Whew! I think I'm just about caught up with piggy stories of my latest fosters from Dakin.
All three of these sows are expert loafers. Browny is a moose of a guinea pig, yet can stuff herself into the paper bag to take a nap. Bear took a shine to the hammock and would often oust anyone in it so she could have it all to herself. Bolt was often spread out her first week here, trying to find a comfortable spot. Now I understand why!
Floor time!
Banzai doesn't know that the floor is lava - so he's under the dining room table, wandering into the kitchen, going to all sorts most piggies don't go. Meanwhile, Bear wouldn't move from the spot I had placed her on the floor. I don't think she was frozen from fright, she couldn't be bothered to move. Browny is funny. She is not interested in being touched or interacting with me, unless I have food. However, as I was filming Banzai under the table, I suddenly felt little feet standing on my feet. I looked down and there was Browny! I am her bestest buddy during floor time. She often snuggles up against my leg if I sit on the floor with them. I was surprised she cross the room just to stand under me.
Say hello to Lancelot. Dakin asked if I'd be willing doing introductions between Lancelot and Buckaroo Banzai (when Banzai is weaned). Sure! So now Lance is hanging out with us. He's just over three weeks old and very wuzzy. Ooh - I feel like a Regency mom - I'm getting ready for my little debutante to come out to society. LOL. Oh, Banzai, you're growing up so fast! I hope you find a good match.
I haven't had this many guinea pigs since the last time I pigsat and that was years ago. It's a full house, plus a fridge stuffed with lettuce and veggies. We'll see if we can keep everyone happy. Wish me luck in another two weeks when I do the introductions.
No bunny rabbits in our yard this year, but this woodchuck has appeared a few times. He's cute, but his interest in the garden has me a bit nervous...
I went to a Game Day on Saturday (all of us vaccinated). People! Without masks! (Although we all showed up with masks in hand, in case any of us weren't comfortable maskless.) Went for a short hike. Played games. It had been so long I forgot the rules to the game I brought. But the slice of normality was wonderful.
The Game Day group are also contra dancers. A few of us waltzed in the dining room. Can I just say it was really strange? Being that close to someone other than Rob. It makes me wonder what it will be like when dancing starts up. (We spent a lot of time betting when that would happen.) Something I've been looking forward to for over a year - is it going to be difficult to get back into it?
I managed to make four shopping bags from three yards of fabric. Three of them have reinforced bottoms (and then I ran out of fabric for the fourth).
They finished up about 15" tall, with a 7x11" bottom. We've liked the three-handle design - it's nice to be able to sling these bags over the shoulder. The bag itself is a little shorter than my usual pattern, yet they still hold a lot. We gave them a tryout last weekend. Rob was thrilled to have more bags that we needed, rather than trying to shuffle things around to all fit into what we had.
Three of the bags have the fruit right-side up on one side, and upside-down on the other. I flipped the reinforced bottoms to have the design run the opposite direction. One bag required a bottom seam - so that one has the fruit all right-side up. Turns out not to be that noticeable.
I've spent the last month poking around this whole email feedburner thing. I moved my email followers off of feedburner to Follow.it. Hated it. Disliked the way the email looked, was unhappy how the emails and rss feed were delayed by 12-24 hours and I'd have to pay to get some basic stuff. What? No.
(I also tried Feed.io which looked great on the surface, but never got it to
work.)
Researched some more. Initially I wanted email and rss, but feedburner
is supposedly leaving the rss feed as is. So I focused strictly on the
email. I've seen MailChimp and stumbled across AWeber. I decided
to give that a try. My email subscribers would have seen the change last
week.
Oh, goodness, let the cuteness begin!
I'm convinced that baby is a boy - I posted photos and have had two more pig people agree with that assessment. Rob has named him Buckaroo Banzai. He calls him Buck for short; I call him Banzai (usually with an exclamation point - Banzai!). The sows aren't sure what to make of him half the time - I find them jammed on the second level and he has the whole first floor to himself. What is this tiny creature that follows us around?
Just 24 hours after Banzai was born I needed to clean and reconfigure the cage. This turned out to be a difficult task because there was so much happening on the floor.
Dakin's trio of foster sows have been entertaining. Before I start flooding my blog with photos and videos of Bolt and the baby, I'll catch up with the last video I shot before I knew Bolt was pregnant. (But look at that bulge on her side in that photo - I did have some suspicions about her.)
These gals quibble and spat but get along really well. I often find them resting near each other. They've each learned to tolerate me reaching in to scritch their noses. Bear (the aby) dislikes being picked up, but settles nicely when being held. She's quiet and calm when being held (although she's bossy to the other pigs). Browny would rather not deal with people at all, if she could help it, but is now comfortable enough to beg shamelessly for food. Feed me? Yes! Touch me? No way. Both Bear and Browny are old enough to have the laid-back, life-is-good-as-long-as-you-feed-me look on life.
Where to start?
Mom came to visit over the weekend. Yay! Spent the day at my sister's. It's so nice to be able to hang out.
My potted sage was blooming. I didn't know that sage had purple flowers. The plant was getting spindly, so I cut off the flowers and brought them in.
I woke up this morning to three bickering guinea pigs: teeth chattering, chasing, screaming. Sounded like a real throw-down. Things seemed to settle down after I swept the cage and fed them. Then I heard cries of pain so I picked Bolt up to see why she was so distressed.
Suddenly I had two guinea pigs in my lap.
So this happened this morning.
Bolt is doing very well and so far seems to be a good mama. Baby started out really tired and wobbly, but he's gotten a lot stronger in the last hour. I'll feel better to see him nursing and running around.
OH! We've just had nursing! Yay for baby piggy!
Ooh - lots of photos. I met up with a friend on Sunday for a walk and a bit of local history. We had fantastic weather. First stop was the forest bells. The bells are long and skinny, like oversized wind chimes. Can you find the two of them in this photo?
Obviously not very visible. But they were a fun find and sounded pretty. There's six of them in this area, each with a bell pull marked with their note. I tried to take video of the sound... but it didn't turn out. I guess I'll have to go back again?
I got the call on Thursday I knew was coming - Chocolate found a forever home. Could we bring him in on Friday? And would we like to bring home more piggies? Sure. It would make the drive down worthwhile.
Before Chocolate went, I managed to catch one more video of his goofiness.
He loves that egg-cersizer. I'd fill it with a bit of diced carrot and cucumber at least twice a day. I could hear him batting it about: bang! bang! He wouldn't let me watch, but I set up the camera. He's good at it - as soon as it gets stuck, he goes around the other side and bats it again.
I'm whipping together some shopping bags for this month's OMG. First one
done last night. I didn't want a bottom seam, so the fruit is upright on
one side and upside-down on the other. It's really not that noticeable -
so I plan to keep doing this with the others. I think I can get four bags from this fabric.
I'm hoping to get them done by the weekend so I can get back to the
Icy Waters quilt. I'm still quibbling about what order to sew together the fabric. I need to focus on getting a few more blocks together.
Chocolate has been a wonderful little foster guinea pig. He is about a year old, alert, curious, and well behaved. But it's taken him a longer to settle in than the other fosters I've had. That's the drawback of a solo guinea pig - the world is a scarier place. And who do you play with? Or steal food from? Whereas most of my fosters start demanding food when I walk into the kitchen in the first day or two, it took Chocolate nearly two weeks to figure out that kitchen noises were something to get excited about.
Although he's been timid and wary, he's also energetic. When I cover
the cage at night he feels safe enough to kick up his heels. He was loud
enough to hear over the dishwasher; just look at how that cage rocks and
rolls! Thumpa-thumpa!
Some of our shopping bags are falling apart and at least two have wandered away, so Rob requested that my May goal is to make a few new bags. He likes the Bread and Circus bags best, so I'm using them as my pattern. It has three straps - two handles and a shoulder strap.
I had picked up some pretty fabric at Swanson's last summer. The fabric is a little on the lightweight side, so I'm going to reinforce the bottoms like the originals. The bummer is the fabric design is directional, but I don't want to put in a bottom seam - so these will have upright fruit on one side, and upside-down fruit on the other. I'll play around and see what I like (or maybe add in the bottom seam).
This should be a quick project. I'm hoping so, anyway, so I can get back to the Ice Waters challenge.
Sharing with:
Elm Street Quilts - May One Monthly Goal
