Loom

I have not unpacked my loom since we took it apart and put it in a box in 2009.  Before that, I had not woven anything since somewhere around 2004, when my kitty Riley died.

Lately, I have been hearing song references to weaving, and have been thinking about it more.

Yesterday, Dave dug around in the shed and found the loom box (it's a small 4 harness table loom for making narrow strips of fabric, like place mats and table runners).  He re-assembled the loom, and I got the whisk broom out and cleaned it off under the beautiful blue sky.

I took the whisk broom to the warping frame, which was hanging on a peg in the shed. 

Then, Dave dug some more in the shed and found my bin full of yarn and string.

He went out and bought me a folding table.

Loom, tools, sticks, and yarn are all in the house now, waiting for me.

This is progress.

After more rain this past week, the weather got oppressively hot again, like July.   That only lasted a few days, though, and this weekend has been spectacular.

We have decided to get the bikes out today and hose them down.  Everything in that shed is encased in webs.

While they dry off in the sun, I will get a little more laundry done, and then later, we will RIDE!!

We had a scare this past week. 

Star, one of the feral cats who lives in our yard, got trapped in the shed for 48 hours.  She peed on stuff while she was stuck in there, so now the shed REEKS of cat pee.

She must have been too afraid to run past Dave when he went to close the door on Sunday night last weekend.  It's SUCH a good thing that we didn't wait until yesterday to open the shed again!!

We had noticed her absence at mealtime for a couple of days, so on Tuesday, when she didn't show up, Dave had gone into the shed on to get his work gloves, so that he could go search through the brush in the yard for her body.

Star is the senior member of the tribe, and she has always had respiratory problems.

When he opened the shed door, he noticed that the gloves were on the floor BEHIND the door.  One of them was also wet.  He asked me "does this smell like cat pee?"..... smelled weird, but not distinctly like cat piss.  In retrospect, maybe it was a combination of leather and pee from a female cat (which smells different from a male's.)

He searched the yard, while I thought about the gloves.  How did they get onto the floor from their usual spot?  Why were they wet?  That shed is solid, no rain gets in, and the gloves' usual spot is up high, on the top of a shelving unit.

Duh. 

So, we went into the shed quietly and looked around. 

There was no sign of her, but that didn't mean she wasn't hiding!  Dave went into the house and got a flashlight, and he found her, hiding back among the storage bins.

We left the door open and went inside, and she came out!

If she would have been trapped in there all week, she would have died.  We were out of the food that we keep in there for the ferals, so there was nothing to eat or drink, and as I wrote above, it was hot.

As it is, she is fine and happily reunited with her son, Luke.

In other news, we think our Annabel probably has a urinary tract infection.  She was exhibiting signs yesterday morning, so Dave put a call in to our new vet who does house calls.

Annabel is pathologically TERRIFIED of going to the vet, so we waited for a call back that never came.

In the meantime, she continued to use the box obsessively, but has been exhibiting no other signs of distress.  Her ears are cool, and she is bright eyed, active, eating, and drinking.

Hopefully, the mobile vet will call Monday, and Dave can come home to meet her. 

If things seem to be getting worse today, though, we will have to put ourselves through the abject trauma of getting Anna to the emergency vet.

She will freak out when she sees the carrier, we will have to struggle to put her IN the carrier, at which time she may very well shit all over herself and the carrier.  Then, we get to drive WAY up north like that.

Once there, they will have to sedate her to get her out of the carrier and treat her.  It's AWFUL.

Right now, she's lying on her back between us on the couch in purring bliss like she often does on weekend mornings when we are at our leisure to enjoy our home and pets.

Must get on with breakfast.  It's too beautiful of a day to waste any more of it sitting here!!