Legwarmers Done, Rain, Birdsong

The ragg wool leg warmers I started knitting back in February have finally joined my Finished Objects list. I finished casting off the second one (in progress in the photo) last night.

The first one is over an olive oil bottle standing on a yogurt carton to dry after I dampened it. I call it "Ragg wool as sculpture".

This wool was fairly harsh and stiff dry, but damp it feels soft and buttery-fuzzy. Once they've both been wetted and dried, they'll go back in my cedar drawer until winter.

They took about 66 grams of wool each, and I have 72 grams left from the first original pair that I unravelled to knit them. So I'm thinking about unravelling another original pair and knitting a second pair to fit. Maybe shaped this time with no ribbing except the K1 P1 at the top and bottom.

We actually got rain again yesterday afternoon, nearly four-tenths of an inch. This has been a very dry summer. I think some of the birds that hatched in June and July have never even seen rain.

We got nearly a quarter of an inch between 2pm and 3pm. It's been so dry, you can see the rain pouring down at the end of the rain gutter, running over the surface of the sandy yard and not soaking in in this photo.

Hummingbirds must like damp weather. I had been worrying about the bird I photographed here, because I hadn't spotted her either at the feeder or in the catnip for a while, and it didn't seem like the level in the feeder was going down. (I do change the syrup regularly regardless.)

I finally saw and heard her again yesterday, and got to watch her in the rosebush preening herself with that deadly-looking bill, and scratching the back of her head with her tiny little foot!

I don't know how to put streaming audio in a post. If you click on this, it will take you to a wav file I uploaded.

Bird sounds

The sound quality is pretty poor, recorded out my window with the microphone of my new camera. You'll hear a couple seconds of hissy silence, a towhee, a robin, the towhee again, crows in the background, and a mourning dove.

Today I'm catching up on the last two patterns of my Sampler CM and listening to almost the same sounds out the window.