Saw my shadow, went back into hibernation.

But lo! It is spring! Time to crawl out from under the couch and see what's going on in the real world.
(Not the greatest pic of me ever, but Rev looks dashing. It was really sweaty out by that point and I think my face was melting. Everyone looks great squinting, too. Hubba hubba.)

Last Saturday was my favorite day of the year. That's because it's the day they held Bark Around the Park and the K9 3k! Hence, the pictures you see here. I live for this weekend every year, though I have to wonder why two of the biggest dog events of the year are held on the same day, with overlapping times. There has to be some kind of reason behind it or they'd have changed it by now, I'm sure. I find myself imagining a vicious rivalry between the two host organizations, a dogfight, if you will. Lots of snarling and fist shaking. Maybe the two organizers were in some illicit relationship that ended badly, or perhaps there was some kind of philosophical altercation over whether or not adopters should be allowed to juggle their pets provided they are otherwise excellent caretakers. Do remember, this is only speculation (read: a total figment of my overactive imagination), but why else would they stick to such a bizarre schedule?

Well, whatever the reason, it worked out nicely for us. We showed up at the park downtown (the one with the copper acorn by that guy I used to serve coffee to every day at 3rd Place. That park must have an actual name. Anyone know what it is?) While I'm asking questions about the park, does anyone know why they have a plaque with a fountain dedication on it, with no fountain in sight. Seems kind of insulting to the person it's dedicated to, though they're probably dead so in all likelihood they have no idea. But they could at least cross out the word "fountain" and write in "shrubbery" since that's what the plaque's in front of. Wow, this is a really long parenthetical statement. I've forgotten what I was saying, so I'll just start over and forget the end parenthesi. So, we showed up at the park downtown at around 10, then hit Bark Around the Park after the walk (and much tent browsing) at noon.
Poor Bark Around the Park. It was relatively desolate. Well, not desolate, but the crowds weren't like those of previous years, but d-a-n-g the giveaways were flowing. We left with a half-ton of swag, not to mention some vegan dog biscuits. I couldn't resist supporting the people sellling homemade dog biscuits after all that time I used to do that for 3rd Place. The dogs seem impressed by them and I feel slightly less guilty for letting their supply of homemade biscuits run out. After all, I wrote a whole book on cooking dog treats, you'd think I'd be on top of that. Stores like PetSmart, Pet Supermarket, and Petco were handing out whole bags of stuff. Crazy! The next most generous were the vet clinics who kindly provide us with new bag clips every year. Our potato chips thank the entire veterinary profession for preventing the onset of early staleness.

If you're looking for a cat who is good with dogs, Bark Around the Park is the place to go. This kitty, pictured below, was so casual among the dozens of dogs milling about, it was impressive. She was just lolling about in the afternoon breeze, stretching her arms as far outside the cage as she could manage, greeting everyone who stopped by with a volumous meow. Want an instant family? A nearby cage held a dog/cat duo, lounging in the shade.

I was so proud of Scott and Usagi! They did the Senior Walk (.5K) at the K9 3K along with the Triangle Game Developers to raise money for the SPCA of Wake Co. Are they not adorable?

Notice anything unusual? Yep, I wore out and was ready to go home at the same time Scott was. No kidding! I hurt pretty bad the next day, but was fine again on Monday. Wow. Usually doing half of a day like Saturday would have had me laid up for a week. Accupuncture, I love you! (And a shout out to my new meds, too!)

Rough Day/Rough Play

Or perhaps I could have titled this Degenerate/Degenerate (one pronounced each way)?

Feeling quite ill today with my miserable Degenerative Disk Disease. Hence, I degenerate. This is by far the unfun type of dengeneration. I'm trying to do a kajillion things, among them, making rat and mouse cards for the next round of Vegan Sample Bags--a really neat project on Etsy.com that introduces buyers to lots of cool vegan crafters' products while donating all the proceeds to highly worthy animal causes. Check out the current one at: http://vegansamples.etsy.com/.

I have both contributed to the bags and bought them, so I can assure you, they are officially neat frito. Of course, pain has assaulted me today so I got absolutely nothing done. Often I can't decide which is worse: sustaining the pain itself, or the time eating black hole the pain creates.

So, I'm trying to cheer myself up with a rousing browse at Etsy and what do I find but a store of vegan delights that offers something I dare say we all need (or, at least I do, anyway): a little vegan discipline. Hence, I would like to introduce you to Deviant, a store that understands that cruelty should always be consensual. Whether you are looking for actual playthings or just a smidge of fashion, it's nice to be able to find a cruelty-free option that's intentionally so, made by a genuine craftsperson, not by machines. It's leatherless by choice, not because it's a cheapo knockoff.

A-freaking-dorable!

Happy Birthday, Revco!

I have a teenager now! Revco just turned 13. That's him above, hopping up and down, trying to grab one of the treats I baked for him. It's a new recipe that seems to be a hit! Pain Faux Viende Avec Herbs de Provence...the recipe will be featured on the EtsyVeg team blog soon. They're very hearty, though low in fat. A nice soft and chewy treat. In the mean time, take a look at the team site: http://www.etsyveg.blogspot.com/ Basically, it's a group of people who run stores on Etsy.com who get together to support each other and do some good for animals. Etsy is a great place to shop. If you received a gift from me this holiday season, it's extremely likely that I bough it on Etsy.com!

Speaking of stuff I'm doing on the web, I wanted to show off the card I made for the Simon Says Stamp "Hot Chocolate" Challenge. The theme is pink/brown and of course, the beverage mentioned. I just got this house mouse stamp so I had to use it. Mmm. Donuts. Is there anything they can't do?

Aaaaannnd, I'm super busy and up really late working on cards for a couple of rescue fund raisers. One is a craft show in the UK and the other is the Vegan Sample Bag fund rasier I contributed to a few months ago. Basically Etsy.com stores donate free samples to be put together in pretty hand decorated totes and sold to raise money for an animal rescue. The previous one I was in raised money for a sanctuary for homeless pigs. I've heard that these totes are really cool and a genuine bargain. I know I always try to include a few nice goodies from my store for each buyer. Check it out! http://www.etsy.com/shop/vegansamples

And, ahem, my store: http://scrappyrat.etsy.com

Well, I'd best get back to work if I'm going to get these cards made, packaged, and on their way!

P.S. One week till my 4th poetry book is released! So soon!

Botanica Box

It's 5:35 a.m. and I am still awake, packing up those tires-squealing, last second, do-I-maybe-still-stand-a-chance-to-get-these-things-somewhere-on-time gifts. Most of these are, of course, the ones I made by hand, so it's not just putting paper around a box, it's also making adjustments, putting this together with that, and I'll admit it, actually making a few of the items from scratch today. I'm relieved, at least, that my craftsiness only extends to side order gifts because if I had to come up with stuff worthy of being the main course, I would never get to sleep all year.

Well, that's not entirely true. This year Scott wanted his gift to his mom to be a floral arrangement I made. He picked the colors and I even managed to drag him slowly through the faux flora section of AC Moore to get him to pick out all of the flowers (or at least pick from amongst several I picked that weren't too absurd--I had to waft him away from the ginormous globular hydrangia puffs he kept picking out since two of them would have overflowed the container he wanted) so in my opinion, he genuinely deserves credit for the gift despite my assembly. And I did that assembly between 3:30 and now. And here I thought this kind of last minute frantic cramming ended when I graduated. I think it came out pretty well, though looking at it from here I see two flowers that are out of place. It's making me nuts to see those two flowers sticking out, but not quite nuts enough to make me get up and fix it just now, I'm so tired.

On to the photos. The pics I've uploaded depict a project I made for the Alphastamps matchbox shrine swap. Alphastamps is a fantastic store full of all sorts of beautiful trinkets, stamps, and collage supplies, quite possibly my favorite out there. The people in the swap group make the most amazing things. They're all quite talented to the point where I feel almost unworthy of being included. Every swap is a great learning experience, and I highly encourage anyone interested in honing their crafting skills to join.

The matchboxes in this swap are approximately 1.5x2.5 or thereabouts. Think of the kind of matchboxes you used to (and maybe still sometimes do, somewhere) find in gigantic fishbowls on the way out of restaurants. In this case, I ordered mine from...you guessed it...Alpha Stamps, where I also picked up the beautiful floral dresden, the momento mori scrap, and the nifty skull and rose (not shown, but used in some of the boxes I swapped away) cubichon that went into collaging this little "shrine").

Some of my readers may not be familiar with dresden and, oh my, you should be because it's one of my favorite things in the world. These are bits of german paper "scrap", generally dry embossed, often metallic, that were popular in the 1800's to embellish family albums, decorate greeting cards, etc. The other item that might not be immediately recognized is the momento mori scrap. A momento mori is any type of personal trinket intended to keep one's dead a little closer in one's memory. Some that are popular among collectors include hair jewelry (though it's not exclusively made from the hair of the dead, it often is considered funerary jewelry). Check it out online. While I'm hair-phobic (Hair is creepy once it's detached from its human. Seriously.) I have to admit, it is quite beautiful. In this case, however, our momento mori is a sheet of photos of taken after the death of a loved one. Because it wasn't common for families to have their own cameras until fairly recently, and because having one's picture made was both an expensive and tedious production (involving standing very still--this is why people's eye often look weird or blurry in old photos. Their eyes moved during the long exposure process), many people didn't have photos of their loved ones around. So, when someone died, more often than not, if the family wanted to ever see their lost one's face again, would need to have a picture made. To contemporary Americans, who don't really have much contact with their dead anymore, but in the past this was not unusal at all. I know if I lost someone and had no photos, I'd have it done rather than have no reminder of their appearance.

I was playing with the idea of the different ways we encounter flowers, how pretty, innocent, and lovely scented they can be, but also how they can be sad or even sinister. I wanted to have it be a bit of a surprise when you open it, like "eyeew" almost. Like once on the playground in elementary school, one of the girls thought she caught a hummingbird and was completely charmed...until the teacher told her what she was cradling in her hands was the biggest locust she'd ever seen. She shrieked and threw it down. It was interesting how fast her reaction changed, though it was the same thing she had been holding so dearly a second ago.

So, check out Alpha Stamps and give matchbox shrines a try. If you do, please send me a link to your photos. I'd love to see them!

Goodbye Baby Ween.

Ween died yesterday afternoon. He was 17 and a half, but you always hope for a few more years, even when you see it coming.

Over the last year he'd grown thin, and more and more often he'd hit the side of the bathroom counter instead of making his usual satin slick landing when it was kitty treat time (the dogs are less pesky when you're on the counter instead of the floor, after all.)

Lately his back end seemed to be sinking and his knees were turning inward. We debated whether or not we should attempt wresling him into a carrier and sustain his surprisingly shrill howls on the drive over to the vets' office to see if they could offer some kind of medicine that might limber him up a little, but the last time we took him in, we couldn't get close enough to the suddenly armed and ferocious box in the back seat, so the vet had to immunize him like a feral, through the slits in the verikennel. Getting him to calm down enough to prance across the counter and show off his gams just wasn't going to happen.

The organic human-grade holistic joint supplement I ordered arrived on our doorstep today. Oh well.

When Scott brought Ween home, his name was Janice and his head was bigger than his body. We found out later (he wasn't always a threat to veterinarians everywhere) that Janice had an undescended testicle. Oh. So he came home a second time as Tofu-Kitty, but soon his habit of belting out a tune in his Siamese tenor each night (a behavior we came to refer to as "Weening Out"), and his tendency to get into fights with socks--and lose every time, earned him the moniker, Weeny. He was a year younger than my resident cat, Small Change, so we got in the habit of calling him Baby Ween. For some reason he also earned an article and became The Ween, sort of like on Leave it to Beaver. No one can remember why, but it stuck. T.S. Eliot would be proud of this cat.

It's hard. Toulouse, one of my other cats, the one who was best friends with Ween, has been searching all corners of the house and meowing so sadly. It's heartbreaking to hear him crying out and not receiving a response. He knows Ween died, but it probably feels as unreal to him as it does to me. Poor baby. He's going to miss having a friend of his own species that he can groom and tussle with. My other kitty, Weezee, sort of tolerates Toulouse, as cats often do with each other.

Scott took Ween to the crematory this afternoon. I guess I'll put his ashes on the "mantle" (there's no fireplace below it, so I don't know what you call it) next to his old friend Small Change who passed on about 8 years ago from liver failure. It's kind of weird, but Ween dying also stirs up a lot of memories of dad dying just a few years ago at this time of year. It feels like someone's always disappearing. Sigh.

I follow Zen, so I wish Weeny an auspicious rebirth and hope he enjoys shaking off his heavy body, trading it in for a bouncy new one. I hope he maybe finds Small Change again (aka, Mr. Big), his feline big "brother" who smacked him around mercilessly, a beating Ween took with the enthusiasm of the little cartoon terrier who always popped back up, right beside the bulldog announcing, "We's pals, ain't we Spike?"

I hope somewhere, someday soon, they'll be curled up purring like a chainsaw in the laundry of someone who loves them dearly.

Take good care of my boys, okay?

Blog RAKs Ahoy!

First, let's get started by announcing the winner of last post's "Crushed Creativity" prize. Jenny, please send me your mailing address, I have an assortment of Stampin' Up goodies for you!

Jenny related her smackdown:

"Well, I was at work and I thought something I had made was just simply beautiful and so I showed it to my collegue! (Steven) He looked at it and said without skipping a beat, "That is the uglist SARC I've ever seen." To say the least I was a little bummed.. I still hold it over his head.. :)"

To curb suicide attempts, I asked that each commenter (commenter? That sounds odd to me.) include a link to something they had made that they were proud of, so Jenny included a link to her blog: http://asecretvintage.blogspot.com/2009/08/burning-heart.html

Very neat, I love the unusual color combination. It's nothing I would have thought of, yet it works. Very vintage, like peeling wallpaper and worn red velvet.

In other news, I was lucky enough to win this great doggie-head lunchbox, which is not only adorable, but also highly useful for the vegan who often attends crops where non-vegan meals are served. I can stuff it full of yummy goodness, like peanut butter sandwiches with black currant jelly, little snack pack cups of vegan chocolate pudding, and itty bitty carrots. Mmm.

Well, I noticed the resemblance this lunchbox has to my own dog, Usagi, and sent her photo to Amy at Easy As Pie, the generous woman who drew my name to win her blog prize. Amy agreed and posted the comparison on her blog, Easy As Pie:

http://blog.easyaspierecipes.com/2009/10/reallife-munchler.html

What do I like about Easy As Pie? The abundance of animal-free recipes. As you can tell by the chicken recipe near the top, her site isn't vegan, though it's handy for those of us who are. The site celebrates foods and thing that do not make people puff up and wheeze, break out in hives, and otherwise aggrivate one's histines. Whether you have allergies or not, check out her site. The food photos are reason enough to visit. Yummers.

I love Etsy!

I've had an Etsy store for a few months, but only recently have I been really using it to its fullest potential. I quit Stampin' Up with the dawn of the new demonstrator agreement*, which inspired me t0 get serious about my store, Scrappyrat Designs. I'm still building up my inventory, a goal which I'm happy to say has been hampered by a jump in sales. Sure the filthy luchre is nice, but I just love how my heart jumps with every sale message that shows up in my email box. My insides get all smiley knowing someone likes the stuff I make. It's second only to the almost electrical zap I get with each acceptance letter I receive for one of my poems or other projects. I'm sure anyone who participates in any sort of creative endeavor can relate.

We really put something very raw and personal out there, which is more than a little scary. In that harsh reality that is kindergarten, we learn pretty quick that we aren't the apple of the rest of the world's eye and that maybe our Sears catalog collage isn't the greatest work created since Picasso's blue period, as our parents led us to believe. Then there's the horror of Junior High and that time the boy you had a serious crush on for months found your super-private notebook you wouldn't even show your best friend and read your most dramatic and heartfelt poem aloud in a crappy "British" accent, much to the amusement of the rest of the class. Remember laughing along, hoping that no one would know that you were the one who wrote it?

It's nice to feel a little redemption. Every time someone picks up something from my Etsy site, buys one of my books off Amazon or Lulu, or an editor sends me a letter saying they want my writing in their magazine, or when a publisher takes a chance on publishing a book of mine, those nasty little memories sting just a tiny bit less.

Here's the new giveaway...tell me one of your creative horror stories, one of those times a teacher or classmate cut you off at the knees artistically. I'll choose someone at random to win some retired Stampin' Up goodies from my stash to make those wounds close up a little faster. :)

Want to double your chances to win? Finish your comment with a link to a project you're particularly proud of.

Drawing will take place in 2 weeks, on Wed. the 21st.

P.S. Check it out! I've been featured in the fabulous Triangle Street Team blog: http://nctriangle.blogspot.com/2009/09/local-featured-seller-scrappyrat.html

*I won't go in depth, since it's likely that you've already read a ton of gossip about it, some true, some not, on a kajillion other websites. If you wish to know more, the best explanation I've seen is on one a blog I read religiously, Craft Critique. While you're there, subscribe to their blog newsletter. You won't regret it!