School Is In Session

I am currently on the hunt for a new knitting project.

I spent most of last week working on three shawls. Mat's childhood best friend¹ is getting married next weekend, and I had offered to make his fiancée a wedding shawl. She was so excited about the idea she asked me to make two more shawls for her flower girls.² After a false start on a Swallowtail Shawl, which has gone into the gift basket, I figured out that Annis was a much better choice for this task: it was faster, since it has both short rows and stockingette, and it also has a mini-size, which is perfect for tiny toddler flower girls. Thanks to this flash of knitting genius (with thanks to paperbirch and grrly), I was able to crank out 1 full sized shawl and 2 mini shawlettes in 7 days. Huzzah. Special thanks to Dorian for his help and supervision.

The little one is quite sweet, actually, and might be just the thing for that skein of cashmere silk I've got hanging around...in several months, anyway, when I'm not completely sick of the pattern.

Since finishing the shawls, I've started a test knit of a pair of intricately cabled socks. This pattern is probably one of the hardest things I've ever tried to knit. (Not in a bad, frustrating way, more in a challenging, read-closely-and-pay-attention-to-detail way.) The frequent cables, thin yarn, and tiny needles are also giving my left wrist fits, so I need to find something more relaxing to knit. Big yarn and big needles, and maybe a project that will work up quickly. I'd hoped to start on the first of my fall sweaters, but after careful perusal of both the pattern and my substantially increased waistline, I've come to realize that I will need to go up a size from where I thought I was when I bought the yarn eighteen months ago. Naturally, it's a yarn I purchased at the Knitters' Frolic, so getting more involves finding somewhere to order it from...

The new school year starts today for me, since I don't teach on Mondays this year, and I definitely want to have a project on the go at work.

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¹ James used to work in the restaurant at THSWSNBN, so I have actually known him longer than I've known Mat.

² Yes, this conversation happened about a year ago, so obviously I waited until six weeks before the wedding to start working on the shawls. Sigh.

A pictoral explanation of the cats' relationship

Yes Virginia, There Are Things More Boring Than My Posts About Knitting

I love having cats for pets. I've had cats all of my life--my mother has stories about how Spike and Muffet would "babysit" me very carefully when I was a newborn--they always wanted to be where I was, watching what I was doing. We owned several cats over the years, usually choosing to have them in pairs (and on one particularly ill-advised occasion, in quads). Leaving the cats behind when I went away to university was very difficult for me; the world always seemed like a much lonelier place without a cat to come home to.

(an early shot of Dorian being worn as a hat)

So I was pretty excited when Mat agreed that we could get a cat when we bought the house three years ago. Mat was raised as a dog person (owing largely to his mother's allergies) and he had always maintained that he was totally uninterested in having a cat. We went to the Humane Society here in town, and the cat chose us, as is the tradition in my family.

Bad Cat participates in tabletop role playing.

Dorian, so named because he was somewhat grey at the time we adopted him, grew into an enormous cat: nearly 17 lbs. at his peak. It seems quite obvious now that he would do so; just take a look at the size of those paws in his kitten pictures. Much to Mat's surprise, he found that Dorian had a lot of personality, and he found himself quite enamoured of our Bad Cat, as we'd taken to calling him. The cat, it turned out, was not at all like he'd imagined: the cat was affectionate, playful, and frequently a bit silly. He also has a fiendish craving for vegetables that makes it nearly impossible to do much food prep without a massive paw reaching up to beg for bits of pepper or lettuce or cucumber or...

Enormo-tron with Youngest Sister.

Over time, Dorian grew into himself, and then overgrew himself, tipping the scales at 16 lbs. 8 oz. Our attempts to feed him less food were initially successful, but when the hot days of summer hit, his activity level dropped so low that he re-gained most of the weight we thought he'd lost. He also grew lonely during the days when we would both be at work for several hours. We eventually realized that it was time to add another cat to the mix: my parents' reasons for always having pairs of cats were actually pretty solid. Dorian needed a friend.

Enter Hob.

Hob (named after Hob Gadling, a minor character from Neil Gaiman's The Sandman series) came home to us in January. In an unintentionally hilarious contrast to Bad Cat, Hob is what we call "little". We had a hard time picking out a name for him (his shelter name was Jean-Luc, which I thought was awesome and Mat hated purely on the grounds that it wasn't a name that we picked for him) so he actually spent the better part of about ten days being called "the Little Cat". Hob was a stray for a while, which has resulted in a couple of fairly curious behaviours: he eats everything he can find, and he is a wool sucker (likely caused by not being nursed for long enough). It has also given him an overbite--his incisors hang out of his mouth like little fangs.

Tiny vampire cat being groomed by Middle Sister's cat, Jerkwin.

Dorian and Hob get along pretty well, although I'm not sure Dorian has quite forgiven me for bringing the tiny interloper home. They chase each other and play fight (16 lbs cat vs 7 lbs cat is hilarious, in case you were wondering--sometimes Dorian literally holds Hob off with a single paw). Dorian has lost enough wait that he's now appropriate for his frame. There's no sleepy snuggling together just yet, but I imagine it will happen in time.

It's good to know that there are always two things that are going to be happy to see you when you come home--even if it's only because they think you're going to feed them.

Our house is a very very very fine house....

It has, as they say, been a hell of a week.

We have adopted a new cat. His shelter name was Jean-Luc, which I loved and Mat disdained (apparently only because it wasn't a name that we gave him). After spending a few days being referred to as "The Little Cat" (an apt moniker given that he is literally less than a third of Dorian's size), he is now Hob, after Hob Gadling from Neil Gaiman's The Sandman:

The adjustment has been interesting. It's gone better than I would have imagine in some respects, but Dorian is definitely a little sad about the whole thing. He has hardly snuggled and has not purred at all since Hob came. They have been wrestling each other and chasing each other around, but all of those moments are punctuated by moments like this:

The weekend was particularly stressful. The old roommates were in town to celebrate Ian's birthday. We wound up moving the festivities back here, and I was very excited to try out the ice cream maker attachment for my standmixer in making strawberry daiquiries (amazing, in case you were wondering). As we were standing around in the kitchen, I could hear something in the basement that sounded like a tap running. Assuming Mat had left the laundry room tap running for some reason, I went down to shut it off...only to discover that it was not the laundry room tap at all, but the bottom of our hot water heater, leaking water all over the basement.

This is not the sort of thing that's good to discover at 11:30 at night when you've been drinking socially with friends.

We couldn't get the intake valve on the tank to shut off, which meant that the tank kept trying to refill itself, and we wound up having to shut the water for the whole house off for the night to get it to stop. Thankfully, the tank was a rental, and the company came the next day and replaced it with a newer and more efficient model.

Then our washer broke on Monday. Like I said, a hell of a week.

Saying goodbye

Sad times today--in a little over an hour, I'll be going with a friend to have her cat put down. Bing is a small but vocal black cat, who is quite fond of knitters, particularly when they act as warmers for any seat on which he might like to sit. The poor guy is seventeen, which is quite old for a cat, and his health has gone downhill in these last few months. He's stopped eating now, and dropped below 5 lbs. I don't envy Girl Tuesday the decision she's had to make, and I figure that it's the least I can do to go with her. God knows I wouldn't want to be alone if it was Bad Cat in the same position.

So if you have pets, make sure that you give them extra hugs and maybe a treat today, so that they know how much you love them.

Hot Kitteh in the City

It's about a bajillion degrees here, by which I mean approximately 30C/86F. Mat and I went for a walk down at the waterfront today; I very foolishly forgot to wear sunscreen and am now feeling the wrath of the sun on my delicate skin. I brought the camera along and managed to take a few good pictures.


(footprints on rocks)


(look at how low the water level is this year--scary scary)


(that guy)


(hot kitteh)

The Joys of Being A Pet Owner

We've had Bad Cat for approximately 18 months now, and for the most part, he has been a delight, and our lives have been all the richer for his presence in our house. (Exceptions to this statement include his need to have someone awake with him when he's awake, his need to eat--or try to eat--everything, his cries of distress to arouse sympathy from the neighbours, his...odorous...contributions to the bathroom, some occasional scratching, and the time he ate a plant and vomited bright green on our duvet.)

This holiday season, Cat has decided to contribute to the family by helping with the decorations. Mat and I set up our tree yesterday, but didn't have a chance to start decorating it. The knitting guild is having a sale/trade table at our holiday party in a couple of weeks, and while I was evaluating what parts of the stash I could be persuaded to part with, I found the Dread Sock. As Bad Cat has recently expressed considerable enjoyment in the unravelling of half-knit socks, I broke the yarn and passed it on to him.

Mat worked a night shift last night, and I went out for a few hours to attend a silent auction in benefit of the local AIDS Committee (alas, I did not win anything). When I got home, I saw this:



On closer inspection, I could see this:


Needless to say, Bad Cat is very pleased with himself:


He's lucky he's cute.

What do you mean, it's only Wednesday?

It's been a busy week here in North Bay Rock City. The T-1 year countdown to the wedding is on as of last Friday, my special snowflakes handed in their first essay assignments to me, and it may (or may not) have snowed at some point in the last seven days. I did not personally witness any of this alleged snowing, so I am opting to believe that it didn't actually happen.

I did, however, break down and turn on the furnace a few days ago when I got home and the thermostat told me it was 14 degrees in the house. Brrr!

I also had an appointment with a dermatologist on Monday. My body is covered in moles--I easily have between 200-300 of them. (According to the US Cancer Institute, most people have between 10-40 moles.) I also fall into just about every category of risk for melanoma: fair skin and light hair, freckles, UV exposure and sunburns, having more than 50 moles, and having many dysplastic moles.

There's one mole on my arm that the doctor described as being "just wrong", so it's going to be biopsied in December, and in the meantime I am not to ever sunbathe again, ever, and to wear long sleeves and a hat when in the sun. I also get to check myself over every month to make sure that nothing's changed mole-wise.

Then today Mat was playing with the cat and asked, "Is it the cat's ear bleeding?" It wasn't, but there was a large red bump inside his ear, and another one where his eyebrow would be (if he was human. Do cats have eyebrows?) Thankfully, the vet was able to see us today, and my poor kitty has neurogenic dermatitis--basically, he's stressed out and it's manifesting itself in these sores on his skin. He was given a cortisone injection and is now on the road to recovery, so hopefully he'll be all better soon.

We also got him on a scale while we were there, and my wee beastie weighs a not-so-wee 16 lbs., 8 oz.

A sweater for Caitlin is on my needles currently. It's another February Lady, but I've done the yoke in Noro Yuzen (a wool/silk/mohair variegated) and the lace part in Berroco Inca Gold (a silk-merino cable spun). The Inca Gold is heavenly to knit with. The finished sweater will be unique, but hopefully in a way that suits Cait. (And hopefully it will be finished in time for her birthday next month.)

Happy to me

27 is not off to a good start. It seems unjust to have to work an 8:30-5:30 day (even if I do get to meet with an old friend for lunch)--but the real injustice is that when I woke this morning, it was not to the sound of my alarm at 7:00, but to the sound of my cat vomitting all over my brand new duvet. At 5:30.

Now, I can hardly be mad at the poor little guy--today is a big day for him, too. He's six months old now, which means it is time for the big snip. He wasn't allowed to have any food after 8 p.m. last night, and I think his hunger drove him to have a nibble or two of the lone plant in our house. Or at least, that's what I'm assuming the bright green stain on my duvet was caused by. I sure hope it comes out.

Hallowe'en was a good time. The Professor McGonagall costume was a big hit, so I'm pretty sure that I will reprise it next year, and my evening costume came together pretty well considering I started it only three days before Hallowe'en and sewed the whole thing together myself. All things told, it was a very good time--lots of good, dancing fun, including "Rock Lobster" (no "American Boy" though, alas) and more than a few mini Oh Henry bars.

Caitlin and Mum are off to Nicaragua today for the annual medical mission--I'm wishing them blue skies and smooth sailing (flying) all the way down.