Lucky

 Grandbaby #7, whom I dubbed Lucky for referring to at this little place here, was born at the end of January.  

DS2 and Surprise had kept the gender a secret until after the birth, so until I got the proud phone call from DS2 announcing baby's arrival, I didn't know for sure that Lucky is a little boy!  (Confession time:  I'd really been hoping that Lucky would be a boy.  DS2 and Surprise have been trying to start their family for a while, and I just really hoped that DS2 would get to have a son. Daughters are good too, and hopefully God will give them one of those in the coming years, but if it was/is going to be just one child for them, I was rooting for a boy.)

Given that I was supposed to be making a 'gender neutral' quilt for this grandbaby, whose gender was top secret, I really had a hard time.  Surprise had said yellow, green, gray, some blue, maybe a tiny bit of purple.  I wanted to stick with that palette even though it wasn't one that I was drawn to.

I knew what pattern I wanted to use--square in a square--but as far as what fabrics, well the ones that kept speaking to me leaned toward the boyish. 

It all started with the feature fabric, which is a Disney print.  As soon as I saw that fabric online, I knew it was the one for this quilt--DS2 and Surprise met by accident at Walt Disney World 10 years ago.  So the Disney themed fabric absolutely had to be for Lucky's quilt.  Had that chance meeting between a New Jersey girl and a Michigan boy not happened at Disney World, there would be no Lucky.

After that, I just went through my stash and found fabrics I all ready owned that coordinated with the colors in the Disney Fabric.  Yellow, green, gray and some blue. 

For a day or two I debated throwing in a light pink or purple which also looked okay, but in the end I omitted those two colors because they just didn't 'feel right' to me. I sewed the quilt, the whole time hoping it wasn't going to turn out too overtly saying 'boy quilt' and have Lucky turn out to be a girl and then have Surprise not really want to use the quilt made specifically for that child because it wasn't girlish enough.

So it was kind of a relief when DS2 called and said that Lucky is a boy.  Now I didn't feel quite so nervous about gifting the quilt I made.  It's still pretty much gender-neutral, especially bordered in the yellow fabric I chose.

Lucky's very gender neutral quilt (heavy on the yellow)

Gender-neutral backing (heavy on the green)

The day Lucky was born, I had finished quilting but hadn't yet sewn on the binding of the quilt.  Which didn't end up being a big deal, because DS2 and Surprise requested no visitors for at least the first week after Lucky's birth.  So that gave me time to hand sew the binding down.

Lucky was 8 days old when DH and I got to see him.  He's a little skinny bugger, weighing in at less than 7 pounds at birth and being 19.5" long.  But he's really strong all ready and has pretty good neck strength/head control for a newborn.  Both DS2 and Surprise are fair skinned, so odds are good that Lucky will be too.  We'll have to wait several months to see if his eyes will be blue like DS2, or greenish like Surprise.  Right now they are the typical newborn bluish grey and he has thin dark brown hair (which, if it's anything like my kids and several of my older grandkids as babies, will fall out and come back in blond or sandy colored for the first 5ish years.)

Requiem For a Rooster

 

This is Stuart.  Stuart came to this little place here as a 'free mystery chick' in an order from McMurray Hatchery back in 2018.  He was a little bitty ball of fluff, and, as a day old, I thought he might be a bantam of some sort.  In fact, his size is what gave him his name: Stuart Little. As he grew, and his adult feathers came in, and he displayed an atypically luxurious tail of long black/green feathers, I finally figured out that he wasn't a bantam at all, but a Silver Phoenix.

Stuart got to stay at this little place here partly because of his unique breed with it's long flowing tail (visitors always complimented me on my beautiful rooster) and partly because he was, for the most part, a very friendly and non-aggressive roo.  Very occasionally he would challenge me, typically the first time I'd wear shorts in the Spring and he wouldn't recognize my legs, but usually he was a mellow guy and would even walk up to greet me.

Coming to see me on the patio.

Stuart got to sire a bunch of the chicks that hatched out in DD2's science summer school classes in 2021 and 2022.  We even kept a couple of his 2021 daughters here (who laid lovely green eggs, being half Ameracauna and half Silver Phoenix) for a while.  He was great with his hens, very protective.

Unfortunately, a week and a half ago, Stuart went out with his ladies to forage in the corn stubble on a nice late January day.  That night, when I counted chickens to shut them into the coop for the night, Stuart was missing. I searched high and low, even following chicken tracks out and around in the field, but found no sign of him.  Not a carcass, not any feathers, not even a speck of blood.  And since Stuart has always returned to the coop, every single night, I had to face the fact that he's gone.  Most likely carried off by a hawk while he was out in the field having fun rummaging in the corn stubble for kernels and calling his ladies to come enjoy the feast he'd found.

RIP Stuart.  You were a good rooster.  One of the best, one of my favorites of the last 21 years.