mini maneki neko

mini maneki neko amigurumi

For the past few months, I’ve been wanting to make a smaller version of my maneki neko amigurumi, since they are rather time-consuming and not especially lucrative. I finally came up with a pattern that I like, and made several of them in different colors to help me determine whether or not I should sell them on Etsy.

mini maneki neko amigurumi group

I’m still not 100% sure if I should list them on Etsy or not. I posted them on my Tumblr and got quite a few “likes” and nice comments, though, so I suppose I’ll give it a try. I always feel like the stuff I make isn’t that great, but I’m probably just too hard on myself.

posted in Arts & Crafts, Crochet | tags: , , , | 2 comments

world of kitties

This illustration appeals to both the linguist and cat lady in me.

gemma correll cats print

I can’t wait until it’s available as a print. I think I need it. Actually, I’m planning on making a wall of cat prints somewhere in the house (yeah, I’m crazy), so I definitely need this.

I recently did a post on Gemma Correll’s kitty illustrations on modcatlove—check it out. There’s also one about tattoos of her designs. I love ‘em.

posted in Stuff I Like | tags: , , | 1 comment

a year in spring hill

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: man, does time fly by!

Here are some crazy things:

  • I’ve lived here in Spring Hill for a year now.
  • In little over a week, I’ll have been at my job for a year.
  • On April 4th, I’ll have been with Chris for four years.
  • In a bit over two weeks, I’ll be 24.

I can hardly believe it!

The hardest thing to believe is that I’ve been here for a year. Unfortunately, in that time not that much has happened. The house still needs a ton of work, we haven’t really made any friends (sans one, in my case), and I haven’t really accomplished any of my personal goals. Sigh sigh sigh.

It’s kind of discouraging, especially since I’ve been going through one of those totally awesome confused-as-hell phases, where I’m in a funk because I don’t know what I want to do with my life. I’ve been thinking about going back to school, but hell if I know what to go back for. I’m considering computer science, with a focus on web programming, but we’ll see. The only thing really holding me back is the fact that I’ll have to take out more loans. That doesn’t sound especially appealing to me.

On the upside, my life on the internet has picked up a bit. I’ve added pieces to my portfolio, gotten more development experience, made a lot more sales on my Etsy stores, and I’ve gained a following with modcatlove (and the Tumblr I created to accompany it). These blogs are the main reason I haven’t updated this one in some time. It’s really crazy how time-consuming it is, blogging consistently. Especially since I post a lot of pictures and I spend a good deal of time searching for them. It’s kind of ridiculous how much time I spend looking at cats on the internet!

Although things haven’t gone according to plan (wait, there was a plan?), and this year hasn’t gotten off to a great start, I’m trying to stay optimistic. Things could be worse, and they can always get better. I at least feel like I’m headed in the right direction, although I’m not entirely sure what that is.

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what a day…

It’s not even 3:00 and I’m exhausted.

The morning started off with a sinus headache and nausea that forced me to lie back down for a few more hours. I finally got up at almost 11:00. Get on my computer, and I’m met with two big surprises, one good and one bad:

The GOOD: My chocolate-covered strawberry cat toys were featured on ModernCat and as a result I’ve had quite a few orders placed this morning. Eight so far + two from the other day + the modcatlove giveaway = a whole lot of crocheting this weekend. I’ve also been asked by a few other bloggers to use my crafts in giveaways and reviews. Wow. I’m kind of blown away.

The BAD: modcatlove was hacked into and there was a lovely message from the hacker on the main page, which I hope not too many people saw. I was able to fix the problem, but I’m not sure how they got in so I’ve been doing a lot of research in order to find vulnerabilities in my site and how to prevent future hacking attempts. The situation is manageable now, and I’m going to start doing regular backups, but I was so freaked out and upset this morning that I’m feeling totally drained and kind of paranoid.

So the end result of all this: sinus headache/nausea + site getting hacked into + being featured on a major blog = a totally worn out Megan. There’s no rest for the weary, though. I need to get a couple of posts up on MCL and I have about a million strawberries, donuts, and mice to crochet.

posted in Arts & Crafts, Crochet, General, Graphic/Web Design | tags: , , , | leave a comment

new modcatlove

I’ve spent the past four days working on a new layout for modcatlove.

modcatlove 2.0

I like the layout much, much, much better than the previous one. To be honest, the old layout was not very good and it really bothered me. While I do like simplicity, I found the design kind of boring and a bit too bold. I didn’t feel like there was anything special or impressive about it, and that’s not good for a website I’m hoping will become really popular, nor is it very good for my portfolio. I would have started out with a better design to begin with, but I was in a rush to get the site up and running and kind of just pulled something out of my ass.

I had a lot of fun with this design using CSS3 properties like box-shadow, border-radius, and text-shadow. I really like the box-shadow property and love the way it looks in my sidebar widgets.

Firefox vs Chrome/Safari/IE9

Right now I have the widgets set up with rounded corners in Firefox and squared corners in everything else. I would have done rounded corners in Chrome and Safari, but Chrome has an issue with using both inset shadowing and rounded corners. I think I may actually like the squared ones better with this design, though. Thoughts?

What do you think of the overall design? It doesn’t look nearly as good in IE, but according to Google Analytics, only about 11% of viewers are using IE. About 40% are using Safari, which really surprised me, and about half are on Macs. I really expected to see most people using IE, so this is a very pleasant surprise.

posted in Graphic/Web Design | tags: , , , | leave a comment