Say Hello To

The newest member of the posse here at Casa de Mongrel.

This, is Midge. She came to us with that name from a friend of a friend (Thank You Cathy!). We were told she was being called Midge which was short for midget as she was the runt of the litter. Well, no more let me tell you. And due to that big old M on her forehead, which is a hallmark of tabby heritage or so I've been told.

She is sweet in her way, but crazy in the way of all kittens. She's a bit upset with me right now because I made her go on a car trip to get a harness and leash so she can start going outside more. We have our work cut out for us if we hope to have her leave birds and chickens alone. I think she'll really only be able to go out when we're with her.

But as you can see here, she is very interested in "out there". In fact, thank you Sweet Baby Jesus for double hung windows because lower sashes must now be kept close, or else someone is climbing window screens.

As you can see, she's already pegged the softy. That is not my lap...

And she's already getting used to the ways of this household, such as monthly baths.

And that those big cat wannabe's are all noise and splutter.

She has decided that Emmitt shall be her buddy. To bad Emmitt, could really care less. But he'll put up with her to the point of sharing his favorite spot with her.

Perhaps dine with her too, for if he shares, maybe she will?

And maybe goof off, just a bit.

And she's decided that this fool is okay to play run and chase to a certain degree. Although I have only seen her play her game of tag with Emmitt or the humans in the house.



She would much rather prefer if Tucker would just lay down and wag that wonderful cat toy of a tail of his. Please excuse to the silly voice to make him wag. You can see, Sullivan wants so bad to get in on this kitty action. He misses his cats so, and she just hasn't decided yet. I'm waiting until she discovers that sleeping with him is like having a giant fuzzy hot water bottle, and she'll fall for him.

But until then, someone is left out. Poor Guy.

Speaking of the boys though, since' it's been awhile since an update, they're doing just fine. It's a bit hot here for them as it's fully summer now, but they're still having a good old time.



In fact, have you ever seen those nature documentaries that show the elephant seals on the rookery beaches and the big males fighting for their harems? Well, they remind me of them when they act like this.

Being full summer, the leaves and reptiles are all out.

Our garage snake is still around.

We found this in the garden a few days after we had our first spring sightings.

And then there was an unfortunate garden tractor incident, but as far as I could see, there were no actual injuries, and she slithered away after I checked her out to make sure she was okay. I've only seen her once since, I think she's steering clear of us for a bit after that.

A few weeks ago too, I was cooking and happened to look out front and saw something making it's way across our driveway, so I had to quick grab a camera and run outside.

If I had to guess, it's a box turtle, but I'm not certain. After we snapped some shots and left it alone, it decided to browse through our tall grass, as you can see here. I found the "turtle trail" kind of amusing. I was impressed with how fast it moved once it got into the grass as well. Definitely not a sprinter but faster that you expect. One morning not that long ago, we also had a large snapping turtle crossing the road less than a half mile from the house. It's nice to know they turtles and snakes are about, even if you don't see them often enough for my taste.

And there's always bugs. I wish I had even my phone today as I had a little praying mantis that just wouldn't stay off me while I was down in Hastings .

For you squeamish ones, there's no more bugs or reptiles, but I also found these MASSIVE carp in a pond down the road. I was driving by and saw something thrashing in the water so I went to take a look and found these four. If I had to guess, the largest (2nd from the top) is a female and all the thrashing was the males trying to be her one and only.

I know, it's been a while since I've posted anything. We've had things going on, and then after awhile, it just seemed to become this big obstacle I couldn't seem to overcome.

I would think, "I need to post to the blog", and yet I always found reasons not to. One of the biggest of these reasons was that I didn't feel like had much to share. I'll try to get past that.

The other blockade was that we were busy. Blogging takes time and I always seem to want to do something else with my time. Maybe I should take a page from Sarah's book and do more smaller posts.

But part of my issue is that it seems like I go to my actual computer less and less. And the iPad blogger app, well, let's just keep it polite and say it's less than nice to work with.

So perhaps I need to put some concerted effort into fixing this problem, especially since I've been on the blog quite a bit removing spam comments. It seems as though there's been quite the increase in "bots" getting through to leave ads or just people thinking leaving an advertisement for themselves in the comments is okay. But a few times a week I clean things up.

Today however, I had a comment left by someone that just really irked me. And I figured that if I was going to go to the computer to respond, I should wrap up the pictures and videos and leave a new post as well.

I don't like to just delete comments from actual people, I figure even if they might be a little negative or just disagree with me, they might make people stop and think. But this one steamed me. It was left on my post that had a couple patterns on it that you can find here if interested. And I felt like I needed to respond at this time, though if anything else is left I probably won't.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I feel that I was inspired by someones scarf to make something similar. Now, this scarf wasn't something that the person could just tell me, "oh, I used this pattern" and I could run home and search for it. No, it was an off the shelf mass produced item that caught my eye. And then it stuck with me. Heaven forbid, I would say it inspired my knitters eye, and decided to see what I could do with the shape of it. I did not say, go to wherever she thought she bought it, buy one, take it home and reverse engineer it. No, I thought about it's construction, wondered about how to make it work better for me, and went about creating said thing. I'm fairly sure, many and possibly most designers are inspired by shapes and lays of fabrics they see out in the general world and do this kind of process.

Yes, I did originally try to find a pattern. None of them did exactly what I wanted, or were the shape I was looking for. The closest I could find that I was tempted to settle for was what I feel is an exorbitant amount for a downloadable; therefore, low overhead in production, end price. It was not part of a collection, it was a single pattern for a scarf, that they wanted $12.00 for. I was not going to settle for an item, and pay that price to use my own paper and ink to get it. Nope, instead I picked up my needles, and I played, and I tore out. Then I played some more, and I tore out some more. All the while I wrote down, scratched out. Then I wrote down the next attempt, and the next and the next, until I had exactly what I wanted, and the written direction to get it again. That, is not what I would consider plagiarizing someone else's pattern. That was taking a shape concept and figuring out how to make it meet what I imagined for it.

All that being said, I do not consider myself a designer. One, I don't have the education, two, I don't have the desire, and three, I don't think what I do is all special. Any knitter with enough patience can do it. Therefore, feeling as I am not a designer, I don't charge for patterns that I make. So what do you feel I gain from this "knocking off" you accuse me of? If I had the name of the designer, or even the make of said piece, I would have stated where my inspiration came from Sweety. Instead, I gave the little bit of information I had on a piece that caught my eye, and made my own pattern, with my own work, and I'm going to call you on your behavior "Jen".

You see, you tried to make it look like I did something wrong. That I stole something from someone and tried to gain something with that stolen information/item. I suggest you re-read the original post. And then I suggest asking yourself that if you were in a knit shop when this item was pulled out and it's existence explained, would you have spouted off in this way to my face? If you would have, good on ya. But I highly doubt it. What I can tell you, is that should you have said this in person I would have replied in this way to your face. I very much dislike people who use anonymous internet interactions to behave in a piss poor fashion, and that is exactly what I think of your accusation today. It was piss poor and you did it in a way that you felt here would be no personal fall out. So, since I have no way to contact you to explain this; though I wish I were a hacker and could trace you to your computer, you get this very personal response. Thank you for the outlet you gave me, and giving me an excuse to make a blog post.

But all that aside, If I have any faithful readers left after this very very long hiatus, I hope you all have a good weekend! Midge says "Bye".