All in a morning's work

It's 9 am here, and so far this morning I have (all by myself) unloaded the dishwasher, nursed a baby, made coffee for the spouseman to take to work, vacuumed the house to fight the rain-encouraged ant infestation (kids cleared some of the floor), made breakfast for 5 people, cleared up after breakfast for 5 people, made my bed, dressed, nursed the baby, dressed the baby (clothing chosen by sister), wiped up one spill, said thank you to big sister for wiping up another spill, read the comics, framed two pictures done by Thing 2, found spots to display framed pictures (not easy in a house with no horizontal display surfaces), wiped down the bathroom floor, took a lot of paper goods to the recycle bin, nursed the baby, helped Thing 2 write a shopping list for clothes, suprevised animal-related kid chores, took the baby's tea-covered sock off, caught a parakeet-hunting scratching kitten, helped get the parakeet back in its cage, cleaned and bandaged two people's cat scratches, helped Thing 1 get the mop set up to mop away the ant's scent trail, moved the barricade of a crib that Thing 3 put across his door, cleaned up half of the under-crib area, agreed with Thing 1 that he was "creative but obnoxious," picked up the spit-out pieces of apple that Thing 4 put on the freshly-vacuumed rug . . .

What have I not had time to do? Find my cell phone. Fold the laundry. Clean up the mess by the back door. Get the kids to do their bookwork. Knit any more on this:


That first sleeve is done but in need of lengthening -- I think he grew while I was knitting it. That string tied to the top is a cheater. I knit to the knot and it's supposed to be the right length. The second sleeve is using non-stretchy yarn.

If the second sleeve allows, after the collar I'm going to lengthen the body too. This sweater was supposed to be done early so I could start on the Blinding Black Saddle Shoulder Sweater, but oh well. It's not like finishing it is going to be easy, thanks to Puck the kitten.

He is utterly obsessed with my Chibi, and I don't think it's the loop I tied to it. I am forever chasing my finishing needles.

In bee-related news, my spouse spent his weekend fashioning this (all by himself, although Things 3 & 4 "helped"):


It's a top-bar beehive fashioned after this one, with some modifications. Even with freshly-bought materials, it's about a third of the cost of a traditional, or Langstroth hive, which is what I've been using so far. He's happy with it, and I'm sure the bees will be, too.

In this kind, the bees suspend their comb from the bars -- see the little ridges?
and there's no frame around it, plus no foundation on which they build the comb. The shape mimics the half-oval honeycomb is in the wild. It yields a little less honey, and a lot more wax than a traditional hive, but there may be some health benefits. For instance, the screen at the bottom is so the varroa mites (nasty, nasty parasites) fall off of the bees and can't get back on. In a traditional hive, they can either climb back or fall onto another bee. These mites might (heee) be responsible for whatever disaster is befalling my current hive. I'm going to go to the bee meeting tonight -- knitting time! -- and ask some questions so maybe I can rescue the crashing population.

Anyhow, since I have friends who are interested in hosting colonies of bees for me in exchange for a portion of the harvest, a less-expensive hive option has to be tried. Thank goodness he's handy!

I don't dare hope for knitting time until Miguel comes. But now that the kids are playing some complicated zoo-paper airplane game, maybe I can make two phone calls and look for that missing cell phone.