Playing

Gabe is really fun to watch. She sits atop her cage - or sometimes inside it if all the toys are hanging down - and starts methodically working on the closest part of a string of beads. Some 5 minutes later, she gets through it, and it falls. Part of it falls in the cage, and always at least one bead falls outside on the floor. She cocks her head and watches it as it bounces *pok pok pok pockity-pock*. When it finally settles down, Gabe watches it a little longer with her head cocked, then does a freak-out flap-dance atop her cage, yells for a couple minutes, sometimes does a lap of the room, then starts preening. Fifteen minutes later she's tired of preening and returns to the toys. ^_^

She's really become much more entertaining to me, and I hope entertained as well, now that she's discovered chewing these toys apart. It used to be that she'd just sit kinda fluffy and drowsy all day. Now she spends half the day all animated with playing and preening, and she does spend another half the day napping inside her cage, head under her wing and all, so cute, *gwah!*, but the intermittant activity definitely seems better to me.

Fabric question

I bought a couple yards of cotton flannel to play with. When the woman was measuring and cutting them for me she asked me what I was making, and I told her I wasn't sure how much I'd need, so I over estimated. She pointed out that was a good idea so I could make the pattern line up on seams (big whoop for what I'm making), and to account for shrinkage.

My question is twofold: (1) How much is it going to shrink? (2) Should I prewash the fabric?