Several of you have asked how Mocha-the-outdoor-cat is doing these days. You’ll be happy to know that he’s still coming around, drinking from the heated bird bath, and now eating the dry cat food that we put out for him. He still has no interest in letting us get near him. That about kills me. I’m a hands-on animal person. But he does seem to show up just after we get home in the evenings and when we get up in the mornings. I think he likes us. To a certain degree. At least he likes the food and water coming from us.

Guess who else wants to eat cat food and drink from the bird bath? These are the night-time visitors to our back porch. They’re very big and pretty cute. And in my typical “let’s name them” fashion (I know, I’m weird), I’ve dubbed them Harvey and Marge. However, I am not feeding raccoons. The cat food started coming in at night after that. I don’t really want to encourage these two, no matter how cute they seem from the other side of the glass. They are pretty funny, though. The one on the left got IN the bird bath, tipped the whole thing over, and then backed his way into the bigger guy on the right, to get him away from the cat food dish.

See?  In and tip:

Bump – “Move over, Dude.“:

Fortunately, Mocha seems to be doing a good job of avoiding them completely. I don’t think raccoons are good to cats.

Sheri ofcourseourcatGraciedoesn’tliketheraccoons,either

Soon after we moved into this house, we noticed a cat sitting in the back of our yard, some afternoons. Of course I tried to make friends with him, but he doesn’t let anyone get too close. We (ok, I) named him Mocha.

He has gotten braver. This fall he started coming up on our deck in the mornings and peering in our back door. This causes our (indoor) cat Gracie all kinds of stress. She does not want anyone else on the deck. (Our other cat Zoe doesn’t mind at all. She’s a bit more mellow about such things.)

One morning I saw him drinking from a puddle on the deck, so I put water out for him. After that, he’d come 2 or 3 times some days, just to get a drink. So when the weather got cold, of course I had to get a heated bird bath so that he (and the birds) could have water all winter long.

He seems to like it here. Sometimes he even comes and sits on our window ledges and looks in.

Did I mention that Gracie doesn’t like him hanging around?

He comes as early as 6:30 am to drink, and the other night I saw him getting water on the porch at 9:30 pm. I’m getting worried that he has no home and sleeps under our deck. What will happen when it gets really cold? Paul assures me that he probably has a cat door in his home, where he is free to come and go. But I think I had better worry about him all winter long. You know, because worrying is so effective.

So far I have refrained from buying an outdoor heated cat house, and putting food out for him. So far. But I’m still worried about him.

Sheri istherea”bleedingheart”signonmyhouse
thatattractsanimalslikethis?FPS.

Look. It’s a rainy day here! We’ve had about three rainy days in the 8 weeks we’ve been here. Usually, it sprinkles for 5 minutes and then stops and the sun comes back out. Today, this is the view out my back window. Perfect day for another cup of coffee and some knitting. If I’m lucky, I’ll hear an owl hooting back in the trees. They usually talk at night, but one afternoon I heard three or four of them going on and on. And one evening, WH and I were taking a walk at dusk and one swooped overhead. I’m sure he was on his way to a meal. It made me glad that our cats are indoor cats! And I don’t think we have rabbits out there. Although, come to think of it, maybe the owls have something to do with that ….

Owls have seeped into my fall decorating, too. I can’t seem to resist a good owl decoration. See?

Owl on a window:

Owl on a shelf:

Owl on a bookcase:

I should stop buying owls now. Instead, I could make an owl sweater, or an owl coffee cozy, or an owl hottie (just because I like the name). Are we friends on Facebook? If so, you might have seen this video I posted a couple of weeks ago. The subject? An owl. Flying right at you. I think I like them better when they’re hooting in the trees.

Sheri whonowneedsthatowlcoffeecozy.

I need to finish my Project Three. I had the idea that crocheting 800 yds. would go a lot faster than knitting it (and since this project coincided with the fact that we had just moved and had lots to do here, I figured that was just as well.) Of course I’m now into 2200 yds. on this project and it’s still not the size I want. Working more on it today.

Saturday I was distracted by all of the photos you have submitted for the Project Three Gallery. It took me awhile to go through and approve them all, but they are fabulous! And more arriving daily.

Yesterday afternoon, I was distracted by this project. Specifically, the Scrabble tiles. The photos were already up. I thought it would be fun to spell out our names, the names of the states we’ve lived in, the names of the streets we’ve lived on, etc. I need to add town names.(Scrabble tiles – available by the bowl full at antique stores and flea markets near you.) It makes a fun family memory wall. However, it does not make for a finished afghan.

Then when I finally thought I could sit down last night and work on it, I was distracted by this one. All evening long. (How can you say no to that face?)

Today I am distracted by work, but tonight …. tonight I will be working on my project. Really. Must be done by Thursday.

Anything distracting you today?

Sheri noMondayUpdatetonightbutmorenextweek!

Well I have to say, it’s good to be back to Loopy-ville after having two weeks off to move and unpack. (But it was good to have the two weeks off, too.) In the two weeks that we’ve been here, we’ve already had visitors. We’ve had my parents, WH’s mom and friend, my friend Meda, and our friends Steve and Janice and their kids pop in already.  The nice thing about people visiting you right away is that they don’t expect much in terms of how the house looks (or what meals you might want to make for them) so that worked out well.  Plus, we’re very close to a place called “Serious Texas BBQ” and we have gotten good at trucking people up there for dinner when they visit.

I promised to show you my favorite part of this place and here it is: the back yard. We have an overabundance of evergreen trees, as well as common ground on one side and in the back. You can be out on the deck and not see another house. (If you had been to our St. Louis house, you know that we had people RIGHTTHERE on either side and in the back. So this is wonderful. I anticipate spending lots of time back there, once things settle down a bit.)

And a few of you wanted to know where the cats like to hang out in the new house. Here’s Gracie’s favorite place – sitting along the back of the couch, looking out the window into the back yard.  Then falling asleep for a long cat nap.

Zoe is also into cat naps and can be found anywhere there is sunshine. Like on our bed in the afternoon. Or sprawled out on the warm tile in the mornings, as the sun pours into the kitchen. This house has a lot more direct sunlight and both cats are enjoying that. They used to fight over the one little sliver of sunlight that made its way into one of our dining room windows for a few brief moments in St. Louis. Now the whole back of the house is bathed in sunlight in the mornings and they have several warm spots to choose from.

We also have a little front office that I have taken over. In addition to a desk with a computer (where I can do my Loopy stuff), I have my works-in-progress cabinet and a chair for knitting.

So that’s a few areas of the house that we’ve been enjoying during our first two weeks here. But enough about that. Let’s get onto Contest Winners! We have three winners from last week’s Blog Contest, where I asked you to share some favorite summer memories. Thanks for participating! And congratulations to the winners that the random number generator picked:  Agata from MN, Retha from CT, and Michele from Saskatoon, who each win a $35 Loopy Ewe Gift Certificate.

Now that all of the entries (751!) have been uploaded to the Project One photo gallery for Camp Loopy, pop over there and pick out some of your favorites. Aren’t they amazing? We’d like to award a Reader’s Choice Award, in addition to a couple of other awards that we’re going to do. Can you help us? Send your choice for your personal favorite to support @ theloopyewe.com and we’ll tally the votes and award prizes next week. Speaking of Photo Galleries, I’m working on the Project Two gallery. So far we’ve had 200 photos submitted and these mittens, socks and gloves are just gorgeous. Such happy colors! I’ll keep working on going through all of them to get them approved. I know you’d like to see them asap. I am just so proud of all of you who have been camping along with us this summer. You’ve inspired each other, and you’ve certainly inspired me. It has been a lot of fun! I hope you’re participating in Project Three with us. Remember, even if you have not done Project One or Two, you can still participate and join us in Project Three. Come along!

Sheri whoneedstoadjustbacktoaworking”sleep”schedule.
Stillstayinguptoolateinthep.m.andneedingtoomuchcoffeeinthea.m.

WH and I have been doing a lot of work around our house over the past two months. It’s amazing what a difference a little thing like brushed nickel door handles and new light fixtures, make. We’ve been in our house for 16 years and I didn’t realize how much I did not like the gold door handles and fixtures until we got rid of them. One of my very favorite things about our house is our screen porch. We added it to our house 8 or 10 years ago, and we use it daily. I recently saw the blue-ceiling porch photo (below) in this fun online magazine, that shows a blue ceiling on a screen porch. I think it makes it look like a beautiful blue sky. (Not sure I could get WH to buy into a blue ceiling on our porch and I’m not sure it would look right on ours, but it sure looks perfect on the one in the photo.)

My friend Janice and I were talking about things we like and don’t like about our houses this week. What’s one thing you love about your current house/condo/apt and/or one thing you wish you could change?

Thanks for all of your blog comments on the May Contest post. We bring a LOT of years worth of knitting experience together! If there weren’t over 1200 comments, I’d go through and add up all of our years.  But just suffice it to say, it’s a LOT.  I drew two names for the two Spring Fling Goodie Bags that I set aside for our May Contest. We’ll be sending those out to Caroline from Oregon and Maria from MN. Thanks again for participating in the contest!

WH and I are heading out to Colorado for a quick few days this next week. I’m leaving the Lovely Loopy Elves in charge here at Loopy, and one of Knitting Daughter’s good friends in charge of housesitting and cat watching at home. (I’m betting he will gravitate to the porch on most days, just like we do. I’m also betting he’ll be glad that we didn’t paint the ceiling baby blue before his housesitting job began.) I’ll do a blog update on Monday to fill you in on the Monday Update stuff (but probably later in the evening), and then I’ll be back to blogging again on Monday, the 23rd. In the meantime, back to the blog question today – what do you love and what would you change about where you live?

Sheri aworkerattheMontessorischoolacrosstheparkinglotis
randomlyspritzingwaterstraightupintotheair.Why?