Shower Cat

Not everyone has a cat who keeps them company while they are taking a shower and drying off....

Finicky Cats!

I stopped buying canned cat food by the case years ago because my cats stopped eating it. Turned up their collective noses. I offered dry food until Precious, our kitty that we believe was accidentally poisoned several years ago, could not keep dry food down. So, we went back to canned for her, but bought the one and only flavor that "stunk" right and that she would eat.

A few months ago, she refused to eat that. So, we switched to shredded in gravy, not pate.

A friend who no longer has a cat gifted us with a case and a half of cat food. Precious still won't eat it. Bootsie and Archie, our other two kittys who eat indoors won't touch it, either.

Not ones to let good cat food go to waste, Buck and I decided we were smarter than the cats. We started mixing the juice from one can of people tuna with three cans of cat food. The cats like it just fine.

And, Buck and I have tuna salad every day or so for lunch. It is a high protein, nutritious meal.

Only problem is, we still have about two-thirds of a case of cat food to get through before we go back to buying the stuff our finicky cats like straight out of the can. Buck and I are sure getting burned out on tuna salad for lunch.

Gorilla Garbaging

I know, "garbaging" is not a real word. But, I needed something to go with "gorilla", as in, "gorilla warfare." That is what I felt like I was doing in my studio yesterday when I got into a cleaning mode -- warfare on the garbage.

 I had storage containers out there filled with piles of office supplies, memorabilia, obsolete papers and plain junk. They could be more useful to me now if they were available. So, I went into "gorilla garbaging" mode and started throwing things out. I consolidated usable office supplies, organized what I want to keep to remind me of past rural letter carrier state and national conventions, and went through my old 3.5" floppy diskettes to choose the ones with information I want to save onto a CD. All our newer computers are sans a 3.5" drive, so I better do it quick before those floppies are totally useless.

I found a program cover with a sharp image of the artwork from CaRLCA Unit 15 when we sponsored the state convention in 2006. I hope to use it next year to create blocks for a quilting project to sell or raffle off at a state meeting to raise money for our political action committee. That alone made my gorilla garbaging effort worthwhile.

Anyway, my project that took me about two hours freed up a cardboard office box and a four-drawer Rubbermaid unit that is now mostly filled with over-sized paper supplies and "cost of goods sold" supplies for my quilting and craft projects. That freed up a large tote for my fabric projects.

The generous donation I made to our garbage can means that discarded stuff is not coming back.

Buck's Fitness Center

Buck’s idea of weight-lifting. We used “Old Blue”, my dad’s old pick-up, which is currently our hunting, firewood and go-to-the-dump truck.

Buck decided he did not need to have all the fun by himself.  He invited me to help.

Buck says along with getting fit, we can get warm five times with this firewood:   

• 1) When cut [It was raining when he started, over 90° when he finished – I missed out on that one – oh, darn!]   
• 2) Loaded [hot]   
• 3) Unloaded [still hot]   
• 4) Stacked [I will wait for cooler days for that chore, thank you very much.] and   
• 5) Burned [Oh, yeah! This saves big-time on the heating bill…]

Photo Templates

I got tired of fighting to get my images placed in my blog posts where I wanted them. I often want two or three photos side-by-side. I decided to solve the problem by making my own plain color paper templates (and creating some using my own photos manipulated by my photo-editing software). I can add my photos and sub-titles on top of my templates using my photo-editing software, then save it as a new image that I can upload in one fell swoop.

I know there are fancy template software packages out there with images that take up A LOT of space on the ol' hard drive. For now, I will play with my own templates. After all, I have taken so many photos over the years, why not show off my own creations before I get excited about ones developed by others?

Genealady on Etsy

I now have a store on Etsy named Genealady:

These are what I listed today: 

 

And these get listed next:

         http://www.etsy.com/shop/genealady

PAC Contribs

Today they are on the way to the PAC chair for the California Rural Letter Carriers' Association. I have been meaning to do this for awhile. Finally did. Now that I have more time than money -- which is not necessarily saying much -- I am making things to be used as fund-raisers.

Things I learned making the snowman:
1. Invisible thread is hard to work with by hand.
2. Quilt the little pop-out pieces (Hard to see in the photo, but the cardinal, the hatband and the carrot nose are separate pieces that are stitched on to give a "built-up" look.) BEFORE you attach them to the quilt piece.

The other hanging quilt includes the block I needed to do for Sara's Second Saturday class. I got started and decided to finish the project. Since I need to get these items in the mail in time for the snowman to make the Fall Carrier Seminar Day, I decided to finish the other project and send it along with the snowman. So, Sara is going to have to settle for a picture of the completed block when I show up at class this coming Saturday.

This quilt also includes the design from a tee-shirt I don't believe I ever got around to wearing. The color is that florescent "safety green" that I thought was so great when my husband was still working construction and wearing a lot of that color. It was hard finding fabrics to match, or even blend, especially when I found the blue background with green, yellow and orange dots fabric I thought really set off the background color of the shirt and had to try to make it look decent with the strawberries on black fabric. This shirt design was from the state convention site in Oxnard, known for growing strawberries. That was the only strawberry pattern in the entire fabric store. So, there is a reason for the stretch in making these fabrics work together.

Things I learned doing this project:

1. Iron-on pellon stabilizes knits pretty well. I used a light-weight so that I could stitch through it easily.
2. Even with iron-on pellon, knits will still stretch if you are not careful.
3. Screen-print and sewing machines do not mix well. I had to free-hand the stitching on the design. The bottom teeth were not the problem. The pressure feet could not slide on the painted surface. I could not even use the pressure post without a pressure foot.
4. Do not, and I mean DO NOT iron over a screen-print surface with a hot iron. I almost messed up the design by accidentally getting the iron too close. Use a cover cloth or press on the opposite side of the fabric.