Detox Doodles!

This is a habit of drawing something every time I feel the urge to scroll unnecessarily. It helps stop the bad habit and start a new good habit of sketching daily!

This page is all about bats, so much variety!

#art #bats #sketch #DetoxDoodles #sciart #InkArt

For 15 years, an old, no longer used chopping block has been lying untouched behind our garden fence at the edge of the forest.
Today, I took another look at it and snapped a few quick photos. What I found was impressive:
Various mosses and a great variety of different lichens of the genus Cladonia, such as Reindeer, British Soldier, Trumpet, Mealy Pixie Cup, Organ Pipe, Powderhorn, Pyxidata lichen and more... just nature.

#LichenSubscribe #Mosstodon #naturephotography #nature #closeup

One thing I've been meaning to do this year is some updates on our off-grid electric system, just in case anyone's interested, or looking to do it themselves.

I grew up off-grid for a while, so none of it was shockingly new to me, but even so, when we wanted to do it a couple years ago getting numbers was difficult, and installers always wanted to WAY overdo our system. In the end, I'm glad we put our foot down, and ended up doing a much smaller system than anyone(outside of a family friend who installs systems about 4 or 5 hours away from us) was willing to do.

So, now that my wife, myself, and our two boys are living off-grid full time, and living a fairly normal life as far as anyone in suburbia would be concerned looking in from the outside, I thought I'd start a thread that I could update over time.

As a side note, I was going to(or even may have) start this last year, but some damage to our system, and Helene, made it a weird year with downtime. Hopefully an outlier, but maybe not!

I'm also happy to try to answer any questions that anyone might have about any of it.

That all said, we have 7.2 kW of mono-facial solar panels, ground mounted on a hill above our cabin. We have a fairly long electric run, all underground, into an old shed that had a much older system in place when we moved in. We replaced all of that equipment with a new Victron system and EG4-LL V2 LiFePO4 batteries. We have 60kWh of batteries on a 48V system.

That runs to two buildings, one of which is our main cabin and the second is a very small little two room(main room and bathroom) building that may have once been a mother-in-law suite or something like that. My wife uses it as her office space now.

In our main cabin space we added an EcoFlow smart home sub-panel a few years back which all of our circuits runt through. We keep two Delta Pro "solar generators" each with an extra battery on hand that we can run the cabin fully off of as an approximately 15kWh backup.

We also have a small gas powered generator(WEN DF875iX) that we try not to use, but particularly when the system was damaged, we do from time to time. Since we drive off of our property almost zero, the gas used for the generator, and our kei truck to drive around on our property is the vast majority of our gasoline usage. So far this year we've purchased 15 gallons and used about half of that.

That all said, and I'll try to remember to do this quarterly, from January 1st to March 31st this year we had:

-610 kWh of solar generated in January

-579 kWh of solar generated in February

-679 kWh of solar generated in March

-1868 kWh of solar generated in total YTD

-In February we did have a couple of days where we ran the generator. We ran ~5 gallons of gasoline for a total of 35 kWh of power.

Little spotted kiwi found on #NewZealand's mainland for first time in 50 years https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/567038/little-spotted-kiwi-found-on-new-zealand-s-mainland-for-first-time-in-50-years

"#Kiwi pukupuku are extremely vulnerable to introduced predators. Until now, it was believed they only survived in offshore islands and fenced predator-free sites. An estimated 2000 of the threatened #birds remain, though the population is increasing thanks to the #conservation efforts... Despite years of searching, the last known sighting of a #KiwiPukupuku on the mainland was in 1978."

Finished this quick little knit over two nights! A soap sack/sock, the third I've made, this time for my S.O. ^^ 100% cotton, a nice little thing to keep your soap from slipping from your hands in the shower. I've been using my own for months now and I love it! And after showing this off to some friends I now have a couple more to make…  

You can find this free pattern on Ravelry: https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/washcloth-that-holds-soap-bars

(or here if you don't have a Ravelry account: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PEL_L4zot6DL1hL7a7YYBqRbvmvWPrpS/view?pli=1)

(Please remove the names of the groups in any replies!  )

@knitting @fiberarts @fibrearts @textilearts #knitting #FibreArts #FiberArts #Crafting #Handmade

To compete with Artificially Generated Imagery, I have decided to become an Unhuman Artist by transforming into a vaguely malevolent cloud of vapour. You can support my cursed form through my print store - they're made here in Ireland using gallery-quality materials, ship around the world, and are packed in sustainable, environmentally friendly packaging. Browse here: https://www.ciaraioch.com/artprints

#MastoArt #Art #MastoDaoine #Ireland #FediGiftShop

Rosey Bean loves being sprayed with water

#springerspaniel #dogsofmastodon

Good morning. Wishing you a pleasant week. 🌅

#sunrise #bloomscrolling #Colorado