A house is not a home without a cat.

Or two.I miss Archie terribly each day and still wake up very upset, but we decided very quickly, particularly our younger son, that cats are very much part of our life, and so I have to make some introductions in a minute.

Thank you SO much all of you who offered such support and concern, it's quite overwhelming to hear from so many people and I am very grateful. I'm still struggling and feel like I'm not in my own life, but time and friends will help.

So now to our new furry additions.
They are both rescue boys from our local RSPCA shelter - they had come from a room, just a room, with over 30 cats in, all their lives in one room, although well enough fed and looked after. These two seemed to have a bond, with the little one headbutting and curling up with the older one all the time when we visited their pen, so home they both came. They both had terrible sneezing fits for the first week or so and the little one just sat all day, but now they are absolutely fine and full of energy just as cats should be.

Monty:is the handsomest black and white cat ever, with neat white feet and beautiful white whiskers. He is very solid and tall, with a very wavy fluffed-up tail. He may be about 4 or 6, nobody seems to know. He is friendly although still a little wary.
Monty likes food, climbing, running off with the grey furry mouse-toy, chatting, chasing feathers, food, looking out of the window, food, chasing a ping-pong ball in the bath, food, and sleeping on son no. 2's up-in-the-air-bed.

Monty is in the process of re-modelling the sofa so that it has perforations.

Leo:is a very fluffy, soft black kitten, about 6 months old. He is very like Archie but has, to me, a very different face. We love black cats and yet they often get left behind in shelters. When he came home he was SO thin, you could feel all the bones in his spine and his shoulder blades stuck out, I think the older cats had been pushing him out of the way at mealtimes. Now he has a tummy like a small round, fluffy football that sways from side to side a bit as he walks. He didn't know how to play with anything when he came but now it's lovely to see him running off with the grey furry mouse and feathers. He is affectionate and has a little cuddle and a purr every day.

Leo likes food, squeaking loudly to get more food, chatting to Monty, chasing Monty's feathers and stealing the grey furry mouse, food, sitting in the sunshine, food, chasing a ping-pong ball in the bath with Monty, food, and curling up with Monty on son no.2's bed.
Leo is re-modelling the carpet on a daily basis. This is how we chose our carpet - nice and flat:

This is Leo's preferred design - nice and loopy with lots of sticky-up bits:

Sadly it is a very large and expensive carpet to replace. Every morning when I come down I take my pointy pair of scissors and try and poke the loopy bits back into the carpet backing, but that just leaves holes. Leo is definitely winning.

It is good to have furry lives in our home again, but Archie was SUCH a good cat we'd forgotten what havoc cats can cause, especially when there are two of them. And it's not the same - Archie was so special, he slept on my shoulder for a bit every night, I've never had such an affectionate cat and will never forget him. But these two are making me smile again and are good to come home to, as long as they haven't destoyed too much. We've not had two together for years, it's so nice to see them playing and hear them constantly chatting to each other, and of course they love curling up together too.

A heartbreaking farewell to Archie.

My beautiful, sweet, black, shiny affectionate boy is gone - he ran straight under a car this morning and we lost him instantly, so very, very young. I'm still in denial and such shock, it seems a never-ending time of losses, you pick yourself up after each one but it gets harder each time and you do wonder sometimes how many more you can cope with. He was such an immense comfort at the end of each day, after struggling through endless clearing and dust and mess and emotionally drained after a day at my mum's house he was always such good company and I so needed him to stay with me. There is something so tragic about a life cut so short, he had such a lovely nature and was supposed to share life with us for many years.

He was so loved and was so very happy, jumping about chasing after butterflies and bees yesterday in the garden - on our side of the road are about 50 interesting gardens to explore and an enormous field with great edges to find small creatures in, no reason at all ever to go across the road. There are many, many cats in our area, all happily trotting across, it's got speed bumps and a low speed limit and I really thought it was a very low risk road indeed, Newton and our other cat scooted across many times a day for years without so much as losing a whisker, we hardly ever hear of any cats being lost. I guess perhaps some cats have road-sense and others just don't. I know many of you, especially overseas, keep your cats in but it just wasn't an option here, much as I wanted to.

So I'm not sure how life will go on, it's hard to imagine life without a cat but I'm not sure I can go through losing any more, we'll have to take a day at a time, perhaps the only thing to do will be to find another furry companion, we'll see. Having lost one at 8 and now this, I keep looking at other people around who have cats that are older, who live to twelve or fifteen or beyond, (and at those who trot about from one side of our road to the other) and thinking 'When is it my turn?' I seem to have lost my own life and feel like I'm living in someone else's bad dream a bit, but we're making slow progress with my mum's house and one day I guess we'll move forward again. I haven't forgotten about any of my friends here in blog-land, and I'll try and catch up with what you're doing as much as I can.
Any of you with cats please give them an extra stroke from me, I know many of you will empathise.

Happy Christmas and Archie in the snow

Those of you who have been following a little while may remember that I'm a great advocate of the 'buy yourself presents' way of doing things - that way you get things you are truly happy with.

I've been trying hard to support other craftspeople and artists by buying from Folksy this year, even though I still haven't quite managed to set up a shop of my own, so was delighted to find these beautiful Christmas Robins from the Linen Cat shop - and I ordered a set for a friend. Well, when they came I just hated to part with them, such lovely deep rich colours and so cheerful, so I sent them off and then promptly ordered some more just for me. They came so quickly and were beautifully wrapped with great details on the labels and packaging, and this morning I hung them up on my garland.

I finally got round to putting a few decorations on our tree too, but Archie was un-decorating it as fast as I was getting them on, thinking it was a great game. In the end I had to leave a lot of bare branches at the bottom of the tree with things hanging further up. We also had to move a couple of bags of presents which had been lovingly wrapped by my friends in lovely rustly tissue paper, There are few things more attractive to a cat than rustly paper AND a bag to stuff his head in, so my presents are now ontop of the wardrobe - in fact there's not very much we've left under the tree at all.

Archie is loving the snow - it seems to be making him a bit skippy and mad, and he's been staying out for ages despite cold toes! Here he is nearly up to his knees:
And here he is all black, skipping about in the white snow, just like a young cat should. He starts tentatively for a little while then pounces on it before trotting off!



I hope all of you have a very Happy Christmas and are able to enjoy some rest and time for yourselves. We are struggling as my mum is deteriorating drastically each day mentally, so it's very tough, but we will make the best of everything and spend some time with good friends and family, and I'm finding that being with my boys is so helpful as I can think about my life going forward despite all the difficulties.
Thank you for all your friendship and support this last year which has meant so much to me.

Christmas Wrapping with Archie, by Archie.

I'm finding this is a great time of year to help my mum with lots of things. It's my very first Christmas and I'm very excited about all the decorations. I like the things that look like bits of trees best - I've managed to run off with small pieces of those and hide them under the kitchen table for later. I quite like trying to chew the fairy lights too but my mum says I'm not allowed.

Let me tell you how cats can best help their humans at this time of rustly paper and ribbons.

First you will need to hide behind any rustly paper ready to get all big-eyed and spring out at your human just as they may be trying to stick a piece of sellotape on a present, so that they are so surprised they stick the sellotape to the wrong bit.

Then you should see how well you can sharpen your claws on the end of any spare paper you can find - my mum did take a photo of me doing this but it was very blurry as I was sharpening very fast. This helps add decorative perforations in the edge of the paper to make it extra special, here is my suggested design:

Then you should roll over and over on the paper as it is spread out and start chewing any nearby curly ribbon.

This helps unpack the ribbon ready for your human to use.

And then finally don't forget to demand constant attention, this helps by ensuring your human feels needed.

A follow up about John Lewis

Now, where were we all that time ago, before life got so complicated?
You may remember, or probably won't, ages ago at the end of this post, which came in my previous crisis-free life, that I'd left a load of stuff in John Lewis. Well following on from that I would like to say how fantastic the store can be. There are many reasons for this. Obviously it has many pretty, shiny, stylish and desirable things all laid out in attractive displays. It has many departments on many floors containing virtually everything you could need in all areas of your life, and, of course, it has a haberdashery department. Only in a parallel universe could I dream of being able to shop there regularly.
But it's so much more than the products they've got - it's the way they treat customers. I feel like I matter to them - nothing is too much trouble and so far all the assistants I've met have been unfailingly attentive and helpful without being pushy. It seems to be how shopping should be, and used to be in the past when people had time and a smile for you.

But I wasn't prepared for what happened following my experience of losing my stuff in my brain-less daze. Well I did ring up the day I lost the bag and there was no trace of anything, but even if there had been I'd have had to go and get it, or replace it all, so off I set on an 8am bus (that's very early for me on a Saturday) and got there just as the store was being unlocked the next day. I made my way to an assistant to explain brainless daze and forgetfulness and she took me to haberdashery to see if anyone had handed my ribbons in, but they hadn't. But the manager was there and overheard and told the assistant to take me up to Customer Services and.....if my bag hadn't been handed in he told her to ensure that all my items were replaced free of charge. Can you believe it? Of course he had heard me say 'small bag' and knew it was haberdashery rather than Jaeger/Jigsaw (as if) but even so I'd spent getting on for £20 and was quite overwhelmed at their offer to replace it all when I was the one who'd lost it.
In the end when we got upstairs yes somebody had indeed handed my things in - I couldn't really imagine anyone wanting to run off with tailors chalk, embroidery threads and a thimble but you just never know.
So faith in human nature is restored, and I like John Lewis even more. And so I bought these very nice mugs from them - I fell for the bird as always.


Archie liked the unpacking of them as you can see from the first photo. He's been enjoying wrapping Christmas presents as well. I haven't enjoyed this as much as he has.

Happy birthday to Archie!

My beautiful Archie is now a whole year old - in fact his birthday was a couple of weeks ago but in the middle of the chaos of life I didn't manage to post anywhere near the day itself.
I know from the lady who owned him and his mum that he was the first one of the litter of five to be born. He has been the sweetest kitten we've ever had, no bad temper at all and so cuddly even as an adult. Hard to believe he has changed so much from the tiny black-with-tabby-stripes fuzzy ball of fur here:

to his present sleek self! He is still very stretchy and bendy as you can see:

I couldn't work out how to post videos when we had him, but here are two short ones from when he was tiny - I love the second one where he topples over but pretends it was nothing to do with him!





Now of course he is so much more sensible and grown up. He likes to watch TV with us - Frasier and Grand Designs are his favourites so far, we don't know why:



It's proving to be a pretty grim time for us. My mum is still in hospital, mentally much worse than ever, it's unclear how much she'll recover so we're just trying to take a day at a time and see what happens, while clearing what we can from her house bit by tiny bit. Archie is keeping me going with lots of cuddles!

Playing with silks

There are so many things I want to post about - the autumn colours, Folksy purchases and supporting other craftspeople, the interesting world of Royal Mail Recorded Delivery (where you pay extra for the peace-of-mind that comes from knowing your item has been delivered, only in my case 75% of the time I've used this service they've not collected a signature thus leading to extra stress rather than any peace-of-mind whatsoever), Special Delivery versus FedEx ( I really will try and fill you in one day because it's all quite interesting if you need to send stuff out), but I am struggling so much with time I'm just going to stick to a bit of felt for now. I'm in the middle of many projects but recently went a bit mad with ordering silks - here are my packs of dyed silk hankies:

I must, must, must look into dyeing my own, but no way is it going to happen quite yet, so I took the plunge and paid for them ready-done. There's also a new hank of sari silk in there - they're from Fibrecrafts, which stocks a more purple sari silk than some other places, although there are always lots of lovely colours mixed up together.
I've used the plain silk hankies over cream wool tops before just to give a bit of texture and sheen but cut these ones up a bit to make a contrast with the background.

I really like the effect although would love even deeper colours - I'd hoped they'd be more jewel-like and that I could use them against black but I think they're a bit pale, but I'll enjoy experimenting, if I can find a parallel universe in which there are 40-hour days.

Here is the card my OH got me for our wedding anniversary last week - 22 years this year. Very like Archie indeed, eyeing up all the butterflies:

Archie himself has taken to watching TV while assisting with any technical computer problems I may be having - he'll be demanding a salary in salmon Whiskas Temptations soon.

Cat Yoga

I can only assume someone has been teaching Archie some kind of strange yoga pose for relaxation, because look how he is lying. Surely this must be one of the most odd arrangements of cat limbs ever, how can he stretch his little tummy round that much? He really is very bendy.

He has lost none of his longing to sleep on my laptop, as you can see - since I've been told laptops get rid of significant amounts of heat through the keyboard, it doesn't seem like a good idea to be insulating it with all that black fluff, however comfy he is. He always knows I'm going to ask him to move.



We lost him for a bit yesterday, he's so black it's impossible to spot him in dark corners, but I'd looked everywhere and thought he must have somehow got out. Then I found him, fast asleep and curled up, in here:

Obviously he got up when I got the camera out.
This is not good - he's never got right in before and slept- I often put a load of clothes in and leave the door open while I scour the house for odd socks to top it up, throw them in, slam the door and start the cycle. This would be a disaster if he sneaked in for a nap in the meantime, so I've had to put a note on the machine saying 'Check for cat'.

Must show you this last photo, I promise it is absolutely and completely genuine. Last week I left my laptop on the kitchen table to go and make a drink, and when I got back, Archie had renamed one of my folders with his little toes. All by himself. He obviously didn't think much of the contents.

Ups and downs and being busy

It's proving to be one of those times when I feel like the days are slipping past and all muddling together, I'm sure most of us feel like that at busy times. I've sadly had much less time to post anything and I think may be entering a stage of life when that continues. Worse, I haven't been able to keep up properly with blogs I'm following, so I'm very sorry I haven't been able to comment as much as I'd like, it doesn't mean I don't care.

Lots has been happening here, not all good, but then not all bad either.

School has started again, we're back into routine, which is good, although it does bring some challenges. Son number one is now fifteen. As he is not the most organised person in the world I asked him to get EVERYTHING ready for his first day of school the night before. He said he had. At twenty past eight on the actual morning he told me he couldn't find his pencil case and that his shoe-lace had broken before the holidays. He also told me this morning he couldn't find his tie and he didn't want to use his spare one because he didn't like it any more because.......he had drawn a biro face on it last term.
I have spent half an hour today de-staining it, washing it and mending it.
Such are the joys of term-time!

Briefly, the 'downs' are that my 82 year-old mum has been undergoing tests all summer, we still don't know what's going on but there's some problem with her liver - so that's been a concern for a long time now. Her GP is one of my oldest and closest friends, and she's a thorough and excellent doctor, so she couldn't be in safer hands, but there's also a specialist involved who's still running more tests, so we're still waiting. We sadly lost my uncle, my mum's brother, last weekend too after a long illness which suddenly deteriorated, that's been distressing and more so as he lived in Canada and she couldn't go to the funeral or see him in his final days. So all in all she has needed to talk and be listened to more than normal, and is finding everything hard to take in. I'm an only child and we lost my dad a long time ago, so I need to make sure I'm available to support her even when I've got a long list of things to do. Usually she keeps busier than me with all her interests and groups - she's got a better social life than most teenagers, but right now she's not feeling well enough.

But there are 'ups' too - I've been making lots of things ready for the Wandsworth Artists' Open House event the first two weekends in October - I have an artist friend who opens her home and shows her paintings, and she shares the space with me and other artists too. Do download the leaflet and have a look through if you are anywhere nearby - it looks fantastic - so many different styles of art to see. I wish I could go myself as I want to see everybody else's work and meet all the other people involved - perhaps next year!

So I've made some more tea cosies as they were successful last year.

And lots and lots of flowers. And a few new bags.

This black one's got some sari silk incorporated into it and has come out really well. Always so hard to know what people will like but I'll send a selection.

Archie has been helping with my felt roses. First of all he helped by being beautiful and black and being a faithful companion.

But then temptation rather got the better of him:

After that he found I suggested he go out in the garden and play.

Archie scared us all to bits last Tuesday by completely disappearing from 6.30 in the morning till 8.30 at night - he's never been away for more than four hours before. I'd just printed out the first 50 'Our cat is missing please could you check your outbuildings' leaflets and had them in my hand ready to go out the door, when he trotted in calmly as if nothing had happened. And they say pets are supposed to reduce stress.