Forgot to work on my project today. 
Author Archives: Cabol
Blacksburg Farmers’ Market flier
Posted onFound this flier on my windshield after work yesterday. The scan is a little hard to read, but the back has coupons and a list of items. Pretty neat.
Yeehaw!
Posted onI’m running up against a deadline here, and I’m not sure I’ll make it! A certain little Bug is having a birthday soon, and I promised myself I’d get her dolly to her on time. Because the Bug lives in Europe and because I’m cheap … errr…. thrifty and sending the package via llama, dolphin, and carrier pigeon (they take turns), I have set a deadline for mailing of July 31. That’s not very far away!!! AIE!
Dolly is done. Casual knitted dress is done. Posh frock is done. Cowgirl outfit is NOT done. Dolly bag is NOT done. AIE. I started working on the cowgirl outfit, but the dolly bag…I’m not sure it will happen. The pattern directions make my eyes cross. I need pictures, people…not a list of steps that read like the instruction manual for the Millenium Falcon!
One of the things holding me up with the making of the cowgirl outfit was finding the right fabric for the pants. Mom sent me a bunch of cool pieces, but none of them seemed quite right for a hip cowgirl. Last weekend Andy and I were in Roanoke and managed to stumble across a Joann’s store. I found some fun striped courdoroy for $1.60 a yard! I only got half a yard…so only 80 cents! We also (coughcough) stumbled across a Michael’s store, where I picked up a few pieces of brown felt for…get this…80 cents! It was Super Eighty Cents Day! [FYI: We went to Michael’s before Joann’s, or I’d have gotten the felt there. I don’t like Michael’s. It’s chock full o’ “craft” junk that’s meant to be “crafted” and then thrown out. I mean come on…what’s the point of making a cute little house out of rubberfoam bits if the door doesn’t open!?!?]
I’ve been sewing everything by hand. I was going to pull out the sewing machine, but I don’t really have a place for it, and it seems like a lot of hefting and manuevering for very little benefit. It’s sort of fun hand stitching anyhow. I did zigzagish on the vest and last night I was doing that thing where you sort of stich over your stiches to make things sturdier. I’m pretty slow at it, but the items are small! I think I’ll get the pants mostly done tonight, but I have to get some teeny elastic this weekend to do the waist. I’ve left the shirt for last because the sleeves frighten me. Maybe she’ll just have to be a shirtless cowgirl. Hey, don’t look at me like that! She has a big vest that is like a tank top!
No pictures until the outfit is done. Sorry. 
Status
Posted onRead Small Business Survival Book (Barbara Weltman and Jerry Silberman) for about 15 minutes. Interesting stuff on marketing plans. I think I’ll have to reread this book. It’s a pretty quick read and though some of it doesn’t pertain to a _really_ small start-up business, the majority of it is at least interesting if not useful.
Also spent a little bit of time working on the proposal. It’s been a while since I’ve had to do something like this, and I’m a bit rusty. I think I have the time line and the deliverables section pretty well ironed out, but that’s the easy part. I need to get the problem definition and solution sections going.
And it was thaaaaat long!
Posted onThe raspberries are pretty much gone. There were lots of dried up lil berries…but not lots of yummy ready ones. While we were picking along the fence on T. and S.’s side, T. came over and said hello. We talked berries, and he mentioned there were tons of raspberry bushes on the other side of his property in his other neighbor’s land. He offered to and did call the other neighbor to see if we could go over there and pick berries, and then he led us through the grass and weeds and poision ivy to where the patch was. Alas, there weren’t many berries left there, either. Perhaps next year when ours ripen, we’ll talk to those folks again and see if we can pick there. We’ll also need a machete. We got about a pint or two of berries from all the plants. Maybe tomorrow I can make a cobbler or somethin’?
One of our slithering friends is growing. We found this skin floating along the edge of the pond. While it was in the water, the skin still looked sort of snake shaped…especially the head part. When Andy took the skin out of the water, the tail was full like a balloon and was leaky. It was neato.
Today the ducks started eating Big Girl food. *sniffle* They grow up so fast! They still have baby fluff but are mostly feathers. They are working on growing wings now, too. At the tips of their wings are growing what looks like white plastic pins…I guess the foundation for their big wing feathers. And they follow Andy so well!
The blackberries should be ripe in a week or two. At least that’s what T. thought, and he should know better than us. Blackberries. Ooodles and oodles of blackberries. Dang, we really need a big freezer! Ya know how lots of people set up wish lists of Amazon or Toys R Us or Bob’s House of Llamas? Do you know any online stores where we can build this wish list:
– large chest freezer
– hand sheep shears
– machete
– spinning wheel
– electric fencing
For Catie
Posted onI know that every day Catie wakes up and thinks to herself, “I wonder if there will be a bunny picture on Loafkeeper today…” Well Catie, here’s a picture of Hop just for you.
Bunnies really like raspberries. In this picture, Hop is dreaming about raspberries. If I had photoshop on my computer, I’d have put a little thought bubble above her head that says, “Mmmmmm….raspberries.” Sort of like this (isn’t Andy cool?):
The ducks are working on feathers lately. A few are sporting fancy feather masks while Little Runty is still trying to get her tail and tummy feathers going. Wings are sure to be coming soon. Ducks are pretty lucky critters….they can walk, swim AND fly. They are little web-footed super heroes!
Last night the bunnies, the ducks, the cats, and the people all got a noisy visitor. Around 3am the bunnies started thumping. I woke up and blinked a few times and noticed three cats all peering incredibly intently out our window. I looked outside but didn’t see anything, so I went back to bed. The bunnies thumped some more, and the cats were still staring, so I went upstairs to the bunny room. I looked out the window there and still didn’t see anything, but when I was very quiet I could hear a slurping sound. Yup. Raccoon on the living room porch feasting on bird seeds. I turned the porch light on, and the raccoon ambled a few feet away. I’m not sure why he was on the porch, though, when he had already knocked the bird feeder onto the ground below.
Mystery solved, I went back to bed, worried about the ducks with a raccoon on the loose. Throughout the night I kept hearing fits of peeping from the girls….but it didn’t last long and there were no hysterical shrieks like I’d imagine a duck would make if a raccoon was ripping a leg off. This morning the only sign of the raccoon visit was the empty bird feeder on its side in the yard.
I can fly!
Posted on“Look, Ma! I can fly!!!”
The ducklings are getting their big girl feathers, and before we know it, they’ll be trying to fly. Their grown-up feathers are all sorts of shades of brown. I never thought boring old brown could be so pretty. Really, they shouldn’t be called Khaki Campbells. They should be Cocoa Campbells. Yumm. Chocolate ducks. You can sort of see their new feathers in this picture. Check out their tummies, tails, and wings.
Their house is done now, and Andy has a good start on the attached run. The girls don’t quite seem to know what to think of it yet, but there have been no more escape attempts.
Badger, Badger, Badger…MUSHROOM MUSHROOM!
Posted onSnake….a snake….it’s a snake!*
Well…two snakes, actually. The last day my parents were here, we were standing outside oogling ducklings when my dad says, “Is that a hose across the driveway or a snake?” I turned around expecting to see some little garden snake skittering across the gravel, but no. This was a Snake with a capital EEP. She was probably five feet long (I said six, my mom said four, so we compromised at five). That’s a lot of snake. We watched her slither across the driveway and into the large pine tree, where she disappeared for a while. After a few minutes, though, she reappeared on the other side of the tree and slid into the grass.
I always figured I’d be able to see snakes when I was walking through the grass. The only way I could tell that this five-foot long, shiny black snake was in the grass was because the blades of grass were moving gently. Yikes.
I don’t know where she was going, but the snake was definitely on a mission. She kept on going across our property in pretty much a straight line. Every now and then she’d pause for a few minutes…and then start up again… Andy finally woke up and grabbed the camera. By that time, though, the snake was mostly hidden in the flower bed. He still managed to get a nice shot of her head. Andy said she’s a rat snake.
Yesterday, Andy and I went back out to pick more raspberries and to check out an apple tree I’d seen at the front of the property. The apples are very small and not so tasty. We decided to let the wildlife continue to enjoy them as they had apparently been doing. There was a path through the grass up to the tree and a spot under the tree where someone appeared to have been napping.
We picked about two quarts of berries and headed back up towards the house. After the rat snake adventure earlier in the week, you can bet I kept my eyes to the ground. Andy was in the lead and he marched right past the second snake of the week. We think he’s some sort of water snake, but we’re not sure.
I yelped and did a bit of a dance. Andy was startled by my yelping and turned around and saw me pointing at the snake, and I think that startled him a bit more. I thought at first it was a pile of dried up poo…but no….it was a snake. He appeared to have eaten recently, and Andy said he even saw the food lump moving. Ew. I was very proud of my snake-spotting skills and even more proud that I did not shriek like a little girl.
Escape attempt
Posted onThis morning when I went up to feed the ducks I was concerned when I couldn’t hear them cheeping through the outside door. They were still fairly quiet even after I got into the work room next to the room they stay in…and considering the door connecting the two was open, I got a bit worried by the relative silence. Usually the girls are cheeping and peeping and honking and doing little tap dances when I visit them in the morning. What was wrong?
I walked into the duck room…and five little ducklings swarmed around my feet. Escapees! After the initial surprise wore off, I began to wonder where the other two girls were. I quickly found one still in the brooder, but the seventh was nowhere to be seen. Did she get outside somehow where she was eaten by a hungry raccoon? Was she stuck in the table saw? Arg!
I decided to take the girls down to their pen/tractor in the hopes that this would draw out the last duckling. When I pulled back the cardboard barrier around the brooder to let the sixth duckling out, number seven peeked out from where she was hiding (stuck?) behind the cardboard and under the edge of the brooder/pool. Phew.
Feeling like a parent on a school field trip making sure no kids were left behind in the reptile house, I counted and recounted feathery heads to make sure everyone was present as we tumbled down the hill to the duck tractor. I think we need to get the duck house secured and ready to inhabit ASAP because the ducklings can no longer be contained by cardboard and a baby pool.
When I went back into the house to tell Andy what had happened, I was giggly because escaped ducklings is rather cute. Andy was less than amused, however, and said, “Yeah, you think it’s funny, but you aren’t the one who has to go clean up duck poop all over the workshop floors!” HAHAHAHAHAAH!
Speaking of cute critters, here’s a photo of Sana sprawled in the sun.
Das Duck Haus
Posted onMy brother drew a design for our duck house that we, alas, had to reject. We couldn’t get the city to approve the wifi tower, and PETA was unhappy with the spiral staircase. They said it would cause too much stress to the ducks. How else, I ask, were the ducks supposed to get to / from the landing pad?
The work on our duck house continues. The boys got the walls framed and are finishing up the walls. Mom and I did some priming, but we couldn’t keep up with the boys’ progress. Plus we were running low on primer. Here’s some photos of the progress. Eventually the whole thing will be painted brickish red. We got two cans of really pricey paint for $2 each (normally over $30 each), so who cares about the color. Maybe I’ll put a mosiac on the side or something fun later.
It’s back to work tomorrow for me. Andy will probably collapse all day and rest. Or maybe paint. Hee.