Warm, and the measurement thereof

We just replaced the catalytic combustor in the old woodstove, so things should again be humming along to keep the house warm, which means that the hearth will once again be covered in kitties.

In watching the cats try to form a sort of living hearth rug, i developed a new theory: the warmth and comfort level provided by a stove ought to be measured in CCs. That's right, "Contiguous Cats" - for the number of felines that are drawn in to make a pile in front of the stove. I think i could probably set up as a testing lab for this certification scheme... here we've got a (fairly modest) three CCs, namely Winston, Fitzgerald, and Lulubelle J. Fuzzbutt.

Winston Stout

All cardboard boxes must be investigated. Period.

Packaging

(Gee, you can get anything from Amazon these days...)

Winston's recent favorite sleeping spot (proximity to the woodstove is not coincidental, i'm sure), in a box that's just his size... barely.

Carnivores, eh?

Some days i really wonder just how much English the cats understand... today, the phrase "i'm baking fresh bread" motivated an indecisive Winston to suddenly leap up off the porch step and dash inside. 

Winnie (on the bottom of the tabby stack, there) is an abject carb slut, and cannot be left unattended around bread, flour, potato chips, or anything vaguely pastry-like.  He will rip through any packaging - the bread i bake is now kept in a hefty plastic loaf keeper, inside a cabinet with a strong magnetic latch.  So far, it's kept him out, but i worry...

Two tabbies, take two

Here's the second version of the "Tabby love" print, this time on black paper, and hand colored:

Instead of listing...

...i finished up carving this block today - well, it's technically yesterday, by now.  I still want to do a version printed on black paper (using the same brown ink), with a few white bits hand-colored.  But i think i need to make a little trip to pick up some art supplies first.

I did this one from a photo of Eliot and Winston... Tabby love.

New uses for old sewing machines

A few months back, i helped my grandmother move.  She was moving to a smaller place, and one of the many things she planned to leave behind at her old house was her ancient Kenmore sewing machine.  Now, i'd never sewn on this machine, but it was in the room i'd stayed in when i spent summers at her place as a kid.  I kinda liked the cabinet.  And she told me she'd bought it with the first money she'd earned from her first job, sometime around 1939.  (Now, from the model number, it looks like it was probably manufactured a bit later, something like 1947, but Grandma is 88, so we'll cut her a little slack on the chronology... and maybe that was a different machine.)

Anyway, i wasn't about to let it stay behind.  So we had it loaded onto the moving van, and then it went from her old house to her new apartment to my parents' place, and eventually back down here, the heavy old machine having been removed from the cabinet and wrapped in an old blanket for protection on its travels.  I'm still trying to create a spot to wedge it into in the sewing area, and as the machine has waited for a permanent home, the cats have found it a prime sleeping location.  Eliot demonstrates:

 

And Winston does likewise: