i haz more cat fans!

Weasel Peterson enjoys friend Frog.

i haz catnip

My latest consumer product tester, Marigny Treme Brown-Gervais. She's sampling the beta stage of My Friend Octopus Catnip V. 1.5.
The idea to make cat toys stemmed from a kittenwarming party I recently attended. (My friends planned to surprise another friend with a kitten, but then re-calculated and decided give them a cat-owner gift certificate to the humane society. The rest of us chipped in with kitten-related presents.)
For Marigny, the cat pictured here, her dignified owner LOVES octopus, and once even wrote an octopus opus. So I decided to treat her with a bright-blue, stuffed felt octopus, crammed with that crazily obsessive herb that smells like nothing to me: catnip.
The kittenwarming recipients received Bird V. 1.0, as well as Gnome Head and Mouse. Another friend received Frog.
But, of course, I still had catnip leftover. Oh yes, just wait...there's more.

My lovely model

Thanks to my lovely friend Jenn for showing off one of her birthday gifts, a chiffon flower hair pin.

singe my fingers for this?

New technique - singe the edges of circlets, stitch them together in blooms. Brooch or pins, your choice.

Updated on Sept. 20: and now...organza!

Pinata

To celebrate a dear little girl turning a grand old age of 7, I put together a horse-shaped pinata out of a paper bag.
Last year, a friend's 27th birthday was feted with a Pegasus-shaped pinata, mostly decorated with bits of crepe paper.
This time, I decided to use acrylic paints, glitter, yarn and bits of cardboard.
The shape came together nicely, but figuring out how to suspend the pinata was a bit tricky. This is when I wished I had more engineering skills. In hindsight, I should have punched out two holes and strung it up like the tutorial.
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to make it to the party, but I saw lots of photos of children wielding a stick and then a little crowd of kids gathering candy on the ground. I hope the horse-pinata fulfilled its short-lived life of duty.

Survey says...

My co-worker Stacey samples what I'm calling "Broken-Ankle Brownies," in honor of two other co-workers (not pictured) who have had recent tumbles. Success! (Not for the victims of broken ankles, I mean.)
I thought a batch of Peanut Butter Brownies with Chocolate Ganache would be the thing.

Zip! Zip!

Finally, the laminated fabric remnants find a life in these bigger-than-coin-purses, smaller-than-clutches creations.
Detail oversight: zippers are handstitched. One of the purses doesn't even have a zipper because I cut the fabric too short. So they're not the sturdiest purses in the world, but I can always reinforce later. Looks first!