Of Mittens and Kittens

I'm terrible about knitting things for other people but never making anything for myself.  Somehow, I never feel justified buying yarn for something that isn't going to be a gift or for sale.  So, when I got a gift certificate for Christmas, I figured it was the perfect opportunity to get yarn for a little something for myself.

The crazy amount of snow we've been getting lately has just been too much for my usual gloves, so I figured mittens would be a good idea. Handily enough, I'd just made a pair of mittens as a shop sample before the holidays, and I freaking loved the yarn - it's the chunky version of Berroco Vintage.  One skein was more than enough for a pair (and I even made them a little on the large side).  The pattern...well, the less said the better. It ended up being a 'Pirate's Code' kind of situation.

I managed to get them done just in time for (what will hopefully be) the last round of snow.

And here we have them after shoveling (and in better light - this is closer to the color in person):

I'm very pleased with how they held up - I was out in the snow for somewhere between and hour and a half and an hour and a quarter, mittens covered in snow, using one of those snowshovels with the 'grippy' handle that's like a ginger grater (and my hands stayed so warm!).  There's really not much fuzzing or pilling, and what there is looks like a good run through the washer and dryer will clear up.

And in the world of cats, poor Miss Minerva's been frustrated lately. We have an obvious mouse in the basement chewing insulation off of pipes, but it seems to be keeping up out of her reach.  We've given her free run of the basement for the last few days, and she's spent most of her time there, coming up only to lie around the house sighing heavily (seriously - you've never heard a cat sigh so much in your life) and occasionally take out her frustrations on her toys.  I feel bad for her, since despite usually being a bit of a dim bulb, she's really an excellent mouser (very good about just catching them without eating them) and she's being denied her chance to shine.  At this rate, we're just going to have to wait until payday and spring for a mousetrap.

Quite a bit of knitting, indeed.

So, I'm finally getting some of my older projects finished (mostly because I've got great ideas for new stuff and I'm too cheap to just buy more needles). Right now, I've got a kitty pi that's all done but the felting running through the washing machine. I'm a little nervous, honestly - I haven't felted anything in this machine before, and the damned cat bed took me so long, I'd really hate for anything to go wrong at this late stage. I suppose it didn't take that long in terms of continuous knitting, it got set aside for about a year, year and a half, but still... I did the math, and there's over 600 yards of yarn in this thing, not counting the eyelash yarn worked in at the top edge. Pre-felted pic for the sake of posterity (34 inches in diameter):



Also, since the **SECRET SWATCH** turned out so nicely, I got the needles today to start working a few more kinks out of the design. I'd love to have a prototype done soon, maybe get the pattern out by Christmas, but I really need to finish the other two in-progress patterns before I start in on it. After all, it's much easier to teach a class on a project you have a pattern for, hm?

Got the yarn to start in on some of the Christmas knitting today, too. Very excited about it, but (of course) I have to finish up another project to free up the needles I need. Although...it was just something for myself, so I could always just throw it on a stitch holder for a while...

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More doom on a cup!

Went with something of an unintentional Smurf theme today:

It started off as just a cat stalking something in grass, then I thought that the cat sort of looked like Azrael, and decided that the subjects of today's doom would be a few hapless Smurfs - perhaps a branch village of political dissidents, striking out on their own against the patriarchy of the main village, and about to discover that there was, in fact, safety in numbers.

Now all I can think of is that scene from Snatch:

"The hare has to outrun the dogs."
"So what if it doesn't?"
"Well, the big rabbit gets f*cked. "
"Proper f*cked?

Only with Smurfs and cats...
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My day thus far...

Woke to the sound of birds singing and the first ice-cream truck of the year driving by. Then I hopped out of bed and brightly started in on a fun art project.....

....Then the weird 'no no no' noise started coming from the cat.....

I managed to whisk her out the door in time to keep the kitty spew confined to the doormat...where I didn't see it and put my foot in it tossing her out...

Foot scrubbed, gonna go clean the carpet, get some food, and see if I can manage to get back in 'project' mode. I think on days when I wake up with a project in mind, I need to just make putting the cat out the first 'to-do' on my list.

Best laid plans of mice and men are all f***ed up by cats.

So I woke up this morning all "I'm gonna write, and do some painting, and clean the kitchen, and get that hat pattern posted", but then I opened my bedroom door and found this:

So the cat got dumped out on her fuzzy little butt, I cleaned up the trail of shredded toilet paper, found where she'd hidden the toilet paper roll holder, and now I'm going to eat and play World of Warcraft, because it's all gloomy outside and that just sucked up my will to do something productive for the next few hours.

multi-talented cat

As I awkwardly type this, all eleven pounds Miss Minerva is carefully perched on my kneecap, cleaning her own butt. I have no idea when she suddenly developed a sense of balance, as earlier today, she tripped over a rug in the living room. I shall attempt to get the hell off of me and continue later...

A faint glimmer of garden...

In hopes of actually having a garden this year, I picked up one of those little greenhouse thingies at the grocery store and seeded it Sunday night:

The chamomile has already sprouted nicely, and it looks like the basil is close behind. I'm hoping that at some point in the next couple of weeks, it'll stop raining long enough for me to get out in the backyard and actually get a place ready to transplant these guys when they get big enough. I maybe should have thought about that before I started the plants, but if worse comes to worse, I can always transfer them into larger pots for a bit to buy some more time.

Except the catnip...somehow, it doesn't seem like that great of an idea to have a big pot full of catnip anywhere inside, unless I wanted potting soil all over the carpet and the cat permanently stoned.






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New/Old project

So we were over at my parents' for Easter, and discovered that Little Kitty Dude has seriously outgrown his Kitty Pi. Even all curled up into a ball, he still sleeps on top of it rather than in it anymore. If I'd known he was going to turn out to be Humongo-Cat, I'd have made it larger to begin with, but as it stands, I suppose I'll just have to make him a new one. Fortunately, I've got two skeins of Kureyon in colors that'll go with their living room, and I've got a few other assorted shades of green wools that I can stripe in if it looks like the Kureyon's not going to be enough. If my calculations are correct, I'm going to have to make this thing the size of my kitchen table (pre-felted - he's not quite *that* big....yet...)

Fortunately, my cousin picked up her cat from her folks, so the new kitty will be needing a bed and can make use of Kitty Pi Mark I. I'd thought about grabbing it for Miss Dummy-Fuzzbutt, but she seems to insist on pink.

Damned girly-ass cat.

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Somebody did not enjoy her bath.

I can only describe the reaction to the cat bathing as being a fine example of whatever passes for mouthing off like a trucker to a cat. Glad I wasn't the one on the front line for this round, at least.

This is getting cropped and resized as my new user icon for at least three different places.

stuff and things

Miserable day - I forgot to tell Tiwaz that I was working late, but fortunately (ergh?) any annoyance on his part was quickly dispelled by me tripping as I got out of the car and scraping the hell out of my knees and hands. We got the kitty back, but she's still a little buggy. We're going to hope that the stuff the vet put on her is just taking a few days to work, if not, we're just going to have to board her again and possibly just toss that couch the neighbors gave us.

Fortunately, all my yarn and crafty supplies are being kept well isolated from the cat and surrounded by citronella oil, so there shouldn't be a problem there. In fact, I've already almost got one of my Christmas presents finished. May be a record, finishing any knitting for Christmas before Thanksgiving.

And of course, I almost completely forgot that today was November first. I'm really not liking my original idea for my story, I think I'm going to go for something completely from scratch. I think I'll take a day or two to get some basic notes/outline on paper and then sit down and get some serious writing done on my day off.

Lost a rug, gained my sanity

At long last, we seem to have found the favored place the cat has been sitting to clean herself, and thus the breeding ground for the continual waves of fleas she's been suffering from. Unfortunately, said place was under the living room rug.

Fortunately, it wasn't a very expensive rug, I'd been thinking about replacing it anyway, and we've got a rubbish skip at the moment since we're remodeling, so the rug went straight out. The living room carpet under the rug has been thoroughly shampooed with bleach, the couch that sits on the rug has gotten the same treatment, and everything's been doused with salt to keep the little buggies from returning. My skin is so dried out and peeling from all the cleaning, I don't think I'll need a costume tomorrow.

This means that finally, at long last, I can knit freely anywhere in the house! With any luck, I'll have my etsy shop restocked before Thanksgiving, and maybe get a rough draft going of a pattern for one of the sweater designs I'm working on. Hooray!

Back to hating the cat/neighbor

Despite being treated by the vet and shaved, I found three fleas on Miss Dummy-Fuzzbutt this evening (in retrospect, perhaps she should have been shave, then treated, but that's really too much kindness to ask from the universe at the moment.)

And of course, the cat was rolling all over the yarn I just bought today for stuff I was actually intending to sell. Needless to say, no sleep for me tonight as I scrub thoroughly, prepare to fumigate the couch, and stand ready to vacuum as soon as The Boy wakes up. (I'll be nice and not wake him up with the vacuum). All available advice leads me to believe that if I just stick the yarn in the freezer for a few hours, it should nip any possible flea problem in the bud. I can't tell you how tempting it is to do the same to the cat...seriously, has anyone looked into cryogenics as a chemical-free flea treatment?

Yarn withdrawal

Again with the cat.

She's a very pretty cat, perfectly sweet and loving, and the dumbest m***********g animal on God's green Earth. She is also, at the moment, covered in nasty little bugs.

I hate the little bugs.

Because of them, I cannot get my clothing moved over to my new house. More importantly, I don't want to move my craft supplies over, as I'm pretty sure she will want to lie on them and cover them in cat hair and little bugs.

In her defense, the little bugs are not her fault. We have scrubbed and treated the cat to within an inch of her life, and when the little bugs kept returning despite her lack of outdoors time, we realized the source of the problem.

You see, a month or two ago, my parents' neighbors generously gave us an awesome red leather reclining couch and matching chair. Free of charge, all we had to do was get them hauled off (I believe the exact reasoning was something along the lines of 'I went out and bought myself a new car and now the wife wants new furniture in exchange for not killing me in my sleep')

These are the same people whose cats and dog have been suffering from a three-month flea problem, and whose oldest son counted over 40 individual bug bites on his legs last week from an extended 360 session in the basement with said cats.

They gave us a giant red leather-covered flea nest.

Blankets with smallpox would have been easier to clean up after. I really wanted to have a nice relaxing week after the wedding getting my stuff moved in and arranging the house, but such was not to be.

I fear our only option is to shave the cat and fumigate the couch.

(well, the only option that The Boy will sign off on, at least.)

Fun with bathing cats

So yesterday was bath day for Miss Dummy-Fuzzbutt. Things did not go well.

First, she got me across the top of the foot while I was trying to set her in the tub (the *dry* tub, I might add), then she gouged me in the hand a couple of times once the water started. I'm a bit of a bleeder, so that meant that as I'm trying to scrub the cat, I'm ending up smearing blood all over her nice white fur.

As the grand finale, I turned the faucet over to the shower hose, thinking that I'd be able to get her rinsed off faster that way. Instead, it frightened her so badly that she suddenly lost bladder control. So of course, then after I finally got the cat rinsed, I had to scrub and disinfect the tub.

I grow to loathe the cat.

Then I went home and gave my mom's kitten a bath. I plonked him chest-deep into a sink of warm water, soaped him up, rinsed him off, and got nothing but a mild 'are you done *yet*' sort of noise out of him.

Secret Agent Cat

We couldn't have Little Kitty Dude showing up to the party tomorrow underdressed, so I whipped up a little something for him to wear. He loves the silly thing, wore it all evening without a peep out of him.

Presenting... Secret Agent Cat! (go on, sing the chorus of the song, you know you want to)
Here's my first draft of the pattern, I'll work it over a bit and see if I can refine it a bit when I have the time.

Materials:
black yarn (I used Paton's Classic Wool Merino, left over from the Kitty Pi)
size 5 needles
crochet hook
Velcro
darning needle
measuring tape
very compliant cat

Instructions:

• Measure cat's neck (or dog's, I guess).
• Cast on 5
• Work in garter stitch, slipping first stitch of each row, until piece measures 1/2 of neck measurement.
• k2tog, k1, k2tog
• knit row
• purl row
• Continue in stockinette, increasing one stitch at the beginning and end of every knit row until 11 stitches are on the needle.
• Bind off knitwise
• Cast on 11
• purl
• work in stockinette, decreasing first and last stitches of each knit row until 3 stitches remain, ending with a knit row
• purl
• knit
• Using crochet hook, remove each stitch from the needle, pull through the base stitches of the other triangle, and place back on needle
• kfb, k1, kfb
• continue in garter stitch until band is long enough to go around cat's neck comfortably with some overlap and bind off.
  
• (optional) Cast on 3, work 7 rows stockinette. Bind off and sew around center of bow
• (if you were making this for a female cat, you could put something shiny here instead)
• Sew in ends, block, tack down edges of bow, and attach Velcro to each end.
• Sneak up on cat (preferably while sleeping) and attach collar to cat.

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