Tuesday, January 29, 2008

The Isle of Wight

I have a treasury display at Etsy for 3 days called: Pretty Women Wearing Pretty Things, http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list.php?room_id=26078 Please visit and click on the items, you will see very pretty women, nice clothing and accessories and that will make my treasury more popular!




My last internet customer was a lady from the Isle of Wight. I had never heard of that place before and was intrigued by the name. I looked it up on the internet. It is in the United Kingdom. One very interesting thing I learned was the plight of the red squirrel. The following is copied from a website I found: http://www.wightsquirrels.co.uk/


"Red squirrels are the only squirrel native to the British Isles. They are disappearing from the mainland fast and are being replaced by the introduced American grey squirrel.
The Isle of Wight is an important stronghold as the Solent provides a barrier to grey squirrels. However a grey does find it’s way to the Island sometimes, so we need to be vigilant. There are contingency plans for dealing with greys that arrive on the Isle of Wight. Not only do grey squirrels outcompete reds, they carry the deadly parapox virus, which is fatal to the reds. "


The red squirrel is in danger of extinction somehow the American Grey Squirrel was introduced and are taking over. This put in question so many of my animal rights beliefs. It is LEGAL to trap and kill the American Grey Squirrel in the United Kingdom. I am an super duper animal rights believer and I am on the fence about this issue. It also in turn puts in question my previous stance on hispanic immigration to the U.S.A., the Palestine Israeli thing, the rights of indigeonous peoples...... my goodness, it opened up a floodwork of things that I had never questioned before. Not that the Isle of Wight has anything to do with those other things but apparently they were stirring in my subconcious and somehow the plight of the red squirrel served as a catalyst. Since this is not a political blog and I don't want it to become one I will just leave it at that. But I am now finishing my latest creation, the Isle of Wight Shawl. Inspired by all of the things I read about the Isle of Wight and the emotions it stirred in me. The sea, the green grass, the crisp melancholy winters........ See my shop for the finished product!

Friday, January 11, 2008

I need shopping lists.

Have you ever gone to the supermarket and found someone's thrown-out shopping list in your cart? I need that list! I have had an idea for a long time. I would like to decoupage my old kitchen table with shopping lists from around the world and in different languages. I would like them to be legitimate anonymous shopping lists, not ones written up just for this purpose. Please collect these for me and mail them regular mail to me. In return I can send you a crochet applique or maybe a discount in my shop. I am thinking I can send one crochet flower per list or something like that and with a maximum of say, 15 crochet flowers per person. I would love lists from anywhere. Perhaps if you live in the San Francisco area for example you may find asian shopping lists, or combined language lists. In Florida you might find them in Spanish and Creole. Of course I also want English language lists and lists from exotic far off places like Africa, Asia ... anywhere! I may then decide to sell the table if it comes out nicely. I should let people know this because their shopping list contributions will only be paid in kind with a crochet flower per list up to 15 lists per person. If you have lists to send me let me know and I will email you my address separately. My husband still has to bring me the digital camera so that I can publish a picture of the table as it is right now and then you can follow the project as it goes. Meanwhile if you are someone who is as intrigued with abandoned shopping lists as I am there is a guy who has collected THOUSANDS over several years. Visit his site http://www.grocerylists.org/ . I wonder if it would be copyright infringement to print out some of his lists to use in my project?

Wednesday, January 9, 2008

9 Lives

Today I was going to post a picture of a hummingbird crochet applique that I just made but my husband has forgotten our digital camera in the vacation trailer which is about two hours away. Now I have to wait until this weekend before I can get the camera to take pictures of some of my new creations. So today I will write about one of my rescued animals. Boca Raton is a cat I found alone in the front yard of an abandoned house one year and a half ago. He was still a kitten at the time but not such a young one. He was morbidly skinny and was breathing very strangely. He breathed very rapidly and with each breath his stomach inflated instead of his chest. So wierd. His mouth was crooked and he drooled a lot. Each person that passed received a warm greeting and "meow". Strange for a street cat. Ferile cats usually run away from people or attack if you somehow corner them. Long story short, the vet found that his lungs were pushed back towards his rear and into a restricted space next to his stomach. His intestines had spilled into his chest cavity and therefore his heart was squished over too far to the side and producing even more pressure on his lungs. This condition was most likely from being hit by a car. Since he had somehow survived and managed to heal more or less on his own. I decided not to spend any money on a costly operation to correct the problem. I just let him live at my house and fed him. He gets along well with the other dogs and cats. (He doesn't even hold a grudge against the labrador mix who welcomed him into our home by grabbing him by the scruff of the next and ran around the yard playing "keep away" with the other dogs. About a month ago, early summer in Cordoba, and the birds are pretty aggressive at this time of year. The chicks are starting to jump from their nests and the parents are on constant radar. No being is safe, especially cats who have a bad reputation with the birds. Well, I don't thing Boca Raton was stalking chicks, he spends most of his time just trying to breath and trys not to exert himself. We suspect he must have been on the roof and a bird attacked him and in his escape he fell and didn't land on his feet. Or maybe he was escaping the attack and got hit by a car. All we know is that we found him in the yard bleeding profusely from the mouth and with peck marks on his head. One really bad one next to his eye. A desperate rush to the vet, IV, one week hospital stay and the inevitable operation on his intestines and lungs to put them back in place. At this point he could hardly breath so the alternative was either operate or put him to sleep. So Boca Raton (the spanish translation of "rat mouth" and inspired somehow by his crooked mouth) has definitely used up a few of his lives. Here is a picture two days after the operation. Once I get the digital camera I will publish some "now" photos. He is now happy, gaining weight, breathing easier, still lies around all day, and still greets passing strangers with a friendly "meow".






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Tuesday, January 1, 2008

Happy New Year















The turkey I made for New Year's Eve dinner was a success! Although it is a common thing in the U.S.A. to cook a turkey for special holidays, here in Argentina it was a big surprise. The younger kids were squealing, "That's a huge chicken!" The teenagers made a few silly jokes. It came out juicy (for a turkey anyway) and since it is summer here we ate it at room temperature with different sauces that are usually eaten with a "pata flambeada" (a roasted cow leg). Enjoy these few pictures from our evening with aunts, uncles, cousins and in-laws. Please don't laugh at what I did with my makeup. I only realized the next day when I saw the pictures of myself next to the turkey. To see all the pictures go to http://www.picasaweb.google.com/petitpoix