News Flash: Black Hole Discovered in Suburban Maryland ...

Yeah, that black hole is in my condo, peeps. I had a few organizational moments today wherein I completed my photo inventory of all the stuff I made in 2008, stuck all the inventory stickers on them, filed the book away, and started my 2009 inventory book. Somewhere along the way, one of the gift set boxes went missing. I am pretty sure I did not sell it back in December. In fact, it is in the store, so it must be here somewhere, or I would not have included it. I have looked in every box of cards I have out, and even in the box of Christmas cards I have in The Other Room - nada. See, a black hole is the only plausible explanation.

Then I cleaned out a box of stuff in my Living Room. No kidding, I did! I found a ton of cards from like four years ago, that I thought were Da Bomb when I made them and now they are in the trash. Just not worth keeping around. I also found that half the box was scraps. More scraps that I never got to use. I think I'll offer them up when I have my Free For All in February, so other people can use them.

Then as I continued in my weekend routine of laundry, I thought I'd document why everything (EVERYthing) in my possession is covered in cat hair. When I do laundry, it is in a teeny tiny closet of a laundry room behind my teeny tiny bathroom. The only space I have in there to place folded laundry is on top of the washer, so I fold the big stuff, and leave the socks, etc, in a heap to be addressed later. Then I take all of that and dump it onto my bed so I can then open the washer to put the next load of stuff into the dryer. Earlier, when I walked back into the bedroom, this is what I saw:

I think she has little kitty radar and she knows when a fresh pile of socks is available for nesting. She did not even open one eye when I took that photo. We're talking comotose.

And you know when I say she is getting squishy? This is what I mean by 'squishy'. Stuck to me like glue. Here she is on one of my legs as I sit on the couch.

And this is what I complain about when she needs to be in my lap. It makes it a bit tough to type. I had to slide my right hand out from under her behind so I could snap that photo. And yeah, there's cat hair in the keyboard, too. All you cat owners out there get what I am talking about. All the non-cat owners, who are shaking their heads, will never 'get' it. It's a cat thing, and there is no training in the world to make it better. We just learn to live with the furry beasts.

Now on to some stampin'. When the winners of my last Spot The Mistake contest receive their goody packages this week, it should be readily apparent what box of stuff I raided to fill the envelopes. But also in that box was a sheet of 12x12 paper that screamed 'origami kimono' to me, and I finally got to them last night.

Whenever I make these, I have to go back to the Kindergarten-level sheet of instructions I printed off a few years ago. That, combined with an origami book I have had since High School, usually gets me back on track. I make a modified version from the instruction sets, because, well, I am never quite happy with something until I futz with it, ya know? So I made three of these kimonos last night, then set them aside until today so I could figure out what to DO with them.

This is what I ended up with:

Yawn. So I pulled out my trusty SU Bamboo background stamp, inked it up with Versamark, and and stamped the blue pieces with it.

Much better, doncha think? The charm is from a stash I have from Custer's Last Stamp. The 'coin' on the belt is a stamp of a coin that I stamped in Versamark on Gold Metalic paper, then embossed with Detail Gold EP, and cut out. The bamboo is a piece of a skewer. Somewhere, In There, I actually have bags of real coinage, but it is buried under the heap of scraps.

Now I have wasted another perfectly good weekend being basically a slug, and it was soooo worth it. When my massaaaaage therapist says how much easier it is to get deep on a Saturday (as in Deep Tissue), I chalk it up to having just gotten out of bed, instead of having just gotten out of the car after 45 minutes on the beltway. See? Sometimes being a slug is good for the soul. :-)