Sleeping Beauty Has Sleeves

Sleeves have been set in by hand after easing the sleeve heads. Had one fitting on Sky and will get around to readjusting after the back lacing tab and zipper are in place. Ripped out one side of the skirt forepart because it was puckered and reattached it by hand this time to assure it works.

I added a simple row of the gold twist bugle beads and rocailles to the edge of the sleeve cape to tie the sleeve in with the bodice. Hand edges of pointed inner sleeve are piped and need finger rings to hold them in place. This is a very heavy sleeve!! I may have to put a tie in the upper back to keep the bodice from dragging off her shoulders!

I need to put gold bullion braid on the forepart insert and join skirt to bodice. Zipper will be hand set because this pattern doesn't call for one and it's an extra to help her dress for stage. Cindy's red calico petticoat is hanging up behind the bodice.

Tonight I finish off her shawl, cut out Kim's skirt and piece together another skirt. I also need to run a piece of elastic at the top edge of the center bodice.

I had two burglars yesterday afternoon. I left the back door wide open so George could come in and eat. She's been extra fussy lately because of the two new kittens and the visiting cats from next door. I hear this crash in the kitchen and get up from my desk to go see. I round the corner just in time to see two young raccoons dragging a plastic bag with 2 bags of cat food across the floor and headed for the back door. I told them that they could get take out when they started paying for the food.

They let go and waited for me on the porch to fill their bowls. Cheeky little buggers. I DO sometimes feel like an all-night diner with drive through. I don't mind feeding the extra guests, but they get pushy sometimes. There are two possums dining on the water side porch along with the neighbor's two cats, too.

Coon Children

The burble of fuzz you see above are various parts of three infant raccoons I rescued from the side of the road. They were camouflaged so well that only my sixth sense told me to back up and check the overturned cardboard box. They had been dumped this evening. Why would any fool think that three coon babies were capable of getting up, fixing themselves a steak and going on about life without a mother is beyond comprehension.

I'd been at Martha's all day putting together ATCs to list for sale. We really worked an eleven hour day and I was ramped up to getting something done when I got home. Instead, these fuzzy children have become my wards and my job for the evening. I called M to let her know that I got home, thank her for the day and to tell her about my roadside acquisition. M sez, "Call a wildlife rescue or you'll have three more mouths to feed."

See. Martha knows about my penchant for feeding every stray that comes along - two AND four legged. They all come. She knows that I have this invisible symbol stamped in my aura with, "I WILL" gathered in fluted script all around me. And you already know that I feed a menagerie, including two cats, assorted adult raccoons, possums and various birds right here on the porch and yard of Dog Patch if you've been a reader. What I haven't had time to mention is that someone else dumped a beautiful Himalayan male cat in front of my property and I've been feeding him for about a week. I need to figure out what to do with him. And now these coon children come.

After going on line to a veterinary college, determining their ages from a measurement chart and reading the extent of specialized care that they would take, including tube hydration and emergency feeding, I felt the best I could offer them was a towel laden bed to snuggle into for a safe night until tomorrow comes and a specialist could take over. They were not interested in organic soy milk - my only subtitute on hand in lieu of mother's milk.

George the cat needed an explanation and is taking it pretty calmly after I let her check them out and told her that it was strictly a temporary situation. I called every facility that I could think of, including the Sheriff's Office. I got two return calls that both promised to take them in the morning. So. Here they'll stay until then. Just in case you think I don't do my share, I end with a picture of one of the coons I feed regularly on the porch. That's my toe. He doesn't care.

Possum

Wouldn't you just know it that as soon as I say I have nothing new to report that there is, indeed, something. After my entry last night/early this morning, I return to the living room to do my rendition of straightening up. Which is, sit on the couch and become interested in a book on Early American costuming.

I leave the door open on the water side of the house for George, the cat until we go to bed. She likes to go in and out and I don't have a proper pet door. At the moment, she was sitting up on a shelf above the door entertaining a bolt of fabric. Fabric bolts and beads and laces and trims and mannequins and machines are everywhere in this house. They're the detritus of my day job.

George looks down at the floor by the door as I hear this tiny rattle, rattle. I stand up to see what she's looking at and see a big possum standing just inside the living room trying to pick up a plastic box of beads left out from tonight's project. Maybe he was looking to embellish a quilt.

"Nothing there to eat B'rer Possum," I say. He looks at me and then turns around, ambles out the door leaving the beads behind. I am not insulted by his disinterest. Most of the critters tame and wild have this attitude with me. I'm nothing to be intimidated by, at least in their diaspora.

You see. I have left most of Dog Patch in a state of wildness remarkable on my country street of manicured yards. The neighbor men knock down the grass next to the doors and in the driveway so I can go in and out, but the balance of the yard has become way overgrown by default. My depression and disinterest in the avid gardening I used to do has become a tumult of cultured things gone wild. There is a Blue Skies vine with it's garlands of lavender-blue flowers growing up and over the house and into the trees above. There's the Chinese honeysuckle that has grown bored of it's tree and has escaped into the yard. Pandora vine looks aloft from a June orange tree and a purple passion flower vine happily shakes hands with it from a plumbago.

My wildness has become the last refuge on the street for critters who have nowhere else to go. Development all around me has grown concrete and warehouses in place of the trees and woods that were cut down to make room for them. So. The denizens of the woods moved over here. I share grounds with raccoons and possums, some snakes and birds of every description that appreciate the fact that I took them all into consideration when I did my planting once upon a time. I put in things that seed, nut and fruit: A veritable supermarket for creatures looking for a quick stop for dinner fixins. They have their choice of passion fruit, several kinds of oranges, grapefruits, tangerines, sunflowers, rose hips, pineapples, mulberries twice a year where they gorge so much that you can see possums supine with distended bellies for weeks, elderberries, flowers with edible seeds and roots, acorns, palm nuts, fruiting cactus, plantain and bananas. There's a really good produce section here at the Dog Patch Ashram and Hot Flash Hotel.

Over on the meat aisle, we have every conceivable kind of bug and moth, lizard, and frog. The caterpillars who take over the mulberry trees every six years or so bow to me in unison, all the thousands of them at once. If someone knows what this phenomenon is, would you let me know?

My payback is the general disregard for my presence. I interrupt possums and coons sharing the cat food bowl out back with Skitty, the partially feral outdoor cat with red pants who lives outside in a little house I built for him because his indoor manners border on the unsanitary. I put out extra and look the other way. But sometimes, I have to stand there to be sure that Skitty gets his share. "Doesn't your mama cook for you?" I say to the littlest ones who barrel off the porch at the sight of me. They have yet to learn what their elders know - that I'm a harmless old dumpling that welcomes them and talks rough. The birds will alight just above my head in the same passionless disregard.

But the coming in the house is a new behavior. Although, I've seen many a black paw and arm feeling under the large crack at the bottom of the door and a ratty tail or two swishing contentedly there as a possum cosied up to the cat food bowl. Curiosity to see if there's a wildlife version of aisles with cans of possum food may be it. Well. The tree that I grew from a little nut just outside the back door, now 30 feet tall is showing promising signs of fruiting. I'm happy to report that this year I'll be adding avocados to their fare.