Patient X Lack of Progress Report

Dear All. I am Roy the Pet Therapist Secret Agent Kitten assigned to socialize a patient with SFHD--severe fabric hoarding disorder. I have instituted a tough love policy with this patient where I bite her hand whenever she thinks about fabric. I attack her hands relentlessly on the computer keyboard to prevent further fabric purchases. Despite constant attempts to prevent her from wallowing in her stockpile, I must give up all hopes of returning this person to society. I have wasted almost a quarter of my life to this useless pursuit. Until I get reassigned, I will just take time out and write my memoirs.

Roy's Progress Report

Roy has made excellent progress. When he first arrived, he was an attack kitten with a hand obsession. When I threw a toy, he bit my hand. If I used a wand toy, he attacked the hand. If I held him, he gnawed on my hands.

To adapt to Roy's special needs, Kitten U converted to KMI--Kitten Military Institute where Roy was forced to run laps chasing a wand toy, endured hours of chasing thrown toys, had to battle with stuffed toys (not hands!). Bites led to puffs of air and the dreaded time out. I even put lemon juice on my hands--which worked for about ten minutes--but then like a sugar addict pulling a cake from the trash can, Roy would bite my hands anyway.

Now, after a week at KMI, Roy now chases thrown toys. He can even initiate play with cat toys. And when he lapses into biting and attacks, they are much gentler.

So the extra good news is that Roy has graduated from KMI and is now enrolled at Kitten U. He has already passed exams in tissue paper, scrunched paper balls, and tiered roller ball. He excels at multi-tasking--playing with several toys at once. Or maybe he has kitten ADD. He is now taking lessons in the sewing room including runway running and strip pile mining.

I am only using a very small pile of strips to begin with because I don't want to overwhelm him.

Brown owl

This month we are celebrating chocolate...I mean the color brown...over at the Rainbow Scrappy Challenge. At first, I thought a brown owl would look ridiculous, but I think it looks fine. There seems to be something wrong with him though.

Because the other owls are keeping him at a safe distance.

Dear Jane: Daytona was adopted!

This Dear Jane block was too easy to resist. But I did put it off until after I had done some basic rain preparation like clearing the rain gutters. The forecasts are fluctuating, but, in any case, everyone around here is expecting that some of our roads will become impassible.

And I pulled together this applique block in case we lose power.

But the real news of the day is that Daytona was adopted today! I went to visit him yesterday and he refused to acknowledge me. He said he will never trust anyone with cotton breath again and how come he never got to learn to build with legos. And yes, the last of the lego kittens (Nicholas) had been adopted. But even more surprising, in the last week, Daytona had turned into an adolescent cat--double in size--with a loud disapproving meow instead of his high pitch squeak. And even better, the cloudiness in his eye had almost cleared entirely. He may end up with a normal eye after all. Now he can use both eyes to investigate his new forever home.999999999999999999999 

Note: Additional key strokes provided by Roy--the kitten that loves the keyboard because that's where the hands are!

Dear Me. Dear Jane.

One should beware beguiling blogs that seduce one into folly. In this case, a little Fabadashery can get one into a lot of trouble...and in this case its starting the Dear Jane quilt. Of course, unlike others that tackle this quilt, I am not planning the colors or the layout. I'm also going to use Kaffe or Kaffe-like fabric because I love it and this quilt requires you to get up close and personal with the fabric you choose.

In case you don't already know...The Dear Jane antique quilt is immortalized by Brenda Papadakis in her book "Dear Jane". It's a sampler of primarily 4.5 inch finished blocks. Some pieces get so tiny that paper piecing seems the only way to go. And I'm NOT a paper piecer. And when I saw the block shown above: A2, I thought I would give it a go using my sloppy unJane-like flip triangle method. This block uses a .75 inch grid (1.25 inch unfinished) which is the same grid as my bounding bunny block.

The very center piece of this block finishes as 1.5 inches, unfinished 2 inches. So I made two half-square triangles using the Easy Angle Ruler. Then I put the two half square triangles on top of each other and sew on the diagonal (but over a tiny bit). Then I iron the flip triangle over and cut away the excess fabric under the flip.

All of the other sections are also made using flip triangles. Then the sections are sewn together. My block is not close to perfect given there was no precision piecing involved. And I'm not showing you the back side because it would certainly give you night terrors.

Here are the Dear Jane blocks I've made so far. The two on the left side were made following recent block picks made over on the Fabadashery blog. I made the other two blocks to see how well I would tolerate hand applique. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would because its a nice way to wind down the day.

Spiderweb and Roy

I'm continuing to make progress on the spiderweb. I have quite a few quilts that I'm working on, but this has become my favorite. It has a lot of steps, and I'm usually in the mood for one of them...from piecing the wedges to pulling out the fabric to constructing the block. But I'm not sewing as much as I might like because the Kitten U duties have grown.

In case you missed the earlier post, this is Roy. I have since learned that Roy is short for destRoy. He's tiny and adorable, and his very favorite obsession is biting hands. Moving hands, still hands, and even hands hiding up the sleeve or anywhere one might try to put them to avoid clutching claws and sharp teeth. And no he is not feral. He's a lovebug that wants attention 24/7.  So we're working on it. He now knows that he shouldn't bite me, but apparently biting hands is his chocolate.

And now I'm worried that Kitten U is not meeting its performance standards. This fella was added to the adoption roster on Saturday when there were 43 kittens available, and he was adopted that day. Tommy the kitten and Bob the poser kitten were also adopted, and now the roster is down to 36 kittens. Unfortunately, Daytona is still waiting. And yes, I have considered a stealthy Roy for Daytona switcheroo, but don't tell anyone.

Orange Fish

While I was busy helping Roy the foster kitten move into his dorm room here at Kitten U, these orange fish swam into my sewing room for the Rainbow Scrappy Challenge. I'm hoping that Gayle at Mangofeet will enjoy the monkeyfish in the upper left corner.