hug-me-slugs Archives - Page 6 of 36 - Ruffing’s

Posted on June 20, 2015 by Elizabeth Ruffing

Finally, more stuffed toy slugs

I have an array of Hug Me Slugs up in my toy shop, in a variety of sizes. It made me feel better to see them smiling at me.

These are 12, 9, 8, and 7 inches tall.

I will keep working at getting more up, along with some other creatures.

I went out and picked up some supplies. I was surprised by how much the prices went up. I got what I needed on sale, but the regular price for this many glass-headed quilting pins, two packs of the kind I like to use, would be $17.98! And my stuffing is now at $11.99 a bag. Even on sale, they are still expensive.

Temperatures here are running between 95 and 101 degrees, but we had appointments for two strays, who have been showing up at my neighbors’ houses, to get them fixed and vaccinated. I only have a couple of photos, from afar, this handsome guy. He looks like Sasquatch peeking out from behind that tree.

I have been leaving food out for a week, in a trapping spot, and tried to trap from before 6am until after 10pm in the heat, with no luck. His friend, a gray-and-white cat, was next to the trap at one point during the night, but it was the moment I went to check the trap. He ran away.

The rest of the day was ridiculous, with one extremely talented girl kitty, a neighbors’ pet, who was an expert at cleaning all the food out of the trap, without stepping on the trip plate. She even carefully licked it off a piece of cardboard I put over the trip plate, to make the area more sensitive. I would come to check the trap, and it would either be open and empty, or closed because it had been jostled.

Then there was food that was left out, when I needed everyone to be hungry. It was hopeless. I got very tired, sweaty, and frustrated. Another kitty is going to take the second vet appointment, after the first had to be canceled. We will wait until the heat breaks, and try again in another spot, with the snack thief inside, I hope.

During my trapping fiasco, these guys got into a fight again. This time, I went inside and got a bowl of food to break it up instead of risking getting bitten. Santana reluctantly gave in to the food.

Trouble likes to follow me around. Trouble is the black-and-white cat’s name. Santana sees him as a rival. I didn’t see Santana on the other side of my dad’s car, when I said hello to Trouble, who had followed me home. This seemed to set Santana off again. I think Santana gets extremely jealous. He jumped on Trouble and fur was flying again. Trouble seems fine. Santana was limping a little. I didn’t get bitten.

Both belong to neighbors. I think they will eventually sort it out. This has happened with other neighbors’ cats and they adjusted. I like them all, and so I hope they can be friends. Most of the time they seem to tolerate each other.

I was done in, and didn’t want to even go outside or talk to anyone after all that. Oliver Bunny helped calm me down. He has been relaxing in the heat, with the air conditioning on, sometimes by himself, and sometimes with friends.

I don’t quite trust these two tabby girls with him, but they are very insistent about having bunny time. Oliver is popular and interesting. He is also brave. If they bother him, he grunts at them and I go shoo them away.

When he wants to be left alone, he stretches out next to the toilet, which is cooler.

He used to eat dandelion leaves, but he has been boycotting them. Instead, he has been eating huge amounts of cilantro. He is being picky. I got him some green leaf lettuce, and he didn’t want that either. Romaine is okay, but green leaf, not so much. He wants cilantro, carrots, and most of all, his banana slice in the morning. Banana slices make him very happy. A friend suggested he needs his own banana tree. I said he needs a tiny banana tree, that grows one slice at a time. He is little.

I am going to go get some bunny time, and some toy time in, and hide for a while. Tomorrow is Father’s Day. Happy Father’s Day! We will be having cake.

Posted on May 10, 2015 by Elizabeth Ruffing

Happy Spring, Happy Mother’s Day

It looks like I’ve been missing since February. Happy spring and happy Mother’s Day!

I feel like I may have been lost in the woods for a while, but I have been busy. Winter was one medical visit after another with my parents, but thankfully, we’ve gotten through all of that. Hopefully, all will be well and we have that behind us.

I have been sewing and sewing, trying to get my Hug Me Slugs and Friends toy shop going again. After selling out of all my popular toys before Christmas, for two years in a row, I didn’t have enough toys partially done to keep rolling. I estimate I have about 180 bodies sewn now, in an assortment of sizes and colors. Not stuffed or detailed, but sewn. It’s a start.

I just recently added some 7 and 8 inch Hug Me Slugs to my shop. I hope to get my other characters together too, like my Hug Me Toads, Monsters, Bunnies, and Kittens and Cats, but first, I am doing more slugs.

I have so many pretty colors to try out, like this new Granny Smith apple green. It will take me years to sew all the fabric I have. If you are looking for a Hug Me Slug in a particular size and color, feel free to ask if I have on in the works. I’m doing my best to get everything up and running.

For a few months, I have been struggling with feeling sad, and tired, and overwhelmed, but I feel like I am doing better now. I’ve been trying guided meditation, which has helped. I have CD’s from Roberta Shapiro and Belleruth Naparstek, which I would recommend to anyone wanting to try it. Both have CD’s available online.

When I meditate, I always envision a forest. I decided I needed more trees, and so I have been planting lots of them. I hope someday, there will be a forest outside for me. Or more of a forest. There is a wooded area here, but I want it to be bigger.

These are my neighbor’s cats, Gumbo (black and white, above) and Scooter (gray and white, below), following me, and above is Jude, my cat I take for walks on his purple leash. They all like to see what the others are doing, even though Jude makes a fuss when the others walk up to him. That doesn’t stop him from heading over to see them. I cat-sat for Gumbo, Scooter, and their brothers, Fish, and Trouble for months. Scooter always asks me for treats. He likes pets too. They all do, although Trouble is shyer about the pets.

Recently, all four brothers and a stray they befriended, all came wandering over to see what I was doing in the back yard. I didn’t have any treats. They wanted attention. I think they were lonely.

Sometimes, I go say hello to them, and Scooter runs ahead of me into his garage, begging for snacks. I decided to fix a couple of their toys I found there. They had a ripped-open catnip chipmunk and this lobster whose Velcro closure wouldn’t close up again. It made such a hit here, while I was trying to close it, that I am wondering whether I should try to make a pattern for one, or buy one online. The Velcro pouch was too small and didn’t work, and so making a new pattern would probably be better.

Oliver Bunny prefers to play with toilet paper rolls. I have saved a ridiculous number of these. If anyone stops by, they are going to think we use an awful lot of toilet paper.

Bindi brought Oliver her favorite squeaky bunny toy, but he isn’t sure what to do with those. He does like to toss the kitty jingle balls around.

This is our other neighbors’ cat Santana, on one of his favorite napping pots, his pizza box. We can’t throw it away. I think it is funny that the box says, “100% Satisfaction Guarantee” because he looks 100% satisfied.

He guards our porch, but falls asleep on duty. He doesn’t like other cats to come up on our porch, which he sees as his personal sanctuary. A couple of them come anyway. One also looks in our door when he wants treats. The other runs away when Santana chases him. We don’t leave food out. We seem to have a social gathering location for cats.

Thanks for stopping by.

Posted on February 22, 2015 by Elizabeth Ruffing

Seven, eight, nine…stuffed animal slugs

My title has my brain playing Feist’s 1,2,3,4 now, even though the song is missing both a seven and an eight. The connection makes sense in my head.

There is also a Sesame Street version that only goes up to four.

Speaking of counting, for some time, I’ve been donating portions of my toy sales to help animals. I was curious to see what it amounted to. I added it up, and I’ve reached $597.60 so far. Some has gone to The House Rabbit Society, Alley Cats and Angels, Kitty Bungalow Charm School for Wayward Cats, The Whiskars’ Syndicate, Protective Animal Welfare Society (P.A.W.S.) in Kansas, Care For Bear, and our friend Cheryl’s feral cat fund to care for community cats here in our area of NC. It doesn’t seem like a lot each time, and so it was nice to see that it adds up.

I’m adding back a size in my Hug Me Slug plush toys, for anyone who likes to make slug families, with little, middle, and big kids. Those are the 7, 8, and 9 inch Hug Me Slugs above. I have 12 inch ones too, or I usually do. I am making more. I’ve had people get those as parent slugs to the smaller ones. You can find my stuffed animal slugs over in my Etsy toy shop. Some of these have been adopted already, but I still have some available there at the moment.

These two 7 inch yellow Hug Me Slugs went out as gifts. They were named after their Girl Scout counterparts. One was called “Candy Corn” and needed a candy corn heart. I painted the heart with fabric dye. Since she was for a big kid, it was okay. Babies put my slugs in their mouths, and so I wouldn’t do that for a baby, to be safe.

I had these up as Valentine’s Day slugs, but they happen to still be around for now, waiting to be adopted. They are 9 inches tall.

These three above are the 7 inch size, and you can see I am adjusting the sizes of my patterns. Oddly, the purple and the light blue are the new size, from the same version of my pattern. The light blue guy got a little chubby instead of tall. That happens. He’s already gone out as a new baby gift. Apologies for the redundancy in my photos between my blog and Facebook page. I’m behind with my blogging, as usual.

I just got through sewing 50!! of the new 7 inch slug bodies. Next up, they get stuffed, and then detailed. I’m trying so hard to get restocked, but it takes so long. I machine sew the first seam, and then it is all hand sewing from there. That seems crazy sometimes, but I prefer the way it looks. I’ve never been happy with machine-sewn details. I think the hand sewing gives them more character, makes them seem friendlier, and is more personal.

It gets overwhelming at times, trying to get toys finished in any number. We’ve also been running to doctors’ appointments and more eye surgeries here, and doing rounds of eye drops, which I kept having to get up early to do for my dad. We’ll be starting more for my mom. We have appointments and another surgery this week.

As you can see, I curled up in the middle of the kitty pile the other day. The weather has been cold and miserable, but I know, nothing compared to up north. I am relieved when the sun comes out. The drear is getting me down. I feel so sad sometimes. Today was at least warmer, but it went back to gray later.

Santana, our neighbor-cat, finally accepted my invitation to nap in Mr Bear’s house. It has been unused for a year almost. Mr Bear would have wanted his friends to have it. I told Santana this, and he seemed to understand. I put a catnip pouch in there for him, and recycled a few more for the porch.

Posted on January 14, 2015 by Elizabeth Ruffing

Reslugification and surgeries

I have finally added some Hug Me Slugs to my Etsy toy shop. The 12 inch slug has been adopted, but the 9 inch and 7 inch slugs are currently in my toy shop. I am trying to restock, which has been a struggle for a long time. I have days when I want to stop altogether, because I feel like I am not getting ahead, but I am trying to hang in there.

A customer sent me this wonderful photo of her three boys with their Hug Me Slugs. This is the kind of thing that keeps me going. I love how the guy in the middle is trying to eat his. Another customer told me that slugs make good teething toys.

One of our kitties, Zoomie, has been wanting to cuddle and sit in our laps whenever he gets the chance lately. He even got into my lap with Oliver Bunny, who wasn’t sure what to make of that.

Zoomie is 17 1/2 years old, which the vet says is the equivalent of being a 95 year old man. He didn’t seem to be feeling well, and my mom noticed swelling on his chin. So, we took took him in to the vet right away.

He had an abscess in his mouth, of undetermined cause, which has now been drained. He also had some growths removed from his forehead and side. The vet removed some of the tissue around the growths, to try to be safe. We discussed this with the vet, and we opted not to find out if they were cancerous. At the beginning of last year, Mr Bear had a tumor removed from his neck, and we found out shortly after that he had more tumors, which were inoperable, inside. The vet said if anything else is going on inside, there most likely wouldn’t be anything we could do. There was nothing that could be done for Mr Bear, as much as we tried. We are happy to have Zoomie with us, and were very much relieved that his condition improved with surgery and medication. The kitties and the bunny want to look at him, which bugs him a little.

We are home today, because we had to cancel my mom’s eye surgery. We had ice this morning, and didn’t want to try to get to the hospital, which is fairly far away, in the bad weather. She was very upset about this, as it is stressful gearing up for it at all. We haven’t found out yet how long the wait will be to reschedule.

This is one of my neighbors’ cats who comes to visit. I made catnip toys for Christmas for our cats and for our visitors. I also brought some over to the cats next door, who come to visit as well, but sometimes get chased off the porch by this orange fellow, Santana. I think they may be learning to play together. I hope they will.

I was working on a Christmas card of carolers, two of our kitty visitors, Santana and Trouble, and Oliver Bunny, singing. I didn’t get it done on time for Christmas. I opted to work on the catnip toys instead, and not rush through the picture, which got more ornate than initially planned. I think I may need to go back to painting, to feel better, but I tell myself I need to use the fabric that is taking up my workroom. It has been awfully dreary here. I think we would all feel better if the sun were to come out again too.