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Thursday, April 3rd, 2008

Alison's Rag Rugs page

Looney Labs In the News: Underground Gamers review of Aquarius and Conrad Zimmerman's review of Fluxx

What changes have you made to Zark City since version 1.1? Why haven't you made a video in like forever?

This week it's all about Alison and various construction projects which Kristin and I have been helping her with. Firstly, we've building a fence in the side yard. Two fences actually. Why? For the theoretical dog!

We've been gradually preparing to become dog owners for quite some time now. Kristin & I have never lived with a dog and in truth never much cared for them, being instead cat people; but since Alison really wants a dog, Kristin and I have been working at cultivating a pro-dog stance.

A little over a year ago, we spent a few weeks living with a friend's dog named Nessa, as an experiment in having a dog in our house, and that test went well enough that we've been gradually making plans to adopt a dog of our own ever since. But it's been slow going since a) we're all just crazy-busy doing Looney Labs stuff and b) we're being super-picky about dogs we could consider adopting, since we want to have the best possible odds of developing a good relationship with the dog.

I cannot say yet when a dog will arrive... we've reached a stage where it could be very soon, or could still be a long time yet. It's kind of like we're a couple expecting a baby; we've been bracing ourselves for the rapidly-approaching day when things in our household suddenly become different.

Towards this end, we've been putting in a couple of new fences, to enclose a section of the side yard as an area the dog can have to itself. We're also planning to install a doggie door in the kitchen wall through which the theoretical dog can gain access to this fenced in zone.

The next project we've been helping Alison with is the construction of a new latrine structure for the land her family owns out in West Virginia. Although she and her parents and brother went out to The Land many many times while Alison was growing up, she hadn't been out there in ages. Moreover, although Kristin & I have often heard about it The Land during our 9 years with Alison, we'd never been there before -- until last weekend. Now, having finally visited the Land, it's hard to figure out why it's taken us so long to do so. It's great!

The Land owned by Alison's family is 68+ acres of wooded mountainside located about a 2 hour drive from our house. The property includes a small pond and stretch of riverbank and, oddly enough, a small graveyard featuring tombstones from the 17-1800s.

What the Land lacks however is much in the way of facilities. There's a nice little shelter -- a sort of permanent tent if you will -- which the Franes built themselves when Alison was a kid. The shelter is still in pretty good shape, and we're talking about fixing it up. But if we're really going to be going out there more, the first thing the place needs is a new latrine.

So Alison (with a lot of help from Kristin and a little bit from me) is designing and building an A-frame style latrine. We'll be hauling it up the mountainside during our next visit to the Land, making the place that much more inviting, and we're planning to start taking camping trips out there this summer.

Lastly, as long as I'm yammering so much about Alison and the things she's been making, I have to also mention her newest crafting craze: She's weaving a throw rug out of rags! She's been cutting up various old clothing of ours, you know the kind, those beloved old shirts that have too many holes in them to keep wearing but which you hate to let go of... well, she's been recycling them into area rugs (well, just this one so far, but she's got others planned) and it's a great way of giving something old a new life!

For more details on this, check out the page she just posted about her Rag Rugs project.

Alison is amazing, isn't she? (BTW, Happy Birthday, Alison!)

Thanks for reading, and have a great fortnight!