A new year

You can't reflect on this past year without talking about Covid. I have been very fortunate to be able to work from home and have the means to have groceries and other items delivered rather than go out to purchase them in person, so my exposure has been limited, and to the best of my knowledge I have not ever contracted the virus. However, a work colleague died from it just two days after Thanksgiving. He was due to retire at the end of the year and had a family. I was looking over some computer code he wrote for me just yesterday (very well written, too), and it saddens me greatly that he passed away too soon from his life. He was a really nice guy. 

Another sadness is that we lost our beloved furry buddy, Felix, in early December. He lived a good, long life and we so enjoyed having him in ours. 

Felix Shag-a-ferocious Tuggle-rumpkin
2003 - Dec 2, 2020

Moving on...

I had a very crafty-filled year, most of which I wrote about in this post, so I won't repeat it here. I splurged on a number of new "toys" - partly out of retail therapy because of feeling cooped up but mostly because I wanted them.

And believe it or not there were things I didn't own yet. This Cricut Maker was a Christmas gift that arrived this week. Not a great picture of the machine, but the picture was more meant to show off the snowflakes I made - my first project after cutting out the sample blue bear. It's fun! I think my next project will be to cut out some lettering to label some drawers that store sewing supplies. It'll dress them up a bit more than boring label-maker tags. I'm also excited to use this to cut small fabric pieces, either for quilting or machine embroidery applique.

The rest of my Christmas gifts were mostly either items to sew with, like bobbins, sewing machine feet, embroidery hoop, or books on knitting. Two books on Norwegian-style knitting!

And speaking of knitting, I finished one sock today:

Last week I finished sewing a Christmas-themed potholder. Another one just needs the binding. Maybe I'll get to it tomorrow.

I've always wanted to crochet snowflakes, so I gave it a go. I don't know that I'll ever make all 100! Haha! 

And on this New Year's Eve, I also spent some time spinning:

So what's in store for 2021? Well, one things for certain, I will do more knitting, sewing, embroidery, spinning, and weaving. And now that I have this new Cricut, I might do a little scrapbooking. I still have plans to do some fiber dying with natural materials - I received an indigo dye kit and some madder plant material at my spinning guild gift exchange. 

Happy New Year!!

My Ella

Ella

April 1997 - August 27, 2015

I have lost my sewing buddy. She was a great companion and I shall miss her terribly. Ella was 18 years old and her health had been declining over the last year or so. On Monday evening she had a seizure, followed by another a few hours later, and then another... The vet prescribed some medicine and gave her fluids but her seizures continued and it became obvious that the only humane thing to do was to help her go over the Rainbow Bridge, as they say. She is no doubt happy to see her old friend, Sammy, and maybe Gris-Gris too, though she didn't care for him all that much.

Ella as pattern weight

Photo-bombing the picture of the sock monkey I made

Keeping my weaving warm for me

Holding down a run-away ball of yarn

You were loved.

Ella is the queen cat

Ella prefers soft pillows...and thinks Felix is a pest and shouldn't be in her house.

Where does Felix sleep?

Anywhere he wants.

On a box. Note the nice, soft blanket on the bed (for the cats) complete with cat toys. But no, the box is more comfortable.

In the sink...with the faucet poking into his side. He was sound asleep and snoring. Oh, and he doesn't have a big white "skunk" stripe - that's light coming in from the skylight.

And finally, on the fall centerpiece I just put together a few hours ago. Who knew that pumpkins and gourds made nice pillows?

Magazine overload

I have to do something difficult. No, I'm not getting rid of these Threads magazines (yet), but I am going to let my renewal pass by. It's not that I don't enjoy the magazine because I do. I just don't have room to keep collecting them, and frankly, I don't have time to thoroughly read them either. When the magazine arrives I flip through it and I see the helpful articles on sewing techniques, but I don't read them. I expect that I will someday go back to these magazines when I need sewing help and on a few occasions I have. But I'm also just as likely to reach for one of the many sewing books I own. Tauton Press put out a Threads DVD archive, which I bought, and perhaps they'll continue to make DVDs on a yearly or multi-year basis. With e-books and iPads and the like, maybe we're heading toward paperless books and magazines as the norm. Could be interesting. I'm not ready to find a new home for all of my old Threads issues or toss them in the recycle bin so in the meantime they take up room. And that's mainly the reason why I need to stop the flow of magazines coming into the house. It's not just Threads that I collect. All these magazines are starting to overwhelm me.

These are some of the knitting magazines, which I no longer subscribe to. If there's a magazine for sewing, knitting, spinning, weaving, machine embroidery...I probably have at least one copy. Often I just buy the single copies but I've had subscriptions to many of them. Then there are the foreign magazines and don't even get me started on the pattern magazines. My bookshelf is stuffed with ten years of Burda plus a smattering of Diana Couture, Elena Couture, La Mia Boutique, Patrones, Knipmode...

I also have a large collection of Martha Stewart Living magazines, which is boxed up because I don't have the bookshelf space. That's another magazine I stopped subscribing to.

So my magazine subscription is now down to only two: Burda and Elle. I might stop Elle in favor of a different fashion magazine. I like to mix it up and try different ones. At least I don't hold on to the fashion mags - I tear out pictures that interest me and put them into a inspiration book...when I get around to it.

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We have four cats in our house but only one of them seems to make the blog on a regular basis: Felix. Today he took advantage of an open pantry and foraged for his own food. Apparently it's much more fun and interesting to tear into the bag instead of just eating the very same food out of his bowl. He works hard for that food too - meowing, rubbing, reaching up to the counter...but I guess it's better straight out of the bag.

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And finally...

The deck is about  95% done - just a few steps left and some sealing and then it'll be ready to enjoy.

Shower cat

Felix decided to take a bath in the shower.

He likes to roll around and show off his white belly. Action shot!

Taking a break during his manic "wash-fest"

And in other news...the deck is coming along:

Like a jigsaw puzzle

I made a small patio!

We bought the concrete stepping stones a while ago with the intention of making a small patio under a bench we have in the backyard. Like many projects, we had good intentions but other stuff stood in the way, like  weeding under the bench just so that we could get to the point of being able to put down the stones. Here's what the area looked like before we hired three guys to save us from the weeds:

I'd like to get a few more of the concrete stepping stones and fill in some more area in the front of the patio but I'm too pooped to go out to the home improvement store to get more. It's a beautiful day today and just the right temperature but it was still hard work to make the area level and lay down the stones. I took frequent breaks and enjoyed the pretty blossoms in the yard.

The bees like the cherry blossoms too

The Wisteria is blooming and smells wonderful

I even let two of the cats out to have a romp. Felix loves to roll in the dirt.

I can tell I will be sore tomorrow from the digging and raking and lifting. I'm already feeling it, so I think I will finally try out that new air-jet tub we put in and have a soak.

Home again

Felix insists that I not leave again.

A gaggle of knitting FOs

My knitting needles were smoking over the last few weeks. I made a bunch of knitted items for my in-laws for their birthdays. We visited them in Chicago last weekend to attend my father-in-law's birthday party.

I made this hat on the flight from SFO. I cast on during the ride to the airport and worked on it on the flight, finishing it as we taxied to the gate. The yarn is Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride Bulky. The stitch is a simple 2x2 rib. I used a pattern called Pro Bono, which is available free to those registered on ravelry.com.

The matching scarf, also in Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride Bulky, was actually the first project and it led to all of the others. I felt I couldn't give one in-law a hand-knit scarf and not the other. The scarf is just a simple 3x3 ribbing. I chose to do 7 ribs to signify my father-in-law's 70th birthday.

I used up some stashed Malabrigo to make my mother-in-law a scarf. The pattern is called Scrunchable, also from ravelry, but it's really just a simple k2p1 stitch pattern done on both sides.

I also made a matching hat and fingerless mitts using the Malabrigo Head Thingie and Malabrigo Hand Thingie patterns from ravelry.

It was cold in Chicago, as one would expect in January. It snowed on the last day we were there but it didn't delay our flight for very long. Here's a view of the Museum of Science and Industry and a frozen Lake Michigan, taken from my in-law's apartment.

I'll leave you with another picture of Felix hogging the heat register. The world is just too much for him.

Party dress or prairie dress?

I worked on a dress last week in hopes of wearing it to a Christmas party last Saturday night, but I wasn't happy with the results. I have thoughts on how to improve it but decided against trying to incorporate them before the party. Instead I wore my Burda dress from October with a black jacket.

The un-finished party dress is Vogue 8509. I made a muslin so I could modify the princess seam fit. The muslin looked like a dress for the 5th wife of a FLDS polygamist. I had (some) confidence that the finished dress would not be so prairie-like because I was using a rayon crepe instead of crisp cotton muslin. As I sewed up the rayon, the dress looked promising as a party dress...until I sewed in the sleeves.

I don't want to make another sleeveless dress, so I thought about ways to improve the look. The first thing that popped into my head was to add a ribbon below the bust. I had some black petersham (the dress is a deep, deep purple) so I pinned that on.

I bought some purple velvet ribbon from Britex and tried that on the dress:

I think I like the velvet ribbon the most, although I think I pulled it a little tighter than the dress actually is. The neckline is still unfinished and is supposed to be bound with bias tape. I planned to make a bias strip from the fabric and use that. I'm also thinking about lowering the neckline. Opinions on which ribbon and whether I should lower the neckline would be greatly appreciated! Also, I'd like your honest opinions about the dress. Is it still matronly? Anything else I could do to fix it?

Here's a parting shot of one of my silly kitties. Poor baby is cold. I don't know what he would do in a real cold climate.

Happy Halloween!

These are my Halloween cats I've been collecting. It all started with the third one from the left (click to see larger). My husband says the cat is wearing "candy corn pajamas." And no, I did not knit the Jack o' lantern sweater for cat #4.

Cat vs. Cat

We have a bit of a dominance issue among our furry kids. For many years Ella ruled as "top cat", sometimes subtly (she is the one to make sure we humans remember to fill the food bowls twice a day) and sometimes through arrogance by ignoring the two youngest cats when she walks past them. But she never fought with any cats to be on top. Then one day we met Felix in the parking lot of Costco. He was hungry, dirty, not fixed, and needed a home. Life for Ella has never been the same. Felix wants to be king cat and Ella is not happy about this. Felix bullies the other cats and sometimes has all-out fights with Ella. I've tried the Feliway plug-ins (a pheromone) but it's an expensive solution at about $18 a bottle and the cost of electricity to run it. So I bought the book Cat vs. Cat to help find a better way to keep the fur from flying. On an aside, I also bought a Furminator, which is fantastic for removing excess hair and which will hopefully cut down on the shedding. I should have taken a picture of the piles of hair we collected from each cat. Enough to spin...if I wanted to do that but ew, I think not.

Having been owned by cats for quite a number of years, I didn't learn much that was new from the book but it did corroborate my own thinking and observations. There is a pecking order and it goes: Ella, Felix, Sergei, Abby...with Ella and Felix jostling for the top spot and Abby content to spend her life hiding from the world. When Felix gets upset or we've played with his white feet too much (oh, the white feeeeeet!), he beats up on Sergei or Abby. So we really need to be more aware of his feelings and not tease him, even though it's out of love but he doesn't understand that.

One thing I hadn't really considered too much was how the cats must divvy up the space in the house for their own territories. They have done a pretty good job of claiming the living room. We redid the room a few years ago and bought a beautiful leather couch for it and hoped to use the room for...well, I'm not really sure actually. The TV is in the family room so I guess the living room is for sitting. And curling up with a good book* But as soon as the paint dried and the furniture was moved back in, the cats took it back as theirs and now the new couch is covered with throws to protect it from their claws as they run across it and from the hair. Oh, the hair! Hopefully Furminator will help with that.

Here are three smug cats in their room, on their couch. The two tabbies are Ella on the left and Abby on the right and the white one is Sergei. Lots of nose-prints on the window too.

The book suggested providing more vertical space and a cat tree does that very well, and helps keep the cats off your furniture. We'd been planning to make one (being the do-it-yourselfers we are), but that hasn't happened so we opened our wallet instead. Although I'd like to have the tree in the living room to provide an alternative to the couch, the book suggests placing it where you spend time so that you can interact more with your cats, so it's in the family room. It's been fascinating to watch the interactions and the power struggles. All day yesterday Felix "claimed" the top and he's been scratch, scratch, scratching on the vertical pieces whenever he can. Ella mostly hangs out on a middle shelf and Sergei has come by to check out the "hidey-hole" in the very bottom. Abby never came out of her hiding place, wherever that is. This morning Ella claimed the top and you can see how grumpy they both look in this (really poor) photo I snapped. Even when Ella is victorious she doesn't look content - either it's her "tabby frown" or she's just very cautious that Felix might attack at any moment. And he might.

So will there be more harmony in the house with the new cat tree? I don't know but it gives them a new place to hang out and deposit their hair. I don't expect I'll be able to reclaim the living room couch but maybe they'll spend more time in the family room with us. Maybe Abby will get brave enough to come out and investigate and claim a shelf. One can hope.


*we are amused by people on the house hunting and redecorating shows (like HGTV) remark about a corner of the room or a window seat as a place to "curl up with a good book." As if. Eh, maybe they are big readers but I think it's something people would like to think they'll do.

Ok, I get it

Last night after dinner I pondered what to do with my evening. My husband was in bed with a cold and I didn't feel like watching TV. Of course I could have, and probably should have, done some laundry and cleaned up the house, but I didn't. I worked all day and I'm also trying not to catch my husband's cold, so I thought I'd do something relaxing. Naturally I thought about working on the Burda WOF jacket that is taking me forever and an eon to cut out, let alone sew, but instead I had the urge to play Xbox. This is unusual for me as I don't really get into the video games. Or so I thought. After three hours of trying to drive Homer Simpson around in a car to complete missions, which mostly amounted to smashing into things, or collect gold coins, I now get it about video games. I see why my husband can spend so much time playing the games. They're addictive! "Just one more..." "ugh, I almost finished the mission and then time ran out..." "there are probably more coins around here somewhere..." And before I knew it, it was time to go to bed.

I did have the added bonus of a furry friend come sit by me for a little while as I played. Amazingly, it was not the usual Felix or Ella, but Sergei! Sergei is the formal feral kitty who is still scared by everything. We adopted him at 6 months of age... 5 years ago! He won't let anyone approach him to pet him, let alone pick him up, but I am finally able to give him a pet when I put his food bowl down. So I was stunned when he jumped up on the couch and settled in on the blanket next to me. He just looked at me and I didn't dare move or reach out to pet him. Then after a while he turned around and snuggled with his back next to me. I was able to pet him and scritch his ears. He's ok if he doesn't see your hand coming at him but he still wasn't quite sure about it all, just like when I sneak pets when I put his food down. And then Ella jumped up and scared him off. Oh well, it was great while it lasted.

For the kitties

I spent last Saturday morning doing some community-project sewing with my ASG group. We made over 100 pads for the Humane Society of Silicon Valley to use in their cat cages. Woohoo! I bought some animal-themed fleece from Joanns to contribute to the project. The pads required two 21x26 inch pieces of flannel, fleece, or cotton. Two and a half yards of fleece was enough for four pads. A piece of batting was added, but if the fleece was thick, as mine was, we omitted the batting. The edges were just serged and ties were sewn on so the pads can be secured to the cages. Here is a picture of one of my pads in-progress:

I thought my own kitties might like a couple of these in the same fabric to lounge on, so on the way home from ASG I stopped at Joann's to buy some more fleece. Joann's on a Saturday afternoon can be a bit crazy. Here's my tale of woe: it was a different Joann's than the one I bought the original fabric for and while they did have a bolt of it, the bolt was located way up on a shelf. So first I had to wait in line just to ask the clerk to get it down - fortunately the line was short at that time. Then I had to wait in a very long line to get it cut. Two clerks were cutting but one disappeared to fetch something for the customer and the other clerk's customer was unsure how much fabric she wanted and of course waited until she was at the counter to decide and get the clerk's opinion (I think the clerk had none). Then the clerk misplaced the empty cardboard from the now-finished bolts and it out took a while for her to sort things out. By now the first clerk was back with a monstrous home-dec roll of batting but I thought I'd be in line all day waiting for the customers to calculate how much they wanted and decide if they wanted to spend that much. They had a bolt of muslin in their hands so I suspect they were maybe recovering a piece of furniture or making a headboad they saw on an HGTV design show. Anyhoooo, I finally made it to the cutting table and got my yard and a quarter cut. Afterward I should have just walked straight to the checkout but nooooooo, I did a lap around the store to see if there was anything else I wanted (non-fabric, because that would require cutting). Mistake. By the time I got back to the checkout the line with just my fleece because there wasn't anything else I wanted, the line had stretched to 10-12 people. All this to make two cat beds and it's not like I don't have fleece at home...I just didn't have cute red fleece with black paw prints on it. But my kitties are worth it, as are the shelter kitties who now have 100 new colorful, warm, and comfy mats to sleep on.

I'm pleased to say that when I got home I didn't just toss the fabric on the bed in the guest room and let it be buried under the other fabric that I haven't gotten around to sewing. No! I cut out the mats and serged them right up. The mats were met with approval and have now been adorned with cat hair.

It's been a week already?

I know I wanted to blog more this year, but gosh...time flies.

Since last week, I

• Traced off Burda WOF pattern #119 from the 12/2007 issue, realized (sadly) that I didn't have enough of the fabric I wanted to use but I "managed" to find a candidate or two, or three...or four in my stash.









• I made cupcakes








• I did some spinning with friends (sorry no picture, although I did bring my camera, I forgot it in my purse!)



• I did some knitting. I'm still plugging away at Lara, otherwise known as my big orange sweater. Yikes!



• Bought more yarn. Ugh. But it was on sale. And it was Rowan tweed. My favorite.



• Watched movies. Sadly, nothing memorable.

And now for your enjoyment, here is our silly Ella. She's an 11 year old "kitten" who still chases her tail. And she falls off the chair in the end...intentionally I'm sure. (for some reason you have to click on the play button twice)

The latest in haute cat-tour

Ella and Felix are horrified ...