New paintings and regular art updates.
I need to move on. I’m not going to ride this and I’m not sure if anyone will buy it. It’s a trike conversion. The back wheels and stays are bolted onto a bike frame so it can be adjusted to different sizes. We refurbished it, adding new wheels in 2022. A friend has stored it for me for over a year but it’s not fair to expect him to keep it.
So with regret I will try and sell it. If anyone here is interested I’m in the North Midlands of the UK. I’m willing to sell for a fair price.
A few weeks ago I spilt some bleach on my favourite trousers. I’ve been meaning to do something about it, so today I plucked up courage and got my black acrylic paint out. I put a book inside them so the paint wouldn’t show through on the other side then carefully painted the orange tinted bleached areas. What do you think? I think it’s turned out rather good!
For months now our cat flap has been broken. Not the main part of it, but the screen that opens in and out. Basically we had tried to keep the big cat in at night by putting the lock on it, but he forced his way through and broke the flap part into three bits. For a while I glued it together, and taped it up with sellotape, but soon that had been ripped so my next idea was to tie it open with some string. I can’t get down on the floor so I couldn’t swap one catflap for another and I didn’t know if I could get a replacement.
Today my sister came over so we decided to go on a search. The local petshop said it was a staywell catflap and they only stock petsafe ones. So we went to the big petstore. We had managed to take the front and flap mechanism off as it had catches you push in to release it. The store had about seven different sorts but according to the customer assistant out catflap was out of date!
Eventually after much head scratching we found one that was about the right size. We couldn’t take it out of the box so it was a guess but I decided to try it.
When we got home I and looked at it I realised the whole catflap was slightly narrower than the old one so the screw holes were closer together and if I were to use the whole thing we would have to get someone in to re-drill the holes. Plan B was to take the plastic flap out of the new one and put it in the old one? Yes it fitted, but it was too stiff, the diameter of the cylinders that go into the holes in the flap were too big. My sister filed the sides of the cylinders down where there was a flange around them and I used a knife to whittle the inside of the tube shaped bits it fitted in…. Result! The flap now swings freely. There is about a two millimeter gap at the bottom but it hangs in the closed position and opens both in and outward.
Now I’ve just got three confused cats, there isn’t a hole to leap through anymore, but a window out to the garden. Bemused looks! I opened the flap for one of them and opened the door for the other… If they want to come back in they will have to learn to use it!
Mallaband-Brown