Leader of Men

bunnies, past and present

Today was the one-year anniversary of the sudden death of my dear bunny Narcissus, friend to me and girlfriend to Attila for seven years.

 (Narcissus on the left, Attila on the right)

A few weeks ago, I came home from work to discover Attila acting strangely, and refusing to eat. As anyone versed in proper rabbit care knows, ileus - the cessation of gastrointestinal activity - is deadly for bunnies, and swift. I rushed him to the vet in terrible fear. The vet diagnosed Attila as having a stroke, and broke the news to me that he believed Attila had been blinded. It had scared and stressed him into not eating.

The next few days were miserable for the both of us as I mixed copious amounts of small-animal gruel and forcefed it to him every few hours. After three days of that he'd had enough and refused. He nibbled at some bok choy but the vet told me to remove it as it was too sugary for the delicate state of his stomach. I resorted to shoving dandelion stalks in his face until he snapped at them in frustration. Finally, he took a bite here, a bite there. When he started eating hay on his own again I nearly cried in joy. Never have I been so happy to clean a litterbox.

He's doing fine now, and the vet even believes he's regained some of his eyesight. It's hard to say how much, but he navigates without a problem and rarely bumps into things. He's become exceptionally affectionate, and enthusiastically licks my collarbones when I hold him. Other than the residual loss of eyesight, he's perfectly healthy, which is amazing for a 10-and-a-half-year old rabbit.

Much thanks goes out to my friend Meredith and all of my imaginary internet friends - you know who you are - for being so supportive and rooting for Attila the whole way, and to the pet-loving community members of Etsy who touched me with their many responses and concerns to a thread I posted there about Attila. Such big drama over such a small rabbit! But he means the world to me, and I hope we have a great many more years together, before he rejoins his beloved Narcissus.

it's too nice outside to be blogging

It's been three weeks since I wrote anything here, which is pretty shoddy. But I have an excuse:

I live here. Yay me!

I also have another exam coming up in June. Maybe after that I'll have a life.

other women shop for shoes

I spent a lovely morning and afternoon in Squamish shopping for rocks. Specifically, visiting one of our suppliers' quarries to select focal boulders for a project under construction. We also visited what I have lovingly dubbed The Biggest &%$#@! Scariest Saw You Have Ever Seen.

This is what cuts the largest boulders on the site into slabs. I like the helpful arrows pointing out its killing edge. I am sure I will be encountering it again later in my nightmares.

We visited two different quarries (one charmingly named "The Boulder Patch") to select about a dozen specimens from among thousands. It had just rained and the entire quarry was oozing mud, and we had to scramble across huge piles of boulders trying to not break our ankles in the process. The foreman dropped his watch and lost a little piece of it down a crack. It was a lot of fun.

If you are still reading this post, which I fully admit is waxing poetic about piles of rocks, I commend you. They don't look like much in a big heap, but when you get up close and start examining their unique forms and textures and colours, and start envisioning how they will look in the finished project and express the intent of your design with their individual beauty, well, that's when you realize you're the sort of dork that writes blog posts about big piles of rocks.

Anyway, I found some beautiful jade Cheekeye river boulders for the project's water feature. This one in particular had gorgeous colour and texture. Isn't it cute the way they mark them, all tied up in a red ribbon like it's a present?

This is a pretty massive Cheekeye, about 5' across, and will be the main boulder in the water feature grouping. The bottoms of all of these will be sawn flat with the giant &%$#@! scary saw so they will be stable on a flat concrete pad, cored into the middle and dowelled in.

My coworker was scoping out some enormous chunks of granite for her project. The largest the foreman measured was over 7 feet across.

   

It's always exciting when you can find some boulders with pre-existing moss. Yes, I said exciting. Like finding a shirt with diamond buttons for normal people. I picked out these lovely mossy little basalt pieces for the project's meditation garden.

  

  

 

When these boulders are installed in the next month or two, I'll take some more pics and post them here for show-and-tell (if everyone hasn't passed out from boredom, that is).

 

monthly goal check-in

 

The time has come for the monthly goal check-in, and I'm pleased to report that I accomplished a tiny smidge of what I intended to, which is better than nothing at all.

Here's what I wanted to accomplish:

1. Re-photograph all leftover 2008 inventory.

2. Find myself a good small business accountant.

3. List at least 50 items in terrain.

4. Rebrand leader of men - new business card and shop banner.

5. Blog at least 3 times weekly here.

6. Revamp blog sidebars.

7. Bribe girl at work into modelling some items for me.

8. Participate/attend at least 3 Vancouver area craft events to network, network, network.

Now that I've stopped dying of laughter, this is what I actually got done:

1. HALF-ACCOMPLISHED. I got about half of 2008 leftover inventory re-photographed. Unfortunately I've been working some long hours again and daylight is in short supply.

2. ACCOMPLISHED! This was the most important goal, and I am extremely happy that I found a very good and very affordable small business accountant.

3. HA HA HA HA! What was I thinking? I got 12 items listed. I was doing quite well at the beginning of the month but got drowned at my day job in the latter half.

4. SORT OF PARTIALLY HALF-FINISHED. I have some sketches for some new branding but haven't decided on anything yet.

5. CLOSE ENOUGH TO ACCOMPLISHED THAT I'M GOING TO CALL IT ACCOMPLISHED. I posted 8 times in 3 weeks. Which is an 800% improvement from the previous 3 weeks.

6. HALF-HEARTED STAB AT IT. I prettied up the links to design blogs but that's about it.

7. THIS WOULD HAVE BEEN ACCOMPLISHED IF #3 HAD BEEN ACCOMPLISHED.

8. I GAVE IT A GOOD SHOT BUT THE REST OF THE WORLD WOULD NOT CO-OPERATE.  I had signed up to volunteer at the Swap-O-Rama-Rama several weeks in advance, only to be told a week before the event that they no longer needed my help. Oh well. But I did make it to the Got Craft show last weekend to schmooze it up a bit.

Since so few of these things actually got done, I'm going to retain this list for my May goals. Work is getting ridiculously busy again (recession? what recession?) and I have another exam coming up at the beginning of June, so I don't think there's anything more I could realisticly expect to complete.

she's having my babies

Last weekend I picked up a little Sempervivens (otherwise known as hens-and-chicks) to add some green to my desk. The nursery had about a dozen different kinds but when I saw this variety called "Fuzzywuzzy", I knew I could not resist such awesomeness.

I potted it Saturday, and Monday morning I discovered it had sprouted about 15 little babies off the ends of its decidedly furry leaves. When they are a little bigger I will buy a horde of tiny pots, plant them, and train them to be my Fuzzywuzzy army.

    

 

houseguest and sushi

HB turned up in Vancouver for a few days last week, on his way from New Brunswick to Tofino. Since the Maritimes are not exactly known for sushi and HB had a hankering, we wandered over to Hi Nippon on 4th so he could restock his stomach.

 

Notice how there aren't actually any photos of sushi here. What can I say, I was hungry.

a vintage tin with tasty added bonus

While grubbing about at the antiques fair last weekend I spied this badly beat-up tin tucked away on the bottom of a shelf. Despite its poor condition it had some great graphics and text, and when I looked a little closer I was delighted to discover it was a tin for "Nokorode" (no-corrode) soldering paste.  As I do some metalsmithing on occasion and greatly enjoy the mangling of common words for advertising purposes, I thought it would be a fun thing to have.

When I picked it up it felt strangely heavy, so I looked inside - it is still half-full of soldering paste! I don't know if soldering paste has an expiry date, but I don't think I'll try it anyway. And by try it, that means soldering or eating it.

It was made by the M.W. Dunton Company in Providence, Rhode Island, probably in the 1920s. M.W. Dunton was in business for nearly 100 years before being purchased and absorbed by Rectorseal in 1998. More info on M.W. Dunton is available here.

 

summer surf

Aquamarine, pineapple quartz, sterling silver. In terrain.

vintage ring boxes

One of my finds from Saturday's antique market: two vintage ring boxes, quite worn but still charming. One box reads "W.E. Watts Ltd, 25 St. James Street, Derby, Founded 1858", the other is unmarked. They look like leather but are some sort of light wood.

Moonstone and citrine rings from Leader of Men.

the easter bunny was good to me

I spent a lovely Easter weekend doing all sorts of things, none of which were things I was supposed to be doing. Sunday's weather was miserable, cold and wet and windy, so naturally I decided venture outside to take a bus for an hour across town to visit a chair. And said chair ended up coming home with me, being cheap and of loose virtue.

Here she is:

Before anyone who is a fan of midcentury modern design starts squealing loudly and wakes up the cat, this is not the classic 1956 Eames lounge chair. This chair is an Eames-style lounge by another MCM company called Plycraft. Not quite the same cache, but still a great vintage find and without the ridiculous four-figure price tag. I picked this up for $200 CAN including taxes and delivery, which for you American folks is about $5 plus a Twinkie.

The leather is in rough shape with some fading and a couple of small tears, but eventually I will have it reupholstered. The wood is in good condition and the swivel and tilting mechanisms work flawlessly. It is also dangerously comfortable. As if I needed another reason to avoid fresh air and the outside world. It is also dangerously sexy. Sitting in this chair is like beer goggles; everyone looks better with it on. Bunnies too.