No great revelations here, and it’s not a year yet since he passed, but I found some pictures of Samson that I wanted to share.

Buddy’s Bar-B-Q, down in Knoxville, delivers their various meals in lovely boxes shaped like (and the perfect size for) kitty houses. Wade had at one of them with a box knife to add a door and some windows for my boys, and they all enjoyed it, but Samson? He loved the thing.

It was his hidey-hole, his Sekrit Lair. He’d lurk inside, burst out to ambush Loiosh or Chocolate. Or he’d just curl up inside and pretend the rest of the world (especially those humans) wasn’t there. It was his safe place, and his favourite napping spot.

I miss my Samson. I wish Emily had gotten to meet him, too. I think he’d've loved her just as much as he loved Loiosh.

It’s been a loooong time since I’ve posted a real show report, and, well, I ain’t gonna do too much to make up for that right now. But you can have some pretty pictures!

I went to a 12th Night event (that’s an SCA thing) out near York, PA. It’s a small group, but one I was pretty familiar with when I lived here last, and I ran into a couple of folks I hadn’t gotten to see in way, way too long. My sales were pretty good, especially for people who haven’t ever seen my products before, and I had a good time, too.

There’ve been some changes, though. They certainly didn’t have a musical group this big the last time I was out that way.

They sound great, too. They played for a couple of hours, with some medieval music I was familiar with, and a bunch I’d never heard before. Good stuff!

Continuing the musical theme, one of the other merchants had some gorgeous musical instruments for sale, too. I saw several of his stringed instruments being played in the band (and that’s him to the far right, in the picture above).

In addition to all the lutes and such, he also had a couple of simple wood pipes that I was really tempted by, wooden spoons, and some lovely handforged knives.

Right next to me was a merchant whose wares I’ve admired before — he makes beautiful, accurate wooden chests and chairs.

Beautiful, comfortable, very functional — and portable. Yep, the thing folds. Gotta love centuries-old technology!

I have a wrist rest for my keyboard — as do most folks who type a lot. It’s the older style, without the gel, and they’re difficult to find these days. I plan to keep this one forever.

But, alas, the plasticized ‘fabric’ it’s covered with does a number on my skin if they touch. Which they do, see, because I use the thing.

So I had this solution. I took a scrap of linen and wrapped it around the wrist rest, and attached it neatly with rubber bands, and figured I’d come up with a more permanent solution later.

…that was probably five years ago. So it got to looking like this (fair warning: gratuitous cat picture):

I finally got sick of this last weekend, just before the trip to the mountains with my family, so I gathered my materials and laid my Plans.

I have an old, beat-up flannel shirt that once belonged to my dad. I wore it until its holes had holes, then kept it for sewing projects, because the fabric was so soft. I’ve already used part of it to cover my mouse pad, but I didn’t think to take pictures of the project. Suffice to say it came out looking pretty good.

I used one sleeve for the wrist rest, since it was just the right length:

I knew if I simply wrapped the wrist rest in the flannel it’d slide all over my desk, so I had to leave the grippy part on the bottom uncovered. Instead of wrapping the fabric all the way ’round I folded it over and pinned it to the bottom edge of the wrist rest, and started whip-stitching it on, like so:

I didn’t sew all the way to the end. I knew I was going to have to fold it over neatly somehow, and I wasn’t sure how yet.

Instead of dealing with that, I turned it over, pulled the fabric tightly across the top, and pinned and sewed as before.

Eventually my fingers got tired — it’s hard to pull a needle through something as dense as a wrist rest — and I experimented with the ends, finally coming up with this, which turned out pretty neat:

Over the weekend (and with plenty of breaks for another project, about which more later) I got the rest of it stitched up. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. Here’s a view of the bottom, with the grippy part still quite available to keep the thing in place on my desk.

And here it is back in use (cat optional). You can see my mouse pad, covered in the same fabric, to the upper right:

It’s more comfortable for my wrists, I don’t have to worry about the rubber bands breaking and flying across the room (which used to happen disturbingly regularly), and wow, does it look good.

Not Colorado’s mountains, alas. But the Appalachians are pretty, too, and even more importantly I got to spend the weekend with my family.

My Aunt Ann has an absolutely beautiful, luxurious cabin in the mountains, and she’s generous enough to share with us from time to time. We went up there last weekend — me, my mother, my sister, my nephew, and of course Loiosh — and had a wonderful time.

Riley wanted to see his picture in the viewscreen of my camera, but he doesn’t yet understand that I have to take his picture first, so there were some Unnecessary Closeups:

Riley and Mom spent a bunch of time playing with beads — or, as I like to call it, ‘sewing practice’:

Mom made dinner Friday night (her wonderful lasagna), and I cooked on Saturday — an African-inspired peanut stew that I really ought to post the recipe for sometime. We took a few walks in the (very, very cold) woods, got plenty of naps (my sister especially enjoyed hers), and spent some time in our favourite hobbies — Mom and Aunt Ann doing crosswords, and I got in some sewing (about which more later).

And Loiosh spent most of the weekend (when not being chased around by Riley) napping atop the couch.

My sister got artistic with her iPhone — I think this was Instagram? Or one of those? Either way, it’s a beautiful portrait of my boy.

All in all, a lovely weekend, and a lovely break.

Remember that ‘depression’ thing?

Surprised by how long it took me to get around to that ‘gratitude’ thing?

…okay, so sometimes it takes me a little bit to catch on.

• So I’ve got this kitten. Who’s almost a cat, these days. And oh, she loves me.
• I get to see my nephew ALL THE TIME.
• Free rent. And utilities. Also the fact that it’s been almost two months and my mother and I still haven’t killed each other.
• Did I mention the cats? I take Loiosh to my mom’s store once a week to help keep an eye on Riley. And he puts up with it.
• There’s a laundry room right in the house. No laundromats!
• I’ve gotten some truly awesome sewing projects done (about which more later).
• Getting back in touch with old friends. A lot of them. Like, zillions.
• Also, best nephew ever.
• My whole family is right the heck here. RIGHT HERE.
• Weekends at the cabin in the mountains.
• Sometimes my mom cooks, and I don’t have to.
• Also, she really likes my cooking.

So yeah…it’ll do. It’ll do.

I’ve been catching up on some old pictures lately…these are from before I moved. Trust me, Emily’s a lot bigger now!

I’d run out of packing peanuts, and my dear friend Lisa suppled me with a few. By which I mean a whole freakin garbage bag full.

Needless to say Mr. Loiosh was pretty excited, specially after I moved some of em to a more easily accessible tote (which, as you can see, he promptly knocked over):

Emily, of course, was curious. What are these? Why are you so excited about them?

…so of course he had to show her (she is as addicted to them now as he is — fortunately neither of them eat them, they just chew em up and leave me a mess.) But in the meantime, he’d already focused on bigger game…

…the rest of the bag, which, just after this shot was taken, he knocked over, thus causing me to holler, chase him around the apartment some, and then clean the hell up. Scaring the crap out of poor Emily in the process, of course.

…yeah, that’s my cats.

Dark, rich, creamy chocolate. Warm, spicy, woodsy ginger. What’s not to love?

My soap contains no petroleum products or detergents, and it still has all the moisturizing glycerine produced by the saponification process. It is very gentle on dry or sensitive skin, while still cleaning well enough for oily skin (or skin that’s just very dirty!).

Once you try handmade soap, you’ll never go back. It’s all handmade, and it’s all natural. Always.

Size: Each bar averages 4.5 oz (133 mL).

Ingredients: Saponified oils of coconut, palm, castor and safflower; glycerine, water, shea butter, berry extract, glycine soya protein, titanium dioxide, natural chocolate flavouring oil, ginger essential oil, cocoa powder.

A year ago, I was visiting my mother for Christmas, and she took exception to the fact that I had no decent pants to wear to the family Christmas dinner.

…alas, she was kinda right. I had sweatpants and jeans, and my jeans would’ve been fine except for the big hole in the knee. What can I say? High fashion has never been my forte.

Fortunately she had a pair of jeans that would fit nicely around my belly — of course they were too long (she’s about six inches taller than me), but that’s easily fixable with scissors, right?

I trimmed them off to the exact right length, tucked them into my boots, and off we went to Christmas dinner, and all was well.

…except for the part where they were the exact right length, which made things difficult when I got around to hemming them. No matter how tightly I rolled the hem, they were gonna be too short.

Fortunately, I had a solution. Or at least, a shirt.

I’d acquired an old swimsuit coverup from friend — she never wore it any more, and I didn’t wear it either because, well, I’m not near as boob-tastic as she is, and the neckline was…overly generous. Plus, the fabric was a little scratchy.

But I was intrigued by the gold trim, so I folded it up and tucked it away, figuring it’d come in handy with some sewing project, someday. And with the jeans, the day was here.

A simple solution, I thought. I’d trim off the sleeve cuffs and sew them around the bottom of the jeans legs, thus finishing off the cut hem without needing to turn it, and also making it pretty. Perfecto!

Except for the part where they weren’t quite long enough.

I spent far more time than was strictly necessary trying to convince myself it’d be pretty easy to just slim the jeans legs down at the bottom until the cuffs would fit. Fortunately I failed, cos wow, that woulda been a pain in the butt.

And I wouldn’t have come up with this:

That’s from the side slits in the shirt. I cut them out, trimmed them evenly all around, and cut slits in the side of each jeans leg to fit, then painstakingly sewed them into place. This was by far the hardest part — the fiddliest part, anyway, and I’m glad I’m patient when it comes to this sort of thing.

I’ll note here that the whole thing was sewn by hand. I do okay with sewing machines these days, but for anything remotely tricky, give me a needle, thread, and all the time I need to put each stitch precisely where it needs to be.

After that, sewing the cuffs around the rest was pretty trivial, and it all fit really well when I was done.

And now I have really lovely hippy jeans that fit me well, get me lots of compliments, and are just fun to wear. One of my favourite sewing projects ever.

I love the idea of messing with jeans — anything from sewing patches on to totally reconstructing them into something else. I’ve just started playing with the idea, here — so if you’ve got a project of your own to show off, I’d love to see it.

Just a quick picture post, cos yeah, that’s about all I’ve got.

I was mostly done packing, but Chocolate had Opinions on the whole ‘we’re moving’ topic.

OPINIONS I TELL YOU.

…I did eventually manage to get the desk into the Uhaul trailer, but Chocolate was Unpleased.

Emily’s settling into the new place nicely. Also she’s growing HOLY CRAP fast.

SO BIG.

She did really well in the car (for all TWELVE hours straight) — I was impressed! My little travelling girlkitty. :)

More soon I hope!

Didn’t I just post about this? Except not really, because all my plans are changing again, but it’s okay.

For a little over a year now I’ve been working for a dear friend. What with one thing and another, I’m not working for her any more (though we’re still working together on a few things) and thus my income has dropped a lot.

This is okay. Don’t go and yell at her. It’s all good.

But, alas, it does mean that I’m about to fulfill cliche and move in with my mother for a while.

my mom

Yeah, this is usually pretty stressful. And Mom and I have our moments. But we understand each other a lot better than we used to, and we get along a lot better than we used to, and if all else fails she has a pretty big house and we can both go hide for a while if necessary. So we’re pretty unlikely to kill each other, I think.

And this drops my expenses a lot. More than my income has dropped, actually. Plus, with so many of my people living in the Northeast, I figure I’ll probably be making a little more at shows than I was here.

So it’ll do. It’ll do.

I’ve spent the last couple hours packing — fortunately I don’t own a lot, so the actual move part won’t be too stressful. I’m hoping to get the trailer this weekend, and be at my Mom’s for Thanksgiving. And won’t that be lovely?

Further updates as events warrant. And if nothing else, I know it won’t be boring.