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Bits and pieces
Following on from last week's drowned rat, I noticed a couple of days later that GB's long-neglected not-salt lick was no longer dusty, and there were bits of it on the floor. The next day, I was entirely relaxed to find that a rodent had been chewing on some packaging:
The day after that it had moved to the next shelf over, and when I went to refill the bait trap yesterday it turned out that the package was empty.
My best guess is that drowned rat had a litter of adolescents at home, and when mum didn't come back they tried to find food on their own. Hopefully, there is now a small heap of dead rats somewhere.
(Although the egg that I foolishly left on the bench this morning did mysteriously vanish, so probably not a clean sweep.)
In more cheerful news, I let the ducklings out of their pen for an hour this evening. They are very taken with dandelion clocks, and mud. They went to bed filthy.
Sadly, it's not as easy to get good photos when they have the whole garden to roam around in and they're on the other side of a pane of glass, but you can as ever click to embiggen.
This morning, we had rain! Actual, useful rain, so this afternoon we headed up to the field and dug up ragwort, which will hopefully make the job easier when we do it again at flowering time.
(I used this as an excuse to not do any weeding, because my wrists are having their usual late-spring too-much-weeding flare-up. Ho hum.)
I've had a pretty quilty few days: Big Quilt Club on Saturday, a workshop on Sunday, and then Little Quilt Club yesterday. Mike was away in Dublin over the weekend, so I ducked out of Saturday's meeting early (and, as a result, half the paperwork has gone walkabout. *Someone* took it home, just not the person I'd asked to do it. I'm sure it'll turn up eventually).
I was also going to duck out of the workshop at lunch time, but then the instructor overheard me saying so and said "Well, I don't mind if you bring your dog," with which other people agreed. The garden was sturdily fenced, a careful study of the hall's rules revealed no mention of dogs, and there were no signs saying "Guide Dogs Only", so during the lunch break I nipped home and brought him back with me. After about five minutes, he wasn't settling, so I thought he might still be feeling car-sick and took him outside for a bit of fresh air, at which point a member of the hall committee popped up on the other side of the fence and told me that dogs weren't allowed, inside or out. Sigh.
The instructor very kindly brought forward the last part of the demonstration, so that I could see it, and half an hour or so later we were back at home. Poor Bob: two country lane car journeys for no good reason.
I finished the sample piece off yesterday:
The class covered two things: making improvisational (it's good to be wonky) blocks, and then making that circular 'porthole' surround to show them off (a lot simpler than it looks). I'm afraid that the former is a bit beyond my comfort zone, but I do like the portholes, and might well try to do something with them again.
I've also been plotting future quilts. There's a big fabric sale next weekend (a company from Yorkshire that mostly does mail-order but also has a travelling roadshow that goes to various quilting groups a couple of times a year), so I want to stock up....
The day after that it had moved to the next shelf over, and when I went to refill the bait trap yesterday it turned out that the package was empty.
My best guess is that drowned rat had a litter of adolescents at home, and when mum didn't come back they tried to find food on their own. Hopefully, there is now a small heap of dead rats somewhere.
(Although the egg that I foolishly left on the bench this morning did mysteriously vanish, so probably not a clean sweep.)
In more cheerful news, I let the ducklings out of their pen for an hour this evening. They are very taken with dandelion clocks, and mud. They went to bed filthy.
Sadly, it's not as easy to get good photos when they have the whole garden to roam around in and they're on the other side of a pane of glass, but you can as ever click to embiggen.
This morning, we had rain! Actual, useful rain, so this afternoon we headed up to the field and dug up ragwort, which will hopefully make the job easier when we do it again at flowering time.
(I used this as an excuse to not do any weeding, because my wrists are having their usual late-spring too-much-weeding flare-up. Ho hum.)
I've had a pretty quilty few days: Big Quilt Club on Saturday, a workshop on Sunday, and then Little Quilt Club yesterday. Mike was away in Dublin over the weekend, so I ducked out of Saturday's meeting early (and, as a result, half the paperwork has gone walkabout. *Someone* took it home, just not the person I'd asked to do it. I'm sure it'll turn up eventually).
I was also going to duck out of the workshop at lunch time, but then the instructor overheard me saying so and said "Well, I don't mind if you bring your dog," with which other people agreed. The garden was sturdily fenced, a careful study of the hall's rules revealed no mention of dogs, and there were no signs saying "Guide Dogs Only", so during the lunch break I nipped home and brought him back with me. After about five minutes, he wasn't settling, so I thought he might still be feeling car-sick and took him outside for a bit of fresh air, at which point a member of the hall committee popped up on the other side of the fence and told me that dogs weren't allowed, inside or out. Sigh.
The instructor very kindly brought forward the last part of the demonstration, so that I could see it, and half an hour or so later we were back at home. Poor Bob: two country lane car journeys for no good reason.
I finished the sample piece off yesterday:
The class covered two things: making improvisational (it's good to be wonky) blocks, and then making that circular 'porthole' surround to show them off (a lot simpler than it looks). I'm afraid that the former is a bit beyond my comfort zone, but I do like the portholes, and might well try to do something with them again.
I've also been plotting future quilts. There's a big fabric sale next weekend (a company from Yorkshire that mostly does mail-order but also has a travelling roadshow that goes to various quilting groups a couple of times a year), so I want to stock up....