My eldest noticed that at certain angles little miss has a lightning bolt on her forehead reminiscent of Harry Potter. I suggested we change her name to Harriet, but that was rejected.
The Girl Who Lived
Return of the beard
Some of my chickens are finally getting their beard and muff feathers back. Jade’s face is particularly spectacular. Some of the other girls are sporting nice fluffy feet.l as well. Others are still experiencing the ravages of the molt.
Princess Pup
Little Miss Mystery Pup likes to snuggle under feet to sleep. She also likes to snuggle under blankets and stick her nose out. A snooze on toes is cute, but dangerous with rocking chairs and recliners, so I made her a little country princess bed (princess because of the canopy, country because the canopy is made of undyed cotton drop cloth). The bed keeps her out from under feet when she is sleeping, and is just so stinking cute.
The whole thing was made with scraps from my craft room. The fake fur top is scrap from a Halloween costume. The bottom of the pad cover and the canopy are from a heavy duty cotton drop cloth. The zipper (the cover needs a zipper so it can be removed and washed in case of accident) is from my stash of old zippers. The pad itself is egg crate foam left over from the crate pad I made for my old dog. I used lucet cord to gather and bind the canopy, then tied it to my end table to make the tent. She likes it, but still prefers to sleep on my feet. Training continues.
Red Banded Leaf Hopper
I saw this little brightly colored guy while I was picking basil to hang dry. With the naked eye, it looked like it had bright pink and blue stripes! My basil has been fabulous. I have three pots and they have all been producing nice leaves and surviving the heat. My thyme died after I rearranged the pots. Oregano seems OK, just slow growing. Cucumbers were a complete bust. Not a single cuke. Maybe I’ll just plant more basil.
Mask conundrum
So I’m sure you have seen articles on the new study on a low cost method of testing masks by Duke University that showed neck gaiter masks may be worse than no mask at all. If not, the published scientific article is here. The conundrum (quite apart from the frustrations of language and the use of “fleece” for something that is neither warm nor fluffy), is that the neck gaiter (some twitches linguistically here too, gaiters are for ankles, but this usage shift is at least logical) is the only type of mask I can get my youngest to wear. The valve type masks have already been banned at the doctor’s offices. So what to do? While making masks for my eldest for school, I had an idea. Patch it.
I had already ordered stretchy swimsuit material to make neck gaiters for my youngest, so I sewed a tube, then sewed on a rectangle of woven cotton fabric. (Don’t even get me started on the “hold it to the light” test, and all that vague verbiage.) We tested the patched neck gaiter on a trip to the doctor’s, and the fit works OK (I made the first one a little big), and it is a little trickier to get the patch in the right place, but she can still breathe, and her mouth is covered. Do I think it will be effective? I hope we don’t have to test that hypothesis. But it keeps her hands out of her mouth, and brings awareness for keeping distance. I have only seen a few people people properly wearing medical PPE: a dental hygienist and a phlebotomist. All these other people with their paper masks with gaping holes at the sides and around the nose, well, the effectiveness must be from awareness and not actual virus blocking. (Opinion only, not research backed, nor scientifically studied with proper peer review. Like all my stuff.)
