man, sometimes it really hurts to be back at work after a good weekend! kicked mine off with a good long dogwalk friday.

in my 'hood, there are only a few streetlights and since i have very small, mostly black dogs, i need to do a lil something to help the motorists see em. knog lights have been a perfect solution for that. they fasten to the dogs harnesses and they're bright enough that people slow down when they approach.

its awesome!
they were pretty fired up after their walk...they mellowed out for a little while but were back at it, 100% shortly afterward.

rah-diculous. went for a late night donught run to country style. they had such a limited selection that it threw me into a rage, and i launched my phone off at the doughnut lady.

well, not really. i stood up out of the car and it fell out of my sweater pocket, and totally shattered. tiiiiight. somehow its operating fairly well, despite the fact that chunks of the screen are actually missing.
ugh. i was in such a bummer mood about it that saturday morning, andrew set up the raven on a workbench in the garage and tidied up a space on the bench to work on it.

it made me totally stoked.
my coworkers partner brought me some additional fabric on friday night as well, and i was real inspired...knew i had to make something new this weekend.

i decided to try my hand at dog coats...

whipped up a quick one for miss Dottie.
she wore it well!

it was a pretty good fit and it didn't really take that long to make a pattern for her...then sewing it up took no time at all.
since that went well, i decided to try one a bit bigger and i made one for mr. Egon.

these bostons are so patient. they are very good and tolerate "fittings" pretty well!

after a little pleating to accomodate his big chest and little waist, we nailed down a great fit for him.

hes such a funny guy, he loves being snuggled so whenever he wears a jacket he takes a nap. like clockwork, after i put his new coat on to show andrew, he laid down and took a nap in the grass. ha!

after a midday break from sewing, i jumped back into it and made a pattern for mr. idle. he needed a jacket that reflected his true gentlemanly nature...

and voila! what a handsome dood.
while i was cleaning house and sewing, andrew was outside workin' the land. he finished cutting the stump down to the ground and started excavating the dirt around it so we could cut it out more.

it was an insane amount of work.
after a full weekend of labor, this morning the stump stood like this.

its hard to get a feel for it, but remember each of those fence panels are eight feet long. its a MASSIVE stump, rock hard heartwood. i think we're gonna have to rent a stumpgrinder to really finish getting it out...its intense.

he took a break (can you even call it a break??) from stump work and tilled up the whole garden area...good to break ground and start killing off the grass clumps that had grown already. seedlings inside are off to a good start, so hopefully by the end of the month i can harden them to go outside.
egon randomly rediscovered his soccerball this weekend, and boy is he obsessive about it. he plays soccer real hard, basically until you take it away from him. after i take the ball away he cant stop focusing on it...at one point we put it on top of the fridge so he sat at the fridge and cried. the next day i changed the location...i hid it in a spare room.
and what did he do?

what a big baby. somehow he's convinced that its on top of the fridge, so throughout the day yesterday he would stop every now and then to whine at the fridge.
i had such a good weekend of sewing that its hard to be back at work today. i took on a project for a friend, she wants a nice coat for her sweet rescued pitter (he's so sweet.)and thats about all i can think about! i just want to go home and finish this thing up.

i love new projects...i'm always really stoked to take something on i've never done before, especially sewing wise. its cool, thinking up patterns for different sizes and shapes of dogs and making them work.

ALSO.
throw $20 at this if you can. make Pat's backyard concrete skatepark a reality! anyone that comes to richmond for mopeds or skating or bikes almost always ends up at pats, he is the most laid back and generous person i know when it comes to sharing space.


watch the vidja!


help if you can. i put a 20 toward it. keep your money local!

This week has been crazy. Called in to work early almost every day, stylists out sick. I hate the long days but they're usually spaced out..this week has been awful with them.
Yesterday the transmission on the work washing machine blew out, and the diamond springs water fountain almost caught on fire. Second one in less than six months, glad I've been at work both times to unplug.

All that brown is burned styro. The first one that broke a couple months ago started boiling...the five gallon jug of water was freaking boiling. Terrifying, and when I called Diamond Springs that was apparently a real common issue. "oh yeah, thats the element, no worries we'll be out to switch out the unit." No bigs, its just gotten so hot that its boiling a plastic container full of about 4 gallons of water.
Cray cray.
In more awesome news, I scored some really cool new fabrics.

My coworker's partner works at a big design firm in town and said he's gonna start bringing me the fabric samples they get from material design firms...this go about was a huge brown bag FULL of cool stuff. All heavy fabric, like upholstery material. I'm super stoked.
AAAAAnd I got to cook dinner for a baby this week! Nicole brought Tucker over for dinner, and I genuinely had no idea what almost-1-year-old babies eat. He was stoked on the ravioli I made from garden squash and pumped on roasted beets...broccoli was good too until he realized that he liked beets and ravioli better. Haha.

Shoulda made a video of the Bostons LOVING Tucker, Dottie could not deal with herself. That guy got his face licked about a million times. When I put them upstairs so that he could eat in peace, they just lost their minds. Silly dogs.
Almost at my weekend...looking so forward to it. Srsly trying to get the engine back assembled and put on the raven.

firepit friday!

cold weather means firepits, and if it weren't for the constant weekend foul weather, we'd have had a lot more already. sat up by the fire for a long time after dinner out with friends. didn't want to work saturday after that, thats for sure!
had a fun saturday anyway after work...caught up with friends for dinner and it rolled over into a full on tetris battle and treats hangout. even got to facetime with friends we wished were hanging out! awesome!

the dogs were super stoked...so stoked in fact that dottie threw up on chad. good dog.
egon played and played until he couldn't deal anymore. had to sleep. this guy fell asleep mid-chew on his fav nylabone toy...

and then "winter" finally came. saturday richmond started bracing for a snowstorm...it didn't come until sunday.
it was a good one too. we got 3-4 inches at our house, it basically snowed all day sunday starting pretty early in the morning. went on an adventure hike since there wasn't much else to do.
sort of loosely followed gilles creek on a four mile walk.



found some massive weird containers...the two on each side were built to overflow into the center one, but only one of the side containers seemed to have a pipe coming into it. weird.

they were totally filled in with leaf debris, but they were a bizarre find.

also came across a rad hut, maybe i'll camp there this summer.
after the long cold snowy hike, hit up the salvage spot i'd been wanting to visit and picked up another chair for the living room. nice little krueger fiberglass chair, hugs the butt well.

the snow was getting pretty intense, actually really accumulating by the afternoon. the bostons love snow, they can't possibly eat enough of it. they have a hard time walking, they are so preoccupied with snorfiling up as much snow as possible.

they were super snuggly, they would play outside until they were too cold then we'd wrap em up and let them get warm.
dottie seemed pretty impervious to the cold...i think she was just so motivated by the deliciousness of the snow.

egon would start shivering pretty quickly, so we just put him in his hoodie and let him hangout and stay warm.
stayed up pretty late, loving the snow. made a late snack run to the close grocer, and picked up supplies for mini-pizzas. yum!

egon kept getting so pitifully cold in the snow that we decided to really dress him up for it...we put on his flashing chucks and his hoodie and let him go. he wouldn't really move much, but after he got over the awkwardness of the shoes it seemed like he didn't mind a barrier between his little toes and the icy ground.

next time i come across some cheap neoprene i'll sew him up some dogsocks for cold days. haha.
monday was a real weird day. seemed like every single thing i did totally failed. the laptop i just bought is not charging or staying on for more than 10 minutes. tight. basically i'm out $40 in shipping for nothing. packaged it back up to return via ebay. total bummer. tried to load software on the desktop to make a doggie cam snow video, no dice. video plays too slow, lags and skips. cannot even watch it. tried to load an os onto this oldass imac, no dice there either. tried to finish sewing a hat commission, the backup sewing machine kept shattering needles and eventually just broke down. had to take it apart twice to fix it. annoying! took forever to finally finish the hat.

at least i got seeds started and took the dogs on a short snow adventure. everything else i did blew up yesterday, just bad news after bad news, total let down bummertown. defeat! oh well.

took a drive to kroger to pick up dinner supplies, finally stopped to peek at this datsun.
i've got a real soft spot for those 280z's.

though i don't think i'd ever buy one. i'd rather have a old celica. like a 72 celica, with a 22R swapped into it. that would be SWEET.
peeked in on the italians to see how they were doing in the snow...

looking good, friends!
after dinner i was still trying to get beyond the crappiness of the whole day. not really working out. went to bed, just ready to get to the next day.

there was no room on the couch for idle, so he crammed his hulking mass into the tiny boston terrier bed...hahaha. he was back in it this morning after he ate breakfast...maybe he's claimed it for his own!
is hard to see, but thats a tiny little dog bed. that guy is hilarious.
and now back into the work week, waiting for time off weekend warrior style.

seeds came in the mail. goal for this coming weekend is to get them mostly started, with a real deal timeline. i also need to start plotting the garden. raised beds this year with defined pathways. i'm real excited.

kicked off my weekend with a trift adventure, took the long way to petersburg and hit several flea markets, salvages, and thrift stores on the way.

sweet camaro roadside. wish i'd stopped for a photo by every sweet auto for sale, would've made a great album.

love the decal kit.
after thrifting went on a long mountainbike ride. took the brownway to the greenway, to north bank then rode the new trails at dogwood dell. they're not finished yet, but they are SO FUN. and having a bike path thru the woods from my house to the greenway is real tight. so stoked on rogue efforts.
video to come, soon.
naturally, spent time with dogs.

these guys were extra sweet.
laying in the sun, chewing on toys.

being sweet to each other. when they're not busy scrappin and running around, they're a real pair of sweeties.

they seemed pretty tired after the long weekend, full of yard adventure.

they were pretty much content to snooze in the sun, going outside for brief runs.
at one salvage spot i came across this freakin AWESOME tension lamp. i've always wanted to have like SIX of these.

everytime i have a little extra cash and search for em, they run 50-300 for messed up, broken ones to pristine super cool ones. managed to finaggle this one for 30$, and even though the light sockets were totally scary, they worked. i can't believe i plugged it in as it was.

i decided to try my hand at rewiring it. seems easy, right? three way switch, pretty easy.
this was the least offensive of all the sockets...

it held a bulb, wasn't shattering into pieces, and didn't look as poorly wired as the others.

i'm shocked that these were working, but they were.
took some snaps of the original sockets and rolled into home depot on a mission. found a pretty close replacement for 3$ a pop. tight!

armed with some electrical basics, i jumped right in.

a long time ago, before the safari was a pretty moped at all, chance was helping me with some wiring issues. he told me to always mock up your electrical before you tuck it all away and make it perfect/pretty, cause if you've done something wrong its such a pain in the ass to take it all apart once you've routed it all. truth. its stuck with me forever, with so many different projects.
reworked all the little ball/sockets where the lamps were supposed to swivel. lubed em up after a cleaning. they actually swivel now!

and yep. finally, a nice tension lamp. so stoked, such an easy project and a worthwile upgrade.

this is my project for monday...just needs a little work to make it a solid fixture. the legs were put on in a crappy halfassed way, and as a result warped the mounting fixtures over time. it'll be an easy fix (i think).
andrew agreed to come with me to one salvage spot this weekend, there are a couple lamps i'd like to go back and snag. i'm on a mega quest for nice lighting since i have a lot of furniture in place.
keeping an eye out for a nice, vintage hanging porch light and more ceiling fixtures that i can hang to replace the ones upstairs.