Black Friday, Small Business Saturday & Cyber Monday

Did you survive Thanksgiving and Black Friday? We only made one shopping excursion to Lakefront Brewery in Milwaukee so my husband could buy their limited edition Black Friday beer, which is only sold today.  If you are trying to do the buy local - buy handmade - support small businesses - thing, here are some suggestions for both in-person shopping in SE Wisconsin and some on-line gift guides in the form of Etsy treasuries for those of you in the rest of the world.

If you live in southeast Wisconsin and are looking for some local, handmade holiday gifts, here are some upcoming craft shows & one workshop:

Saturday, November 30, 2013
Art Vs Craft (their last year) - Milwaukee WI at the Harley Davidson Museum 

Holly Craft Fair - DePere WI

Sat & Sun December 7-8, 2013
Crafter's Marketplace (presented by the ABK Weaving Center)
at the Jazz Gallery, 926 E Center ST, Milwaukee  (I'm participating in this one.)

Sat. December 7, 2013
Holiday card making workshop at Redline Milwaukee

MKE UP Market Holiday Bazaar and Fundraiser for the Philippines at SPIN Milwaukee

Sun. December 8, 2013
Hovercraft 2013 at Turner Hall

Buy Local Gift Fair - Lakefront Brewery

There are probably plenty of others that I am missing!

If you don't live in Wisconsin, you can still shop on-line. (My Etsy shop is here)  I've also been putting together some holiday Etsy gift guides ranging from the kooky & creepy to the fun & colorful.  I've tried to keep the focus on handmade, as well as feature some folks I know both in person and on-line, though there are also strangers included along with members of the Etsy Wisconsin Street Team (WIST).  Enjoy!

Home for the Holidays (little colorful houses)
https://www.etsy.com/treasury/NTIxNzIyOHwyNzI1MzM3NzY0/home-for-the-holidays

Spoiled Cats & Spoiled Dogs (gift ideas for pets & pet lovers)
https://www.etsy.com/treasury/NTIxNzIyOHwyNzI1MzE0OTM2/spoiled-cats
https://www.etsy.com/treasury/NTIxNzIyOHwyNzI1Mjg3OTU0/spoiled-dogs

Krampus (a mythical creature who accompanies St. Nicholas and punishes the naughty children)
https://www.etsy.com/treasury/NTIxNzIyOHwyNzIyNjY4MzM5/krampus

Zombie Holidaze (and there's a lot of holiday themed zombie stuff out there)
https://www.etsy.com/treasury/NTIxNzIyOHwyNzI1MjQ0MDI4/zombie-holidaze 

Kooky & Creepy Holidaze (if you prefer your holiday a little off-kilter)
https://www.etsy.com/treasury/NTIxNzIyOHwyNzIyNzE4ODgz/kooky-creepy-holidaze

Now time for leftover pumpkin pie and a nap.... 

In Memoriam: Nuts and Outdoor Cat

This winter we lost Nuts on December 20, 2011 and Outdoor Cat on January 9, 2012. Both were older with serious health issues so we knew it would happen eventually, but it was still heart-breaking. Nuts was my husband's cat, and she adopted him some thirteen years ago when a friend of his found her as a stray. When she was little she would run around like a crazy cat, and his young son said "This cat is nuts!" and the name stuck. She was the reason we kept a "Beware of the Cat" sign by the front door because she hissed at everyone except my husband and once chased our former landlord's dog out of HER yard.

Outdoor Cat was much shyer, and when we bought our house, we did not even know that she was living under our deck until our neighbor told us she had been there for some years. No one seemed to remember how long, but the previous owners used to leave food out for her, and everyone told us she was "not very friendly." I have described in previous blog posts how Outdoor Cat went through the Wisconsin Humane Society's Trap Neuter Return program and ended up coming indoors.

She adopted me and slept on my side of the bed at night, while Nuts slept on my husband's side. Often the humans would end up squished together in the middle third of the bed acting as a buffer zone between the two cats, who would hiss at each other on sight. Fortunately since they were older female cats, they mostly pretended the other cat was not there.

Our remaining cat Ruby would like you to know that we do not need another cat. Ruby is enjoying having full command of the humans' attention and having access to rooms that had previously been the other cats' territories. She distributes her fuzziness equally between our laps.

Art Trader, Pinterest & other Distractions

I realized that I never posted back in July that I was interviewed for the Summer 2011 issue of Art Trader Magazine, the FREE on-line 'zine for all things mail art. You can download the PDF file here. Be sure to check out their site because they also have contests and offer on-line workshops. (I took the Fantastic Faces workshop in the spring.)

Also this summer, I am attempting to reorganize my office/work area, though no one can tell when looking at the space, because it looks as messy as ever. I keep getting distracted by looking at other people's beautiful work spaces on-line and browsing for storage ideas. My friend Mel got me hooked on Pinterest, a site which allows you to "pin" links and images to your own themed boards. So perhaps I spent more time pinning inspiration to my Art Studio Ideas board than I should have....

And two of my Pinterest boards on cats and Edgar Allan Poe translated into my first Etsy treasuries. (And I was not in anyway procrastinating the cleaning and organizing when I made these.) And one of my minor accomplishments this summer was getting a few more of my quilted ornaments listed on Etsy. Now back to work...

Outdoor Cat After One Year Indoors

This time last year we brought Outdoor Cat indoors for the winter in advance of a snow storm. (She had spent who knows how many previous winters living outside, which in Wisconsin is pretty cold going. You can see all the related posts here.)

Once she figured out that she could stay inside, she pretty much became an indoor cat (though we still call her "Outdoor Cat"). Occasionally she will ask to go out, and we'll open the front door for her. She sit on the porch and look around, nibble some grass, and maybe explore the bushes, but about 5-10 minutes later she's at the door waiting to be let back in. Like all cats, she is trying to train us humans. As this video shows, her hardest task is getting us to follow her to her empty food dish (and she will put up with annoying baby talk to get what she wants).

Now that cold weather has set in, I sometimes wake up in the wee hours to find I'm wedged in between my husband on one side, Outdoor Cat on the other, and Nuts the 16-lb. cat crushing my feet. Sometimes all three of them are snoring. (The third cat Ruby prefers the living room couch.)

As I type this, we're under a winter storm warning. Outside, the wind is howling, the snow is gusting, and the windchill is 6°F (-15°C). Outdoor Cat is sleeping in front of the heat grate on my office floor (amidst the piles of papers seen in the video - I'm still cleaning!) And when I get up from my chair, she will probably run straight to her food dish in the next room and look at me expectantly!

Outdoor Cat Update

This past week was the one-year anniversary of Outdoor Cat going through the Wisconsin Humane Society's Trap-Neuter-Return program. I last reported in December that she had moved inside for the winter, and now that spring is here, she still prefers to stay inside. She'll still ask us to open the front door, but then she'll usually only stay around the front porch for awhile, eating some grass and watching the world. As soon as the neighbors come out, she runs back inside.

It's interesting how many typical indoor cat habits she now has, such as scratching at the bathroom door if it's closed and sleeping next to my chair in my office. Occasionally if I don't get up at 6 a.m., I'll find her sitting on the bed beside me, staring very earnestly at me. We no longer close her in a separate room when we go out, and for the most part the three cats tolerate each other, though there's always the occasional hissing match when they cross paths. At 6:10 this morning I had both Nuts & Outdoor Cat walking over me, within a foot of each other without hissing because they were both intent on getting me out of bed to feed them. And BOTH had food in their dish but wanted me to pet them and move the food around for them before they would eat. (Naturally my husband slept through this ;o)

Next step will be moving OC's litter box down into the basement with the others so I can reclaim the guest/sewing room!

Outdoor Cat's Adventures Indoors

When last I blogged about Outdoor Cat in May, she had just survived the Wisconsin Humane Society's Trap-Neuter-Return program. Over the summer, we worked on socializing with her and getting the two indoor cats Nuts & Ruby used to her presence. (That's Nuts on the left above, and OC on the right, each pretending the other cat doesn't exist.) OC started coming inside briefly after one day following me in the front door when I took her dish inside to change the water and refill the food. Pretty soon she figured out that the indoor cats ALSO had food and water! She would come inside to look around but would quickly run out again if she was startled.

We still weren't sure whether we would try to bring her inside for the winter or not, but we figured we'd try to get her litter box trained in a kennel for the really cold nights, just in case. I borrowed a dog kennel from my sister and kept OC in it overnight in the spare bedroom for the first time on Halloween, when 200 neighborhood kids invaded her territory on our front porch.

She handled the litter box OK but was not keen on the kennel, trying to tunnel out of it. When we were sure she would use the box, we experimented with leaving the kennel door open. She still preferred to be outside, so when our first big snow was predicted, I invested in a SnuggleSafe Microwave Heat Pad for her shelter. However, after we brought her in out of the storm, she settled in to her new space in front of the heat vent.

So she's been living indoors since mid-December, occasionally looking outside but thinking better of it after a minute or so in the cold. She's even trained us to leave her bedroom door open for her (after repeatedly waking us up at ungodly hours by scratching at it) and now she guards the upstairs hallway at night. Since Nuts sleeps on our bed, there are occasional rumbles in the wee hours when they cross paths in the hall. (Ruby sleeps all night in the living room and generally ignores OC.) We have been closing OC's bedroom door during the day when we're at work, so when we come home and let her out, she will sometimes run downstairs and ask to go outside, look out the front door at the snow and ice, and run back upstairs to her food dish. We are not ruled by cats, at all. Honestly!

Outdoor Cat's Big Adventure

I'd been deluding myself into thinking that maybe, just maybe, Outdoor Cat (above) had been spayed, but on the morning of May 8, our neighbor reported that Outdoor Cat had been performing naughty acts on our front porch with Other Outdoor Cat (right). On the advice of Julie (kisluvkis), I attended the Wisconsin Humane Society's orientation for Community Cat Caregivers last Saturday, since their Trap-Neuter-Return program is now available for feral cats outside of Milwaukee County as well.

Then this week, since I'm working at home all week, I began the process of Outwitting Outdoor Cat. I bought a wildlife trap on Saturday (my first visit to Tractor Supply Co.) and left it on the front porch draped in a sheet, with the door locked open so she could get used to its presence. My initial plan was to trap her on Sunday night and take her in for spaying Monday morning, but apparently she overhead me saying this and did not show up for dinner on Sunday. She reappeared on Monday morning just late enough that I wouldn't have been able to take her in for surgery (since she had to be dropped off between 8-9 a.m.). I gave her a little bit of breakfast but at Julie's suggestion I withheld food for the rest of the day. In the evening, I put warm sardines in the trap, but she pointedly sat by the front door (next to the open trap) waiting for me to bring her food in her dish.

We did our best to ignore her pathetic gaze, and around 10 p.m., my husband reported that the trap door was shut. But it turned out to be Other Outdoor Cat, the male who apparently wasn't as cautious where sardines are concerned. (Should have taken a picture of him.) I'm still convinced OOC lives somewhere else because he looks well-fed (could be more wishful thinking on my part) so I let him go and re-set the trap. (His time will come for the snip, I'm sure.) When we went to bed a little before 11 p.m., Outdoor Cat had returned to stare in the front door waiting for dinner. At one point she sniffed at the trap, but didn't go in. I woke up at 1 a.m. and the trap was still open, and O.C. was nowhere to be seen. Indoor cat Nuts woke me up at 3 a.m., and lo and behold! The trap was shut! I half expected to find Other O.C. in there again, but instead there was Outdoor Cat looking very annoyed.

I bundled her into the garage and went back to bed. The next morning, I dropped her off at the Humane Society knowing there was a possibility she might not be coming back, if she was deemed adoptable and they could find a good home for her (the outcome I was hoping for), or if she tested positive for a communicable disease like feline leukemia, in which case they would have to euthanize her. So I spent the day waiting for a phone call good or bad, but no phone call meant I could pick her up after 4:30 p.m.

So now she's resting in our garage, under observation for 48 hours before I can let her go. Our neighbor lent us his dog kennel so she didn't have to spend two days in the wildlife trap. I can offer her food tomorrow morning, and in theory I'm supposed to check her stitches, but I don't think that's going to be very easy. The black blob in the white plastic carrier is her, still looking peeved.

As part of the program, she had her ear notched, so observers can tell she's been spayed, and she now has a microchip identifying me as her owner should she ever get picked up as a stray, though after this adventure, she may never want to see me again!

Outdoor Cat Update

At the end of last year I wrote about the Mystery Cat that showed up on our front porch demanding food. We did finally hear via the realtor that the previous owners only left food out for it (for several years) but never did anything else. (I still don't know if it's male or female but so far no kittens have appeared!) We fed it all winter, and now that the snow has finally melted, and the temperature gone above freezing, it isn't waiting for a handout everyday, but I'll put food out on demand. (Like yesterday morning when it was peering in the front door, much to the annoyance of the indoor cats Nuts & Ruby.)

And apparently it has a posse since we came home the other night and saw three cats running together across our driveway and into our bushes, one of whom was Outdoor Cat and one of whom I have seen hanging around our yard on three different occasions. I'm hoping they're just visiting from the farm across the street!

One of my friends told me she had a snake under her deck, and as soon as she got it removed, a family of raccoons moved in, so I'm a little worried what we'd get if we did manage to relocate O.C.!

TV watching and cat-impaired crafting

I try to multi-task by crafting and catching up on TV shows, but once cold weather sets in, the grey cat Ruby thinks that I only sit on the couch for her convenience. No sooner do I settle in with my paper and scissors and glue stick (and old catalog to glue on and book or binder to use as a sturdy work surface and portable paper cutter and pens, pencils, ink pads) when she hops into my lap, spreading herself over whatever I happened to be working on and goes to sleep.

And obviously if a cat has deigned to honor you with her presence, you can't disturb her, especially when she's so cute and fuzzy. So I try to have everything in reach, which inevitably means the ink pad or paint pen or tool that I need is in the other room. Also I end up with cat hair glued to my fingers (and Ruby probably has paper scraps stuck in her fur).

While working on ATCs for this Saturday's live trade, I caught up on last week's Battlestar Galactica so I could watch tonight's episode, plus new episodes of Burn Notice, That's Clever (finally saw segment featuring Ten Two Studios design team alum Diane Bouchard - yay!), Bones, Quilting Arts and Big Love. I don't watch reality shows (other than Iron Chef America) because The Soup and Best Week Ever summarize everything I need to know. I've also been crafting lately while watching repeats of DIY's Jewelry Making and HBO's Generation Kill (talk about dissonance). The most important thing of course is to have the remote within reach so I don't ever have to disturb Ruby.

The photo above was taken when I finally had to stretch my legs after watching tonight's Soup, Battlestar and Best Week Ever back to back. Ruby is not amused....

Crafting 365, Days 21-23

Moving House and the Mystery Cat

Sister, can you spare some kibble?

Since last I blogged, my husband and I ended up taking advantage of the slow real estate market and buying a house (my first). After what seems like months (well, weeks anyway) of packing, moving, cleaning, fixing, unpacking, reorganizing, etc, we're finally mostly settled in but still have boxes to be unpacked and art lying against the walls rather than hanging on it.

We had seen a black cat hanging around our back yard, but hadn't thought much of it until after the first big snow when it showed up at our front door looking for food. We asked our neighbor who it belonged to and he said as far as he knew it didn't have an owner. The previous owners of our house had been leaving food out for it the past few years, and it apparently lives under our deck.

It's extremely shy, though it has let me pet it while it's eating. This is the best photo I've managed to take of it because when it hears the camera whir open, it bolts. We've been waiting to hear whether the realtor was able to learn anything from the previous owners - did they ever take it to the vet? Have it neutered? Give it shelter in winter?

We can't let it inside, even if it wanted to come, because we already have two cats who can be very aggressive and territorial. (Nuts once chased our landlord's dog out of the yard at our old house, and Ruby freaks whenever she sees another cat out the window. They don't even get along with each other very well.) If it truly is a feral cat, it can't be adopted in the traditional way and suddenly be transformed into a house cat. And assuming it's been living here several years and knows this territory well, it might not do well being relocated (as much as I would like to take it to my sister's farm -- haven't convinced her to buy into that one yet ;o)

It survived our subzero temperatures before Christmas, but after doing a little research on-line I made a temporary feral cat shelter using stuff we had around the house: cardboard box, plastic sheeting, foam insulation board, and duct tape, plus some hay from my sister's farm. I'm not sure yet what the long term plan will be....