Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Kittens Are Not Toys, and Will I Make it to Chicago in Time?

The busyness of this spring was a surprise to me. I have tripled my dress sales from last year in just five months.  This year's orders for First Communion dresses, graduation dresses,  and other formal dresses knocked me out as I struggled to keep up as well as work part time waitressing and be a mom.  I cut back my hours at the restaurant to just on the weekends and had to stop taking orders for dresses.  After May, the orders slowed down and were left to a handful of Flower Girl dresses.  I stopped taking orders for the summer as well as I needed some more family time.  Here are some of the dress I made this spring:

 








Life outside of sewing update:


I hosted 30 family members for Easter this spring which was bittersweet.  It was a good get together and we enjoyed having my cousin's family come in town, but one of my cats, a 2 year old tabby went missing in all the commotion.  Three weeks later, my second cat, a purebred Oriental Shorthair disappeared.

I'm not sure if we have coyotes or what happened to them.  But after weeks of a cat free home, I was beginning to feel a part of me was missing.  I felt guilty that I thought they would be ok playing outside sensing all of the joy it brought them - I kept imaging them returning -the scene in my mind went a lot like that "running slow motion through a field, arms outstretched" scenario.  So, I decided that kittens were in order.  I played with the thought of buying a purebred again (this time a Turkish Angora - a white one with odd colored eyes!), but I would have to be on a waiting list and the kitten would be $800.  So I then thought it good to get two kittens from the shelter.  After visiting Cincinnati's SPCA looking for my missing cats, I discovered they had a lot of kittens.  But when I made a call to see if any were available for adoption, the curt woman on the phone told me they had no kittens!

My need to fill my kitten fix was growing stronger by the day, by the hour.  I enlisted Lucy in this quest as her role was to soften her Daddy's heart to the idea as he was rather enjoying the kitty litter free home we were now inhabiting.  He was a bit keen on the idea of a little white kitten and agreed that you can't get just one.  Plus, he thought it funny that Lucy wanted to name her cat "Chicken!" So, sensing an opening, I went for it and fate complied.  I found kittens through our local Craigslist and made arrangements to take Lucy to a nearby amusement park for most of the day, followed by going to pick up two kittens that late afternoon - a pretty awesome day for a four-year-old!

We paid $20 total for the two remaining kittens from a litter of seven.  One was a little white runt boy, and the other was a skittish, huskier creamy orange tabby boy.  Enzo and Oscar, respectively, have been with us for about a month and have cleaned up nicely and are doing great.  (The name Chicken was dropped as I feared it would predisposition the kitten's temperament) Enzo is still smaller than his brother, but his personality would have you think he thinks he is a tiger.  Oscar is my special little cuddle buddy after the kids go to bed at night.  I have found myself saying too often to my kids "Kittens are not toys!"  They haven't quite got the gist of it, but at least Lucy has stopped putting Enzo in her riding toy's little trunk.



I'm going to keep a good eye on these two (you can take that to mean my kittens or my kids)!  There will be no outdoors for them, either.   I just felt like I had more love to give after I lost my first two, but I guess I needed to get more love, too.

Now, a very quick note about Chicago.  I am trying very hard to get two flower girl dresses done, and create at least three samples of a collection from my portfolio in the next two weeks.  But the irony of me being a seamstress/fashion designer is that in my case "The cobbler's kids have no shoes!"  I rarely get the opportunity to make myself or my kids anything, so I have very little to show.  On Sunday, July 22 is an open call casting for Fox TV's Fashion Star.  I will need to organize a lookbook/portfolio to show as well.  I am a crazy person to take all of this on, but we'll see, right!?  I needed a break from the mad rush to get things done, something to clear my head and thought my about my patient little blog awaiting me and how it would be a great revitalizer to fuel me up.  I'm glad I took the time to update this blog and will let you know how things turned out.

And a final update from me.  Right before Easter, I received a call from my Aunt Cathi that she was diagnosed with a form of terminal cancer.  She passed two weeks ago, aged 52, leaving behind my uncle, and her two daughters, and all of the rest of us.

I feel a part of me is missing again.