Here Comes The Cat

The Universe has brought the sales back, though I fear by mentioning it I will have jinxed it entirely. The other issue is what is the Universe trying to tell me...that if I whine the sales will return? That seems like a bad message to send Universe. Perhaps you were actually telling me that if I work hard and focus on other things that the sales will return. Yes, I think I shall choose that answer. What was I working hard on you ask? Why, my next Wonderland piece, of course. Yes, the mask that was suggested...I am making it.

At first I thought you were mad, but as I could not come up with a proper pendant or necklace design...I though maybe you were not so insane after all and I sat down during the children's nap time and began to think. The first hurdle was to design the great green eyes. I took a triangle motif and tatted it on the inside of the eye wire. This was not an easy task. In fact, this was the point where I cursed your suggestion with great vim and vigor. I managed to get both the eye created after much fancy crochet hook work.

The second challenge was of course the striping on the the cats head. I am working off of the new Tim Burton designs. If you haven't seen them yet, go look now...I'll wait. Anyway, this bit meant that I was going to be using two colors, which I don't enjoy doing with the needle. This is the one time I wish I could shuttle tat better. The long cut threads are always tangling and making things more complicated than they really are. I decided to not reinvent the wheel and used an existing mask design and merely picked the spots for the colors.

Next challenge up for today are the ears and a second row that will reinvent the wheel a bit. For this piece I am using all hand dyed threads as well. They seemed to be the perfect colors to make this one come to life. Once that second row is done another challenge will be to wrap those eye wires with the tatting on both sides. I predict that there will be cursing. I am not certain how comfortable the mask will be with the green on the eye, but it will be wearable and I suppose most masks are particularly comfortable anyway.

I did get an order that I need to make up, so the cat might be on a break for the day, but I feel like the design is working up so quickly that it should be done very soon. Of course I still haven't decided what embellishments if any this one will have. It seems only right given the other jewel encrusted pieces in the collection that this have some sort of shiny, perhaps some filament running through the blue, or I could hand a string of glass pearls from the corners making a smile...though that might be terrible annoying to wear. Well, as you can see, I'm not done with Wonderland just yet. I hope you're enjoying my trip down the rabbit hole.