Sesame Seed Designs » pets

Oliver is cute

Casey — Mon, 11 Sep 2006 03:06:00 +0000

Oliver is so cute!! He’s my new bunny. His color is called chocolate but he’s really a light orange. I don’t know who comes up with the names. Here he’s eating weeds like a good little bunny.
Since Kathy asked, here is some info about angoras. (If you’re not interested, skip this part) They are more work than your average bunny. He lives outside but has a roof so he doesn’t get rained on. Since they have so much fur it’s important they don’t get wet. They also don’t do well in the heat. Again, because of all the fur. When it’s really hot, we freeze a liter bottle of water and put it in the cage so the bunny can cool off. They also require brushing so they don’t get mats in their fur. We’ll see how this guy does but once they’re over a year, most don’t need to be brushed more than once a week. Different angora breeds need different amounts of brushing- it depends on how many guard hairs they have- and individuals vary too. They are the softest bunnies you’ll ever feel and I love petting Oliver!

Besides knitting, my project this last week has been painting my bathroom. My bathroom used to be terrible. Here’s the before:
It doesn’t look that bad until you see the walls up close.
It’s wallboard with wallpaper attached. (It’s popular in trailers and manufactured homes. Classy stuff.) It was super old and dirty and we couldn’t take the paper off because it’s fused to the wall so we had to use a nasty oil-based primer to cover it all up. Fumes filled the house for days. How I love inhaling chemicals. It was all worth it, though, because now my bathroom looks like this. The color is called spring rain and it reminds me of a robin’s egg. I love it! No more dirty, nasty walls! We even had this pretty print that matches perfectly.I haven’t been neglecting my ogee tunic. I started seaming it together the other night and it’s coming along slowly but surely. It’s still summer so I’m not in a big hurry to finish it. It’s not like I’ll get to wear it soon. It’s looking like it’ll fit nicely and I am excited to see it all finished!

Proof is in the pictures (a.k.a. Why I love the fair)

Casey — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 05:34:00 +0000

I had so much fun at the fair on Sunday! I took lots of pictures, petted lots of animals and ate lots of sugar. I told you before that I won ribbons so here is the proof.
My river stole only got third but everything else won a blue ribbon! They hung my backyard leaves scarf backwards so no one got to see the pretty pattern. They also really packed the things in the cases. My soleil tank top was barely visible and The lace on the bottom was almost completely hidden. I’m not complaining, really. I won ribbons so I’m happy.

My bread also won a blue ribbon! I love baking bread and last year I entered a recipe I had never made before. Bad idea. This year I entered my favorite recipe and it turned out great. It looks a little weird in the picture but remember people- at this point it has been sitting out in the open for almost 2 weeks. It looked beautiful the day I dropped it off. Other Oregon State Fair highlights included:

My friend Amber eating a fried snickers bar. Hey, someone had to do it and it wasn’t going to be me. After the funnel cake and giant sno cone, I couldn’t eat anything else.
(For the record, she liked it but doesn’t think she needs to eat one again. Mike feels the same way about the one he ate last year.)

I think these are the cutest tomatoes ever! I’m glad they won 1st place.
There was an entire display devoted to vegetables with faces. This was my favorite. Do you think it’s “supposed” to be a seal?This won the most unique vegetable award. I wish I had a vegetable that unique in my garden!This is a “cute vegetable.” I think that’s fair code for smallest vegetable. This bitty carrot lost to a teeny ear of corn.
Baby piglets (is that redundant?) are so cute!! They were sleepy. I wish I could have picked one up and squeezed it- not too hard, of course. This fluffy bunny won the award for “Best Wool.” It looks well deserved. The cutest bunny at the fair was a baby English Angora that won 3rd place and then came home with me! Yep, I bought a bunny from a 4-H’er and he’s really fluffy and cute. I don’t have a good picture yet but when I do, I’ll show him off.

I hope all of you had the chance to go to a fair this summer. If not, go next year! It’ll be tons of fun, I promise.

The prettiest bunny ever

Casey — Tue, 04 Jul 2006 21:01:00 +0000

Phoebe, my pretty princess of a bunny died on Sunday night. She was lethargic and not breathing well so we rushed her to Dove Lewis- the emergency clinic I was hoping I’d never have to take a pet to. After several hours we cried and decided to euthanize her and then cried some more. It was really sad but best for her.

She’s a german angora and I have tons of her fur safely stored away that I’ve been wanting to spin. You can see my first attemps at spinning her fur here. I though I had lots of time to learn and lots of angora fiber to proctice with since she kept growing more. Now that I don’t have her anymore I don’t want to waste all her fur learning to spin it.

Is there anyone out there that can spin angora and would do that for me? For a price, of course. I just want some mittens with a Phoebe cuff or maybe a little mini-Phoebe to snuggle up with.

snow and knitting go together

Casey — Wed, 21 Dec 2005 19:48:00 +0000

I have pictures of what I’ve been up to since my last post. Knitting, knitting and more knitting.
I knitted some bath puffs out of cotton chenille for my girlfriends and was in such a hurry to send them off that I forgot to take a picture. They turned out really cute and just when I finished them, my yarn order finally arrived on Friday so I’ve been knitting my dad’s scarf like crazy. Every spare moment I was knitting and I finally finished it last night. When I got up this morning my first thought was that I didn’t have to knit that scarf today and I was thrilled! I have so many other Christmasy things I want to get done and now I can because the scarf is no longer consuming me. Part of the reason I was able to finish so quickly (really in 3 days because I didn’t knit Monday because I went and saw U2 on their final show of the tour!!!) was that it snowed on Sunday! I got sent home 3 hours early from work and went in 2 hours late on Monday because it was icy so I had more time to knit. Portland doesn’t usually get snow so the city kind of freaks out. My dog had never seen snow and he went nuts! He ran around like a crazy possessed dog and scooped up lots of snow in his mouth. Here’s a picture of us in my snowy backyard. So my dad’s scarf is knitted out of Knit Picks Andean Treasure. It’s 100% baby alpaca in the color Granite and it’s so soft! I love it. If it weren’t such a boring, masculine color, I would be tempted to keep it for myself. I don’t think any of my pictures captured the true color. It’s a pretty medium shade of brown mixed with a little grey. I think my dad will like it. I knit three braided cable patterns with a seed stitch border. My original plan was to knit a complex celtic braid since my dad is Irish and loves all things Celtic but that was before the yarn took so long to arrive. Since I was running out of time to knit, I realized I needed a simpler pattern that wouldn’t take so much brain work to knit. So this is what I settled on. Before I blocked it, the seed stitch edges curled in.But after blocking, it looks great. I woke up this morning and it was actually dry. I was hoping that it wouldn’t take forever to dry as I only have a few days to get it in the mail but all it took was one night. I love this yarn!
I made Mike model it to see how long it turned out. Notice his cute grey hat knitted by me a few years ago. It’s the only hat he wears. I’m such a good knitty wife. Did you notice his arm in the picture above? That’s his flame sweater he’s wearing! Here’s one last picture of my dad’s scarf. This shows the back, too. This pattern makes me think of the forest and I think the back looks like tree bark, althoughit’s kind of hard to see in this picture. I hope all of you have a great Christmas and a happy new year! I don’t know if I’ll post again until the new year as I’m going to California to hand out some lovely knitted gifts to the family!

Happy All Saints Day

Casey — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 06:13:00 +0000

Socktoberfest is officially over and I have 1 sock to show for it! Being my very first sock ever (a knitting milestone!) I am pretty happy. I actually didn’t finish sewing the toe until today but that’s close enough for me. Here is sock #1. It’s a little loose around my ankle but it doesn’t matter because it’s not for me. Hopefully my mother in law’s ankle is a little bigger than mine but if not, it’s still super comfy! These are going to be hard to give away.

I hope you all had a great Halloween yesterday! I handed out candy to trick-or-treaters and it was fun- my first halloween in our new house. Here’s a picture of the pumpkins we carved.

As promised a whie ago, here’s Phoebe minus a lot of fur. She doesn’t really hold still so it was hard to get a non-blurry shot.While I’m showing off my pets, here’s a picture Mike took. It’s a rare occurance because my cats hate each other. Well, it’s really just one that hates the other but we rarely see them both in the same place at the same time. Here they are, though, both sleeping on my bed. The top one is Ramona and the bottom kitty is Gatsby.

Socks and Pumpkins

Casey — Sun, 23 Oct 2005 19:45:00 +0000

We went to a pumpkin patch on Sauvie Island on Friday and it was so much fun! We got lots of cool pumpkins, went through a hay bale maze and saw cute farm animals. They have a big corn maze too but we’re waiting to go through it with some friends next week when it’s haunted. Bradley was very well behaved at the pumpkin patch (except for peeing on a pumpkin) and he liked sitting in the pumpkin cart.
I’m plugging away on my dublin bay socks. So far, my 1st sock is almost 7 inches long. This being my first pair of socks, I’m not sure when to stop. How long do you like your socks? I’m using Lorna’s Laces sock yarn and I don’t know exactly how much they’ll stretch lengthwise when they’re on and I’m knitting them for my mother-in-law so it’s not like I can try them on and knit until they fit me well. How long should I knit it before starting the heel? Advice is appreciated.