Benny's boo-boo and imprisoned picker

Yesterday morning, Benny was missing most of a scur. He might have caught it in the fence, but I suspect he was defending himself against 'ramsome' Barbados. Recently someone contacted me about buying a new flock sire for their flock of polled Shetlands (Yay! Another breeder of polled Shetlands in Oregon!), so Barbados may get to put those hormones to work this fall.

I have a prisoner in the henhouse. At least half of my hens are showing signs of feather-picking – some drastically so (you know it's bad when people think you have Turkens!). One day I caught the culprit, so she's cooling her heels while the others grow feathers. Some are molting, too, as you can see by the feathers on the henhouse floor. I'm still getting 6-7 eggs a day, though.

In other news, Browning's fleece is sold (thanks to a Ravelry ad) and will ship out today. That leaves two reserved fleeces yet to paid for and mailed . . . and all the other bags and boxes of fiber and yarn in my office/wool room. Rick complains occasionally, and the accumulation bothers me, too. There's a bag of long wool roving right at the top of the stairs, so that's the first thing I want to tackle. What to use it for? It is too coarse for garments, and doesn't felt or full. I've used some of it for my homeschool co-op Textiles class, but I'm teaching Yearbook now. Then the perfect use popped into my head – chair pads! We have four wooden chairs in our dining set, and I go through a set of store-bought pads every few years. I'll bet knitted ones would last longer and provide a nice cushion, especially if I knit them out of roving. I plan to start with one, then weigh it and the remaining roving to see if I have enough for four. But first, I need to tackle these:

Yes, it's peach season – Canadian Harmony peaches from an orchard just down the hill from us, to be exact. Yummmm.

That's it for today at . . .