Black Cat Mask

Night two on the floor was a bit like night one, nearly identical actually. So I sit here with two nights of ineffective sleep, but knowing that it won't be much longer until I have two independent sleepers. Of course I had my own little emotional freak out last night after realizing that I have cuddled a child nearly every night for over six years and that is about to end...that gives me the sad. It's okay though, I suppose this is just one of many 'letting go' moments of motherhood and I best present a stiff upper lip and deal with it. Besides since I home school I've got all day to sneak in extra cuddles.

Know how I said I wouldn't get around to the cat mask? Yeah, I lied, I totally got it made yesterday. Without all the extra colors and embroidery that I used on it's Cheshire cousin, it worked up fairly quickly. I opted for the hand dyed light emerald for the eyes and the hand dyed gray for the ears. Oh, what would I do without all this great hand dyed thread about...thanks Heather! I also ended up changing the section around the ears quite a bit from the Cheshire. Of course I made it all up as I tatted so I wrote nothing down again. I also tried for a more almond shape in the negative space of the eye. I didn't keep the change though because even though it did indeed look more cat like, seeing out of the mask was...challenging. It's always an interesting balancing act to keep functionality along side design without losing too much of either.

As I don't really expect my thread for the moths until tomorrow, finishing the cat leaves me in the position of deciding what to do with my day. I have been very good about keeping the house at a maintainable level of clean as there are more guests on the way at the beginning of the month. No major clean ups needed. There are still a couple of pieces waiting to be remade, but nothing terribly popular so I hesitate to get into production mode. I currently have over 160 pieces in the shop and not counting simple color changes or slight differences that still leaves well over 100 designs sitting about, so I don't really need to design anything new. Of course when have I let 'need' dictate that sort of thing, but I have no pressing ideas either. Maybe something will just come to me, or maybe the thread will come early or maybe I'll just be too tired to care.