An Awesome Sewing Blog That I Just Have To Share

Nall is a Spanish Sewing Blog. I've been following her because her blog combines two of my interests:  sewing and my desire to learn Spanish.  She's amazingly creative, and she posts daily.

Today's blog post is about a little play tent she made for her kids.  And, it is just too darling and she' even appliqued a rat with his rat hole.

Cool news story about Mars and a Rat

I just had to share this story.  This is from Fox News, and it's about a photo of Mars (from NASA) purported to show a "rat".  

Just a neat photo.  But, I am a bit surprised that they didn't decide to call it a "squirrel."

What's that?

That is Doctor imitating an orange.  He, apparently, made a wrong turn when he was sneaking into his stash of pepitas.  Doc loves his pepitas.

Success.  He found his way to the right bag.  Here, he enjoys nibbling on his pepitas.

He's my only rat with a passion for pepitas, and we've been keeping a little bag of pepitas on the counter over the couch where the rats play.  Doc frequently finagles his way up to the bag, knocks it down, spills it.  He's always making a mess with his pepitas.  But, the other rats leave the pepitas alone.

By the way, orange rinds are another of the rare foods that you don't want to feed to rats, specifically male rats.  Orange rind contains a carcinogen, d-limonene, which is a problem for male rats, but not female.  Here's a post about that at RMCA.

And, if anyone is wondering, no, he did not nibble on the oranges.

Hi There, I'm Peter.

This is Peter in his favorite spot, between the pillows of the couch.  He's a tad odd.  Seriously, he's essentially propped there in a biped position.  He's enjoying a banana yogie.  mmmmmmmmmmm

Peter is one of our new rats.  Our other new rat is Walternate.  If you know my rats, yes, sadly, our original Walter passed away from old age.  This past winter has been tough for our rats.  We had a lot of losses.  Many of our rats had a few years on them and died of old age.  It's hard for me to blog about rats going to ratty heaven, so instead you get to hear about our new rats.

Peter and Walternate, continuing our tradition of naming rats after TV shows, are named after Peter and Walternate "Walter" Bishop.  "Fringe" is a SciFi show and occurs in at least 2 different alternate universes.  The primary characters call the Walter character from the alternate universe, "Walternate" which we thought was perfect for our new rat.

Sneak Peak

Sneak Peak at my newest custom work.  This is just part of the custom order for 2 triangular hammocks and a square 12" hammock.

I had such a blast making this set, and I have extra squares waiting to be made into hammocks.  Giggles.  Now, if I just sew them together, I will have more stock for my Etsy store.

If you look closely and rotate one of the triangles, you can see that the triangles are actually a square hammock cut into two.  Even though all of the hammocks were made with the same fabrics, I thought, by cutting a hammock into 2 to make the triangles that would provide some additional linking of the set of hammocks.  Ahhhh.  Well, maybe, I also did it that way because it was easy.

It looks like I'm going to have some delightful photos of the lucky hamster who is enjoying this hammock set.  So, stay tuned.

Daytime and Rats

Sam says, "Seriously, I'm try to snooze here."

I just read an interesting article from Popular Science about how rats exposed to lots of light become depressed.  Rather, they prefer darkness.

This is a bit of a no brainer to me, but I have to think about how my current rat room is set up.  They have a night light on all night for my benefit.  Poor little guys.

Oh, and I have one criticism of the article.  It is my understanding and experience that rats are NOT nocturnal, but rather crepuscular.  They prefer dawn and evening hours and prefer to sleep during the night and daytime.  I definitely see my guys more active during those hours, but they seem to party all night, too.  (Indeed, last night they knocked over their litter box.  sigh.)  And, Doc snoozes in the afternoon as i frequently spend some time with him during the morning hours.  He eagerly waits for me to take him out for his morning romp, but if I bother him in the afternoon, I get the Doc's patented evil eye.

Regardless of whether rats are nocturnal or crepuscular, if they develop depression when exposed to more light than darkness, that's something to consider for pet rat owners.

The New Belt for the Singer 66 Works

Woot.

The new belt installed without a hitch, and the machine just feels more sturdy.  I'm very happy.  

And, as you can see, I am sewing again.