Some more photos from yesterday. In the comments, some have noted that their cats don’t get to play with knitting projects. Neither does Chaos, usually. However, when I bring out some bit of knitting to photograph, things just seem to gett out of hand quickly…
Thanks, everyone for your kind words on my Falling Leaves socks!
To start my Stashalong, I’m going to knit… Jaywalkers. Hey, I feel kinda left out – I’ve seen so many gorgeous Jaywalkers that I want my very own pair.
I started out winding some well-aged yarn from my stash. With help, of course…
After the help was dismissed to the bathroom for a few minutes, I ended up with two lovely balls of Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock in Black Purl. This yarn was purchased in 2001. Told you it was well-aged! 🙂
The really funny thing was me discovering that I have nearly the same shade in Koigu KPPPM (color P305) and in Koigu Kersti. Hopefully no one doubts my need to be in Stashalong. Anyway! I started my Black Purl Jaywalkers during a two-hour staff meeting this afternoon and made good progress, as assessed by Chaos:
At long last, I’ve finished the Koigu Falling Leaves socks, making them my first finished objects of 2006… notwithstanding that they were started October 9, 2005. Moving right along, here’s a photo of them nearing completion earlier today – can’t you just feel the excitement?
Here’s the rest of the cat, if you were curious (and even if you weren’t):
I meant to follow this pattern as written and do the short row toes and heels. In fact, I tried the short row toe from the pattern, but I didn’t get very far into it before the cursing started up (are you having a flashback yet, Ana?!) and I decided I would just use my regular old toe and heel. Whew. Much happier.
I also decided to do the lace pattern the opposite direction on one sock, but you have to get pretty darn close to my feet to detect that they’re the socks are mirror images lacewise.
I do all my socks toe-up because those are womens size elevens you’re looking at… running out of yarn is a constant worry for me and toe-ups let me maximize the yarn. Good thing I don’t like tall socks, because this is all the yarn I had left:
Tomorrow I’ll reveal what my first Stashalong project will be.
This was the scene on my street when I woke up this morning; a few more inches have fallen since.
I haven’t received my “The City of Minneapolis has declared a Snow Emergency and anywhere you’re even thinking about parking is now illegal” email yet, but I bet it’s on its way.
I’m knitting away on my Koigu Falling Leaves socks – I have about 2/3 of the 2nd sock left to knit. (What baby sweater? Huh? Ends? What are you talking about?)
No knitting pictures today because I wanted to show off my new slippers. One of my lifelong desires has been to own a pair of novelty slippers. As lifelong desires go, it’s pretty lame, true. But I had never come across the perfect pair of novelty slippers for me. There were some Siberian Husky slippers at Target once… only in kids’ sizes. An ex-boyfriend had some bear paw slippers (ala Homer Simpson), but they just really weren’t my thing. Then last week, I discovered… black cat slippers.
Oh yeah. Notice how the tails are shaped very similarly to the Chaotic Kitty’s crooked stubby tail?
“What the…?”
Happy feet! The soles on these slippers are about an inch thick and super cushy.
So far Chaos hasn’t attacked my feet while I’m walking, which I think shows admirable restraint, what with the tails and all.
Perhaps because he was much more focused on playing fetch with his tail-free red sparkly mouse.
“I’m a predator. Get over it.”
Last night I knitted with Jeanne again. More accurately, Jeanne knitted,
and I wove in ends on the sweater for my coworker Maranda’s baby (known to be a boy). The baby who was probably born days ago, but Maranda’s (male) boss told her to just give a call and let us know sometime after she was home… We figure we’ll hear back at about the time the baby starts preschool.
Jeanne kindly pointed out that the sweater I’m insisting is sized for a one-year old probably won’t fit an average child until he’s two. Huh. Well then. Why am I bothering to weave in the ends now?! I have years to do it!
When I weave in ends, I apparently emit deep sighs with annoying regularity. Sometimes I catch myself. Last night I caught Jeanne sighing, too, as the sweater she’s working on isn’t one she would necessarily have picked to knit (it’s a special request from her mom) and in revenge, the sweater is fighting Jeanne knit over purl.
Mr. Intensity (aka “Fang Boy”) hasn’t much to say for himself today. Just that he’s keeping an eye on you… and you… and you, too.
For the past several months, Chaos had an unusual interest in a pair of green sweatpants. This was not an exclusive relationship, however; he occasionally focused on a grey Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) sweatshirt. I have no pictures because he was usually quite secretive about this behavior. When he wasn’t secretive about it, I was generally gawking at him and trying to figure it out.
Friends pointed out that although it was certainly more simple to have a pair of sweatpants around than a second cat, maybe Chaos needed some company – company more interesting and interactive than sweatpants. However, since the sweatpants have remained on the shelf for the past several weeks, maybe the sweatpants thing was just one of those phases kids go through. (Don’t get me started on phases. His Sweatpants Phase was much better than, say, his Jackson Pollock phase. That was messy.)
What did this relationship consist of? Primarily of him dragging the sweatpants or sweatshirt off the shelf and often into another room. It isn’t easy for a cat to drag a large item of clothing around with his mouth, no matter that said cat is a muscular 15 pounds. I never wear the grey MPR sweatshirt, but when I put on the green sweatpants recently, I discovered that it’s not easy to be sweatpants that have been dragged around by a cat – my poor sweatpants are covered with numerous fang holes.
One of the holiday cards I received this year was from my friend “Rudi Tuzla“, who scribed a lovely poem honoring Chaos and his acrobatic sparkly mouse fetching. Thanks, R! 🙂
Chaos, Chaos, running round
Streak of black light on the ground
Circling, wary
Leaping high
Chaos leap and mousie die
Jeanne got a picture of me taking a picture of her the other night. Am I glad she just had her camera phone! You’re going to go look at that picture, and all you’re going to have to say about it is “my, what large hands you have there, Chris.”
Bamboozelle is blocking as I type:
Yup, that would be a square Rubbermaid container under there – 680 ml, if you’re particularly curious.
Chaos didn’t particularly care that I finished knitting Bamboozelle:
“Heh. You read the finishing directions yet? Heh. Come back and talk to me when you get through that bit. And where’s the i-cord, eh?”
He was much more interested in tracking down his lost fetch toys:
Thinking maybe weekends will be for gratuitous cat pictures…
Meet Diablo, as he hung out by his water dish at my brother’s birthday celebration yesterday. Diablo is Chaos’s brother. If you look closely at his forehead, you can see two pale grey lines. When Diablo was born, those lines were black and looked like horns – hence the name.
Diablo is pretty much the anti-Chaos in every way. Where Chaos is dark, Diablo is light. Where Chaos is bright, Diablo is dim. Where Chaos has a puny tail, Diablo has an even punier tail…
They were very cute kittens, although you can see that Chaos had more space for a brain than did Diablo:
And here’s my all-time favorite picture of Chaos as a kitten – I like to call it “Panther perching in jade, waiting for unsuspecting prey (aka “dust bunny”) to pass”:
