More Inspirations

Essentially, the decision is whether or not to go with more green than blue or blue than green as those are my two favorite colors. Both of these inspiration pieces incorporate the colors I like and the themes I like.

Craft Room Decisions

July is going to be the month for remodeling my craft room. I am very excited about it! I have finally gotten all of the other things out of the way that I needed to do this summer before school begins again. Now, I can work on FUN STUFF! I have already been cleaning out the craft room so I can start with a clean slate including the closet of the craft room. Here is the puzzlement. For the past few weeks, I have been contemplating the color scheme of the craft room. I have been focusing on finding an 'inspiration piece' and then it occurred to me to make my own 'inspiration piece'. I have been making these little 8 X 8 art pieces in hopes it would offer inspiration as to what color scheme I wish to commit to but so far, I am not that committed to anything. Everything seems good when I am trying it. I know as I get closer to painting day the inspiration will strike! This is one of my little attempts at inspiration using topics that are meaningful to me. I will post more of these inspirations later. I do know one thing for certain. Denim will be the fabric of the craft room. Funny how I do not have any problem committing to fabrics.

For A Friend

No original works were harmed in the making of this art piece. ;)

Cheer Down

Remember in This Boy post, I said all of my cats have theme songs. Nigel's theme song is Cheer Down by George Harrison from Lethal Weapon 2. I love that song and is a wonderful example of the extraordinary guitarist that George was. Back to Nige; I do remember one day before I adopted Nigel looking out the window at him and watching him interact with his mother, Emily. She was having a terrible time just trying to stand up without him kicking, biting, swinging on her, chasing her, scratching her. She being the wonderful, gentle mom that she was exercised all of her patience with him in order not to retaliate. I can still clearly see how he had just torn into her and then, out of the blue, reversed gears simply to suddenly lite out like the wind in order to dash half way up a very tall oak tree. He was this much of a hellion all at maybe one month of age. The thought I had was 'someone needs to make that little fuzzball cheer down.' Well, he has not cheered down any since. None. Zero. Zilch. He has only ramped up more. I think that is why I love him so much. Like the song says, There's no tears to be shed, I'm gonna love you instead, I want you around, cheer down.

Masked Marauder

As you can tell from a couple of posts below this one, Oliver loves to sleep on the windowsill. This is his favorite place to sleep. Tonight, he had his sleep disturbed. I heard some bumbling and banging on the patio. I figured it was another one of our 'possum visitors or maybe even a hungry cat (go figure). I switched on the patio light and what to my wondering eyes should appear but a new type visitor!! We have never had a visitor such as this one. When the light hit him and he was standing looking in that window where Ollie was by now sitting up trying to peer out at our visitor, I thought Ollie was going to jump out of his skin! He could not leave that windowsill fast enough. He ran and never looked back! Straight for underneath the bed, he tore out! The last I saw of Oliver, his tail looked like a wire bottle brush! However, Nigel immediately wanted to check out the goings on of the patio. When he saw our masked friend, he was very curious but the site of me and Nigel were too much for the little raccoon and he scurried off into the darkness. And I hope that is where he stays. Nature is nice but I do not like it when nature and my house collide like when the squirrel came down the chimney. ;)

Kneeler Update

After quite sometime, the belt frame for the kneeler got made in Austin and arrived into my possession today. I assembled it tonight. Next step, I have to baste the 7 foot long kneeler onto those two posts that have cloth on them. I have to get that dowel with the cloth attached up to the machine and sew the kneeler to each of those cloth covered dowels, then roll it up like a scroll. Most importantly, I really have to get sewing on that thing. I want to finish it by Christmas. That is only 6 months away! That sounds like a long time but not considering my skill level.

This Boy

Remember that really great Beatles song "This Boy"? This boy would deny the pain and all of that? I love that song. Well, this boy in this picture (Oliver) is not into pain. He is all into comfort. He is suffering with comfort in this picture. Another thing about this boy; he loves to craft. You have never seen such a craft loving kitten before in all of your life. He can be completely sound asleep, totally dead to the world and I can open the door to the craft room and this boy will have awakened, ran and be in the craft room before I can get in there. This boy thinks crafting is fun because crafting involves a lot of fun things that cats love but that their Moms have to be ever vigilant. ;) Future post will be about more songs I associate with my cats. I like for all of my cats to have a theme song.

Who touched Me?

The title of this is "Who Touched Me?" but was cut off when I snapped the pix. The rest speaks for itself. Doubleclick pix to see detail. Carol, that woman is you. One of those women standing behind you is me and the other one is your sister, Mary. I hope you like it. It will be in the scrapbook that Kay and Elizabeth are compiling for you but I am not supposed to tell you. ;)

Little Nyquil

I spoke to my 80 year old Mom earlier this evening and she asked me how "Little Nyquil" was doing. From the looks of his picture, "Little Nyquil" appears to be doing just fine. (In all fairness to my Mom, I have had a terrible cold lately so remedies are on her mind.)

Cat Reading - Helga Sermat

I love this print. This is my dream guy.

Knightsbridge Hyde Park, London

I came across this picture that reminded me of an interesting story. Once upon a time, Andrea, Becky, Tommy and I were in London together. We had been out site-seeing all day. We were so very exhausted. We had been over at the Tower of London and maybe Buckingham Palace too. I cannot recall specifically now but what I can recall is that we had been several places not exactly close together. There had been a lot of traveling on buses and in taxis and trains and walking involved. Our feet were aching. We were suffering jet lag in a major way. Even though we had a full day, our itenerary was still full for the evening. We were scheduled to go on a "Jack the Ripper" tour beginning at 10 pm. We had one tour drop us off here at this hotel located in Knightsbridge. This was probably not a good place for us to stop in retrospect. However, it is where the tour people suggested we meet them. The people at this hotel looked at us all like we were the proverbial Ugly Americans. They kept asking us if we could 'sit someplace else' and 'stand someplace else' and asking us what exactly were we doing. We would always explain that we were to meet a tour there and they would act somewhat aghast and say "You are to meet a tour here???" as if we had said we were to meet the Pope there. Periodically, the doormen would ask us if they could hail us a taxi. After being asked this so many times, we got the bright idea to go to the hotel restaurant...not the fancy restaurant, mind you. Even we knew that would never pass muster. We went to more like the 'cafe' of the hotel. After we quietly seated ourselves at a table so as not to draw attention, a cafe personel waiter-type person walked out of nowhere just to ask us if we would mind sitting at the cafe bar. We complied. What else could we do; foreigners in a foreign land as we were. Okay, here comes the sad ending to the story. After we endured numerous insults and condescending scowls from the hotel staff, our tour bus shows up and we are so very thrilled! At long last, we can join up with travelers like ourselves and leave all of this snobbery behind!!! Oh no, the tour bus was overbooked and alas, we were left standing on the sidewalk watching our "Jack the Ripper" tour drive off in the cold London night. We finally made use of one of those doormen, "Okay, you can get us a taxi now." They were happy to see us go.

Just Too Much Time to Spare

I manage to work a full time job in only four days a week and it is not an easy job either. I go to school too. There they have me write, write and write some more about all kinds of topics just to give me experience. After all, if I am ever to support these youngsters in their persuits of degrees in higher education, I must know how to write as well as they can and know how to document their articles even better than they can for their submission to peer reviewed journals. However, I digress. I seem to have so much spare time on my hands that I have volunteered to stitch this tapestry kneeler. I was told that it will take me approximately one year to complete it because that is how long it has taken others who were not able to dedicate their lives solely to their kneeler's completion. Look at the kneeler closely. This is only a small portion of it that I was able to capture with my meager camera as I am not a professional photog with a high powered wide angle lense. The kneeler is over seven feet long. And yes, that is a Longhorn on it. What are the odds? The other ladies got kneelers with depictions of doves, crowns, lambs, olive branches, angels and other religious symbols. When it came to time to pass out my kneeler, I get a Longhorn Cow. Is it me? Is it so obvious? Do I have the word 'hick' stamped on my forehead? I think only certified country folk get Longhorns! The funniest part is that I like him and did not even object to having to stitch him. In fact, I am already referring to him as Bevo. I can tell you this straight up; Bevo and Nigel will never meet because I would not even know how to begin 'replacing' Bevo if he got a hole chewed in him! Periodically, I will post progress. BTW, wish me luck!