Dora (front) and Pookah, her mom-cat, (behind)
We’re all exhausted. Especially the cats.
Begging for turkey is hard work, you know! I’ve been stitching — more news on that front later. 
Hope you US folks all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and that the weekend is wonderful for EVERYBODY!
May 15, 1995 - May 17, 2010
Your fur will continue to live in my embroidery for years to come!
Working my way through my box… also on the “decorate a bathroom in my house” concept, there are three of the Kats by Kelly designs all stitched. These are actually stitched with the KbK signature in the corner, rather than my initials, because I feel Kelly’s signature is very much a part of the design, and they ARE her artwork. I love these. In particular, Gone Fishin’ reminds me of my own baby Rhys, gone now for a bit over a year. I miss that cat. He used to “fish” just like that on our dinner plates in college when we didn’t have a table to eat at. And if you called him on it, he would get this look like “What? Oh dear. How DID that paw get THERE?!” As if we didn’t know.
Yeah. Rhys. I miss him.
Click to see the entire image in a larger format.
I miss needlework shows. I miss CATS (and having it local so I didn’t have to fork out the cash for a hotel room). I haven’t been able to afford EGA Seminars. I miss them.
I was reading Havi Brooks blog archives the other day (it’s taking me a LONG time to get through them because there’s so much wonderful information that I have to stop and digest as I work through it…) And she said this about what happens at conferences:
Connections. Friendships. Torrid love affairs of the mind. This is sometimes also called “networking”.
Yup. That’s it exactly. I MISS sitting around the table talking to Eileen Bennett about the 5 different ways we know to do a chain stitch and what’s the easiest to use when… I miss being able to go book shopping with Linn Skinner (of course part of that is the fact that we no longer live in the same town, but still…).
I met one of my best face to face friends on usenet – rec.crafts.textiles.needlework way back when and when I moved to NC, there she was. But for me, working on a computer 8 hours a day means I don’t necessarily want to see one when I get home, so the online community suffers a bit for me. I have what appears to be odd taste in needlework (I like a little bit of everything, from crewel to cross stitch, to stumpwork and everything in between), so I miss the big needlework shows and conferences.
All of which adds up to: I need to start attending art workshops and the few needlework shows that are still out there… we need to support them or they’re going to disappear in this economy. And dance workshops. And any workshop or conference that is part of something you are passionate about. There’s just SOMETHING cool about being in a room full of people who “get it” and don’t look at you like you’re insane when you start babbling about how mad youare that they discontinued DMC Medici wool — or that you just HAVE to have another jingly hipscarf, even though you’ve got thirty hanging in your closet… You may start out alone, but by the end of the first hour you’ve got more people to hang out with than you’d think. (Oh, and the “celebrities”? They’re just people who love what you love, too…
My godson is turning twelve this February. He wants handknit socks. However, he wants a very specific colorway that is probably going to necessitate my actually buying sock blanks and dying them myself. This is not going to happen and still get them knit in that amount of time. As usual, click on thumbnails to see more detail.
Two years ago I went on a garage sale binge. I was looking for specific things for the house, but instead I found… needlework supplies. Lots and lots of needlework supplies, some of which I bought sight unseen. One of the kits in one of these lots was a candlewicked cat pillow pattern put out by Caron. I’ve been hemming and hawing about the color scheme for a year now. The colors that came with the kit are er… very pastel.
While I am sure that the kiddo will love the kitty, I didn’t think the colors that came with it were going to fly. So for a year I’ve postponed stitching it. Finally his mother pointed out that I don’t HAVE to use the colors or the threads that came with it… how many obvious things can I miss? Of course, the point was probably that I didnt’ want to waste the cheap thread that came with the original cheap kit… Heh. I should know better by now, right? Thread is cheap in general. Don’t be afraid to change it. 
So I’ve changed the color scheme for something a bit more… er manly? Well, bright at least! And the kitty color is now that of his cat. I’m pretty sure 
he’s going to like it, but I’ll also provide a more boyish present at the same time, and the suggestion that he leave the pillow in the living room so that he can blame it on his Mom when friends are over.
Even more of the kitty has been stitched now! Just the yellow yarn and the green yarn to go and then I can figure out how to put a zipper in a pillow so it can be washed. This IS for a 12 year old boy, after all! I may enlist his mother — she used to work in soft furnishings and knows about all that sewing and finishing stuff that I have studiously avoided learning. Which is kind of funny .given that I’m the one who taught her how to sew… But that’s story for another day.