Springing into Spring, sort of

So this is how the yarn knitted up that I spun from our Shetland fleece, plied with bamboo and then dyed.  The colors are more intense than I'd like - too close in value.  This was an experiment, a starting point.  I'll do it again, but next time I'll shoot for contrast.  But it's not bad for a first try.

The gray teal yarn that I've been waiting for - back ordered since January - finally arrived.  It's a perfect match and it was worth waiting for.

And somewhere in this week I finally made soap.  My notes say that I last made this September 20th, nine days before my life came to a screeching standstill. The soap-bar well is running dry, and after using other soap, I know that I like it too much to retire it.  I'm my best customer.

With nicer weather, we've started working on the yard.  There are less than a dozen plants that grow successfully here so we fill in with non-edible stuff.  We bought this kinetic wind spinner at Costco.  We saw it and there was no question that it was going into our cart.

Ian found this the other day - too cute to pass up.  This bunny can't eat anything because it's made of rocks.  My favorite kind of rabbit.

Yesterday Sandy dropped me off at the gate after we'd shared a trip to town.  As I was opening the gate, I heard Carol's voice - my neighbor just above us.  Hi Carol - what?  Can you call Tom when you get to the house and ask him to come down with the shotgun.  I have a rattlesnake.  We have cell signal at the gate so I called him from there.

Their puppy had flushed out this rattler so Carol threw her into the truck, grabbed the only tool she had and pinned the snake to the ground.  I have no idea how long she'd been there and teased her - how much longer would you have stayed?  Oh, a while.  Tom is a marksman and popped the head off in one shot, and it's Tom who popped the head off our rattler last summer.  It's not that we hate rattlers.  We worry for our dogs. Rattlesnakes actually are good neighbors but not with dogs.

I'm subbing for the next couple of days at the Verdi Elementary School and very much looking forward to it.  It's the school furthest from our home but everything is far from here.  The sub year is almost over - another month.