100 of 10 - Day 23 - Skye

The weather is dreary and the light is bad, so I'll have to leave you with a slightly older shot of pretty little Skye, surveying the land from the balcony of her rat castle. :)  

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The Weekend in Black and White

Holiday prep...

We are off on holiday to the Netherlands in a few days time.

Well,  next Friday really, but this coming week is looking to be such an insanely busy week, with school stuff, and getting all the critters sorted, and boy #1's leavers celebrations (he is off to secondary school in September! Where has time gone!?), and then an unexpected hospital appointment for me next Wednesday, which will likely set me back a day or so in preparation, that I really have to get a move on with my holiday prep now or it won't get done in time. It feels weird to be quite this organised, but I'm going with it...

This does not mean, however, that I have my priorities completely in order. I have, for example, already spent an unreasonably long time contemplating what knitting projects I want to bring. Do you find that you spend far too long thinking about things like this?! Realistically, I probably won't get a lot of time to knit anyway, and yet I find myself weighing up different projects, WIPs, looking at more patterns. Insane, when I have so much to do!

I'm currently thinking of bringing my newest project, the Mohair cowl that I'm knitting with some stash yarn that I recently unearthed. I can't even remember where I got this stuff, but it's quite nice to knit with and will hopefully make a nice light but warm jumper with a generous cowl. There is lots of this yarn, so I'm not likely to run out no matter how generous I make it.

I'm also thinking of bringing my will-it-ever-get-finished Black Acer. This cardi has been on my needles so long it's unreal, but I find it so hard to work on it. It's not so much that the pattern is too difficult as that it takes my full concentration and I so rarely have a moment during the day when I can give it that. I tried knitting in the evening, but the black is awful to work with in artificial light. Perhaps the holiday will allow me to make some headway with this project? I'd really like to wear that cardi sometime before I retire...

I'm also thinking of perhaps bringing my parrot socks?  These are usually my handbag project and I tend to drag them all over the place because they are an easy no-thinking-required stockinette stitch and therefore ideal for quickly picking-up and setting-down as required.

Alternatively I could bring my red Hedgerow socks, again a project that's been on the needles far far too long. This might be the better option because the parrot socks will get finished one day anyway, because they live in my bag and come out whenever I have to wait anywhere for any length of time. The Hedgerow socks however are again somewhat more tricky, with a somewhat fiddly pattern to remember, and if I get distracted I tend to mess it up. Or should I rather take an easy project for the beach?! Decisions, decisions...

I'm also thinking of bringing some yarn to work on the larger version of the little crochet rat I made for boy #2. Boy #3 has been asking for a cuddly larger version for so long now...

I don't know... I have so many pattern ideas at the moment that I am finding it really hard to properly focus on a project. Should I instead bring something new and exciting?!

Or perhaps I should shelve these contemplations for a while and concentrate on packing things like trousers and underpants...

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A Year of Projects
Crafting On

Ratties big and small...

As you might recall, we have a little mischief of fancy rats that we keep as pets.

They make wonderful pets. Our vet always says they are like mini dogs and he's right. They are affectionate and clever, and always want to cuddle and play. They can be trained too, though we've never bothered. To see them rushing out of their bed to greet us when we come to the cage is a lovely thing to see, and never ceases to make me smile, and that they do so even though a minute ago they might have been fast asleep is even more touching. I never realised, before we owned rats, how much our company seems to mean to them. Rats are naturally more nocturnal, yet in order to spend time with us they will regularly wake themselves up to greet us and to come out for a play. We find that within days they had learned what time of day we usually take them out for free-roaming and they are now always awake at that time, waiting for the fun to happen.

The only drawback - and it's a big one - that rats have is that they have woefully short lives. The average lifespan is below 2.5 years, and for a rat to reach the age of 3 is pretty rare. I once heard someone say that they make bad pets because 'they have huge personalities but such short lives'. While I still think that the good out-weighs the bad and they make great pets I can understand what that person meant. They do have huge personalities and they capture our hearts very quickly and because we get only such a short time with them that can mean a lot of heartbreak.

We have recently lost a few of our ratty friends, and each of them is sorely missed, but the worst death of them, probably because it was so unexpected, and because she was so very young to have to go, was our Tam. She developed a prolapse that, despite an emergency operation, reappeared and didn't improve so she had to be put to sleep.

We were so sad, and boy #2 in particular took it very hard. Tam had been 'his', and her gentle and affectionate nature spoke to him in particular. In rat circles such a special connection is often talked about in terms of a 'heart rat'. Tam was his heart rat. He still has pictures on the wall to remind him of her, but when I found this little pattern I knew I wanted to make a little 'Tam' for him as a memory of his ratty girl.

I'm now planning to make crochet versions of all our ratties, past and present, and boy #3 has also already put in an order for a large rat that he can snuggle better than the small ones (these are really small!), so I'll be busy for a while...

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A Year of Projects

Yarn Along

Crafting On

Rats! There's rats in the house!

So this is another development of recent months - we are now the proud owners of 8 (!) fancy rats. 

If you are squeamish about rats you may not want to read any further than this - even if I have always found them cute I know that rats are not everybody's favourite animal. :) 

So, rats...

Of course it didn't quite start with 8 rats. Boy #1 had mentioned for a while that he would like a pet, and it was either a dog or rats. While I adore dogs, and actually had one growing up, I really can't envision how a dog would fit into our currently rather chaotic family life. Sure, it would fit right in with us as a family, but all the walking? Between work and ill children, and doctor's appointments I can't help but feel that it would be what ends up pushing us over the edge. We just don't need the extra stress and pressure right now. 

So rats it was going to be. 

I did a bit of research and we ordered a cage and on boy #1's birthday last autumn we went to Pets at Home and brought home 2 baby rats, both boys, both 9 weeks old. I've since learnt that pet shops are not the ideal place to get rats, as they usually come from rodent mills and often have health problems as a result, but hey, we were new to all this. 

After some initial hick-ups (one was very shy, the other one so super-excited he chomped down on our fingers liberally), Larry (grey/mink) and Dave (roan) settled down happily and were a huge success with the boys.

Of course that was only the start. Going back to Pets at Home for some toys for the cage I spotted two older rats who had been left in the rescue section and I felt so bad for them that I brought them home with me. They were older gents, about 1 1/2 years old, called Algernon and Bucky (re-named by boy #1 as Snowball), and they had been left because their previous owner didn't have time for them anymore. 

Algernon and Snowball were a little shy and scared, but again settled in just fine. 

Of course that also wasn't quite the end of it. By this time I'd realised that rats are really best either rescued, which is always a good thing to do of course, or purchased from a responsible breeder who works on improving health and temperament issues, so when boy #2 and #3 voiced their concern over the 'unfairness of boy #1 having rats when they didn't' I started looking around for breeders.

We thought we'd found one quite locally and went to pick up 2 girl rats (boy #2 was set on girls). None of us were very impressed with the breeder and they were so terrified that it took months of taming for the two girls, Tam and Bluey, to really feel safe with us. 

In the meantime a breeder a little further afield, for whose waiting list I had signed up, contacted us to say that she had two little girls that we could have so off we went to get more babies. 

This is how our last two rats joined us. Sky and Parsnip moved in with us in March and completed the rat family (who are, for obvious reasons, not kept in the same cage - if we did that we'd probably have about 124 by now!!). They are tame and playful and affectionate, and did wonders to Tam and Bluey, who proudly took on the role of older sisters and started thriving as a result. 

We are quite fond of our ratty family by now. They are smart and affectionate and have huge personalities. Who knew they could make such fabulous pets? 

Pottery FO

I haven't had much time for any sustained pottering in recent months, but every so often I spend a few hours, mainly at our dining table. The pottery shed is pretty much functional by now (maybe the topic of another post), and Betty the monumental kiln, although still not connected (looong story mainly to do with electricity supplies and long cables, so pretty boring really), is getting closer to being functional (also perhaps the topic of another post), but it's been cold around here, and if it's cold around here it's always even colder in the pottery shed. D has put an ancient gas heater in there for me but it looks lethal and I'm scared to switch it on and possibly blow myself up in the process... 

So until it gets warmer I prefer sitting in our dining room. Not much dining happens in there anyway, because we mainly eat in the kitchen. And also, the rats live in there now, so really I should call it the 'rat room' (that's again another story - I have quite a selection of future blog posts lined up now!). Anyway, what's a bit of clay between friends (and family, and cats, and rats...)? Sitting in there has the added benefit that I'm not absenting myself entirely from parenting - I can still hear and see everyone, and I can still go and fetch drinks, and food, and look for lost stuff. :)

A little while ago I was experimenting with different textures in clay. I started a vessel at the pottery class I occasionally go to and then I borrowed some plaster moulds to pour slip onto at home so I could finish the project in my own time. The result was this:

It's a stoneware vessel, glazed very simply with cobalt oxide. I absolutely love it. :)