A bit dotty

I'm fed up with all the dreary weather and I'm ready for some pretty colours - so here are my latest ones. A long process making the dots but I do find them and the pastel shades cheerful and am making lots of different dotty things.

To go with cheerful dots are cheerful daisies too, on a nice spring green background.

I'm all set for tea in the garden - how many weeks do you reckon we'll have to wait for that? I've got my little round table out on the lawn ready - (how dotty is that?! Good to be optimistic though.)

It's been a busy week of trying to felt here - as you know Archie is a tremendous help to me and greatly enhances the whole experience. He does truly love sewing too and likes chewing all types of thread. A couple of afternoons I've just given up trying to do anything creative and have played with Archie and waited for my boys to come home instead- as soon as the first one has walked through the door I've just presented them with a kitten and run off back to the kitchen to try and get on!

Procedure for felting with the assistance of a kitten, using a resist.

Begin this procedure by putting kitten in his bed for a sleep:


Now follow the numbered steps below:

1. Separate wool tops into pieces for each layer.

2. Tease out wool fibres and begin to lay out in very fine tufts over the resist.

3. Retrieve other pieces of wool tops that kitten has grabbed and run away with into the next room to chew and play with.

4. Continue laying out fine tufts of fibres.

5. Peel off last few tufts of fibres kitten has run through and disturbed, straighten, then re-lay.

6. Put kitten on floor.

7. Remove residue of fluffy wool fibres from kitten's mouth.

8. When first side of template is complete, cover with net and sprinkle with water to wet down the fibres.

9. Remove kitten from the spare piece of net he is playing in.


10. Put kitten on floor.

11. Put kettle on for cup of tea.

12. Remove kitten with wet paws from puddles of splashy water on the surface of the felt.

13. Hold kitten in air while he shakes the water off his paws.

14. Put kitten on floor.

15. Turn template over, carefully fold over overlapping fibres from other side, and commence laying out fibres on second side.

16. Repeat steps 2-7.

17. Make cup of tea and stroke kitten.

18. Put kitten in next room and shut door.

19. Turn template over to first side again.

20. Peacefully for 30 seconds commence laying out fibres for second layer.

21. After 30 seconds shut ears to pitiful wailing emerging from next room.

22. Continue laying out until pitiful wailing turns to kitten-yowling. This is much, much quieter than cat-yowling but more distressing and harder to ignore.

23. Let kitten in.

24. Kitten will be extraordinarily delighted to see you after what has amounted to about two and a half minutes of separation, and will begin purring ecstatically, looking adoringly at you and saying silently 'Please never leave me alone like that ever, ever again, I am the sweetest most adorable kitten in the world, I love you and I will be good.'

25. Stroke kitten.

26. Talk to kitten sternly about the importance of being able to continue working.

27. Put kitten in his bed.



28. Continue laying out fibres on both sides of the template until there are three layers on each side and felt and kitten are wet.

29. For the felting stage cover with net and sprinkle soap flakes on felt then add hot water. Rub the felt gently to keep all the layers in place. At this stage the kitten will join in trying to rub the felt, but won't be gentle and may use claws.

30. Put kitten on floor. Brush off surplus soap flakes from kitten's head.

31. Kitten will by now have worked out that the fastest way to access the felting table is not by a series of chair-hopping manoeuvres, but straight up your legs.

32. Put kitten in next room, shut door and work extremely quickly, getting the felt ready to be rolled before giving-in to pathetic meowing.

33. Give in to pathetic meowing and let kitten in, kitten will again be delighted to see you and will need a cuddle.

34. Explain to kitten you will be rolling the felt and he should watch. Put kitten on floor.

35. Commence rolling.

36. Disentangle kitten's teeth from edge of bamboo blind.

37. Put kitten on floor.

38. Commence re-rolling, alternating directions.

39. Remove kitten's front paws from bamboo blind.

40. Put kitten on floor.

41. Make more tea.

42. Check watch to see when it is time for glass of wine too.

43. If too early for wine, try chocolate.

44. Remove kitten who will be sitting on felt while you have made tea/poured wine/eaten chocolate.

45. Put kitten on floor.

46. Continue rolling the felt until piece has hardened to the correct degree, alternating steps 35 through 45 as necessary.

47. Rinse felt and leave shaped to dry.

Kitten will now be looking tired, and will curl up in his bed and sleep for the next three hours, which is by coincidence precisely the amount of time you have spent trying to felt.




But he will be ready to play the whole game again tomorrow.

Archie

Hello, I have a name now, I am Archie.

I am settling really well.
Here is my favourite toy:

Today I have been mainly sleeping.

Yesterday I was mainly playing and running under cupboards.
I would like to get inside the cupboards.

I have funny pinky-brown toes:

Now I am having my mad half-hour and dashing from one end of the room to the other, and chasing my tail. See you again soon.

Trouble arrives.

Let me introduce you to the smallest and newest member of our family. We're still testing out names that fit him, so I'll have to let you know later what he is going to be called.

Part of me never wanted another cat again because I loved Newton SO much, each relationship we have with our pets is special because they are all so different, and I will always miss him very much. But the house was so very empty and we couldn't imagine being without a cat to love, so this week we began looking. My husband and I were both hoping for a little black boy, and I saw an advert for him and his siblings yesterday morning. After a long day waiting to get in touch with his owners we sped over last night to find he was the last one left of his litter - he had a black and white sister, tabby sister and brother, all playing madly together, and about to be collected by other people. I'd have definitely taken the whole lot of them if I could! We felt that he'd been very well looked after, they'd taken him to the vet to be checked over as well, which not everybody does.

He is nearly 9 weeks old, quite fluffy and not quite black - he has quite a brown head and faint tabby stripes in the daylight.

He is desperate to play all the time until he is too tired, and likes playing with the blind-cords best of all. He keeps forgetting that we are not really scary and runs away to hide under the cupboards often, before coming out for more games. He will sit on our laps for a cuddle only when he's run out of energy for anything else. As I type he has fallen asleep while under the cupboard, with son no.2 asleep on the floor next to him.

Oh, and he likes to climb, he's going to be BIG trouble. He's eyeing up routes to the top of everything.

So here we are, a new phase in our life beginning - at the moment he is still a stranger to us and us to him and it will be lovely getting to know him. As I knew it would, having a new life in the house has made me miss Newton even more because of the depth of the relationship that we had with him, but I'm sure in time we will build a unique relationship with this little one as well.

So I'll keep you informed of all his various new antics and hope you enjoy sharing our experience of him growing up!

Crochet Kitten

I'm not quite ready to get all my wool out and start felting just yet, I need to put all the decorations away first and catch up at the office tomorrow, but I did want to make something little while I still had a few moments spare.
Another good thing about the holidays is the lack of guilt I've felt in having a better look round for lovely blog sites, and in my travels I came across this beautiful one called Marmalade Rose.
Spying a crochet kitten pattern I went straight to it and found it was perfect for me to make out of a bit of spare yarn I had left over from doing a crochet penguin last year! Marmalade Rose has very generously shared it with everyone, for which I'd like to say thank you! I too had seen the original knitting pattern a while ago but I think the crochet one is much nicer!

It's taken me a while as black yarn is difficult to see in electric light and we don't seem to be getting much daylight at the moment (unless some of us are getting up early, which I'm not), but I finally finished sewing him up today. I have to say I was doing the tail last night and ended up going quite wrong as I kept losing sight of the tops of the stitches in the round below and ended up decreasing too much towards the end, but then kittens have very pointy tails so I thought it would be fine!

My own lovely cat is very weak and has started coughing, which is a bad sign as it means fluid is probably starting to build up in his lungs, I spend a lot of time checking to see if he's still breathing, which is not very relaxing.
He's searching out every bit of sunshine he can find.

Here he is snoozing on the window sill - he can't quite be bothered to fit all of himself behind one blind as he's so long, and you can just see his black nose in the gap underneath.