Craft Rage

Remember Boobah, the cat with the head wound, and who also lost part of his tail to an unfortunate wind-related accident?

Well, since then, the original head wound has healed, and he's given himself a new one on the other side of his head. Also, last week, the vet amputated part of his tail, because...well, I don't remember what the actual term was, but essentially, he had a teeny fraction of exposed bone at the tip of his tail, and rather than healing around it, his flesh was just creeping upwards, so they had to lop off about a half-inch of tail and pull the remaining flesh down around it and stitch it.

Poor, miserable cat. He's in a supersized head-cone, which The Hotness and I refer to as his "helmet". Unfortunately, we've begun referring to the entire cat that way, as in, "Where's The Helmet?" "Oh, he's crashed out on top of the washing machine." I say again, poor, miserable cat.

I started my corset for my wedding dress, I cleaned the house from top to bottom, baked two loaves of bread from scratch, (my first time EVER), and caught up on the laundry.

And I didn't take pictures of anything at all.

Anyway, I'm off to wash Boobah's face, since he can't do it himself. Poor, miserable cat.

P.S.

This story reinforces my desire to make my own wedding dresses, rather than be at the mercy of the folks at wedding boutiques.

P.P.S

I lied - maybe ONE picture.

Labels: cats

I recently cleaned my office out and rearranged all the furniture, so that the cats would have more access to the window, without having to knock paperwork off my desk to do so.

When I rearranged everything, I noticed that there was a kind of tunnel between the wall and the back of the boxes I had stacked in the closet. I don't know why, but I reached my hand back there, and was horrified to put my hand on a thick mat of cat hair.

After a bit of dry-heaving, (when I first reached back there, it felt a lot like I was touching a dead animal), I moved the boxes, got the vacuum and cleaned up the hair, then rearranged the closet so that I could put a cat bed down there; they can still hide out, but I'll be able to keep it a little less hairy. It's since been named The Cat Hole, because... well, because The Hotness and I like to name things.
Since Boobah's been so under the weather, he's been hanging out in the cat hole a lot lately, probably because he can prop his cone on the side of the bed and find a good sleeping position.

Unfortunately, it appears that this is no longer going to be a peaceful retreat for him; he went and laid down about half an hour ago, and when I returned to my office after making coffee and tidying up the kitchen, I found him laying on the bottom of a cat pile, with what I imagine to be a resigned look on his face.
Poor little conehead.

Labels: cats

I'd better sleep lightly tonight, because if cats are vengeful creatures, Boobah and Dinger are probably going to make their move tonight. They'll need the cover of darkness, though; I'm fat, but I move pretty fast when I'm scared.

I made an appointment to bring everyone but Smooshy to the vet - Bonzo and Dinger need checkups, and Boobah has...well, he has ongoing tail and head problems.

When the time came, Bonzo managed to hide so completely that I ended up leaving without her, and just took Boobah and Dinger to the vet. Unfortunately, when I was trying to load them into their cat carrier, the door came off, and I was forced to improvise a cat carrier.

Nothing screams white trash like walking into a veterinary office with a laundry basket full of cats with their harnesses tied together with string. Luckily my vets and their assistants have wonderful senses of humor!

There were shots all around, vaccinations and whatnot, and we got some pain medication for Boobah - I hate to medicate my animals, but I'm not willing to leave them hurting just to save the skin on my hands. And arms. And neck. Bygones.

On the way home I stopped and picked up a couple of extra-special cat massaging combs, and gave Boobah the royal treatment when we got home - poor dude has been in his collar for a week, now. Hopefully the shot he got will clear up any problems, and give him a bit of relief.

Along with that, I managed to get a bit of sewing done. I did a lot of staring at this skirt over the weekend, so that I could figure out what to do to make a similar skirt of my own.
After much staring, I made a paper model. I do this with pretty much everything I make, because I'm pattern challenged. Stupid lines everywhere. Don't cut here, do cut here, try not to cut off your fingertips, ha ha, you cut yourself! Stupid patterns. Yeah, yeah, a poor craftsman blames his tools. I hear you. :)

Anyway, since I'm pattern challenged, I tend to be less intimidated by just sketching out what I think the pieces should look like. I just use regular notepaper, sketch my pieces in miniature, then tape them together to see how the pieces fit. Everything ends up Barbie-sized, but at least I can tell if I'm on the right track.

Sometimes, I take my mini-pattern pieces and cut them out of my test fabric, to see if they hang properly; I did this with these pieces, and if I had a Barbie, she'd have a cute little blue taffeta fit-and-flare skirt to wear. Unfortunately, my Barbie and Ken dolls had an accident when I was 12, shortly after my mom rented The Fly.

Somehow, Barbie ended up with Ken's head and left arm, and a right leg made of twigs, and Ken ended up with Barbie's left arm and right leg, and a head made out of cheese. Then my dog ate his head. And the steering wheel out of the Barbie Corvette. Which is okay, since neither Barbie nor Ken could work the pedals anymore.

Anyway, back to the skirt. Since it seemed like I WAS on the right track, I cut out my four pieces, and this is what I ended up with;
I did a bit of retouching for color, because in real life, the bottom of the skirt is the same brown you see in the photo, but the top of the skirt is a bright, screaming teal color, so it's a bit distracting.

The skirt definitely needs some crinoline, and maybe a little bit less fullness, but I'm comfortable with the general shape. Once I get the crinoline under it, I can tweak the fullness as necessary. Also, I cut the skirt too long on purpose; I wasn't sure how much room to leave for the crinoline, so I figured that if I left a lot of extra fabric, I'd be able to figure out my hem length once the underskirt is sorted out.

I put in an invisible zipper so that I could test the size of my darts - the ones on the front are fine, but one of the back darts is pretty crooked, which is why the fabric is pulling on the left side. Oopsie! Once I have that worked out, and the hem length worked out, I'll be able to mark everything up, take the pieces apart, and I'll have pattern pieces with which to cut my real dress fabric.

Then I'll be working on the corset top. At least I only need to do one of those, not two, since the corset will actually be the same regardless of the skirt design I go for.

Next time, I'll show you the mock-up for the ballgown skirt. It was 20 minutes well spent!

Labels: cats, wedding dress

I'm not much into astrology (which means that I read my horoscope daily, but for amusement purposes only) but as far as it goes, I'm a fairly typical Leo (which actually got me fired from a job, once - funny story, but we'll get to that later). I'm kinda loud, kinda passionate/emotional, that sort of thing.

The thing is, my personality and my clothing have never really matched - I'm REALLY plain jane in what I wear, so though I'm attracted to things that sparkle, I don't actually wear much of it. That said, I guess for my reception, denim skorts and a t-shirt probably wouldn't be completely appropriate. Still, I really wonder if this might be too much sparkle for a reception dress;I found this at Anna's Bridal Lace & Fabrics on Ebay, and was immediately smitten. With it, I could avoid sequins altogether. That would be nice, since the thought of sewing even one more sequin on lace makes me want to weep. And angers the finger puppets. Well, not the Vulcan one, because he's pretty even-tempered, but the other one is quite wrathful.

Which reminds me, I never posted the pictures of the beadwork I completed before deciding to change the color of my dress from green to gold.

I'm in the process of removing the beads and sequins, but here's part of one flower and the scalloped border. Please remember that I'm new to beading, and if I recall correctly, this is one of the first flowers I did.Originally, it had silver seed beads and swarovski crystals in the middle of the flowers, but they've since been removed, so you can only see them on the scalloped edge.

In any case, I do have a huge glut of a light gold crepe-back satin (about 20m - it's shiny, I'm a crow, ergo, when it went on sale for $1.99, I bought what was left on the bolt), so all I really have left to purchase is the lace. I need about 3.5m (about 4 yards) and then I'll be ready to get to work.

The lace isn't my only problem, though.

Stupid, stupid, stupid cat. This is Boobah.Uh, yeah. He's dressed for Hallowe'en. He's SpiderCat. Don't laugh. Okay, laugh.

Anyway, every time I deep-clean the house, Boobah rips off part of his face. No exaggeration - he peels off flesh. If gross pictures make you queasy, feel free to stop reading here - picture to follow.

In the spring, he removed the hair and a few layers of flesh from around his mouth, and last week, while I was preparing to have the in-laws over for the weekend, he did this;That collar is Boobah's personal version of hell - he backed up for a full day before finally realizing that no amount of backwards motion was going to free him.

I hate that I did this to him - obviously when I clean the house, it stresses him out. I know it's not the cleansers - I use the same things all the time, and unless I vaccum behind the furniture, pull out the stove and fridge, and catch up all of the laundry, he doesn't appear to be bothered in any way.

WTF? Seriously!?

I realize that cats' brains are about the size of walnuts, and that euclidean geometry is largely lost on them, but for a cat, Boobah is pretty smart. If he had opposable thumbs, I think he could easily handle some of the grocery shopping. Well, he can't read or drive, but...anyway, why isn't he smart enough NOT to flay himself when I clean the house?

Stupid, stupid cat.

He's sitting here staring at me, and I'm pretty sure he's thinking "Why don't you stop typing and go use your opposable thumbs to open a can of tuna, jerk?" I guess it's the least I can do.

Labels: cats, smooshy, wedding dress