Gotta Love a Bargain!

Firstly, it was farewell to the baby plecs. Our original estimate of 80-100 was wildly out, and we handed in something more in the region of 150 - 200 babies. It took almost an hour to get them out of the nursery tank and I'm already dreading the job of fishing out the next set of babies will be for the much larger, full of lots of stuff, main tank. Yep, no sooner have I handed these little guys away when a new clutch of eggs have been laid. The male has cottoned on to my idea, and this time had the female lay her eggs on the glass, so there is absolutely no way to retrieve them out.

Plecs 1 - 0 Me

Not much to talk about out-and-about-wise, the weather has been gruesome and its finally beaten us all, even Missy cant be bothered with the rain any more. She's still walking plenty, and chasing all the squirrels, but we just haven't managed anywhere new or exciting. With the hubby working this weekend, I decided today was the perfect day to get cracking on with some projects - namely a new tee-pee cover:

So this was my bargain. I found two single bed sheets at £1.20 each in Asda, which gave me enough fabric to make a spare cover for the tee-pee. I'm always on the look out for cheap sheets - generally I wouldn't make anything super-detailed out of sheets, but they are great for projects that need a big chunk of fabric (petticoats, the underside of quilts, general lining etc etc).

Whilst I prefer her white one cover, Missy has managed to shake mud all over it and it sorely needs washed. Its still far too cold to just leave her bed bare and open to the night time elements, so I had to make another cover before I could wash the old one. Whilst I loved the butterfly print, I quickly panicked that it may have been too loud for the hallway, and perhaps the purple underside would be better. The solution? Why, make it fully reversible!

Fortunately, my panic was for nothing, and the butterfly side isn't nearly as loud as I thought it was going to end up being. Making it reversible was worth the extra effort as I'm really pleased with the final finish of this one, the seams are neat and the top stitching has come out perfect. And who knows, I might fancy it fully purple another time! I had another bonus with the fabric, there was a pillowcase with each sheet, and a sizeable enough portion of scrap fabric left. What to do, what to do?

Make a matching quilt of course! So, for 3 hours work and £2.40 (I had scrap batting lying about), that's a tee-pee cover and a quilt. I kid you not - this dog of mine has a cooler, more coordinated bedroom than I do! Spoiled rotten doesn't come close enough.

Missy hasn't given it a road test yet, she's quite happily sleeping on the sofa. She takes her job of quality checking all my fabric (read that as walking over and lying on every piece I place on the floor) very seriously, and has worn herself out!

Just a short post today, hope your all having nice weekends!

A wintry day

Well, we've had our first snowfall of the year and the nights are officially drawing in, so in my books, winter has arrived. Its not all gloom and doom, we have an action plan in place to try and help Missy get over her Christmas phobia and December is pretty much full up already with plans to see people and spend time with one another.

We managed a lovely winter walk up and around Cockleroy today. It was surprisingly busy around Beecraigs, but we had the hill to ourselves for the most part. The wind was bitter though! I thought I was going to get blown away and Missy just showed off and trotted around us happily. She loves the snow, all the scents sit fresh on top of it and, thankfully, we only lost sight of her the once. She came back to us a minute later looking mighty pleased with herself and out of breath, so she had fun!

In other news, our plecs have had babies again - slightly later than last year! We spotted the eggs straight away and got them into a nursery tank this time, so no need to try and stress out fishing tiny babies from the big tank. Its been tremendous fun watching them grow up from eggs, to larvae, to fry and now proper juvenile fish. We hadnt expected so many to survive, but out of the whole clutch we've only lost half a dozen, so out best estimate of 70-100 fish still stands. I already have a shop lined up to take them off us once they get a little bigger, so its all ok, although I am watching out in the main tank in case we get another cluster of eggs!

I'll leave you with the development photos of the babies and aim to be back soon - I've got some fun sewing projects on the go that I'm looking forward to sharing, and if all goes well, Missy is meeting someone special tomorrow!

Halloween

Halloween is coming, the geese are getting fat!
Please put a penny in the aulds mans hat!

Perhaps one of my favourite times of year, Autumn has truly settled in, everything is red and gold and the weather is still just mil enough to be pleasant for a dog walk.

Missy is a pirate this year (as she was last year) and has been delighting all the trick or treaters that come to the door. Although she's starting to have had enough with all the getting up and down! This year I've modified an actual kids Halloween costume as I have found absolutely nothing for a dog her size - come on pet companies, people with medium to large breeds want to dress up their pups too! All I could find were chihuahua size costumes....

Enough grumbling! I've gone for Pokemon pumpkins this year (I perhaps have too much time on my hands!) and so far one kid has correctly identified team Mystic (L) and team Instinct (R) and I congratulated him with an extra lollipop. 

After hearing that 70% of pumpkins grown aren't actually eaten, I felt shamed enough to do some baking with the pumpkin pieces and innards. I blended the pumpkin into a puree and made cupcakes (for humans), a loaf cake and then Missy of course got some cupcakes made for her! I adapted this recipe and substituted the banana for 4oz of pumpkin mulch. 

As you may have guessed, I am not a fan of pumpkin anything. I was brave and did try a slice of the loaf cake and have to sadly concede that my tastes have not changed, and sent the hubby of to work with the cupcakes (he's going to finish the loaf cake!). Missy loves her cakes and, as pumpkin is super high in vitamin A, I've frozen most of them and she's getting them as a special treat now and again.

I made myself some flapjack, and made sure it wasn't contaminated with the pumpkin! Perhaps next year I may try again...

As a final update, Plec-Gate is still ongoing. I've had two definite sets of eggs, and the babies themselves look to be in possibly 3 age categories. I've finally set up my nursery tank and mnaged to one-by-one, catch 36 babies out of the main tank! They're now safely away to themselves, and I'm concentrating on getting them grown on a bit more before taking them to the pet shop.

Although, I'm rather liking the second tank being set up...

Happy Halloween! 

Little Baby Plecos

Hiya

Well, In addition to Missy I keep fish - currently just the one tropical tank (I had to downscale having previously run two) and its a 240L, which unless I can get something custom made, is the biggest I can have in the house!

A few weeks ago I noticed that my bristlenose plecs were acting pretty weird, but decided to leave them be as they looked healthy and it was fun to watch them digging and burrowing about all the bog wood. Then the hubby spotted one of these:

A teeny tiny baby! Less than 5mm long.

And then I spotted all of these!:

Yes, all those yellow things are eggs, and Daddy is guarding them!

And now they've all hatched. They're too small to take out into a nursery tank, so we've had to leave them to fend for themselves. We'd always set the tank up to be as anti baby as possible - plecs and corries to eat the eggs, congo tetras and butterfly fish to eat any small offspring. The plan backfired when the plecs guard their eggs, and then, since they are plecs, they never leave the bottom of the tank, the other fish haven't really eaten them...

Currently I can spot usually 8-10 babies at any one time, last night I got 16, so goodness knows how many there are going to be! The plan is to hand them into the local aquatic store once they get big enough to fish out (no pun intended), but I will keep you all updated on plec-gate!

In other news, we're all heading down to the lakes for a week - Missy never likes us packing so she has been regarding the whole thing with great suspicion. I'm sure I'll get some nice photos to post up once we're back (at least, if the weather is fair! Its been horrific the last few days!)

One of the reasons we're going down that way is that its my nieces birthday weekend, and she is perhaps the greatest receiver of sewn goods from me, so here is a few bits I'm taking down for her!

    

The cloak is because she wants to be a vampire when she grows up! It matches a little waistcoat I made her earlier in the year (But alas, have no photos of!). The little dungarees are adorable but I think its going to be the red lucky cat pinny dress that goes down the best with my sister!

Till next time!