Horace Horse

   I've added a new stuffed animal to my listings. Horace the horse, named for one of the lead characters in 'The Ranger's Apprentice' series. (a great series of books by the way.) I decided to work on a pattern for a knitted horse because 2014 is the year of the horse, I couldn't find a pendent I liked, and I cannot make a horse out of polymer clay.

   It took me about fourteen hours to make Horace, most of that time was either spent holding up one of his body parts and asking my mother 'This looks like something, right?' or going back and fixing something I didn't like. I'm hoping the second one won't take as long. I'm shooting for nine hours, that's an hour more than Roxi Rabbit, but there is a lot more involved in making Horace so nine might be doable.

   I learned to make a loop stich for his mane, but I'm not very good at it, yet, that's one of the reasons Horace has the longest processing time of all my items. Hopefully I can lower that as I get better at making him. For some reason tassels, like pompoms, are hard for me to make. I don't know if there is some trick to it or if I just naturally bad at it. Not that that stops me. I sew the base of the tail to secure all the threads. Otherwise it falls a part if you pull on one of the threads.

  This horse doll is about 10 1/2" (26.67cm) when sitting up, not counting his ears, and is 8" (20.32cm) at the shoulder when on all fours. (It takes a bit of work to make him stand like that.) He is one and a half feet (31.75cm) tall if you count the ears. Horace's body is 4" (10.16cm) wide. His legs are 4 1/2" (11.43cm) long and 1 1/2" (3.81cm) wide. His luxurious, black tail is about 8" (20.32cm) long at longest point.
   Here is a link to the listing: https://www.etsy.com/listing/163016552/horace-horse
He ships everywhere. 
   Every horse is unique; yours may not look exactly as pictured. Each is signed with a brown J on the seat.
   Horace is latte brown with a black mane and tail, but custom colors are available.

  Mom thinks he looks like a buffalo on all fours, so I guess I'm half way to a buffalo toy. And 90% of the way to a unicorn or a Pegasus.  It took a bit of work to make him able to stand on all fours while still being able to move his legs, but I really wanted him to be able to. Some of my favorite stuffed animals growing up were ones that were like that.



                 
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The Pasture

   We finally got the pasture shredded. Now we can put up the new chicken house. (Possum and  Hand-full can't wait.)
    I didn't think to take a picture of it before but here's one of it after.
   The day before the guy with the shredder was supposed to be here we went to get a piece of the chicken house roof that a twister had ripped up and dropped on the other end of the pasture from the gate, but when we started to pick it up we saw there was a skunk under it and beat a hasty retreat. At first we were going to leave it and tell the guy to mow around it. But the next day Mom decided she was going to put on old clothes and try and use the piece of roof as a shield as she ran away with it. Sort of like when we accidently caught a skunk in the cat trap and put a big box on it to protect us while one of us -in this case me- set the door up so the skunk could leave. Fortunately, the skunk had gone when Mom went to move the tin.  
   Mom and I were kind of nervous about one of the cats getting run over during the shredding. Especially when we saw Persephone going into the pasture just as the guy was driving his tractor to it. We rushed into the grass to drag her out. I ended up catching her and throwing her into the barn. But as the tractor got closer and closer Sephy got more and more terrified. And I ended up getting scratched pretty bad as a thank you for saving her. Thankfully no one (other than me) was hurt.
         The animal's reactions to the freshly shredded pasture was rather funny, though. Lobo can't wait to run in it, the cats seem angry about it. Not surprisingly, since every morning there would be at least two cats sitting outside the pasture waiting to run in when they saw movement. They must have been doing a good job of it too, because I only saw one rat run out during the shredding. Back when we used to have it shredded regularly, and had fewer cats, we'd see five or six run out. The chickens were suspicious of the pasture, Abe even sidled up to it, like he does us before he attacks us. Apparently he was going to fight a pasture. I don't even want to know how he planed on doing that.

       
                  Thank you for reading Bats Bizarre's official blog. Have a bat-tastic day!

Fall Seedlings

  None of the seeds I planted earlier this Summer came up.


   It's about time to sow seed for Fall gardens and Mom's already planted some broccoli, kale, cabbage, and cauliflower seeds. We're waiting for the 19's full moon to plant the snow peas (It's a two man operation). All of her gardening has put me in the mood to try again.
  I read that one of the reasons seedlings grow for a while then die suddenly is a fungus in the soil. Supposedly sprinkling cinnamon in the soil will kill the fungus responsible for this dampening off.
 Hoping this was my problem, I planted Feverfew, Pennyroyal, and Lavender seeds with a healthy helping of cinnamon for each pot. Here's hoping it works. And that the seeds come up at all. I'll keep you posted.


  Thank you for reading Bats Bizarre's offical blog. Happy gardening. Have a bat-tastic day! 

Run Away Chicken

  Yesterday, when I opened the cage to feed Amy's chicks the little Barred Plymouth Rock fell out of the cage and immediately half ran- half flew away. She's not very tame and would not let us get near her, but for some reason she ran right up to any cat she saw and just hung around them. The dog was out at the time and tried to help us catch her, but we were afraid he would step on her or trip and accidently crush her, so we put him up.
   Mom tried shaking a cup of scratch grain to attract her, and she started to follow one of the cats but she ran off before one of us could get to close. 
   It took us about twenty minutes to catch her. And Mom (who finally managed to grab her) says the little girl pretty much gave up and threw herself at her.

  Up until this escape attempt we had been afraid the Barred Plymouth Rock was a rooster. But her tail looks like a hen and when she was running around the yard she looked like a hen. I hope she is indeed a hen because she is soo cute; with those cheek tufts and those pretty green eyes and her self assuredness...

                      Thank you for reading Bats Bizarre's offical blog. Have a bat-tastic day!