Almost done!

I finished tacking down the recycled billboard covering to the south and west today. The south side has part of a diamond ring on it (the other half is on the tarp I cut for the north side but am not quite sure about yet). Covering it was a little awkward, due to how Ed braced it on the outside (I’m sure there’s some reason for that; I just don’t know what it is), but I did a pretty good department store wrapping job on the corners, and think it will hold up well. In a year or two, we might box in the sides properly.

I still want to close off any seams or overlaps with white duct tape (I started with silver & decided I’d wait on the white to make it a little less bootleg), and maybe make a few other enhancments.

I may put strips of felt between the posts and tarp to minimize wear–you can see how even today’s light wind blows against them. I wish that had occurred to me before I wrapped the sides, but at least the wrapping layer will afford some reinforcement.

And I might get some lath and staple down the cover to the posts and braces and it probably wouldn’t hurt to do that along the top and sides as well.

I also need to decide what I want to do about the open/north side. As it stands, snow can blow right  in. The problem is that I need to be able to come and go, and not having the covering taut means like it will blow like crazy all the time and wear out halfway through winter.

I’ve been toying with making a sort of blinds-like contraption. I could fasten it just to the top, make a hem and make it rigid with PVC pipe, then roll it up when I don’t need it (probably just hold it with a couple of velcro straps), or unfurl it and strap it down when there’s weather.

That little corral of hay bales in front of the first picture is my new compost pile/next spring’s hay bale garden. It’s open on one side so I can trundle in a wheelbarrow, and once I’ve got it all loaded up, I’ll cover it with a tarp or somesuch to keep the heat/moisture in.  Next spring when the hay is nice and weathered, I’ll box it in with the cattle panel I bought just for that purpose, and plant my garden into the bales. Eventually I’ll probably do a conventional plot around it as well, but I’m trying to be modest taking on new projects.

My other gardeny project is to cover the old coop with greenhouse film. I threw on some crappy mattress cover plastic during Felt School, and that saved everything through the freeze, but I want something a little nicer/less ugly. I ordered the film last week. I think I’ll try the blinds contraption there  as well, as it would be handy to fasten it down to the top and be able to roll up the sides for ventilation to prevent mildew. I’m not sure what to do about the front and back. I don’t think I’ll be able to keep anything alive all winter, even if I enclose it completely, so it’s probably wise to just think of it as a season extender.

I still have to swap jackets for Ronnie, Uncle Honeybunch, Mr. Shivers and Hokey Pokey–who I realized today is almost entirely woolblind on one side, which probably accounts for his strenuous objections to my first attempt at a costume change.

Here are Jayne and Agnes in their freshly-marked, new jackets.

And here is my astounding 14 feet of progress on the building scarf since Yarn School. Marissa was plugging away with that frustrating pompom yarn, so I figured I should keep going with it. Once I moved the thing to my bedside, picking it up while watching TV was the natural progression. As you can see, I’m both an avid tivo watcher and a fast knitter. Normally, we don’t watch quite this much TV, but we had almost a month of shows and a bunch of premiers piling up the three weeks before (Ron on tour, the Harveyville Fair, and workshop prep) and during Fiber School, so it’s been a couple hours a night, plus the occasional marathon (Mad Men, Fringe). We’re heading back into TV equilibrium, so I won’t be nearly as productive, but I caught up with 3 months of neglect (though I’m still a couple months behind).