Smitten, our beautiful and sweet Pippi, died last Monday, October 21st, 2013. Our hearts are sad and heavy, and we miss her in a million ways. Looking back through our photos of her, I found so many images that demonstrate how much her life with us was shaped by my fiber-related pursuits, and by the book-binding experiments of both Matthew and myself.
She fit into our lives so perfectly. She loved to be near us while we were working, and always seemed to find a way to make a project into a comfy bed or an exciting game. Since I started this blog, I have included many cute photos of her. In this post I tried to avoid duplicates and to dig back a little further into our lives together (there are a couple repeats, though, that I couldn’t resist). Here is a glimpse of the life of the Pippi as fiber-cat:
This one is from 2000 or 2001. It’s one of our oldest photos of her, when she was a tiny kitten. She is stretching in front of my spinning wheel (a recent gift from my mother and my Aunt Peggy).
Another early one of Smitten excited by the possibilities of milkweed bast fiber.
Here are a couple images of Smitten enjoying the process of carding, and the nice soft batts it yielded (naturally dyed, of course):
Smitten agrees that alpaca deserves its reputation as a luxury fiber. This fiber was a gift from my sister Simone, and the handspun yarn eventually made its way into a dense but striking shadow weave scarf for my other sister, Denise.
Here are a few of her resting amid the book-binding tools and general clutter of our work-spaces. She made everything seem serene:
This tapestry loom makes a nice canopy.
Or an exciting hiding place?
Pippi shared my excitement about flax and flax retting tanks!
She did not share my excitement about fiber and crafts magazines.
She loved to help me wind skeins into balls…
And to inspect my book covers.
And to help the madder roots dry out.
She guarded the extra heddles when I left them on the bed…
Smitten protected the warps I left lying around.
And she was supportive of my color choices.
What shall I do without her?