Kitten Update

We have officially decided to name the new kitten Curry after Arthur Curry/ Aquaman. Our other three cats hate water and even though they sometimes get in the tub they jump right back out if it is even slightly wet. Curry on the other hand was curious about my husband's shower the other day and jumped in on his own to investigate. He stayed for just a minute to look around before casually climbing back out.

Our big cat Parker has been the picture of patience this past weekend. Curry doesn't really like to be left alone and has been following us from room to room. Anytime either of us sits down he wanted to climb up on our shoulders and rub his head on our faces. While that's adorable it makes if a bit difficult to get anything done. Since Parker has been the most tolerant so far we started setting Curry beside him when he got really needy to see if he would snuggle with him instead of us. Parker would sit there patiently and let Curry climb all over him until he would get too close to Parker's face. At that point he would very politely get up and walk away, no hissing or swatting at Curry. Eventually they cuddled together on top of our cat tower. This video shows how tolerant Parker has been.

After this Curry finally settled down and they took a super cute nap together.

His stomach seems to have settled down as we havn't seen as much vomiting and he keeps trying to eat the big cats food. Last night he even tried to push Balder aside to get to his bowl. We are still feeding him wet kitten food so the big cats keep trying to eat his food as well. We usually take him into our spare bedroom so he can eat uninterrupted. He still wants to snuggle with us whenever he can but settled down and slept next to my husband most of the night Saturday. Our other cats are getting better but still aren't super keen on Curry. Our most vocal complaints come from Caramel, who had never liked change, but I did manage to snap a photo of them reasonably close together and peaceful. (Excuse the quality, it's a phone picture.)

We hope that very soon everything will settle down and all the cats will be able to peacefully coexist.

Woodland Creature Quilt

This weekend I spent some time getting ready to start an new project and digging up all the fabrics to make sure I had everything in the same place ready to go. A couple of months ago I came across several coordinating fabrics with adorable forest critters. My original thought was to make some sort of bag or purse with them.

Main Fabric

Companion Prints

Eventually I found other woodland fabrics and extended the idea to making a small throw blanket or quilt. The fabrics are mostly from the nursery section and very pastel so I wanted to add something to make it more adult.

Other Coordinates

Backing Fabric (It's super soft!)

I decided I want to add blocks with embroidery where I use the basic outlines from the fabric and add details to transform them into video game animals. I haven't actually started working on the drawings for the embroidery designs yet because I'm still trying to decide on the characters to use. Right now the list looks something like this:

Fox- Fox McCloud from Star Fox

Owl- the owl from Legend of Zelda at the exit      from Kokiri Forest 

Hedgehog- Sonic the Hedgehog

Raccoon- Rocket Raccoon

Rabbit

Squirrel

Deer

Birds

Butterfly

I know Rocket Raccoon isn't a video game character but I still like him and all you have to do is add a big gun to that little raccoon, no need to change his shape at all. The only rabbit characters I can think of are Peppy from Star Fox and the Raving Rabbids and I don't really want to use either of those. Right now I'm leaning toward using Swift Heart from the Care Bear cousins but I'd love to hear any suggestions someone else might have.

I haven't actually laid out any kind of design or plan for the layout yet but the fabric I have for the back is 60 x 72 so that's the maximum size. If I end up needing more squares I can add other things like an Arwing ship, a tiny Groot, or maybe a Butterfree or some bird type Pokemon.

Librocubicularist- June 2015

Most of my reading for this month has been craft books with a few comics thrown in. Scroll down for the highlights but first a kitten update.


Our new little guy seems to be doing okay. Our two large boy cats are mostly ignoring him at the moment but that is a step up from the hissing the first two days. Parker seems interested in snuggling with him but is still unsure about the whole idea. They keep sniffing at each other and then wandering off in opposite directions. Caramel continues to hiss at him most of the time but she hasn't swatted at him or anything and last night she jumped up on the couch, saw him sitting on my lap, and jumped back down without hissing at all so we might be getting to the end of that as well.

He has been having a little bit of tummy trouble but we are hoping that it's just the stress of a new place and so many new cats and experiences. He seemed interested in the shower so my husband stood in the shower and held him. He didn't put him directly in the water but did stand close enough to get him wet. He didn't freak out or try to get away. We have been considering names and the top contenders right now are Natsu (the fire wizard from Fairy Tail) or Curry ( after Arthur Curry aka Aquaman). With him being so interested in the shower we are currently leaning toward Curry.

Now on to the book reviews:


The Handbuilt Home: 34 Simple Stylish and Budget-Friendly Woodworking Projects for Every Room by Ana White

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I am not at all skilled at building things for my house but I'd like to be. This book starts out with a fairly extensive section about tools and basic techniques, I find that lots of books of this type skip over this assuming that you already have some idea what you're doing so I really appreciated finding it here. The rest of the book is broken down into sections based on what room of the house you would expect to find the finished projects in. Each project has a rating for suggested skill level, projected cost, and time estimate to complete the project.
The projects cover a fairly wide variety; everything from a simple picture ledge up to bunk beds for the kids or a recycling center with pull out trash can. I don't really have enough tools to try anything out yet but the steps are explained in language that seems easy to follow and there are pictures of nearly every step. I would probably have to work up to it a bit but I'd really like to make the extendable sewing table it shows as well as some benches to go outside with our patio table.

Age Recommendations: Obviously with the use of power tools involved this book is for more adult audiences but older kids could probably assist with building.

Gertie Sews Vintage Casual: A Modern Guide to Sportswear Styles of the 1940s and 1950s by Gretchen Hirsch

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


While this book focuses on sewing vintage style clothing it contains loads of information that can be used for any sewing projects. The introductory chapters discuss every aspect of sewing such as choosing the right type of fabric for your garment, tips for various types of fabrics (specifically knits), techniques for finishing seams, tips for getting the best fit, and so on. The later chapters focus on the patterns that come with the book. There are just a few basic patterns but each one has several variations. For example the pants pattern has several variations for different styles of short and also combines with a halter top pattern to make a cute romper.

Age Recommendations: This book is geared toward adults but teens/ tweens interested in sewing and fashion could learn a lot. While it does contain all the knowledge a beginning sewist would need I think that the sheer amount of information could be overwhelming. I think it would be best for someone who has already mastered basic sewing techniques and wants to take their skills to the next level and/or learn to alter patterns for optimum fit.

Eco Books: Inventive Projects from the Recycling Bin by Terry Taylor

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This book offers instructions to make books using a wide variety of recycled materials. Everything from egg cartons to old cassette tapes is used as a cover for books. Often the pages shown as recycled as well from old maps or book pages to simply brown paper grocery bags. Although it does include a section in the back with more information on types of stitches used for the most part this book assumes some previous experience with bookbinding. If you are new to the idea you should still be able to complete the projects but you may end up flipping back and forth in the book quite a bit. I would prefer it if the information about the binding stitches was included with the project in which they are used. The books using gift cards and cassette tapes are my favorites but I also like the idea of using the mini cereal boxes or old floppy disks.

Age Recommendations: There is some variation in difficulty level among the projects here but even beginners should be able to find something they can handle. All but the youngest kids should be able to complete the simpler projects and even then little kids could help with some of the steps.

Zoo Trip

I'm making two posts today because I promised pictures from the zoo before we decided to get a kitten and he took over today's post.

Friday my husband and I went out to the Kansas City Zoo. Its so big that it takes a really long time to see everything and  we used to stay all day to feel like we got our moneys worth. But last year we had a friends of the zoo membership and we actually ended up going to the zoo more often because we felt like we could stay for just a few hours and leave. Around Christmas we went for just around an hour to see the lions open up their gifts and then left without feeling bad.

This week I specifically wanted to try to get more pictures of the otters to use for cover photos. Things didn't really work out for that but we still had a nice time. First of all it was really hot out so we didn't stay as long as we might have. Second there were several busloads of kids there so it made it hard to see some of the animals due to crowds and loud noises. Finally because it was really sunny I had some problems with glare off the glass at many of the exhibits.

The zoo also has a baby gorilla so we really wanted to try and see him. His mom was sitting in a corner holding him and it was super packed and hard to get close. I wasn't fast enough with the camera to get a shot of him sticking his tongue out but I did get this picture...

Also this picture of a gorilla who didn't seem to excited about the increased crowds around the exhibit.

Even though it was a short trip on a hot, crowded day we still had a good time and managed to get some nice pictures.

Cat Adoption

I know I've mentioned our cats before and today I'm going to tell you the story of how they joined the family, including the newest little kitten that we just picked up yesterday.

Back when my husband and were still dating he was shocked to learn that I had never had pets. He grew up in a house where there was always at least one dog and several cats. When we started dating his family had 3 dogs, 5 cats, and 2 birds. So a little bit after we were engaged he decided to get me a kitten. Actually because a single kitten can be kind of needy he decided to get me two kittens. That's how I ended up with two girl kittens that we named Caramel and Samira. They came from the same home but not from the same litter of kittens. Because they were a really young they lived with my husband and his family for a while. Early on they had trouble getting Caramel to eat but then one day we stopped to get Arby's for everyone on the way over and my husband was sitting on the floor eating a roast beef sandwich and she mewed super loud and climbed up his shoulder and tried to steal it.

Caramel and Samira Cat (Husband in the background keeping them pointed the correct direction for the camera)

Caramel Kitten hiding in the curtains

As all cats are they had their own set of personality quirks but they are both very goods cats.  Then about a year and a half after we were married his sisters rescued a couple of cats and ended up with a litter of kittens. They were having problems finding homes for all of the kittens. We originally were going to take one but they were so adorable we ended up keeping two of them. This is how we got the boys, Parker and Balder. When they came to our house they were tiny but they grew up fast.

Balder and Parker

They quickly grew bigger than the girls and the girls weren't really sure what to do about that. Not right away but eventually our poor Samira cat decided that she just couldn't deal with them any more and she started to hide out in our office so she wouldn't have to see them. She would let her sister, Caramel in but not the boys. No matter what we did we couldn't convince her to come out and be social. Then she quit eating and we couldn't figure out why... we took her to the vet and we force fed her for a while but she never started to eat on her own again. We lost her just short of a year ago, but her sister still looks for her. She wanders into the office, looks around, maybe pace for a little bit, and walk back out. She just seems very sad and lonely still. That's why we decided it might be time to get a new cat. Caramel tolerates the boys but she doesn't love and cuddle them. Our thoughts were that maybe if there was another cat smaller than her (or at least closer to same size) that she might be better friends with it. Plus part of the reason Parker annoys her is that he wants to play and she doesn't. So maybe a playful kitten he'd have a playmate and she would still be happier.

So my husband has been searching around kind of randomly online for kittens and on Friday found an adoption event at a place near us called Unleashed Pet Rescue. So on Sunday we went out to look at kittens. We had a very good experience there. They are a no kill shelter that operates on donations. They do not have a set adoption fee but ask that you pay what you can to help them offset the cost of all the medical expenses they have for the animals. The cat we adopted has had all of his shots and vaccines, he is neutered and microchipped. We also have a month of pet insurance coverage.

They have a room with kittens and we had a chance to just kind of hang out in there and watch how the cats interacted with each other and how they reacted to us as well as other people. There were a couple of black kittens that we really wanted to adopt because they reminded us of Samira and we thought that might help Caramel feel better but they were very shy and we could see that it wouldn't work out well. What we did find was a tiny little orange tabby kitten that constantly wanted to play with us. He also approached several of the other cats and was hissed at and backed down, but then later try to play with the same cat. So we figured he could probably deal pretty well with our other cats.

His name from the shelter is Curtis but we will most likely change it. We are slowly introducing him to the other cats and it seems to be going well. When one of our big boys hissed at him he hissed back and the other cat laid down. He is still nervous around them and will run to one of us occasionally for reassurance. As long as that can happen he seems pretty fearless. All three of our cats have hissed in his face and he has hissed or growled back at all of them. We got out a feather toy and the three boys seemed to coexist quite happily but Caramel sat to the side and judged everyone. We did bring her a small Arby's sandwich to help ease her stress because she's never been good with change and it did seem to help her calm down at least somewhat.

Feather Fun

Judging Face

Even though they are in no way related here we already have pictures showing a family resemblance.

We already have a few ideas for names but are waiting a few days to get a better idea of his personality before we make a final decision. That being said if we're open to suggestions if any of you have name ideas. I'll try to keep you updated on his integration into the family.

Family Secrets

This is not the kind of post that I'd planned on making but sometimes you reach a point where you just need to vent a little bit. My husband and I have a secret. . . Well not really a secret. Its not that nobody know it's just that we don't really talk about it much, partly because it doesn't come up in conversation much but mostly because it's difficult to talk about. That 'secret' is that we have fertility problems.

It shouldn't really be a secret. It's the kind of thing that is easier when shared with a wider support system. But after 6 years of stress from the same problem sometimes its easier to just not talk about it. It is something that we both have kind of constantly in the back of our minds but sometimes not actively thinking about it is the only way to stay sane. But random events can push it into the forefront. . . seeing kids at the park, pictures of friends with kids on facebook and of course holidays.

My husband and his youngest brother on July 4th (Several years ago)

It's getting close to Father's Day and it's a difficult time for us. There's a variety of things going on here. First of all my husband isn't able to visit with his Dad much and really misses him. Add to that the knowledge that he might not ever be able to have kids of his own and you can understand why he may not be in the mood to hear about the awesome Father's Day gifts you received.

On my side of  things it's obviously a little different. I see the hurt that he feels and that makes me hurt. My husband is quite a bit older than his next oldest sibling so over the time we've been together I've been able to see him with kids and it's adorable. Most people who know him would probably say that he'd a fairly serious person but around kids he is the biggest goofball ever and I wish I could see more of that person.  I see all kinds of awesome ideas for Father's Day gifts and cards and I think about the way he is when I have seen him around kids and feel sad because I think he would be a great Dad . . . And I wish more than anything that I could buy him a Father's Day gift.

Photobooth goofyness at a friends wedding

Right now we have hit the point where we can't move forward without spending an extraordinary amount on treatments. My wonderful husband, who already works a full time job plus on call time, has decided that he needs to start looking for a second job. It seems like no matter how much we save its never enough and just when we start getting momentum in saving we hit some sort of setback such as needing to replace a tire or make some kind of house repair.

I know that he feels like the situation is his fault and therefore his responsibility to fix but it shouldn't be that way. Right now I only work part time. If anyone should be working two jobs its me. I've been trying to find a full time job myself but have problems even finding something I think I qualify for. Almost everything requires previous experience. Even when I found things to apply for I have very rarely even been contacted for an interview let alone hired.

We can both get in a downward spiral by worrying about finding the money to have kids, which leads to if we can't afford treatment will we be able to afford kids, should we even try to afford kids, are we doing the right thing by waiting for this treatment to work or are we wasting time and money we're going to need for other things? And on and on . . . So for now we'll continue to let the problem work in the back of our minds and have a nice Father's Day dinner with my parents. But believe me, as soon as we do figure out kids, there will be the largest Father's day celebration ever at my house.

Room for Improvement

There are always ways that you can improve yourself and taking learning new ways to create is a great fun way to do it. There are a bunch of arts and crafts I wish I were better at.

Here's my top three and projects I'd like to make if/when I mastered the skills. Please note the pictures and instructions in this post are not mine but I have provided links to the original posts and listed the creators.

1.Magic Circle

 I know a little bit about crochet but I've never made much with it. Specifically I'd like to learn how to use the magic circle stitch and make all sorts of cute amigurumi figures.

Things I'd like to make:

This super cool light up R2D2 from MiaHandcrafter.

A nice Death Star pillow for our couch from Pops de Milk

2. Bookbinding

 I have made some books/ journals before but would like to learn more types of bindings and details.

Specifically hardcover books like these:

From Millecuirs on Deviantart

or This one by Danybuffy also on deviantart.

3. Woodworking

This one is kind of two things. I'd like to be able to learn a bit of woodworking and some wiring/ programing to be able to make things like this awesome NES controller table by thisissafety on Instructables.

If you have suggestions for books or classes where I might be able learn some of these things drop me a line in the comments or on the Eclectic Otter Facebook page.

Celebrating Small Victories (Plus Gaming Maps from Clouds)

The past few weeks have not been the greatest. Nothing is seriously wrong, just lots of little things that have added up. So while nothing has been completely resolved we are making progress so I wanted to use this post to focus on the positive parts of things.

Last week I talked about the fact that I caught poison ivy while trying to mow our backyard. It still needs mown. I'm embarrassed to say exactly how badly it needs work. However my husband and I have made plans to get it taken care of, hopefully by this Sunday. Also my poison ivy is almost cleared up.

We still don't know for sure what caused our hall to flood in the rain, but there has been enough sun that our lawn doesn't have standing water in it anymore. We are still trying to figure out the problem but I was finally home and awake while it rained overnight. It seems like cleaning the gutters out more at least helped. When I looked out our gutters were not overflowing and we had no standing water on the patio where everything has been flooding. Its not conclusive evidence but it is as start. We still need to figure out how to make that side of the house drain better during heavy rain.

My husband's game is going great. Everyone seems excited about it. He's been running without a map because we bought into a Kickstarter for a program called Worldspinner that allows you to input basic information about your world and then ages it. It creates and names cities based on the culture that lives there and creates a history adding details like wars. It can also add information about heroes throughout the world's history and plot hooks for each city. We only donated enough to get Beta access and it hasn't opened up yet. He was trying to hold off on making a map until it was available but the campaign is quickly moving to the point where a map is necessary. Since my cold has caused me to spend a lot of time on the couch I started working on the problem.

I don't really remember where the idea came from but at some point we had a conversation about using the shapes of trees of clouds to make a map. Both of them have irregular outlines as well as internal details that could be used to define mountain ranges or rivers. So since I've been collecting cloud photos I opened a few up in Photoshop and got to work.

This is the photo I started with.

I just zoomed in on an area and start looking for shapes to outline. I did create a new layer so that the drawing was separate from the photo.

Then I used other colors to mark interior features of the cloud that could be water or mountain ranges.

Then just keep looking for more shapes.

In the end you can delete the photo layer and just have a map left.

In ended up with six countries. They are still very rough and need more details added but its a good start. I figure we can print and cut them out so we can play around with how to arrange them into larger continents. When we do that some of the borders will have to be tweaked so things actually fit together but it sounds like a fun afternoon. I'll leave it to my husband to add in cities because he has it sort laid out in his head already.

Sick Day

I apologize but I will not be making a longer post today. I spent most of weekend dealing with a cold/ allergy attack giving me a sore throat and making me so stuffed up a can barely breath. I blame all the rain causing crazy plant growth and super mold. Hopefully I'll be feeling better and ready to post again come Thursday.

Never Rains but it Pours

It has not been the best week for us here at the Bardic Bear, if I could hit rewind and do the whole week over I might. But then again for at least part of the week's problems that wouldn't help matters any.

All of our problems are the fault of this endless rain.

To start with our yard is in dire need of maintenance and the rain only fuels the growth of the underbrush. Last Wednesday I tried to work on getting our backyard under control but the grass was too tall and too wet so the mower kept choking up and dying. I worked for about 20 minutes before finally giving up and only managed to clear about 6 feet along the length of the house. However apparently that swath contained poison ivy because by Friday night both of my legs were blotchy and itchy.

Back my Ankle

The other major problem we are dealing with is that apparently all the rain has caused some sort of leak or something and our spare room and hallway are partially flooded. We aren't entirely sure where the water is coming from. There is a door near there, leading to a small side patio, and we think it is coming from there. Possibly caused by clogged gutters . . .  If either of us were ever home when it happened we could get a better idea.

Light=Dry    Dark=Wet

 It cleared up for a while tonight and was able to do some quick, emergency gutter clearing but they still need more work. Hopefully that will at least help. Ideally we would replace all of our gutters and add some type of leaf guard so we don't have to worry about the clogs but we just don't have the spare money at the moment. The gutter drains into some kind of buried pipe that's supposed to move the water away from the house but it's not doing very well and our whole front yard is a swamp. That pipe in the center of the photo below is supposed to be draining water away from our house but I don't think it's doing much good at the moment.

So at the moment I'm not working on any crafting projects. I'm just trying not to drown or scratch my legs off, although the rash is starting to look scabbed so hopefully it will gone soon and I will have at least one less worry.

Lego Minifigure Display

Finally I can show you what all this spray painting was about. . .

Or at least show you some progress on the project. I haven't been able to get enough cans painted to completely finish everything but this post should give you a good idea of where I'm going with this.

For a house without any children in residence we have an awful lot of Lego and other figurines and decided we needed a place to store and display them.

We have a photo wall that has a blank space that we thought would be a good spot to show them off. The plan was to collect enough cans to fill the space, paint them, and hang them like picture.

The painting went fairly well, aside from all the rain. You can still see the areas where the labels were glued to the cans but with a little bit of care it should be easy to hide when gluing the cans together.

Some of the cans ended up with a strange texture from the paint on the inside. I'm not really sure what caused it so unfortunately I can't offer any advice on how to prevent it. But again with the way I'm putting everything together it shouldn't be a big problem.

You can arrange the cans in whatever kind of pattern you'd like, even using different sizes of cans or leaving empty spaces if you like. We wanted to have maximum space for figures in the smallest space so we used just a simple offset pattern. They are attached to each other with hot glue some kind of super glue. Just pay attention to the glue marks on the cans and try to put them to the inside so they will be less noticeable.

Update 8/19/2015

When I lifted the original piece up the hot glue gave out and everything fell apart. I tried again using Amazing Goop and it seems to be holding up much better. We used an offset pattern with 5 in one row then 4 in the next. 

I glued each row individually then glued the rows together. While everything dried I used bulldog clips to hold everything in place. Edit: Make sure everything is flat and level before the glue dries.

I also decided to put in decorative backgrounds to match each figure. (I had already decide to do this before the paint problems but it's a good solution for that as well.) I used Photoshop to print each picture in a 3 inch circle. The cans we have are about 3.25 inches so that leaves about 1/8 inch border around each. I glued these in with spray glue. Eventually we have some figures we can't find a good setting for but you can either use just a decorative paper or leave them with just paint. 

The Lego figures have bases that fit pretty well across the bottom of the cans so they are fairly sturdy and level. The ponies don't have anything like that and we may eventually need to come up with a solution to keep them from falling over but so far it looks great.

Once we get everything painted and glued together the final step is to glue a picture hook on the back and hang the whole thing up. We hope to be able to get about 36 slots (6x6 cans) but that may or may not be enough to hold everything we have. Depending on how it fits in our wall space if we have extra room it should be easy to add on. If that fills the whole area then. . . well I guess we'll just have to make another display somewhere else.

Update 8/19/2015

We ended up with 23 slots but, because of the pattern I used we should be able to add more cans fairly easily. I'm still working out what I want for backgrounds for everything but this is what it looks like on the wall. . .

Somehow when I glued the rows to each other the whole thing ended up a little warped. 

If you look at it from the side the center point bows out from the wall but it doesn't seem to hurt things any.   Update: When I first hung this it seemed fine but over time things have been falling out, so make sure you have everything level while you are glueing it together.

More pictures of it in completed and in place.