Cat Grass Farming

Boy kitten really likes his grass. I used to think that having grass would help substitute his obsession for eating my pillow cases. Turns out he has room (and passion!) for both in his diet.

Cat grass is a racket. You can buy a pot for $3.99 from the nice pet store people down the street. Or you can make it yourself, which I decided to do recently. I bought a thirteen dollar bag of Non-GMO wheat, grown in Kansas. When I went to put it away in the cupboard I noticed an old three dollar bag of wheat that I had already open, and that's what I used instead. 

At the same time, I'm trying to re-use plastic containers that come our way. So I stabbed some holes in the plastic egg cartons that come from a person giving away eggs on my Buy Nothing group and went to work making cat grass. Here are my grass starts.

I reuse the original cat grass pots, add more dirt, place the starts in the pot, add little more dirt. Water. Wait.

Voila! Boy kitten has been working on this one a bit and finds it to his liking.

It's little things like this that make me happy.

Summer's End

I really wanted to call this one Summer's Eve, because that's the name of an old school feminine hygiene product. My friends, and one in particular, would approve.

Sometimes she calls me her best friend. And I used to confidently refer to her as mine. But right now she wants some space. We had a year of Pandemic Monday phone calls, initiated by me. I never bailed. I didn't really consider whether I wanted to talk, because for the first time in forever I had her attention. We talked about every single thing on the face of the planet. And now that we're not stuck in the house any more, she has time for everybody else. Right after the trust had been rebuilt and my heart opened she indicated that she'd like to let me know when she wanted to talk again. The longer it goes, the more I understand what I had previously misunderstood. I have to say that it feels cruddy. But whatever. It isn't like we haven't done this before.

In the meantime the summer is ending and the days have been beautiful. I harvested tomatoes and then cut down my tomato plants yesterday. Then I cleaned up a bit in the aku room. The tomatoes were not plentiful but were delicious. I still find it fairly miraculous that I kept the seeds stuck to a paper towel for a year and then mistakenly flicked them onto some dirt and made 13 tomato plants. Gave some to friends. Grew the others myself because I felt guilty that they'd lived. And the other day I was able to eat a sun-warmed tomato while feeding the wee beastie.

It could be so much worse.

Adventures in Powdercoating, Part 2

The tables and chair came out looking great and I am so happy.

First, I heard that the tables were done and I could come pick up and then choose the color for my chair.  So I did that (I was working from home).

Witness the beauty of the table. It was rusty and sad before, and it was free because my sister left it behind when she moved to the Midwest. Now it is beautiful.

Then I had to pick out a color for the chair. What I really wanted was a blue-violet. But my choices were limited. They'd just painted a firetruck, so there was red. I knew there was yellow because they were working on coating some bollards for the roads agencies. There was teal (barf) and a translucent blue that I was too chicken to take, and then there was this blue. A very 1975 elementary school blue. I like it.

They told me that I could pick it up in a few hours and it looks effing amazing. It is smooth and bright and beautiful. I still have to make a new seat for it, but I put it right back out onto the porch and put my Buy Nothing Project giveaways on it. Makes me so happy.

Here are a few photos of the progress and the result:

What can I paint next? This level of transformation is addictive!

Adventures in Powdercoating

I have a favorite chair that is super beat. I *think* I bought it at a garage sale when I lived in my first apartment. I thought it was SO COOL. I still do, but it looks really funky.

So I asked mrguy how to use a sander, and I had this unrealistic picture of myself sanding this chair down to the metal (which I thought was wrought iron) and clear coating it. Then I actually tried doing this. Boy was it challenging! I kept replacing the sandpaper and stopping to rest my hand, and after a solid 35 minutes I was ready to stop. I realized that I needed help.

I decided to look for sandblasting and powdercoating services, found one, and they do furniture as well as their big industrial jobs. On Friday I took some time off work, brought my chair and two other pieces. One little table I must have gotten from the flea market. I remember having glass cut and ground for it at one point, but most recently I had some bright blue plastic cut to order. Swingin! The *tall* table was left behind by my sister when she moved to Minneapolis. I had red plastic cut to order for it. 

When I realized that I could get more items sandblasted and painted under the minimum order, I brought those two tables along with the chair. I will paint those two their original black when they're done, and the chair? Who knows? I've asked them to give me a call so I can come in and choose a color.

To the left of my items is an order that's ahead of me in line -- some radiators. They are going to be gorgeous! And V., the customer service person, showed me some electric blue clear coat that had been added over chrome on part of a car fender. These people have me fantasizing about what else they can do.

There's more to the story. V told me that her bosses are 29, and she worked with them when they were 17 years old, at the metal painting service. Later, these kids went off and started a metal fabrication business, but always used the services of the painting service they used to work for. A few years ago they heard that the painting service was closing, so they bought it. They brought the whole crew over, and they run the two businesses. They called up V, who had worked with them back in the day and asked her if she would come back and work with them, so the whole gang is back together.

I can't wait to go back!