Book and Cat Lover Alert

 'Just finished this little brooch, 2 by 1-5/8.  I love old books, doesn't matter the text, and I love the inscriptions in them, fancy end papers, and the marks of the years and damage they have sustained. So I've used a book cover from a children's book inscribed "to my niece, Aunt Sophie, Aug. 27, '86," in a spidery hand, and that's 1883 my dears!  The pin finding is nickel wire bent into a safety pin sort of configuration and secured to the cover with waxed linen tied through copper grommets.  From an old copy of Hiawatha I cut a stack of pages, mounted my miniature embroidery to that, and finished with a frame cut from the same text.  At the last, a lovely surprise appeared, just beneath the kitty a fragment of text says "strings of fish"!  That's when I abandoned using a tin frame I had cut and thought to rivet over the stack. As the saying goes, one must be ready to sail to Serendip when the opportunity arises.