Project: poplar pet gates

dining room/kitchen gate

BEFORE: hallway barricade

When puppy Jack first came home, a couple of wastebaskets in the doorway were enough to keep him in the kitchen. Very quickly though, two serious barricades of random stuff were necessary to keep Jack penned in. Yuck. I considered buying baby gates, but the options out there were so horrible (or they looked passable, but were too expensive to buy two), I decided to make my own. We had leftover poplar from our window sashes project and while searching online, I serendipitously found this. Perfect(!), although my gates would be much smaller in scale to fit the doorways. I also had constraints with the direction in which the gates could swing. I decided to forgo the caster (as much as I love casters) because my floors are fairly uneven. It was a bit hard to find hinges that would work for me (thanks finally to OSH!), and a latch that I could attach to the outside. Then I had to meet T's perfectionist-engineer requirements. But all in all, I'm very happy with the results. And having a clear hallway again, PRICELESS!

AFTER: hallway/kitchen gate

interfering with the work

yum, let me chew on this!

Doggie hats

Yes, it's been a while since I last posted. Super busy at work. But during thanksgiving, I made these hats for my brother (his dogs, that is) and he finally got around to taking a picture. They were a huge pain to size (try holding a hyper boston terrier still), but once I got the pattern down, the second hat took very little time. I used a washable acrylic yarn.