SHAWL AND SHAWL PIN

My 96 year old friend Jane is in a nursing back in Kenosha, WI.  It's an older facility and they don't have air conditioning in the rooms and they have very little heat.  She gets chilly just sitting around so I started knitting a shawl for her before Christmas and had so many interruptions that when I finished it, it didn't look right.  I crochet 20 times faster than I knit so I was really disappointed about spending all that time knitting instead of crocheting.  I found a crocheted shawl pattern that looked classic and not confusing. 

I finished it yesterday and I really like it.  Even my husband liked it.  It's all black which Jane will like and it has that fuzzy yarn around the whole thing with extra rows on the bottom.  I decided she needed a shawl pin to go with it so I made a pin out of polymer clay. 

I used black clay and a texture sheet and put flat back Swarovski crystals on it and white perfect pearls.  She loves silver and crystals and black so I'm sure she will like this.

EMBARRASSED

I had some pictures of Buster printed at Walgreen's today.  When I went to get the pictures I told the young gentleman at the counter my name and he said "OH, the cat pictures".  I said yes, those would be mine.  He said "yup, the cat on the door, the cat in the garbage can, the cat sleeping in the chair, the cat chasing the ball" and then I cut him off.  I said "my mother lives in Florida and wants to see pictures of my new kitten, you are lucky I didn't have any nude pictures of old people in there".  At that he gave me a strange look and told me since this was a retirement community, he sees a lot of strange things everyday and that's getting to be a normal thing.

I'M GLAD I ONLY HAD PICTURES OF THE CAT.  My husband warned me I was getting to be a geezer because I spend too much time talking about the cat.  He said I should get a life away from the cat for a while.  So, I asked him if he wanted to change the cat liter, scoop the cat liter, feed the cat, play ball with him and all the other things a good cat mom does?  He just said

"NEVER MIND" 

:0)

CANE SWAP TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS

OK, I'm frustrated.  Most days I can sit down and make a flower cane or Kaleidoscope cane with no problem.  Now that I HAVE to make a cane my brain and fingers aren't working together.  My friend Evelyn who has macular degeneration came over the other day so we could "play with clay" and do some canes for the cane swap.  Yesterday she came over so I could help her reduce her cane.  She fell in the garage a couple weeks ago and hurt her hand.  Her cane is beautiful.  She has a way with colors.  She was an art teacher all her life and now she has trouble seeing, it's a dam shame.  That's all I can say.

This is her Kaleidoscope cane which I think is beautiful.

This is my cane that I did yesterday and my black clay was very mushy so I'm letting it rest and then I will square up the sides.  This is how it started.

I wanted to reduce while it was still a little soft because I thought it wouldn't move if I waited too long.  Guess I should have waited, the black would have reacted better.  At least I got 4 canes out of this so I only need 6 more.  I have till the 18th of February but I have a ton of other things I need to do like play with the cat.  LOL

CANE SWAP - PAIN SWAP AND BAD KITTY

I'm running out of time and I need 12 pieces of cane for the swap.  I have 2 that I like.  Last night I worked for 3 hours making a cane.  Started out with two huge Skinner Blends and made a spliced cane.

I like this cane but wanted something intricate.  So I decided to make a flower cane of this.

This is really big.  I should have put a quarter by it so the size would be evident. 

I love flower canes covered in black instead of translucent so I used 5 packages of black to cover this cane.

Looks good now but once I got it covered and reduced, I was very disappointed.

My black clay was mushy.  There were spaces between the stamen and flowers so I filled it in with black clay.  I should have left it alone and just covered it.  Took a piece and did some manipulation.

I think I'm going to do a large Kaleidoscope cane and use this entire cane in the Kaleidoscope.  I'm very disappointed but I thought I would blog about the bad stuff since I usually try to blog about just good stuff.  Trials and tribulations I think they call it.

Can't blog without mentioning Mister Buster.  I thought his dad gave him a time out yesterday but then I realized he was sleeping.

This morning he woke me up by licking my nose.  Kitty love, nothing like it.

CANE SWAP AND MORE BUSTER ANTICS

Our clay guild is having a cane swap and I'm still experimenting with different types of canes to see what I can come up with.  I need 12 canes, 3 inches long.  Yesterday I made a couple Kaleidoscope canes.  I left one in tact after I cut it in half and put the two pieces together.

This is a picture of the end piece.  I wrapped the other two pieces up to keep them clean.

This is one piece of the second cane.

This is also a piece of the second cane.

These are the four pieces from the second cane that have been reduced.  At least now I have the concept of what I think I want to do but I want different colors.  These were done with left over canes and pieces of clay.  I'll try this again but with brighter colors.  It's a great way to take a cane you don't really like and make 4 different canes out of it.

HE'S AT IT AGAIN

Buster has had me laughing non-stop.  He's been wonderful.  I still think about Booboo but this little kitten is the love of my life right now (except for the big guy I live with).

This is where I found him this morning.  Took some work to get him down.  I still can't figure out how he got up there.

Wednesday he decided to get up on the fourth shelf and sleep on my purse.  When he got up, the purse started tipping forward and I was sure he was going to go flying and get hurt.  He did a flip and ended on the third shelf with the shoes.

He was holding on to those shoes for dear life after that.  At least he doesn't think my feet stink. :0)

Everyday is a joy and a new amusement with this little guy.  I think he has a cold.  He's been sneezing and coughing.  What do you give kittens when they get a cold?

JUST COULDN'T LEAVE IT ALONE

Our clay guild is having a cane swap at our February meeting so I've been playing around with canes.  I love making flower canes with weird Skinner blend combinations but I don't know if that's what I'm going to do.  Thank goodness not all the canes have to be the same.  I'm really excited about getting canes from 12 other people after seeing this necklace on CraftEdu.

OK, I made a cane,

JUST COULDN'T LEAVE IT ALONE

I think I liked it better before but this will make great beads for my golf stroke counters.

I need to get to work now and make some canes.

HINT HINT: Read Colt Pixy's blog today http://coltpixy.com/ she talks about using Super Sculpey to clean your pasta machine.

UPDATE ON BUSTER

He's still fascinated by the computer.  Yesterday morning I poured a cup of coffee and sat down on my desk.  He jumped up on my keyboard and when I tried to move him, I hit the coffee cup and dumped it on my shirt and in my lap.  Burned my stomach and leg but not bad.  John came in and pulled the shirt away from me.  I'm just thankful little Buster didn't get burned.