Zippy Zippers

Here are a handful of zippers that I squeezed in while making postage stamp blocks. And you can see that I'm also squeezing them onto the edge of the design wall to take their picture.

August is Molly and Buddy's birthday month. As free range kittens, they didn't keep an exact record of the time and place of their birth, so we approximate and celebrate for the entire month of August. And yesterday, they opened some presents early so they could warm up a bit. You wouldn't want to go into your birthday month cold and risk an injury.

This also means that Molly is getting excited for the beginning of the month scrap giveaway/curated free table. She wants to clear out some fabric to make room for all the new toys she is expecting. (Aside: And what if she gets fabric for her birthday?).

So the signup will be on the August 1 post and will close on August 4.

Rolls of Postage Stamps

There are many ways to make postage stamp blocks. For these blocks, I prefer to use rolls of stamps that I unwind and then cut apart.

Meanwhile, I now have a "supervisor's chair" next to me at the sewing machine as Katie suggested. This allowed me several hours of sewing without "thread conditioning" and posing in front of the sewing machine. Apparently if provided with proximity, sufficient adoring phrases and a toy on a string, most supervisors will leave the worker alone. And as I type this, my supervisor is snoozing in the extra desk chair next to me.

All Bow-Tied Up

Okay, these are admittedly fussy, especially in comparison to zipper blocks. As a reminder, these are based on a one-inch grid and the finished size is 1.5 inches. Also, Molly is regulating how much sewing time I can have.  My sewing chair is her new sleeping location now that its too hot for a heated bed.

And Molly told me a kitten joke. It was quite a-mew-sing.

Collecting Stamps

These are the postage stamp blocks I have so far. Definitely need more orange and purple blocks. Probably green too.

Meanwhile, we are continuing to get visits from "Tiny." Buddy named him that because he's a full-grown cat, but he's the size of a kitten...that is, Molly's size. I am staying as far away from that discussion as I can. To complicate matters, Tiny is not one to be scared away by a mere human. He obviously has staff who know and respond to the command "Let me go outside at night."

Zippers and Too Much Excitement

Zippers are the palette cleanser between postage stamps.

And this is Buddy about a half an hour before he had a complete hissy fit when a strange cat came up to him at the back screen door. Just to make things interesting, this cat looks just like Molly except for the face...no mark on the nose plus the mug of a tom that has weathered many fights. But my first reaction was how did Molly get outside?

P.S. Buddy can get really loud.

Postage with cats

Here are more postage blocks.

And here is Buddy making a stink face at the camera.

And here is Molly explaining to Buddy that he shouldn't make a stink face at the camera.

And here is Molly conducting an assessment of Kitten Academy. She refuses to accredit the kitten school until they stop being so stingy with Bebop's treats, play with her more and give her daily spa treatments. Molly also recommends that I change to the bird videos for cats.

Light Postage

With all of the postage blocks up on the design wall, I could see I was veering to the dark side. I needed more postage blocks with light backgrounds and I also needed to add more light squares into the blocks with dark backgrounds. (I am calling them background, because I'm not actually using solids for these blocks...its a dotty blender.)

Meanwhile, for whatever reason, blogger is letting me continue with the legacy version, so no problems there. However, my photo editor continues to cause me fits and makes me tear my hair. And now Molly is unhappy because I didn't edit out "cat stink face." I told her it is her responsibility to filter out the cranky cat feelings. I gave her four tries and this was the best one.