Closing Time and Blogiversary

If you would have asked me when I started writing this blog what I thought I would be doing a year from then, I would never have guessed that I would be closing on a house in Colorado.  I might have told you that I hoped to have purchased a house, but I would have thought that house would be in San Francisco. I didn’t know that I was going to learn to spin yarn, much less that I was going to acquire a spinning wheel. I wouldn’t have been able to tell you that I would passionately love 2 little girl kittens whom I would have to give away (I’ve always loved my kittens, but in a more impermanent way). It just goes to show that no matter what plans you might make for yourself, surprising things just come up.

The closing on the house today went smoothly. Michael spent the morning making sure that everyone had all the documents they needed (it turns out the companies involved in the transfer process procrastinate to the point of endangering an on-time transaction), and by the time we had to close, everything was in line. We signed a billion documents. We chatted with the sellers and our respective agents. And in the end, we got the key to our new house! The sellers are still moving out tomorrow, but we will be coming in Saturday morning to do a few things to the place before we go. Holy cow, we’re homeowners!

I’ve started 2 projects, both in commemoration of the house purchase, and because these are things Michael and I will need for living in a slightly colder climate.  Michael needed a scarf (he tells me he has never actually worn a scarf before. Really? He was born in Pennsylvania…) and I needed gloves. I’ve made more progress on Michael’s scarf than my gloves, largely because his project is a little simpler and quicker to complete. I also tried to stop myself from starting the gloves because I had other projects that were really long past due. I’ve completed many of those projects, so I now feel I can work on the gloves. I’ve picked out a stitch pattern and cast on the ribbing. I think I’ll post the pattern for both of these projects when I’ve completed them.

(The lighting for these pictures was kind of poor – the only white background I had here in the hotel was in the bathroom.)

I am happy to say that, of the works in progess I had a year ago, only one of them remains uncompleted – Carisa’s afghan. The afghan is an active project as of a few days ago, and I expect it will be finished before I leave San Francisco. Shall we see what is on my hooks and needles now? I’ll include links for those of you who are on Ravelry.

1. Carisa’s Afghan. We knew this. The only holdover from last year, and first on the priority list for this one.
2. Colorado Scarf. The second priority, a project of my own design. Michael is going to need this. Apparently, we’ve chosen to move during the months in which Colorado gets the most of its snow. Fabulous.
3. Colorado Gloves. Pressing, but not too big of a priority. Also a project of my own design. I’ll need a good pair of gloves for snow-land, but I do have serviceable store-bought ones to tide me over.
4. Blaine’s Baby Blanket. Fortunately, this is 1 of only 2 afghans on my list. I meant to have fewer in progress so I could enjoy the satisfaction of completing a project more often. I’d like to get this one done by Blaine’s birthday in June, and hopefully I can deliver it to him myself given that we will only live 7 hours away from my brother’s family by then.
5. Earl Grey. I started this when I joined the San Francisco one-sock-a-month group on Ravelry. Sadly, I have only completed maybe ½ of one of these in the 5 months since I joined. Oh, well.
6. Clapotis. I like the pattern, it’s just that the poor thing had to go to the bottom of the queue in order to make way for things I was giving to other people or things that I needed more urgently. This in only decorative, I’m afraid.
7. Cat Couch. I’ve been meaning to make something for my cats to call their very own. My kitties are so very appreciative of all my yarn projects. The like to lie on the blankets, they’ll snuggle with a sweater, and they give a fair shake to all the toys I’ve created for them. They deserve something nice. Maybe it should be higher on the priority list.

I notice that I have 2 fewer WIPs than last year. I wanted to reduce the number of things I had going at one time. While I wanted to remain below 6, I think it’s ok to be where I am, given that I actually have utility projects on the list. I have plans for future projects, but none are afghans (whew)! I am going to design a sweater for myself, given that I have yet to find a pattern that works for me. Strangely, I have no desire to cast on something new right now. What have I become?!

One opponent down

I’ve beaten my first opponent in the WIP Wrestling event. It was a long, imperfect battle, but I did it.

The Cat and Mouse Afghan (I call it Cat and Yarn on my Ravelry page) is now lounging on my sofa. I’ve had it in my hands for days now every time I sat down. Bit by bit the yarn disappeared, and in the end, I had an afghan. Groovy. Now, just 4 opponents remain.

I did less spinning than normal in class this week. Instead, I got to play with another tool that I thought I might want – a drum carder! Drum carders are particularly good for mixing different fibers and getting variegated roving or fiber blends. They make these things called batts. Mine looked like this (well it was one solid sheet, but I didn’t get to photograph it before the teacher showed me how to tear it into a usable form).

When the fiber was formed into a bump, it looked like this (since it’s variegated, I took pictures from different angles so you could get a better idea of what it looked like).

I’ve actually spun this fiber plus two bobbins worth of a complementary color and plied them. I will set it and take a picture. I am tempted to knit some of this one up before next class (although it does interfere with the Ravelympics projects – ugh).

I’ve also beaten an opponent in the kitten world today. Sunshine turned from being a scaredy-cat today into the most affectionate thing I’ve seen in awhile!

You can actually see the partial leg a little better in this picture. But look how happy she is! Linnea and I played with her for a good, long time last night. I think that she had such a good time playing with us that she decided we were friends after all. Sunshine got pretty helpful yesterday, too. She pottied Ling Ling for me (that is a job that I am really happy to hand over). It’s cute to see a small kitten with a mothering instinct.

Moonlight was incredibly cute last night, too. I use a thermal mug full of warm water to warm the bottles for Ling Ling and Tiki. Moonlight apparently likes warm water (very reminiscent of the way my cats drink water from the shower floor when I get out), and repeatedly went to the mug for a drink!

Wisteria has gone back to eating on her own. Last night she found eating to be too exhausting and fell asleep in her food!  It happened about 3 times before I finally got the camera. She had been wrestling the little kittens before her dinner, which is probably what wore her out. Today she got vaccinated and fawned over at the shelter. Two big days in a row – whew!

The tiniest kittens are finally getting teeth. When the first nubby little teeth come out, I add a spoonful of baby food (or in this case, regular wet food) to the bottle. Tonight both of the little ones ate wet food from my fingers. I need to tell Toni – she has their other 3 litter mates. I also saw Tiki using the litter box on her own today. It seems like they go from one stage to the next in a matter of hours. It’s kind of cool.

Crisis in Crochet

I was working on my cat afghan, inspired by the idea of getting down to just 6 WIPs. Except for substituting the color of the cats in this afghan (the original pattern calls for blue cats), I left the pattern unmodified. For the first time in my life I checked gauge for an afghan (usually I don’t worry because, well, it’s a blanket -it’ll fit). What could possibly go wrong?

When I got here , I noticed that I was running low on the burgundy yarn. No, big deal, I’d get some more from my stash. I went to the box where I was storing this WIP and reached in.

“That’s odd,” I thought. There was no more of this yarn. I dumped the box out. Still no more. Oh, crap. Luckily, I had the original invoice from when I bought the yarn, so I knew where to look if I needed to buy more. I had a ball band with the dye lot. I looked on Ravelry to see if someone had it in their stash. Only one person did, but I didn’t notice if the dye lot was the same. Still, I had 2 possible sources.

Later that night as I worked, worry crept up on me. I could swear I had enough yarn. I thought I was going to have at least one skein too many early on in the process. As I watched the skein I was crocheting from disappear, the worry began to eat at me. I put the afghan down to search some more.

Nope, not in my notions basket.

Not in the dining room.

Not in the office.

I sat in front of the computer and thought, “I’d better place the order for this yarn so I don’t run out of ambition. What if this yarn is discontinued? What if the dye lot is hideously different?” In the end I decided I should wait till morning. I mean really, is there that much demand for a mass-produced acrylic yarn?

It grew later – 1:00, 2:00, 3:00 in the morning. I couldn’t fall asleep. I panicked more and more.

Then I had an idea. I grabbed the flashlight and tiptoed into the bedroom. I grabbed the handle on the yarn trunk by the door. It’s kind of sticky, and I didn’t want to wake Michael, so I yanked it quickly and hard. Michael sat up. “I thought someone was breaking into the bedroom,” he said. “Go back to sleep,” said I. “OK.”

As quietly as one can with plastic bags, I began removing other WIPs and pre-assembled project kits from the trunk. One by one (holy cow, do I really think I can make all of these?) they came to rest outside the trunk. When I got to the back, my hand felt something soft and familiar. All right! A skein of this brand of yarn – not necessarily the right color (I am making Blaine’s baby blanket out of the same type of yarn). I grabbed several skeins and tossed them into the hall. I quietly put away the rest of the projects. Then I went into the hall to see if I was in luck…

Whew! I had plenty of the burgundy yarn left. Crisis averted. I brought it into the living room and put it where I could find it again. Finally, I could sleep. Soon, I’ll be sleeping with the new afghan.

Speaking of accomplishing things, I spun the white roving for our plying lesson in spinning class. I’ll show you the finished products when I spin it all. That’s a story for next time, though.

I acquired 2 more kittens today. They are just about the same size, maybe a little bigger than Wisteria was when I got her. They are both on the bottle, about every 8 hours. I think they are 2 1/2 to 3 weeks old.

The black and white one is named Ling Ling. The lady who named Wisteria named this fellow as well. The calico girl is unnamed, however. Does anyone have a suggestion? Please leave it in the comments. There are just a few criteria:

1. The name should be uncommon, but not too weird. Patches is out (although I love that name for a calico, all the calicos in the shelter are named Patches).
2. The name has to be family friendly.
3. The name should be suitable for a girl kitten (or at least gender neutral).

I’ll let you know whose suggestion we went with in a few days. It’s not a contest, and there is no prize except bragging rights. But naming kittens is fun, I swear.

Thank God Almighty, I am free at last

Holy cow – jury duty is over. It ended yesterday with the jurors coming to a decision on most of the questions asked of us. We could not come to an agreement on the final question, though, and we had to declare ourselves hung. I was the presiding juror – the foreperson. I feel a little bad that under my leadership we could not make a decision, but I am getting that maybe the lawyers could have done a better job making their cases. Oh well, water under the bridge.

On my first day of jury duty, before the jury selection, I began crochetting the baby blanket I am making for my nephew for Christmas. His mother reads this blog, but he can’t read yet (I’m not sure that he can walk yet…), so I’m cool posting the pictures. I learned rather quickly that I could get away with bringing my knitting to jury duty, so I dropped this project like a hot potato and worked on a few things that needed to be finished. On the jury duty form it says you can’t bring knitting needles, but I think they only care if the needles look scary. Sock needles and sizes 6 and 8 circulars aren’t quite in the scary category.

Tomorrow I am taking Merry and Cupcake to the shelter to get adopted. I plan to stay there with the kittens for a few hours, playing with them and trying to interest people in taking them home. If I am not successful, I will leave them at the shelter to try another day. As soon as Nebby’s daddy is ready, I am going to meet him at the shelter and hand over the object of my recent affections. Sigh. I know I’ll fall in love again, it’s just sad to say good-bye.

Now that I am in control of my life again, I plan to update at my previous rate. Thanks for waiting this long.

Making Progress

I’ve been working on my yarncraft this weekend. I’m making some progress, and I’ve even reached a new low in my number of WIPs – I’m now down to 8!

I completed this potholder on Saturday. I worked on it some on the car ride to and from the canoe trip and that night before I went to bed. It’s made with Lily Sugar and Cream cotton in ecru (the supersized ball) and in wine.

I also made a bit of progress on Blaze. I’ve discovered a problem that I will be able to illustrate better when I take out the reserved stitches for the armhole. I have to look up pattern corrections and see if I just didn’t do enough research, or if I discovered something new. I am positive I didn’t mess up – part of it works the way it should, and I counted and recounted the stitches. I’ve done it all correctly. It’s just that you make the sleeves separately, then knit them into the body right where the armpit should join. The pattern matches nicely on top, but underneath, there is a complete mismatch. Like I said, better illustrated later. I’m going to feel really stupid if I realize later that I did make a mistake after what I’ve said here.

On Sunday we washed the kittens’ room and the kittens themselves. It’s a bit of an assembly line thing with the kittens – I wash, Michael dries, then we put them in their freshly cleaned room. They’ll need to be bathed frequently until this ringworm thing is over. Even then, I’m not sure that I will be able to get that stuff out of my house!

Biscotti is a little down right now. He has lost about 30g over the last 3 days, and all he wanted to do today was to look at me with sad eyes. I gave him some sub-q fluids, and that at least seemed to stimulate his appetite. It’s worrisome, but there is a very good chance that he’ll start feeling better soon.

Making choices

My insomnia has absolutely wrecked me this week. I can feel it getting better now, but I just haven’t had ambition to get much done with my messed up schedule. So, I’m sorry that I haven’t updated my blog, but I had to make choices about what to do with my time.

I photographed most of my stash for Ravelry. It took hours. I have a lot of yarn. I still haven’t gotten the pictures uploaded yet, but the hardest part is over.

Alexis’ blanket is complete. I can send it out with her brother’s present on Monday and that will all be settled. I learned from this experience that I hate weaving. I just loathed every minute of it. I tried to like it. I mean, it’s fiber art, that makes it fun by definition, right? Let’s just say it has taken discipline to finish. I like the blanket, just not the work it took.

I think that leaves me with just 9 WIPs. I suppose I should add that I started a potholder sometime in the last month or so. I’ve left it in the desk drawer for awhile, then I started carrying it around in my purse.  Let’s count the WIPs, shall we?

1. Crochet potholder. I have no pictures yet, but I will post the FO.
2. Blaze. (The sweater I showed the people in Vancouver)
3. Kilt hose.
4. Tunisian crochet cat bed. I think I am going to abbreviate this one and make it into a kitten blanket given that I saw a mistake the other day.
5. Romantic Cardigan. I just haven’t touched it this year.
6. Dishcloth. I haven’t really needed to replace any of the ones I have, so it isn’t that big of a deal yet.
7. Carisa’s afghan.
8. The cat afghan.
9. Jen’s socks swatch.

The worst part is, I have every intention of starting a new project despite this list. I have jury duty starting the week of the 9th, and they don’t allow knitting needles in the building. The do, however, allow crochet hooks, so I am bringing the beginnings of my nephew Blaine’s blanket (hopefully to be completed by Christmas).

The kittens have been passing around a pretty nasty cold. I start them on meds the first day they lose a little weight and that seems to clear it up. It’s just that they’ve been stuffed up so they can’t breathe while they eat – so they quit trying. I think with the ringworm, the eye infections and the URI Nebby is on like 5 different drugs. That poor fellow.

On the bright side, the diarrhea is going away. I gave the kittens Albon for coccidia, and the distinctive smell went away. The poop only got marginally better - from pure liquid to pancake batter. I added canned pure pumpkin to their food, and suddenly we have poop with form. Yes, this is my life - the study of poo.  You should see the pictures I took for the kitten manual. Who photographs poop (other than someone with a fetish)? For the record, that isn’t me. <shivers>

Well, I need to try to sleep. We are going canoeing with some friends tomorrow morning, so I have to be up early (6:45) to care for the kittens before we leave.

Good thing cats are cute

I am cleaning house today. My office still needs work (which is actually possible to do now that I have the massive storage desk) and my kitchen… well… yuck. I started with a project in the office because I can take breaks to knit pretty easily. I just left the knitting on the desk and occasionally knit a row or 2 when I felt I had made enough progress with my organizing project.  

At some point I noticed Serra lying on the sweater I’ve been making. I didn’t worry about her – she was sleeping, not looking naughty in the least. 

 See that? While I was actually doing housework, Serra was being sly and evil. She severed the yarn without my noticing her. How does she do this? The worst part is, I know Serra is an evil genius capable of destroying knitting. That’s why most of my needles are metal now despite my preference for wood.

This doesn’t seem like such a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but I have my reasons for being particularly upset about this. When I bought the yarn, it was a massive hank that would allow me to at least knit the body of a sweater without breaking the yarn, thus avoiding the problem of the woven-in ends showing through. I spent hours untangling the yarn (the rest of it is a huge mess) so I would have a huge ball with no ends to weave in. I had been able to protect it until today. Just a few minutes unsupervised with Serra, and all that is gone.

Good thing Serra’s cute, or I might have to sell her to the circus.