Mabelline and More...

Some folks who got the carving I did of sweet Mabelline as an invoice image (her photo is in the clue) have been asking if I ever had the chance to see her fawns.  The answer is yes, but it's really hard to get a picture of the little rascals, since they don't stop moving -- ever!  I have some amazing blurred images - even one of nursing babies, but they really are blurry.  I did capture one of the babies in pixels, though, and thought I would share so you could see.  I love the mother and child shot -- I took this one standing on a stool and peeking out the window of the Stampeaz packing room.

Here's one that I took from the deck overlooking the back woods, which is why it is looking down on the little cutie.  Mabel always gets nervous when I come out on the deck and try to take pictures.  I wish some manufacturer would make a digital camera that was really silent.  I don't know why they feel like they have to build in all the shutter noise and beeps that always scare the critters - it makes it way too hard to be sneaky with the wildlife!   

 

You can see that Mabelline has passed along some of her eye shadow expertise to her offspring.  Oh, and Mabel loves watermelon rind.  The little ones aren't convinced, but their mom loves to find the leftovers after I pack up my snacks to take to work (and feed the turtle).  These guys make it difficult to want to leave my house to go to the office every morning.  LOL! 

Balancing Act

My little turtle has learned a new trick!  She can balance a tiny watermelon seed on the end of her nose.  I don't know, do you think we are ready to run away and join the circus yet?  

Every morning she comes to see if I have anything wonderful to give her.  I actually think she may be watching my bedroom window to see if I'm awake yet, because she marches right up to the door, once she sees me peer out at the world.  She still loves her watermelon, although she branched out to eat some lettuce and a few blueberries over the last couple days. Watermelon remains her favorite -- by far.   

Many thanks to all who came and joined my birthday party.   I hope you enjoyed the celebration!  Interestingly enough, there was a piece of PZ Kut that sat around unclaimed for three days before someone finally snagged it --  and that was the day *after* I had planned to turn out the lights and sweep up the confetti!  So, I don't know exactly what that means.  It could mean that people are happy with OZ Kut and don't feel the need to scramble for the last few sheets of PZ, it could mean that everybody thought the celebration only went on for three days instead of seven, or it could mean that everyone's tired of my very foolish little games.  (Or maybe people just ate too much cake and fell asleep....)  In any event, it was fun to scramble the present around and have folks find it -- thanks for playing with me and thank you for the kind birthday wishes. 

Speaking of cake, everybody who ordered something last week has been checking under their labels, right?  I hid some cake under there!!  Really!  I did. Quispy cake...   :)

The Thirsty Turtle - Really Thirsty!

I had posted pictures earlier in the summer of the turtles that came in for blackberry treats.  The saga continues.  I have had at least six different turtles, each with distinctive markings on their shells or heads or legs.  There is a sweet little female three-toed box turtle that has become quite a regular.  Until the last few days, she was happy with her blackberries, strawberries and grapes.  But a couple days ago, she became frantic and actually crawled up past my hand and nearly into my lap looking for something else when what I was offering didn't meet her need.  After trying everything I could think of in the refrigerator (grapes, cherries, blueberries, etc.) I discovered a small piece of watermelon I had left from dinner and wondered if it might hit the spot.  

She chomped right into it (you can see the little beak marks in the piece I'm holding in the picture above where she bit it) and ended up eating the whole thing in very short order.  She was absolutely desperate for the fluids, since we haven't really had any measurable rain around here since around the beginning of June.

 

  

Interestingly enough, I have made a little turtle watering dish that's low to the ground so they can reach it, but I guess it wasn't enough - or maybe it was the electrolytes and minerals she needed - who knows?  

I'm just so relieved that I found something that worked for her, since earthworms, slugs, snails and grubs are in extremely short supply this year, right along with water.  I also watered all the leaf piles in the back and front yards so that the turtles could find a cool, moist place to hide during the day (and maybe attract a beetle or two for them to eat). 

In other news, it's my birthday!  Look for a pretty little wrapped present, if you want to join the celebration this week.  You know what's in the package, of course.  :)  I will be putting a few up every day, so if you miss one, try back again later!  It's going to be a little like the Easter Egg Hunt, but with a less frenetic pace, since it will be going on all week.  LOL! 

Take a Chicken on Safari....

Yes, this is the long overdue Chicken Update.  :)  

The incredibly lucky Chicken is doing well, although she's not really a Spring Chicken any more and has stopped laying eggs.  I guess they only get a certain allotment in over their life span and once they're gone, they're gone.  But, that's okay - she's a happy little bird. 

When I was on vacation and everyone else was taking a nap, the Chicken was acting like she wanted to go out and have an adventure.  One of her favorite things is to go to what we call the 'old bridge site' and have one of us turn over logs so she can find tasty bugs and things hiding underneath.  So, that's what we did.  And so the adventure began. 

First, we had to take a little walk across the wide open grassland and over to the old bridge site to where all the favorite hunting logs can be found.  She's so funny - if you get ahead of her and look like you're going to turn over a log, she comes running and flapping her wings so she won't miss out on any of the good stuff.  

  

Once we get to the logs, she gets in place and when she's ready to pounce, I turn over a log and hold it for her so she can dive in and snatch tasty beetles and delicious centipedes (one of her personal favorites - they're fast, challenging and scrumptious to a chicken - at least that's what I think she's saying....).   It's hard to hold the camera and turn logs at the same time, so I couldn't get a very good picture of her diving for critters - she also moves really fast!

After we turned over all the logs, that little Chicken was still wanting to hunt some more, we ventured into the woods where we found some new logs to turn and she got to go on a bug hunting excursion through the deep 'jungle' grass, into tangles of vines and around gnarled tree trunks.   Brave Chicken on safari....  

 

Of course, after returning from a major hunting expedition, it's important to take a good, long bath.  She's so funny when she does this.  It's almost like she goes into a deep trance state and loses track of time and space.  The practice of Chicken Bath Meditation.

Then, cleaned and preened, she's ready to sit on a friendly lap out in the sunshine and recount the great and glorious escapades of the day.  (Don't you just love the sun shining through her comb?)

So, there you have it.  The Lucky Chicken is still doing well and is absolutely as lucky as ever.  :)

Crane Your Neck....

This is a very belated post - this is actually from my vacation from some time ago, but I wasn't very good at keeping up the blog there for a bit - too much other stuff to keep up with!  But I still wanted to share it with you because I think it's awesome!  So, why would any sane (oh, wait -- scratch the sane part -- I forgot we were describing my behavior!), exhausted person go on vacation and get up at 4:30 in the morning?  Voluntarily.  Enthusiastically, even, if somewhat blearily.  Here's why: 

A person gets to see the most amazing and wonderful things getting out into the woods early in the morning.  Little warblers waking up and flitting through the brush, sleepy bears rambling around, and the occasional sandhill crane... 

I still haven't gotten to see them do their dance, but I did get to hear them making a huge racket a clearing or two away.  They're amazingly loud.  One of these days, I hope I'll have a chance to see the whole performance, but this was cool enough for me.  :)

Seriously- it's worth getting up unreasonably early in the morning to see something like this.

Don't you think?  And of course, if you've been quick enough on the draw, you may have found something else awesome.  Just sayin'...  :)

Blackberry Bliss

This morning, while I was cooling down from my exercise routine, I looked out the back window to see a box turtle headed toward the ground-level water dish at what, for a turtle, qualified as a dead run.  I knew that the sides of the dish would make it tough for a turtle - that one is primarily for deer and turkeys to come and get a drink, but other critters like it, too.  So, I grabbed a shallow dish filled with water and a couple blackberries and went down to greet my guest.  Usually, the turtles will retreat into their shells until I back away but this one apparently smelled the blackberries and marched right up to me and took one out of my hand.  Thirsty *and* hungry. 

Don't you just love the expression of blackberry bliss?  Munching with eyes closed and complete absorption.  This first one one ate four blackberries without flinching before wandering off to do other turtle things.  But when I looked up, I saw another, smaller turtle heading our way, so I offered it blackberries for breakfast, too.  It was more shy and did the shell retreat dance before tucking in to a juicy repast. 

When I gave turtle number two a third blackberry, it decided to just take the berry and carry it off somewhere to enjoy in peace and privacy.  And that's my story for the day..... 

 

The End.....  :)

News from the Merry Old Land of OZ...

Here is the update and sample carving information from ElectricMedic.  First the actual blocks.  The little fox is the same image on PZ Kut from the last round.  They sent it back to me for comparison purposes, since I wanted to see the differing gouge mark qualities.  Baby Bugs is Sample #1 (the same material Electric carved last time with the musical rose image) and Baby Taz is the new Sample #2 (which we've all been calling OZ Kut).   The fox image is able to sit on top of a quarter with a fair amount of space left over all the way around (except, perhaps, where the rose stem is sticking out), just to give you some idea of scale.   

I printed each one side-by-side on a piece of cardstock I had sitting on my work table - nothing particularly special with respect to surface.  In fact, I think it tended to wick a little bit with my Memento Bamboo Leaves ink because the pad is fairly new and pretty juicy.  The black ink is Versafine Onyx Black.   The lines on all these carvings are beautifully fine, and amazingly even.  I can take a couple of pointers away, just looking at Electric's finished carvings.  :)

Electric's preliminary sort of stream-of-consciousness thoughts ran something like this (Medic typed as he was talking and carving -- quotes from Electric and Medic are in bold italics). 

Using the regular staedtler , works terrific. It feels easier to use the staedtler on sample #2 than sample #1. The knife cuts through the material like butter. Much easier than the first stuff. Was able to make a deeper cut without having to put a lot of force behind it. That is all the prelim as I haven't finished carving the design. To me it is a winner but I will finish and then give the final report.

Medic's comment completely cracked me up, so I just had to share it: 

I was sitting on the couch and I heard these strange noises from the man cave. Lucky I knew what was going on in there otherwise I would have been curious. I heard...WOW....OH MY...THAT'S IT....THIS IS PERFECT.....SHE HAS IT......

That just made my evening!   LOL!  Then the pertinent bits from the final report went like this: 

The new material solves the problem we had with the first pertaining to knife cuts. I was able to cut deeper and bigger chunks with the knife and pull them out and also the materiel still ripped apart like it should, no rubber band problems.
 

Tried to use dull gouges and all seemed to work fine. The sharp gouges made perfect straight lines like a knife. The ones that are not as sharp still cut the material half decent but if you look close you can see slightly rough edges, not as clean as if using a sharp tool.
 

IMHO, I recommend running sample #2 only. That will please the vast majority of PZ White carvers. Definitely easier to cut with a knife and a sharp gouge still cut like butter.

So, that's what I'm doing.  A trial run of Sample #2 (A.K.A. OZ Kut) is in the extrusion schedule for this week!  (Yikes!)  That means that by the middle of May, if not sooner, there should be a brand new material for us all to try out.  I am looking forward to seeing how the actual extrusion process effects the material - there's a good chance it will make the block even better than the lab samples - I'm hoping so!

Once again, I hope ElectricMedic will chime in here and let me know if I have missed anything they think people should know about the future OZ Kut.  And many, many thanks for your gracious help with the testing.