November 2010      

• Monday 1st - Sock Knitting - More Toe
• Wednesday 3rd - Weather Annoyances and Heel Turning
• Thursday 4th - Uno Gets a Mega-Trim - Part 1
• Friday 5th - Expensive Week
• Friday 5th - Jackit's Third Trail Ride - or The Further Adventures of the Water Weanie
• Sunday 7th - Sock Knitting - Foot Be Done
• Monday 7th - The Demise of the First Set of DPNs
• Saturday 13th - Sock #1!
• Sunday 14th - The Miata Goes for a Sunday Drive
• Wednesday 17th - Shifting the Brain Around
• Thursday 18th - Uno Gets a Mega-Trim - Part 2
• Sunday 21st - Sock Pair #1 Finished!
• Tuesday 23rd - Sock Pair #2
• Wednesday 24th - Bee Disaster
• Thursday 25th - Bee Hive Repair
• Thanksgiving

Back to October • Forward to December January

Monday 1st Sock Knitting - More Toe So on Friday I'd never knitted a sock, didn't know how to knit a sock, and indeed hadn't knitted anything in 20 years. Now look - three days later and I have half a sock!

Thursday 4th
Uno Gets a Mega-Trim - Part 1

Friday 5th
Expensive Week

See the pretend money fly out of the bank account as we get a new roof put on the Roquero Cerro rental house and put a new top on the miata!

The Roquero Cerro house always needed a roof from the time we bought it, so we were just waiting for enough rental money to go in the bank account so we could afford to do it. Bob put it on for us and it looks very fine.

The miata roof, on the other hand, had gotten sad over the last few months. The tiny cracks in the corners grew to 4" long holes and then the back window split along the top. Apparently duct taping it up with plastic bags wasn't going to work for the rainy season so we paid a nice roof-installer-man in Sacramento to put a new one on at vast expense. The new one isn't as pretty (it's plasticky, as opposed to the former fake-fabric one) and the shape isn't as attractive, but it keeps the rain out and gets rid of the annoying wind noise we'd been putting up with... all good.

Friday 5th Jackit's Third Trail Ride - or The Further Adventures of the Water Weanie pft is working at home on Fridays now and every now and again I'm able to join him - and this Friday was one of those days. As a result, we were able to slither out in the afternoon and go over to Cool to ride for Jackit's third outing. He hadn't been to Cool before and was most excited by the arrival and departure of several horses while we were tacking up. I finally found a snap for his crupper and after punching multiple holes in it, was able to get it to fit somewhat tighter than it had been. Due to his enthusiasm (read "not taking any notice of me") I hand-walked him out from the start. He was settled by the time we reached the first creek crossing - at which time we spent 45 minutes persuading him that he wouldn't die instantly if he stepped in the creek. Eventually through a combination of encouragement, trickery, and spanking, I got him to cross without leaping it like it was Beecher's Brook in the Grand National, but not before being stepped on at least once. But he did it, and we were pleased and continued along the trail, now accompanied for a short distance by a hiker and his be-belled dog who I got to walk behind Jackit for him to learn to deal with such things.
All was going swimmingly until we got the next creeklet - a small 2' across affair. Still hand-walking,  I stepped across using the "make like you're just going forward and the pony will follow" system. Indeed, the pony *did* follow - leaping the 2'-wide creek and landing right where I was standing (safe ground, no doubt), knocking me down into some rocks.  Using the three-second rule, I jumped up and yelled and screamed at him, as best I could given that the lead rope was inadvertently now wound around my little finger and the fact that my hip was doing that "OOWWWWWWWW" thing - enough pain that I had to stop yelling and stand quietly for a minute or so, waiting for it to subside. Adrenaline makes you shaky, but I had to get him to cross back and forth a couple of times - which, thankfully, he now did just by stepping over, and then we continued on. At the foot of the hill, I finally got on (knees still shaking) and rode him up the hill (him all the while humping at the feel of the somewhat tighter crupper; me yelping and threatening him). I confess, I was still very uptight by the time we had to start down the hill, but with pft and Fergus on their best behaviour, carefully heeding my every little [paranoid] instruction. Jackit is strangely good on downhills - I always expect him to feel awful because he's so narrow in front, but he actually feels very balanced. At the bottom, I was relieved that there was no water in the either of the two next creeklets (by then, I was about done with creeks for the day), but we were dismayed to discover that the Trail Where the Dead Lady... was closed - possibly because it gets so mucky at the bottom in the winter. I hope it's a temporary closure, because I really like that trail. Instead, we were forced to scale the red hill - something I wasn't sure Jackit was ready for, but resolved to ask him to go up and only let him stop when I said so. Amazingly, he never asked to stop, and indeed, didn't even puff that much - much better than the last ride where he started to drag quite soon after we started up a smaller hill. He has an excellent work-ethic and I was very pleased with him. At the top, we even experimented slightly with some short trotting, which went well. By now, it was starting to get dark, so after one more brief foray onto the singletrack, we retired to the paved road and came in that way. Jackit marched smartly along, never flagging, although towards the end I was detecting a tremor in his back end - presumably from marching so smartly: his back end had never worked so hard before. Very proud and pleased with my pone... bruised bottom notwithstanding:

Sunday 7th Sock Knitting - Foot Be Done I worried that it wouldn't work properly, since I was following the top-down pattern - that the whole heel area would be backwards, but it seems to work - yay!

Monday 7th
The Demise of the First Set of DPNs

Nearing the end of my sock and being very excited by it, I've been knitting in the car on the freeway every morning. This gives me nearly a whole 30 minutes of knitting (can't knit on the way home - it's dark). This morning, putting my bag into the car, I managed to slam the boot lid on my knitting bag which wasn't all the way in. Oops. Thought perhaps I would have smooshed one of the needles, but it turns out I snapped all five :(

Luckily the knitting shop (Shelby's Place) is just minutes off our commute route, so we dashed in there before work and, seamlessly, I had a new set of DPNs and no interruption to my knitting flow. 

Those bamboo needles just aren't as strong as they could be.

Saturday 13th
Sock #1!

All done! Finished the last lil' bit of ribbing this morning in bed (while listening to Middlesex on the iPod)(good book!). I cast off a bit tight, so have to wriggle it to fit over my fat heel, but otherwise am thrilled with how well it turned out - it's all rustic and woolly. Now on to Sock #2. I'm a little concerned about this, since I was winging it most of the time, so am not sure I can duplicate what I did. The resulting Sock #2 might be slightly, er, different. But that's hand-knitting for you, right?

Sunday 14th The Miata Goes for a Sunday Drive Instead of riding the pones on the sunny Sunday, pft and I took a reccy trip up to Loney Meadows at 6000' to see if it would be suitable as a Thanksgiving Camping Destination. It turns out not. For one, there was a sign saying "Closed to vehicles between November 15th and March 14th". And for another, the area was covered in soggy, melting snow. It'll be a lovely place to come next summer, however. And we had a fun day driving about in the car.

Wednesday 17th
Shifting the Brain Around

Winters are seldom kind to my head - as soon as the clocks go back everything goes to pot - trying to balance life when it seems all but impossible given the lack of available daylight. Why I can't seem to figure this out every year is beyond me. It's not like it's a great surprise, but it gets me every time.

Once the rainy season starts, most of my best thinking gets done when I'm pushing slop around in the barn every morning and I spend that time trying to rebalance myself, not always with success.

Part of the trick seems to be focusing on the things you can achieve, rather than obsessing over the things you can't. And giving yourself permission to slow down without feeling like a failure. Trying to avoid goals that are going to push you over the edge - such as planning elaborate excursions to endurance rides that you can't possible get horses fit for, when you're barely able to keep up with their day-to-day care. Treat winter like an extended downtime - and enjoy it, it's not like you don't love spending a whole weekend snuggled up under the covers, reading books.

All work and no play make Lucy a dull girl, so I've been trying to have small successes - like knitting socks. OK, so this is a poor substitute for the high you get from completing an endurance ride, but it's better than nothing.

Another thing I would like to try and integrate into the already stuffed awake-time is some sort of exercise - exercise, that is, that doesn't involve pushing slop around. Slop-pushing is a great upper-body and calf work-out and is good thinking-time, but it doesn't clean out your head and lift you up the way "real exercise" does. So far I haven't figured out how to do that but I know if I do, I'll feel a lot better.

The last thing is to try not to feel resentful towards others that have lives that allow them plenty of riding time - and thus the ability to continue attending endurance rides (and having the stamina to do so). They have their lives and I have mine. If I want what they've got, I'm going to have to make some sacrifices in other areas - and I have to decide if I'm willing to do that. If not, then deal with it. I'm rich in so many other ways and I just have to remember that.

Thursday 18th
Uno Gets a Mega-Trim - Part 2

Sunday 21st
Sock Pair #1 Finished!

Sock #2 took only a week to complete, what with knowing what I was doing (except for not being able to figure out which online pattern I used to do which part).  And this time, in a fit of wisdom, instead of casting off too tightly as I did with Sock #1, I did some online research to find out the proper way to do it. This meant that I then had to unpick the cast-off on Sock #1 very, very carefully, reattach all the stitches to the needles and re-do it. But at least it worked and now I have two spiffy socks of great softness and squishability that I can put on without trickery, even if they don't quite match in shape and size. <proud> (Update: After wearing them for two days, including in bed, I finally had to give in and put them in the laundry pile. Let's hope the "Superwash" designation is true and they don't shrink to the size of baby feet).

Tuesday 23rd
Sock Pair #2

And we're off again - green socks this time. Not as interesting to knit, in terms of watching the colours change as you go along, but just as serviceable in terms of the finished item.  These are knitted at 52 stitches (as opposed to the 60 of the previous ones), so they will be a lot snugger. I'm also going to make the toe-heel portion shorter, taking into account the stretchiness. As a result, I may have enough yarn to make two pairs out of this yarn (Heritage Cascade).

Wednesday 24th
Bee Disaster

When I went out to feed this morning, I found my hive upside-down on the ground, the contents turned out and three of the choicest honey combs gobbled up, frozen bees glued forlornly to brood comb. ACK!

Initially, I thought it must be a bear attack - bee hive upside-down, contents munched, but now I'm not so convinced. 

For one thing, the horses weren't at all nervous or flighty. If a bear had been banging around in the orchard, I'd expect them to be a little jumpy. For another, the hive just wasn't trashed enough. It was a mess, but most of the combs were undisturbed - or at least as undisturbed as they could be, given that they'd been flung 6'. They were mostly sitting propped in the overturned lid.

My best guess is maybe a deer was sleeping close by and was startled enough to leap up and crash into the hive, knocking it over, and then some other lucky critter (raccoon? skunk?) happened along and ate the three honey combs? 

pft came out and finished feeding the pones while I started on Operation Save Hive. It was still below-freezing, but thankfully bright sunshine abounded (rather than the pouring rain of the last five days).

Fetching my big sailmaker's needle (the one I only found on Sunday, when doing the cast-offs on the socks) and some yarn, I tried to tie the outermost honey combs back to their bars. This met with limited success - they were attached, but I couldn't get them very snug to the bar, so they sort of dangle underneath with a gap of an inch or so between them. The yarn pulls through the combs at the slightest provocation, so the whole set-up is very, very fragile. Everything got very sticky, very fast, so I had to fetch a bucket of warm water to rinse needle and hands in after every pass through.

Worried about ever getting to work that morning, we compromised with the next few bars by propping them in the hive with carefully engineered twigs to make "bee space" between them and support them underneath. 

The closer we got to the brood nest area, the harder it became. Although there were lots of frozen dead bees clustered on the outside of the combs, there was a big clump of lives ones nesting under and amongst the five remaining brood combs - two or three of which were still attached to their bars. So we had to lift them carefully one-by-one with minimal disturbance to bees (I really didn't want to deal with trying to complete the operation surrounded by a bunch of pissed off, riled up bees) and put them in the hive - like a delicate game of pick-up-sticks - then shimmy everything sideways towards the door-end to snug it all up. 

I was encouraged by how many bees were still living, and judging by their behaviour, I'm hoping the queen is still alive and wasn't one of the bees that succumbed during the night. And I'm encouraged, still, by how much honey reserves they have left. OTOH, I'm not sure the brood could have possibly survived - it's supposed to be kept at 92°F/33°C and of course it was the first night we've had below freezing this winter - about 25°F/-4°C. 

Unfortunately, in their semi-hibernated state, I'm not convinced that they can put things to right at this stage. They may keep any remaining live brood warm and fed, but I think it's unlikely they will repair any of the combs or clean out cells for new brood to be laid. 

Luckily, although its due to be below freezing during the night over the Thanksgiving Holiday, it should be in the 60s and bright sunshine during the day so I need to see if I can further repair the propped combs - either with the help of boingy-hair clips tied to bars onto which to clip the combs, or by manufacturing some sort of sling that goes under the comb to attach it to the bar. I don't want to leave the twigs in there, lest the bees (once they wake up again and start working) integrate them into the comb and I end up with one big blob of joined combs.

Thursday 25th
Bee Hive Repair

Well, I feel a little more hopeful than I did last night. The bees were surprisingly active this morning when I went out to take a look, with a few flying in and out of the hive. They also seemed quite "busy" inside the hive, although I was unclear what they were doing - hopefully repairing some of the damage? 

pft and I spent a few hours later this afternoon re-engineering what I did yesterday. The full honey combs were incredibly fragile and very, very hard to work with. 

We ended up trying a variety of things to reattach the combs back to the bars: 

• yarn - this is what I used yesterday to sew through the combs - but it just pulled through 
• plastic tie-wraps - too bulgy 
• plastic coated electrical wire - too bulky and hard to work with 
• MIG welding wire - very fine and unobtrusive, our pick. 

To stop the wire slicing into the underside of the combs, we made little slings/pads out of short bits of cardboard toilet-roll tube which went underneath the combs in two places for the wires to wrap around. 

The bees were helpfully docile: yesterday I got stung once on the hand from stupidly trying to brush a bee off, but today we worked with no protective clothing, assuming it was cold enough that the bees wouldn't get too feisty. We also tried to keep the hive closed up as much as possible while working. And it really helped that the bees were mostly interested in staying on the "brood" (if there's any left) comb closest to the door, leaving the broken honey combs free for us to fiddle with. 

I think I'm left with: 

H B B B B H H H H H H H 

that is to say, 7 and half bars of honey and four of "brood/pollen/honey". 

I mopped up some of the moisture - a mixture of dew and honey (can you say "sticky"?), but the area where the bees were mostly hanging out was dryer than the rest of the hive, so hopefully that indicates that they're in clean-up mode. 

The only comb now that still isn't re-attached is #2 bar and I decided the bees didn't really need me going in there trying to sort it out - hopefully they'll engineer something themselves to their liking. They seem to be crawling around it, so hopefully that means there's enough bee space for them to work with. 

	You can see the pink wire we tried first - see how it bulges out either side. Two combs to the left of the pink wire, you can just make out the welding wire that we mostly ended up using. And you can see the bees clustering on the far left.
	The little scraps of wire poking out the tops of the bars. I put some styrofoam and bubblewrap in the empty air space on the left of the hive, on the outside of the follower board.
	Fingers crossed!

Thanksgiving

Despite not being able to go on our planning horse-camping trip at Boggs Mtn over by Clear Lake (they close the trails after heavy rain - and we had heavy rain), TG didn't turn into a complete flop. 

Thursday was spent fiddling with the bee hive, sleeping, reading, knitting and generally recovering.

Friday (Jackit's Fourth Trail Ride) -  pft and I took the Fergus and Jackit over to Magnolia. That was the first time Jackit had been there and the first time I'd ridden him on anything remotely like a drop off. I can't say I enjoyed the experience - I'm not worried about Jackit hurting himself should he go over the edge (or him really caring too much if he did), I'm more concerned about my well-being. 

He did pretty good, considering there was lots to see and hear (rocks, tree stumps, pipes, someone shooting a gun, ...) until we got to a medium-sized puddle. After squinting at it for a while, he decided that he couldn't possibly pass it without giving it at least a 4'-wide berth which wasn't acceptable to me. During our conversation about this, along came some mtn bikers coming the other direction, so because we were blocking the trail I ended up getting off and leading him around. The mtn bikers obliged by handing him a carrot (not that he can currently eat a carrot while wearing a bit, but the thought was there), so that was a good experience. After a few to-n-fros with the help of a tapping stick, Jackit seemed quite able to walk quietly past the puddle without trying to scramble up the bank to get away from it.

Later, a runner proved a bit too exciting, so I dismounted again and did some hand-walking. We took advantage of the situation by sending pft and Fergus off around the small loop a few times to let off some steam and teach Jackit (while I was safely on the ground) that he wouldn't die if left by Fergus. This exercise was made more fun by Fergus and pft reappearing three times (as they were travelling at speed). Jackit was a little sad and whinnied a couple of times, but kept it together quite well. We met hikers, and dogs, more hikers, and then a lady cantering the other direction on her horse. All good things to see and experience.

Finally, the climax of the ride - we went down to the creek - thinking we'd have a hard time convincing him to cross the trickle-creek, let alone the massive-raging-creek. As it turns out, he crossed the trickle without noticing it was there (so surprising to me that I went back and made him do it again, just in case he forgot to see it), and then when we got to the raging creek, I had pft "try to pony him across". Once again thinking this would go horribly wrong, I watched from the sidelines as Jackit calmly got into the creek and crossed twice without a murmur. Huh... go figure.

So I got on, and we crossed again (with no hesitation or concern on his part), and continued on up the hill. Going uphill isn't Jackit's idea of a good time and he wasn't keen - and was even less keen to go down again (no doubt associating that stretch of trail with "hard work" without realising that going down is way better). At the top, we stopped for a breather and Jackit was much more interested in inspecting the surroundings than munching on grass.