A Plethora of Potholders

I finished the three sets of oven mitts and potholders I started in February.  These mitts sport fabric from three baby quilts, a duvet cover, a least two table runners, a tea pot cozy and a shoe bag.  Ah, good memories.  My fabric basket is a bit emptier.

My sister recently commented that the set she got at Christmas wasn't quite insulated enough.  I repaired her set by putting a layer of Insul-Bright on the palm side of the mitt.  I've never used it before.  I'm not sure how much more heat resistance it offers, although my sister was thrilled with the difference.  I used it for two of the sets, against the palm side of the potholder/mitt.  The third set I had completed before I bought the Insul-Bright, and I was not about to rip them apart to add it.  I guess those will go to someone who's a bit more impervious to a hot oven.  I've never had problems with any mitts I've made before.

The Insul-Bright crinkles, which I find odd.  Noisy oven mitts?  I also discovered the mitts are stiffer and the potholders have a tendency to curl.  Not thrilled with that.

The potholder pattern I found is kind of neat.  They have little flaps in the back where you can put you thumb and fingers (see the rightmost potholder).  Very simple to get on and off with one hand and they stay where you want them when you're grabbing hot pots and pans.  I like them much better than regular potholders, which always feel like they're about to slip away.

This sates my craving for crazy-quilting.  Time to go back to something more structured.

Behold, the Double-Wide

I'm not fat, I'm fluffy

I've had a number of guinea pigs over the years.  In the past, most of my big girls weren't fat - they were just very fluffy.  Vicky had been the biggest pig I owned, but even at her most massive she was only 2.75 lbs.

I've had people tell me they think Bertie is the largest of my current trio of pigs.  You may think that from  the photos or videos.  But oh, you'd be so wrong.  Bertie is a respectable-sized pig at 2.5 lbs.  And Pinni?  Well, there's no fluff on this pig.  She's lucky that black is slimming, because this fatso tops out at a whopping 3 lbs 1oz. I've never had a guinea pig that weighed so much!




The photo I snapped this morning may help illustrate how hefty she really is:  just look at that butt hanging off the hammock!  Don't you just want to squeeze it?

Happiness is...

... a bag full of hay that you've claimed all to yourself.

I found Willow fast asleep yesterday morning, wrapped up in her sleeping bag of a brown paper sack stuffed with hay.  Breakfast and bedding all rolled into one.  She was no doubt dreaming of carrots and tomatoes.

What a rough life.

Celebrating Clean Fleece

A clean cage can be a pretty exciting event.  The girls get to explore the kitchen and living room when I clean their cages, but they all stand in the doorway as soon as they hear me putting in the new shavings.  Woo-hoo!

This weekend when I cleaned the cages, I also swapped in new fleece on the upper levels.  Pinni thought this was pretty cool and kept running up and down to check it out.  I had to laugh at how she'd kick out her back feet.  She usually doesn't get this worked up.  Who knew such a fatso could move that fast?  I'm surprised the third level didn't flex more than it did.

Bertie is usually the one to get charged up over a clean cage.  This pig loves to do donuts any chance she gets.  It took her a bit longer to get warmed up.  Maybe she was just waiting for Pinni to get out of the way.

Scroll Sweatshirt

I cut the material for the scrolls yesterday and sprayed the backs with iron-on adhesive.  (Thanks again, Jane, for recommending 606 for this type of work.  Its amazing!)

I spent a chunk of this morning rearranging the filigree and eventually found a layout I liked.  What looked good on the shirt when it was flat on the table did not look good when I wore it.  None of my original designs worked.  In the end I simplified what I was doing, reversed what I had left and came up with what you see here.  It was a challenge to get all of the pieces in place and not pin myself in the process.  Ouch!  I gave up trying to have the pattern continue over the shoulder and onto the back.

Designing this took at least three times longer than cutting the pieces and sewing it together.  Once the pieces were ironed in place, I zigzagged stitched the edges.  Lots of looping.  The red in the material matched the shirt so closely that I had problems seeing where to stitch in places. The looping wasn't as hard to sew as I feared and the whole thing remained flat.  Yay! 

I know what I'm wearing to work tomorrow!

Scrolling Patterns

I haven't done any applique work for myself lately, so I bought myself a sweatshirt with the intent to do something artistic.  I went through my fabric stash and came across some black and red leafy material and thought it looked great against the red sweatshirt. 


I love decorative scrolls and Celtic knots.  I decided something winding would be neat. I started to cut templates.  I had trouble with my first set of scrolls.  They looked fine on the sweatshirt when the sweatshirt was laid out flat, but didn't look right when I tried it on.  I then realized that the delicate scroll-work looked great, but its too thin to show off the pattern of the fabric I want to use.  In addition, at that width, most of the fabric would be covered with the stitching.

So I started again.  I retraced my existing scrolls, fattened them up and made a fourth scrolling piece so that the overall pattern come farther down on the left side of the shirt.  I think this width will look better with the material, even though it lost some of its daintiness.  It looks better when I'm wearing it, although it still needs some adjustment before I'm ready to cut the material.  This is as far as I got before I ran out of time.

Ha.  I may be dragging my feet to finalize the design and cut the fabric just because I don't want to face the nightmare of stitching all those curves!

Willow's Stone

Last June Willow was diagnosed with a very large bladder stone.  After much angst and research, I opted not to surgically remove it.  Life returned to normal and living with a bladder stone didn't seem to affect Willow's day to day life.

In December she acted odd a few times and I noticed her girly bits looked a little larger than usual, but nothing struck me as worrisome.  No stone, no blood, lots of pee and poo.  Then this weekend, she didn't want to come out of her cozy.  Didn't finish all of her food.  I found bloody pee stains in the bedding.  Sunday morning I inspected her....and I could see the tip of the stone lodged in her urethra.  Yikes!  She was peeing.  She was eating, mostly. I did as much research as I could and contemplated what to do.  In the end, I pumped her up with more shilintong, some pain killer and waited.  The painkiller helped:  two hours later, she was perky and chowing food.  It was the best she had looked all weekend.

On Monday, I took Willow to the vet on the way to work, knowing that my regular vet wasn't in.  Poor Dr. McMillan:  guinea pigs are not her specialty and I left Willow for her to take care of.  I would understand if Willow couldn't be saved.  I could understand if McMillan did triage and had me bring Willow back on Tuesday.

What a Valentines Day present I got!   At lunchtime Dr. McMillan called me to tell me she had removed the stone and that Willow was doing fine.  My jaw dropped when I came to pick her up at the end of the day.  The stone was HUGE.  I am so glad I didn't try expressing it myself.  I'd have killed her.  As it is, I'm amazed they got it out of her without leaving a mark.

Willow and her stone

I couldn't bring home the stone immediately, since they wanted Willow's regular vet to inspect it.  I picked it up today.  Just look at the size of it!  (Closeup of stone here.)  Dr Holmes told me this is much bigger than when described it as "massive" last spring.  She didn't think it could be passed back then and Willow managed to pass this thing now?  We are all amazed.


Willow is doing well, has been eating like a champ and peeing all over.  She limped a bit her first evening home but that has gone away.  I suspect she pulled something when struggling with the vet.  Who could blame her?

The x-ray they took of her on Monday showed no other stones forming in her bladder.  So I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Willow will remain stone-free for a while.

Bits of Mitts

One or two of my oven mitts are starting to get ratty, so I pulled out the materials to make me a new one.  But why make one when you can make three or six?  So I went a little crazy the other day cutting oven mitt pieces.

I spent so much time on cutting all the pieces that I didn't have time to complete a single one.  These aren't as bright as some of mine, but this was the color scheme for the majority of my scrap fabric.  I try to put all dark colors on the small curvy pieces, since that's the part that actually touches the baking sheets and pans.  Its the most likely to get dirty and burnt - so dark is good.