Catching up, Part 3

I decorated two nightgowns to give for April birthdays. The first was for Valerie and the second was for my mother. You'll notice a certain similarity... It was such a cute idea, I felt compelled to use it twice.

This is Valerie's present. She posted some pictures on her blog, too.



Here's the one I'm giving my mother for her birthday tomorrow. I think I like the composition on Valerie's a little better. Shhh, what Mom doesn't know won't hurt her.



A closer look.



I would have included a small brown cat in the photos for scale purposes, but she was too wiggly.

Catching up, Part 2

Valentines! Wait, aren't those given in February? That was months ago.

Yeah, well, what can I say? I got distracted. I'm happy to say that they were all given to the people they were intended for on the correct day, it's just posting them here that's taken me so long.



This year I made little felt pins for my family. My sister lives on the other side of the country, so I have to make sure hers gets finished early enough to get to her by the 14th. This usually means that I do hers first, and that means she sometimes gets the short end of the stick. I figure out what I'm doing when I make her Valentine and then the later ones are more complicated.



I realize now that I neglected to include a small brown cat for scale purposes in these photos, so you'll have to take my word for it when I say these are all about 2" across.

These were for my parents.



And finally, our two cats yin-yanged together for Mr. Elinoire.

Catching up, Part 1

The deal is that I get to post to my blog when I finish something, but sometimes I can't post because the thing I've finished is for someone else and that person might see what I've posted. So I need to wait. And then I forget to post about it later.

Have I ever mentioned that I have the attention span of a hummingbird? Or a certain small brown cat?



Anyhoo, this is a tote bag I gave Valerie over the holidays. (You know, the ones back in December. Last year.)



As you probably know, Valerie is a Knitter Extraordinaire. So this is a bag for knitting stuff. With a mouse knitting on it. See?



Plus, the aforementioned small brown cat, now used for scale purposes.

Entry the fifty-fifth: In which Sylvie has strong opinions

Sometimes Sylvie gets to go outside to sniff the world. I'd say "go outside for a walk" or "go outside and look around," but really, what she's doing is sniffing everything she can. See?



The first couple times she went outdoors, she was pretty skittish. That is no longer the case. Now she pulls me all over the place, complains when I pick her up to bring her back in, and then YOWLS AT THE DOOR FOR THE NEXT HOUR.



I'm so excited that Sylvie is embracing the vocal aspect of her Bermese heritage. :-|



We may have to have a moratorium on these little excursions for a while.

Window Hopping

Happy Day After Easter! (Alternately, if you don't celebrate Easter, Happy Monday!)

On this holiday, my family has breakfast together,* everyone gets something yummy from See's instead of a basket, and then we go to a potluck brunch** that starts a little bit later every year.***

Sometimes we make things for each other but unlike Valentine's day,**** this is optional. This year I made this set of three little cut-paper windows for my parents.



I think you can parse the first and last windows on your own (they're three separate vignettes and don't have anything to do with each other, so don't worry if you can't figure out the plot because there isn't one), but in case the middle one confuses you as much as it confused my parents, it's supposed to be a (very) simplified version of this painting at the National Gallery:



I notice the National Gallery calls this "Two women at a window," but the title I learned in Art History is "A girl and her duenna." I love this painting. I just think the scene of two young women (or one young woman and her guardian, who happens to be another young woman) looking out the window and giggling is incredibly charming. So when I started trying to think of window-related images, this popped into my head. See?



(Hey, at least the thing that popped into my head wasn't defenestration. That's window-related. But kind of depressing and un-holiday-y. AND probably even harder to portray in cut-paper than a Murillo painting.)

* Traditionally we have hot cross buns.***** When I was little, the name of this food confused me. My family isn't particularly religious and our version of the holiday had a lot more to do with decorated eggs and the Easter Bunny (or the E.B., as we called him) than anything else. I didn't get that the relevant word was "cross," not "buns." I did not realize that hot cross buns had nothing at all to do with bunnies and everything to do with the shape of the icing.

** Yes, you read that correctly. My family has breakfast together and then we immediately go to a friend's house where we eat another breakfasty meal.

*** 2pm-ish this year.

**** I made valentines. I forgot to post pix of them. I will do this soon. No, really.

***** If we can't get those, we have some other bread product that my sister dislikes.

Plus, here's my sketch for the bunny window.