Battling the Squirrel and HMS Progress

One of the many local squirrels and I are fighting an ongoing war over ownership of the can of birdseed on my front porch. I say I own it and the contents belong to the neighborhood bird population, but he seems to think that it’s his personal dinner pail. This is a metal can with one of the handles that swings over the lid to hold it in place. There’s a small bump on each side of the handle that barely serves to lock on the lid. Mr. Squirrel has figured out how to deftly bypass that minimal security measure. I actually watched him in action yesterday (he’s a bold little boy and doesn’t care if we’re watching him through the sidelight, about 2 feet away from him). Interestingly enough, he does most of the work with his teeth and not his paws/claws. He grabs the handle and works it back and forth until he finally pops it off of the lid, then lifts up the lid and usually flicks it off so that it lands noisily on the concrete porch and announces his latest raid. Then he parks his fuzzy little buttocks inside the can and munches to his heart’s content. I can tap on the sidelight and he just looks at me as he continues to munch on a sunflower seed. Little stinker. So, last night, as I was replacing the lid for the half-dozenth (is that even a word?) time that day, I decided to grab the heavy pitchfork that was leaning up against the wall a couple of feet away and lean it up against the can. I figured that might slow him down a bit, though honestly I just expected to hear a heavy thud and he somehow managed to toss the pitchfork off of the can. I came down this morning to a squirrel sized opening of the lid – under the pitchfork. He got the handle down off of the lid and managed to open it just far enough to get in without having to budge the pitchfork.

I know the easy answer is to find a more secure can, though I can’t go with plastic because he’ll chew right through it (we’ve had this argument before and he wins). I’ll have to troll the Lowe’s or the hardware store down the street and weigh my options. I think Terry still gets a kick out of the little guy managing to continue to weasel his way in, but I’m starting to get annoyed. I respect that he wants a meal, but the birds have a right to one, as well.

Anyway, squirrel wars aside, I put a little bit of work into Heirloom Memories Sampler last night. I decided that, despite having spent a couple of hours practicing my bullion roses the other night, I need to skip down and do the hardanger section at the bottom first. I don’t want to try to roll those bulky bullion roses into the scroll frame and still try to maintain decent tension on the piece. I just don’t think it will work out well. So, I cut out the hardanger sections last night while watching a marathon of Say Yes to the Dress. I absolutely hate working with silk perle and Thea seems to adore it, so I keep getting stuck in this trap with her designs when I buy her accessory packs. I have the same problem every time. When cutting out the hardanger sections, the tip of my scissors inevitably ends up pulling one of the perle stitches in a kloster block. It snags, I have to compensate and, somewhere in the process, I get frustrated and swear off silk perle all over again. There are some cases where silk is heavenly to work with and there are some cases where it is just a nightmare. To me, silk perle and hardanger just don’t mix well. Especially when worked on 32 count fabric where each little section to corner to cut out is just that much tighter. I have this problem every time I work with silk perle. If anyone has any suggestions, I’m open to them.

And now, I’m off the start the needleweaving process. I’m really skeptical about what the results of using white silk to weave next to ecru silk kloster blocks are going to look like, though….