My neighbor shared this idea for a bird feeder with me: an empty gallon jug with a large window cut out of the side, and the bottom filled with bird seed.
It works well and can be made with items around the house. The birds and squirrels have no trouble accessing the seed.
I repurposed the hanging chick feeder I made in 2019 to feed the wild birds. I do not plan on raising chicks again, and I do enjoy watching the birds come visit.
When we first moved to our house, there was a large wood workbench on the back porch, salvaged from an old workshop. Since it had been left out in the elements, many of the parts were warped and cracked. I disassembled the bench and reused the parts for projects around the house. One of those projects was a cat food cabinet made from two drawers and part of the workbench top. I turned the drawers sideways to make the sides of the cabinet, put on a top with back splash, and made a door with hinges. The wood I used for the door had a large split, which I reinforced with braces on the back and an old leather belt nailed to the front.
The problem with the wood top is that it was not smooth, so was hard to clean. To fix this, I added laminate adhesive tiles to the top, then gave the rest of the wood a boost with a rub down with Howard’s Feed-n-Wax.
It took a bit of time for the cats to figure out that the new surface was stable, and Thor would rather his wet food bowl be put elsewhere, but the surface is so much easier to clean now.
I used to record voice overs, both professionally and as a volunteer for a radio reading service. I enjoy the work, and even invested in a decent microphone and amp. Then life happened with kids and pets and noisy house environments and technical software difficulties. It has been awhile but I decided I want to try again, and the downstairs coat closet had already been cleaned out for an office during the pandemic, so I moved my stuff in.
I’m pretty proud of myself in outfitting the room. The carpet was already there to keep the floor from being too cold for feral cats in cages, the curtains were all left by the previous owner, the curtain rods were all repurposed from other locations in time and space. The fairy lights were from a failed experiment in my kid’s room (they are too bright for her). The shelves were already there, I just rearranged them. The chair is from a set that migrates around the house and is good for recording because it doesn’t roll, creak, or make other unwanted noises. The only thing I purchased was a pop filter and a mouse pad (neither pictured). I used to have a pop filter, but I have no idea where it got off to. My optical mouse really doesn’t like the white surface on the shelves, and we have no spare mouse pads.
I did some initial tests, including a musical Zoom call (kid’s guitar lesson), and things seemed to all work OK.
I sat down on a quiet morning (everyone else was off to work and school) and started experimenting with the software. I’m using Adobe Audition because it is bundled with my graphic software package. I walked through the tutorials, which was a great refresher because I’ve already used this software to remix tracks for my chorus, and I learned some shortcuts that I didn’t know, and discovered spectral view (wowza). And a terrible, terrible buzz. I chased the source of the buzz for an hour, trying different settings, different microphones, different headphones. I had finally given up, thinking that the next step was to move everything back, went to turn off the desk lamp, and heard a pitch change. What? I had dug an old led clip light out of a drawer, and plugged it in for more light. I unplugged it, tried recording again, and the ambient noise level was undetectable. Of all the irritating things. Recording testing can now continue, and I don’t have to repurpose the room, again. For now.
Happy Halloween, may your electronics be shielded.
One of the sling beds in the catio gave up under the weight of the kitten and popped its grommet. I removed the rest, it has lasted awhile, and puzzled over a replacement. The two sections of 1 x4” wood that I screwed to the catio supports seemed about the size of a pillow case. It turned out it was a little wider, but with a quick seam and a couple of snipped holes, I converted an old pillow case into a cat sling bed that slides over two parallel boards.
Cotton does degrade in the sun, but this might be a better design idea than grommets in the corners screwed to the board. I’ll see of the cats use this setup, and if they do, replace the cotton with outdoor resistant fabric.
Critters and Craft 