The Mischief Maker

Little Sanford continues to thrive, and he is becoming a one-cat wrecking crew. Seriously. It sounds like there's construction going on in our master bathroom at night. He's very sweet and endearing, but he gets into EVERYTHING. Today, he found a basket of needlerolls. They were up high, well out of kitty's reach, but somehow, he got to them.



Oh, and the bits of debris that are on the floor around him are remnants of a potted plant that he attacked before his Great Needleroll Discovery.

Integrating him into the household with the other animals is coming along slowly. Zoe, our oldest and crankiest cat, is distinctly unimpressed. You might even say she's p***ed. Buddy isn't exactly thrilled either, but he's holding his temper a bit better. Sadie, however, is Sanford's new best friend. He chases after her non-stop and we're amazed at how tolerant she has been.



I had a stitching finish last week, but I'm not able to share. It's for a fall/Halloween exchange. I'm quite pleased with how it turned out, but am unsure exactly how I will finish it. I have a few ideas, though.

More Updates

During my blogging hiatus, I actually did complete some stitching. One of the projects that I was particularly pleased with is this ornament, which I stitched for a Christmas in July ornament exchange. It is from one of the JCS ornament issues from years past.



I found the finishing fabric before I started stitching. I wanted to choose it first, figuring that it was easier to find an overdyed floss to go with a specific fabric, rather than doing it the other way around.

The stitching was easy, but the finishing itself was a challenge. It shouldn't have been difficult, but I am absolutely convinced that the instructions in JCS weren't quite right. When following their measuring and marking instructions, I ended up with a flap that was way too short to hit the correct place when folded over. Naturally, I discovered this *AFTER* I had already cut the stitched piece per the faulty instructions. >:( From there, I improvised.

I also had trouble finding a button to finish the ornament. It was impossible to find anything in stores out here, so I ended up going through my large collection of antique buttons. Luckily, I found just the thing. All I had to do was clean it up... a LOT.

My current WIP is Souvenir Sampler. At the time I started it, I was bored to death with neutral fabric colors. Instead of the recommended neutral, I chose a pretty 36 ct. Edinburgh linen from Silkweaver that was in my stash. The fabric is actually a lovely pale green... not that it looks that way in the photo. I really need to remember to take pictures in better light. LOL I'm using DMC rather than the called-for silk floss and tweaked the colors just a bit, so that they would go with my chosen fabric.

Has it really been so long??

It seems as though I haven't posted anything here since the end of June. It's now September. Where did the time go? Way too much has happened since then to bother posting about it all now. Lots of work on the soap business-- which, by the way, appears to be causing me a bit of plumbing issues. It seems that my garbage disposal (new, just installed in December) does not care for the lye solutions that occassionally get poured into my sink. Expensive lesson, yes, but cheaper than what it was going to do to my pipes if the disposal didn't corrode. Ouch!

The kitchen plumbing issues have me seriously considering having the garage converted to a soap lab. I don't think there would be too much plumbing work to do, and it already has gas heat and cable. Not a bad idea, but we'd need to clear a LOT of stuff out of there first. So, I think that is a bit off in the future, and I'll need to find a way to dispose of my soap bits and lye that does not involve pouring things into my kitchen sink. Sigh...

In the meantime, I finished stitching Tradewinds! I'm so happy with the way that this turned out.



There's some other stitching going on, as well as other crafty stuff, but I think I will save that for another post. ;)

In other news-- Sadie rescued a kitten... sort of. BF had been hearing odd cries outside for several days, but we couldn't locate the source. We were afraid that something was injured. So, I brought out the hound (on a leash, of course), and she led us directly to a tiny little kitten. It was frightened and gave us a hard time in trying to catch him. But, catch him we did. It was a good thing, too, as the poor thing was half starved and had some kind of respiratory infection.





The poor thing was wheezing horribly and frightened out of his mind. Eventually he calmed down, and was very happy to have some food and kitten milk replacement. Two vet visits, assorted antibiotics, shots, prescription kitten food, and countless hours of nursing the poor little creature has produced a more robust and healthy kitty.



And yes, we're keeping him. We named him Sanford.