Did you have some happy holidays?

Did you enjoy the holiday season? Topher sure did! He decided this bit of wrapping paper was a bag and crawled right inside -- you can see his tail in the corner of the couch on the left side, barely. He's also been enjoying the shoe box that the paper was wrapped around, as it is perfectly Topher-sized. Plus there's been so much tissue paper to shred! And we haven't even reached the big gift exchange with my family on the First. Truly, it is a good season to be a Fluffmonster.

Anyway, now that Christmas is past, my Etsy shop is open once more! And starting this afternoon I will be back to listing items in my continuing quest to get all of my current stock listed in the shop. Plus I will keep making new things, so be sure to check this blog regularly for in-progress posts and pictures of the goodies I'm making for myself.

Busy busy!

I'm busy making holiday presents, which of course I can't post here because then I might accidentally spoil some surprises. Instead, have a picture of Topher. Awww, such a fluffy kitty!

Winter has arrived early in Arizona, by the way. It's been cold and rainy, there's snow on the mountains, and I am ever so glad for my warm fuzzy robe, cuddly pets, and the vast amount of tea in my cabinet.

Cute cat picture!

I haven't posted much about my pets lately, so here's a photo of my favorite fluff-monstah! My friends Helen and Bob left their two dogs with us for the week, and Helen brought over a nice big bed for Tess, who is a senior citizen and doesn't need to be lying around on cold tile all day. Well, Tess decided that she'd rather sleep on the carpet under Chris's desk (she really likes him!), so the other pets have been taking turns enjoying the big bed. Topher has clearly decided that he's finally find a cushion worthy of his regal body. I love how he sits pretty much in the middle of it, openly declaring that it is HIS bed and he will NOT be sharing it with any corgis.

Kitteh in a box!

It's a special Sunday blog post! Just wanted to share this picture of my big fluff-monster Topher squeezing himself into a shoebox. All boxes that come into this house immediately belong to the cat, whether or not he actually fits in them.

Take a picture of ME!

Earlier today, I was taking BFAC pictures, and I thought I was all done, but Topher disagreed. There was one more important item to photograph -- HIM! Actually, he really likes to get into my photo tent. I had to lock him into the office while I was actually taking the pictures, because he wanted to get inside with the items. *sigh* Luckily I grabbed him before he could sit on anything important.

Oh yes, he's sitting on my dining room table. Isn't it pretty? It has a row of big metal studs running along the edge, which gives it a rustic medieval look. The chairs are made out of the light wood, with studs along the back, and have puffy cushions in micro-seude that almost matches the dark wood. It's a spiffy dining set. We love it.

I'm really quite tired now, and I can't coherently organize my thoughts, so I'm going to wander off.

Shhh! I'm hibernatin'!

Please don't mind the clutter in this picture, the area around Chris's desk is one spot of the house that I really don't clean.

My kitty Topher just loves paper of all sorts. He likes to chew on it, shred it, play on it, scratch it, whatever. So it came as no surprise to me that he staked his claim on this chunk of brown paper that was used as packaging material in a recent delivery. He kept jumping on it and playing around, to make it make crinkly noises. Then, when he got sleepy, he trampled it down and made himself the perfect little nest... awwww.

I love sleeping critters. They're just so adorable, with the way they curl up, and the content expression on their face. When Topher sleeps like this, he always reminds me of some woodlands critter, curling up in a den to hibernate the cold Winter away.

I wil be up in Marana house-sitting tomorrow, Thursday, and part of Friday. I may or may not have internet access, so I may or may not make blog posts! I just hope it's not cold and rainy while I'm up there, as I was looking forward to a little Christmas hike with my doggie pal Gobi.

In case I'm not around to blog on Thursday, I want to take this opportunity to wish everyone a safe and happy holiday!

No pictures here, move along

My grand plan to take photographs was thwarted by my camera running out of battery juice, and me being unable to find the other two awesome camera batteries that I have around here someplace. I know that rechargeable batteries are better for the environment, and I'm all for improving my green footprint, but I really seem to get better life out of those Lithium batteries that are designed for electronic gadgets.

Anyway, since I can't do photography today, I'm writing instead. Yay! I've written a few pages, and if I really buckle down, I might even get to kill off a character tonight. Well, probably not, but it's something to strive for. I admit that I tend to get really attached to characters, and then I don't want to kill them, but a few need to die to move the plot along. Poor characters.

Because it's the weekend, I get to talk about my dogs. Awwww! They're behind me right now, wrestling. Daisy makes this really vicious face, with her ears back and her lips pulled way up, and her jaws go snap-snap-snap in a ferocious display that is really ruined by the fact that she'll randomly stop to lick Maggie. They're really amusingly bad at fighting, so I often find myself giggling at their antics. This causes them to break up their fight and run over to me, to try to get me to join in. They also still try to get The Toph to wrestle with him, but he is having none of their corgi shenanigans. I did catch him sniffing Daisy's wagging tail the other day, though. He's getting used to them!

I love my Maggie dog!

It's Saturday, so I'm going to gush about my dogs!

When I set out to get a corgi, I wanted a red and white one (like Daisy). That was what I thought of when I pictured corgis, and in fact, until I started researching them on-line, I didn't know that they came in other colors. The pictures I saw showed that black tris were beautiful, but I still had my heart set on a red and white.

Maggie has completely changed my mind, and now I love black tris at least as much as red and whites. Her black fur is so shiny, her markings are beautiful, and those little brown eyebrows make her so expressive. She's an adorable little dog. She constantly makes Chris and I laugh with her smiles, her stretches, the way she jumps puts her front legs up on our legs and stares at us adoringly (even though she's not supposed to...), and the funny wookie noises that she makes when she wants attention. Not to mention her utter and complete infatuation with Topher. She'll follow him all over, bark at him to try to get him to play, and sit down and stare at him sadly when he ignores her. I swear, she has a schoolgirl crush on him!

For Topher's part, he's gotten a lot more tolerant of the dogs. He always comes out into the beadroom with me when I let them out back, and he used to run away as soon as they came in. Now he just sits there, and they come in and sniff him and maybe give him a couple of little licks, while he looks on with slight disgust. He's also more likely to be in the same room as them, or even on the same couch. I suspect that come winter, they'll be snuggling together.

In beading news, I'm about 4" along on what will eventually be 16" of spiral rope to go with my frog pendant. I had all kinds of other ideas, but the truth is I only have 1 of the three greens in size 11, and I didn't want to do something complicated in 15s, not with a deadline looming. Hopefully next month's challenge will be more up my alley and I'll be able to make something cooler! I think it will be announced within the next week or so.

Tomorrow, I'll gush about Daisy!

I'm going to be a dog owner!

Topher says: "Dogs?!? I didn't agree to share my house with any dogs!"

Yes, I can finally share my news! Chris and I will be adopting not just one corgi, but two 18 month old corgi sisters! I've spent all week in e-mail discussions with the rescue organization, which is based out of TX and NM. Today, through the power of the Internet, we gave them a video tour of our house, which was the last thing they needed to be certain that we're an ideal home.

Our girls are currently named Maggie and Daisey, but I'll probably be changing their names -- I'm not a big fan of people names for pets (Ok, yes, there is an actor named Topher Grace, but that's not where The Toph gets his name!). Of course everyone who hears that I'm getting a corgi -- including Chris -- suggests that I should name it Ein, after the one in Cowboy Bebop, but that's not happening! So stop saying it, people! ;)

We'll probably make the roadtrip to bring them home next weekend. I'm so excited!

What did I tell you?

If you'll recall, when I posted about how I was going to start sewing, I predicted that Topher would "help." Here it is, the photographic proof! Coincidentally, it's also photographic proof that he is one gorgeous boy! His markings are what made me pick him out of the litter, and he's grown up into a rugged example of tomcattery.

Anyway, it doesn't help that the pieces for these pants are so big that I had to put the cutting board on the floor... no way it was going to fit on my kitchen table. So there I am, sitting on the floor, putting tissue paper on cardboard! This is absolutely a place that Topher must be, because tissue paper and cardboard are his two favorite things in life. When he wasn't sitting right on top of the project, as seen here, he was sitting on the empty end of the board, swatting my hand as I tried to pin things down. And as you can see from his expression in the photo, he wasn't the least bit ashamed of himself.

That was only one of the problems that faced me with making these pants. First of all, measurements and sizes. WTH, Simplicity? According to my waist measurements, I'd need to cut out something like a size 20 to fit my waist. To get an idea of how patently ridiculous that is, here's my picture from Ren Faire 2007. Oh yeah, and by my hip measurements... I'd need a size 10. *sigh* Thank you, Simplicity, for rubbing in the fact that I have decidedly unwomanly hips. Since my particular instance of this pattern only goes up to a size 10, that's what I'm cutting out. I seem to recall from my Mom sewing my wedding dress that their measurement/size charts tend to be grossly inaccurate, so I suspect these pants will be too big. This is why I'm starting out with the cheapest fabric I bought!

And speaking of cheap fabric... As you can see, my fabric is very pretty. It's also very soft. If they turn out, these will be wonderful Summer pants. However, it's also terribly unevenly cut. You'd think that after spending 10-15 minutes in line to get my fabric, I could at least get some straight fabric. I didn't realize just how uneven it was until I was over halfway done pinning everything down, and realized that with how it was laid out, I was never going to be able to cut these pants out. That realization came at 12:20am, and this was the point where I said "To heck with this, I'll try again some other time."

That some other time will probably be tomorrow. Wish me luck!

My fight against chaos...

...also known as cleaning my beadroom. Once again I've managed to get fed up with the clutter in my beadroom, and I've spent the past two days trying to do something about it. I say "trying" because really, it's like that traffic jam game. I can move the pieces around all I want, there's still only going to be one empty space! At the very least, my clutter is more organized now. I managed to put a bunch of books away on my super-cute book case, and put away some beads that have been homeless since gem show, and re-organize some findings. One reason why I've been doing this is because the beadroom is currently too messy to work in, which means I have to work at the kitchen table. That means that this happens:
Yes, that is my cat Topher sitting smack-dab in the middle of my beadwork. He has this really fine hair, and it gets all over the beading pad and caught up in the beads when I weave them together. Also, it's hard to make jewelry when he is on not just my beads, but often my needle as well.

It's a constant battle between Topher and I. I want to make jewelry, he wants me to pay attention to him. Sometimes we come to a compromise and he lies down next to my Vellux work pad. In fact, I was just beading a few minutes ago, and he's still waiting there for me, dozing off with the expectation that I will come back and shower him with affection. He's insanely cute when he's asleep, so even though I'm done with beads for the night, there will probably be some petting in his future anyway.

Because I've been focused on beadroom cleaning, I don't have anything made for this week's update. I was just struck by an idea for a really cute bracelet, so I'll probably make that tomorrow. I also have a few ideas for nice woven necklaces and lariats, but I don't think I'll have any done in time for Sunday's update.

Today's Cool Thing is this Triple Fuse Necklace. It reminds me of something that some awesome raver chick would wear in a cyber-punk movie! Yeah!