The Sewing With Cats Blog Award!

And if you're thinking, "Gee, I've never heard of that award before," it's because I just invented it. And I'm awarding it to myself. Yup, I'm that full of it. Also, Walnut made me do it.

I've been seeing a lot of blog awards floating around lately on some of my favorite sewing blogs: the Versatile Blogger Award (for, I imagine, bloggers who blog about multiple things?), the Leibster Blog Award (for blogs with less than 200 followers), and the Sunshine Blog Award (for bloggers who bring sunshine to the blogiverse). I myself am grateful to have been nominated for these, and while I'm really bad at coming up with the required list of new bloggers to nominate (I totally blank out at the moment even though I love so many great blogs out there), I do love the intention behind them. Only...I just keep seeing the same ones circled around, and then newer bloggers might not know older bloggers (as in blogging for longer, not necessarily closer to death) have already received that award...so what better solution than to create a new award that nobody's ever heard of before!

So why does Sewing With Cats deserve an award? Well, as all you who do actually Sew With Cats know, managing to make garments with those tricky felines around is quite difficult sometimes! Cats love getting all up in your business, whether it be on the fabric, the patterns, or the notions. I am pretty sure every single one of my sewing patterns has been lovingly warmed and crinkled by Walnut at some point. And once the garment is actually sewn up, it's tricky keeping them cat-hair-free long enough to get a good photo, and even then a stray tuft is likely to drift into the frame right as the picture is snapped (at least, if you have an ultra-downy long-haired cat like Walnut; those tufts are like dandelion seeds or Charlotte A. Cavatica's baby spiders: made to catch the wind). There are quite a few bloggers out there who I've seen consistently produce fabulous work, unhindered (mostly) by their feline helpers. And they deserve to be recognized.

Now, I hold no delusions that this blog award is actually going to be passed around, but I'm going to go ahead and award it to some deserving bloggers and make up some rules about it. Mostly because I am just nosy and want to know the answers to these questions.

Rules:
1) You don't even need to thank the person/cat who gave it to you. Heck, give it to yourself if you sew with a cat and I don't know you/it. Reason for this being, cats realize they are superior beings and never deign to thank you even if you've been scritching their ears for an hour and your arm feels like it's going to fall off.
2)  Nominate an arbitrary amount of people for this award. Tell them about it if you wish. Or don't wish. Or wish for five minutes, then suddenly TURN AROUND AND SNAP AND NO I DON'T WANT TO BE SCRITCHED ANYMORE.
3) Answer as many of the following questions as you wish on your blog:

• When did you acquire your helpful feline assistant? Was he/she immediately helpful, or did it take awhile? What is the average amount of time elapsed between when you start a project and when something gets helped with?
• What is your helpful feline assistant's favorite/weirdest thing to assist with?
• How do you decline said assistance without losing your arm? 
• What's the worst thing your helpful feline assistant has managed to botch up? I'm imagining shredded chiffon, snagged silks, etc. 
• Are you ever afraid to post too many pictures of your helpful feline assistant on your blog, for fear of being labeled a crazy cat lady?

Anyway, without further ado I nominate Gertie of the Blog for Better Sewing, Elaine of The Selfish Seamstress, Jessica the Stitchy Witch, Leah of Struggle Sews a Straight Seam, Devra of Puu's Door of Time, Leimomi of The Dreamstress, Amy of Sew Well, Aleah of No Time to Sew, Debi of My Happy Sewing Place, Tina of Down the Retro Rabbit Hole, and Esz of Kitty's Drawings. Congratulations on producing top quality garments with cats around!

And now I'll confess that I don't even know how to go about informing someone of Gertie's caliber that hey, I just made up a ridiculous blog award and I want to give it to you even though you have way better things to do with your time than write about sewing with cats, you know, things like teach that Craftsy course about tailoring a suit. Oh, the dilemma! *sigh* I'm just a crazy cat lady who sews all the time and can't stand children, and thank goodness I've got a life or even I would be concerned about me.

Then again, maybe I haven't got a life. Because this is most definitely me at parties, except that I'm sober.
Which almost makes it worse, because it means I am fully cognizant of the fact that talking to cats is
much easier than talking to all the cool people. Cool people scare me.  {picture}

(And just in case you were wondering about my own answers to these questions: I got Walnut about three months before I started sewing seriously, and he has always been involved. The average time it takes him to discover that a pattern has been laid out and is ready for sitting on? About four minutes. Just enough to give me the illusion that maybe he hasn't noticed this time. He especially loves diving under the fabric and scrabbling around underneath it once I've laid it out and straightened the grain and everything. Usually, my husband ends up playing the bad cop and drags Walnut out/off and tosses him onto the couch, so I don't have to bother. I think the worst thing Walnut's done is throw up on a tiny part of a nice lining fabric. I cut out that portion, but now my five yard length is two 2.5 yard lengths. Leave it to him to throw up exactly in the middle. And lastly, I obviously do not care about posting too many cat pictures. Although I did stop tagging every post with Walnut, since that would pretty much be every post.)

Blurry, because he just dived across the fabric (and left a tuft of fur).

Today's poem, suitably tied into the feline theme of this post:

Cat, by JRR Tolkien (how awesome is that?!?)

The fat cat on the mat
may seem to dream
of nice mice that suffice
for him, or cream;
but he free, maybe,
walks in thought
unbowed, proud, where loud
roared and fought
his kin, lean and slim,
or deep in den
in the East feasted on beasts
and tender men.
The giant lion with iron
claw in paw,
and huge ruthless tooth
in gory jaw;
the pard dark-starred,
fleet upon feet,
that oft soft from aloft
leaps upon his meat
where woods loom in gloom --
far now they be,
fierce and free,
and tamed is he;
but fat cat on the mat
kept as a pet
he does not forget. 

My own fat cat on a mat, looking particularly leonine with his mane and coloring.
Also, for the record, he's not actually fat; he's just exceptionally long-haired. Lest you think that I'm just a biased owner, I looked it up, and he is actually on the lighter side for a Siberian male. Then again, that might be because he's neutered.
Okay, I'm going to stop projecting body image issues onto Walnut.