PEP Badge: Oddball

This is some heat duct I replaced and installed.  
 I needed to run heat duct to two bedrooms.  Added an 8inch T out of the furnace and ran 8inch up through the ceiling to another 8inch T.  For bedroom #1 I reduced it down to a 6inch duct to a vent I added in the baseboard.  For bedroom #2 I reduced it to a 6inch then to a 4inch flex duct that I could run under the joists to a vent I added in the floor.
 In my kitchen the old register needed replacing.  I removed the old 8x10 register and 8inch duct from the basement and replaced it with an insulated 8inch flex duct.  The new replacement register was 10x10 that I made into the 8x10 that I needed.  

I had to tile a bathroom floor.  
The depth of the floor was 1.5 inches deep so I used Portland cement and concrete sand to raise it .75 inch. After it dried I laid the tile using thin set in a herring bone pattern.  Later I pointed it with type-s cement to match the other room as opposed to doing typical tile grouting.
The cement is still green in the finished picture.

I crocheted a disguise for my porch goose. If Otis or Otessa is from anywhere around the Ohio Valley they understand the cultural significance of dressed porch geese.
Seriously though, if this doesn't qualify I understand but I felt like it bridges some aspects of textiles (creating custom fit clothing from natural materials) and community (artwork/decoration for the neighborhood, cultural trends). It certainly feels "odd" just not sure if ball. I'd only ask for 0.5 point here given the piano factor, its more about the skills involved creating a woven piece of "art" or clothing.

This took me about 8 hours of crocheting with six colors of yarn.

(This is my first oddball submission so I hope I've provided all the necessary details)

I've been wanting to make a fabric haybox for a long time. This should be very helpful for decoctions and dyebaths, yogurt making, and of course slow-cooking food.

Nothing new to make this apart from the thread.  The canvas is a cotton remnant from my mom's donated stash. All the filling is tiny unusable scraps of natural fabrics (mostly cotton, with some wool and linen). Loops are the only synthetic bits (upcycled lanyard).

Fully self-drafted to fit my medium sized pot in which we cook beans and grains.

The most time consuming part was sorting through piles of fabric scraps to identify and rip/cut up truly unsalvageable textile (and I do free quilting, so in order to qualify as "unsalvageable", a piece must really be minuscule or worn thin).  I estimate that 3 pounds of fiber that would otherwise have gone to a landfill were used. There's a reason textiles are so hard to recycle!

I've measured the temperature, and it can keep a liter of water in the "safe food zone" (above 60oC) for at least two hours (starting from boiling).

And it passes the "very cool" test from my teenagers.

Took about two and a half hours of work in many 10 minute increments

I have been working on a project that stacks functions:

1) I have been having a hard time gardening because of the number of vermin. After 2 summers at this house, located on the Wildlife-Urban interface, I have struggled to keep new sprouts from being eaten. I feel like my efforts to be a gardener have merely been transferred to feeding the vermin. Even my mint, alliums, and horseradish get eaten!!! I need a far better solution than trapping.

2) My kids yearn for a pet but I am definitely not interested in having an indoor pet. I just don't feel like an animal lives it's best life trapped indoors; I feel the same goes for us, humans. I'd like to facilitate teaching my kids the importance of having a routine and a responsibility to another living being. I observe how they interact with animals and I think they're ready for a pet.

3) I sometimes have butchering scraps that I'd prefer to give to an animal rather than bury.

After spending time at Wheaton Labs and taking notes of how the boots manage the cats on property plus the successful hunts that the cats there have, I made plans to replicate this system at my house.

This BB submission is for an insulated, outdoor cat house.

I used a combination of hard and soft wood scraps that I already had available to me. I also completed the fire rack with forethought that I would mount the cat house on top. You'll notice that the fire rack overhangs, intentionally. I will be taking temperature measurements of the interior of the cat house. If the cat house doesn't stay warm enough in the winter then the location of the cat house enables me to make a 6in hole through the stucco exterior wall that would lead to top shelf of my laundry room where I could then mount an indoor cat house. For now, this additional step may not be necessary.

I used wool tanning scraps that my friend gave me to staple into the interior of the cat house.

I mounted the cat house on top of the fire rack to give the cat protection from wildlife.

Now, I just need an outdoor cat =)