Singing In The Rain

Don’t you love the movie, Singing in the Rain? Especially the title song with Gene Kelly hopping in and out of puddles?




I’m in Northern California where we are being drenched by “the storm of the century.”

It’s been quite the letdown. Here we were supposed to get 40-50 mph wind, 4-5” of rain. It’s just been constant rain, but nothing spectacular. What a letdown! At least the schools closed for yesterday and today!

Of course, some of us weren't so lucky.

To my doggie- woggins, however, it is a totally different story. She hates the rain. And the wind. But yesterday and today, it’s been nothing but rain. Each time I take her out to “do her duty,” she trots out there and looks around for a few seconds. After that, she turns around and stares at me…pathetically.

Poor, pitiful thing

“Oh, I don’t need to go potty, Mommy.” she says.

I repeat, “Go potty, Miko.” and she looks at me more pathetically. If that’s possible.

Next she tries to sit on the soggy lawn, her signal for “I don’t need to go potty.” But that is thwarted by the puddles in the backyard.

She shivers, she shakes herself off numerous times, tries to look more pathetic. Greta Garbo never did it so good in Camille.

Finally, after 3 or 4 minutes of this, she starts looking for a place to “do it.” This includes going in the deepest grass in the backyard to get much more wet. But then finally success!

Here I have a dog who hates rain, hates to get wet who will stand in the rain for 3 to 4 minutes getting drenched just to try and convince me to let her come in the house.

I just don’t get it. I don’t.

Reading to Cats

My baby cat has grown up and has just celebrated her first birthday. It’s hard to fete a cat when she doesn’t eat anything but cat food. I’ve tried turkey meat, chicken, etc. She just sniffs and walks away. Talk about picky!

The drawer was being repaired--Kaiju thought it a perfect bed for a cat!

Kaiju loves to sit in the dishwasher

I had seen a slide show somewhere on the internet and saved it for a Really Random day. That’s today!

My dog, Bambi and I, 20 yrs ago

I love to read. I somehow managed to instill that in my children, amazingly enough! And they married readers. Cool! I try to get my students to love reading as much as I do.

I loved to read to my kids, but now they are grown and live on their own. So I love this slide show of children reading to cats in an Animal Rescue.

I decided to try and take a selfie with my cat and a book. I thought it would look good for the post. I’ve only done one selfie and it was awful. I don’t think I’ve improved!

The best picture of them all

I’m smiling, Kaiju is actually looking at the book!

Now that I’ve turned that into somewhat of a success, let’s look at Reading to a Cat!

The Itsy Bitsy Spider(web) Border Dilemma

It's early morning here--good morning to all! I've been trying to write this blog for about 45 minutes. It's hard to type when something is crawling up your leg with sharp claws. And I have pajamas on that are thin cotton and only come to below the knees!

My little charmer has fallen asleep on my lap and now I can type with both hands!

The Little Charmer

Who can resist this little girl? Her name is Squirt and she is a bundle of love and no bigger than a minute. You may remember that I lost my cat last Spring. Within a few weeks, I was pining away for a kitty. I decided to wait until summer when I'm home and could devote time to her. Once I got home from vacation, I was able to wait 4 whole days before hubby and I were off to the animal shelter.

Squirt stole my heart the minute I picked her up and she snuggled under my chin! She's settled into the house very well. My dog and hubby's cat aren't not so sure about the little interloper...both of them are afraid of her! Bunch of wusses!

Squirt in my inbox

Looks like our house is going to be turned upside down. She's been chewing on paper in my inbox, swatting my houseplants (they make great toys), and generally having all those great kitty adventures.

Squirt perfecting innocent look after playing
with the houseplant.

Squirt's first night home

A couple of months back I was trying to figure out a border for my Spiderweb Quilt. I came up with what I thought of as a winning plan...only to sew it on and see it was definitely Not Working. That's when I turned to my lovely friends that read my blog and got ideas of how to improve my borders, which involved removing the borders I had put on!

Here is my latest version of a border. I chose a chocolate brown with colorful flowers or another with colorful sprinkles. I'm thinking of leaving on the yellow border. What should I do with an outer border. I'm adding wider borders because I need to make the quilt big enough for a queen size bed. The brown would be five inches wide. The next border would be about three inches.

And now, my friends, help me with these questions:

• Which border do you like? or do you think both of them stink? Personally I like the border with the flowers.
• Should I leave the yellow, swap places with the brown or use another color than yellow?
• What color should the third border be? Busy? Tone on tone?

Please leave a comment and let me know what you think. You were so helpful last time and I'm relying on you to guide me on my way to finish this quilt. (Hoping the flattery and whining will help you to comment!)

Happy Monday To All!

Check out other great design walls (links on left border) at:

Design Wall Monday at Patchwork Times
Show and Tell Tuesday
Linky Tuesday at Freemotion by the River
We Did It Wednesday
WIP Wednesday
It's A Party Wednesday
My Quilt Infatuation

A Cautionary Tale

Gather around, ye gentle quilters, and heed my cautionary tale. I have great hopes that none shall ever experience this nefarious deed by giving ear to me now.

I spent a year of my quilting life working on the Farmer's Wife Quilt with a group of women. We were making two blocks a week. Not only that there are 111 blocks. It was a formidable, arduous, Herculean one-year project.  These very difficult six-inch blocks, some having 50-74 pieces, took every bit of the two weeks for me to make. But wait, I also paper-pieced them. All those itty-bitty pieces. (If you've made a Dear Jane quilt, I apologize for whining. But, I mean, who would ever be crazy brave enough to make a gazillion four-inch blocks?)

When I had made sweated over half a gazillion blocks, okay--somewhere around 35--I put them up on my design wall to gaze at their glory. And to provide me incentive to soldier on.

Here is where the tale takes a mournful turn. I left the blocks on the design wall. Every day I would pass by the design wall and bask in the glory of six-months work.

One afternoon, as I walked into my house from a grueling day at work, I spied something horrific on the floor.

Horror of horrors, hubby's horrid cat had chewed off the corners of two of my blocks! In fairness I should attest that we had two cats in the house. One was mine, Newt, who never, ever chew on his beloved mistress' quilt blocks. It could only be the evil Cleo, my hubby's cat.

You can see the evil in her eyes.

I should have seen it coming.

 Avert your eyes if you are of the sensitive nature. Behold the destruction!

I think I'm going to extract every tooth out of her mouth.

After that, I'm not giving her any dentures either!

She'll just have to gum her food for the rest of her life!

I immediately called hubby at work and told him that he was lucky his cat was still alive!

I then concocted a suitable welcome home for my hubby. I found two cat stuffies and hung 'em high on the front porch. Then I made some crosses and little graves and put them in the backyard.

Then I drug that horrid little feline out and showed her the fate of those who eat my quilt blocks. She pretended to be cool, you know how cats are. But she's never touched another block of mine again!

I put on the funeral dirge and waited for hubby to come home.

And here's how focused my hubby is...he walked right in and didn't even see the cats! But I made sure he did. Oh yes, I made sure he did! Those atrocious (stuffed) cats suffered a fitting death!

A Few Photos from the Week

I've been perusing the links on Judy's Design Wall Monday. (click here) My design wall in the other room is empty, but here's a shot I took of the two projects I'm working on. I had just tossed both the quilts on my cutting/ironing table the other day. Later I glanced over and they were such a lovely jumble that I had to take a picture.

I'm making progress on these quilts, which are part of my February Get It Done list. The Spiderweb needs one more border and the sandwiching and quilting. Wait until you see what I picked out. It needed a dark border to tie it all together. I went and found a gorgeous, plain midnight fabric. It is a dark blue, or wait--is it dark purple? It's one of those fascinating colors that have two colors that show up different depending on what color they are next to. I love fabrics like that!

I have to sandwich and quilt the spiderweb. I'm doing a beginner's class for our quilt guild teaching them how to make a spiderweb. I showed it on Wednesday night last and seven people have signed up. If you're interested, the pattern is from Bonnie Hunter's Quiltville blog. (here)

The square in a square is just a teensy weensy way away from being finished. I worked on it all weekend. Mondays are my wonderful quilting day. My husband works late on Mondays so I get three hours of quilting after I get home until he arrives home. I worked on it today. I've got the sashing finished on the two long sides. It's pinned and ready to sew for the two short sides. After that it's just the binding. The square in a square was my first QAYG (Quilt As You Go).

I told my husband I was trying to think of the name for the quilt. It is almost completely 70s fabric. The 70s were an interesting decade for me. In the space of those ten years I graduated from high school, graduated from college, got married, and had three children.

Hubby came up with a winner: The Seventies Are Calling, They Want Their Fabric Back!

This is the same guy who helped me name an all-blue batik quilt: Jacques Cousteau's Undersea Adventure. You should hear the interesting names he gave his stuffed animals as a child and gives our cats!

A few pictures from this week:

Calla Lilies my hubby gave me when Newt died

Our swallow who is building a nest in the eaves above our front door.

TGS with one of my granddogs, Ginny

OSLW with the two granddogs

My dog, Miko, looking cute

Goodbye Newt

My good friend and sweet little kitty, Newt, is gone. I took her to the vet this morning because she was losing weight, lethargic, not eating or drinking. The blood tests showed she had a urinary tract infection. They also revealed extremely elevated calcium, high white cell count and a liver that had some things wrong with it. Newt had lymphoma of the liver.

Newt is my cat. I never had a cat all my own. Once I married my hubby, cats started appearing around the house. Hubby is a cat person; I, up to the point, was a dog person. First Gypsy (her newest blog name) daughter #1 got a kitty Clyde. Hubby adopted two cats: Rizzo and Smudge. Along the way we've had Alex and Wulf and even had our grandcat Clyde for a while. When #1 daughter was ready to have a baby, she got a kitten, Daytona. We warned her about nesting instincts and getting kitties. We were right. About a month after #1 grandson, Firstest, was born, we received a call from  asking if we wanted Daytona because he had scratched Firstest.

Newt came into my life through a friend of Hubby's. She was from a litter of a feral cat that was in the warehouse the friend worked in. Newt joined us when she was around five months old, spitting and clawing. She wanted nothing to do with us and dove under the bed. Any attempt to engage her, talk to her, touch her or even look at her ended with spitting, hissing and claws scratching our hands.

My hubby is a Cat-Whisperer. Honestly. He has this little half whistle/half smoochy sound that he makes and cats alert and run to him. Every cat loves him. Cats on the street, cats nobody can touch, cats anywhere. He knew what to do with Newt. Every day, decked out with welding gloves, he would grab Newt out from under the bed and haul her out. He would take some time, very short in the beginning, to pet her and try to settle her down. He did this twice a day.

After months of hiding Newt started to emerge. Whenever either of us sat down at the computer, she would come and sit on our laps. She would trill this lovely purr and stay there until we got up. Then away she'd dash to some hidey hole.

Over months and months Newt began to come out more often and sit on our laps. When someone would come into the house, off she would sprint to a secret safe place.

It was years before she started entering the room when people were around. If they noticed her she would zoom off. Now she is happy around anyone.

Lots of happy stories are going through my head. Maybe I'll share later down the road.

Newt was 14 years old. We had the vet put her to sleep today. 

Farewell old friend.

Newt playing with Christmas ribbons

Catching a few zzzzz's