Vyxxan's Virtual Venture

Author Archive

Gotta have a kitty photo once in a while.  Stubby likes to come in the house every so often, and because we know he won’t spray, we let him.  He tends to pester Rita a bit, but mostly he just wants to nap on something soft like carpet.  :)

I think he has really grown up to be a handsome cat.  Beautiful blue color, with a cream tinted chin.  For some reason he reminds me of an otter… I think it’s partly the short tail, and partly the teeth I can see when he’s sleeping.

We are finally out of the kitten business.  All the adult females are spayed, so we won’t be having any more kittens here.  Have one adult male to neuter, and 3 boy kittens.    The adult male is Tonic, who has to be one of the wimpiest male cats I’ve ever known… but from his point of view I’m sure it was just a survival tactic.  If your own momma runs you off, backed up by 3 other momma cats… I guess you run away and hide.  We have finally coaxed him back into the herd, and he actually comes up on the porch again.  Just don’t try to pick him up.  Gonna be hard to get him to the vet.

Finished my purse with the twill I dyed while on vacation.  All the sewing machine work was done before vacation was over… and when I got sick midweek and ended up staying home I did the hand sewing one afternoon when I was feeling slightly better.   Still don’t know what is wrong with me, but at least the doctor I saw on Wednesday didn’t say heartburn and not listen to me.   He gave me something else to take, and set up a ct scan for today.  Got to take my new purse out and about to be admired.  :)

I love how this fabric came out, and changed up the purse quite a bit for it…  no quilting, for one thing.  I put some sturdy fusible interfacing on the insides to give it a bit more stiffness,  plus made the outside pocket big enough to take over one whole side instead of that wimpy little pocket that the pattern has.  Oh, and longer handles.  It still has the whole lining with built in pockets…  I do like this purse pattern for the most part.  Takes quite a bit of work, for something that should be fairly simple.

Of course I didn’t realize when I enlarged that pocket so much just how much of the side it would be taking up…  and forgot to leave room for handles to be sewn on.  Plus, I covered up some really nice fabric, darn it!  It also isn’t sitting straight… but neither are the pockets on the inside.  I was lazy and not using a lot of pins.

But as you can see, that double pocket is quite useful now… deep enough for reading glasses and deep enough that stuff won’t fall out.  Not sure I need the whole side in pockets like that, but for sure it’s more useful than the previous version.  I mostly carry my little reading glasses in that case in the left pocket… but I have to dig in my purse for them.  Now they are out and handy.  Heck, I can carry a few pairs now…  in case I forget I’ve got some stuck in my shirt and need more.  :)

The pocketless side of the purse.  Click on that and look at it… isn’t that fabric absolutely lovely?  I never would have thought that those two colors went together if it wasn’t for my friend Rabbit.  She wanted a shirt with those 2 colors and one other… and I thought ugh, mud.  But it came out so lovely I actually did another for myself and then decided that I wouldn’t mind the purse in those colors, either.

Ron and I are both on day five of no smoking now.  I’m using the patch.  Ron is using nothing but will power.  He seems less bothered by not smoking than I feel… I get that 2 min craving but I don’t see Ron doing =anything=.  I’m sucking down lots of cinnamon and coffee candies… Ron isn’t even chewing nicotine gum.  Heck, even with the patch I want nicotine gum.  (but I know not to)  I think we’ll both be fine…    I know I needed him to quit because I am easily tempted if there are cigs around.  He knows he needs to quit because it’s a dang money drain he can’t afford.  Me, I’ve been wanting to quit again for years, so I just really needed Ron to get on board.  Together we can back each other up, and it’s working out well.  Yay for us!  (and thanks for all the encouragement from my friends!)

Got a bit of cooler weather again and rain today, so I got out my knitting.  Instead of finishing the fingerless glove I was working on and got tired of last winter….  (after making one pair) I decided that I needed to knit my grandbaby  a little hat.  So, that’s what I’m doing, a blueberry blue hat in acrylic yarn.   Just sort of winging it without a pattern, sort of like the last acrylic hat I did.  I cannot do ribbing any more for some reason.  That switching back and forth from knit to purl just makes me crazy with having to pull the yarn this way and that.  I’m sure part of that is that I totally forgot how to knit continental again… my hands just automatically do it the way I learned when I was 5 or so.   Having something to do with my hands is nice when I’m quitting smoking though…  so I’ll work through this hat and then probably go back to something simple where it won’t matter so much about the knitting/purling thing… because it will be felted.  Hmm, that’s a thought, maybe I should just knit the baby a big wool hat to felt up.   :)

Well, this is all the news I can think of now….

hugs,

Vyx

 

It’s been really exciting, NOT.  :)  I’m too lazy to have too much fun.  :)

I’ve done some heavy cleaning, but not as much as I should have done.   Chores of course are always the same.

One thing I did do before vacation was order a folding parallel clothesline.  I never even got a notice of it being shipped, but it arrived today (Saturday) by FedEx.  I won’t be able to use it much when it gets to be winter, but in the meantime I can have sheets and such that are air dried rather than tumbled into wrinkled balls.  We have good cotton sheets, but the dryer just tumbles them into a mass of tangles and wrinkles.  Makes me want to iron the pillowcases,  almost.  :)

I’ll check the size of the fit in the existing sleeve tomorrow, my last day off before work again.  I figured out how to fill it in so the new pole isn’t 18 inches in the ground… I’ll drop something that I can tie a wire to down that hole, then fill in with rocks that will be lifted out.  Just in case I ever need to have a pole sunk that deep again.  I haven’t figured out what I’ll put as the pull out for the rocks, but I’m sure I’ll find something around here.  The rocks are no problem at all, got plenty of those.  The fit if it’s loose I can shim with something or other.  Perhaps another bit of pipe if needed.

Dyed some fabric this week, and am sewing a purse.  I’m sewing the same purse I’ve been making for years, same basic pattern anyhow.  I’ve changed it a lot…  I quit sewing things outside in and turning them, and now just use the serger for that stuff.  Works great, lots less trouble.   As I get older and my vision gets worse, I am thankful that I have a sewing machine with an automatic threader.  Whoever invented that is a genius!

The fabric came out absolutely wonderful and I only used 2 colors.  I carefully picked my spots to use for the purse sides and outside pocket, as of course with most of the LWI stuff I do some bits of it are even better than others.  Woven fabrics are harder to dye in my opinion… the dye just doesn’t travel as easily as it does on knits.  I got a little impatient with the batching process and stuck the bucket in the microwave… that actually helps set the dye faster with the heat.   In summer I just set the stuff outside in the sun, but it’s been cool here already.

I should be able to show off the purse here sometime this week… I’m hoping to get it finished tomorrow, but my last day of staycation has a lot going on.  Gotta go grocery shopping.  Install the clothesline, and test it out by doing laundry of course.  I’m sure there is stuff I’m forgetting.  Plus, I’m expecting my stepdaughter and our grandbaby to come visit.  Visiting with the grandbaby Aiden will override everything else.  Aiden is 6 months old already!  We don’t get to see him that much, but when we do…  well, everything else is gonna be dropped.  I love being a grandma, although I’m trying to teach Aiden to say VeeMa.  :)  I’ve gotta order more shirts for him, he’s starting to outgrow the stuff I’ve been making him since before he was born.

Ron has been busy with his own projects.  Mostly that’s been the truck he’s been fixing up for his son.   I’m not sure the truck is ready to leave with the kid yet, but it’s pretty close…   and Patrick has been helping with it all as much as he can on weekends.   Ron is teaching as they are doing, and hopefully his son is picking some of the stuff up and remembering it… today they changed the oil, with Patrick doing the squirming on the ground bits.  Which is good, because my husband just got out of his neck brace and has managed to crack a rib working on that truck.   He says the rib hurts worse than the neck did…. but that’s just because it’s fresh.  At least he’s able to do stuff again… that’s really made a big difference.

Took a day trip to Eureka Springs yesterday, and visited with my friend Jan.  No, my other friend Jan, lol!  It’s funny, I have very few friends…. and the two best ones are both Jan.  We did some shopping and had lunch and stopped by to see Sara at Paper Odyssey, but she wasn’t there, only Tony.   I reminded him of my name and gave him a jar of my wild plum jam, plus of course bought a few things.  I felt stupid when I realized I’d brought jam that didn’t have labels on it…  you know I print out labels.   Tony may never remember my name, but hopefully Sara will remember that it’s one of the things I bring to my friends…

Before and after shopping and lunch while visiting with Jan… well… she has dogs.   I love dogs.  Puppies!  She has a puppy that was just so adorable I wanted to bring it home with me.  Aussies, beautiful ones.  Very well trained, the little 10 week old puppy knew how to sit and lay down.   I got to get strange dog smell all over me to make my dogs jealous…  I wish they’d get a strong whiff of  well behaved dog… instead of silly stuff like oh,  jump in the pond because those other dogs like water!  I paid for the strange dog smell when I got home with BunBun mudpawing me to get a better sniff.  Ah, I shouldn’t complain, really.  The beagles are pretty well behaved all things considered.  BuddyMack’s harness broke sometime overnight and he was running loose but didn’t decide to run to town…. he stayed where he lives.  He went and got in his house when I went to find out why he was out and about in the yard.  He was happy to stick around and play chase with the cats and steal some of their food.

Well, it’s now Sunday morning and my last day of vacation has officially started.  Guess I should get to bed and sleep… there is that shopping to do and we all know how I hate grocery shopping on weekends, but I’ve gotta restock the fridge… lunches for me, etc.  Too much stuff to buy…. and I have to include lots of fresh veggies.   Ron and I are both supposed to quit smoking this week, as of Monday morning.  Need lots of low cal munchies like carrot sticks and such.  I know what happens when I trade cigs for cookies.  Not funny.

hugs,

Vyx

Ha ha, the joke’s on me.  Old sleeve in the ground is too small!  So, I started a hole today… in a better spot (not under trees) but had to stop when I hit a rock I couldn’t budge.  Ron says he’ll finish it tomorrow.

The other bad thing… No grandbabies were seen today.  I stayed home all day waiting.  Sigh.

Warning:  this post contains graphic images of a praying mantis eating.   Close ups of bugs.

I’ve had LOTS of praying mantis this year.  I don’t remember ever seeing this many anywhere, any time, any year.  I did see a HUGE one last year, I swear it was longer than my size 6 shoe… but I was mowing at the time and it was trying to get out of my way and I was trying to not run over it.

Shoot, at my house I’d be lucky if I’d see a few trying to get in the house in the fall…  like other bugs, they don’t want to freeze when the temps drop.

This evening there was one walking back and forth on the edge of the truck bed that my husband is fixing up.  It kept looking like it wanted to attack us, it would reach as we walked by.  Then it got annoyed and decided to go climb on the roof of the truck, but was having trouble.

Well, I had a brilliant idea.  I’m sitting out there and flies are landing all over me.  Have a beer in my hand and have to keep it covered because of the flies.  So…

Pour a little bit of beer on the truck, move mantis back down there and watch her eat her dinner.  An all you can eat buffet, if you will.  I sat there and watched for a little while before I thought… Camera!  I need my camera!  At this point she was on her 3rd fly….

Anyhoo… here ya go… and I hope you enjoy this as much as I did…

That last photo is a bit blurry…  I’m still having troubles with my camera focusing sometimes.  It sure did all right on those close ups, though!  Zoom function worked well, so I didn’t have to try to get the camera close.

Oh, and just a reminder, clicking on any photo will enlarge it.  These are all set to 1K pixels wide.

Hugs,

Vyx

It’s really amazing…  normally it’s all dead, waiting on autumn rains.  I would have been struggling to keep things alive and probably failing.  I am still having to water some stuff, but I’m no longer worried about our big trees going dead.

This year… well, we got over 5 inches of rain in August.  VERY unusual.  Our hay field which would normally be brown and dry and nothing… is now all green.  I wish I could show you, because it’s incredible.  The johnson grass especially loved the rain.  Grass is taller than I am, and this is September, not May.

I can show you a bit…  the bermuda grass and other grasses aren’t as tall as that johnson grass…. and the johnson grass is mostly up by the house.  Photo from the corner of the dog walking path…

See how tall that grass up by the house  looks?  It IS tall, it’s way taller than I am.  The short stuff is almost knee high…

If/when the guy comes to cut the hay again… he’s gonna get some good hay this time.  We had a thing where this guy would come hay our field and haul it away and we never got anything from it other than it was cut twice a year or so.  For a while they also put chicken litter on it (I’d rather skip that step, thank you… it’s bad enough I have to smell it from the chicken houses to the north as it is).  Anyhow, this year I decided that someone else should cut our hay and sell it for us.  The only thing is that the guy I picked had too much on his plate.  He has a farm, he runs a business… and cutting 160 acres of hay pays a lot better than cutting our 3 or 4 acres.  But he swore he sent someone out… I remember the tractor driving by with the hay mow.  Went and cut someone else, lol!  (we keep forgetting to ask about that…  bet that was a shock for someone)

So, when we’d given up hope, out regular guy came over and asked why we didn’t want him to hay us any more.  I told him because it’s worth a bit of money, even if he does all the work.  I keep it free of thistles and such, and fertilize it.   He should be paying, even if it’s just $5 a bale.  But he was here when it was all brown and dry… No one was expecting another cutting at that time.  We told him if he wanted THAT hay, it was free.  Next time, he’ll have to pay us.  He agreed…  we have good hay with it being mostly bermuda or johnson grass.   In an average year hay runs about $30 to $40 a bale (BIG round bales).  We want what is fair… he does all the work of cutting etc., but it’s OUR hay.   In a bad year for hay, good hay can run $60 a bale.  So, the normal guy agreed to pay us.   He knows how to cut it and when, so this should work out well.

I’d love to show a photo from the house down to the end of the property… only I’d have to stand on the roof now to take that photo.  Not happening.  :)

Still waiting on my muscadines to get ripe…  probably another month before that happens.  Red grapes got picked a bit late, but I still got about a 1/2 gallon.  Those are some sweet grapes…  just pure sugar, eating them is like eating cotton candy.

I’m having a staycation this week…  off from my paying job, lots of work here at home to catch up on.  Maybe a day of fishing during the week, and of course I’m firing up the bbq tomorrow and cooking a huge pork roast.  Low and slow… I’ll let it smoke all day, then cook it even longer wrapped in foil.  As a friend pointed out, I can always freeze the extra.

That’s all for tonight…  I’ve gotta run out and grill some burgers quick before chat time!  :)

hugs,

Vyx

I’ve got grapes!  Not a lot, but enough to pick and maybe do something with.

I picked these Wednesday evening.   This is just from one vine planted last year… I have two vines of this variety and  the other vine didn’t do as well.  I didn’t even bother picking the few grapes on the other vine.

Some kind of white table grape… I was going to look up the name, eh.  I have a chart with what grapes I planted where, but I don’t remember what I did with it.  Not on the computer.  Oh well!  White table grape works for me.

The skins are tough, they didn’t pollinate well, and they probably didn’t get enough water.  Some are seedless, but some have seeds, which is weird.  I figure I’ll be cooking them up and putting them through the food mill anyhow, and freezing the juice/pulp for later use.  The flavor is kind of Meh…  they are grapes.

I also took a photo of the vine after I’d scissored most of the grapes off…  It looks pitiful, but that’s partly because of insect damage.

And yes, bermuda grass is right up there, poor grape vines!  There is landscape fabric and 3 inches of mulch under that grass, though… and a soaker hose for water.  I do the best I can with roundup on the grass…  wish the darn stuff would go take over the hay field, bermuda hay is better than “mixed” hay.  Stay away from my plants!

I wasn’t real hot about training the grape vines I bought locally…. I did better training with the muscadines, as they were smaller stems that weren’t all curved and such already.  I figure as long as I prune well in winter I can eventually train the others better.  I hope.  Heck, I know nothing about growing grapes except what I’ve read online and learned the last year or so.

While I was out with the camera I took a photo of some flowers I grew from seed this year.  Milkweed family, I guess.  Common name is Snow on the Mountain.  My friend Jan had some of these last year, and I had to have some too, so I hunted down seeds after she told me the name.  I hope they reseed well, although fighting the bermuda grass like everything else does here… well, it’s iffy.

I love the white and green variations, and so do the butterflies (and some wasps).  They aren’t as big of a draw to butterflies as I thought they would be… the purple flowered weed does much better with that.  I don’t care, I love how they look, they are different!

Along with table grapes I planted some muscadines.  One never grew, that’s why I have 2 of the white grape.  Another one bled to death this year after I pruned it… died all the way back to the root.  But it came back to life!  It sprouted out from way down on the stem and is starting over.

 

Now, it’s not as great as it looks…  all the lower part is the muscadine.  But along that top wire is my RED table grape which was getting 90% of the water this year until I figured out that the soaker hose had a split in it.  The red grape made a LOT of vines, but also some good clumps of grapes.  They aren’t quite ready yet, but that’s a grape thing.  Did you know that grapes don’t all get ripe at the same time?  You’d think they would, but a cluster of grapes are like anything else… some ripen earlier, some later.  You try to pick them when most are ripe.    I’ve tasted the red grapes and they are wonderful…. very flavorful.  Took a photo, too, of course, so you can all see how some are getting ripe and others are not.

Hmm, not such a great photo, but see how some are red on one bunch and another whole bunch hasn’t even started?  These are another locally grown table grape that I should know the name to.  I’ll find that paper or notebook… and then tell ya.  But in the meantime, I can’t wait for the red grapes to get ripe!  LOVELY flavor.  Still that same tough skin, but heck, that’s probably my fault.  I’ll eat some, I’ll cook up the others and mix it with the white grapes and have some strange hybrid jam.

Oh, but wait, there is more!  I said I’m growing muscadines!  The one muscadine that survived set fruit like you wouldn’t believe.  That beer flat of grapes?  That’ll be nothing compared to what I’m going to get from the muscadine.  Let me show you a close up of a cluster…  and the vine is covered with these clusters…

Of course these won’t ripen until really late in the season…  perhaps September or October, I’m not even sure.  I have a freezer for the early stuff, you know me, I don’t can anything in summer if I can help it.  Certainly not jams.  I’ll use up the white grape juice to stretch out the muscadine juice…  but yum yum!  I am really fond of muscadines, the flavor, that is.  They have tough skins like the other grapes I’m growing, so all that I can do is juice them.  Well, I know I’ll eat some, but that’s squish the grape out of the skin into your mouth, and then spit out seeds.  Like eating concords.  :)

Well, that’s all the story tonight… I’ve got grapes.  I apologize for not blogging as much lately…   it’s summer and I like to be outside.

hugs,

Vyx