My Cat Face Pillow Is $90 + $10 shipping. You can buy it here.
It is my fifth and last Cat Face Pillow. Eileen inspired the idea when she asked me to make two cat pillows for someone she knew who adopted a cat with three legs from Salem Community Cats. The same place that Jon and I got Zip from.
I enjoyed making those first two pillows and made two more which sold quickly. Now I’ve used up all the fabric so this is the last one.
My Cat Face Pillow is 15″x15″ with a 3″ border. It is $90 + $10 shipping. You can buy it in my Etsy Shop. Just click here.
Or you can email me at [email protected]. I take checks, PayPal and Venmo.
Next month I’ll be shearing the sheep. I’ve already talked to Ian McRae, our shearer about it and he’s ready to come when I ask him.
I’d like the sheep to be off hay and grazing for a while before I do. That way there will be less hay in their wool when it’s shorn.
Issachar and Asher’s wool is the most sticky. By that I mean it’d dense and thick with lanolin. So the hay clings to it more than with my Romneys. They are a mix of Romneys, Blueface Leicester and Cormo.
I look at it now and I don’t think it shows. That’s what I want, like a good dancer, I want my art to look like it comes easy.
But when you’re close to the stage you can see the sweat flying, and hear the trumps maybe even the breathing of the dancers.
The good ones make it look easy.
When I finished making the last Cat Face Pillow, I cut up what was left of the fabric and came up with seven whole cat faces.
Yesterday the cat face above was surrounded in the same browns and grays of the cat itself. But even as I sewed it together I knew it wasn’t what I was looking for.
Today I found the fabric that set these Potholders in motion.
Jon bought me the yard of fabric when we still lived in Old Bedlam Farm. He got it at a farm stand and by the looks of it I’d say it was from the 1960s. I loved it’s vintage feel, but was never able to figure out how to use it. So about a year ago, I cut it into strips and tried once again.
Nothing came of it, but I rolled the strips up and put them in a box with other rolled strips of fabric.
In these Potholders what I wanted to bring out was the feel of the cat faces. Not the emotion, but that soft watery charcoal look combined with hard edged dots and lines.
I found that look in the vintage fabric Jon bought me so long ago. And when I cut up the strips just right, I discovered the right colors, abstract designs and subject in the flowers.
The bright graphic colors and drawn lines were just what I had imagined.
The last Cat Face Potholder I made today
I made seven Cat Face Potholders today. I’ll finish them up next week and put them up for sale in my Etsy Shop when I do.
The parts of the refrigerator backing that I still had.
I didn’t know how important that piece of cardboard on the back of the refrigerator was until Bud broke it to pieces when he was trying to get at the rat.
Our fridge is old and that piece of cardboard which helps with the flow of air and keeps the compressor from overheating, has been discontinued. I searched around for a used one and when I couldn’t find one I knew I’d have to make my own.
Luckily I hadn’t thrown the damaged one out. And it was really mostly still there, only in two pieces.
I was able to figure out how much of it was supposed to be solid and how much needed those small opening in it by where the pieces screwed into the back of the fridge.
It was like a puzzle in some ways, just one with missing pieces that had to be replicated.
I found an old cardboard shipping envelope that I saved to reuse. It was the perfect thickness and weight. I just cut it to size, then mades some holes replicating the ones that was all ready there the best I could.
With the help of some duct tape I was able to fit it all together.
The strange thing is that before the rat incident, the refrigerator used to make a lot of noise. Now it’s much quieter.
I don’t know why, maybe Bud and the rat jiggled something back into place.
The moth was floating on top of the water bucket. She looked so beautiful her lacy wings spread thin, almost translucent, on the surface of the water.
I wanted to take a picture, but by now I know that just because they are not moving doesn’t mean they are dead. So instead I floated my finger tip gently under the water, under the moth, and lifted her out.
It was only moments before she started to pull her wings in then release her drowned antennas.
I gently slid her off my finger onto the fencepost where she blended perfectly with the weathered wood.
Today a friend told me that her father used to catch flies in a glass and put them outside instead of killing them. I use a fly swatter, wouldn’t have thought of doing that.
And yet….
By now the sheep were baaing and the donkeys were impatiently pushing the sheep around, because they could. Zip was pacing in front of the gate and the chickens were clucking, reminding me they too wanted to be fed.
So I didn’t wait to see her fly away, but I know, from experience, that eventually she did.
I know I take Fanny and Lulu for granted sometimes.
I just expect them to be in the barnyard healthy and happy whenever I visit. But of course that could change any day for so many different reasons.
I wonder if it would have made a difference to ten-year-old-me to know that the older I got the happier I’d be and that donkeys would be a part of my everyday life.
When I was about 10years old, I wanted a horse so bad (like so many little girls) I had an imaginary one. Her name was Star and I’d hold her imaginary lead and walk her around. She felt so real to me that it seemed as good as having an actual horse.
I don’t ride the donkeys or even walk around with them. But I brush them and clean their hooves and ears. We sit together and communicate without words.
I suppose the silent agreement is that they guard the farm and be good to the other animals and people who live here and I make sure they always have food, water, and shelter.
Then there is the love.
Not that Fanny and Lulu would necessarily think of it that way. But they do like attention from Jon and me. Enough that they ask for it by quietly walking up to us when we are in the barnyard, or nudging us with their noses, or braying at the gate.
People have lived with donkeys for thousands of years. That connection may be forgotten if not tended to, but I believe it lives deep inside both humans and donkeys.
It has been reawakened in me. And I only hope that if I get to grow old, I will be able to do it with Fanny and Lulu. They will be forty (the life expectancy of a donkey) when I am eighty. Perhaps it’s just a fantasy, like my horse Star, but at least I can still imagine the reality I desire.
Zinnia and Bud sleeping in the doorway of my studio
Bud got a good night’s sleep after yesterday’s rat.
But he was back hunting today outside my studio. I saw him nosing around in some leaves by the fence. In moments he pulled his nose out of the leaves and had a mole in his mouth.
Unlike a cat, Bud wasn’t interested in playing with mole. When he dropped it on the ground it didn’t move. I was wondering if he would eat it, but instead he bit it in half, left the two parts on the ground and walked away.
When I told Jon about it he said that was how Boston Terriers kill rats. I guess it’s a good way to make sure they’re really dead.
I told the mole I was sorry and put it in a pile of leaves on the other side of the fence. I didn’t need Zinnia eating it and throwing it up at 3am.
I know that Bud hunts, but I’d never seen him catch and kill an animal before. I was both horrified and impressed.
When we got Bud I didn’t think of him as being a good farm dog. But I feel differently about that now. Even if he’s still trying to dig out of the yard, he helpful in other ways. Including being good at snuggling.
I finished the last Cat Face Pillow. It’s the last one because I used up the fabric. I have a few cats left over that I’m going to make in to Potholders. I started working on those today, but didn’t get far.
I’ll have one or two of these pillows for sale in a couple of days. I’m just waiting to hear back from someone who asked about them.
I love how they wove their way into my class at The Mansion today. That’s how ideas work. One leads to another. The only thing I’ve found is that if I don’t act on an idea, it withers along with what would have grown from it.
