Rattributes

Sorry for the downtime folks — my webhost had to move me to a different server and it messed everything up until I could get hubby to fix it up for me. He’s been sick (nothing serious, just a little flu) so I didn’t want to pester him to do it until he was feeling better.

Thanks!

My poor little boys didn’t gain any weight while I was gone!

Othello: 412
Hamlet: 388

I’ll have to work on fattening them up now that I’m home. I’m a little irritated.. my parents turned down the heat in the house while I was gone without asking me, so when I got home it was 65 in here and my poor boys were chilly. I warmed them up with some snuggles and yummy cooked oatmeal, but I feel awful that they had to be cold for a week.

Right now they are asleep behind my back and definitely happy that I am home. As soon as they heard me talking when I walked in the door last night, they ran to the doors of the cage and started hanging all over the bars. I missed them so much!!!

Just a quickie since we’re leaving for Minnesota tomorrow (we’ll be back on the 6th).  My Dad is babysitting the boys and I wanted to get a measure of their weight before we go and another, of course, when we get back.

Othello is sitting at 413
Hamlet is at 388

Well, my pal (Alleycat, aka Irene) received her gifts today! I swear, I love sending hammocks even more than I like receiving them! Not that I am not looking forward to my gifts (which should be arriving on the 23rd, and I’ll post pics) but I just looooove to give people things.  I used a cute, striped ladybug flannel for her hammocks with a bright purple fleece lining.  I made her cage liners out of teal fleece to provide a little bit of contrast.  I also sent a few braided fleece ropes (purple, teal, and pink) and a few treat pouches full of Suebee’s mix.

I was also able to serve as a “backup pal” for Kacee9 (Kendra) since her pal fell through for the first Santa swap.  For her I chose a green giraffe flannel with a green, yellow and blue striped fleece lining.  Her pan liners were made of the same fleece, and her shelf liners were made of plain green fleece for a bit of contrast (and because her favourite color is green).  She hasn’t received hers yet, but I expect it to arrive Monday or Tuesday.  Hope she likes it!

I mailed a few things to Heatherama as well to cheer her up after someone hit-and-ran her car, but I forgot to take pictures of them before I sent them out.  If she takes any pics once they arrive, I’ll put them here.

Just a quick update on fatrat weight.

Othello: 375
Hamlet: 362

Just to mention — I started a sewing blog for myself last night since I seem to be posting more and more pictures on here of things that I have sewn that actually have absolutely nothing to do with rats.

Don’t worry, Rattributes isn’t going anywhere!  I just needed another space for myself for my regular sewing.  In any case, if you have any interest in seeing the things that I sew (clothing, bags, etc), then check out my Sewpbox!

I can’t recall if I’ve mentioned or not, but I signed up for another Santa Swap on Goosemoose.  The sendout deadline is this Wednesday, although I’ll hopefully be mailing out my presents on Monday.  I’d kind of been putting off doing them because I wanted my coverstitcher, but it hasn’t even shipped yet, so I sewed up just about everything yesterday.  I have a few things left to do, but ran out of the right color thread (the serger just devours thread) and it was too late to go to JoAnn’s and get more at that point.  Now I need to wait for them to open to get started again =/

Amazingly enough, I am the only one awake right now.  Dan would normally have been up for several hours at this point, but he is still snoozing away.  It is pretty boring just sitting here with everyone asleep and not being able to sew.  It doesn’t seem so bad during the day when Dan is at work, but when he is home and I just can’t talk to him because he is sleeping.. well.. it sucks.  I hated it so much when he worked nights because I spent all day fighting the urge to go and wake him up.  I’m not good at not bugging him.

Anyway, the boys seem to be reveling in all of their new space.  Normally they snuggle up and sleep together, but right now Hamlet is sleeping in one of the tubes and Othello is sleeping in the litterbox.  I’m sure they’ll go back to snuggling later, but all day yesterday they were super far apart.  I’m kind of amazed that Othello is not sleeping under the liner, yet.  He pulled the liner up (much to my dismay) but apparently decided that now that he has ruined my decor, it is okay to sleep somewhere else.

Oh yay, oh yay!  I finally found someone to sell me a Ferret Nation 142 who didn’t bail out on me without warning!  The cage is sitting out in the driveway right now, drying off after a nice hosing down.  Once it dries I’ll scrub it all down (although it is in good shape and shouldn’t need too much work, but I’ll definitely want to disinfect it, just in case) and hopefully get it set up for the boys this weekend.  I only have 2.5 yards of cotton fabric for the set I’m planning for this weekend (I usually buy 3 yards, but I’ve been having a bit too much leftover to justify it), so I hope that it will be enough to make a full set for a 142!  I know I have enough fleece to do the liners, I just hope it doesn’t look sparse once I get it all set up.

I have some more Christmas decorations that did not fit in the current cage, so at least I’ll be able to put all of those up!  Ohhh.. I’m just so excited to clean the cage on Saturday!!

Lazy bRats! I spend hours making them a beautiful Christmas cage with bunches of snuggly hammocks and what do they do? Sleep on the liners. Or in the litterbox. At least they aren’t under the liners yet.

I weighed the boys tonight — Hamlet is sitting at 335g with Othello at 338g. I guess it won’t be long now before I feel completely comfortable removing the hardware cloth from the cage. I have to admit that I am looking forward to that, as I really don’t like how the modification makes the cage look.

I finished Jamie’s (my older sister) Christmas present today.  When I saw this fabric at the store I knew I had to have it, since it just screamed her name at me.  The picture on the right shows Anya modeling it.  I had some fun making fabric “yo-yos” today (the flowers, they’re kind of hard to see) — they were a first for me.  

The picture on the left shows a bit more of a close-up of the flowers.  I found really nifty buttons that I thought would make the perfect centerpoint for the flowers.  I think tomorrow I’ll see about making the snuggly baby pajamas for my neice.  I’d like to get Jamie and her family’s presents done soon so that I can get them mailed out.  I have a little more time for everyone else, since I don’t need to worry about shipping.

On a bit of a side note, although still related to sewing, I just ordered a coverstitch machine.  It’s a Janome 900CP (which is discontinued, but still a nice machine).  I was kind of debating back and forth as to whether or not I wanted a dedicated coverstitch machine, but made up my mind that I needed one when I started thinking about doing hammocks on my serger.  I like the idea of it since I find the stitches to be so much nicer, but obviously with a regular serger you can’t install ribbons (since the knives will just.. cut them off).

My serger doesn’t do coverstitch and I didn’t want to fork out the major bucks that it would cost to get a regular serger that also coverstitches, so this seemed like a pretty decent option for me.  Not only do I save money and still get the ability to coverstitch, but now I won’t need to undergo the lengthy process to swap my machine from regular serging to coverstitching!

Unfortunately… now I have three machines on my tiny sewing desk.  We’ll be doing up Christmas decorations soon and I am pondering rearranging the living room while we are at it to see if I can make space for a bigger desk.  I would really like something L-shaped so that I can set up all of my machines at once (and even possibly have a surface to cut on that isn’t the floor, god that makes my back hurt), but I’d settle even for something just 20″-30″ longer or so.  I suppose only time (and trying :p) will tell if this can actually happen.