Catch-up

So, I've obviously been slack again and haven't posted in quite some time. Sorry about that, but it happens. I've been busy at work mostly, and trying hard to ignore the looming deadline of my contract running out. The deadline no longer looms, as I have been given another extension and I have a job until June. I've also been ignoring the fact that I was going to have to move house in a couple of weeks, but it looks like I may not have to worry about that either. See, problems do go away if you ignore them.

Today I've got two videos for you. The first is one that I should have posted ages ago. It was taken the day that Ronan and Tayla moved out to Cressy, and is the first few minutes of them wandering around and exploring their new home.

I've really enjoyed having Ronan and Tayla out at Cressy. I'm out there nearly every day so I've still been able to watch them grow. I am incredibly proud of the way they have both grown up. Ronan is a good kilo heavier than Tayla now, and has really chunked up. He still likes to interact with people a bit too much, but he is just really curious and inquisitive.

Last week Ronan and Tayla got split up for the first time ever. I only had a couple of days notice (typical in this job unfortunately) that Tayla was going to be sent down to our Taroona compound for pre-export quarantine and will probably be sent to one of our mainland partners in about 3 months time when her quarantine is up. I'm excited for the future that she might have, but obviously I was a little sad to pack her up and send her off. This video was taken the day before Tayla was sent to Hobart.

Ronan is doing well without his sister. We gave him a new friend, another hand-raised little girl called Preia. She's slightly smaller than him, but is pretty tough so its a good pairing. We always try and group house juvenile devils to give them someone to play with, but so far they seem to mostly be avoiding each other. I'm sure they'll be best mates soon.

New Trail Camera

For Christmas, my parents gave me a trail camera. Its a motion sensor camera for tracking wildlife - it takes both stills and video and has infared night vision. The other day, I put it in the enclosure with the little devilies I raised to try it out. I was please with the fact that it was as easy to use as the ones we have at work, and was about the same quality.

The stills, as can be expected, were much less interesting than the video, but here's a still taken just after dark to give you an idea of the night vision capabilities.

These two videos are pretty cute - they show the right way and the wrong way to climb up the branches to the highpoint. Ronan demonstrating the sensible way and silly little Tayla(usually the sensible one) demonstrating the wrong way.

No vids, so photos instead

Currently, blogger won't show any videos I upload and seems to have lost all the videos out of previous posts as well. This is very frustrating as I was going to share a video with you, but as I can't here are a few photos of Ronan and Tayla in their grown-up enclosure out at Cressy where they have been thriving for the past month or so. At last weigh-in they were around 3kg and Ronan was actually heavier than Tayla for the first time ever, but that was weeks ago so they need weighing again.

 We love hanging out in our tyre - its the perfect size for us to snuggle up in.

 Our nest box opens into this lovely den so we feel nice and secure. Mum lifts our hessian sack curtains to check on us when we are hiding out in here. Its our favourite place on hot days as it is so nice and cool. Although, we also love hanging out under the leaves of the huge lomandra on hot days. Or playing around in our pool is always fun as well.

 Now that we are used to it, the big, wide outside world isn't scary at all.

Actually, its kinda boring. 

Except the hose - that's still very scary! We run and hide whenever the hose monster appears.

A soft spot for softies

Earlier this year, I made both my housemates Adipose (cutsie little aliens from Dr Who) softies for their birthdays as they both love them and said they wanted them when we were re-watching the episode of Dr Who they feature in. I hadn't made a softie for a while and found I really enjoyed so I made myself a little owl as a prototype of a pattern I was designing.

Tiani's adipose and my little owl spent a while living on the back of an armchair in our living room. Our friend, Hannah, came over one night and admired them. It was only a few weeks until her birthday so I offered to make her the soft toy of her choice. We pulled out my soft toy pattern books and Hannah decided on a bunny, but there wasn't a pattern she liked so I was set the challenge of designing a bunny softie pattern for her. Bunnies are a lot more challenging shape to simplify than owls, but I gave it a go and Mr Bunny is the result.

 I took Mr Bunny to show my crafty workmates as I was quite proud of the way he turned out, which resulted in a commission for me to make another owl for an upcoming baby shower that my workmate was attending. I've previously made large owl softie/cushion/things for a couple of workmates who have had babies and they have been very popular so I adapted that pattern and made a bright blue one (they were having a boy). I was even paid for it, which kinda makes me a professional soft toy maker.

Most recently, I've made a coffee cup plushie (from the chewing gum ad with all the evil food creatures) for Christine. While watching the ad together several times she remarked that she would love a softie of the coffee cup, and when it got close to Christmas and she said it again, I knew what I would be making her for Christmas. The coffee cup plushie is the size of a large takeaway coffee and was a little challenging to design because of the complicated shape of the lid (most of which you can't even see from this angle), but turned out pretty well.

So, the moral to this story is:

Don't mention you would like a plushie, softie, or teddy of something in my vicinity unless you really mean it.

Darcy's photo shoot

My friend Reegan is crazy about Darcy. She is my first port of call if I'm going away and need someone to look after Darcy, and lately she's been asking me to go away more often so she can have him over for more visits. Reegan has also proclaimed herself to be Darcy's godmother. I gave her a photo of Darcy to put on her fridge, but she has framed it and put it in the middle of the mantlepiece because she wanted him in pride of place. Her reaction to the photo gave me an idea, I could take a heap of photos of Darcy and print her a calendar of him. I may have then got a little carried a way, but with a few props, a little bit of peanut butter bribery, a good camera, and a lot of patience this is what Darcy and I produced: (as always, you can click to enlarge if you want a closer look)

Cover Art:

The Months:

I hope that made you smile :)

Ronan and Tayla update

Well, little Ronan and Tayla have grown heaps. From a starting weight of 250g when I first took them in, Ronan is now a whopping 1.65kg. Tayla has always been slightly bigger and she is now 1.75kg, They should grow to be about 9kg and 7kg respectively.

Bottle feeding hasn't been necessary for the past few weeks, they eat mostly meat and lap up their milk supplement from a bowl. Caring for them has become a lot more fun and a lot less work since stopping the bottle feeds. They have all of their teeth now and their jaws are strong enough now to crunch bones, which means that they are pretty much ready to live outside full time and be treated almost like adult devils. So, on Thursday, if everything goes according to plan, they will be moving out to Cressy full time. They will still get special treatment, of course, with bowls of milk every day, the best bits of meat, and lots of enrichments. Their enclosure is nearly set up ready for them and I built them a special nest box last week. They love being outside at Cressy in their day pen while I'm at work so I'm pretty sure they will love their new place. Its about 4 times bigger than their day pen so it'll be the biggest space they have ever seen. I'm glad I'll get to visit them all the time at work, though, because I am so going to miss having them at home.

Anyway, this video was taken a week ago at Mum and Dad's, When I'm visiting my parents, the kids hang out in our old rabbit cage outside. Eggs are both one of their favourite toys and one of their favourite foods, so even though they were both very sleepy, they came out and played with the egg for the camera.

A tale of two stories

Reader's Digest is having a competition for writers to enter stories of exactly 100 words (no more, no less). Tiani introduced me to the idea and has entered a story of her own, and I decided that it might be a fun challenge. And a challenge it was, but I've ended up with two potential entries. The first is an abridged version of a story I wrote a few mon ths back, the second one is an original story written specifically for the competition. I can't choose between the two. So, which do you think I should enter?

Story 1:

She lay flat on the ground deep in the Tasmanian bush. A mosquito landed on her, but she didn’t dare swat it. This mission was more important than a few mosquito bites. She heard a noise close by, but it was merely a wallaby. She watched as it turned and fled as somewhere overhead the alarm call of a honeyeater rang out. Then she saw it. She made an effort to calm herself; she couldn’t afford to miss. She carefully took aim, and breathed out…“Click!” …The thylacine ran, but she had the shot. She had photographic proof; the thylacine lives.

Story 2:

She strode purposefully into the store, preceded only by her ample bosom. Not again. Paul attempted to hide behind the counter, but it was too late. Why did she always come into the store when the shop girls were on lunch break?

“That bracelet broke the first time I wore it.” She waved the string of beads in front of him accusingly as she spoke. His mind flashed back to the way it had been stretched to fit around her thick wrist, but he knew better than to point it out.

“Yes, Mother, I’ll get you another one.” He said.

Also, I challenge you to come up with one of your own (especially Rob).