It’s a no-show for you, little one

I know, it’s a sheep shot. But that sheep–always raising a racket, always chasing after those little birdies. I tell you. He was a baaah’dmutton.

The knitting: I started to cast off, stopped, switched to a different size needle and tried to undo those first few kid-mohairy stitches. I could just hear Natalie and Nat King Cole’s famous duet: “Unfroggetable…”

And then there’s LynnM’s description of my backyard as San Franserengeti. Love it.

So. The ends are run in. It is blocking, and like lace always does, it went from looking like not all that much to absolutely glorious.  It’s finished!

And on a wildlife note: I’ve been taking the main birdfeeder in the last few nights, putting it back up first thing when I get up. Trying to discourage the squirrels. They can’t get much but they can shake some out if they go at it sideways and they get a real pinata party going in the early mornings.

So last night I pulled a chair out from under the picnic table and set it to the far side of the thing so I could step up to reach.

When our kids were little, my husband set up a hidden timer on the TV (the few years we owned one so that I could have Sesame Street on while cooking dinner.) The idea was, they could only watch under supervision.

We got up one Saturday morning to find a certain small child had pulled his pillow off his bed, pulled out the knob on the TV, and had gone back to sleep, baby blanket up to his chin, waiting for the show, any show, to come on.  He was snoozing away when we came in the family room and saw the test patterns on the screen. This may have been a factor later in the non-replacing of the decades-old TV.  (Ahem. Test patterns around here are made by me now.)

This morning there were rows of finches on the branches tied by the pole, facing left towards the empty spot, waiting. And facing to the right, with empty air between them where the food should have been–a small black squirrel. Perched on the top of the back of that chair. Staring, just staring at that spot, refusing to let even my coming around the corner deter it, fervently willing what it couldn’t have anyway to reappear.  Pulling its tail around it for a blanket in the brisk morning air, needing a pillow to complete the scene.

I made sure to spill just a few seeds for it when I wasn’t looking. Just a few.

(Ed. to add.) Speaking of scenes: if you want to see some really cool bird photos, you’ve got to see Glenn Nevill’s site.