Time to Get Busy

Do you realize that it's a mere 38 days until Christmas?? Oh my! I need to Get Busy!! And try not to panic!
Last week, the store where I buy most of my quilting fabrics was having a 20% Off Sale, so I went and bought the above stack of fabrics. DH even helped me pick these out! We spent at least two hours doing this, which was a marathon for poor DH. I had fun, but I'm not too sure he'll be volunteering to help me do this again anytime soon! These are my projects for Christmas presents. I can't say more than that without giving away the secret. But it does look like I will be busy! Really, I'm looking forward to it. New fabrics to play with! Yummy!

This is Shade. He came into the sewing room to "help" today. He wanted my attention and purposely laid down right in the middle of what I was doing. That made me so happy! You see, we almost lost poor Shade.

My DH was very sweet and brought me flowers about 10 days ago. I was a Bad Cat Mommy and left the flowers out overnight where Shade could get to them. I know better than that. He's always been a plant chewer. I now only have silk plants in the house, because he'll eat the live ones. Every time. Well, these flowers weren't super toxic, but they sure made him a sick kitty. He didn't even eat them, just chewed on them a little bit. No vomiting, just lethargic and he wouldn't eat or drink. He slept a lot, and often would just stare off into space with no response to us. He lost about 2 pounds. (That's on top of the 2 pounds he lost while being boarded during our trip to Nevada last month.) He didn't interact with Dunkel and barely interacted with us. Every night he curled up on our bed, right in between our pillows, and slept there all night. He rarely sleeps all night with us. That told me, as much as anything else, that he was really sick.

He's been better the last 5 days or so, but very fearful of everything. He wouldn't come downstairs if he heard DH down there. He usually only does this when there's people visiting. He's much better the last 2 days, and even came downstairs to see our friend K when she was here last night, and even let her pet him! I was amazed at that! He's usually the world's biggest scaredy cat. Anyway, I'm very happy and relieved that he's better now.

Here is a picture of the flowers that Shade got sick on. They're Alstroemeria or Peruvian Lily.


I hope those of you who have cats will make a note of this, and keep the cats and the flowers separate. I'd hate for anyone else's kitty to get sick. Fortunately, Shade is better now and starting to act like his old self. I sure hope he doesn't have any lasting ill effects from this episode. I'm pretty sure he lost one of his 9 lives on this one!

We had a really busy week last week, galivanting around some days and too much housework on other days. So I didn't have much time for sewing. I did manage to get a few "witch's pantry" jars sewn one day last week and today I got the lids on them.

I'm not real sure about the top on that middle jar. I might take that off and try it again. DH suggested that I lop off some of the point on the bottom of that 'square on point' (lid) before I sew it to the jar. I think I agree - it looks too much like it's floating in space.

These jars have little pieces of paper pinned to them, with the name of the "ingredient" on each of them. I'll be putting permanent labels with a more "witch-y" font on the jars before I'm done. I got the list of ingredients for spells from a Harry Potter web site.

Here's another picture of Shade. Some people have an Alpha cat - I have an Olfa cat! *giggle!*

And here's Shade at his post in the quilt studio. He's back on the job, supervising! All's right with the world.