A is for.....

Hello Beautiful People!

First of all, I want to tell you how excited I am to be working on my new book. It's been on my mind for years and feels fantastic to be actually making it happen. I can't believe it's already over 60% funded after a little more than a day. Woohoo!!

We'll start with  the letter A, for which I chose to have my Abysinnian cat wearing an Apron and other clothing that have Argyle patterns. This breed is named after Abyssinia (now called Ethiopia) the country from which it was first thought to have originated--but now it's been discovered that its origins are actually somewhere near the Egyptian coast.

Here's a combo shot of my parts that made this figure next to the sketch I did. This rhyme came to me pretty easily, unlike some of the other ones you'll see in future posts. You can also see that I scrapped the original idea of an all-argyle apron in favor of leggings and the mitten being dominant, and the smile and apron matching. It's not easy, but also kind of fun to paint a pattern as precise as argyle.

So now I want to tell you a little secret. Every cat's name in this book is in honor of a fashion designer, model, or icon from history. Fun, huh? This will be briefly mentioned in the glossary, but it's here that you'll get to learn a little more without having to do the work yourself! 

Audrey is named for Audrey Hepburn, who changed the way many women dressed after seeing her in movies like Breakfast at Tiffany's in the iconic "little black dress." I bet she could have stylishly sported an argyle apron as well.

I'm not planning on making the figures in the book in alphabetic order, but I have finished A, B and C and have already started making seven more. I'm on a mission to get as much as I can done in the next 28 days while this campaign is alive. Are you ready to roll with me? Good. I'll be back in a day or two to introduce you to another kitty.

Thanks again for your support of this project! If you know any cat-loving friends you can share this with, that would be swell. Click here to go to the Catabet Kickstarter page!

And now, for your moment of Zen: 

 take care,
Hilary