jesirose

Whew! This quilt has a TON of blocks! I’ve cut out about a third of them so far.

Photos coming

Today Sadie finally responded to the Kennel command. She BOLTED into the bedroom and into her kennel and stared at me. It was awesome. She repeated for me and Colin. The golden training tool? The clicker and a carton of 100% Freeze Dried Liver Treats by Gimborn

It’s a bit pricey but the carton is pretty big and if you have sharp fingernails or a serrated kitchen knife, it’s easy enough to cut them up and double or triple your treats. They are huge.

Sadly, she’s still not relearned “Sit”. Her down is awesome and it’s become her default behavior, but every time I try to capture sit, it becomes a down right as I click! A bit frustrating.

She is also learning “Go to bed!” thanks to Lizzie’s mom’s suggestion. She has learned if I point at the bed she should run into it, but then she just gets back out Silly dog!

In general I had a pretty bad day, but I did pick up the new fabrics for my next quilt. This is a surprise for my grandparent’s 50th anniversary.

Silly me, when I chose this pattern I didn’t read the cutting instructions. The squares are 1.5″ x 1.5″ - holy mole! I have to cut over 1000 squares for this. I lost my rotary cutting grid so I am going to pick a new one up tomorrow as I cannot cut all of these without it. I’ll go nuts.

Pretty, isn’t it?! I tried to get some accurately colored photos of the fabric to share, but if the colors look weird - they look better in person. I had help from experienced quilters They didn’t have enough neutrals so I went for green and gold too. They look awesome in person.

And here is the one I made for Mom and Dad’s 9th anniversary. This is just the top before I quilted and bound (binded? adding the binding? hmmm.) it.

Yesterday Sadie got to spend some time with the cutest little German Spitz named Lizzie!

Sadie was a bit shy at first.

Then they had a great time wrestling and playing chase.

Yay! It was getting dark so most of the pictures didn’t turn out

After a few days in the Rat Manor, I decided it really was too small, and thought it wouldn’t really be that hard to modify the Ferret Nation. So I called around. After about an hour on the phone I located one at a Petsmart two towns over. They agreed to price match Ferret.com (After I told them other stores had done it for my friends - a little white lie, but I know other stores HAVE done it for people on GooseMoose).

I considered looking for the SP Exotics cage and waiting for the Critter Nation but really, I was so tired of messing with cages I wanted to get it over. I thought the mod would be easier - I was slightly off. But it’s done now, and sitting pretty in my office! I decided to rotate my desk so now I face out from the wall instead of facing it, and put the FN behind me. I have to turn around to see the girls but this was the best way to fit everything in here.

I managed to get it done with only 5 cuts on my hands and a nice bump on my nose from hitting myself with a pliers. Yeah, it’s black and blue. I was tightening a zip tie with the pliers and pulled hard - the tie broke and I whacked myself right between the eyes and down a bit. I feel pretty lucky I didn’t hit my eye, and that I hit it straight on, because I think if I’d hit it at an angle, I’d have broken my nose. It’s sore but not broken as far as I can tell.

(It’s hard to tell in these pics, but you can see the bruising and the red spot where I hit it. Ow!)

I needed 4 rolls of the 3′x5′ hardware cloth and about 450 zip ties. It took about 6 hours - seriously. I did it myself until after I hit myself my husband tightened the last row of ties for me. Then we assembled it. I did the hardware cloth before assembly, and this is what my living room looked like when I was done. I ended up picking up each zip tie leftover by hand and vacuuming each little wire piece with the hose one at a time. Should have done it on a hard floor and swept! See all those tiny green dots? Hardware cloth wire.

When you do it, it’s important to put the curve of the wire INTO the bars. This way the cloth doesn’t bend into the cage and you get the best fit. So it looks like this with a few ties on:

I haven’t finished decorating it, but here is what I’ve got so far:

The ball in the corner wasn’t as big a hit as I’d hoped - they’ve taken the fleece out and are just laying in it now!

And a final cute hammock shot: