Hive Cleanup

Tuesday morning I cleaned up the east hive, which died out over the winter.  We should have removed a couple of the boxes, I think they had too much space to try to keep warm in, so part of the failure was freezing.


The other problem was, I think, starvation, even though there was lots of honey left - bees are brilliant in an instinctive-behavior sense when it comes to things like building comb.  When it comes to things like reversing what direction they've been moving over their honey stores over the winter to get to a place with plenty of honey . . . not so much. 

The first two pictures show the top of the top box of the hive, with come that they built between the tops of the frames and the inner cover - gives a sort of cross-section view of what wild-built comb looks like.  Not so neat and perfectly even as you might be led to believe.

All the bees you can see in the first two and the third picture are dead.  The third picture probably best shows some dead with their heads still in cells.  That's a sign of starvation.



See all the capped (closed) cells on the frame in the fourth picture?  They're full of honey.  The reverse side of that frame has even more honey-filled cells.  There's really quite a lot left.  Hence our assumption of guilt on not reducing the number of boxes for the winter leading to freezing.



This fourth and last picture also shows a kind of strangely-built area in the center of the frame.  These plastic frames, it turns out, need to be pushed up against each other, or there's enough space that the workers can get . . . creative in their comb-building. We thought we had remedied all their creatively-built areas, but apparently not.

I removed sections like that from several frames, hopefully the new bees will fill in with nice neat comb, like the lobes on the outer sides of this frame.

It was cool enough Tuesday morning that the two surviving colonies of bees were still snuggled in their hives, so I was able to clean up this one with no gloves or veil on, and could easily take pictures with my iPhone's camera.  Elrond wandered around and did wander through to see what I was up to, but didn't seem particularly interested in the dry, empty old comb I'd scraped out of some areas.

Ron's New Socks

Finished these socks last night, here they are on Ron's feet this morning.  Blue Moon Fiber Arts Socks That Rock Lightweight, in the Knitters Without Borders colorway, with cuffs out of Shadow (black) from the Raven Clan set of colors.

Much of what looks black in the Knitters Without Borders part of the socks is actually purple.  And hot pink, not red.  Good thing Ron's secure in his manhood.

The socks were knit toe-up, in a chevron gansey pattern on the top/front.  The back of the legs are ribbed, so they have a chance of fitting Ron's ankles while being big enough for his feet and to get his heels through.  They're still a bit looser than he'd prefer through the ankles.  I used up all but a smidge of the Knitters Without Borders, stopping at a logical place in the pattern, then switched to ribbing for the black. 

The colors do a continuous stripe around the foot one way for the first part, then reverse when the (non-obvious) gusset increases start.  you can see that on his left foot.  Go back to striping for about one round, then kind of zig-zag up the leg.  Interesting.

Picture taken with my iPhone.  Pretty good little camera, really.

Robin - Halloween

Just a quick snapshot from Halloween morning, before Robin went to school.

His shirt says:
Knowledge is Power
Power Corrupts
Study Hard
Be Evil

And now, Some Finished Socks

"Angee" socks from Cookie A.'s "Sock Innovation" (link to .pdf preview of the book, showing most of the socks). No, this is not the yarn used in the book, this is the "Hearth" multi from Knitpicks.com, in their "Stroll" sock yarn. Good match, eh? My moosies are kinda covered up, though.


Well, that picture came out a bit dark, didn't it. A variation on the "Twisted Rib" socks from Interweave's 25 Favorite Socks book - the twisted rib columns are one stitch wider than the pattern is written. We're all smart enough to figure that one out. :) The yarn is Brown Sheep Co. Wildefoote, color "Tom Cat" which I thought was grey-ish with one pinkish ply, but I'm told by VS shows up as purple.

"Milo" from "Sock Innovation." And the moose on my blockers. Yarn is "Ty-Dye", and I think I did an awsome job of splitting the skein to get obviously-related socks, thankyouverymuch.


Yet Still Another Cookie A. pattern, "Monkey" from Knitty.com. Yarn is "Crazy Zauberball", I don't think the colorway has a name. I hope it shows up better on your screen than this one - it goes through dark teal, burgundy, grey, brown, and looks really cool, in about 3/4"-1" bands. The heels I did in Wildefoote "Cranberry" to keep the color-changing going down the foot. I think it's a decent color match, but heavier yarn.

Yarn Orgy Results

Hmm. The picture above seems to be a bit dark. The three skeins on the left are the half-priced generic sock yarn I referred to in my LJ post about the Stitches trip. The middle one of the three big skeins is red and black or red and blue (still not sure), that may end up being another pair for Ron. The others are purples. The blue-green smaller skein (Cherry Tree Hill brand, no color name) is going to be the Mermaid's Lagoon socks from knitty.com. No concrete plans yet for the orange and the green.

Above are the dozen skeins from Miss Babs, IIRC they're all the "Yummy" superwash merino. She had a lot of nice solids and semi-solids, I could easily have spent a lot more money there than I did.

Let's see, the two dark green skeins on the left are for Ron - I expect it's going to take more than one skein to make him a pair. But I might be able to get a pair of anklets out of it, too. Don't know what pattern I'll be using with it.

The green and white ("Day at Sink Valley Park") is going to be the "Glynis" socks from Cookie A.'s "Sock Innovation." - link to .pdf preview that shows most of the socks in the book. It turns out that colorway is still not as solid as the sock really needs, but I'm not ripping them out for the 5th or 6th time, dammit! And if anyone plans to do these socks, you need to get a couple repeats in to really see the pattern. And don't knit too tightly. Yeah, I have learned something in all the tries on them.

Next is a pale grey ("Oyster"), which is going to be the "Bex" socks from "Sock Innovation."

One of the two rusts, not sure which it was now, except the more solid ("Terracopper"), (they are slightly different) is going to be the Baroque socks from Knitty. Yeah, that pattern needs a solid yarn!

The burgundy ("Merlot"), third from the left of the bottom four, is going to be the "Vilai" socks from "Sock Innovation." Yes, I do like Cookie A.'s socks - I've got 2 more queued up from yarn in the stash - "Nebula", "Ornette" (in about those colors), and 2 more that will probably be done out of the yarn orgy - "Stricken" - but not in light blue, yuck, and "Twisted Flower" - probably the other rust, since I didn't actually grab a dark green - D'OH! - and I will be buying more of her patterns.

If you have suggestions of which yarn to do "Stricken" (or other Cookie A. patterns) from, e-mail me or leave the comment here on blogger directly (gmail addy is your blogger userid), comments on the LJ feed behave . . . oddly.

Wolf in Intended Habitat

Remember the wolf from about two posts earlier? Well, here it is, in the intended habitat, in color. You see now exactly why I spent mumble years futzing around with it.

This was taken immediately after completion Sunday afternoon (you can see the yellow ink smears on the one side). The skin around it is already red in the picture, but is fading today. The minor bleeding you can see in some of the yellow has cleared out, too. Still a bit ouchy, but not too bad.

The artist worked around two freckles/moles that are slightly raised - flat ones he'll go over, but he doesn't like to mess with anything that could possibly be a problem site. I can handle that (and Dr. Iza saw them earlier this year, along with the fifty-zillion other spots on my back and shoulders), although the one is the backs-side paw is kinda obvious. The other one not so much.

Since this is immediately after completion, the colors are as vivid as they'll ever be. They were still that bright this morning, but I expect the skin to start peeling today, at which time the appearance starts to move to the less-bright fully healed state.

Thunder-Duck, and a Wolf

Click on the pictures to embiggen, BTW (embiggen - good word, thanks Yarn Harlot)

Hmm. Clever of me to call this Otter-Dracos Pictures instead of Photographs, as these aren't photos (obviously). They're drawings that Ron scanned in, brought into Adobe Illustrator, and traced/cleaned up (hence the awsome display of symmetry). So I probably should have put the copyright as belonging to both of us, but I doubt he'll be fussed.

The first one is a Northwest Coast-style wolf's head I was working on for myself. I forget how many versions I've gone through as I worked on it in the last mumble years, this time I finally got it right, I think. I think the key was getting rid of outlines. You may or may not notice that the bits are free-floating, not necessarily connected. But it works, you end up seeing the face as a whole. It would be more detailed, but for design constraints the final medium will impose.

As we were finishing the wolf face up, I had the idea to do a Thunderbird-Duck. Yes, with DucKon in mind. I couldn't resist. I did it. Hence the second drawing, ThunderDuck with the duck face in the chest. More semi-detached bits, although less obviously than in the wolf face. More detail, too. I knew that I could put more detail in it.

Then Ron had fun, took out the duck face, and put in the wolf face (with some stretching and/or squashing to make it fit, but not obvious deformation).

In some ways, the ThunderDucks are just . . . wrong. But they came out so well! We also have colored and black-and-white filled-in versions, in which the moustache-y bit in the beak is gone, because it was waaaaay too much like a moustache.

If the DucKon leadership leaves me as Publications again, I do solemnly promise . . .
. . .
. . . NOTHING! I have the POWER! I have the SOFTWARE! I have the IMAGES! BWAH HA HA HA HA!

Looky looky! New Bloggy!

Since LJ's picture storage/uploading makes me crazy, and our other Blogger blog is for Otter Necessities, I've started Yet Another Blog for general picture-posting. And here it is, dracos-otter-pictures.blogspot.com. I'll add links from LJ and Otter Necessities' blog.

So, about these pictures: A while back I decided I'd like to take pictures in Hillside Cemetery, which is on Smith Street, about a block or two north of the Palatine train station, as there seemed to be some older stuff there. New headstones are boring. Old headstones (and footstones, it turns out), are interesting. So we finally got there on Wednesday. We went about 6 pm, because the sun is getting lower and so the light is more interesting.

I think Ron took the first picture, and a couple others, I took the other two posted, and most of them for the evening. And most of them had to be rotated counter-clockwise a couple degrees - but some had to be rotated clockwise - woo! drunk Lon! Straightening was made even more fun by the fact that a lot of the older stones lean. And the cemetery is hilly. Finding a good line to straighten on was sometimes entertaining.

I need to work on my composition. Perhaps that's why I bought a book on composition a week or ten days ago?

Not sure these are the best of the batch, but they're the ones I grabbed this morning.