Midori's Floating World Cafe

If you are looking for a cute, neighborhood sushi place with a great lunch special in Minneapolis...well, I can tell you about one! Midori's Floating World Cafe!  For $10-$12 you can get a very filling lunch and for a bit more, you can have a delicious cup of loose leaf tea.  Just a quick plug for a place we love and one we think not enough people know about.

A pair for a pair.

A wedding present for my friend Becky and her new husband Kyle.  These are my first attempts at potholders and I think they turned out to be a relatively good pair.

The front is a mixture of fabrics and the back is a panel of the striped fabric you might recognize from a recent project!

I included a loop of ribbon in case the newlyweds prefer to hang their potholders. There is a double layer of cotton batting in the middle to make them able to do their job. I don't have a walking foot, so I had to futz with things to keep all these layers feeding through evenly.  The corners got a bit thick and hard to sew through.

I was inspired by the instructions from my girl thursday's blog post.  Since I wanted to use the cotton batting I had on hand instead of the kind Chantilly had on hand for her instructions, I didn't sew my strips to the backing.  I sewed the 4 layers together after they were all cut to size and then turned it right side out with a little area I had left open.  Sometimes it is really nice to sew things that don't have to fit a person!

Mid-Summer Clean-up

People post so many flyers around my workplace that the bulletin boards built up layer upon layer upon layer of paper.  I caught a crew doing a clean-up.  I love, love, love the resulting college after they've torn off what they can.

Camilla, Petunia and Nellie in June

June was a big month for Camille, Petunia and Nellie.  They went from spending a few hours each evening outside to full-time outdoor birds.  Their little box was getting a bit crowded and their energy level and curiosity were outgrowing the brooding box, too!

When I took the lid off to do some cleaning and refilling, Nellie made a jump for it!

The space that they spent a lot of time in when we brought them out each evening is beside a window.  This was when Fanny first discovered what was making all of that noise she could hear through the air vents that went from the basement to our 1st floor.

Since the timeline was getting pretty tight, Paul really put all of his energy into getting the coop and run done.

I think it is safe to say that they love it!

They get a lot of free ranging time when we are home and have a safe space to enclose them when we leave.

We are still working on socializing them.  One of the things we do to ease their fear is to bring them treats like worms.  This approach has had mixed success as Camille now associates me with treats and is much less fearful.  However she seems unable to tell the different between a worm and my toes so she gets confused and pecks at my toes!

None of them love to be held but they all tolerate it once you catch them!  There have been a few comical incidences of chasing the chickens down to get them into the run.

Nellie is almost done filling in her face with feathers.

Petunia surprised us by growing a neck beard.  Which is funny because we are becoming more and more confident that she is a hen and less and less worried that she could be a rooster.

I guess we just have a bearded lady chicken!

Transit

When the weather is nice here, there are so many ways to get around and so many fun sights to see along the way.

Like this one from a lunch time walk:

Or this one from my bike commute home:

A new branch of the light rail opened up a month ago.  Welcome to town, Green Line!

I spotted these cranes that grace the area that formerly housed the Metrodome on a weekend ride.

On a recent bike ride home, I came across a loose dog.  He had a collar and tags and was super friendly.  He came right to me when I stopped my bike and called to him.  I was thankful because he was at the intersection of a well trafficked street.  Since he had tags, I figured it would be easy to figure out where he belonged.  I tried calling the vet from the rabies tag but the number was disconnected.  So then I called the microchip number and found the nice doggy's owner hadn't registered it!  Nobody was walking around calling for the dog and none of the nearby neighbors recognized him.  Luckily a kind woman stopped when she saw what was up and offered to help.  I couldn't do much more than I had since I was on bike.  She agreed to give him a ride to animal control.  As you can see from the picture, he was totally cool with that.  I hope he was reconnected with his people!

Another funny transportation related tidbit: I have an international trip planned for September and will be doing a bit of driving.  In order to legally do that, I needed to get an international driving permit.  My permit was mailed with a cute post it note from a AAA employee.  By golly, I think I will have fun! Thank you, AAA!