Our Pets...

It's been a pretty rough week around here for our pets.  Arbour, our 11 year old cat, has gone missing and we fear she may have fallen prey to a fisher.  We've learned since her disappearance that there are more fishers around this area than usual this year. 

Casey was two when we got Arbour and she's always been a bit of a mom to her cat.  As a kitten Arbour would just climb into that little nook in Casey's 'arms' and that's how they'd sleep. Needless to say, Casey has been missing her cat as have we.

To make things worse, Casey started limping on Wednesday and she spent last night in hospital, having had to have a minor surgery to have her damaged 'toe nail' removed.  The claw may grow back, but in the mean time the limp is almost completely gone and she's happy to be resting comfortably at home!  How do you like that cute bandage.  LOL

 Earlier in the summer, when my friend, Heather came to visit, she asked me to back her car down our large hill as she's not as comfortable with it as I am.  Casey, always by my side, followed me up the hill, so Heather told me to invite her in the car and give her a ride back down.  Well, Casey happily jumped in, and when at the bottom of the hill she just curled up on the seat and went to sleep.  She slept there for an hour before we were able to coax her out!  Silly old puppy...(she turned 13 in June, but will always be my puppy!)

One of Those Days...

Do you ever have one of those days where you just can't seem to machine quilt...the fabric seems weighed down or something and you're struggling to move it around through the machine with your regular ease?  Well, that's the sort of morning I'm having!

Let's take a closer look at why...

Yes, it would appear as though Arbour has again found the newest 'cat bed' that has obviously been put in the studio for her personal pleasure and comfort!

But, being the horrible person I am, I will have to move my little assistant because my wishes to work on this piece trump her need for yet another comfortable place to sleep!

DOF Study: Pinhead Kitty

I'm working to get more comfortable with shooting using Aperture Priority on my camera and eventually moving into shooting in manual all the time.  My goal is to get out of (and stay out of) the auto setting for good!

In this shoot, I grabbed my crazy pin cushion* to play around with DOF (depth of field).  I love the great results I can get with my 50mm 1.8 lens.  So much fun...

*Several years ago my friends Heather, Doeteke and I were making these silly Halloween cats. I made my head, following the pattern, and when I held it up to the rest of the cat it was way too small.  Heather said it looked like a pin head, and that gave me the idea to make a pin cushion out of the little head.  I went ahead and redesigned a larger head for the Halloween cat (in hindsight it could have even been bigger...).  Anyway, when I got home, I used the little head to make the pin cushion and attached it to a tiny mason jar so that I could store extra pins inside the jar.  At first it was a bit creepy sticking pins in the cat's head, but I'm over it! :o)

A Photo Shoot and Timeline...

This week in the first Beyond Beyond post, Kim challenged us to do a photo shoot in which we set up a still life and then moved around to take shots from various angles.  The other day, I found our cat Arbour sleeping on a pile of quilts that were left on top of the antique sewing machine at the top of the stairs.  So...

It wasn't long before she was watching me and following the camera.  She didn't look too please that I had disturbed her nap, but I kept shooting.

When it came time to figure out how to present a select few of the shots, I remembered a timeline lesson that Kim had taught us in Beyond Layers, which I have been meaning to try but so far hadn't done.  I had to figure out a few things since I put my own spin on it by using photos along with thought bubbles in place of Kim's text boxes.  It was fun interpreting Arbour's thoughts from some of the looks she was giving me during the shoot.