Cloud Sculptures

Posted on September 8, 2017 by TJ

Today we finally had sunny skies. Well, we had mostly sunny skies. Ok, we actually had patches of sun and blue peeking through clouds. But it didn’t rain.

It rained off and on through the rest of the week. I didn’t mind, although I really, really dislike walking through the muddy straw on my way to the coop. The straw makes the mud spongy and I feel as if I’m going to disappear into quicksand.

A few days ago, I picked up a couple feathers that the ducks had discarded and I put them near Shelob’s lair. I wanted to see what she would do. The next day I saw that she had glued them around the entrance to her tunnel. She is such an interesting critter, although the sight of her still fills me with terror. Good thing I don’t ever see more of her than a quick flicker of movement as she vanishes into her lair.

Or, rather, most of the time I don’t see more than a flicker of Shelob. This afternoon as I refilled water buckets and gathered eggs, I creeped over to the fence and looked over it to see if I could see her. It’s hard to spot her because she blends in with the earth, but I thought I might have seen her, so I carefully took out my camera, zoomed way in, and….CLICK. My goodness she is big, and scary looking, and terrifying! But she’s also rather interesting…as long as she keeps away from me. But it’s not her fault that I sneak up on her and get scared, so I don’t blame her. She does vanish quickly when she sees me. She’s keeping our Non-Aggression Pact very well.

The really awesome thing about the rainy days is that the clouds were dramatically beautiful. Because of the Great Lakes, Michigan has a lot of cloudy days. People who move here from other states sometimes think Michigan is too cloudy and gloomy. But I love the clouds. I think they look like beautiful cloud sculptures. I’m glad that I live in a place where I have an unhindered view of the sky.

The only slightly negative thing about clouds is that they block our view of celestial events. This week there was a strong solar storm so there were awesome Northern Lights–or so I heard. We didn’t get to see them because of the clouds. Oh, well.

In-between downpours the other day, I moved the leaping wire deer over to the hill on the other side of the driveway. EJ has a pile of junk he is going to discard in the dumpster at work. I found something that that I used as a stand to hold up the deer. My guys laugh at me because I keep moving the two wire deer around the property.

The days are getting chillier now. I’ve been feeling quite comfortable in sweatshirts and jackets.

I successfully fulfilled my first international order–to a friend in Australia. She ordered two pair of dragon gloves, which she says she loves. Yay!

I’m excited about working on my next project. I want to make a beautiful feathery swan shawl. I found a pattern that might work in an out-of-print crochet book. I was able to find the book in places like Amazon, but it cost more than $50. I finally found a copy at e-bay for about half the price, but the listing had expired. So I contacted the seller and asked that if she ever relisted the book to please let me know because I wanted to buy it. She responded that she would immediately relist the book so I could buy it, which I did! Yay! I thanked her for relisting it for me. Now I just have to wait for my order of yarn to arrive. If it works as I envision it, it will be magical.

I spent much of the day working on the Teric’s Treasures page of this blog. Now if you click on a photo of an item, it will take you right to the item at Etsy. I still want to tweak a few things, but I got most of it done.

I have friends in the path of Hurricane Irma, and also friends who live in states with terrible wildfires. They are in my constant prayers. I also continue to pray for people affected by Harvey. My friend told me that the grocery shelves are still quite bare and it’s not easy to find gas.