This evening we let the chickens out in the garden for the first time. They’ve been with us a few weeks now but they’ve been living in their ark. We didn’t plan to let them out this evening, I was going to wait a week or so more and get the fences & gate checked out properly..however, Demelza had different ideas.
I was home early today as DH and I both had to go for medicals (for the adoption application) and when I got back I went out to check the chickens had water and give them a few handfuls of grain. As I was changing the water Demelza made a bid for freedom and  bolted past me and out of the ark, as she was out I decided I may as well leave the door off and let the other two out.

We had hours of amusement watching the three of them investigating the garden. DH spent the whole time panicking that (a)  the cat would get them (b) they would jump over the fence or (c) they wouldn’t go back into their house.
As far as (a) went, Simpson did have one go at them - they squawked a lot and fluttered away. He then spent the evening sat with us on the patio watching them VERY closely!
(b) Well, they didn’t jump the fences but Morwenna became very determined to jump on the pation chairs and then the table.

She did this several times before making her final intent clear and making a bid for the roof of our single storey extension! Luckily she didn’t make it or goodness knows where she would have ended up! She then wandered off down the garden a bit and promptly “flew” up into a bush at which point I decided I had better clip her wings. As she was perched in a bush it was quite easy to pick her off her branch, DH got the scissors and we clipped her feathers on her left wing. Hopefully that will stop her!

And as it started getting dark they wandered back towards their ark (with just a little encouragement from us)

So, all very exciting but I’m very happy that they made it through their first outing safely. I’m planning to let them out every evening when we’re home then all day at weekends to start with and then I may just leave them out all the time just shutting them up at night.

As this is supposed to be a knitting blog here is some knitting content -

This is the finished Ms Marigold. I actually finished her about a week ago as she was very fast to knit taking about 3 days to knit. I love the finished tank-top, it’s just what I wanted for work on those slightly colder autumn days - smart but with slightly querky features such as the ruffles on the shoulders.

The pattern was not the best pattern I’ve ever followed, there are no stitch counts after increases - it simply says “increase until the piece measures x inches” so you are not sure how many stitches you should end up with. I increased as much as I wanted, worked the body and then did some extra increases at the side to fit over my hips…then realised  I had an even number of stitches but not one that was divisible by 4…except I didn’t realise this until I worked the first round of 2×2 rib and got back round to the beginning to find I’d just worked 2 knit and needed to work another 2 knit for the beginning of the second round!!!!

However, I do like the idea of knitting the shoulders and back altogether and then joining in the round so there are NO seams to sew….I love this idea as I hate seaming and also you get such a smooth outline with no seams.

I wore this to work today and got lots of compliments.

I’ve also made a start on some Christmas knitting - as two people told me in the past 4 days how many weeks it is till Christmas!

This will be a “Weasley Sweater” from Charmed Knits by Alison Hansel although it is also available for free on her blog here. It’s based on the sweater Mrs Weasley knits for Harry Potter for Christmas in the first book, this one has a “T” as it’s for my friends son, Thomas.

The yarn is an aran weight tweedy wool in a dark navy and a bright green. I bought this in a little craft shop in Dingle, Southern Ireland a few weeks after Thomas was born, I’ve tried knitting it up about 4 times since then but always been disappointed and frogged. This sweater seems perfect for it - being a big believer in fate etc I am convinced I was drawn to buy it in order to knit a sweater for Thomas when he was older. I bought him a pottery mug in the same shop as a Christening present.

I am still working on the Genome Socks from Interweave Knits Fall 2007 for a swap partner and have just about half the leg to complete.

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Tags: chickens, leghorns, knitting, weasley, genome, marigold

This entry was posted on Monday, September 3rd, 2007 at 8:32 pm and is filed under Knitting, garden. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.