Deep Blue Sea update

Deep Blue Sea had a bit of an adventure last month. I’d hoped to finish part one completely, but before I could get those other waves done, I had a catastrophe.

Or properly spelled, a CAT-astrophe. Notably of the “claiming by cat pee” variety.  One of the cats did a drive-by on my stitching bag, which I’d stupidly put on the floor, and decided to give it a rinse.   It was partially my fault.  It’s springtime, and the windows are open for the first time this season, and it tends to make a couple of our cats a bit… antsy, particularly Hoodsie, who was abused when he was a neighborhood cat to the point that we’ve had to put him on medication for anxiety.  He goes on a short-term marking tear in the spring as he smells all of the new scents from outdoors, and I’m figuring it was probably him.

The problem in a household of multiple cats, however, is that it’s a bit difficult to pinpoint who did it. In addition to Hoodsie, there’s Colley – who’s now fast approaching age thirteen and getting a bit senile.  I don’t want to punish the wrong cat, but it was very tempting to go on a tear around the house when it happened.  So rather than do any punishing (which isn’t exactly going to work with a cat anyway), I just worked as quickly as I could to save the things that were hit.

Thankfully I caught it almost immediately, ran it up to the sink and with some careful handwashing of the area hit (plus another washing later, just to make sure), I’ve managed to remove ALL of the smell. The fabric is overdyed, so there’s a slight change to that area’s color due to my spot washing, but it still works fine with everything else on the fabric (it simply turned darker blue). The good thing is that it was several inches away from any completed parts, so I was able to wash the fabric without having to go near what I’ve already stitched.

So crisis averted.  Barely.

I’m going to be taking a break from Deep Blue Sea for a couple months.  I feel like I’ve been so fixated on getting part one done, and it’s bogging me down when I really do want (and need) to get some work done on the glut of other WIPs and UFOs I wanted to push forward this year.  I think I need some time away from it to take a breather and stop stressing about keeping up with all of the parts, which was never going to happen anyway.  I need some objectivity on it.  Working on some other projects will be just the break I need.