Happy New Year !
The last few months have been spent getting the picture framing workshop organised.
I have had a small amount of work so far but given that everything is generally quiet at this time of year it's not surprising. At least I am well stocked and it will be a nice change to have money coming in as opposed to the endless invoices during the setup period.
Keeping enough, and the correct, stock is quite tricky. Quoting for a frame in a moulding and mount that I do not stock means £50 minumum moulding order, 20 mountboard sheet minumum order and a delivery charge of £20. That is quite an investment for a single frame so the object is to use existing stock. However it is also important to frame using the right combination of materials so once a month I will bite the bullet and place a new order.
I guess it will be a year before I know if the business is a success but at least it keep me off the streets.
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Not too much happening on the croft as I am still deciding what to do with the land. The Land Rover went down to Inverness for a very expensive service. This one involved replacing every single fluid on the vehicle and I had a new battery fitted as well. I also invested in a block heater. This is esentially a 2.5kW heater that sits in the coolant circuit and can raise the block temperature to around 85C in 45minutes.
The advantage is that the engine will be warm before starting on a cold day. This reduces engine wear and also means the interior is toasty instead of arctic.
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I mentioned in my last diary entry that I had a Stoat as a house guest. Well after 6 weeks of almost 24/7 recording I managed to "capture" him. It was quite an effort to edit 24 hours of film to extract a couple of minutes so I started to use telltales in the places he visited. This made editing a little easier as moving the telltale was obvious even when scanning through at high speed.
At some point I will put the video together but for now I have a few stills. Bear in mind that Stoats do not hang around anywhere for long !.
These pictures are taken in the "kitchen" just by the front door. Fats (as he is now called) managed to steal the drip tray I mentioned and it is now probably hidden between the walls. Fats managed to find three ways of getting into the kitchen but all are sealed so he should lose interest soon.
Apologies for the low quality but the camera is low resolution and these are captures from video. Also the camera colours are poor in low light and it captures infra red when the lights are off. Anyway you can see that Fats is adopting his winter white camouflage.
This is a cute image of Fats when he returned to retrieve the drip tray he hid in the wall. Just to the right of the heater is a wall void that I filled with expanding foam to keep the wind out.
This did not stop him and he spent quite a long time digging a hole to get at the fat store.
This was his next tunnel into the kitchen which I discovered by accident. The lid is a telltale that allows me to see activity when editing the video clips.
This was a funny sequence. I came home at about 4.30 pm which was a favourite time for Fats to visit. I think he must have been busy chomping through the insulation again and did not hear me arrive. Having seen that the telltale lid had moved I replaced it and stopped the video and immedialy restarted it again.
Checking throught the video I saw that Fats had come into the kitchen but had not left. So he must have been caught out and still in the kitchen when I arrived. I stopped/started the video and saw the tell tale had moved again so more activity.
The yellow arrow shows Fats in mid air and blurred as he takes his chance for freedom.
The next picture shows him in full flight at the back of the fridge...
And back down to safety !.
I have timed this sequence and he made the journey in 2.18 seconds. No wonder they are hard to see on video.
Incidently the black dots on the mat are not what you think !. I spilled some bird seed... honest.
So that tunnel has been sealed as well so that takes care of Tom & Dick but what about Harry ?.
Well we finally came face to face one night after he had found a way throught the roof !. I opened the kitchen door and Fats was sitting on the draining board. I swear I saw his eyes roll... Anyway he did an amazing set of acrobatics to get back into the roof which deserved 10/10.
I have only seen Fats once since and that was when he managed to trip a mouse trap with his nose. He lept into the air (without the trap) and disappeared never to be seen again.
I will keep my eyes open for him again but he was becoming a bit of a pest so perhaps this was for the best.
Enough of this excitement....
More next month.
Cheers
Pat
