The Alphabetical Laura: Cats

I love cats. I have one cat, his name is Annyong. 

I have had him since he was a kitten, and he has been annoying me ever since! He is such a bad cat. He gets on the counters and eats any food left there. If the food is a loaf of bread, he will tear the plastic open and nibble from the top of every single slice, ruining the whole loaf. If the food is in a container, that won't stop him. He will knock it down, break it open, and liberate the delicious treat inside. He will eat bacon grease left to cool. He will lick the pots and pans on the stove. He is a hungry cat. 

Annyong is a cat that doesn't necessarily like toys, but he does love chasing imaginary things all over the house like a madman. And he likes to torment the dog. Those two havent really figured out how to play together. Mostly, Annyong smacks and bites Bronson, and Bronson states at him with an offended expression. 

Annyong loves boxes and being locked in cupboards. Every time I open the pantry or linen closet, I have to drag him out of there. He will hear the door open and wake up from a dead sleep on a different floor of the house and come running. He finds closed doors to be an insult. 

And every box that enters our home, this cat will attempt to fit into. 

But as much as he is a pain in the neck, I love my sweet kitty so much! 

Other Posts in this series:
The Alphabetical Laura: Animals
The Alphabetical Laura: Books

The Alphabetical Laura: Animals

I have always been a huge fan of animals. I was the kid who found a stray cat at the park and convinced it to follow me home. Then it lived under our deck, getting bigger and bigger with kittens until my mom felt sorry for it and finally brought it in the house.

I remember going camping as a child and trying to lure chipmunks out of the bushes with sunflower seeds. They would peek their little heads out and grab the seeds, getting a little closer every time. I got greedy and wanted to get super close to them, so I tried to get them to take the seeds right from my hand. I ended up getting bit. 

I begged and begged for a dog, and we finally got one when I was in second grade. I took him to school for show-and-tell, where one of my classmates asked my mom "if he's a boy dog, then why does he have nipples?" Rusty was a great dog; except when he was jumping on the table to steal a Mars bar, or lick up all the butter. 

My first dog, Rusty

My love for animals has shaped my life in many ways. I am employed in a vet clinic as a Registered Animal Health Technologist. I always say "it's kinda like the nurse in the vet world" when asked what the heck that means. But truly, I do so much more. 

Me, performing dentistry on a knitted cat

Yes, I do practice good nursing every day. I place catheters, and comfort pets, keep them clean and comfortable, feed and bathe them, give them TLC when they need it most. But I also draw blood, take X-rays, and run lab tests, like blood counts and chemistries, urinalysis, fecal analysis, cytologies, and parasite screens. I perform blood transfusions and chemotherapy, assist in surgery, perform dental cleanings and administer and monitor anesthesia. I discuss nutrition, dental care, grooming, training, and post-surgical care with clients every day, and I teach training consults with clients whose pets need specialized care, such as diabetic pets. I ensure that our hospital is clean, organized, well stocked with medications and supplies, and providing excellent care to every patient. I help new puppy and kitten owners welcome their new family member into their lives, and I help elderly and sick pets to pass away in a peaceful and pain free way. 

A stray kitten that was turned into our clinic

I love what I do, because I do it alongside animals. There is nothing sweeter than a cat or dog that is so thankful when we help them to feel better. I am grateful that I have the education and training that I do to be able to work in this field. 

A duckling with a broken wing that came into the clinic

My favourite animals are probably cats. And special mentions goes to foxes, sloths, frogs, deer, raccoons (don't tell my husband-he hates them), mice, lions and tigers, bears, bison, wolves, birds, whales, dinosaurs, fish, zebras, and platypuses. Really, the list goes on and on. If something has an animal on it, I am instantly drawn to it. When I see fabric featuring animals, I typically want it. 

A sampling of some of my animal fabric

When my husband and I got married, our wedding theme was lovebirds. I made a bride and groom pair of birds for the top of our cake. 

Bride and groom birds

My favourite Christmas decoration is adding a Santa hat to our crocodile head. 

Merry Christmas!

And of course, I have pets of my own. 

Annyong and Bronson.... if only they could figure out how to play together!

Do you have a favourite animal? 

Cats.....in jeans?!

One thing that I love about having a goddaughter is that I can do special things just for her without feeling guilty for not doing the same for everyone else. So at Christmas time, along with a gift from my husband and I, I like to have a little something from me to her. And as far as I am concerned, homemade gifts are the most special. So this year I decided to make her a little cat stuffed toy. Wearing jeans. Oh my goodness, the cuteness!

I started out drawing a pattern that I liked. It took a couple drafts and a lot of erasing before I was happy with the look of the face. 

Face on the left was rejected, face on the right was approved

Then I set to work picking fabric. I had some scraps of a grey flannel with fun little light grey circles that I thought would serve well as the face, tail, and legs. I used white flannel to make the white patch on her face, and her arms. I am absolutely in love with Violet Craft's Brambleberry Ridge line, so I used the purple plaid for her shirt. A pair of old jeans of mine became new jeans for the kitty, complete with back pocket! 

Look at that little butt!

I put together the face using felt for the ears and nose, and embroidered the eyes, mouth, and whiskers. Looks pretty good! 

Pretty cute!

One thing that I am terrible at when it comes to making stuffed toys is taking the seam allowance into consideration when laying out the face. I think this cat above looks so cute.... Then I sew it all together, and I think it loses something. 

A little bit alien looking.....

I think I need to leave a larger seam allowance to accommodate the design better. Oh well, I still think she is cute, just different from what I pictured the final result would be. 

Front view

Back view - I love the tail!

And of course, the obligatory staged photos. Here, the kitty is helping me make cranberry sauce for Christmas dinner. Cats love cranberries. Now let's hope that Briar Rose loves her cat!

Such a helpful little kitty

Annyong likes her!

The ocean was always you: a quilt refashion

My husband's cousin lost her mother to a hard battle with breast cancer a few years ago. I love and adore Renee so much, she was such a special person, and I always found her so supportive and smart, and a real pleasure to be around. I miss her, and I thank her for getting to know her (as short a time as I did), as I feel like she really opened my eyes to having an authentic and honest existence, and appreciating the beauty in the world. She is a woman to be admired and loved. So when Angelique approached me about refashioning a memory quilt for her, made from her mother's clothes, I was honoured to be able to take on this project in memory of such a great woman. 

Angelique had the original quilt made shortly after her mom passed away, wanting something beautiful that she can snuggle up with and take comfort from. The quilter made a quilt with large squares of stripes, and backed/bound it with a blue sheet. 

The original

She hated it. She didn't like the colours and the way they came together, she hated the blue sheet backing, and in hindsight, felt the size was too large. She put it away in a closet and didn't ever use it. And that isn't what you want for a memory quilt representing your mother!  So I took it home with me and percolated for a while with it. 

She wasn't thrilled with the pinks and floral patterns as part of the main quilt. And she wanted something more modern. I saw that there were lots of blacks and blues and greys and whites, and started thinking of the ocean at nighttime. Then I saw this quilt on Pinterest, and thought "Perfect!" Also, I found this poem to be very inspiring. 

Isn't that so fitting for mothers? It's true that no one is as vast and important and mysterious and beautiful as your own mother. Just like the ocean. So I kept this in mind throughout my work on this project. 

My first step was to create a draft to show Angelique for her approval. My concept was to use the black fabrics as the night sky, with the white fabrics as the moon. The blues, greys, and black/white patterns would be the ocean, and below that, the greens, browns, reds, and pinks would be the earth. 

The layout

 She liked the plan, and so began the arduous task of hand ripping stitches to take apart the quilt piece by piece.  

Annyong was "helping"

Separated and sorted

After I had the quilt in pieces, I ironed and sorted them into colour groups, then began trial layouts. 

My bed is my design board

I ended up omitting the pinks from the earth portion, they just didn't work. My plan was to incorporate them into the back. Then I sewed all the pieces together. I found this to be a real challenge, as the different types of fabrics have different degrees of stretch. After I had it all together, I learned about using stabilizers when dealing with tshirt materials. That would have been nice. I hand appliquéd the moon in place after using fusible web to fix it to the quilt. We decided against incorporating stars into the night sky. I also decided to add a black border all the way around. 

The front with no border (yet)

Then I turned my attention to the back. I had all the pink fabrics left, so we decided to do a horizontal stacking coin row to liven up a black-on-black backing fabric.

The back

Great! Time to baste! I laid everything out on my dining room floor to make the quilt sandwich. Originally, we were going to reuse the sheet that had been used for backing as the stuffing, but it was too slippery, and it would have made quilting difficult due to shifting. Instead, I ended up using a thin fleece blanket to keep the weight down. At this point, I sent pictures to Angelique for final approval. She decided that she wasn't feeling having the earth portion on the quilt front, she felt like having just the sky and water was more soothing for her. I'm glad I checked in before basting! I took apart the earth from the sea, replaced the borders, and set to work basting. 

With the earth

Without the earth (and basted)

I used wavy line quilting over the ocean part with varied spacing between lines to make it look like waves in the water.

Close up of wave quilting

I used a walking foot for this, and this is the first time I have quilting using it. It sure made quilting a breeze! Until I got to the sky. When I took apart the quilt, I knew I was going to be using the black all together as the sky, so I didn't seperate each block from the panels, but left them all sewn together in long strips. This was a mistake. The previous quilter had attached old sheet pieces as a stabilizer, but left lots of excess material loose in each block. This means when it came time to quilt the sky, I ended up with huge bunching at each seam between blocks. 

This looks terrible!

At this point, I was feeling very discouraged, and contemplated telling Angelique that we had a fire and the quilt was lost. I couldn't give her a quilt that looked this terrible! I was so embarrassed that it looked so amateur. Thank goodness for a fresh set of eyes: my mother-in-law came over to see the problem and suggested handsewing over the seams to tack down the bunching. This made a world of difference!! Apparently I forgot to take an after picture though, so you will just have to take my word for it.  

Next I tried to machine quilt some modern clouds into the sky, but the thread was too skinny to show up properly. So I hand embroidered over it with a chain stitch and 6 strands of thread to make sure it really popped. 

Clouds and the moon

My last step was to hand bind the quilt with the same black as the border. I wanted the border and binding to just blend into the background, so as not to detract from the star of the show, the fabrics from the clothes. 

The finished front

The finished back

Closeup of the moon

Wrapped and ready to gift

Angelique came over yesterday for the big reveal, and I am so happy that she loves it! I shared with her the poem and my inspirations, and she shared with me the meanings that the ocean and the moon and white cotton shirts have for her and her mom. I think part of what makes this memory quilt so special, is that not only is it made with Renee's clothing, it has deeper meaning and significance in addition to beauty. Just like Renee! Angelique is excited to finally have a quilt that she can use and love, to take comfort in and share with her children. And I am so happy that I got to be a part of this project and pay tribute to an amazing woman. This project was a true labour of love, and an honour to be a part of. Renee wrote regularly on her blog Circling My Head, and I encourage everyone to have a read through to get a glimpse of what made her so special. 

A hat a day keeps the doctor away

This week was apparently hat week around here! I banged out three hats and a coordinating diaper cover in the span of  6 days. Gotta love crochet for speedy finishes! 

The first hat I made by request for my mother-in-law to give as a gift (my first commission!). She wanted a cowl style hat, and when we saw this pattern with little bear ears, we loved it. We guessed what size to make, as the giftee is a pretty tiny little girl, but upon completion, the hat looked a little small. So I made another one in a larger size. This hat is a fast project, and comes together easily. And is adorable with those little ears! 

Size comparison

Annyong the model: cats love cowls

Since I was on a roll, I decided to keep the hat train rolling and make a hat and diaper cover set for my soon-to-be-born nephew. His mother wanted something cute to use as a prop for newborn photos. We had browsed pinterest together and she picked out a few favourites, but left the final decision to me, as she wanted to be surprised. (Hopefully she doesn't read this before he's born!) I decided to make a puppy hat, because their first born son loves dogs. I used this pattern from the blog Repeat Crafter Me.  Her instructions are super clean and easy to follow.  I had so much fun crocheting this piece; the ear flaps and those braids are adorable. I was freaking out from cuteness at every step. 

Add the diaper cover in, and this is a complete set!

Too cute!

 I made these in a 3-6 months size by mom's request, as their first son never fit anything newborn. Even with that, I marvelled the whole time about how tiny babies are. I can't wait to meet this little guy!!

Recuperation, rejuvenation

Last week, my challenging last couple years came to a peak.  I finally faced one of my biggest fears and was admitted into the hospital for surgery.  It has always been a goal of mine in life to never have surgery, but it's funny how your priorities change when faced with health issues.

I have never had a great stomach.  I have always had problems with attacks of sudden diarrhea. My doctor had decided it was IBS, and that I was young, so not to worry.  I have also been on the birth control pill for years.  When my husband and I got married two years ago, we decided we would stop with the pills and hopefully welcome children into our lives.  That was apparently not in the cards for us.  I have had increasingly severe stomach and menstruation problems along with infertility since a miscarriage shortly after our honeymoon.

Over the course of that year, my problems with diarrhea became a new monster.  I would be struck by attacks at all times of the day and night, and the frequency and severity of them became worse and worse.  It got to the point where I would feel like I have diarrhea, but I would be unable to actually pass anything, sometimes for over an hour.  I couldn't find a food link, it seemed to happen whether I had eaten gluten or dairy, or anything at all.  By the end of the first year, every episode of illness would last a couple hours, would usually result in nausea/vomiting, and the pain was awful.  When I started passing blood clots with my stool, I decided to push the issue with my doctor, as this was something beyond IBS.

In January 2014, I initiated a referral to a GI specialist to perform a colonoscopy.  This was scheduled for the end of March, and when I report to the hospital after the worst bowel prep imaginable (I'm taking medications that force my guts to empty, but my guts refuse to let go), they sedate me to find that they are unable to pass any of the scopes past my sigmoid colon.  That's right, my colon is so narrowed that the scope they would use on little babies is unable to make that turn.  Dang.  Okay, new plan is for a CT scan to image the bowel.  That is apparently a year long wait, but I manage to have some strings pulled, and get myself bumped up to a May appointment.  CT scan shows an otherwise normal bowel, but this area of dense adhesions around the sigmoid.  My GI doctor feels this is still inconclusive and orders an MRI.  Another 20 weeks to wait for that.  Except I end up at emergency with pain and bleeding after a bad bout, and they mark my MRI request as urgent, and I am able to get in within a week.  MRI confirms what the CT shows, adhesions around the sigmoid.

When I see my GI doctor for results, his first suggestions is that we "try to manage this at home with diet and more fibre".  Ha!! At this point, I am having severe episodes that last 4 or more hours regardless of what I eat (which is mostly soup and Boost, a liquid diet), am regularly passing blood with my stools, and am pretty much in constant pain, which is worst when I am actively ill.  I tell him that this will not work for me, fibre aggravates the problem, as anything that adds bulk to stool is a nightmare to pass.  Luckily he suggests we go ahead with a referral to a surgeon.

So now, 9 months after starting the referrals, I check into the hospital after my third (and hopefully last!) bowel prep.  My most recent episode of illness lasted 7 hours.  That is 7 straight hours sitting on the toilet in agony, unable to pass anything, including gas, nauseous, in 10/10 pain, praying to God to strike me dead rather than continue dealing with this.  Ridiculous that it came to this point before something was done.

Surgery went very well.  They found a "big tangled mess" of adhesions, a thickened area of bowel that could barely squeeze anything through, and the surgeons said thank god they did surgery when they did, or I could have ended up with major problems- a ruptured bowel and emergency surgery on a septic abdomen.  Scary.  They cleaned everything up, and removed the problem areas, including 14cm of bowel.  The lab reports came back confirming that this nightmare was caused by endometriosis.  

I can't stress enough to everyone that you know your body best.  When you feel like something is wrong, don't be afraid to stand up for yourself and push for further testing or treatment with your doctor.  I am so glad that I had the nerve to step up and say NO, fibre won't cure me, I need something better.  Had I been meek, I very well could have ended up in the ER with a ruptured bowel or worse.  Be aware that birth control pills can mask symptoms of this disease.  I had symptoms before, but never to this extreme, and they got progressively worse from the point that I stopped taking the pill.  Knowledge is power, so don't be afraid to read and ask questions and be your own advocate.  

So now I am focusing on recovery.  I am resting up and easing into eating again.  Over this whole ordeal, I have lost 50 lbs.  I am so much weaker, I can't lift or wrestle big dogs at work anymore, and I get so tired doing any kind of exercise.  I am looking forward to getting onto a better foot health wise, building my strength and endurance, and increasing my fitness.  

I am also looking forward to getting some serious reading and crafting done!  I have a stack of books on the ready, a mix of favourites to reread, a book club selection, and some new titles.  I already polished off His Dark Materials during my hospital stay- if you haven't read this series, I highly recommend it!  I brought some knitting with me to the hospital too, but didn't get much done.  Apparently it is really hard to focus with morphine in your system.  

My to-read pile

I am working on a knitted blanket for my husband that is inspired by the Game of Thrones' Stark family (he is a huge Stark fan). Gotta keep him warm, as winter is coming!  I am using illusion knitting to make two separate panels of the wolves, and then a centre panel with a forest of cabled trees and the illusion knitting "Winter is coming".  I will attach the three main panels with some chunky cables, and put a border around the whole thing.  Tassels are a maybe at this point.  The whole thing will be in grey and white, to play homage to the Stark colours.  I think Pete is more excited than I am about this project!  

My design sketch for the Stark blanket

For quilting, I am currently reworking a quilt for one of my husband's cousins.  When her mother passed away, she had some of her clothing made into a quilt, but never really loved the final product.  She asked me to take it apart and come up with a more modern design.  I hand-ripped all the seams to take apart the quilt, and separated the whole thing (thank goodness there wasn't extensive quilting over this one!).  Since there were lots of dark colours, blacks and blues, I thought it would be nice to make a scene of a full moon shining over the ocean.  I made a little mock-up in Excel, and got her approval, so I started laying out the fabrics this week.  I am excited for this project, I have some nice little touches in mind to make this a special quilt that she can treasure forever.  

Annyong admiring the before quilt

Demolished quilt

Moon over the ocean layout

I am thankful that my friends, family, and work family have all been so supportive of me throughout this journey, and I hope that moving forward I can live a more balanced, healthy life.  I am ready to put this past behind me now, and move onto bigger and better things.  Here's hoping for a healthy, fit, fertile future.  And, of course, lots of crafting!

My kitchen is a garden!  

The Charley Harper Resolution

I blogged about The Charley Harper Conundrum a few weeks ago.  I was having difficulty deciding what to do with the back of the quilt.  I ended up deciding to run with the interlocking design because I love how complimentary it is to the front.  Both do a great job featuring the fabrics with a nice, fresh white background, and both designs are pretty modern.  I have to laugh at myself, though.  This is only my second quilt, and I decide to attempt a pretty difficult pattern for the piecing.  That pretty much sums me up: I'll try something at a beginner level, then skip straight to expert!

The plan

I put together each section individually, then attached the smaller sections into larger blocks (ie: a1 and a2 attached, b1, b2, b3 attached).  Then I attached the larger blocks together, and sewed some long strips of white onto the sides and top to make it a more even frame all around.  It took a little fiddling to make sure everything lined up properly, and I definitely had to take apart and restitch some sections.  But the attention to detail paid off, because it all came together nicely.

Completed backing

My next step was to make a quilt sandwich of the front, batting, and back.  Only problem was that I didn't have a large enough single piece of batting to use.  I had a few large scraps left over from Briar Rose's quilt that would combine to make a big enough piece, so I decided to try to attach them together.  I used a wide zig-zag stitch and ran it through my machine, holding the edges right beside each other with no overlap.  It came together perfectly, and saved me a trip to the fabric store!  Waste not, want not!

Don't overlap at all, just press the edged close together

You can barely tell this is made from scraps!

I laid everything out on my dining room floor and basted with safety pins.

Then percolated with the decision of what kind of quilting design to use.  In the end, I did some free motion quilting of (relatively) straight lines with a variety of sizes of circles coming off the line at random spacing and intervals.   I used the super precise method of measuring with my four fingers to determine the spacing between the lines.  I wanted something that looked organic, and I am very happy with how it turned out.

After squaring off the quilt and trimming the excess back/batting fabric, I made a double fold binding with the brown fabric I had originally bought to do the backing.  The colour matches some of the leaves in the Charley Harper prints.  I like to hand stitch my binding, I think it looks nicer than a machine binding, and it went very quickly now that I have the hang of it.  Just two evenings instead of a week and half for the last quilt!  I finished it up last night and tested it out- it is very snuggly, perfect for getting cozy in front of a good movie.  This morning, I took advantage of a nice sunny day and headed into my backyard with the quilt to have a little photo shoot.  Please bear with me- I just couldn't get enough pictures of this one!  

And some detail shots.

And because you can't leave a quilt unattended for even a minute....

Annyong loves quilted blankies

And last but not least, my favourite element of the quilt: I included a piece of the selvedge in my piecing, and I absolutely adore how it looks.  

This quilt has been a challenge, but reinforces for me that anything is possible if you just give it a try.  I was a little intimidated by my ambitions, but I figured it doesn't hurt to make the attempt.  I am so glad I aimed for the stars on this one, because I feel so fabulous that it was my hand that made this beauty.  Do you ever have a moment where you look at something you have made and think "I can't believe I did that!"?