Cookies! Olé!

After taking a cookie-making break, here are some Mexi-cats.

Cats in sombreros and mariachi cats, born from a doodle I did earlier this week.

The cookies will be on the bake sale table at the annual Chili Cook-Off that the Gananoque & District Humane Society is holding on Saturday at the Lansdowne Community Centre (Jessie St.) from 11 to 2.

For everything there is a season

I'm still playing with baby sweaters, but a girl can't knit all the time. It's not a good idea ergonomically-speaking. :) Fortunately, I have a nice collection of partially finished projects in several media. It's not huge (that collection), but when a project falls out of favour, I do tend to neglect it for a while. And I do that in a heart beat. And without a shred of guilt. I know its day will eventually come. Today, is the day for this one.

I can't remember exactly when I drew the sketch, but I wrote a little poem (doggerel, really) to go with it that's dated April 11, 2006, in my notebook. So, the whole project's been languishing for a while. I hope to embroider the poem around the border.

I have the appliqué layered now with a lovely bit of right-sized Tuscany silk batting that my friend Karen sent to me as a gift-in-the-mail in September 2014. That batting has been waiting all this time for just the right project. I've never worked with silk batting before, but I'm loving the way it sticks to the cotton backing and top.

I'm planning to quilt it by machine, and then, hand embroider the details. I know that seems counter-intuitive, but I'm confident I can hide all the knots and thread tails from the embroidery. The last embroidered quilt I made was hand-quilted, so I embroidered first, layered and completed the quilting on a frame. I don't think I want the machine quilting to cross over the embroidery anywhere, and I think embroidering on the layers will be easier than embroidering on one flimsy layer. Check back later to see how that goes, if you're interested.

Ode to Ice Cream
26 inches x 30 inches

More boy stuff

Still researching what makes a baby sweater suitable for a boy baby. Babies of either gender are sweet and cute. Do we treat boy babies differently from girl babies? I've never seen even the most rugged of men, slug a baby on the shoulder, and ask, "How's it goin', buddy?".   However, there does seem to be some unwritten rule about how boy babies ought to reflect their 'boy-ness' in their dress.

Blue is the quintessential colour for boys, right?  Turquoise is a member of the blue family, specifically blue-green. Therefore, this is a boy colour, right? Let's push the envelope and add an appliqué patch for decoration. Are cats OK? Lions are pretty man-ly. Is this happy cat face OK?

I'm still not sure I have a handle on all this. What I do know is that it's fun to knit these little sweaters. I've donated this one to the online auction that the Lyndhurst Feral Cat Project is running right now on Facebook. Proceeds from the auction are going to the Gananoque & District Humane Society who help us so much with our cats. In fact, without the G&DHS, we wouldn't be able to do what we do.

If you're in need of a baby sweater for a boy, size 6 to 9 months, made of washable wool/nylon (or over a 100 other items on offer), please check out the auction page. https://www.facebook.com/LFCPAuction2017   Bidding ends Sunday night, March 5, at 9 pm sharp.