CatCat Grabs the Keyboard

My Turn for Important Announcement

Am I not the most beautiful cat you have seen this morning on the Intertubes?

Catnip--Homegrown, of course--satisfies.

The basket overturned atop my precious catnip prevents the neighborhood rascals from eating it right into the ground. Some cats have NO self-control.

Who needs a Mouse pad when I am available ?~!

Colonizing my turf. That Toshiba is long gone; we're a Mac-only family for many years now.
Thanks and we miss you, Steve.

My fur feels unlike any other fur you have touched. I am so soft ... words cannot adequately describe the lusciousness of my pelt. However, I will let you pet me if you do it correctly. Maybe. On a sunny day. With no wind. In the shade. perhaps....

Loving the most recent piece touched by human hands.

I am awake.

Oh, if you have managed to wade past all the pictures and get this far, here's that announcement I wanted to make.
Occupy Your Litter Box Movement

You see, I too get distracted very easily, 

just like some people we know and love.

Sincerely, CatCat

To Say Thank You...

To my Precious.

Your work today on my arms and hands improved the way I feel by a lot. The knowledge you possess and use to help me when I am in pain amazes me and heals me. Many thanks; words are inadequate.

Night night.

One "Quilt-Ain" Finished for Phyllis

One of Two Completed This Week

Despite having the aforementioned two-year old keeping us company three days this week, I completed one of Phyllis' Quilt-Ains for her computer room window. I am very pleased with how well the backing and the flimsy married up to each other and slid in place perfectly while I top-stitched.

Want to see it?

Fifty by fifty inches, backed & top-stitched for a Finish.

Phyllis loves sashing-giving each block its own chance to show off its design and colors effectively. The other window's cover will follow this same idea with sashing around each and every block. Still swirling in my mind are what the blocks themselves will look like. One of the most fun parts of block generation lies in getting to choose which color follows Each. And. Every. Time. Between seventeen and twenty-one times per block. Heady !~!

❧  ❧  ❧

As an adjunct, I completed another five by five square:

Multi-block components enclosed by thin brown sashing make this one my favorite so far.
There are five sections: a 2-block, a 4-block, a 5-block, a six and an eight.
Can you see them?

So a double finish this week with the weekend to look forward to. A farewell party tomorrow for a long-time Philosophy Circle organizer moving back east will celebrate Aldo Borromei.

Scout

Working around a two-year old for the last three days

Stacking fourteen alphabet blocks sets a new house record !~!

Commenting on the colors I have chosen in a vocabulary that belies her "just turned two" status gave us lots to talk about.

Rest up, there are books to be read, cheese to be eaten and Yo Gabba Gabba to be watched.

The joys of having a little one underfoot cannot be described adequately with just words. Pictures help.

First Sashing Experiment & Quilt-ains

This small lap quilt is my first try at sashing-the solid color striping between the blocks. I really like how this style of setting allows each block to show itself in a special way that is lost when the blocks are snuggled right up to one another.

The backing and binding are a sheet that Cathleen brought to us a few days ago during her visit. There were two pieces already cut that fit Exactly !~! How does that happen, she asks the Universe. Final size is about 40 inches square.

The weekend was quiet and productive; I have built another three dozen blocks. I plan to make "Quilt-ains" for the two windows in Phyllis's computer space in her home in Jasper Ontario. When I showed Mark the one in our living room window he exclaimed, "It looks just like stained glass !" That's it !~! That's exactly what I think too. So I will build some window covers for their place and we will all have the same look together thousands of miles apart...

Here's the one in my living room.

The kitchen windows with their Quilt-ains.
That wall color is Behr Crystal Waters-pretty, isn't it?
I love water colors.

What are your favorite colors to surround yourself with ?~! I like to have sky and water colors on the walls and ceilings while the floors feel best either green, brown, or slate. Like the natural earth, I need and want my environment to feel as tho I am outside near water.

First Commission

Yay !~! My first commission arrived safely and is dearly loved by her new owner.

Meet Abby's Nautical Indigo:

Under construction

Close up of the mermaids-too cute !~!

Clipper ship and the sailor girls.

This indigo shibori made its way here via my neighbor, Kathy Rehak, who found it in a thrift store in our beautiful city, San Francisco, at a 'steal-me' price. She gifted me and Abby inherited it as the perfect quilt back. Remembering that indigo is Abby's favorite color, it seemed prophetic that this gorgeous piece should appear just as I needed a backing for her.

CatCat loves it too.

Completed and ready to ship to its new home in the Tropics. 

Happy warmth, Abby, I hope you love it for a very long time. Remember there's a lifetime repair warranty too; should anything happen we'll work together to fix it.

Edit: I have entered this in Creative Friday.  Stop by and see all the amazing items wonderfully ingenious people are proud to show.

Orange Friday

My friend Babara Stanbro has a great blog, ”Cat Patches”, and she plays a Foto Finish game weekly. Today's Link up is Orange and,

buddy, is it that time of year Or What ?~!

That feeling of giving

 Angela fell in love with The Aqua Project tonight when I took it over to visit. She flipped over the piece; I gave it to her.

"You cannot do that..."

Quite the contrary.

Aqua Project basks in sunlight.

I love this one and am designing another one similar to it. Aqua is a great color-lots of years I lived on or near water the colors in this quilt.

Found: Closet Floor

Appears to be in reliable shape; vacuum unable to suck up anything larger than that clangy-bangy whatever-it-was-will-fall-out-soon so hey !~! What's to worry piece we ran over an hour or so ago ...

It's eighty degrees F (27 C) today and so it must be October. My first trip out here in Oct '99 was hot and mildly humid and breezy for four solid days. Coming from thirty years in south FL I gathered, erroneously in retrospect, that it had been like this since mid-April or so and immediately decided that it would be just fine to live here. I wouldn't freeze with this much great summer weather.

So I moved the following March, guessing that old man winter had had enough time to trundle on down that old high-way.

Yeah, right.

My summers for my entire adult life had overflowed with sunburn and sandy waves and heat long into the night.

A few short months later at the 2000 Fourth of July BBQ at the Unitarian Fellowship of Universalists in Berkeley bfuu.org, when queried as to the whereabouts of the "burger" buns I replied with, "On the table behind the lady in the green parka." 

What ?~! moved my entire life...

Where ?~! to NoCal; SF Bay Area specifically

and most importantly:
Why ?~! Multi-Culturalism. I truly was astounded to see lots (or for that matter--Any)  tv commercials with "other than WASPs" as principal characters. 

The weather took, and still takes, thought, pre-planning and the determination to do it anyway and yet I am happier here than I ever was there now that I have taken over a decade to assimilate and internalize it all.

Are you happy where you have chosen to live? Will you move again if the opportunity comes up? What drove your last location change, if you've ever  made one and if not, why not do you think ?~!

Curiosity drives me today.

Lynda

Illness struck again

For the third time in just under a year, I have been struck with a "gut ache" that involves an awful lot of pain and nausea. We made it thru this time with no ER but it was a rough ride.

Reaction to flu shot has been implicated altho the week began with two unfamiliar toddlers and nine hours of their germs Monday. Wednesday I awakened with a sore throat and by Thursday was laryngitic. At my doc appt Thurs morning, despite my compromised health, she insisted on a yearly flu shot. By Thursday night I was in the throes of a flu episode with the accompanying symptoms. Not a pretty sight.

It took until Sunday morning before I could do more than walk ten feet to the potty and back again to the bed where I'd fall into a shivering, moaning bundle of shakes until the CBDs and pain meds took effect and sent me back to sleep for another 90 minutes or so to begin the cycle anew. Flu shots will be seriously considered in the future before blithely agreeing to such a nasty possibility.

This is Oakland some years ago in the midst of an outbreak.

thanks, Google images

National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Day

Take a minute today to remember those you know and love 
who have lost a pregnancy or a baby due to whatever reason.

Iris

Karen

Jodell and Tony

Thank you for sharing with me today.

First Rain

Last night brought the Bay Area its first touch of rain for the 2012-13 season. We wait patiently all Fire Season for the clouds to release their bounty onto our parched hillsides and forests. If only we could remember to roll up the car windows on nights like this !~!

My best friends provide me with an inimitable list of the benefits of true friendship, sisterhood and love. 

Here they are several summers ago, 2003 I think, when I made a trip to FL to visit them and the few other friends I have left there. 

Phyllis Looby on the left and Karen Taylor on the right. A pair to draw to-every time.

Iris (on the right) and I hiked to the ocean one afternoon thru Tennessee Valley. The beach is black sand and the waves unpredictable. Worth the walk, for sure.

A pillow made for late friend who loved manatees and warm waters.

Cathi, my older daughter, with her two most precious. Anthony on the left is now ten--and Madison is seven. How'd that happen in a year or two !~!

Weeping Copper Beech reached out and grabbed me one lazy afternoon at the local nursery. After my youngest sibling, Tony, died unexpectedly this became his memorial. Stretching for the sky like T always did, this tree is perfect--I kiss it on the way to my car each day.

This is the four of us in OK in Aug 08 to bury Teri.

Saddest time of my life-another post will talk about that...

L-R: Lynda, Mike, Tony, Cathi.

Iris and I heading for Tennessee Valley. I'm the taller one on the left.

Our front yard and entryway. Changes happen every season, plants are moved, new ones put in, structures come and go...

Another day passes in relative calm, nice visit from Cathleen with some lovely fabric to give to me for sewing-four pieces just beautiful. Aaaannnnnnd...

One cut piece is exactly the size I need for the back of the 9-block with sashing I put together last night and today. Incredible how the world just works to bring what is  needed to the fore while allowing other, sometimes bigger, ideas to simmer in the background.

Off to sew the batting together to make it big enough for my 9-block and then attach it all together. How will we bind it today ?~!