FO: Cat Butt Coaster

Every now and then the internet shows you something you just have to make immediately. My husband's mom loves cats, so I saved the Peeking Cat Butt Coaster pattern (which is free) for when we needed a quick gift. He found a mug he thought she would like for Mother's Day and I knew the time had come. We dug through my cotton stash and pulled out the perfect colors and 1 hour later I had a ridiculous coaster to give her.

And it's just as offensive looking from the back... I used I Love This Cotton in Monkey Brown for the cat and a very old Sugars 'n Cream cotton in Tea Rose for the um... hole. I've now been told by more than a few people that the hole color is unsettling, lol. It's a very striking color.  My husband says it really draws the eye. The eyes were just two buttons from my stash - who knows what from - and I used embroidery floss to make thicker thread for "pupils".

It turned out to be the perfect sized coaster, so maybe it will be a funny conversation piece on her desk, lol. Being only 1 layer of yarn, this is a bit flimsy, so I use spray starch and ironed it flat to hopefully hold its shape better. This seemed to work well.

And just one more close view of that butt hole... This was a quick project and was pretty amusing both to make and give. I definitely recommend making some if you have a need of coasters, lol.

FO: Monsieur Splat Cat

In all my gift making the last month or so, my husband reminded me of his grandma's birthday just a few days before hand. Yeah, lol. I had something already made for her for Christmas and I think he just figured I'd give her that earlier, but I really didn't want to change my Christmas plan, so I started looking through my patterns to see if anything struck me as to what I should make her for this occasion.

I stumbled on mention of the Indie Gift-A-Long on a blog I follow. A bunch of indie pattern designers on Ravelry all got together and set up this group with awesome prizes and pattern discounts. For this first week of the GAL, certain patterns from certain designers would be 25% off (so only Nov 13-21), and one of the patterns was something I'd always loved but never purchased: Splat Cat by cheezombie.

Isn't it cute?! I've always thought it was really funny, but I just never had cause to make one up. Justin's Grandma is definitely a cat lover, so I thought she might enjoy it too. The pattern is pretty easy to follow, and I made mine up over a few nights (only a few hours total) and had no problems. The appendages were definitely more time consuming than I thought, but I guess that's pretty typical for me :)

Isn't his face great? The body is knitted as one piece, then the legs and eyes are picked up and knit while the tongue and ears are separate pieces you sew on.

The pattern is listed as an amigurumi/coaster, so he cam be nice and useful too :) I doubt Justin's Grandma will use it as a coaster though - I think she said she wanted to hang him up.

As for his name, I added Monsieur to mine since every time I read the title I hear it in the voice of Dutchess from The Aristocats (Eva Gabor) saying "Monsieur Scat Cat," so it stuck.

 And here is the birthday girl herself with the splat cat :) She's 86 years old!

And of course the Gordo had to try the cat on for size :)

I really enjoyed making this little guy! Just so you know, if you want the pattern for yourself it is 25% off but only until midnight tonight - so hurry here! (I'm not being compensated to mention that or anything, just wanted to pass along the great discount.)

WIP Wednesday: Painting The Living Room

So, I haven't gotten much finished lately on the yarn front. I did finish something up a few weeks ago that I still haven't blogged, but I've been busy with actual responsible activities instead :) I've been painting our living room! Just to clarify, this is what it looked like when we moved in:

It's much more filled with crap now, lol, but that horrible red/brown/mauve color has is still on this wall. We painted the two walls to the left of this photo before we moved in and when you're sitting on our couch an watching tv, you don't see the red so it was really easy to just let it sit unfinished. Until now!

First, I had to move all the crap furniture out of the way and Kilz the daylights out of the whole wall. I'm not kidding you, this took 3 coats of Kilz to make it white. I wanted to make sure it was very evenly white before putting on the actual paint because it's a light gray and I didn't want any of that awful red showing through after all the problems we had picking a color. So, I have done this mostly by myself after my husband goes to work at night. Between switching from cutting in and rolling, plus the 3 coats, it took me 4 nights to get it looking like this. I finished the last of the Kilz on Saturday night, so I was able to use real paint on Sunday to make it look like this:

lol I know it doesn't look much different than the Kilz at first glance, but just look at the base boards in this photo and you can tell it's gray. This is Sherwin Williams' Super Paint in Sedate Gray. I still have to do inside the upper edges of the bay window, paint the bay window ceiling white, and paint the baseboards, but it's at least a nice gray color :) Even though I still have one more enormous wall left to paint, it's really amazing how much this has changed the feeling of the room. I can stand facing the front door and it's all nice and evenly gray - I Love It! Tonight I will be doing the base boards and the bay window - fingers crossed that I get it all done.

Even though it's not finished yet, I can't tell you what this has done for my home reno motivation. Here's a perfect example - I used to always look through the DIY & Crafts Pinterest boards when I was bored, now I'm addicted to the Home Decor boards. I have all kinds of plans for several rooms now. I'm trying not to get too carried away with plans though. I don't want to start too many things again and get burnt out like when we first moved in. Once I get this area back to normal, I will either do that last wall (this plan depends on when I can borrow my parent's big ladder since that wall has a 14 foot pitch at the top), or I will finish my cabinet doors for the kitchen. We're having other kitchen issues at the moment, so we shall see. For now I'm just thrilled to have made some type of progress.

In other news...

There's a cat in my house! I never thought I'd say that, to be honest. Not that I don't like cats, quite the opposite, but I'm always afraid they will tear up my furniture/house. This one was abandoned a few blocks away from our house - her owners moved out almost 2 weeks ago and the neighbors said the cat has been hanging out on the front porch meowing to be let in ever since. We couldn't just leave her, so we brought her inside and put her in the empty spare room. We kept her in there last night to make sure she could use a litter box and whatnot. I happened to have a sample pack of cat food from my couponing days, so I poured that in a bowl an no joke she ate 3/4 of it last night. She just purred loudly while she ate and then rubbed against our legs in thanks. She even likes the dog! And the dog likes her, which is weird, but we'll take it. So this morning she graduated to being let out downstairs with just a few rooms closed. She loves our den! It's like a cat paradise because there are all kinds of stacks of boxes and stuff that hasn't been unpacked yet sitting in the back corner. Anyway, at the moment, we have a cat :) I'm going to take her to be checked over tomorrow and make sure she's disease free, and we will see how she does with scratching furniture. As long as all goes well, she will get to stay!

THat's what I have going on this week. To see what others are up to, check out Tami's Amis' blog.