This is My Country

Although it's a lot less monolithic than some of the news media on either side might have you believe. (Overall state results at the top, county-by-county results at the bottom. Map source, the New York Times. It's interesting to move the little slider over on the left and see which counties did and didn't change.)

There has been more knitting, although it got a lot less lacy. It's going to end up being a woolly lap blanket, so the lack of laciness is fine. I am just finishing a couple of plain rounds and psyching myself up for my weird vision of squaring the circle. I have to decide about dyeing the last skein of this yarn. I'm pretty sure I don't want to leave it plain Dijon mustard, but haven't picked out a new color for it yet.

I meant to take this photo of the blueberry fields yesterday on our way to the polls, but I forgot to bring the camera. Fortunately today's weather is just as spookily beautiful as yesterday's, when it hit 71 degrees F (22 C)! In November!

After we voted, we went to pick up the countertop we ordered for the cabinet where the new gas soapstone stove will stand. (It's from Woodstock Soapstone Stoves, the mini cottage stove.) When we did, I bought a new birdfeeder.

When we moved here, we had the rare and strange good luck to live in a patch of land with no squirrels. For a bird watcher with a feeder, it was great. Naturally, this couldn't last, and about 8 years ago squirrels found and started to colonize our little spot. I guess there are finally enough acorns on the maturing young oak trees and enough maple seeds to sustain them.

What this means, of course, is that my old hand-me-down hopper feeder is now regularly occupied by a fox squirrel, Sciurus niger, happily stuffing its face with the black oil sunflower seeds I usually offer and gnawing the suet out of the suet feeder.

Although I don't believe it's possible to completely stop a determined squirrel from getting into a feeder^*, at least it should be entertaining to watch them attempting to figure this one out.

^*What else have they got to do? And anything that doesn't stop them just makes them smarter!