Happy Halloween!

This gorgeous little witch appeared at our house tonight!

If the doll in her arms looks familiar, you're right... it's this one. That was her no-sugar "treat". But hahaha, you can't see its clothes! Gotta wait..... ;)

Poor baby

Courtney and I took Annabelle to the vet after school on Tuesday to get her distemper shot. She was a very good little patient and didn't even flinch when she got the shot. Courtney loved being along to help.

Yesterday, the shot was apparently making Annabelle not feel so well. She ate and drank okay, but other than that, she slept all day. This is where she spent the day (except for when I napped in my recliner... then she was on me):

Yes, she does have quite the selection of toys... all the hand-me-downs from my other housecats. She normally LOVES them all and has tons of fun playing with them. It's so good to see the toys get some use, including the ones I'd bought for Josie hoping to stimulate her with some fun (well, some of them did... for like 5-10 minutes).

But note that the toys haven't been moved during any of these shots taken throughout the day. She just didn't feel up to playing.

Yes... she IS still alive!

Josie certainly missed her entertainment. She was totally bored:

Annabelle seemed to perk up considerably after supper, so hopefully today will be much better, although yesterday she also sounded like she might be coming down with a cold again. Aargh. We'll see how it goes.....

Update: Annabelle is back to her bouncy, flying-around, having-fun-with-everything self this morning - yay! She's been moving too fast to get any photos, but here's one of Josie watching her. Ha!

She's also had Josie doing some running, too.  I think they're both happy. :)

She still has some chest congestion, but it's mostly when she first gets up from sleeping (like me in the mornings) and once she gets it cleared out, she seems fine. I'll keep an eye on her and see if anything develops.

Pattern testing again, Part 2

Back in this post, I showed you some fabrics I was using to test another pattern. Here they are again:

A part of the test also involved some of these tiny polybeads:

And this "Contraption" I made:

Taken apart, it looks like this:

It's just a little silicone funnel and a section of a toilet paper roll taped into a narrow tube. Fastened together, they were very useful in adding some of the polybeads - which were measured with a medicinal measuring spoon (you know, the kind you get for giving prescription meds to children) - to the bottoms of these:

So I was working with some pretty small items.

Next there came this:

After sewing everything together and stuffing it with polyfill stuffing (for which a medical hemostat/forceps worked wonders) and a few more polybeads, and this is what I ended up with:

She is all of 10½ inches tall! Isn't she sweet? Of course she's lacking clothes right now, but you'll have to come back in a couple of days to see what she gets to wear.

I made this doll using a free tutorial written by my friend, LiEr, for whom I've tested other patterns, the most recent of which was the Bella Bag. She does a beautiful job of writing, making her tutorials and patterns so easy to follow.  I had no trouble at all making this little doll, and I look forward to testing more of the patterns for items that go with the doll. Yes, I'll be showing them to you eventually, too!

To see the doll tutorial and maybe give it a try yourself, check out LiEr's blog here. She'll give you all the details and even show you her "Contraption".

Carrots, anyone?

I dug my carrots on Sunday, because it got up to 60° and finally was somewhat pleasant outside. I'd been wishing I'd dug them earlier, before the precip and cold temps had set in, but now I'm glad I waited. The conditions were perfect for digging... moist enough to make digging easy, yet the carrots aren't muddy. Yay!

I did get "a few"... with the moist spring we had, I think every single seed grew! And this is minus the ones we've already eaten:

They're just nice-sized, too... a few smaller ones, but nothing humongous... mostly 'just right'.

The wind was coming up and the temp was going down by the time I got out there, though, so I didn't even take the time to take the tops off (it was Sunday, after all), so for the time being they're in a box in the garage, tops and all. We'll see how long I can procrastinate.......

Reds

Here are a couple of bright photos to start your week....

Gerbera daisies:

Non-stop begonias:

The begonia has since frozen, and I think I'll be dumping the gerberas rather than bring them into the house this year. They've been in that pot long enough. I'll start over with something new next spring. So these are the final pics of both flowers.

Now I need to take more photos... of... something.

One more kitten

Courtney got another kitten! This one will be a good companion for Izzy. This adorable little furball came from Courtney's other grandma's place. I took Courtney home from here on Tuesday so I could meet her. She wasn't exactly cooperative when it came to getting her picture taken. She was on the move too much. But here are a few shots I got, albeit some blurry ones. :)

This is Zoey: 

Isn't that just the cutest face?!!

She has a very furry little body to go along with it:

Look at that fluffy tummy!

Here's a little better picture, taken by Courtney's mommy, that really shows off Zoey's adorableness:

Izzy and Zoey have a little adjusting to do, just as my two do, but I'm sure there'll be fun and crazy times ahead in their household!

Usurped?

This was pretty funny to observe a couple of days ago. Annabelle made it up into the cat tower for the first time. She was pretty proud of herself. Josie was... umm... not so thrilled.

It appears we have a new queen.

Not to worry, though... it was only "queen for a day".  She hasn't been back up there since, and Josie has reclaimed her rightful(?) place. For now.

They're actually getting along pretty well, although they haven't done any snuggling together. Yet. ;)

It snowed

The birdbath was frozen again yesterday morning. It also had a slight layer of white on it.

There were some of those white flakes on the deck floor, too. But look... there were also pink flakes!

There were even slight drifts of the pink flakes in front of the garage.

They drifted up against the grass, too.

Yep, it's bees' wings. Lots of bees' wings. ("Bees' wings" are what farmers call those annoying bits of corn chaff that fly everywhere. For more info, check out that link.)

Nearly every time the guys go to put corn into (or take some out of) the bin to the northeast of our house, the wind also changes to the northeast. I think it's magic. :-Þ

Update: From moments ago (Wed. a.m.):

With the size of those flakes, they're gonna add up pretty fast. But hopefully they'll stop soon. And the good news is... they're not pink! :)

White-lined sphinx moth hatch!

NEWS FLASH!! My white-lined sphinx moth chrysalis hatched yesterday, finally, after exactly 4 weeks! I'd been checking it several times a day recently, because it had gotten darker and I could see the moth's wings, etc., more clearly. I'd seen it move a couple of times, too... kind of a quick little jump. So I thought it might be going to hatch soon.

Last evening I happened to hear tiny scritching noises coming from where I'd had it tucked away on the counter (so that Josie couldn't get at it), and lo and behold, the moth had hatched! I was thrilled!

It was trying to climb the sides of the jar, thus the noises I heard. Finally it climbed up the stick I had placed in the jar for that purpose, so that it could hang at the top and stretch its wings. Here are the photos I took in the order I took them, so you can see its progression:

Above, it was clinging to the nylon that covered the jar. Of course I needed better pics than that, so I took it off.

Then I put it back on, trying to get a shot of its wings looking fuller:

Its underside was not really glowing. There's lots of light distortion in that picture. :)

Then I took it back off again for clearer shots:

A half hour or so later, I went back and got this shot, when it had its wings fully spread. I knew it wasn't likely to be flying for some time, so I was brave enough to take it back out of the jar:

Here's the empty chrysalis. It was kind of crisply flimsy and had some liquid in it:

What an amazing process, huh?!

Now, the big question is... what to do with it?! With the 's' word in the forecast, it's not a very good time for it go be going outside. Courtney's daddy suggested I let it go in the house. He figured Josie and Annabelle would have fun with it. Ha! Indeed they would! Poor moth. ;(

Anybody need a specimen for a butterfly/moth collection?

Fallness

Fall is definitely making its presence known. It seems like it wasn't that long ago (and it really wasn't) that we had a couple of days of 80°. But Friday morning we woke up to this:

Yep, that's ice. Brrr.

The trees are turning color, although this doesn't seem to be one of those years where everything is so brilliantly colored in our area. This ash tree is trying its best, though. Not bad, as far as ash trees go.

The leaves are dropping, too, very gradually so far.

Such a pretty time of year. I'm not quite ready for it to be so cold, though. And I sure don't like that 's' word I've seen in the forecast. I hope Indian Summer arrives soon and lasts a loooong time! The farmers need it, and especially some drier weather, to get the crops out of the fields.