HAPPY NEW YEAR 2K12: The Nyan Cat Edition

I hope everyone had an enjoyable New Year's celebration! I had to work at eight in the morning, so my night was pretty low-key, although I am excited to go to a New Year's party tonight at Jay and Carly's. Why tonight? Well, pretty much everyone in our friendgroup works service industry or healthcare jobs where holidays are only sort of real. I'm planning on making a vegan chocolate silk pie, yummmms.

Anyway, I wanted to use this festive day to show off this awesome gift that Eric got me for Christmas. Several months ago, my friend Heather made her cat a Nyan Cat costume, and of course, I promptly exploded. Eric secretly commissioned a second costume for the Artful Dodger as a present to me.

It's pretty much the most amazing thing ever. Dodger does not quite appreciate the amazingness of it, unfortunately.

She is surprisingly tolerant of it, however, and when she walks in it she creeps around the house with this weird belly-dragging walk.

The sequins are hand-sewn on, the poptarts are stuffed for a little bit of depth, and the whole thing is held on with velcro straps around the chest and the belly. It's an incredible thing, and I am very thankful to have such creative friends as Heather and people who appreciate my humor like Eric.

In case you're not familiar with Nyan Cat, it is this:

Yes really, it's just that, and it goes on forever. The first time I saw this video, I laughed for probably a good fifteen minutes straight. Also, thankfully because we live inside the Internet, there have been many many many many spin-offs of this that you can enjoy.

For instance, there are many international ones, like this Russian Nyan Cat:

Or this live action one (this one you need to watch through the end):

And then there's some talented people making music:

And then I found some girl doing a dance:

And I thought, "well, that's kind of a boring dance and not terribly impressive." In the related videos off to the side, I spy more Nyan Cat dance videos and think, "well, maybe one of these will be more interesting." So I click:

Wait, so it's the same dance? Is this A Thing? I click another:

Wait, the SAME DANCE! This is A THING. That people do, and then make videos of for the Internet. This is seriously blowing my mind.

But finally, I leave you with this last video, which is a spacey remix of the song that is actually pretty good, and also features a kitty in a cupcake rocket ship. Happy New Year.

Cat ladies are the best ladies

So, my friend Heather's birthday was on Thanksgiving, so she had her birthday party yesterday. Of course, I had to make her a present.

She has a Devon Rex cat named Josie that she enjoys dressing up and making giant oil paintings of (this is Josie hanging out with the quilt I made for the Derby Demons art auction, which Heather won), and she is a bit of a self-proclaimed cat lady, so I made this:

I had a great time picking through all my felt scraps and ribbon bits and matching colors together and trying different things. I embroidered the words by hand, and I'm a little annoyed that part didn't lay all the way flat.

The back has a little magnet snap as opposed to a pinback, both to prevent damaging clothing and... well, I didn't have any pinbacks.

Heather also received an awesome pair of cat head ear muffs and another little ceramic cat, so it's safe to say that cat ladydom has been officially cemented. Happy birthday, Heather!

Thrift score, vol. IV

When I first started dating Eric, he and his brother lived together and the two of them over time amassed quite a black velvet painting collection. Now Evan has some of them still (those that have not been otherwise scattered to the winds), but our house is distinctly lacking. I found this awesome Charlie Brown one yesterday, but it has already been claimed for the Halls of Kegasus. 

Some kitchen things: cute canisters and this cat mug that I kind of couldn't resist even though we already have way too many mugs...

I think my favorite thing that I found is this little bear! He has a weighted string that hangs from the bottom and when it moves, his little arms move and he plays the piano! I made my first ever animated GIF just to show you how totally awesome it is. I have plans to paint him in the not-too-distant future so stay tuned for that!

And books books books. Eric picked most of these, hence all the sci-fi and fantasy, but he also found a book about Belle and Sebastian and some classic internet meme action - remember Real Ultimate Power?

Also, is it weird that there are now things about the internet that have evolved into like nostalgic "Ohhhh, I remember that" things? You know, like Homestar Runner (do you have any idea how much my friends and I watched this my freshman year of college?) or having a Geocities page (which I totally did, in high school, now sadly lost to the ages). I find the relationship of my generation to the internet to be really interesting, because I have literally grown up along with the development of computers and the internet, from using clunky Macs to learn Stickybear Typing and playing Oregon Trail and Odell Lake on even clunkier Commodore 64s in elementary school, to suffering through slow dial-up on AOL in junior high (think about it - there are kids now who probably have no idea what a modem sounds like), to obsessive AIMing in high school, and message boards and silly memes and cat videos in college and beyond. I don't know, I guess I just think it's really interesting watching the internet evolve. Or at least it will be until it gains sentience and destroys all of humanity.

Back into analog issues, we have a serious need for a new bookshelf around here. Ours are all filled and now books are getting stored in stacks around the house:

Quick, to Craigslist!

(PS - I have some new embroidered things that I'll be showing off soon! Yay!)