Just a short blast for today, because there’s haunting to do…
I love Halloween. I love cats. So cats dressed up for Halloween feels like a no-brainer, especially if I can work a Satsuma Street design into the mix.
One-Eyed Jack is one of their new Halloween ornament designs for 2021. I was too impatient to order and wait for the kit, so I purchased the PDF pattern from her Etsy shop and printed it out at home so I could start stitching right away.
And you know what they say, kids…if life gives you white perforated paper in your stash when a pattern calls for black, grab a Sharpie and make it so (or “sew”). 😉
I altered the pattern slightly to make his markings look a bit more like my parents’ cat, and I left the plumage off his hat, but definitely added all the sparkly beads and sequins as prescribed.
Because I apparently have too much time on my hands, I created (another!) stop-motion video of the process:
He was a big hit, and is currently affixed to my parents’ refrigerator door via the magic of magnets, keeping watch over any tasty treasures that might get put in there.
It’s no secret that I love Satsuma Street design, like this one and this one. This year, I bought Mister Cat after ogling it for what feels like ages. On Etsy, you can buy either the PDF pattern or the kit; I bought the kit from 123Stitch since I already had an order going.
What I liked:
it’s a Halloween cat, duh
her designs are always so colourful and fun
the kit came with black perforated paper, so I didn’t have to buy a whole package of it
What I didn’t like:
the black perforated paper was a bit of a pain to see (like black aida cloth, so no surprise there)
I ran short of three – count ’em, three – colours of the threads included. I am not a novice stitcher who has no idea how to get the most out of her materials, and I didn’t have to unpick and waste any thread, so WTH, people? One, I might understand, but three?
And because I’m a masochistic weirdo, I documented my progress in a series of photographs and turned them into a stop-motion video:
I’m pretty happy with how he came out, despite my issues with the kit. I might have to leave him out year-round just to enjoy him.
Did you know that Darth Vader never uttered the words “Luke, I am your father”? And that Humphrey Bogart’s Rick didn’t actually tell the piano player to “Play it again, Sam”? If you’re swearing up and down right now that those are the right lines, darn it – and maybe you also remember reading Berenstein Bears books as a kid – you’re likely experiencing the Mandela Effect. It’s a psychological phenomenon in which large numbers of people share the same false memory, and so named after the false memory many people share of Nelson Mandela dying in prison in the 1980s (he didn’t, as you might have suspected). This article provides some great examples – as a psych major, I love how weirdly fallible the human memory is.
What does any of that have to do with this project? Nothing, really, except for a common misspelling of near-homophones. Mandela was an anti-apartheid revolutionary. A mandala is a geometric figure representing the universe in Hindu and Buddhist symbolism.
Guess which one I recently stitched up for the Hoopless Hoopla swap on Lettucecraft?
My partner mentioned she’d like something featuring blue, pink, and/or gold, and had listed mandalas as one of her themes, and it felt like a perfect dovetailing of aesthetics. When I set about searching for a design, I inadvertently saved the same one twice, which I took as a sign that it was the one.
I don’t know who designed this, but isn’t it gorgeous? When I looked at it, my eye automatically divided it into three sections, and I decided an ombre effect would suit it perfectly.
I used DMC shades 3843, 3845, and 3846, the latter of which used a huuuuuge amount because I neglected to account for the fact that each successive “ring” would be so much larger than the last. I had enough, but boy, was I kicking myself for picking a design with such an intricate outer circle.
(And honestly, despite my griping, it’s not that big: only five inches across.)
Some gold seed beads added a touch of elegance and brought the design up to the next level. I agonized over the beads longer than I should have, and tried about ten different iterations of seed beads vs. E beads vs. both, but in the end decided to keep them small and subtle.
I was pleased with how this came out and hoped that my partner would like it, too (spoiler alert: she did). But I positively squealed at the cuteness of what she sent me:
Isn’t that lovely? I love the elegance of blackwork, and those tiny pops of red in the flowers positively make this.
The second round of swaps on Lettucecraft recently took place, and I signed up for the Adult Merit Badge swap as fast as my little fingers could complete the questionnaire. I was never a Girl Guide, but I love me a merit badge! My partner listed ten different possible themes to choose from, and I was thisclose to working with “Coffee” when I started Googling bad science puns (she’s a biology teacher, and had listed “Science” as one of her themes). Before I knew what was happening, “Coffee” was all but forgotten, and darn it, I was going to dad-joke the heck out of “Science”.
It was a bit of a masochistic choice on my part, because I am not a science-type person. In Grades 11 and 12, we were made to choose at least one science class of the “big three” to take: Biology, Chemistry, and/or Physics. This was exactly one more science class than I wanted to take. Why not an extra period of French instead, so I could hinky dinky parlez-vous with the best of them? Or English? Never mind that I probably already gave Mr. Klymko a Level-5 Motrin headache on a daily basis anyway: this was my education we were talking about.
I eventually opted for Physics for two solid reasons. Primo, it seemed the “cleanest” and the least likely to feature funny smells, oozing, or explosion; secundo, my aunt taught Chemistry, and I thought it might be weird. (This was really terrible logic on my part, because she taught me math in Grades 10 and 11 and I actually understood it for the first time for reasons that had nothing to do with our shared name. And if I had known that I’d take up recreational baking, I would have volunteered to learn about chemical reactions in a heartbeat.) Because Physics was also the hardest of the three and didn’t garner a lot of wiling victims, the school combined the Grade 11 and 12 students into one class, and we covered both levels in one academic year. Every single day of Grade 11, I had double Physics, and it was brutal. (But! Having gotten both years out of the way at once, my Grade 12 schedule was such that I had the entire afternoon free every other day, so I can’t say no good came of it.)
Biology, however, was a bit of newish territory for me. Through the magic of the internet, I found a picture I liked, to use as inspiration for my badge. My partner told me she has a purse where she affixes any badges she accumulates, and my hope was that her students would get a kick out of this one, too.
Oh, how I love working with felt! The badge is about 3″ high from top white border to bottom white border. When I first found my “inspiration image”, I honestly had no idea whether all the little bits contained in the cell were accurate, but through research I discovered that yes, they were – this is a rough representation of an animal cell!
I made my nucleus and cell phone out of felt, but embroidered the facial features and, in the end, the mitochondria and the vacuoles. I had initially cut small bits of felt for the latter two, but the bright red and green felt made it look like a Christmas ornament and not, you know, an actual science thingie. The satin stitch I went with instead wasn’t a tremendous effort, and helped the overall appearance, I think. Once I had all my features stitched on, and my layers of felt where they ought to be, I added a white backing to hide the stitches.
A close-up, for good measure:
My partner really liked it, which is a huge relief! Her comment: She even got the detail of the endoplasmic reticulum being attached to the nucleus. I just smiled and nodded – although I do know which one the nucleus is!
Wondering what I got in the mail? My partner absolutely nailed it, and did a mash-up of my “Cats” and “Cupcakes” themes.
Her daughter helped pick out the colours, which are honestly so perfect purrfect for something cupcake-themed. She even attached a safety pin to the back of it for easy wearing and removal, which is the ultimate thoughtful detail.
It’s so nice to have the swapping up and running – I love being able to craft outside of my usual comfort zone.
When I adopted my oldest from the local humane society, they lined her carrier with what I think was once a pillowcase (essentially, a nondescript piece of flannelette-like material) for the ride home to ward off the January chill. When I adopted my second, they tucked into her little cardboard carrier a small afghan made of six blue-and-pink granny squares. I’ve still got the cat, and her “baby blankie”, and the blankie gets treated with kid gloves on laundry day: gentle cycle, lay flat to dry.
It probably shouldn’t surprise anyone that when I got it in my head that I wanted to learn how to crochet, I practiced the basics by crocheting simple squares to be sewn into blankets for the humane society. I don’t exactly work on them tirelessly, but it’s proven to be something to occupy my hands while I watch TV or talk on the phone, and over the past while I’ve managed to churn out six:
In approximate chronological order:
Unlike the others, which are made of a worsted-weight yarn, this giant granny square is made from a baby yarn and it’s so soft:
I was really excited about this one! It gave me a chance to try some different techniques, and provided wonderful justification for keeping back issues of Bust magazine:
Hopefully these will help some other kitty settle into his or her furever home.
And yes, my cat still sleeps with hers:
Thanks for looking – and remember: adopt, don’t shop! 🙂
Yes, that’s a bad pun, if it even qualifies as one. (I’m sure dads the world over are shaking their heads and taking an extra step away from me: “We’d never make a joke that bad.”)
This is just a short one, because I have no real backstory for this, but: just in time for Halloween, I managed to complete “Cat in the Moon” by Handblessings.
…my true love gave to me: a triumvirate of cats for the tree!
Back when I got my first cat – that is, my first cat I adopted on my own as an apparently responsible-looking adult, and not a carryover from my childhood – I celebrated her first Christmas by buying one of those commemorative yearly ornaments from Hallmark, and slipped her picture into it to give to my mom. Aawww! Grandkitten’s first Christmas!
By the next year, she had a younger sister, and this meant either a) Photoshopping the two into the same picture, or b) being lucky enough to get a shot where they were sitting side-by-side and not trying to beat the living crap out of one another. And then a few years after that, my parents adopted their own furry bundle of joy. It seemed weird to give them an ornament with a picture of my cats but not one with theirs, so yay, Photoshop! Also, some of Hallmark’s offerings had been not-so-cute over the years, so there had been a year or two with no ornament from the furkids.
This year, I decided to do something completely custom and stitch an ornament for each cat. I found these patterns on Etsy and knew I could make them work:
Of course, the markings aren’t quite right, so I had to change the patterns up a little bit. My muses (or mew-ses)?
Yes, apparently he’s offended by the pink sparkly ball on the Christmas tree. I’ve given up trying to understand him.
For the most part, I altered the patterns as I went along without a point of reference, but the black-and-white has such asymmetrical markings that I used a picture to make sure she looked right immortalized in thread.
I didn’t use a ton of backstitch, partly to expedite the process and partly to keep them more organic-looking and less cartoonish. They’re framed in 3″ wooden embroidery hoops painted gold, and ready to be displayed.
We’ve established by now that I love Halloween, right? Okay, good. And cats? And cross-stitch? And most things retro? Then you may be able to guess how excited I am about this finish!
I bought this pattern from Sastuma Street’s Etsy shop last year (at the same time I bought “Sorry We’re Dead“), but didn’t have time to stitch it before last Halloween. That became my goal for this year!
My take on “Halloween Cat” (although there are in fact three of them in the picture) varies slightly from the pattern instructions. The model was stitched on 32-count fabric over two threads; I used 28 count. The model piece’s fabric is periwinkle, but I opted for this gorgeous hand-dyed “African Violet” I found at my local needlework shop – which, in spots, is a perfect match to DMC 554. Oh, and rather than use the recommended DMC 3819 for the cat’s and kittens’ eyes, I seized the opportunity to use neon green from the same package I got the colours I used for “Sorry We’re Dead” last year.
Finished, and ready for washing:
In its shadow box:
A gratuitous back shot, just because:
I thought it would be fun to take progress shots and set them to music. I’m weird that way. Enjoy!
It’s now framed and on display in the living room…at least for a few more hours. Oh, and see what I mean about the fabric matching the thread?
As always, thanks for looking – and Happy Halloween!
Those of you who have been following my exploits for a while will know that I’m a bit of a stickler for grammar. There was the tea towel, the t-shirt, and the rant about “whatever“. (Oh, yes, and the snarky cross-stitch for a friend.)
It probably shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to anyone, then, that abbreviated text-speak annoys me to no end. There might have been a case made for it, back when SMS messages were allotted only 160 characters, and you had to key “4-4-3-3-5-5-5-5-5-5-6-6-6” just to say “Hello”. (Remember that?) But with the proliferation of smart devices – or worse, when someone’s using a real computer and keyboard? That’s just lazy.
Despite my aversion to that “How R U?” kind of stuff, I found myself drawn to “C U L8R” from the “Cats Rule” line by Heritage Stitchcraft. For one thing, the cat looks a bit like mine; also, I figured it would make a great companion piece to “Whateva”, and by extension, a great birthday gift for my mom. I love Heritage Stitchcraft’s designs for their detail and nuance – and for the fact that each pattern comes with two sheets: one for cross-stitch and one for the backstitch – but oh, my, those squashed fractionals! Evenweave is a must with those guys.
Weekly progress shots are available on my Instagram feed, but I present to you now the finished piece in all its glory:
It’s particularly appropriate since I’m the one who taught her how to text – back when “4-4-3-3-5-5-5-5-5-5-6-6-6” ruled the airwaves.
Beside its companion piece, whose subject looks utterly disinterested in being Cn L8r.
At the risk of sounding like a crazy cat lady, Saturday was my cat’s birthday. I’m not the best cat-mom when it comes to remembering stuff like that; in the eight years that I’ve had her, I think I’ve only remembered once before this. But hey, my bad parenting/sieve-like memory doesn’t mean she shouldn’t have a fabulous celebratory cake, right? The stars were aligned: it was a long weekend and I had icing sugar in the house. And truthfully, I had been looking for an excuse to do up something like this, and what better reason than a birthday?
Say, that looks tall. How many layers did you say it was, again?
I didn’t, but: six.
Proof that “vegan” ≠“healthy”. I used the basic vanilla cupcake recipe from VCTOTW, doubled it, and divided it amongst six bowls to tint each one separately. You definitely don’t want to attempt this if you have a serious aversion to artificial colours – but my theory is, as long as the majority of my diet isn’t neon-coloured, a piece of cake now and then isn’t going to kill me. I made a huge batch of the fluffy buttercream frosting recipe from the same book, and barely had enough to finish the cake. Even though each layer is only 6″ across, it still used a lot!
The birthday girl was somewhat intrigued by this candy-coloured confection, but quickly lost interest and resumed the nap from which she had been so rudely awakened. Hey, more for me!
I’m not sure if I’d try this again. It’s not difficult, just a bit fiddly, and is a bear to store as none of my cake-takers are tall enough to house it. But I can cross “rainbow layer cake” off my baking bucket list.
The Witty Child 