February...

...is upon us and Nicky and I have cast on the socks for this month's challenge:

They are a going to be a fairisle design and are knitting up quickly, always good! I've also been sorting out my beehives as a result of the beekeeping event I went to, and have removed all the beeswax from the frames and melted it down. I'm hoping to be able to use some of it for home-made lotions this summer. I had some strips of foundation which I rolled around wicks, although I also dunked my wicking in the molten wax to make it longer lasting.

I bought Amber some new wellingtons as she only has a pair of canvas shoes that she bought in the sale at Primark for £5 so I didn't really regard them as sufficiently robust footwear for our part of the country. She's in adult sizes so the Barbour wellies weren't cheap but the Dunlop ones are so uncomfortable, and I figured she can wash her new ones and wear them with jeans; Glastonbury chic.

The chicks are becoming very tame which is lovely:

This is Hazel, who became Wilbur for a bit but is now back to being Hazel. She/he isn't a cockerel...or at least Henry doesn't seem to think so :-/ The chicks are in with the older hens now to keep them warm when roosting, although Pippa found a new place to lay an egg - the house attached to the rabbits' outside run, although they weren't in it at the time. Never a dull moment when collecting eggs.

Unfortunately I lost my white call ducks to an unfortunate incident involving a neighbour's dog (it wasn't really the dog's fault), so I am very sad about that. I still have the mallards though, who don't seem to mind the sub zero temperatures and icebergs in their tub:

Snow is forecast for the weekend which I am going to use as an excuse to stay in bed. I can't ever recall being warm or having any greenery in the garden at this time of year; it all seems a distant memory and I keep getting emails about seeds and sweet pea plug plants...it makes me long for summer. My crocuses are poking up in the lawn and borders and I always wish I'd planted more - I could do with having great swathes of them, and so could my bees!