Bathing Beauties

  

I bet you weren’t expecting that.

 

 

For years I’ve bathed these two separately. This time I thought I would just try putting them in the tub together. If it worked, I could save time, water, and a lot of back strain.

 

It worked! Neither dog likes being in water, and shampoo is just adding insult to injury. They were so miserable that it didn’t occur to them to cause any mischief. I got them both clean in half the time.

 

I think I have a very limited window of opportunity with this though. Once they figure out that I can only hold on to one of them at a time, it will be every dog for him/herself and my bathroom will end up looking like a tidal wave came through. 

Looks like that moment of discovery is near.

Katrina

Chilly Dogs

We’ve had below-freezing temperatures five nights in a row, and it has not been nice. Maybe the heating and plumbing contractors are pleased, but the rest of us are just trying to thaw out as we view the gruesome carnage that used to be our gardens. When I’ve had a chance to uncover everything and fully survey it, I’ll post a picture of my plants so we can all remember the Great Freeze of 2013.

In the meantime, let’s look at what the dogs got to keep them warm during those freezing nights.

My sewing mojo went missing somewhere around the time of my hand injury, but now that my hand is fine, I still don’t feel like sewing! But my poor pups were really cold! So I got over my inertia, grabbed some small pieces of fleece I’d picked up at Joann’s for this very purpose, and made two little coats.

At first I thought I could design one, but the muslin fitting process was not popular with the dogs.

So the coats are loosely based on B5126, View B.

It’s lucky that the pattern was multi-sized, because I used size Extra-small at the neck, Small in the torso, and Medium in the length.

As usual, I followed exactly none of the instructions.

Instead of a separate belt, I simply cut the waistband as part of the single coat piece. I made a hem all around the edge to limit the stretching.

The neck is held together with a 2” length of sewn-on Velcro, and the belly band with a 3” length.

I originally thought they should have hoods, but after making Dolly’s coat, I realized the hood didn’t make much sense.

The coat fit perfectly, but the hood was flopping all over the place.

I’d started out with a small, square hood, gathering the base to fit the neck. It looked like this.

 

I cut it down, and it fits better, but still slips off pretty easily.

I could make it much smaller, but that would squash her gigantic ears!

Manny’s coat is the same pattern, but with no hood.

I gave Manny a fancy belt, just because.

They LOVE these coats. They wore them all day, inside and outside. It's nice to make something that fits perfectly, is useful, and it was finished in the right season!

Katrina

200th Post: I've Got the Pictures to Show For It

Here we go with the last few photos that I love but haven't managed to fit into the first 200 blog posts:

Flowers of Desert Willow, Chilopsis linearis, the perfect desert landscaping tree

 

 An Arabian friend

 

My hibiscus put on a big show last spring

Manny likes his sweater, even though it doesn’t quite fit over his round belly.

I just loved this image, but I felt it needed some witty aphorism as a caption. Now I’ve realized I’m just not witty enough, so here it is.

Next week I hope to be productive and get something – anything – done. Ten days til Christmas, people!

Katrina

Parrot’s Day Out

I have two birds living in my house, a Blue-Front Amazon and a Gray Cockatiel.

Michelangelo

Puff

It’s a bit like living with extremely social aliens who have no understanding of personal hygiene or human hearing. Some people think that birds are sweet and refined little pets, but I don’t know where this misconception originated. If you don’t think you can manage breathing feather dust, having to yell to make yourself understood over the loud squawking, finding seeds everywhere in your house, and picking up poopy newspapers everyday, you should not have birds. That said, I am a bird person, so the parrots’ personalities, intelligence, and amusing antics more than make up for the aggravation.

We have a big cleaning day two or three times a year when the outdoor temperature is not too hot and not too cold for me to haul the big cages outside and scrub them down with soap and water and then hose them off.

This is Michelangelo’s favorite day, because he gets to sit front of the big mirror and talk to himself.

Today he tired of mirror-gazing and did some exploring.

Having a good laugh at my expense. (He pooped on the white carpet.)

Puff is not quite so enthusiastic about the process. She doesn’t really like change, and a day of alternative activities is just not as much fun for her.

Looking at me suspiciously - she knows her cage is next.

 

This is the exciting life of a parrot “owner.”

Katrina

Such a Lazy Blogger

It’s Wednesday already, and this is my first post of the week? I can’t even come up with a good excuse for that. It’s not like I’ve been doing anything important or interesting.

So I’ll just fall back on the lazy blogger’s trick – puppy pics.

The usual - ignoring my requests for a nice pose. Too many things to smell.

 

She was sleepy enough to sit still for a shot.



What?

Have a good week!

Katrina

Just More Complaining, Plus Photos

I will not be giving an update on the vegetable garden today. I went out there with such high hopes, expecting to find bright green leaves and flowers and fruit weighing down the vines after the wonderful inch of rain. Instead, I found mosquitoes. Really? I have to put up with stinging scorpions, poisonous spiders, poisonous snakes, poisonous lizards, killer molds, infectious soil fungi, pollution, drought, and ethically retarded politicians. Now I have to deal with mosquitoes too? So unfair.

Plus, the rain is over already. 



source


I didn’t even get around to pulling out my purple rain boots. Since it was so hot, we just splashed around in flip-flops.  

I looked around for any signs that the rain helped us out. Some of the native plants responded cautiously.  

The Texas Ranger (Leucophyllum frutescens) was willing to put out a few of its brilliant purple flowers, but not the full display, perhaps sensing that that the rainstorm was already coming to an end.

I initially thought these bright green seedlings were baby mesquites, since the trees drop hundreds of these long, tan pods full of seeds.

However, it turns out that mesquite seeds need to be digested by animals before they can germinate.

It's more likely that the little green plantlets are actually from the seeds of a Baja Red Fairy Duster (Calliandra californica).  

The seed pods of this unusual plant pop open and the seeds fly out in all directions, with the result that I now have six of them after only planting one. It's a favorite of bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds.

I tried to get some shots of one my little hummingbird friends, but they were blurry as usual. I like to think he was going after the mosquitoes. They do eat a lot of bugs in flight, as well as snatching them from leaves and spiderwebs.   

Of course my two guardians followed me closely, ever alert to danger (or snacks).

So that's it. Of course we still have August, which is the traditional month for rain, so I will try to remain optimistic.

Katrina

Happy Fourth of July

Happy Holiday! It’s a great day to:

Enjoy the outdoors

Get a little crazy

Spend time with family

Catch up on your rest

Have a Happy Fourth of July! From a Polish-Scottish-American (left) and an English-Mexican American (right).

And me!

Katrina

Fun with Photoshop

I've been working on some secret projects, and I don't have anything I can show yet! Instead, I’ll offer up some silly fun today.

As you know, I love my little dogs, and I can’t seem to stop taking pictures of them. One particular shot continues to evade me: the picture of both of them sitting still, in the same frame, and both looking at the camera. I have hundreds of pictures of the two of them, but in 90 percent of them, someone’s got their butt turned toward the camera, and the other 10 percent are blurry due to movement.

I finally got a reasonably good shot of them at bedtime the other night, but it wasn’t very sharp.

Instead of trying to sharpen it, I blurred it a little more, and then mushed the colors around in the background.

Then I experimented with filters in Photoshop Elements.

The ones I liked best were Poster Edges:

And Solarize:

Chalk/Charcoal was interesting:

Mosaic:

Enough silly fun?

I also want to wish my Mom a very Happy Birthday today! Hope you have a wonderful day, and a great year, and many, many more!

Katrina

Spring Cleaning

The house is still a mess, but at least the dogs got their spring cleaning! First they had a day at the vet for teeth cleaning (plus a checkup, vaccinations, etc). After that was a trip to the groomer for their summer haircuts.Now their ears look so much bigger!

And they ended the day as usual, curled up on the couch.

We will all enjoy this short period of good doggy breath, clean fur, and no shedding!

Katrina