Another recent walk, this time at Bentsen Park

Hello, everyone.

Just before everything combined to reschedule our Camino walk, we did a relaxed walk at Bentsen-RGV State Park.

The bird-feeder season was pretty-much over. Except for those feeders that had been stocked! We saw some pretty birds. One type we were seeing, in addition to the green jays, the red-winged blackbirds, the chachalacas, and various full-colored red cardinals, were these ones:

Near the bridge over the irrigation canal at the entrance. His color looked rather orange-ish that time.

At the water-enhanced bird blind with benches, getting a drink.

Also at that bird blind? He was eating sunflower seeds here.

These don't really look like the female cardinals. They might be. Or they might be another color variant. Or desert cardinal? the bill in the internet images of the desert cardinal seemed more sharply curved but the feathery look to the crest--sorry, those pictures came out blurry--made me think it's not a regular cardinal.

The weather was cloudy that day and it seems to have convinced the birds to keep their little caps down.

Returning to our little snake friend of the path

Hello, everyone.

Today we discovered that the Camino walk we have been training for must be rescheduled. The government of Spain declared a national emergency with travel restrictions, as near as we can tell.

So returning to the puzzle of the snake was an attractive thought. We think we have him identified:
desert massasauga is a type of smallish rattlesnake that lives in the Rio Grande Valley. It likes dry grassy country, and since there has been very little rain this year it should be very happy these days! (Link is to a photo from the New Mexico herp society.) We're still having trouble spotting the pit in his face, but he certainly has the cat's eye pupils, and the color. The tail photo seems to show a small rattle chain beginning to form. And he has the full cheeks of a rattler instead of the narrow head of many other snakes.

We cropped the photos and came up with these detail bits:

The head

Overall look at the snake, lying on the pavement

The tail

Interested readers are welcome to add information about this interesting reptile in the comments.

Wildlife on the walking trail

Hello, everyone.

A few days ago we were walking on the Hike and Bike Trail in our town. We often carry cameras in case something interesting turns up.

I almost stepped on this one.

He doesn't have a visible rattle--the first thing we thought to wonder about!--but he's rather small. (Around 18 inches?) He does have a line of brown spots down his back. His head is triangular, the wide part being behind his eyes. No pits were visible in his cheeks, at least to our glance. (But we didn't give him an all-over look.)

A view from another angle.

He was lying in the sunshine trying to warm up for the day, minding his own business right out there on the paved path. We passed on by, live and let live, and continued our walk. When we returned through that spot he had moved on.

A new fidget mat

Hello, everyone.

After returning from the Frozen North, I had a request for a little gift for a relative: a fidget mat, to ease the tense fingers and allow relaxation while watching TV.

The nurse had suggested fur.

An overall view of the red fur fidget mat. The embellishments, except for the stabilizing button clusters, are all on a separate piece that was appliqued at the end. The beads on ribbon idea was shamelessly stolen from, oops, I mean inspired by a video on Youtube that a lady made to keep a record of a fidget pillow she made. The zipper is a fairly standard embellishment, but this time it is sewn on at an angle to increase the interest in the shape. There is a purple button under the zipper and a silver-toned gogo pailette strung on one of the other ribbons. It moves, but only inside the zipper space.

Detail of the zipper, the movable strung seed beads--yes, they are really big seed beads!--and various accent buttons.

Detail of the bead-woven ring. It's from an instruction for a right-angle weave bangle done by Mortira at Inspirational Beading.  The ring is formed by the difference in bead sizes. When I made the sample, to learn the technique, I discovered that the ring is almost a self-operating fidget device. My fingers kept turning it and turning it, exploring the feel of the beads. It's a natural to hang from a ribbon loop on a fidget mat!

The button clusters are texture in the midst of the fur, but they're also there to prevent the layers from shifting in use.

After a short hiatus, a look at how the other (northern) half lives

Hello, everyone.

I went out of town for a few days and discovered how it feels to be in actual cold. (And this was in good weather for up there!)

I am told that in warm weather many waterfowl come to this pond. There is a strolling path around the water, and people were using it.

While riding on the roads there, I did see a couple of sand-hill cranes. They were standing right next to the pavement! Their long necks and their bright red flashes above the eye were impressive.

A late-winter warm spell came while I was there and melted the top layer of ice on the pond.

There is still ice there, but it looks like water now. One goose was gingerly stepping out onto the ice to see if it was swimmable yet.

In the spring these folks will have the famous spring bulbs of the temperate zone to enjoy, like drifts of daffodils and spreading zones of tulips in many colors. In south Texas neither one grows. Also no crocuses!

Photos were taken with my Samsung 5 cell phone. It's not bad for a phone camera. I do still prefer either my Canon point and shoot (new, 10 ounces) or my slightly heavier Canon camera (older, 12 ounces) that was taken on all of our Camino de Santiago walks so far. The new point and shoot camera's first outing was the Israel pilgrimage. It has 40X optical zoom. Sadly, it also has a completely different battery size than DH's Canon point and shoot. But I forgive it, as even with the extra charger to carry it's likely that the weight overall is the same and it doesn't stick out from my waist in its carry pouch like the other does. Larger carry pouches, and larger batteries and chargers, also weigh more than smaller ones.

Cool weather has arrived in South Texas

Hello, everyone. After a reasonably warm winter mostly, it's February and the cool fronts are showing up. This morning it was mid-40's in this area.

We've been walking, mostly on the Hike and Bike, where we did 4 miles on Monday and 6 miles on Tuesday, plus taking the critter for her survey of the neighborhood beforehand.

Last week we commenced on buying new trees for the place: avocadoes to keep the one we have company and improve the fruit set.  While we were out and about hunting them down, we were near South Padre Island, drove over to the end of the paved road and strolled a bit on the dunes in the chilly weather.

South Padre Island National Seashore view

The other direction had a few hardy tourists, also strolling, and all of us wearing jackets and long pants and sometimes headwear.

I've gotten no interesting bird pictures on the Hike and Bike this season, there was construction where the water ditches cross (one over the other) and the birds haven't come back to that place yet, plus there are a lot of folks these days walking, running, and biking on it.

There appears to have been a bot posting comments with a link in several of the posts in the last few months, I know my readers will know better than to click on the link and so I merely mention it as an advisory.

A new machine, a new challenge

Hello, everyone.

In December, a large box arrived for my sweetie, and someone else wrapped it up in paper. There it sat until Christmas Eve, when I opened it to discover a new machine!

This not-so-little beauty is the Janome MC500e, which does embroidery. It does not do sewing, other than what sewing can be done as an embroidery project. Here it is working on the in-the-hoop coasters on the Sew4Home web site.  I used a different color of linen, from stash, and different colors for the threads. The actual pattern was developed from a canned border design, which the ladies at Sew4Home made into an intricate decoration for the square coaster.

I see some non-fattening Easter gifts here.

The machine came with some canned alphabets and designs, and I found some more freebies to try  out as well.

I put this test piece into a three-ring notebook my sweetie gave me. The text was done with the canned lettering alphabets in the machine, and the shell is a freebie I found online. (The person giving the shell away free has it as a part of a beach-y ensemble for a bathroom floor mat. The shell is around 3 3/4 inches across.) Long time readers know that the Camino de Santiago made a big impression around here, so the shell just reached out and grabbed me through the computer screen and said "just think what you can do with me!"

I wrote notes on the test piece, as y'all can see. Which threads were used, the file name of this project--which I envision as a pillow front--and some comments on the way the quilting cotton behaved under the needle.

Very recently, I learned out to print out a placement template, actual size, to see how things work out.

This was an exploration of various sizes of the canned letters that came with the machine. I broke out my little ruler and measured the height of the capital D for the different alphabets. This little trick is done on my machine's software by clicking the little icon at the top, rather like hitting "file" in Word, and a list of options appears. One is Print and it sends what you're working on to the printer, with the centering arrows and everything.

It's been so exciting discovering what can be done with my embroidery machine! And  my local quilt shop has classes on various techniques, explored through projects, as well.

This was from a class that introduced me to in-the-hoop applique. It's a Kimberbell design. Four of us came and worked through it. The little bunny is just as cute as a button, IMHO.

Thank you, Santa!