It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time...........

It may not look like it, but this

is a cat with stress issues. 

We flew out to Indiana for Andy's family reunion obscenely early on Thursday morning.  Because it's such a busy time of year for our friends, how much I would worry about fires with the drought this year, and because I wanted to poison the little vole-monsters who have been plaguing the garden all spring, I thought it would be a brilliant idea to board the cats while we were gone.  Because of our travel times, the cats were due to check in the day before we left and get picked up the day after we arrived.  I made the reservations well in advance, made a copy of their immunization records, and thought I was really pretty clever for coming up with this whole idea in the first place.

STILL feeling like I was planning ahead, we dug out the suitcases Tuesday night.  I have joked many times about Theo getting upset when he sees suitcases come out because he hates change so much, but I always thought I was just joking.  As we now know--it's really true.  I woke up at 6:00 AM Wednesday morning with a kitty who was trying to urinate about every 10 minutes but couldn't.  Urinary tract infections are painful enough for anyone, but for male cats they can be quite dangerous.  Theo has never had one, but my old cat, Catanova, had, so I knew the problem.  So, rather than checking them in later in the afternoon after a trip to the gym as I had carefully planned, I collected the cats and took them to their hotel early so the vet could have a look at him.

It turns out that there are two things that can stop a cat from urinating:  stress, which causes inflammation of something and results in blood in the urine, or a bacterial infection, which is the one that can kill male cats.  But it also turns out that a stressed-out cat can hold his bladder for a good 24 hours.  The vet checked him, thought he looked okay, put him on a pain-reliever after I explained that he had been trying to urinate all morning, and said they would keep me posted.  So, rather than getting to worry about the house burning down with the cats trapped inside, I got to worry about my cat's urination problems--because boarding one's cats in a cat hotel just isn't weird enough on its own.

Now I don't know what your experience has been with vets, but mine has been all over the place.  We've had the wonderful people who took care of Theo when he broke his leg, and I've had two of the I-need-a-new-boat vets--one of whom ran several hundred dollars worth of tests when I took Catanova in for fur falling out and sent me home with shampoo for a skin irritation which wasn't a symptom of anything they tested for (and, to add insult to injury, was--until that point--a friend of mine), and the other one wanted to operate on Theo shortly after his leg saga to REMOVE the pin in his leg when I took him in for a coughing problem that would turn out to be asthma.  So, I was a bit worried that they put him on pain medication instead of antibiotics, and then was REALLY worried after the vet called and didn't know that Theo had been trying to urinate since before 6:00 AM and couldn't, in spite of my telling at least 3 people, including the one I called to ask if I could bring him in early to have the vet look at him.  I suppose it's possible, of course, that among their circles of friends they regularly discuss cat urinating in normal conversation, but I was sort of thinking that at least one of them might be writing it down so the vet would know why she was looking at him in the first place.  I shall know to always look for pens or typing in the future.

We had been trying to make sure everything went smoothly, because this was the first time I'd tried traveling since I hurt my back, and stress makes my back worse, and the Valium was only going to be helpful in a limited sense because the amount needed to relax REALLY tensed muscles is also the amount that would have made it really hard to get me off the plane in Denver and onto a connecting flight without the aid of a stretcher.  Luckily--and I'm sure I'll never say this again--getting up at 4:00 AM makes one groggy enough to compensate for the lack of drugs.  We had some time in Denver, so I called again and luckily Theo had urinated and did have blood in the urine, so it was just inflammation, and they were going to keep him on pain-killers and an anti-depressant while we were gone.  So, I enjoyed the rest of the trip with feelings of guilt rather than worry, which is a slight improvement.

We arrived home Monday night sometime after midnight, and set off to rescue the cats pretty early yesterday morning.  They received a report card for their behavior,

which seemed pretty cheerful as Calisto growled and hissed all the way home.  I suppose "was a total jerk" and "terrified" doesn't earn repeat business.  Theo was sent home with pain-killers in pill form for a play-at-home version of the torture session, and it's possible that we gave him one last night.  Two humans, an 18 pound muscular cat, and half a turquoise pill made for an interesting evening, and as we could no longer find the pill anywhere, we think it might have ended up IN the cat, but it isn't certain.  I'm speculating that NOT giving the pills will help relieve the stress and the inflammation faster than GIVING the pills will, but I'm keeping a close eye on him.

The cats were glad to be home and spent most of the day in the backyard,

but it took several hours to forgive Andy, and I--as the instigator of this whole horrible episode--have only gotten back into kitty good-graces this morning after a great deal of groveling and a solemn promise to find a cat-sitter next time......... 

When The Going Gets Tough..........

........the tough make three quick ornaments to stay on track:

I had actually decided that I had enough lace icicle ornaments for a while, but this week between trying to combat the vole infestation in the garden, trying to get to the gym, doing my pt exercises every day, then trying to get the garden plants weeded and mulched before the next wave of extreme heat hits, I decided that one can NEVER have too many lace icicle ornaments.  It's best to be a bit desperate flexible with these things.............

Arrrggghhh!!

I realize it will pay off at the end of the summer, but gardening is REALLY getting in the way of my crafting.  Dang it!

Not So Much Finishing Friday

It's this hot today,

and after three whole days completely off pain pills, I had a rather bad night and ended up back on full meds for the rest of the night.  That's always a bit hard to take, but on such a hot day it just sucks the life out of me.  And Theo. 


Last night I did get the remaining two sets of strips sewn together,

with a new color order on the smaller one, 

and the original order on the set made with 2-inch strips.  I'm really rather proud of myself for moving on to the next sets.  The way I usually do things is to finish the first set, set the second set aside "meaning to get around to it," and then spend the next year and a half moving it around rather than finishing it.  Of course, these still have to make it all the way to Ornament Stage, but I think them even making it to Long Uneven Strip Stage might be some serious personal growth on my part.  Or, as close as I ever get. 

In the meantime, I am keeping myself under close observation because in order to have something to knit that isn't wool, alpaca, or mohair, I was actually thinking that it wouldn't be at ALL a stupid idea to cast on a lace tablecloth using crochet thread and size 4 needles for a table that takes an 84" long cloth.  And I had hoped to get off pain pills entirely before my brain completely snapped.  Darn........................... 

Ta-Da! 163!!!

Last night my "helpers" and I finished two more striped ornaments,

and kept an eye on all suspicious (meaning "dog") activity in the neighborhood.  

(We try to do our bit for the community)

It seems that we have had our "nice" summer weather, and have moved on to the "hot and horrible" phase.  For crafting, this means that the morning of Finishing Friday--like all mornings--will now be spent in trying to keep the garden alive.  The afternoons, which will now be mostly in the 90s or higher, will be spent somewhere with air conditioning.  I know temperatures are rising and everything, but I still wonder about people who lived here before air conditioning.  Did they just spend the summers naked?

This afternoon's stay-in-the-airiconditioned-house project was:

more ornament shapes!  I decided to try out some new shapes, and I thought cookie cutters might be a good source, and these are the ones I found.  We might have more, but I wouldn't swear to it.  I've made sugar cookies maybe twice since we've been in this house--which will be 7 years next month.  Part of it is I don't make a lot of sweets, part is that sugar cookies are one of the few cookies that I actually like so I would gain weight for my efforts, and the remaining part is that I am generally too lazy to do any cooking that involves a rolling pin.  I make the occasional exception for pizza, but that's about it.  Every year I swear I'm going to bake a pie, but it hasn't happened yet.  Sort of like the final bridesmaid's quilt.........

Aside from still having trouble marking on felt, most of them turned out pretty well and I have now completely used up the first set of strips and will start assembling the second one tonight.  One of the candy canes had a bit of a mishap:

which raises an interesting point.  If one is tracing the ornament design to be sewn on the BACK of the piece, the smart thing to do would be to cut away the excess felt so one keeps all the ornaments on the actual fabric.  Good point, that.  And yet another ornament for the "relatives-we-feel-obligated-to-give-things-to-but-who-never-bother-to-thank-us" bin.  It's a big bin....................

New Ornament Design

I've been thinking about a new ornament design, and this afternoon it was a bit too warm to work in the garden, so I thought it would be a perfect time to try it out.

First, I dug out 5 blue Christmas fabrics, ironed them just enough to get by,

then cut two 1 1/2-inch strips and one 2-inch strip from each color.  Then it was time to play with one of my favorite feet:

I have 3 different 1/4-inch quilting feet (one came free with the second Husqvarna), but this is the only one I can truly manage 1/4-inch seams with.  While I think I'm staying on the edge of the other feet, I don't always stay as close as I should.  This one has a guide for me to use, and I am happy to say that even I can manage 1/4-inch seams with this one.  I laid out the strips in the order I wanted,

sewed them each together with the 1/4-inch seams, then pressed the seams toward the dark fabrics.   One thing that always amazes me with fabric is this:

every last one of these fabrics was sold as 45-inch widths, but after washing and drying, all of them are different widths.  Isn't that amazing?

My original idea was to attach the strip to white felt by using fusible webbing, but either I don't have any left or I can't find it--either is quite possible.  So I resorted to quilt basting spray and a few pins to keep the fabric in place,

then cut out around the strip--leaving ease on each side in case the fabric moved during stitching. 

Then I picked out rayon embroidery thread for decorative stitching,

and decided to stick with the white thread for this one, though the icy blue is a contender for the next set of strips.  I used regular white thread in the bobbin,

 selected a decorative stitch to use,

and stitched down the center of one of the center seams.  At first I flirted with the idea of using the same stitch for each seam, but this one was a multiple-step stitch and was incredibly slow, so I decided that using a different one for each seam would be more "artistic,"   which sounds a lot better than "lazy."

For the next stitch, I used a much simpler design, which went a lot faster.  It pulled the fabric just a bit, so I eased up the pressure of the presser foot by one, but it helped to do all the seams in the same direction.  Eventually, I got all 4 lines done,

which was a fun way to explore some decorative stitching.  One could also use zig-zag or even hand-stitching if one was REALLY ambitious. 

Next, it was time to make ornaments!  At first my idea had been to trace the ornament patterns onto the fabric, stitch them, then cut them out with pinking shears, 

 but it turns out I don't have any marking pens that will show up on this but not remain visible.  So I opted to cut it out,

and sew it together using an overlocking stitch.  Not bad, and with the fusible webbing it would probably work as the fabric wouldn't tend to fray as easily, but such is not the case here.

Next I got the idea to trace the design on the WRONG side:

which would work even better if my pens weren't dying.  The purple is a disappearing ink, which would be ideal, but the blue should go away with some water.   Let's hope,

at any rate.  

Still, 

I'm pretty pleased with the results so far.  I have some other templates to try out, and I have the other sets of strips to sew together as well.  I definitely think the 1 1/2-inch strips are the ideal for this, but I have two larger templates that I'll use when I put the 2-inch strips together.

Kind of a fun project for a warm afternoon..............

Just In Case I'm Crazy Enough........

The new bag has received kitty approval,

and I'm actually possibly considering making another one--though with some edits.  The bag sags toward the bow way too much, and at least needs the striped band on the other side as well, if not a second bow.  I'm not saying I'm quite this crazy yet, but if I get there,

should I stick with the white lining (which could use a pocket), or should I branch out and match the pinstripe with red:

I'll admit, I'm not usually very daring with color, but I think I could make a second bag (without as many errors, even) for a Christmas gift.  What do you think?

I have been just a bit under the weather again, so there has been mostly knitting today.  There's a new ornament,

 bringing me to 142, and progress has been made on the new sock,

which will be either a birthday or Christmas gift for Andy (as he already knows about them, I don't have to be sneaky).  The pattern is hard to see, but it's a nice, stretchy basket-weave ribbing.  I like socks that make SOME attempt to stay up, though so far almost all mine become "slouch" socks by the end of the day.  I have high hopes for these, though.  But then again, one is always optimistic when starting socks.  What else would possess someone to start anything with size 1 needles and fingering yarn?