Last week when I took you on a tour of my sewing spaces, I left out one very important thing, simply because my post got too long.
Well, three things actually. These:
These are Tahi, Rua, & Toru (NZ & Hawaiian readers will think me terribly unimaginative in my naming), my sewing sprites.
They sit and watch over my sewing room, and every time I look at them, I feel happy.
I don’t know where they are from, or how old they are. They turned up at my local op shop, and I LOVED THEM the moment I laid eyes on them. They look like they were designed by Miyazake.
But I have an extremely firm rule. No cat-themed ANYTHING but actual cat.
When you are as well known as I am for your cat, you can’t risk having anything cat-themed, or your whole life will soon be cat-themed. No cat fabric. No cat crockery. No cat cards or cat stationary. The only cat in my house is my cat. Otherwise I will never be given another gift in my life that doesn’t have a cat on it.
So I didn’t buy them.
But they were there the next time I went in.
And the next.
And after three times, I gave in. For 50 cents, I had my sprites.
And they sit just perfectly on the windowsill in my sewing room, and every sewing room should have a cat (even when the real one is being an absolute brat and has been kicked out for bad behavior).
So these are my ONLY exception to the cat-thing-that-are-not-actually-cats ban.
Felicity, the actually-a-cat, is totally OK with them. She likes to sleep under their watchful gaze, or sit with them and watch over the sewing.
I love them! – and I so get the cat-themed issue, though I am seriously tempted to get halloween fabric with a black cat theme, since I have a black cat and am a red head (not so long ago, people thought that red haired witches turned into black cats when they wanted to).
I love Felicity. She and Henry would look good together. His dark brooding good looks would set off her pretty fluffy features. They are both sewing cats so they have that in common.
Sx
I also don’t go for most cat-themed stuff. However, several years ago, my mother, knowing that I wanted to have a cat but couldn’t because of my apartment’s no-pet policy, gave me a small wooden cat statue as a “substitute”. It was really cute and I kept it even after moving out of the apartment and getting an actual cat. A few years later, I was moving into a house that I was sharing with some people so I had to get rid of a lot of stuff, including the wooden cat. I figured it had served its purpose. Less than two weeks later, I went to a conference and one of the attendees, whom I had met at the previous year’s conference and knew about my cat, gave me as a gift–what else?–but a ceramic cat. I got the message. I’m not getting rid of this one. 😉 It now sits at my desk at work.
Everyone need a sewing guardian! My mother has a 2 inch hippo carved out of agate that sits on her machine, right next to her thread spindle. It is only removed for storage or winding a new bobbin.
I haven’t found mine yet but I look forward to meeting them!
I do sort of avoid “cute kitty” stuff, except for the cats themselves. However, there is one exception– my favorite Mother’s Day gift ever. It’s a repro of a little Egyptian bronze of a mother cat nursing a litter of kittens. One of the babies is standing up talking to her. Love it!
I’m such a crazy cat lady that there is no hope for me. 🙂 That said, I don’t have much in the way of cat themed anything except the hundreds of photos we have taken of the purry, furry girlies over the last 3 years. Perhaps people think me to insane to encourage my kitty love.
Echoes of the statue of Artemis at Ephesus.
I’ve got a sheep that I knit from my own handspun yarn for my guardian; my cats are very rarely allowed in there as my yarn is also stored in there and one cat is a yarn whore – she cannot be trusted near yarn.
They look a tiny bit like owls so you could cheat and claim they aren’t cats at all… I understand your no-cat-theme rule. I’d probably so this, too, if I could actually have a real cat. As I am allergic to cats I am trying to compensate with all kinds of cat objects although this is no compensation at all, of course. Nothing can replace a real cat anyway.
How cute! I thought they were owls for a second too. And from far away they aren’t very obviously catlike.
I think your house is still safe from being overrun with cat themed stuff.
Me too with the owl thing at first glance. Maybe they are the offspring of the owl and the pussycat… 🙂
They’re gorgeous!