Hem Jeans Like the Pros!

Get someone to mark the hem for you, or you can match the length of a pair of jeans that are already the right length for you. Once you've got your jeans turned up to the proper length, measure the portion that needs to  be hemmed, from the fold to the bottom of the existing hem.  This pair is six inches too long.

Make a fold and measure from the fold to the upper edge of the existing hem, exactly HALF the depth of the total amount of shortening needed.  For this pair, that means three inches.

Do the same thing at the other side seam. For flared and some bootcut jeans, you may also need to measure and mark/pin at the center front and back in addition to the side seams.

Begin at the side seam with the most rows of topstitiching.  Make sure you have the stitiching lined up (in this photo, I have lowered the presser foot on the existing hem only to hold it in place), and sew as close as possible to the upper edge of the existing hem without catching it in your stitch line.

Trim off the excess with pinking shears, by serging off, or cutting with regular scissors and applying seam binding.

In this photo you can just barely see the line of stitching that effectively moves the original hem up the leg of the jeans.

Turn the original hem down, and topstitich with either matching or invisible thread. Start on the side seam with the most rows of topstitching.

Booyah.  

Many thanks to a client with rather short legs who unknowingly allowed me to use her jeans for this post. :)

Another field trip

This evening we went up to St. John the Baptist Byzantine Catholic Church in Uniontown, PA to hear a concert by the choir of the Bl. Paul Gojdich Seminary in Presov, Slovakia. As soon as I figure out how to get a (not very good) audio snippet uploaded, I'll post it. It was a lovely evening, and I didn't even mind driving home in the rain (although we did have to blowdry a chicken once we got back).
And who knew there was a wind farm just east of Cheat Lake? I need to get out more, evidently.

Field Trip!

We visited the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, PA today, and then traveled up through Pennsylvania's Laurel Highlands to Johnstown, where we toured the Flood Museum, History and Children's Museums, and the Johnstown Inclined Plane. Most of the photos are on my camera, so I will write a longer post when I get those uploaded (this weekend, at least that's the plan).
It was a perfect day for driving and being outdoors, and the trees are nearly at peak color. We had a great time!

New Chicken Coop, Construction Covers Most School Subjects; an Exercise in Stealth Schooling

We purchased four Cochin pullets at a poultry swap meet at the beginning of the month, and over the weekend we built them a coop. I think we managed to cover pretty much all the usual school subjects in the process!
We've been scrounging lumber and building supplies for a while; the fetching and carrying is good exercise (P.E.) and the kids asking for leftovers from various projects around the neighborhood is good public speaking practice (oral grammar and composition).
We had to figure out where in the yard to put the coop. It had to be a location not exposed to much direct sun or harsh weather, but also had to allow for good ventilation and the door had to face in a direction that allowed us access for cleaning, collecting future eggs, and letting out/locking up the chickens as necessary. (Geography, weather science)
Building the coop itself entailed math (measuring length of boards, checking for square corners and plumb walls, and level floor), vocabulary (names of tools, building supplies and hardware and different kinds of lumber), spelling (shopping list for a very few un-scroungeable items), penmanship (writing the actual list), social studies (educating passersby about what we were doing and why we keep chickens), science (life cycle of hens, how to tell when they are close to laying age, what their needs are as to food, water and a nesting spot, the fact that roosters are unnecessary for egg production).

This seems like a good place to introduce you readers to chicken math. Regular math says that we have 8 chickens; four in the original coop and four in the new one. BUT one of the older hens no longer lays, so she doesn't count. That makes 7. The other older hen lays irregularly, so she only counts as half a chicken. Total is now 6 1/2. Then the four pullets aren't laying yet, so they don't count either. This means that by using chicken math, we only have 2 1/2 chickens!

In case you were wondering....

What an egg without a shell looks like.

Laid by Drumstick and immediately collected by Velvet (otherwise it probably would have been eaten).

Lightning McQueen opened it with a knife and said that aside from the lack of a hard shell it was just like any other egg.

New Project!

We have collected all the materials we need to build a DIY incubator, and will begin putting it together soon.

We're using an old crafting cabinet, but other people have used insulated coolers (styrofoam too, though these don't make good brooders after the chicks hatch), large drawers, plastic storage totes, etc.

Want to build one too? Here's a materials list:

Some kind of container you can drill holes into and cut a window in, for the incubation box
A 12v fan from an old desktop computer, leave wires attached
An old cell phone charger or other 12v transformer that plugs into the wall
A piece of plexiglas or glass, about 9" x 12" for a viewing window
Duct tape
A lamp socket with cord
A light bulb (40w suggested; may have to adjust wattage to get temp to the right point)
Hot water heater thermostat (lower)
Hardware cloth
Thermometer and hygrometer
Pan for water as a humidity source, also jars filled with sand, pebbles or hot water to use as heat sinks

We also picked up a package of styrofoam insulation panels to insulate the cabinet, since it is made from thin boards.

You'll also need a drill and bits, screwdriver, keyhole saw for cutting the viewing window, electrical tape and/or wire nuts, perhaps some aluminum foil, and a desire to watch eggs hatch into chicks.

I included a photo of the cabinet as it is now. Regular updates to follow!

Report Card, Sort Of

I realized I haven't said pea turkey about the new school year in a while, so here's a bit of an update!

Birdman was promoted again in CAP. He's now a Cadet Senior Master Sergeant (only 2 more promotions until he's a Cadet 2nd Lieutenant!) He's been doing remarkably well with his Geometry, considering he can't watch the teaching CD-ROM right now. Biology is going well too; he did an experiment the other day in which he extracted DNA from dried peas. I was chained to my sewing machine and unable to take photos, unfortunately.
He's also pretty much taken over the yard work....I may give it a good going-over in a couple of weeks but its bearable the way he does it for now.

Velvet....math remains a problem, but I have determined that she CAN spell. She just chooses not to - in too much of a hurry maybe? She wrote me a note the other day and ALL the spelling and punctuation was correct! I plan to put the note in her folder and save it.
She's quite responsible about letting the chickens and Eli out in the mornings, which is very helpful since she gets up way before either of the boys crawl out from under their respective rocks. I have a bit of trouble getting her to remember to take a poo bag with her when she walks Eli, but even that is improving.
We have some new neighbors staying with the family across the street, and she and Lightning have befriended the two children. Velvet enjoys having a new playmate in the afternoons, and they seem to have a good time together.

It's a struggle to challenge Lightning McQueen. He was blessed with an abundance of smarts, but way too much of it goes towards thinking of ways to get into trouble. He's a year ahead of Velvet in math, and I'm trying now to think of other structured things to keep him occupied so he won't run me completely into the poorhouse.
He and are going to work together and build an incubator in which to try to hatch chicken eggs, and we're also going to build a second coop to expand the flock.

I had put a field trip on the calendar for this coming week, but I pushed it back a week because it's been so rainy....one of the destinations is Johnstown, PA and I'd hate to get caught in another flood up there!

Birdman will be going to the library this week to research Korean recipes for our first International Menu Night; as soon as we have a menu I'll post it. I have a feeling the main dish will probably be bulgoki.

(Realized there is one misspelled word in Velvet's note, but believe me that's an improvement)

International Menu Nights, 2011-12 Edition

A couple of years ago we did a series of international menu nights, in which we had one dinner per month with all the menu items from one continent.

In case you're wondering, we did include Antarctica.  We pretended we were polar explorers and had granola bars, chocolate candy, beef jerky and hot cocoa while sitting around the chiminea in the backyard. :)

This year we are doing individual countries.

Birdman made little slips of paper with the names of countries on them; four countries from each continent. We included Australia but omitted Antarctica. ;)

This month's country is:

Korea.

Stay tuned for the menu, recipes and a full report in a week or so!

Wearing the Dad Hat

This weekend we had shop class.  Remember shop? Girls had to take home ec, shop was purely a boy thing, and woe to you if you wanted to take the class for the other gender.

Here at the Collective, we're equal opportunity.

We have, as you already know, chickens. Their coop is converted from a wooden shipping crate. From our studies on how to care for them, I learned that coops need a lot of ventilation so the chickens stay healthy. To make the coop easier to get into and clean, and to provide more air circulation, we took the roof assembly off and added a 10" clerestory-ish window all the way around, screening with hardware cloth. Then we set the roof assembly back on the coop. We also moved the existing roost boards to hopefully eliminate poo in the nest boxes.

We'll have to make some kind of shutter system for really cold weather, but I have a few ideas for that little task. We also are going to add an outboard nest box and put vinyl siding on the coop to improve the appearance.

Birdman was a big help with this project. He helped disconnect the roof from the main part of the coop, and cut some of the boards for the window framing. He helped cut and staple the hardware cloth as well.

Velvet helped with carrying tools, measuring and holding boards as they were being cut. She also helped make sure we didn't squish any chickens when we set the roof assembly on the ground after its removal.

Lightning McQueen was a general fetch and carry person; holding screws and boards, handing me different tools, and asking all sorts of questions.

I had to disconnect the light switch wiring from the box when we took the roof off. It's been a long time since I did any electrical work, so to help make sure I got the switch wired up correctly when we were finished, I took a picture with my phone before I disconnected anything. (Sort of made that part of the job into an Ikea project, ha ha). Then I simply made the wires look like the photo, stuffed them back into the box, put the cover back on, said a brief prayer that I'd done it correctly, had Birdman plug in the cord, flipped the switch on, and booyah, it worked!

I meant, again, to take a picture of what it looks like now that it's finished, but once again the light got away from me and it's too late. I'll get it up eventually, I promise. Meanwhile, here's one from right before we set the roof back in place. And one of the light switch box, in case you ever need to wire a light switch.

In Which I Ramble Disconnectedly

There's a good point here in this article; I'm one of those Christians who knows about the existence of a LOT of things that make some of my friends cock their heads and go "wha--?"
Things I shouldn’t know exist. | Stuff Christians Like – Jon Acuff
Some of the things I know exist that I probably 'shouldn't' (although I risk being tyrannized by the shoulds) know about?  Pink, Harley-Davidson motorcycles, Harry Potter, Lady Gaga, where to buy a good but relatively inexpensive strapless bra, the purpose of body tape (and where to purchase it), boutique denim.....

And as if that wasn't enough to think about in one blog post, here is a really sad story about what happened to a woman who tried (successfully, but REALLY, what she had to go through) to retrieve her miscarried child's remains from the hospital in order to give the baby a proper burial. That touched me because, way back in a previous life, I was pregnant and the baby died at 20 weeks in utero. The doctors tried all sorts of things to induce labor but nothing worked, so I ended up having a D&C.  I was young and confused at the time, and it never occurred to me to ask either the baby's sex or to have the body released to me so the baby could be buried. I did try not very long ago to see whether the hospital bothered to record whether the baby was a boy or a girl (because in God's Providence I happen to be friends with the wife of a person pretty much a grand poobah at the hospital in question), but records were searched and alas I will never know whether it was a Samuel or a Zoe. I'm not really even sure why that matters, but it does, a little.

I saw a guy running along the side of the road earlier today in Day-Glo green running shoes.

I met a gal for lunch today, with whom I went to high school. We hadn't seen each other in THIRTY YEARS (my heavens, there have been wars that were shorter.....). The server had to come back twice before we quit talking long enough to decide what we wanted to eat, and I'm surprised we ever got anything into our mouths. It was really great to reconnect with her, and I hope to be seeing more of her in the future. She said I haven't changed at all - she's a very good liar, ha ha!

Last Monday night was the university's Fall Fest thingy - they have bands come in and do concerts on the plaza of the student union, yada yada. Normally we can't get to bed until it's all over with, because we are about a quarter mile as the crow flies from the stage.  So our tradition the past three years is that we have Movie Night!  This year's movie was Soul Surfer, suggested to me by one of my Facebook (and real life) friends.  It's the true story of Brittany Hamilton, a young surfer whose arm was bitten off in a shark attack.  A really good movie!  My big thing about movies I let my kids watch is 'is it a movie that shows that perseverance, honesty and hard work are VIRTUES, and that doing the right thing is always THE RIGHT THING even though it's difficult?' This movie has that and more. Great scenery, good acting

'scuse me, there is a chicken in my dining room

now she is in the living room

and a wonderful story (even if the part where she gets attacked by the shark shows a LOT of blood, but it's all highly relevant to the story).

(Oregano has been escorted back out to the yard where she belongs.  I have no idea who let her in.)

Speaking of chickens, we've gotten three eggs every day for three days straight, and Drumstick has developed a limp.  We don't know what's the matter with her, so we have her in the puny ward (dog crate next to the coop with a tarp covering it) to keep her from running around and perhaps injuring it further.  We're giving her yogurt as a treat for the extra protein. She hasn't laid a good egg in a couple of months, one of the limitations of this breed of chickens - they lay extremely well but their 'career' is rather shorter than that of heritage or non-production breeds. We'll always have a couple of Red Stars, but I'd eventually like to have six hens and the other four will be heritage dual-purpose breeds - Dominiques and either Leghorns or Orpingtons (most likely Leghorns because they lay white eggs and we've had some requests for those).

I have more randomness but I think I've blathered enough! One last thing: Birdman turned 14 on Wednesday (yikes).

Now You Have to Subscribe to My Channel

Because I successfully uploaded my first YouTube video this evening!

Granted it's just a short clip of Drumstick with a limp, but who knows what I'll come up with next!

Back to more regular blogging tomorrow evening if I don't have to stay at job #2 too late. Sorry for the hiatus, but things have just been not conducive to writing for the past few days.

Singin' the Egg Song

Oregano's freshly laid FIRST EGG!

 Wednesday was a big day for Oregano; she laid her very first egg!  As you can see from the photo, it's quite a bit smaller than Drumstick's egg.  Eggs generally start out small and get larger as the hen gets older.  Our breed of chickens, Red Star, typically lay very large eggs once they get some "experience".  Crockpot's and Drumstick's eggs, as a matter of fact, are so large that a carton meant for jumbo eggs will not close on them!

Comparison to one of Drumstick's eggs :)

I was surprised to find that Oregano's egg, while small, was very heavy for its size (it felt like its weight was very close to Drumstick's egg!).  I plan to invest in a scale of some kind so I can weigh them.....I found a listing that tells how heavy the different sizes of eggs are, and I'd like to be able to tell the folks who buy our eggs what the comparable size of store eggs is.

We're still waiting for Barbecue to start laying, but I imagine it won't be long now. They are 19 weeks and a day old today; Red Star pullet generally begin laying somewhere between 18 and 22 weeks of age.

It was truly amazing to hear Oregano "announcing" her egg, and then going out to the coop to find her still in the back of the coop (not in the nest box, but at least next to it where the pine bedding is nice and clean), arranging bits of bedding around herself as if to make a better nest, and looking very proud of her accomplishment.  The flap-door I cut in the back wall of the coop was handy for photos, as well as enabling me to collect the egg without either having to contort myself into a pretzel or send one of the kids in after it. We can just reach in and get the eggs now!

Plus, these eggs are made even more special by virtue of the fact that they come from hens that we raised from week-old chicks!

Stay tuned; I hope to be posting about Barbecue's first egg soon........

Too Good Not to Share

Recently found in my facebook feed:

Jacob was a cheater, Peter had a temper, David had an affair, Noah got drunk, Jonah ran from God, Paul was a murderer, Gideon was insecure, Miriam was a gossiper, Martha was a worrier, Thomas was a doubter, Sara was impatient, Elijah was moody, Moses stuttered, Zaccheus was short, Abraham was old, and Lazarus was dead.... God doesn't call the qualified, He qualifies the CALLED!

Have a wonderful Tuesday, everyone.

Home From the Fair

The fair closed last night with a really good Demolition Derby and a nice car show. Here are some photo highlights from Thursday (poultry show), Friday (Marty Stuart concert) and Saturday (car show and Demolition Derby):

Lightning McQueen with Oregano and Barbecue, at the livestock show barn

Lightning McQueen waiting to enter the show arena. Oregano won 1st Place and Barbecue won 2nd place in their class.

The smaller of the TWO Ferris Wheels at the fair, neither one of which I rode :(

Marty Stuart and His Fabulous Superlatives!

Love those old Mopars

Full-size class at the Demolition Derby. Studip lights!

Velvet's feline anatomy exhibit

Lightning McQueen's canine anatomy exhibit

Velvet's horse breeds exhibit

My Bayerische socks

Two Years In A Row

Lightning McQueen and I took a stroll over to the exhibit hall at the fair last night to see whether his and Velvet's 4H projects had won ribbons (and I wanted to see how my socks fared too).

Lightning McQueen:  second place for his exhibit on canine anatomy

Velvet:  first place for exhibit on horse breeds, second place for feline anatomy

I had entered my Bayerische socks:

First place!

Photos to come; we'll be at the fair the next three evenings - tomorrow is Lightning McQueen's poultry show debut, Friday is a concert I've been looking forward to for months, and Saturday is the car show and demolition derby.

Going to the Fair!

Oregano being tested for typhoid

Lightning McQueen is showing his pullets (who are really hens now, as at least one of them has laid an egg, but I digress) at the county fair next week.

The birds have to be tested for typhoid and have a leg band put on before they can go to the fair, and the County Ag came and did the testing a few days ago.

First we had to catch them.  Ha ha! They quickly figured out that something was up, and they were literally all over the place trying to get away from us.  Birdman finally cornered Barbecue over in the corner of the yard, and Velvet managed to get Oregano before she got completely under the chicken coop. Oregano had her turn first, and behaved rather well.  There was some trouble with the leg band, and the first one broke, so they had to do that twice. But she was finally pronounced healthy, banded and then it was Barbecue's turn.

Barbecue waiting her turn

She has no clue!

 Chickens are not very bright.  In fact, they are rather stupid.  Actually, they are very stupid (in some ways).

Bok-BOK! What are you doing?

Barbecue was a bit uncooperative

 Afterwards they both strutted about the yard as if they'd won some super prize. Silly chickens.

Thank goodness THAT'S over with!

I'll let you know how they do at the fair after the show next Thursday!

The Slugs Come Out At Night......

Some more detailed (and less emotionally infused) information about slugs can be found here.

Monday night Birdman went outside to give Eli his final p-break before bedtime, and he called me to come outside.  When I went out the back door, he pointed at the side of the house next to the back door, where I saw what looked like a huge wad of snot suspended from more snot, with yet MORE snot hanging off the bottom end of the whole thing, and all of it gently waving in the night air.

But no.  It wasn't snot.  It was a pair of slugs.

Slugs being both boy and girl at the same time, I don't suppose I could say it was Mr. Slug and Mrs. Slug enjoying a romantic interlude in the total non-privacy of the wall of my house by my back door.  I never did figure out which one was being the male and which the female (because they didn't get any privacy after we realized we had an episode of "National Geographic" suspended from a string of slug-slime right outside the door).

This was interesting (in a gross sort of way).  I have never in my life seen anything as completely creepy and odd as these slugs 'having a moment'.

The pale string at the top of the photo is the string of slime that was anchored onto the siding just out of the top of the frame.

You can see how the slugs are curled around each other all lovey-dovey. (shudder)

That pale bluish blob there at the bottom?  That is the slugs' genitalia.  You can refer to the Wikipedia article I linked up there at the beginning of the post to see how this all works; I can tell you that from my observation, the article is accurate. (more shudders)

And what happened to our ga-ga gastropods?  After I went inside, Lightning McQueen took the salt outside and sprinkled them into oblivion.

I can only assume that they went happy.

The Water-Bottle Orchestra:

performances at random, as long as the car is moving.

A few days ago the kids had bottled water in the car, and they discovered that if you hold the bottle outside the car window you can make noise with it, just like blowing over the top.  They even adjusted the water level in the bottles to achieve an interesting blend of notes, and were putting the bottles in and out of the air to make "music."

I took the following photos with the car sitting in the driveway, but this will show you the proper angle to achieve if you want to try this:

 Here's Birdman demonstrating the proper angle from the side.  He says you may have to fine-tune it, depending on the speed of the car and the amount of water in the bottle, but eventually you'll get a nice singing tone.

Velvet was nice enough to hold her bottle out the back window so I could take a photo reflected in the mirror.  Notice the bottle is tilted towards the front of the car; fine tuning is necessary here as well.

If you try this, let me know how it worked out!

Da Burgh, 'Nat......

Last week we had to go to the bus station in Pittsburgh to get Birdman when he returned from visiting his friend in Cincinnati.  We'd originally planned to eat at a Turkish restaurant, but it was closed. :( So we ended up at McDonald's.

 After we ate, we still had time before Birdman's bus was due to arrive, so we took a walk.  The pink car in the photo below is actually a taxi (will have to edit that one so maybe you can see that it's a pink YELLOW CAB, which is the whole reason I took the picture).

There's a really neato water feature that runs underneath the Convention Center.  You can walk down the concrete ramp/pathway there and go under the sidewalk, and come out on the riverfront.

Those are the lights at PNC Park there in the distance.  We're standing on the riverfront at the Convention Center; there are bollards at the edge where I presume they tie up the Gateway Clippers.

 On the way back to the bus station we came upon this historical marker about the Lewis and Clark expedition.  In the background is the history museum where we went to see the Vatican Splendors exhibit last year.  We are also about three blocks from the Strip District!

Here's an amusing bumper sticker on a car in the parking garage at the bus station:

Ringing the School Bell, 2011-12 Edition

After a short break we are back at the books here at Magpie Manor.

I think Birdman would be fine to have most of the actual summer "off" from school, but I know from experience that left to his own devices he can think up far too many ways to provoke my wrath.  So he's back to Saxon Geometry - LOVE the D.I.V.E. cd-rom. And today he had a Biology test, on which he missed ONE question.  Next week after he returns from Cincinnati he'll have the first Quarterly Exam.

He's working on the US Presidents app on my Android smartphone - each of the kids has an app to study and as they finish up they will rotate to a different one.

I got everyone a shiny new composition book for writing journals, and am continuing with this.  Sometimes I give a prompt and other times I just allow them to write about whatever.  Birdman's first entry is an essay about his experience at CAP Encampment.

We also have brand new book list notebooks.  I'm keeping all this stuff under my direct supervision so hopefully we don't have things misplaced like last year.

Velvet has gotten off to a bit of a slow start in picking back up with Saxon 6/5.  She was doing so well that I had her doing a lesson and a half per day before we went to Indy, but we're back to just one lesson AND the proper worksheet for now.  She just doesn't have Math Brain. She enjoys writing in her journal, and I don't have to remind her to read or update her book list.

She likes helping with the garden, although she's still not very good at deciding which is a weed and which is an actual garden plant - although if I'd (a) planted more to begin with and (b) wasn't so busy with work that it got ahead of me weed-wise, she'd do better.

She's studying the Power Vocab app on my phone; it has a definitions quiz and should help her with spelling.  I looked for a free spelling app but there wasn't one that met our needs.  She'll continue with her 4H projects again in the fall (I'm quite happy with the job she did on both her exhibits for the fair, btw).

Lightning McQueen...........is plowing through Saxon 7/6 like nobody's business.  Next week he goes to 2 lessons a day (read both lessons and do the lesson practice in both, and do half the cumulative practice problems for the second lesson, if that makes sense)

He's not a kid who naturally wants to read, so I do have to remind him to read every day (truth be told, he's not a kid who naturally wants to anything except eat and play video games, but I digress).  He's got a Countries of the World app that has trivia facts, a map, a picture of the flag and basic information like population and voting age of each country all over the world - even the Tiny Nations!  He'll keep going with his 4H projects this fall as well, and will be showing his poultry at the fair.

For group study, I've decided to continue and refine something we did a couple of years ago - the World Tour of Foods.  The first time around we had one dinner each month for seven months with the menu consisting of foods from one of the seven continents. (Antarctica's menu was granola bars and hot chocolate eaten around the chiminea in the back yard; we were pretending we were polar explorers!).

This time we'll choose a country each month and have a main dish, side dish, dessert and where possible a beverage from that country.  I haven't quite decided how we'll choose the countries; I kind of like the idea of putting all the countries on one continent in a bowl and drawing one at random, but the method of letting one of the kids choose a country also appeals to me.

We're also going to continue working on learning some songs from our Church in Slavonic (I have a Russian alphabet app I'm studying; I hope to teach myself to read Old Church Slavonic). And watch movies occasionally (some people may not 'approve' of my choice in movies, but I have a specific EDUCATIONAL purpose in mind for each and every movie we watch (except for maybe Speed Racer, but there's even a lesson to be learned in that one :)  )

So, let's get started!