🌟Some DIY onesies🌟

I found some gerber plain white onesies at Burlington. I had been wanting to try stovetop dying some onesies for some time.  I'd practiced on my sports bras and it turned out ok.  I had the same issues this time around though.  Despite soaking the fabric in water before placing it in the dye, my onesies still came out a little splotchy.  Not sure what I'm doing wrong. A quick Internet search didn't shed any light on the issue either so I guess I will have to keep practicing.

Using an automatic stir gadget I bought a few years ago.  It doesn't work well stirring food or clothes.

Drying in the dishwasher.  I had wrung them out VERY WELL before doing this.

I ended up with 1 orange and 4 navy onesies.  I didn't have any plan after that point.  I thought I might like to sew a little tie and vest, maybe even a corsage, but I didn't think it would look right on navy.  I also thought about embroidering some words or animals (I may still do that) but a quick closet search didn't produce my fuseable interfacing (still lost in the move probably).  So I settled on acrylic painting.  I don't own any fabric pens which would have made this a heck of a lot easier, and didn't feel like buying any so I was stuck using my artists paint.  

For the design, I decided on "80", Adrian's nickname.  I wanted it to look like old school numbers, or like the kind you find spray painted on the side of crates.  I perused dafont.com and an old school design caught my eye.  The numerals had a descending gradient, so I free handed the design using white chalk on my shirt, and applied duct tape over the major lines and across the gradient to ensure crisp lines.  

A little bit of white acrylic later I had what looked like "An" on his shirt.  I knew I needed an outline, my mom suggested lime green, brilliant! I free handed the outline (more embroider vs paint debate, I chose paint to save time) it's a little messy but its a first try and I wasn't going for perfect.  I wanted it to look a little "home made".  It has its own aesthetic, like bad folk art on the side of Latin American buildings or middle school artwork.  

I'm pretty pleased with the end result.  I'm still brainstorming for the remaining 4 onesies!

Backyard Critters

I have 4 feeders in my back yard.  I only use 2 kinds of seed at the moment because I think suet wouldn't do well during this season since there is so much rain.  Normally we get cardinals, house finches, house sparrows, the occasional tufted titmouse and surprisingly... a red bellied woodpecker.  I added a flat tray feeder this year, originally with dried meal worms hoping to attract the many bluebirds that live around my neighbors house.  But none ever came and the meal worms were getting nasty so I replaced it with seed.  Since then it's been feeding a bunch of Mourning Doves.  They just stand on the tray and eat, which I don't mind except they scare away other birds and poop in the tray.

The other day I saw a larger, paler dove on my feeder.  A quick google search revealed that it is most likely a Eurasian Collared Dove, though it could be a feral Barbary Dove (domestic dove).  I'm not an ornithologist, they look the same to me and whatbird.com and wikipedia were not helpful.  There was only one, and he hasn't been back.  

Here you can see it next to a normal Mourning Dove.  It was obviously larger, and more grey than the Mourning Dove.

 Here is a Tufted Titmouse and a cheeky little squirrel.  He climbs up the pole to get to that feeder.  There is another feeder, identical, that is closer to the ground but he likes to work for his meals I guess.

A rather ratty looking Cardinal.

Finally, while photographing the new dove, movement in the corner of my yard caught my eye.  It was two of The Ferals!  (Our neighbor feeds these guys, there are quite a few)  The grey one is Tic Toc.  She was a kitten last year.  I haven't seen her mother Tinkerbell at all since Adrian was born in November.  I don't know who Tic Tocs father is, but I saw her mother, Tinkerbell, do the nasty in our backyard while she was still a kitten with a large male I call "Big Fuzzy".  Big Fuzzy has also done the deed with Tic Toc here, and I am 99.9% sure that this new kitten is his baby.  Big Fuzzy is a large long haired cat that is white with brown and fawn splotches, not unlike the white kitten you see below.  The kitten appears to be short haired though.

I call the kitten Radagast.  After the naturalist wizard in The Hobbit movie.  Why Radagast?  Because of the "poo" on his head.  Radagast is almost a "Van Pattern" cat (think Turkish Van).  This means that he is completely white except for a colored tail and a little color between the ears.  He only has the color behind the one ear though.  His bicolor is grey instead of black, and his tail is mackerel tabby patterned. He appears to have green eyes.
I don't actually know if Radagast is male or female.  I probably never will.  Whatever shklee is shklee will probably move along when it gets older.  Our yard belongs to Tic Toc, and occasionally Big Fuzzy (much to the nightly distress of our cats who are trapped on the back porch and must suffer the injustice).