It will be no surprise to any of you that Burton is LOVING the catio. He loves the ability to go in and out as he pleases – and go out without a harness and leash. HE spends a good amount of the day out there (as long as it’s not too hot). But he especially loves going out after dinner, as the bugs seem to be more plentiful then. He LOVES chasing bugs.

But the other night, something new wandered into the catio.

He was small (about the size of a loonie), and very well camoflauged, as you can see. But as soon as he hopped, he was on Burton’s radar.

I had a hard time getting pictures of him. I kept losing him in the grass in and around the catio. Every time he hopped in, Burton had a blast following him about and investigating with a curious paw. You can see a little video here.

Eventually, Mr. Toad hopped onto the pavement of the back driveway, out of Burton’s reach.

But it allowed me to get some better pictures.

We never saw ANY toads at the townhouse. I’m so happy Burton got to have this experience! I hope there are many more! (Now I have go dig out my toad house and find a good spot for it in the catio.)

I said that curtains for the studio would be the first thing I sewed when I finally got a chance to play with my machine again. And I am a woman of my word.

Because of the move, and ongoing renovations, money is VERY tight. As such, there’s nothing extra to buy fabric for curtains, as much as I’m tempted to (even cheap ones from Wal-Mart or Giant Tiger). That meant cracking into the stash for something.

Because of the size of the window (this house has VERY large windows compared to the townhouse), it meant raiding the bin that I have set aside for quilt backs. I ended up going with this yellow/gold fabric. If it looks familiar, it was a clearance bin find and it’s shown up in bits and pieces in quite a few of my quilts. (Most recently the chicken quilt).

It didn’t take long – as much as I love making quilts, I’m not really a fan of sewing other things, so I kept it simple. Just a couple of rectangles with a rod pocket at the top.

Here’s a little before and after

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They make the area look quite quaint and cozy. In retrospect, I should have made them a few inches longer, to make tying them back a little easier, but they will do for now. When this room eventually gets redone, I’ll probably want different curtains anyway.

Here’s a closer look at the tie-backs.

Just some nice crocheted lace trim from the stash. I had just enough for the task. They are just pinned to the wall with a thumbtack (don’t tell Dave!) but I think they work quite nicely!

Moving can be a very expenvsive affair, especially when, like us, you have overlap of the two properties, and are doing renos at the same time. Add to that almost two months of $100-$200 a week in gas and road snacks going back and forth, and it’s going to be a few months until we dig out from under it all and get caught up to where thing are comfortable again.

As such, it’s going to be a 100% homemade Christmas. That’s not a problem – I have plenty of yarn and fabric to make that happen – but it does mean I need to get moving on those projects in my free time. (Of which there’s not a tonne these days either).

Back before the move, I dyed up three colours of Slinky Cat for one particular gift:

Cherry Blossom Wrapture by PDXKnitterati. I’m not usually a fan of garter stitch lace, but for some reason this one spoke to me.

I’m also not usually good with rectangular shawls. I find them endless and get bored really easy. But, I’m feeling the the log cabin construction of this one is going to be enough to keep me interested.

It starts with a pretty leafy centre. (You all know I love leaves!)

And then it’s built out with logs of contrasting colours.

After seeing my colours all together, I kinda wish I’d made the green a little darker. But can live with this.

Now that the centre is done, I’ll be working on one side at a time from here on out. I’m giving myself a deadline of mid-September. I’ve got a big list and a lot of things to make – and a house to reno! (Though I’m happy to say I got Dave’s studio drywall finished and primed on the weekend. Next weekend will be paint, then it’s just floors and that room will be wrapped with a bow!)

Yep – it’s puppy time again!!!.

On Monday, Dave and I finally got the Bonneville dropped off at the top shop (Everything went smoothly this time) and on the way home, I talked him into taking a little detour to check in on the puppies. (It was only about 15 minutes out of our way)

At the time of these pictures they were just over two weeks old. They’ve doubled in size from the last time I saw them. A couple of them are real little porkers.

Their eyes have opened, though I couldn’t get any decent pictures. They wiggle too much when they are awake!

Mom took this one and sent it to me. You can also get a better idea of their size here.

When I was visiting, they were mostly asleep.

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And oh so cute. It’s very hard not to pick them up and squish them all.

Most of them have black foot pads, though this little yellow has multi-coloured toes. And this little black girl has one white toe (Apparantly Daddy dog, Hank, has one white toe too)

All but two have homes now, and I’m sure the other two won’t be far behind.

They love to sleep upside down, and on top of each other.

It’s hard not to scoop them up and bring them all home!

They’d fit in a pocket so easily!

Back before we moved, I ordered myself a little housewarming gift.

You may recall that the sun porch has three doors. One that opens to the catio, one that opens to the house (which has the cat flap so the cats and come and go) and one that opens to the driveway.

Since the cats can be out on the porch at any time now, I wanted something that would remind people to keep their eyes open and not let a cat slip by them.

It arrived the other day, and I was not dissapointed.

I found the company that makes them through a Facebook ad. As soon as I saw it, I knew it was exactly what I needed. You get to pick from a variety of cat icons, and personalize it with their names. You can have up to six cats and also pick their eye colour.

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I don’t know about you… but I think it’s just purrfect!

Looks like the sun porch set up has received approval from the rulers of the house…

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Almost as soon as I posted about the sun porch on the weekend, I found the bolts to my patio table. So I dedicated my Sunday morning to reassessing how I had things set up there.

One of the big issues was the loss of my wooden plant stand. It meant my house plants were taking up a lot of floor space on the porch. Floor space I now needed to fit my table in.

I’d been looking at plant stands online, but they aren’t cheap. One exactly like my old one is about $200. And we just don’t have a lot of money left to spend on things like that right now.

But Dave, my shining knight, came to the rescue.

When we first moved into the townhouse, a previous tenant had lined a wall in the basement with homemade benches. Dave had taken them apart and turned them into a storage unit for the basement. However, it was too big to get down the basement stairs here. (The basement here is not much – very small and low ceilings). The shelves had been sitting at the side of the house since moving day, while he tried to figure out what to do with them.

As you can see, they are the perfect size for the porch. I dragged them in, cleaned them up…

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After they were thoroughly inspected by Burton, I had them filled with plants in no time!

Adjacent to them, I set up the chairs and table.

It’s a smaller bistro set, so it’s perfect for the space.

In the corner where the broken plant stand was, put this lovely bamboo rocking chair. An old neighbour gave it to me several years ago for my yard at the townhouse. There was no room for it there, so it spent all its time in my bedroom, buried under a pile of clothes. It’s nice to have a proper space for it now. Mom and I are discussing the best way to make a seat cushion for it.

And I mentioned that our fish tank was currently in storage on the porch. Since it won’t be going anywhere until we finish renos on the living room, I decide to make use of it for plant storage too!

Here’s a little panorama of it all together.

I have to say…. it’s really hard to focus on work inside the house when I have a space like this calling me!

Let’s take a break from from all my goings on to admire some more of Mom’s amazing quilting skills. A coworker asked her to make some mandala pillows for her daughters as they head off to university.

They aren’t done yet, but Mom sent me progress photos of them…

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Can you believe that’s done with thread?

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And check out the back…

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Amazing!!!!

With everything else going on, I’ve barely had a moment to even consider my yard and garden. All the plants I dug up from the townhouse were still sitting in pots. That wasn’t a problem when I first brought them, we were getting a lot of rain and they were doing well. But the last few weeks have been mostly dry, and the temps have been rising again. And I’ll admit, I hadn’t been watering them as much as I should, given the lack of rain.

I had to start getting them in the ground or risk losing them all together, and waste all that work I did digging them up in the first place!

My enormous to-do list wasn’t the only thing holding me back… I’ve been having a hard time deciding how I want to lay things out. But I decided it was better to just get things in the ground and healthy again .I can always move things around next year.

First, I tackled the day lilies and the oriental lilies. They went along the fence – easy peasy. Because they are mostly done blooming (with the exception of the Frans Hals daylilies you see there), so I’m not sure which ones are where. I’ll find out when they bloom next year!

Inside the catio fence was looking a little too much like a prison yard, so planted a good chunk of the other plants around the interior, along the fence line. Once they perk up and fill in a little, this will make the catio look a lot nicer!

I had seven strawberry plants, and I plunked them right down in the middle of the catio. Eventually, I want to build a nice raised bed, and have DOZENS of strawberries plants, but for now, the catio fence will keep them safe from bunnies. And the cats won’t mind them in there.

In the corner by the porch steps, I planted my special little Toad Lilies. There’s not a lot of shade in this yard, but this spot doesn’t get much sun until late afternoon, so my little toadies should do just fine here.

I still have to get my roses and irises in the ground, but they are faring a little better than other other plants, so they can wait a day or two more.

There’s just so much room to grow here. I can’t wait to start some seeds, and start dreaming about next spring!

After getting caught out with no knitting while having to wait around for tow trucks the other day, one of the first things I did when we got home was go dig out a skein of yarn and cast on.

While most of my time has, unsurprisingly, been eaten up by house stuff, I have tried to take an hour or so each night to chill and do a little stitching. As a result…

TThe yarn is deep stash… it was missing the ball band, and I can’t remember the brand. I do recall that it was a handpainted yarn, the colours was called Butterscotch, and it’s sport weight… but beyond that, everything else is blank. The pattern is Oyster Ridge. It’s very easy – a four row repeat, and only one of those rows has pattern. It is, however, one of those patterns that looks better stretched out on a foot.

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Such pretty little shells! I have the second one started, but it’s being set aside as travel knitting for now. I have a deadline project I have to get started on!