Can You Stand Another Peanut Post?

I went to the birdy store for some toys for Peanut today, and while I did not come home with the adorable Cockatoo I'm seeing on the side, I did come home with this awesome play stand for my tiny bird. (It's hard to get a picture in front of a sunny window.)

Peanut willingly stepped up on the stand, before she realized this meant she would not be on my shoulder, my chest, my finger, or any other part of her favorite perch. Which is the point, from my perspective. This gives her a place to hang out in the same room with the rest of the family, without actually having to be ON a member of the family. It is also mostly out of Kozmo's range. He could certainly knock it over if he wanted to, but at least he can't grab her on his way past, and I won't leave them together unattended.

This is how Peanut reacts when Koz gets too close. I call this her Eagle Pose. She spreads her wings as wide as they will go to make herself look as big as possible, and then she hisses like a little dragon! It's incredibly cute, and it really gets the point across. Koz does an abrupt about-face and leaves the room every time she does it. They say it's not the size of the dog in the fight that counts, but the size of the fight in the dog. I guess that applies to birds, too!

And Then There Were Two

Yes, my Peanut is a fertile little birdie.

I expected this today, so I've been putting her in her cage every hour or so to see if she would lay in the "nest." She didn't, but she did lay this one in the cage instead of on Younger Son, so I'm calling it an improvement. She doesn't seem to buy into the whole "nest" idea; she actually took the other egg out of the nest and left it in a corner of the cage...but not the same corner as where she laid this one. She seems a little confused about how this whole "roosting" thing works.

I put both eggs back in the nest and brought Peanut back downstairs (she won't start incubating until she's done laying).

She enjoys sitting on my shoulder or chest and chattering to me or preening herself, but she really loves my computer keyboard. She climbs onto it and sticks her head under my typing fingers to get petted. It's super cute, but inconvenient...and getting bird poop out from between the keys is kind of a pain. So I relocated her to a different spot on the computer:

She loves it. She is sitting there, enjoying the warmth, chirping away, and preening herself as I type.

We did have a near-disaster yesterday. I was bringing her downstairs on my shoulder when she abruptly decided she wanted to fly. She fluttered down the stairs and into the family room, where she landed ON Kozmo, who was sleeping on the floor! He reacted as one would expect an 85 pound dog to react when rudely awakened by the two ounce usurper of his master's affection. Fortunately, I got to Koz before he got a grip on Peanut. He was mightily offended by being dragged away by his tail (the first thing I could reach), but far more offended when Older Son swatted him on the nose! No one in this family has ever so much as scolded him, so the nose swat was a grave offense. I pointed out to Older Son that Koz didn't do anything wrong (he was just being a dog), and OS made every effort to make up with Koz, but it may take a while.

Peanut was unharmed, except for the loss of a tail feather and some dog drool on her back. She was completely unfazed by the incident and remains convinced of her own superiority.

Not Male!

Only I would buy a male bird that turns out to be pregnant.

Apparently I can expect Peanut to lay between one and seven more eggs in the next week or two. They may or may not be fertile, since I don't know whether she mated while she was living with the other cockatiels.

Is there any way this could be the KG's fault?

New Baby!

We have a new baby in the house! This is Peanut. He is a male (we think) cockatiel. He is a hand-raised baby, so he's very tame and friendly. He's about eight months old, so not really a baby anymore. More of an adolescent. And judging from his immediate and slightly obsessive interest in me, I think his little birdie hormones are in full swing.

He is technically Younger Son's bird (as you can see from the "perch" in the pictures). For the past several weeks, I have been considering getting a larger bird to keep me company during the day (since the dogs do nothing but sleep). I've been to every bird shop in town, talked to every rescue, and visited about a hundred different birds. Then I took Younger Son with me to my favorite bird shop and we came home with this little guy for him. It turns out, though, that the bird doesn't care who he was purchased for. He would like nothing better than to spend his whole day climbing on me and getting kisses. I had no idea birds could be so cuddly and affectionate. Or so smart! And the bigger birds have nothing on this little guy for personality and interactiveness.

I think I have my new bird.

Happy New Year!

The thermometer in my car yesterday at lunchtime.

Happy Knitting

ETA: I've tried to fix the pictures. Could someone please let me know whether they are now visible? Thanks!

I mentioned in my last post that my house had been torn up for 45 days. As it turns out, 45 days is the outside limit of my tolerance for having my house torn up. On day 46, I evidently become a raving lunatic who frightens husbands and small children and causes contractors to back slowly away while laughing nervously.

However, I apparently also become extremely energetic and efficient. My house is entirely put back together, with a new bathroom, new walls, new paint, and new living room furniture. It is beautiful. I am happy. All is well with my world.

My husband deserves (he insists) full credit for talking me off the ledge. He also deserves full credit for moving enormously heavy pieces of furniture all over the house and lighting a fire under contractors who clearly did not understand the importance of getting the damned project done already.

And now I am deeply engrossed in happy knitting. I got this (at my request, and to the accompaniment of much eye-rolling) for Christmas:


This is a full bag of Noro Kochoran, one of my all-time favorite yarns. I really wanted this to make a soft, fluffy sofa throw. I cast on Christmas morning and have been happily and obsessively knitting ever since.


Note the colors. There is nothing about these colors that would appeal to a male--ever--and that is the point.


Every afghan I have made has been confiscated by someone in my family. And while I am thrilled that they love my afghans, I am also cold. I want my own blankie, and this is it. It's like the hot pink flip flops I bought when my black and brown ones kept disappearing. I couldn't keep a pair of flip flops for more than a few weeks. I've had the pink ones for three years. So this is the knitted equivalent of hot pink flip flops.

The pattern is here, and it is free. I used the Kochoran instead of sock yarn scraps, obviously, and size 10 needles. My goal is to knit one ball of yarn per day, giving me a finished 48"x 60" throw in ten days. So far, I am on track. I don't normally set knitting goals, but this is an exception: I want my blankie, darn it!

Knitting For Sanity

The chaos in my house continues unabated. This is day 45 (by my count) of the Great Flood of 2011. (Note: the name is ironic. For the amount of inconvenience it has caused, the bathroom leak really deserves a more dramatic name.)

Once again--as for most of the past month and a half--there are noisy things happening in my house. Today it is a plumber and a drywaller. I had thought the drywalling ordeal was over last week, at least downstairs, after the four days the drywaller spent putting my ceiling and walls back up, texturing everything, and painting the living room and dining room. Then yesterday the plumber came to put in a new bathtub, and that's where things started going sideways. He spent most of the day trying to get the drain to install correctly. When that didn't work, he said he would need to cut a hole in the freshly repaired ceiling to access the drain. So he showed up this morning with the drywaller, cut a hole in the ceiling...and couldn't make the drain work. After a couple more hours, he went out to buy a different drain. In the meantime, the drywaller is twiddling his thumbs, waiting to close up the ceiling. From the sounds in the next room, that is not happening anytime soon.

The drywaller also needs to put up drywall and paint the bathroom, but of course, he can't do that until the tub is in and the new pipes and faucets installed. Again, not happening anytime soon. Since the tile guy is supposed to be here Monday, the drywaller wants to come back tomorrow (Saturday) to finish the walls. There goes my weekend.

Worse yet, I haven't been able to get a tree or decorate for Christmas, or, heck, see the damned floor, and I'm getting really, really antsy about it. Every time I think we're making progress, another monkey wrench gets tossed into the mix. I detest chaos and clutter under any conditions, and being trapped in a house full of it for an extended period is making me more than a little crazy. I am so not cut out for remodeling.

So I've been playing with yarn. A lot. I wove a shawl out of Noro Silk Garden Sock, finished Snowbird, and cast on Tinder. But at the moment, I need the sort of comfort that can only come from gorgeous, squishy yarn and enormous amounts of plain knitting. I cast on this:

This is Malabrigo in Stonechat, and I have a lot of it. I bought it in a destash months ago, planning to make a sofa throw. The time has come. This will be a log cabin pattern, only super large scale. Each log is 12 inches wide, and the final throw will be a single giant block. All garter, size 8 needles. It doesn't get any more comforting than that.

Knitting, take me away! (Bonus points if you can name the reference.)