An Inspiring Crafter

I'd like to introduce my blog readers to a most inspiring crafter: Donna Ferraro! Donna and I met a couple of weeks ago through my sister Sarah. We all needle felted and knitted together, and I mentioned to Donna that I originally got interested in needle felting because I saw photos of some really cute fairies. I also talked, as I usually do, somewhat incessantly about my cats.

Fast forward to today, when Sarah stopped by with a lovely bag of crafts from Donna for me! First, I am the proud recipient of this lovely needle felted fairy. It's amazingly intricate- not only is her face hand-painted, but her skirt is crafted from flower petals, and her legs are movable and beautiful, as they're wire that's been hand-wrapped with embroidery floss! Donna named her "Thimbleberry Fairy" and I am so happy to have her in my home. I've placed her on our chandelier for the moment, because it's one of the few places I know that Mochi (the wool destroyer) can't reach. I think the Thimbleberry Fairy looks cute there- like she's watching over our family meals. She even came complete with fairy dust!



Donna didn't forget about Meowzle and Mochi, and they sure are grateful for that! She sewed an organic catnip toy for each of the kitties, and as the pictures below indicate, they LOVE their new fish. In fact, they haven't stopped playing with these toys since I opened them 45 minutes ago. The packaging for these catnip fish is adorable, and the premium organic catnip, combined with the enticing ribbons, has made for two very contented cats.

And one very happy cat owner/crafter. Thanks a million, Donna. You made my day.

Pet Peeve: Lost Crochet Hook

One of my pet peeves is when I lose a hook or needles from an in-process crocheting or knitting project. I am in the middle of making a big crocheted bag, which I plan to felt eventually. I got about halfway done with this project and ran out of yarn. It took me a couple of days to get to the store to buy more yarn, and in the meantime our cat Mochi decided that the halfway-done bag made a great toy. Somehow she managed to lose the hook. I know I can just go to my stash of hooks and needles to replace it, but it's driving me crazy that I can't find it. Fortunately my hooks are just the plain ol' metal kind, not like these fancy ones from Grafton Fibers.

Bubbles Galore

My cats love bubbles. They will run in from another room if they hear me opening a container of bubbles. Accordingly, I've been doing some internet research on bubble recipes.

Bubble Recipe Sites:

1. This link includes a jell-o bubble recipe.
2. Bubble art (may be a bit advanced if your primary audience is two cats).
3. Lots of links to bubble recipes.
4. The definitive source, it seems.

The more I write the word bubble the weirder it looks. Apparently it's from the Middle English bubelen, to bubble. My source?

bubble. (n.d.). The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Retrieved January 16, 2008, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/bubble

Can you tell I'm in the middle of editing an academic paper and looking for distractions?!

Holiday Pet Bed, Completed

This weekend I finished crocheting the holiday pet bed I'm donating to the SPCA. If my own cats' reaction is any indication, some little pup or kitten will really like it. Mochi and Meowzle have been sleeping on it all day.

What Would You Do?

If you had this really cool empty can, what would you make out of it? I'm thinking of a pencil holder, but that seems so very predictable. Isn't it great? I don't even like canned peaches, but the "Dainty-Pak" label totally won me over.

And, just for the complete cuteness of it, a photo of my two cats sleeping on my office chair. FYI, I sat perched on the edge of the chair working at the computer for about 30 minutes so as not to disturb the cuteness. Finally my husband came in and moved the cats, muttering something about my carpel tunnel syndrome as he did so.

Beginning a Holiday Project: Pet Bed

I belong to a knitting group that has been very indulgent of my absences of late. I guess being in Mongolia is a pretty good excuse for not attending, but now that I'm back, I'm ready to join the madness again. Anyway, one of the excellent knitters in our group, Deb, suggested that we all work on projects to be donated this holiday season, and even connected us to a particular project- knitted pet beds for the local SPCA (so that the animals have some warmth in their cages during the long Buffalo winter).

I'm not sure exactly what the finished product will look like, but I hope it might knit up like the above photo. Of course, I'll post pictures of my finished product. I just hope Mochi doesn't web with my yarn for this project!

Oh, What a Tangled Web...

The webspinner inspecting her work

One of my cats, Mochi, loves to eat wool and other natural fibers (particularly cashmere). In addition to this not-so-charming behavior, she has another yarn-related habit that is pretty cute. If she finds a ball of yarn, she will carry it in her mouth, dragging the tail of the yarn until she weaves an intricate web throughout our house. Generally these webs begin near a table. She weaves the yarn around the legs of that piece of furniture and then carries the ball to another room, where she proceeds to web some more. This is often a nocturnal activity for Mochi, so we have to be careful not to get trapped in her tangled web when we wake up in the mornings.

A close-up of the web at its origins

The web continues into the dining room; notice that it divides into two paths at this point

Path one: Masterful weaving around a dining room chair

Path two: From the dining room into the pantry and kitchen (she ran out of yarn at this point)

The Temporary Metamorphosis of Craft Buff into Mongol Buff

And... we're off! This is my final blog before we head off on our 48 day sojourn to Mongolia via China. I've got tons of work to do while we're there because I'll be collecting data on Mongolian higher education for my PhD dissertation (the proposal defense I blogged about the other day was step #1, the fieldwork is step #2, and then coming back and writing the darn thing is steps #3 through #1,000. Okay, I'm exaggerating, but the writing will take a while!)

Nonetheless, I expect that my husband John and I will have fun adventures back in the place we initially met as Peace Corps Volunteers. We're looking forward to it, for sure. Although I do think I may have a mild form of travel OCD; I've written a 26-point memo for my friend who will be house- and cat-sitting for us! I didn't expect home ownership (or cat ownership, for that matter) to make it so much more difficult to up and leave, but it has. Oh well, the mortgage and utilities are pre-paid, and we're off!

If you'd like to read a little bit of background information on Mongolia, check here or here.

We depart this morning (Saturday) at 11:30 AM, stopping in NYC before boarding a flight to Beijing. We'll arrive in Beijing at 6PM local time on Sunday, Sept. 23 and my dear friend Sandra has graciously agreed to pick us up at the airport and host us for two nights in Beijing. We'll leave on Tuesday, Sept. 25 in the morning, taking the Trans-Siberian railroad up to Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia. The train ride is a looooong one- we'll arrive in Ulaanbaatar (hereafter UB) the next day, Wednesday, Sept. 26, in the mid-afternoon.

So, all of this is to say that it's unlikely that I'll get much of a chance to blog between now and Wednesday, but please check back by mid-week (9/26 or 9/27). Once we get settled in UB, I'll find a little internet cafe and news and pictures of our travels will pour forth, I'm sure!

Grocery Tote #3 (halfway there, with kitty guard)

So my never-ending ball of yarn has finally ended. I thought I'd be able to get 3 grocery bags out of it, but I wound up with only 2 1/2. Not a problem, really, since I bought 2 of these monster skeins at the same time, so I should be able to make 5 totes total. I continue to LOVE them at the grocery store-- I can fit the same amount of groceries in one crocheted tote that would normally fill 3-4 plastic bags.

My guard kitty Mochi makes an appearance in this photo-- she loves all things fiber, and is constantly carrying balls of yarn around to form "webs" in our house. She will basically unwind an entire ball of yarn around the legs of tables, into hallways, under beds, etc. until she's created a huge lair. She also has pica, and her non-nutritive substances of choice are wool and cashmere. I found this out the hard way-- I have two cashmere sweaters with "extra" seams in them now, in addition to scores of wool sweaters and socks that she's eaten. Anyway, the point is that Mochi has an inordinate fondness for the fiber arts, and she is quite enamored with these new grocery totes. Fortunately they're made from cotton yarn, so I don't have to worry about her munching on them.

Ithaca: Baby Hat & Washcloth and Cat Toy

We went for a quick jaunt down to Ithaca, NY this weekend to visit two great friends.

Nansa, an amazing friend from Mongolia who is a transplant to Trumansburg, NY:



And Alicia, a fellow Oberlin grad who is an inspirational activist and excellent friend (she even gave us her bedroom and slept in the living room):



While in Ithaca, I picked up some cotton-blend yarn at Homespun Boutique to crochet a baby hat and washcloth for John's cousin Marc's impending arrival:



I made these both on the drive home, and I had a little bit of leftover yarn, so I decided to make Meowzle a birthday present. As it turns out, however, his sister Mochi is much more interested in the toy than he is (and yes, those are my toes in the photo-- it's hard to get a good cat action shot!):

Happy Birthday Meowzle

Today my infamous cat Meowzle turns three. He is infamous because he has been diagnosed with "human-directed aggression" towards some people (like my unfortunate sister). But I love him nonetheless, and want to share this photo of a needle-felted likeness that I made a while back:



And so that I don't seem cat-obsessed in this post, I'd also like to wish a very happy birthday to my wonderful step-mother-in-law Joan, who happens to share a birthday with Meowzle. :)