Meet Alice

This is Alice, the newest addition to my household. She's an 8 year old tortoiseshell cat, but she's so incredibly tiny! I've always had bigger cats - usually 10 lbs and up. My other kitty (who is in Arizona with my parents - enjoying the sunshine) weighed in at about 14 lbs in her prime. Alice is maybe, maybe 5 or 6 lbs. She's absolutely tiny.

Two years ago, my sister and I found her at the Oregon Humane society. My sister had been looking at Petfinder, saw Alice's picture and fell in love with her. She promptly called me for a kitty run to OHS. Luckily, Alice was still there and was cute as a button. She's been through a lot; she got so sick with Feline Upper Respiratory Disease while she was at OHS that she scored 1's and 2's on her health assessment. She was put into fostercare, and they fully expected her not to make it. However, she pulled through and eventually was well enough to come back to OHS. We met her foster mom, a very nice woman who told us all about Alice and how great she was. Alice's owner surrendered Alice, along with about $200 of Alice's toys and goodies, because his wife didn't like her.

My sister had Alice for about two years when she decided to go teach English in Korea for a year. She had no one to take Alice, so I begged and pleaded with my landlord to let me have Alice. My landlord is not happy, but she allowed me to take Alice. I figure I'm only going to be renting from her until May, and then I'll be moving into Beaverton/Portland, so it doesn't really matter if she doesn't like Alice. :D My sister actually decided she didn't want to go to Korea, but she still wanted me to take Alice. She loves her, but my sister isn't home that much, and she thought she wasn't able to give Alice as much attention as she deserves. So Alice came to live with me!

She's a wonderful lap kitty, but there are a few things we're eventually going to work on. When my sister first brought her home from OHS, Alice was wonderful in a carrier; she was even purring. We both remarked how strange it was to find a cat that actually liked the carrier. Of course, this was too good to be true. I think Alice was just so happy to leave OHS and to get a real home that she didn't mind being in a carrier. However, she is absolutely scared of carriers now. It was an incredible struggle for my sister to catch Alice to get her into the carrier(for the vet and for the trip to my house), and once in the carrier, Alice was terrified and shaking. She was so scared that on the way to my house she peed herself. It made for an interesting homecoming, that's for sure.

Alice adjusted very quickly to living at my house. The first night, she'd come out from under my bed, get petted for a bit, then go right back to her hiding spot. By the next day she hid a little, but she'd come out as soon as I called her, or she would just partially hide (under my desk chair, behind some of my fabric). By the third day (the second full day) she's completely normal and her extremely social self. She's chilling out on my bed as we speak.

I'm working on transitioning her over to a better quality food. My sister was just feeding her Alley Cat, whose first ingedients are Ground yellow corn, corn gluten meal, soybean meal, chicken by-product meal. ::shudders:: I've done a lot of research on cat nutrition and cat food, and the ingredients in this food are a big no no. Corn is just a filler with no nutritional value, and shouldn't be in the food to begin with, let alone the first incredient, or the first and the second in this case. Good foods don't have by-products; meals are okay as long as there is also primary meats or ingredients, such as chicken.

I have a bunch of sample bags of a variety of different foods courtesy of PetUtopia, whose owner is absolutely amazing and helpful. I mixed in a little of California Natural Chicken and Brown Rice, whose first ingredients are Chicken, Chicken Meal, Brown Rice, Rice, Chicken Fat. Alice ate some of it, but ate just as much of the Alley Cat. I really like California Natural for the ingredients and a reasonable price ($3/lb), so I tried her on the California Natural Herring and Sweet Potato. She did a flying leap onto my bed the second I ripped open the sample, then followed me to a secondary bowl where I poured a bit in. She immediately started eating it. Now it's a day later, and while she eats out of both bowls (one with Alley Cat and the CN Chicken) and the other with the CN Herring, she seems to prefer the Herring one. She's a slow, social eater, so if she's still liking the CN Herring by the end of this week I'll buy a bag of it for her. I may add a wet food as well: we'll see on that end.

I need to buy some more litter too - right now I'm using a non-clumping litter that my sister had a little bit left of. I'd like to switch her to Feline Pine - a pine pellet litter (no dust and less tracking) but although she seems completely settled in, I don't want to disrupt her routine/comfort so I'll wait a few weeks to do that, which means I need some other litter in the meantime.

Well, I think that's all for the moment, although I'm sure I'll be posting a lot of gratuitous kitty photos in the future!

Sewing

So of course I say there's no sewing going on here, and then what do I do? Sew. I made this really cute little bag which I absolutely adore. I'm going to make a bigger tote version. It was a tutorial rather than a pattern, and the way the pattern was set up had you flipping the entire bag right side out through a little hole in the lining. The interfacing does not like this method, so it got a bit crinkled. Next time I'll just do the outer, then the lining, then just top stitch the lining to the bag. I still think it's really cute, crinkles and all. :D I drew a little butterfly then traced that onto contrasting fabric for the pocket, and cut it out of the outer fabric. I had a bit of issue using a blue pen to mark out the butterfly on the front - those marks did not want to go away, so the fabric got frayed a bit with all that rubbing. For the pocket I used the fine tipped blue pen and drew really really lightly, and that turned out perfectly. I used fray-chek to keep those ends from fraying any more. I even hand stitched the front!

Once that was finished I immediately started on another project - my shirt from McCall's 2964. It's been pretty smooth, I've had a couple of instances so far where I had to reread the instructions several times and try to think really hard about what they wanted me to do, but so far I've managed it. However, the problem I've run into is that only a few hours in (I'm a slow ironer/sewer) it's apparent that it's not going to fit me. I've already cut out all the pieces, and don't have enough fabric left over to cut more pieces. Of course, it's the bust part that isn't going to fit - I made the second to largest size, and the bust is way to wide, and not high enough. I really hate that patterns are made for a B cup; if you're substantially bigger than that, shirts are a pain in the ass. So basically what they did was for a bigger bust size, they made it wider without making it any deeper. I know I'll need to do a full bust adjustment on most of my shirt patterns, but I'm thinking I may be able to fiddle with this (because the bust part is a separate piece) in order to get it to fit. Of course, in order to do that I would need to go buy more fabric, then cut out a deeper/higher, but less wide piece. I think I'm going to try to do that, but if I can't find the fabric I'll probably just finish the shirt as practice. But the shirt is so pretty, I feel like I'm wasting all the fabric. Plus, while I loved putting the shirt together, it kind of kills my enthusiasm to know it's not going to fit. Isn't the fabric gorgeous?

Update: Sewing and Riding

Not much sewing going on lately. I have enough fabric to make a few projects, but the problem is that all the fabrics are knits. At the moment, knits are my nemesis. No matter what I do, even with a stretchy stitch, even with tissue paper as a stabilizer, the stitching still puckers. I don't want to ruin all my beautiful fabric, so it lies there on the shelf, taunting me.

I talked with my mother today, a master quilter and sewer, and she said that the tension is probably off on my machine. As my machine (a Bernina 1001 that used to be hers) is awesome I don't want to mess up my normal sewing (which is issue free) by messing with the tension just for knits. My mom offered to show me the tips and tricks for sewing knits when I'm down at my parent's house for Christmas, but since they're in Arizona and I'm in Portland, I'm obviously not going to lug my machine on the airplane. So depending on whether I get frustrated enough/annoyed enough with having all this pretty fabric and unable to do anything with it before Christmas, I might head down to my local Bernina dealer and see if they can help me.

 I've also been looking at sewing classes. I can wing a lot of stuff, and it turns out usable, but I'm a bit of a perfectionist and would like for things to look beautiful without being overwhelmed with how to get them there. There's a great set of classes at Josephine's, but they're a bit expensive and I have a couple other things that are a greater priority. My riding helmet is going to set me back a ridiculous amount, because of course my head only fits the expensive helmet. But I like my brain, and would like to keep it in the condition it's in, so I'll fork out a couple of hundred for a helmet you have to replace any time you have an unscheduled dismount. ::sigh::

Why oh why did I have to fall in love with horses and riding? Seriously, it beats even my photography as the most expensive hobby I have. Long story short on that front, I was a working student for a local dressage trainer for a few months. Did the stereotypical working student things: mucking stalls, cleaning waterbuckets, cleaning tack, feeding horses, turning out horses, grooming horses. In exchange I got free lessons. It was a lot of work, but I seriously got spoiled having lessons 3-4 times a week. I've never been able to ride that frequently before; as a kid I was only able to ride twice a month. Anyways, the trainer and I parted ways in March (for a variety of different reasons) and I'm counting down the days until I have enough money to find a new trainer. I was using my trainer's helmet, so now I have to get a new one before I start searching for a new trainer. The helmet's gonna cost me around $200, but like I said, I like my brain. I know of two eventing trainers south of me that I'm hoping to try out. I really want to jump again, but I need some serious flatwork before I'll be able to start doing courses.

Back to the sewing front, I have to post the amazing find I had at Goodwill. A huge bag filled to the brim with tons of different kinds of lace.
I can tell I'll be making lots of skirts and bags with lace! I'm already looking for good patterns to use this in.

Update: Knitting

It's been brought to my attention that I haven't posted to this blog in a very long time. Life kind of went to hell for a while. It got so bad that I hadn't touched my knitting in months. I was just so stressed out about everything that I just didn't have the energy nor the inclination to pick up my knitting. But life is better now, so craftiness resumes!

My sister has an adorable little kitty named Alice. Alice is the tiniest full grown kitty I've ever seen. She's about 2 years old (I think). My sister wants me to have Alice. So in a few weeks, I'll have a kitty and there will be many gratuitous kitty pictures! Every knitter/sewer needs a kitty supervisor! I'm extremely animal-oriented, so I'm absolutely psyched. I'm going to spoil her rotten.

In the spirit of spoiling her rotten, I knitted her a Kitty Pi. It was a quick and easy knit that used nearly all of my remaining bits of Cascade 220. It's double stranded, so the sides stand up well. It's a bit big for Alice, because she's so tiny, but better big than too small, right? Besides, I'm switching Alice to a high protein, no corn, no preservatives, no byproducts food, so I'm assuming she'll gain a little weight.

I really love the top part of the sides. I used 2 strands of white Cascade 220, a strand of lime green di.Ve' Cipria that was on clearance for $2.00 several years ago, and a blue skein of Trendsetter Yarns Spruce I bought in Vienna. I used 7 different colors of Cascade 220, and then the two decorative yarns.

Let's see, what else. The Goddess Knits Mystery Shawl is on hold for a while. I was working solely on that before I took my hiatus from knitting. Instead, I've been working on finishing my Kimono shawl. Not much to show, as it's the same pattern repeats over and over.