Category Archives: Those Cats

Alongs, Those Cats

Oh oh

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If you haven’t stopped by Yarn Harlot today, head on over and find out about the Knitting Olympics. What the heck – it sounds crazy but entertaining, so I signed on. I’m not sure what I’m going to knit yet – I have to do some stash excavation first. Any suggestions? Here are the rules from Steph’s site:

1. The project must be a challenge for you to complete in 16 days.

2. There are no rules about what a challenge would be….Use your own conscience.

3. While this is intended to be somewhat difficult (like the Olympics) it is not intended to ruin your life. Don’t set yourself up for failure. (Olympic athletes may cry, but they do not whine pitifully, sob and threaten members of their family with pointed sticks because they haven’t slept in five days.) This is intended to (like the Olympics) require some measure of sacrifice, and be difficult, but it should be possible to attain.

4. No casting on before the flame is lit.

5. Finish before the flame goes out.

6. You may swatch before the games. (I consider this “training.”)

Thanks for all the, um, creative suggestions for where sparkly red mouse (SRM) might be. Wherever he is, I don’t think he’s lonely, since I assume sparkly neon lime green mouse (SNLGM) is with him.

If I find either of them in the fridge/freezer/stove, I’m moving out – the cat can obviously take care of himself at that point! I have a strong suspicion that they’re hanging out under the stove, way in back behind the power cord where the yardstick can’t get to. I am awfully tired of pulling out the stove, though. I have resorted to pulling the tails off the other sparkly mice in an attempt to increase their appeal… Nope. He knows that a tailless sparkly brown, orange, or purple mouse is not the same as SRM or SNLGM.

Eileen -You should worry if you’ve started channeling Chaos! ;p
Tink – Hopefully you will recover from your exertion. Good job! Under the stove is the last place I will look.
MrsPao – I did check in my tote bag and, alas, no mouse. Chaos often does send mice to work with me, so it was a very good guess.

Added 5:25 pm: Well, poop. SRM was not under the stove or the fridge. (I’m sure my next door neighbor wonders why I move my appliances so much!). SNLGM was under the stove with SOM (oooh-la-la!) and Chaos is happily playing with SNLGM… for now. Until he starts looking for SRM again. Heck, I’ve even tried ripping the tail off another SRM (SRM the 2nd or 3rd), but he knows the difference.

Hmm, I’m posting from work, without access to most of my photos… Let’s see, hmm, I guess it will have to be baby pictures. Here’s Chaos at one week:

Here we are when he was about 10 days old:

Knitting, Those Cats

Apparently, there can be no blobless pictures

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I finished the not-so-red scarf this morning. I decided to take a few pre-blocking pictures and got out an old black velvet dress for a backdrop. Unfortunately, by the time I had the scarf laid out on the black velvet, I had company. (I intended to do a completely cat-free post today. Really, I did.)

“Hmm, what’s this on the living room floor?”
“Looks like sparkly red mouse’s larger, less red, less mousey relative.”
“Oh, very cushy.”
“You may proceed.”

The picture below is of the scarf after I soaked it in Orvus and water, scrunched it dry in a towel, and stretched it out on my blocking board. The blocking board is 48″ long and I had to curve the scarf to get it on there. Why is the image such a funny shape? Um, because until I was resizing the picture, I didn’t realize how messy my bedroom was… Whoops.

Here’s the scarf after blocking, back on the black velvet. It became amazingly drapey and the colors spiraled appealingly. I’m very happy with it! It’s just too bad the I could never get a good photo of the color, because it goes from scarlet to red to hot pink to fuschia to rusty orange to scarlet…

“Let me tell you what I think of this scarf. Back when I was a kitten…”
Those Cats

A cat’s love of knitting is a terrible force

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No particular focus to this post, so settle in for a ramble…

There have been a few questions about how I manage to do any knitting at all with the Cat Chaotic around. Well, when I’m actually knitting, he’s usually lying calmly on my lap – unless he feels I am jabbing his ass a wee bit too much with my needles. Then things get a bit, um, lively. Or unless he thinks it’s time for him to be fed, at which point he begins to leap back and forth over me, occasionally springing off my stomach. (Ufffffffff…)

But it’s knitting photography that really gets him excited. I’m sure there are lots of reasons he finds it appealing – needles dangling and wiggling, yarn strands hither and thither… And best of all, I’m distracted with the camera so he doesn’t get in as much trouble as he would otherwise.

He also has a weakness for my Chibi. (For the non-knitters, this is a little hard plastic case that holds needles for sewing up yarn.) This is what a cat can do to an unattended Chibi (click to zoom in and get the full effect):

front view
back view

Two years, not terribly long after I brought Chaos home, I made him an eggroll from knitty.com‘s Feline Dim Sum pattern. He loved that catnip-stuffed toy. Played with it all the time. See below for the results:

I swear it didn’t look like that when I knitted it! You might not be able to tell from the picture, but it’s also somewhat felted from all the bunny kicking, biting, and generous application of cat spit to which it was subjected.

Chaos supplements his prescription diet with… tissue paper.

“Mmmmm… tissue paper. Hey, don’t knock until you’ve tried it.”
Knitting, Those Cats

An update and a fickle tangent

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I’ve been making good progress on the Chaotic Black Purl Jaywalkers. Yup, lookie there – it’s the black blob again! I must have a camera setting screwed up or something.

Of course, being as fickle as any other knitter, when I read Norma’s post about knitting red scarves for “’emancipated’ foster children who are in college,” I remembered that one of my knitting resolutions for this year was to do more knitting for the community and immediately scrounged through my stash for suitable yarn. I discovered that I had no red yarn. Hmm. I’m in Stashalong, so romping out to a yarn store wasn’t really an option. I considered dyeing some yarn with Wilton’s cake dye, but I’ve never been able to get the reds to set. Norma gave me a tip on resolving that problem, so I was digging through my stash for yarn to dye when I discovered a lovely skein of Anne in reds and pinks, with some orange and rust bits tossed in for fun.Since using stash yarn “as is” seemed much better than filling my condo with fumes from wet wool and hot vinegar, I found an easy garter lace scarf in Last-Minute Knitted Gifts and got started.

The scarf will be much more lacy and open after it’s blocked. Deadline to drop scarves off for this project is January 31 at any Einstein Brothers Bagels. (For the curious, I’m doing surprisingly well knitting with a color that’s so far off of the Chris acceptable color chart, which includes deep greens, purples, and black.)

“Things are gonna change around here, you betcha. This photography crap is making me very cranky.”
Gluten Free, Recipes, Those Cats

And we had a little party…

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Jeanne came over to my place this evening for some flourless chocolate cake, Rex Goliath 47-Pound Rooster Pinot Noir, and a present to celebrate her birthday.

Strangely, we took no photos during our eating, drinking, and knitting. But I do have a few pictures from earlier today. I was working at my computer when I heard a little tearing sound.

“Chaos, what are you doing to Jeanne’s present?”

 

 

“I don’t know how that happened. Who could’ve done that?”

 

“I’m looking and looking, but I just can’t figure out where the culprit went.”

Hmm. I have my suspicions…

Anyway, to make up for the lack of party pictures, here’s a recipe for the world’s simplest flourless chocolate cake, which is gluten-free and can also be dairy-free:

One Bowl Flourless Chocolate Cake
4 oz bittersweet chocolate
1/2 c butter or margarine
3/4 c sugar
3 eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 c unsweetened cocoa

Grease a 7- or 8-inch springform pan or round pan. Line bottom with a circle of wax or parchment paper and grease paper.

Break chocolate into pieces and put with butter or margarine into a microwave-safe bowl that will be big enough to ultimately hold all the ingedients. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and microwave until chocolate and butter are melted, being careful not to burn them!

Remove from microwave. Stir until chocolate and butter are well mixed. Add sugar and mix well. Add eggs and mix well. Sift cocoa onto mix and stir until just mixed.

Pour into greased pan. Bake at 375 for 25 minutes or until top has formed a thin crust. Cool cake for 5 minutes, then invert onto a plate.

Dark Chocolate Glaze
4 oz bittersweet chocolate OR sweet dark chocolate or 1/2 c double chocolate chips
3 T butter or margarine
1 T milk, soymilk, or almond milk
1 T light corn syrup
1/4 t vanilla

In a small microwave-safe bowl, melt broken chocolate with butter. Stir until smooth. Stir in milk, corn syrup, and vanilla. Set aside to cool slightly. When glaze is cool, pour onto center of cooled cake. Use spatula to smooth glaze and coat sides. Chill about 10 minutes to set glaze.

Enjoy!

Those Cats

You again?

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No particular knitting excitement to report – I started my second Black Purl Chaotic Jaywalker last night, but since it’s still a tiny piece of toe, you can just go the start of the first sock from last week and get the same effect.

“You again? Always with the camera. Sheesh. Can’t a cat have a little privacy?”
Alongs, Those Cats

If the fox in sox counted his sox, how many sox would the fox rox?

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Lynda is hosting Count Your Socks, which will give us all a chance to simply show off all our socks or win a fabulous prize for having knit the most pairs of socks during the year. Why I am participating? Simply for the fun of it (and to see whose house I need to run a sock raid on, of course). I’m starting with 17 pair – nothing compared to Theresa’s amazing 39 pair!

“Why are there more socks on the floor than usual?! And wow, most of them are clean. Now that’s a change.”
“I wonder how many socks there are?”
“You are growing sleepy. When you wake up, you will remember only that there were more socks than you’ve ever seen in your life.”