Preparedness for when

craigywv

hi LYNN he is gallopping abiut as normal,PINEAPPLE he loves all pastas /pulses and veg lol as my dad had him for a year or so before i took him my dads a vegetarian so dog was used to it.....just when he came here the carnivore in him came out lol,thevet seems to think i have brought it on feeding him meat again as he was happy being a veggie and his stomach is all over the place so no more meat matey!!! he loves his old eating habits anyway and he gets all hisvitamins etc....looks like maybe rain here soon so ioff to walk him, have alovely day all xxx

pineapple

I lived overseas where commercial dog food was either not available or cost the earth. So each week we made a bulk load - veg peelings, offal from the village butchers, maize flour, scraps.... It stank the house out on cooking day and solidified - we ended up feeding them disgusting great slabs :eek:. But the dogs thrived on it! When I see the sacks of expensive upmarket dog food (nutritionally balanced nat ) I sometimes wonder if we pet owners are being taken for a ride.

2tonsils

Still got the torrential rain here on and off, which is not good news when we have a broken drain for rain water that runs under the floor and through the wall in the house. It cracked and started leaking on the first earth tremor two days ago and is getting worse but can't get it done till Tuesday...just hope they don't have to dig up walls or floors to fix it (if they do I am calling the insurance in to do it...we are covered for earthquake damage.) Thank God we have a tiled floor as the water is coming in, had two puddles of it this morning and just mopped it up. Had to move lots of my stored plastic boxes though out of the way..the front room looks like a supermarket at the moment lol..but at least there isn't a carpet ruined! Wish to God it would stop raining so I can get it dried out properly, but we have the windows open and the dehumidifiers on.

Meanwhile we have had three earthquakes in two days, two more earlier today. I felt the one around 4am but presumed it was the wind making the house creak..it wasn't. Greece had two 4.9 earthquakes before 7am this morning! We are also feeling the quakes that are hitting Italy at the moment. This is a good link, if you scroll down below the map there is a list of earthquakes that happened in the last couple of days, if you look to the left there is file that you can click on and read the citizens reports and look at their photos/videos if they exist.
http://www.emsc-csem.org/#2

Yes, Piers and the others still maintain you could be in for heavy snow and very cold temperatures from Wednesday onwards..the timing is hard to get exactly right as its a few days away , but all the weather models are in agreement at the moment. It will hit most of Europe!

[Deleted User]

PINEAPPLE I'm absolutely certain we are!!!!! Even the vets are now offering allergy testing (I know, it was expensive) and when the boy had a twinge of arthritis they gave us a nutriceutical - Glucosamine which cost £67.00p and was exactly the same as the stuff I buy for £3.00 from the chemist for He Who Knows these Things!! but had the added 'value' of being tested on pets!!!!! Only once my friend, only once!!!!!!!! I remember a time when the dog was the dog and not a little hot house lily, we fed ours on lights, melts and meal biscuit and I'm sure they were a lot healthier and hardier than dogs are today, who says all modern developments are beneficial, not me for certain, Cheers Lyn xxx.

GreyQueen

Morning all.

I think the idea of "pet food" is a symptom of the affluent society. Animals used to be fed on scraps whereas these days I know some pampered pooches and overindulged kitties whose food bill is greater than that of their owners. Perhaps in hard times people will be having to look backwards to go forwards, and from the above posts, not necessarily a change to the detriment of the pets.

My parents' mogs adore their sachets of catfood but still like to scrounge for table-scraps and if everyone is out all day and meals not forthcoming at the expected time, the little darlings will self-serve from vermin and birdlife. Suspect, as per The World Without Us, they'd survive quite handily.

I'm smiling at my candles. Y'know, the ones I was making two weekends ago? I had the project hanging around unfinished as I found some broken and bent peach-hued tapered candles in the lottie shed (don't ask me why) and added them into the project, reserving a little wax for 2 go-rounds of filling up the slumpy bits in the middle. And plenty of time for solidifying.

I used 3 x Pr*ngles tubes and 2 x 1 litre UHT cartons as molds and all the candle wax was from stubs, fragments and puddles of wax, some mine, some from a pal, some from freecycle.

What I have now are 5 pillar candles, 3 cylindrical and 2 square sectioned. Some of the wax was coloured and some was white. I tinted the white wax with a little bit of the coloured so have one raspberry red UHT candle with a darker red infill, one slightly shorter UHT candle which is half red, then striped in plum, narrow band of purple and top band in peach. Tallest Pr*ngle candle ended up honey brown (white wax with tints and has a top-up of pure white), middle P candle has a dark green lower section and the top 2/3rd are peach, and the shortest P candle is shades of taupe with subtle gradients of colour from different pourings.

Pity I don't have a digi cam to share them, I'm a wee bit prideful at how cute they are, considering I was working randomly and pouring blind. Wanna do some more of this another time.

I did discover a couple of things; the UHT ones come out more easily when you rip the cartons off, but are slightly untrue of shape so not pure squares. A small amount of the melted wax also went into the folds of the TetraPak at the base. You can easily flex the pack to get this out and save towards the next candle but it does mean the base isn't perfectly flat. The irregularity doesn't impact on the stability, luckily.

Peeling the carboard tubes off the pillar candles was a little harder than the UHT cartons but do-able. It leaves a ghostly hint of the spiral from the packaging and on one candle a sort of plastic film adhered to the wax but it was easy to peel. Another candle has a wee bit of foil stuck near the top which is defying my admitedly vestigal fingernails, but I think I can get a knife-tip under it, albeit will leave a little scar in the wax.

I'm dead chuffed. The only bought-in element was the wicking and I have a wee bit left. I've created 5 large and useful candles from what would have gone in the bin, otherwise. In a prolonged power outage, you wouldn't want to be wasting any resource, so it's worth knowing how to reconsitute candles from stubs and scraps. I didn't use any special equipment just old tin soup cans to hold the wax in a saucepan of water, to form a double-boiler.

All in all, a good job jobbed. Now, what shall I do next? Tempted by charcloth, got some old linen teatowel scraps which could be used, could do that on the lottie.........

nuatha

MrsLurcherwalker wrote: »

I remember a time when the dog was the dog and not a little hot house lily, we fed ours on lights, melts and meal biscuit and I'm sure they were a lot healthier and hardier than dogs are today, who says all modern developments are beneficial, not me for certain, Cheers Lyn xxx.

Those are terms I haven't heard in quite a while.
I remember the smell of cooking those along with raw tripe for dogs. What I can't remember is what our cats were fed on when I was small, I suspect it would be butchery offcuts (Dad being a butcher) and kitchen meat trimmings. I can't remember a special diet being cooked the way it was for the dogs.

Congrats on the candles GQ,

BitterAndTwisted

I've got a couple of black bin-bags full of pillar candle-ends from a friend who works in a pub. I really, really must get down to making some candles from them sometime soon. I normally use cotton string for wicks and if I want to colour the wax some kid's wax crayons do the trick very nicely. I got some dead cheap from @sda a while back. Oh, and I scent them with some equally cheapo oils I bagged on fleabay. I use old glass tumblers for moulds which I picked up in a charity shop many moons ago.

I was going to make a bunch of them for Christmas presents but never got round to it. Procrastination is my middle name.

GreyQueen

Jealous of your candle-ends, B & T. Very jealous. Discovered that candlemaking is good fun and I shall be keeping my eyes peeled for more leftovers to play with.

What I think about a lot of craft, and household skills, and survival thingies, is that you need to practice them otherwise when push comes to shove, you will be struggling. Being able to light a fire in the rain could save your life one day.

Speaking of which, the fog has now lifted although it's still a bit murky so I'm flat out of excuses and about to head to my lotties to indulge in [STRIKE]pyrom[/STRIKE] ooops, I meant practice my firelighting skills, and cultivate some ground.

Liddly have their seeds in store now, if anyone is after them. Cheapest ones are 29p a pack. I'm gonna grow some sunflowers because I like them and because I want to experiment with harvesting their seeds for food. If the birdies don't get to them first, of course.

[Deleted User]

NUATHA there are some days when I feel like Mr Noahs Mum! but that's what they were called way back when. The other thing we used to feed was cooked udder and the smell from that it indescribable!!!!!! GQ fascinated by the idea of making charcloth, I did research it on the interwebulator and the method was folded cloth in a sealed tin with a very tiny hole in buried in the fire and left until the ashes were cold, I'd be really interested to know how the cloth turns out if you do have a go at making it, It sounds easy but I'll bet my cotton socks it isn't, Good Luck, Cheers Lyn xxx.

westlothianlass

Hello my lovelies
Not been able to spend as much time on the puter' recently with work and study so hope everyone is well,
Ive missed you all, sad thing that I am:rotfl:.
Its a beautiful day today and its lifted my spirits so in the mood for [STRIKE]playing around [/STRIKE]making useful stuff. Very jealous of your candle making GQ well done you.
I bought a book on soap making the other day and am very excited at the prospect of making some. I have a table outside under a gazebo so think that would be a good place to play so I dont cause chaos/stink the house out:D.
Craigywv glad the pooch is feeling better.
Right off to put the kettle on and dream of numerous seed packets falling through my letterbox.
Hugs WLL x