Miscellany of a Cheshire Cat

More comics at: The Chronicles of Monster Cat

tags: cats, comics, monster cat, paparazzi, silly, tennyson

Comics have been getting posted later and later in the day since I got back from Pennsic… I’m going to try to get back to posting them in the mornings again - still Monday, Wednesday, Friday. I’d also like to get a few days ahead again like I was before I went on vacation. That way I can have writer’s block and still post on time. Ideally.

More comics at: The Chronicles of Monster Cat

tags: cats, comics, monday, monster cat, napping, silly, tennyson

More comics at: The Chronicles of Monster Cat

tags: cats, comics, crusader, milk, monster cat, silly, tennyson

The awesome mug pictured here is one of my favorites. It’s so huge it makes my cat look small! I picked it up at Pennsic a few years ago from one of my favorite potters, Charles Hughes. Tenny’s head does fit into it. He is a rude little cat when it comes to frosty beverages on my desk too. RUDE!

More comics at: The Chronicles of Monster Cat

tags: cats, charles hughes, comics, frosty beverages, milk, monster cat, mugs, pottery, silly, tennyson

You may have noticed that I often wander around my yard and take photos of my plants. Well, lately when I do that, I have a spectator. And he actively voices his opinion regarding the fact that I am Outside. If I’m out too long, he gets all the way to yowling. Poor thing! Post-Pennsic is so hard for him! Every time we leave the house it’s so unclear when or if we will return!

More comics at: The Chronicles of Monster Cat

tags: cats, comics, monster cat, quotes, romeo and juliet, shakespeare, silly, tennyson, window

A long week followed by a short weekend. I feel cheated.
The basil and hot peppers survived Pennsic just fine and are still profusely green and lush. I am not a patient person so it’s hard for me to resist harvesting the peppers now. I’m trying to wait until they’re a little more mature! The purple flower pictured here came along with the pink peonies. I’d almost forgotten about the non-peony plants! I forget what they’re called but they’re going strong!

I started poking at revising my resume this weekend. Goodness how I hate working on my own resume. I have to get into a whole different mindset to talk about what I can do and have achieved in the right language to get myself an interview. I may have to do a quick and dirty sarcastic spoof of my resume just to get it out of my system.
After that maybe I’ll be able to achieve a serious linguistic elegance appropriate for my resume.

Or maybe I’ll just send out a really entertaining resume.

I have yet to do a Pennsic recap beyond “weather was great, friends were loved, fun was had.” (Which may be all I need to say!) I’m still sorting through photos. I have a ton from Opening Ceremonies and now I want to know who all the pretty banners belong to so I may be enlisting the help of the masses.

I have created a bunch of to-do lists post-Pennsic. One list has long-term projects I want to do and the others are shorter-term - daily or weekly. The cool thing about the lists? I’m giving myself permission to skip items and not complete everything on the short term lists. Very decadent to be able to just leave things on the list with no guilt! Yes, I’m weird. But I’m more productive this way.

tags: flowers, gardening, pennsic, photographs, resume, to-do lists, weekend

More comics at: The Chronicles of Monster Cat

tags: cats, comics, embezzlement, monster cat, silly, steve martin, tennyson

More comics at: The Chronicles of Monster Cat

tags: cats, comics, computer, laptop, monster cat, silly, tennyson

So, the short version of this story is that I took on a somewhat ambitious project for friends (the Tadcasters) before Pennsic. I’ve learned to use several of the awesome features of my embroidery machine and gotten the hang of the digitizing software to some extent. The whole project took longer than I expected but not by much and I didn’t even curse people during the process. Plus, Andre has a spiffy new cloak. If you’ve never seen Andre fence with a cloak, you should. He’s amazing. Plus he has this new cloak you should check out.

The following are project notes, mostly for my own reference and rambling…

The longer version involves many hours poking at a sub-par image file to make it into something digitize-able. Why is it that every other group in the SCA has a pretty, clean, happy jpeg image of its emblem but the Order of the Golden Rapier has a poor photo of an enamel pin? Anyway, once I got to the point of digitizing, there were then several iterations to get things right… some test sewing… more edits and iterations… test sewing… changes… etc.

Thanks to IanRaven, the OGR has bottom fangs! HURRAY!

The digitizing is really quite fun once you get past the pixel-by-pixel editing in Photoshop to get a clean image to digitize! The software is slick and easy - and I don’t use these terms to describe software often. Given the original cost of the DesignerPlus software from Bernina, I’m glad it was so simple. The tutorial actually helped out a lot as well. Oh and the repetition of digitizing the same image over and over until it came out the way I wanted it to! This project took so many iterations in part because the original image was so poor. I’m curious to see how things will go with a cleaner original.

The construction of the cloak was pretty straight-forward, especially since I took the pattern from Andre’s original cloak (yes, that’s a gaping hole).

Corduroy and wool twill with generic machine embroidery stabilizer ($1.29/yard from Joann’s). The corduroy didn’t take the embroidery well - tufts came through. I might be able to remedy that another time I think. The math on the dags worked out well and there are 10 OGR emblems on the cloak. Trace, embroider, re-trace because the marking pencil wore off… cut, pin, sew… futz with the collar… hand sew (gasp) the collar closed…

It was presented to him by the Tadcasters at Iron Bog’s baronial court at Pennsic. The best part of the court presentation was definitely everyone grinning at Andre as he tried out the cloak. It apparently flies well and pleases the fencer because he has since been dubbed “Don Linus” for clinging to the new cloak. Hurray!

More photos over at Flickr… More Pennsic photos as time permits!

tags: bernina, bernina artista 730, designerplus software, embroidery, fencing, fighting cloaks, machine embroidery, order of the golden rapier, sewing, silly projects

We’re home. The cats are clearly happy we’re home. The whining has not yet begun to subside. I did bring Tennyson a fresh catnip strawberry from Falcons Mew to try to bribe him into not being quite so whiny. It didn’t work, but the ‘nip was well-received anyway. I have a couple packages of her famous catnip to add to more toys later this year.

For those of you who go to Pennsic, Elaine and Falcons Mew will not be back as vendors next year, but there are already plans afoot to have her merchandise there with another merchant! YAY!

More comics at: The Chronicles of Monster Cat

tags: catnip, catnip toys, cats, comics, falcons mew, monster cat, pennsic, silly, tennyson