Zoey glass

Today Mommy took the custom piece she did of me into work. I now hang next to the piece she did of my brother McKenzie. Someone at work asked if she's going to do of the furballs and she said "someday."

Rockin' Girl Blogger!

Wowie, I was nominated as a Rockin' Girl Blogger by China Cat, DaisyMae Maus, Kaze, and PoppyQ and Willow nominated Chewbacca! How cool is that? Thank you all so much for your nominations. Geez, everyone we wanted to nominate has already been nominated, including Bathsheba, Daisy the Curly Cat, Parker, Princess and Samantha Black.

Also, we won, along with Fiona and Ali, the 100th Post contest on Samantha Black and Tigger's blog Life From a Cat's Perspective!

Mommy took the weekend off and I didn't get to blog. She and Daddy watched cars go left, finished the first rolling gate for the RV pad, watched movies (lap time!) and went to the movies. She also made us a pad to go in our PTU. Now normally, we don't like the PTU but Mommy put 'nip in the PTU with the new pad and we've been hanging out in it and the pad was all cattywompuss when she got home tonight.

Mommy also finished cutting all the pieces for her stained glass this weekend. She said she hates the pattern and will remember not to do a pattern unless there's a picture showing that someone else has ACTUALLY MADE the pattern in glass. She said that several of the cuts of glass were very difficult using only a glass cutter and grinder and it didn't help that Chewie and Smoke were micro-managing in their snoopervising.

She started wrapping all the pieces in the copper foil tape. She'll finish up that tonight probably (unless she runs out of tape).

Several people have asked Mommy about Cha-Ching (Mommy uses my blog to keep friends and family up-to-date on our lives), so I'm posting pictures from Cha-Ching's first visit to the vet on Thursday last week.

He did a really good job at the vet and is being very good about letting Mommy put the medicine in his eyes. Anyhow, I'm really happy that Mommy's back to letting me blog again.

Weekend Wrap-up

Well it's been a busy weekend here. On Friday, Mommy took a quick (over 10 hour round trip) trip to Gray's Harbor to get some records for work and check out one of the projects involved in one of her cases. She said that she must have been stuck in traffic caused by every car accident there was and was very tired of the talk radio people talking about Paris Hilton. Auntie Kim called to she that she and the boys may be coming up from Texas at Thanksgiving as well as in August. Mommy hopes that she doesn't have to work during the November trip, but unless her schedule changes, she'll be getting ready for trial that week. After talking to Kim, she stopped by the glass shop and bought the glass for the new project (except one part of it that she doesn't know what color she wants to use).

The picture above is the stack of glass that she's going to use. She was very tired by the time she got back and didn't want to do anything but let me read kitty blogs and sleep.

Then on Saturday, she prepped her workspace and began working on the project. She had already taken the pattern to the copier store and enlarged it to the size she wanted and made extra copies to use as patterns for cutting. Plus she had already taped the pages together and covered them in clear shelf paper. Here's the pattern all ready to go tacked on her work board. Because Mommy can't find any glass that she likes for the border, she decided to throw out the usual start in one corner and work her way up method, and chose to start in the middle and work her way out. The furballs dropped by to snoopervise her work at one point. They were more interested in playing with her push pins, glass nuggets and other things they were supposed to stay out of so they were banished to Parker's to keep her company. Mommy worked on her glass a lot this weekend. She said she had to get it in gear because she bought Daddy three new video games on Wednesday to keep him occupied while she worked on glass so she wouldn't feel guilty for abandoning him and he's already completed one entire game!

By Saturday night, she had finished cutting out, grinding and fitting all the pieces of the kitty. She made it look just like me by combining certain pieces, cutting some pieces differently so I would have my white gloves and socks, changing the colors and even put in a little pink piece to match the one on my bottom lip. I know that the detail doesn't really show up on this picture, but it actually does look quite a bit like me. Mommy said that it was a lot of fun and there were only a couple of pieces that were tricky, like my pink lip because it was soooo small, the dark green shadowed grass because the curve was too deep to break properly and had to be done by grinding and the small grass piece because it was so thin that it didn't want to break properly. She has to find another piece of glass because she didn't have anything that matched my ears. Hopefully she'll be able to find some at the glass store or get some online if the store doesn't have it.

On Sunday she did some coloring with her ink pens so she wouldn't have to look back at the pattern book to be able to tell which piece was supposed to be what color. The blue and green above the sunflowers is coloring, as is the yellow on the sunflower on the right. All the rest is cut glass. The yellow coloring is to remind Mommy that she's supposed to use the "other" yellow to be the backside of the petals. Mommy said that the brown sunflower center was difficult because of all the little nooks and crannies where the petals meet the center. Mommy finished not quite 95 pieces of glass this weekend and hopes to be able to finish the rest of the cutting in the next week and a half, so she'll have a lot of time for wrapping the glass in the special tape and soldering. She wanted to get more done today but she's going to have to take a break for a while because her fingers hurt. These pictures don't really do a good job of showing all the little cuts and scratches she gets working on her glass. Fortunately they heal really quickly and she should be able to get back to work tomorrow or the next day. The furballs napped with Daddy most of the day while he watched cars go left when it wasn't raining. I got my sub-q fluids and lots of treats today. Then Daddy mowed the lawn and had a "safety break" (aka beer) with the neighbor, Skip. All in all, a very good weekend!

McKenzie Memorial Stone

In yesterday's blog, I posted pictures of some of my mommy's stained glass projects. Today she got to unmold her very first stepping stone. It's a memorial to my brother McKenzie. She used all green glass, to mimic the grass that McKenzie loved to roll in, and took a favorite picture of him laying in the grass and sandwiched it between a clear sheet of glass and more green glass. Mommy's going to put it in the garden where he liked to lay, right under the bird feeder. She put it there for a test run. She still has to put the sealer on it before she can put it in the garden permanently where she'll level and put it down securely in the barkdust.

My First Photo Hunters - Art

This is the first time that we've participated in this one. When I saw that DaisyMae Maus had put up a piece of stained glass that Mommy did, I though we should show a couple others that Mommy did. The one below was the very first really big piece that Mommy did. She mounted it on top of a mirror and now it hangs in the new house in the entry way. This picture was taken when Grandpa came over to help her hang it at the old house. Grandpa made the frame for it. I love how his reflection shows in the mirror (isn't he cute?)

This last one is Mommy favorite big piece that she's done so far. This picture was taken before it was framed. Grandpa made the frame for it too. It's currently hanging over the spa tub (where I get my baths) in Mommy and Daddy's bathroom. Mommy says she likes it there because she sees it every day! It's over 400 pieces of glass. Mommy says that's a lot of glass but it only took her a couple of months to do it in the evenings and weekends (that was before she got married though. Apparently husbands suck up a lot of previously free time).

Right now Mommy still working on a large piece with grapes. She hates working on it because she's using glass nuggets for the grapes and says that grinding them is causing her to grind her teeth! She's taken a break from it to make some smaller pieces and is right now waiting for a stepping stone memorial to my brother McKenzie to finish drying. She hopes to be able to post a picture of it soon. She says it will still be awhile before she goes back to glass because she has to work on a crochet project for her friends Lisa and Joel's new baby.