I describe the long and tedious process of making a cat stocking, and the cat is suitably gracious. Like cats always are.6:30 p.m. - 2003-12-07
Once again... (music starts)... It's the most commercial time of the year! (dah dah, dah dah, dah) (music stops) I put up the Christmas tree today. I got nice and scratched up, and then Piggles/ Lillith discovered it and how wonderful it is to chew on stuff... fake branches... light bulbs... strings of beads... why, anything on a Christmas tree is fun to chew on! Chewing on the tree that I put up... and she should be grateful to me! Yesterday, I spent like 5 hours making her a stocking. (God, that is a sad, sad thing.)
See, I accidentally started a Christmas tradition when I was eleven-ish, I guess. I thought it was unfair that the people got stockings but the cats didn't, so I made some. One for Ben (who actually prompted this decision), one for Goofy, and one for Molly. With, ya know, sequins glued on, and I had their names painted on them and ribbon around the top and such. Crappy craftsmanship, of course, but I was eleven. Of course, Molly died last December, and I guess we just left her stocking down or something because I don't remember anything being done about it. But this year Mom was pulling out the stockings and said, "Oh, what are we going to do about this?" I think it would be kind of yucky to use Molly's stocking for Piggles, so I decided to make a new one for Piggles, all like "Oh, don't worry, I can just make another one for her. It'll only take a half an hour or so to sew up and all, and the sequining isn't a big deal." Ha! First, the pattern that I made when I was eleven obviously wasn't around any more, so I thought I'd just trace around one of the other ones, but Mom wanted it to be bigger, so she could, say, put a tennis ball in it if the urge struck her (No, we have never given our cats presents in the past... but she was going into the "what if someday..." region). Okay, that would be an inch or two bigger in circumference... Mom started talking about how to determine the size of the pattern based on that. I said, "Just chill, I'll make the size a bit bigger and it should fit fine." I traced and cut it out. Whoo.
Then, the search for Christmas-themed fabric. Mom takes up half of my closet space with fabric (although she doesn't even sew anymore). Finally, she pulls out some fabric with cats wearing Santa hats. Good enough. I cut it out... Mom cautions me to make sure I cut it so that the cats will all be facing upright, so instead of cutting two pieces of fabric at once, I cut the pattern out twice. Then I discover that they will be facing the opposite directions, so that the toe(s) is(are) pointed out opposite the other. I re-cut another stocking side, facing the right way. I hem the top, and then sew around and finish the sewing and flip it right side out. This took about 1 1/2 hours (good time estimating skills that I got, hunh?). I also sewed on the green ribbon around the top, added a loop of ribbon to hang the stocking by, and made a rather elaborate bow to the top corner to make it pretty (because the bows at the top for the other cats were, frankly, kind of UGLY).
During that time, the search for the sequins was conducted. Where were the sequins I used nine years ago? Not anywhere find-able, if we still have them. We found some over-sized sequins from an old tee-shirt project of mine, and some small beads. Good enough. I also get out the fabric paint, which we used to spell out each cats name. I wanted to use red, since the material was mostly tan, black and white (the cats), and I was going to use green ribbon around the top. I discovered that the fabric paint (calico red) had seperated into a yellow, oily substance and a big chunk of red stuff. shaking and squeezing did little, merely turning the oil red (another 15 minutes), but I used it on one side. It was runny, and funky, and I decided that I would have to spell out "Piggles" in teeny-tiny red beads with glue to make it even remotely attractive (I sure as hell wasn't sewing up another stocking). We no longer had the fabric glue that I used nine years ago, so Mom told me to use good ol' Elmers. "You know it can never be washed if I use Elmer's, right? It's water soluble." I said. Mom said, "Well, we haven't washed the other ones yet!" I conceded the point, and used the Elmer's and a toothpick to place the beads. Another hour passes. I am finally finished. I stretch and take a break. I can't do the dreaded other side yet until the glue dries. I take a break, and then on the other side in teensy little red beads I spell out Lillith. (It only took about 30 minutes that time, since I had done it already) Another break, then I decorated it...on the "Piggles" side with three "fuscia" sequins and some tiny green beads to make mistletoe, and a tiny gold bead star. Also some random sequining to make it pretty and give it some interest. On the "Lillith" side with a Christmas tree of green, gold, fuscia, pink, and blue sequins, and a starry blue sky night with tiny beads of gold and white for snowflakes that also made up the ground. And then some more random tiny beads. It looked pretty good, so I left it be.
Then, I was finally finished, and I left it out for Mom to put up tomorrow and went to bed. This morning, after Mom had added it to the string of stocking already up, she told me that Piggles had knocked down Goofy's stocking already, and torn off a sequin as well.
The cat really has a sense of the holiday spirit, huh?
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