Eight Acres

At my work I’m known as “the egg lady” because I occasionally bring in our excess eggs to sell.  The eggs are very popular and fights have been known to occur over the last carton in the fridge.  As a result I am often sought out by people who are “thinking about getting chickens”.  The questions are always the same, so I thought there are probably other people who would like to know about this too.  I firmly believe that there are no stupid questions about chickens.  When I first moved in with my husband, Pete, he already had chickens, and I clearly remember being surprised that they needed to be fed grain.  I must have thought that they lived off vege scraps!  So it’s not long ago that I was also a chicken novice with very basic questions!   How many chickens should we get? This depends on how many eggs you want and how much space you have.  Assuming that you have the space, I would say four or five hens for a family of four if you want abo...

  On a recent trip to New Zealand I was tempted by some beautiful yarn.  Both the colours (blue, green and brown) and the texture attracted me.  Woven from merino, silk and possum, it is soft, light and incredibly warm.  You did read correctly, in New Zealand the possum was introduced from Australia and is considered a pest, so it is quite common to find possum pelts for sale, as well as possum fur woven into yarn.  This is a win for everyone, it controls a pest animal while making lovely yarn!     Having bought this yarn I really wanted to make something special with it.  I bought it as a hank, so I first had to wind it into balls.  Having done that I realised that I didn't have much yarn to work with, so I decided to make a shawl.  I consulted all my knitting books for shawl ideas (deciding against getting lost in the interwebs, I did want to get the project started this winter!). I picked up the brilliant book Custom Knits Access...