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This morning, when I stepped outside the front door to start my day, there was a whole assortment of little brown birds on my front lawn, picking up nice soft nesting material. Smokey is deep in the middle of the shedding-of-the-fur, and looks like a molting caribou. Yesterday, before going back into the house from our evening walk, I stood her on the front lawn and plucked out handfuls of nice soft grey undercoat fluff. (don't even ask about the state of my carpeting!) Had been intending to rake it up and put it in the compost, but didn't get to it... now some baby birds will have nice soft nests...

Here is a picture of the completed Scythian horse pendant, that I posted the whole series of pictures about earlier. I'd been meaning to let you all see how it turned out.

Oh, yeah, and this news just in ~
I'm going to Oregon Country Fair this year!

I am actually a juried crafter there, as of 2004, but for those of you not familiar with the craft scene there, jurying in doesn't get you a space, just the right to sell IF you can find someone willing to share space with you. In 2004 I was very fortunate, and was offered a bit of shared space. The following summer I lost my place of residence, which threw my life into utter chaos, and the Fair was not really high on my list of priorities. Last year I wasn't able to find shared space, and I was beginning to doubt that I would for this year either... (You need to be present and selling you craft at least once every three years , or you lose your juried status, which requires going through the jurying process all over again, with no guarantee of getting in again. I was lucky, it only took me two years of jurying to get accepted). I'd resigned myself to going through the jurying again, when one of the folks I'd contacted a while back had a space open up.

SO In the past I've taken at least a month or two to prepare; now I have less than two weeks to get ready for a major craft fair, wheeee! Fortunately, I've been able to get a good responsible house sitter, the daughter of an old friend, to come and stay at Acorn Cottage. So I needn't worry about Smokey and the hens. All I need to do is create an appropriate display and sign, and make sure that I have enough suitable stock for three days (I don't think peerage medallions will work....)