D'vorahDavida
Yetzirah

This may be an odd place to start in relating news from my trip north, but it's where I'm going to do it. I have an old school friend that I visited who raises chickens. I went out to visit him and his flock. He loaned me several poultry husbandry books to read while I was up there. I am nurturing a powerful desire to have a flock of my own, but since I can't do that right now, I'm rubbing shoulders with those who do. I told him about my wild bird feather collection and that I sometimes put them on my felted bags. He immediately traipsed out to his utility room and brought out two plastic storage bins with some unusual items inside. He keeps all his hens but has to "let go" of some of the roosters. He started saving their "hackles". He knows people who use the feathers for tying flies. He preserves them by putting on a lot of borax powder which dries up their…well, I was calling them chicken necks, but really, they could be described as "scalps". Because there's um, desiccated chicken skin on the undersides. (You are using a lot of quotation marks there Cupcake. Feeling a little "squeemish" about the whole thing are we?) Sorta. And I don't want to gross anyone out, but I'm so excited to have these "trophies", that I wanted to share. Here they are...   Aren't they beautiful? All I can say is, I have the coolest friends ...EVER. (You realize that Red isn't going to speak to you for probably a month.) Yeah, I'm counting on it.