ZorritadelaDiscoteca

Lizard coaster Pattern

Body - 00:00:45

R1: MR ch2, 10 dc in MR, slst, ch 2 [10] R2: 10 dc inc, slst, ch 2 [20] R3: (dc, dc inc) *10 slst, ch 2 [30] R4: (dc, dc inc, dc) *10 slst, ch 1 [40] R5: Reverse sc in every stitch

Tail - 00:10:30

R1: MR, ch2, 4dc in the magic ring, slst, ch 2 [4] R2: (dc, dc inc)2, slst, ch2 [6] R3: 6 dc, slst, ch2 [6] R4: (2dc, dc inc)2, slst Cut off long tail for sewing [8]

Mouth (red yarn) - 00:16:47

ch 10 R1: skip 1st st, 8 sc, (3 sc in 1 st), 7 sc, inc, slst, ch1 [20] R2: inc, 7 sc, 3 inc, 7 sc, 2 inc, slst ch 1 [26] R3: (sc, inc), 7 sc, (sc, inc)*3, 7sc, (sc, inc)*2 [32] Cut off and weave in yarn

Tongue (pink yarn) - 00:27:52

In the third stitch from the red chain, ch 10 skip 2 st, 8 hdc [8] slst and cut off extra yarn, weave in from behind

Head (green yarn) - 00:31:00

R1: ch 14, slst in the first ch making a circle R2: ch1, hdc2tog, 10 dc, hdc2tog, slst ch 2 [12] R3 dcinc, 2 dc, 6hdc, 2dc, dcinc, slst ch 2 [14] R4: 2 dc, 3 hdc, 4sc, 3 hdc, 2 dc, slst ch 1 [14] Cut off yarn

Upper lip - 00:40:15

At the 5th st from the head, insert green yarn R1: ch2, dcinc, 6dc, dcinc [10] R2: ch2, turn dc2tog, 6dc, dc2tog [8] R3: ch2, turn dc2tog, 4dc, dc2tog [6] R4: ch2, turn dc2tog, 2dc, dc2tog [4] ch1, cut off extra yarn

Lower lip - 00:47:44

R1: ch1, 6 hdc [6] R2: ch1, turn hdc2tog, 2hdcdc, hdc2tog [4] ch 1 turn Attach red mouth piece and tongue by sc in every stitch, slst, Cut off extra yarn and weave in Stuff in

Eyes (white yarn) x2 - 00:53:40

R1: MR, 6sc in MR [6] R2: slst, ch1, 6 sc [6] slst and cut off extra yarn Glue on eyes and heads for pupils Attach head and tail at opposite ends, Put stitch marker 4 st away from each direction for limbs

Legs x4 - 01:01:24

ch7, slst, skip 1 st st, 2 slst, (ch2, skip 1st st , 2 slst) *2, 4 sc, slst Cut off and weave in yarn

Abbreviations + additional links under the cut

When ranchers in Utah's Rich County found eighteen sheep killed in March 2022, they assumed coyotes. USDA Wildlife Services flew a plane over the kill site and found something feeding on the carcasses that had only been confirmed in the state eight times in forty years. It was a wolverine. Utah sits at the extreme southern margin of the wolverine's North American range. The animal is built for the deep snow and high alpine of Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming, country above ten thousand feet where the winters last eight months and the terrain rejects everything that is not specifically engineered to survive it. A wolverine showing up in Utah's ranch country was not a routine predator complaint. It was a biological event. State wildlife managers had no protocol for it because they had never needed one. Biologists set specialized barrel traps near the sheep carcasses. Catching a wolverine in a live trap is considered one of the most difficult captures in North American wildlife management. The animal is trap-smart, solitary, covers enormous distances daily, and operates almost exclusively in terrain that humans struggle to access on foot. The odds of a wolverine walking into a barrel trap were close to zero. The next morning, a sheepherder found one of the trap doors dropped. Inside was a healthy, twenty-eight-pound male, estimated at three to four years old. It was the first wolverine ever live-captured by biologists in Utah's history. The team sedated him, packed his body in ice to keep his core temperature stable during the examination, fitted him with a GPS tracking collar, and released him into the deep snow of the Uinta Mountains. For researchers who had spent careers studying an animal they almost never got to see, that collar was the first real-time data source on wolverine movement the state had ever produced. The data that came back over the next twenty-five days confirmed what wolverine biologists in other states had documented but Utah had never been able to verify on its own ground. The animal logged over 195 miles of travel in less than a month. He did not drift south toward lower elevations or leave the state. He locked into the high peaks of the Uintas above ten thousand feet and ran massive looping circuits through avalanche chutes, rocky ridgelines, and snowfields deep enough to bury a man standing upright. The daily distances he covered would qualify as an endurance event for a human athlete on flat ground. He was doing it through the most physically punishing terrain in the state, in winter, alone, at elevation, without stopping. The eighteen dead sheep that started the whole sequence were never repeated. The wolverine moved into the high country and stayed there, operating in a landscape so remote and so hostile that the only evidence of his existence was the GPS signal pinging coordinates from ridgelines that no person had visited in months. The collar proved what the forty years of scattered sightings could only suggest. The wolverine was not passing through Utah. It was living there, quietly covering nearly two hundred miles of frozen alpine rock in less than a month, completely invisible to every human being in the state.

I have a long way to go, but I’m nearly done with the major arcana.

Here are some of my favorites:

I set myself a design challenge (as I often do). I wanted to limit the color palette and the brush styles to create a very consistent look.

And since each card focuses on black cats, it forces me to think deeply about symbolism and design to make sure the meaning of each card is clear and each design is unique.

But there’s still a lot of variety coming through. It’s not all class, or all silliness - just like cats

I have a forearm tattoo of the cats in this one ☝️

I’m so happy with how both of these two managed to feel dark, but adorable at the same time.

And then there’s this one absolute diva:

Most of these used my own feline friends for reference.