other mixtures of those colors and us humans didn't even take and make them that way.  It's really fascinating (and makes it interesting to think about drawing or writing about them).

We went to the British Museum, the National Gallery, rode on the London Eye, saw Big Ben, saw Buckingham Palace and the changing of the guard, walked across the Thames, and went on a small Sherlock Holmes-themed tour to the real 221B Baker Street, the Sherlock 221B Baker Street (actually 187* North Gower Street), Speedy's Cafe and Bart's Hospital.
 *Fun fact: 187 is the penal code for murder. 

And in the middle of it all we all got sick, so we lost a day stuck inside with some generic cold or another, watching TV (which, while you expect it to be all sorts of BBC stuff, Doctor Who, Sherlock and other British things, turned out to be Star Trek: Voyager and NCIS).

But aside from that one day of sickness everything was great, and it was just amazing to go into the British Museum or the National Gallery and just see all these amazing works of art or old artifacts just there, out in the open, for the public to view free of charge (I got to see, in person, a bog man, a Monet, a handful of ancient Greek statues and a Van Gogh, among other amazing things).

All that said, though, I was so happy when we finally got home last night, not only because it meant a chance to sleep after staying up for over 24 hours straight, but also because I really did miss Colorado,
and the gardens, and the animals, and now that we're home I'm excited to settle back into the old rhythm of things, to start drawing again (two weeks of doodling without any references takes a surprisingly huge toll on your ability to draw, I've noticed, so I've got to re-learn a few things about anatomy), to start working in the garden more, and to finish some of my old projects and start new ones, such as sorting through and editing and uploading some of the videos and pictures I took of the trip, or looking for a place to get some Champagne D'argent rabbits.

It's great to be home. It really is.

Supernatural

I've been watching a ton of Supernatural lately, and since I love paintings, painting, wolverines, and Cas and Dean, I decided to draw one last thing before we head off to Ireland without my precious computer and tablet (or any real drawing supplies at all).

So here you go, wolverinified Castiel and Dean. Inspired mainly by the episode "Free to be You and Me" and especially that scene where Cas appears in Dean's mirror, a few inches a way from him, and Dean turns to him and says: "Cas, we've talked about this. Personal space?"

Yes I might kind of ship them. I want them to go hunting together more! They're such a hilarious and adorable duo.

Ireland!

So we're going to Ireland and England in a couple of days.

So I'll be pretty internet-less from the 29th of June to the 16th of July.

Not that that will make a difference here since this blog has once again become slightly abandoned.

Animations!

Little preview of the animation I'm working on. It's looking good so far, I think, even though I have no idea what I'm doing.

Now, for a completely different topic, somewhere I must have lost my Californian resistance to heat because it's way too hot outside for me. A few seconds in the sun and I'm sweating buckets. I like the food and green growing stuff of summer, but the heat is something I wont miss once winter is here again. Augh.

Oh, and I quartered a chicken today, with a little help from the interwebs and my dad. A lot easier than a rabbit to cut up, that's for sure!

A Nervous Tic Motion of the Head to the Left

 So I've finally gotten out of this stupid art/writing block I've been stuck in since forever, and now I've got ideas galore!

Well, galore-ish. But I am working on a new story involving crime-solving and shapeshifters!

But the most exciting thing is finally getting back into drawing and really enjoying it! For the longest time I've been so frustrated with drawing and hated my art, but I realized that it was because of the silly fake limitations and rules I've thought up -- art doesn't have rules! So from now on I'm going to draw whatever I want and know that there's no set-in-stone way of doing things.

Aren't realizations great? Of course, after the realization there's the whole "wow I have been such an idiot all this time" but that's awesome because it comes with such happiness and freedom.

Anyway, this whole art epiphany has been brought about by this awesome tumblr and the art and musings there.

 

In other news, I'm going to start working on an animation to this song, and with any luck I won't give up on it! Of course, it's the longest song on earth, but what did you expect? The lyrics fit perfectly!

And, a little backstory before the next bit of art spam: I have been watching/obsessed/in love with the BBC show Sherlock since The Richenbach Fall aired here in the US of A a few weeks ago, and awesome shows need fan art. But, since I can't draw humans, I've kind of chicken-ified the cast...

So here's some (older) drawings of chicken Sherlock and chicken John. Or, for those are fans of puns, Shercluck Holmes and John Bokkson.

Look at them, being awesome and stuff. Shercluck's a Sumatra and John is an Orpington, by the way.

And here's another, sillier, scribbly-er one because I actually really like how it came out...

John: Can we please not do this this time?

Sherlock: Do what?
John: You being all mysterious with your - cheekbones. And turning your coat collar up so you look cool.
Sherlock: I don't do that.
John: Yeah you do. 

Ah, gotta love those two.

Anyway...
Happy arting, everyone!

ALL the pests!

So for a while this spring has been nice -- pest free, full of fruits and vegetables producing way sooner than they should.

Not any more.

Now the mosquitoes are out and the mice are in. And both insects and rodents are very bold.

Also, I think the cat is broken. She spends all her time in the backyard rolling around the catnip that has taken over the lawn and then stumbles around in a drunken haze before falling asleep in her favorite chir. Meanwhile, the mice are getting increasingly bolder, causing me (and I don't even mind mice) to shriek in a surprisingly girly fashion.

I'm really pretty embarrassed by that shriek.

Thankfully, I think we managed to catch the mouse (no help from Zen!) that was responsible for all of this stuff. And even then he was really feisty and almost jumped out of the net he'd ran into. He was like a real life Martin the Warrior.

Unfortunately, our house is not Redwall, so he was relocated to the southwest end of the schoolyard in hopes he could survive off of the scraps dropped by the kids there and stop trying to rid our house of the evil tyrant wildcat Drugaddictcatzenia and her easy-to-surprise human minions.

Out in the garden, the strawberries are REALLY starting to produce. It's awesome. Soon we'll be sitting upstairs round a card table watching TV on Netflix and processing strawberries to freeze. I can't wait! Of course, soon I'll be saying I can't wait for the strawberry harvest to be over, but whatever.

Not much more progress on the rabbit cages, it was rainy yesterday and there's a couple big problems that need to be fixed with the current WIP cage before it can be finished, but maybe tomorrow we'll be able to fix it up.

And art and writing... urgh. I really, really want to write but I have absolutely zero ideas for anything. And drawing, on the other hand, is frustrating as heck because I have no consistent style or good way of doing lineart but I really do have a lot of ideas that I'd like to see drawn and finished. Grahhhh.

Updates and rabbit cage building part one

 So, it's been super busy here for the past few days and I haven't had time to blog for a while. BUT! I promised myself I would and so I will.

 First of all, Sybill's about back to normal now, so whatever it was that was ailing or slowing her down has passed and she's fine now. And it's kind of weird to say, but I'm happy that she's not dead or dying or even just sick or unhappy. I'm glad she's feeling better.

And second of all, there's been a wildfire raging to the northwest for a few days now, over 7000 acres burned and burning so far, I believe, and it's made finding the time to make rabbit cages a hassle since for a couple of days the air quality was too bad to go out in for long.

Here's a picture I took three or four days ago when the smoke was at it's worse. It looked like the freaking apocalypse was coming, but the wind shifted and soon after I took this picture the sky returned to looking fairly normal, or at least less orange and red and end of the world-y and more smoggy and smoky.

I also have a very long list of drawing/comic/animation projects that I want to get to, and me and my dad have finally started working on making the rabbit cages, and the garden has finally started to produce and all that plus the fact that our internet was out for most of the day today, making it impossible for me to blog before now... it's getting pretty busy around here.

 On a nicer, more relaxed and not insanely busy note, we have a yard full of clover and both me and my dad are very good at spotting four leafed ones, so I've started to collect and dry them (I've even found two five-leaf clovers so far, though one unfortunately wilted). My plans are to continue collecting and drying four-leaf clovers throughout the summer and then making cards or something along those lines with the dried plants. If anything, I'll end up with an impressive collection of rare leafy things. It should be fun, and since sometimes all it takes for me is a casual walk past a patch of clover to find a four-leafed one, it's certainly not a time-consuming or expensive hobby.

In other news, the first few strawberries of summer have started to ripen -- and the mosquitoes aren't even out yet! As tedious, annoying, boring and itchy as picking and processing strawberries can be, I'm honestly pretty excited! And of course after eating store-bought strawberries for so long our own amazingly sweet and tender berries taste like concentrated joy. Unfortunately, the robins agree, but Zen's been doing her job and chasing them off with a fair amount of success, so hopefully soon we can get rid of the bird netting without much worry and start harvesting! I'm psyched!


We've also been doing a lot of  herb drying and tea making.
A few days ago I went through one of the strawberry patches (one that sits right next to the raspberry patch and so gets a lot of raspberry runners in it) and ripped out all of the raspberry canes that had snuck into the bed to process and dry for raspberry leaf tea.

I also picked some mint from the herb spiral to dry because I love peppermint tea, and since I noticed that the lemon balm was crowding it (and since we have way too much lemon balm anyway) I ripped a lot of the lemon balm in there out to give the mint space, and since why not, we decided to make use of the plant and dry the lemon balm too.





We managed to process the majority of the stalks before a gigantic, tick-like spider crawled out of the lemon balm and we decided we had processed enough of the leaves anyway, and who needs that much lemon balm tea in the first place, and plus this is just tedious and it's not going to matter in the grand scheme of things if we quit now. So instead we just stopped and dried what we already had.

  
...Which wasn't really that bad of a haul; we had enough lemon balm to, once dried, make at least a few cups of tea. And it was certainly better than letting it go to waste in the compost.

And finally, today, we started on the rabbit cage building! Me and my dad made up a design that would give the rabbits plenty of space and would require minimum wire cutting and crimping. The basic idea was to cut a piece of wire and crease and bend it so that the same piece of wire would make up both ends and the middle divider of a two hole (if that's the right term; and even if it isn't you know I'm going to be using it anyway) cage, without needing to be cut or having sharp edges. The divider (which you can see in the right photo) is a triangle shape, which can, provided the hay/grass can fit through the small quarter-inch mesh (a technicality we didn't think of until it was already cut and bent and decided upon), double as a hay rack. Then, since we trimmed the four-foot-wide strips of wire down to thirty inches wide for the cages (leaving 18 inches of wire left -- the height of the cages) we were able to start making the sides of the cages, using the scrap from the top and ends. Very efficient use of wire, and not at all my idea -- I'm really pretty horrible with building and designing stuff, whereas my dad, who planned this all out, is amazing at it.

 Anyway, the next step for building the cages was more my speed -- crimping the edges down to start to form the cage. Of course, there were technical difficulties. Such as the wire being too small for the "little crimp-y things" (as everyone in our family affectionately calls them, since none knows what they're actually called) to fit through.

So instead we improvised and, wherever we were going to put a "little crimp-y thing" in we (or mostly I, since it was me doing 98% of the crimping) cut out a small cross of wire to in order to fit the "little crimp-y things" and their "little plier-like crimper thing" in to connect the two sides together. It's kind of like magic how, as you crimp and work and slowly connect the two pieces of wire together this heap of messy, unorganized metal mesh starts to take shape and become a well-made, fully-functional and sturdy cage.

Eventually I managed to finish one side of one hole of one two-hole cage (a mouthful and a surprising amount of work for only one side of only one hole), and it took more time and effort than expected -- though it was mainly mental, as lining up the pieces of wire and crimping them together just right is a lot harder than it sounds.

However, that said, even though it's pretty annoying work and not that easy or fast, it's definitely worth it. Since I decided wait to find wire and cages, instead of buying supplies or cages new, and then made the cages at home from scratch, and there's no way I'll be spending more than $90 getting the cage situation set up. Probably won't spend more than $120 dollars total for the whole basic set-up, not counting rabbits and feed and etc.. For comparison, the local rabbit supply guy here sells a 3-stack of cages (smaller than the ones we're building) for maybe $150 dollars (give or take 10 or 20 bucks since my memory's a bit fuzzy). Whereas the $20, 4'x44' roll of wire we got should be enough for three sets of these two-hole cages (if, again, that is the right term) for maybe $60 total if the price of the store-bought, standard, 1''x1/2'' wire we're using for the floor stays the same and we don't have to get more than 12 extra dollars of supplies. So it's definitely a good way to save money, waiting to find cheap or scrap materials, if you have the patience.

That said, I'm still feeling a bit nervous. Worried about if the cages will be good enough, and if they'll hold up well enough, since they're not made with "normal" supplies and to "normal" specifications. The logical and sane part of my brain knows they'll be fine, but of course there's still the small, quiet part of my brain going aahhh! Maybe they're not good enough! Maybe they'll collapse or explode or get ripped to shreds by predators or spontaneously combust! Aahhh!

I just try and ignore that part of my brain and continue crimping wire together.

Sybill's not doing so well

Sybill's been slow and not very lively the past few days, standing around with her feathers fluffed up, not moving much or very fast. She didn't even peck at the camera when I got it close to her.

It sounds silly, and three or four months ago I would've thought I had gone insane if I said I'm feeling sad for her, but it's true. Sure, she used to bully and bother and challenge me and I didn't like to go near her for fear of getting pecked. But eventually I stood up to her and showed her who's boss and  now she doesn't bother me at all. Heck, I've grown to like the scraggly old vulture.

 And now she's slow and tired and not very lively and I'm starting to feel bad for her. I think of all the chickens I've had the most interesting relationship with her. I loved her as a chick, a little fuzz-ball with a bare neck and silly little cap of fluff, but somewhere along the way she grew up and decided to become a bullying asshole of a chicken. She even managed to reach second-place in the flock after Ginny died, and then she started pecking me, too, looking up at me and screeing her harsh little scree "Qyrkk yrk rirkk!" if I got too close to her. She even drew blood a couple of times. Eventually I found a way to tell her, in terms she'd understand, that I was higher-ranking than her and not afraid. A bop on the head every time she threatened me, just like other chickens do, stern enough to feel like a peck from another, dominant bird but softer than the pecks she and most other chickens dished out to subordinate chooks, because, despite her goal of hurting me as much as possible until I ran away, I didn't want to hurt her. Eventually she accepted that I was higher-ranking and stopped bothering me, and in fact we're on pretty good terms now, I think. At least I feel like it. I like her. And it's sad to see her growing old and tired.

I hope she feels better soon. I think the fluctuating temperatures are making her toes hurt.

The flock

We don't have a big flock, we don't have many fancy breeds of chickens. They don't really go on adventures too much, but will that deter me from writing about every single bird? No!

So get ready to meet the flock.

We have two buff Orpingtons.

The one on the left is Mini Max, though she might even be a bit bigger. The one on the right is Maxime. Maxime is the Alpha chicken, the top of the totem pole, and has a good mothering instinct - unlike the rest of the birds, she treats Molly and Shycra, the youngest and lowest-ranking of the flock well, and even roosts with them at night.


Mini Max isn't as nice, even to her nest-sister, Hawk - I've seen Max pull on Hawk's feathers pretty hard when they get into scuffles. Maxime and Mini Max are the trickiest birds to tell apart, and it's easy to see why.
However, once you learn how to tell them apart, it's easy to see how.

First off, Maxime is always a bit ruffled looking. Her feathers stick out messily as if she was in mid-moult and are more contrasted in color than Mini Max's; Maxime's nearly-white body feathers next to her darker, yellower neck feathers look very frankenstein-ish compared to Mini Max and her better-transitioned and overall more even-colored feathers.

As bad as the light in this picture is, it's easy to at least see her ruffled and messy feathers.

But, in my opinion, one of the best ways to identify Maxime is by her eyes. While Mini Max has a sort of stern to normal expression most of the time, Maxime... always looks rather....




Alarmed.

...Whereas Mini Max is sleeker, calmer, and all-around more healthy-looking than Maxime.


Then there's Sybil, bullier of me and the rest of the flock.

She's a Naked Neck, or Turken, so don't feel sorry for her. She's not the henpeckee, she's the henpecker.


She also hates people, shoes, me, other chickens, cats, dogs, anything living or formerly living, and cameras.


"Whatever the cluck that thing is, I want it out of my face, and I want it out of my face now. I will peck, I tell you, I will!"

...And that's why I have so few pictures of her, those I have managed to take mainly featuring her loathsome 'I'm going to kill you' face and/or a messy blur as I jerk the camera out of the way of her razor-sharp beak.

She pushes me around, pecks me, challenges me and goes after my swampy green crocs (I suppose no one can blame her there), but recently I've been trying to show her I'm not afraid of her and not a lower ranking chicken like she thinks I am. I think it's working - if she tries to peck me or challenge me I give her a swift (but not too hard) bop on the head, like another chicken would do to a lower-ranking one. Of course, there are good days and bad days, and at the moment I have a half-written post about the long battle we had a couple days ago, in which she actually drew blood.

Then there's Minerva, who has the softest and prettiest feathers in my opinion. She's quiet and doesn't have much of a personality, but I like her and her mild-mannered-ness.

She's a black Australorp, and not very interesting as far as chickens go, to be honest. She picks on Hawk and the two little girls, Molly and Shycra some, but she's not a very bad henpecker compared to some of our birds.

Hawk, on the other hand, has a very interesting story to tell, as ridiculous as she looks in this picture.

"Hom nom nom"

She is an Easter Egger, or some breed like that. She's very pretty, lays brown eggs like she's not supposed to do and Survived a fox attack (unfortunately, her nest- or perhaps egg-sister, Luna, didn't). The story's rather long, so I won't write it out here, but it was quite dramatic and traumatic for both the humans and chickens involved.

Unfortunately for me, hawk is rather camera shy, so getting a get picture of her is tricky. Nonetheless, I'm sure that such a pretty chicken like her makes the whole species she was named after proud (or perhaps just hungry).

Here she is, a bit more elegant looking.

Look at that pretty beard and those beautiful orange and brown feathers! She could be a chicken model! Just, uh, wash the straw and dried milk out of her beard...


"Hey! Are you taking pictures of me again?! You know I don't like cameras!"

She's a sweetie, but very shy. Her and Mini Max are inseparable, and even then Max henpecks her, sometimes badly. She's a lapchicken, too. If you sit down she'll hop up on your lap and hide her head under your arm and sit for as long as you can put up with it. If she wants someone to snuggle with she'll call and call and call, a loud, insistent "Bup bup bup bup bup bup bup bup bup bup bup bup-" on and on until you come in to sit with her. But, being so low in the pecking order she does whatever it takes to stay where she is in rank, pecking Molly rather hard whenever she gets close (Shycra's just too skittish to get near Hawk in the first place).

Next up is Molly, the annoying, persistent, quick, reckless bug-hunting Red Sex Link.

She's also rather camera-shy. But, being the most relentless and aggressive hunter in the group, she'll dart in past even Sybil or Hawk (the ones who henpeck her the most) just to get a bite of food. She has grasshopper-seeking invisible glasses on, too, I'm sure of it (how else on earth would she be able to find them so easily?), and she's fast and fearless. She's rather gluttonous, too.

She's one of my favorites, because she's just to darn good and hunting! Unfortunately - and I think this is why she's become such a successful bug hunter - she has a habit of not just pecking, but grabbing and holding. Needless to say, It can be rather painful if she sneaks up behind you in the coop, so I always keep an eye on her when I'm sitting with Hawk or feeding them.


"What's that? Can I eat it?"


"...Wait a second... you said that was a grasshopper generator! You lied, didn't you, it doesn't make delicious food, does it?! Is it that darn picture-taking thing again?!"

And, last but not least, there's Shycra.

She's a White Leghorn, I believe, and her name fits her quite well. She's the lowest-ranking of the flock, extremely shy and skittish and runs away at anything. She's afraid of cameras, dogs, other chickens, humans, and pretty much anything new. Funnily enough, though, that doesn't stop her from being almost as good of a worm-eater as Molly is (it's especially funny to watch her regal comb flop comically around as she darts back and forth to gobble up worms).

She's the only bird in the flock who lays white eggs, too, and she's quite the beautiful (and stereotypical) chicken when her white feathers aren't cream-colored from dirt. But that's the downside of having anything that's white, I suppose!

Oh, and I know I said that's the last, but I can't forget Zen!

...Sure, she's not technically a bird even, but she must be part-chicken, because whenever she has the chance to get into the chicken coop, she does. I think it's the abundance of mice.


"Oh, hi. What're you doing here?"

Whatever the reason, the chickens don't mind enough to drive her off. They mainly make alarmed and confused clucks and avoid her as she slips by, trying not to be pecked by one of the braver hens.
Sometimes she even catches a mouse, and then, oh boy, the chickens have a ball. Well, the one who eats the mouse does, at least.

Oh, and the pecking order goes like this, as far as I can tell:

Maxime
Sybil
Minerva
Mini Max
Hawk
Molly
Shycra

Oh, and apparently it's the second annual draw-a-centaur-day. Hrm, I suppose I should go do that.
-Willow