Kitties and Their Toys

moar funny pictures



Midnight adopted this box, and, since I'd just gotten her this kitty warmer mat from Drs Foster and Smith, I put it into the box. She's in there a lot now. I meant to catch her sleeping, but you know how that goes. So I used I Can Haz Cheezburger? to put a caption on it.

Well, Yes, I've Been Busy

How the heck did more than an entire month go by?

I've had some further unhappy adventures with the Internet. Intermittently, I couldn't get myself accepted by Google/Blogger, not even enough to post comments to my friends' blogs. Most recently AT&T Yahoo refused to recognize my password, and, in spite of my being really pretty certain of my date of birth, ZIP code of residence and favorite color code-word, refused to admit me to the email world.

Now that I think about it, this could have been an angry reaction to our decision to dump AT&T U-Verse TV service after only a few months. For those of you lucky enough not to have yet tried this new optic-fiber service, don't. U-Verse is NOT ready for prime time. (I expect the residents of Cleveland, OH, whose AT&T U-Verse TV service failed them during the 7th game of the American League baseball playoffs, may put their feelings a bit more strongly. I learned about the outage when I tried to get telephone support and was told they weren't dealing with any Internet issues right then.) [Ironically, as I am writing this, 2 hapless sales people from U-Verse knocked on my door. They're gone now. They have only small scorch marks on them; I tried to be as gentle as possible. My cleaning lady can vouch that they were still OK.]

OK. Moving on here. Charter Cable has more or less renewed our TV hookups, and the programs I expect to view at a certain time are there, not the 3-hours-different East Coast feed which was a major problem with U-Verse. As of last Friday, I am able to receive and send email once again.

The working email as of this minute is
catbookmom AT att DOTnet

This morning I got an email about a comment on my last blog post from the talented Dodile, so that blog-to-email link is back. Check out Dodile's lovely lace patterns both free (gratuit) and for sale at this link. Nearly all the patterns are in both French and English.


I've been knitting and knitting, and right now I have a huge urge to knit but my wrists are crying out from overwork, so I'm smelling strongly of Tiger Balm. I've finished lots of gifts: 5 pairs of mitts, 3 hats and 2 scarves, and I have a second scarf half done and a just-started 4th hat. I'm a bit past half-way on a Liesel Scarf for myself in lovely, soft blue-green KFI Cashmereno (stash!!). There's a limit on how many of these projects I can show you now, since many of these are for friends who read this blog. ;-D I really love how the scarf for my uncle has turned out. It's made with Paton's SWS in Natural Slate, using the Habit Forming pattern I found courtesy of Ravelry. The Habit in Habit Forming is the one and only Franklin, of The Panopticon, and the pattern has a very nice photo of him.


Last night I finished 2 quick hats for our honorary DGSs in Alaska. These aren't as nice as the superwash wool ones I made last year, just basic designs with Patons Shetland Chunky acrylic/wool yarn. I love the way the colors stripe and spiral.

All of this gift knitting has been the continuation of a huge amount of knitting productivity the last few months. There have been Afghans for Afghans hats, which went off just in time for the December 3 deadline - 3 hats I made since my last post, made from some lovely bulky Kross Mondial yarn, less than one skein per hat;3 tinier green ones I made sometime earlier in the year and a mohair/wool double-stranded Cloud hat, - all of these were from stash yarn!! - plus 2 absolutely adorable pairs of socks made by my dear friend JM. Check out the Dr Seuss-style fuschia star-toe pair!

And I've finished several baby hats for my seniors' charity group, who have had a special request from our local Temporary Aid Center. I forgot to take pictures of some of them. I've been making very basic stockinette and 2x2 ribbed hats, using some multicolor yarns I had in stash (hey, more stashbusting here!!), some Caron Simply Soft Shadows and Encore Colorspun. Speaking of my seniors' charity group, we had a great boutique this year. In the two days of the boutique, we sold over $1400 worth of scarves, hats, slippers, afghans, quilts and so forth. The following week, we displayed all the leftovers at our usual Friday meeting, and the front desk helped us to let others at the center know about them, and in that one afternoon, we sold another $500+. So we collected nearly $2000 this year! Woohoo!! We've already donated a lot of that to other groups around the community: a local parish's Thanksgiving dinner for the needy, postage to Operation Gratitude (along with our 225 hats for the soldiers), the Salvation Army, etc. According to Burbank's RSVP (Retired and Seniors Volunteer Program) administration, the over-600 of us seniors participating in projects contributed over 153,000 hours to various projects this year. Yay for us!!

Ah, yes, there have been new additions to the CBM Stash. Some Di.Vé. Autunno yarn, loosely spun merino, in a deep blue-green for an Emerald cardi (Knitty, Winter 2006) . More Patons SWS in Natural Slate for the Oat Couture Entrelac Tuxedo Vest for DH - he went wild over the scarf for my uncle, especially after he saw my swatch from trying to learn entrelac. Some absolutely yummy Austermann Inka (suri alpaca and wool) in off-white; this doesn't have a project yet, but oh, how soft and smooshy this is. Plus Elann has some great new house yarns arriving as December holiday gifts to their customers: a Silken Kydd (similar to Kid Silk Haze), a new chunky superwash wool, a lovely blend of wool/silk/bamboo, and a silk noile tweed. Some of the Silken Kydd in this gorgeous Baked Apple and some of the silk/bamboo blend will be coming here.



Last but not least, *of course* I've been spending too much time at Ravelry!! For a couple of weeks, it has been the only source of email I've been able to use. Plus there's the variety of forums and discussion groups. Last week, Stephanie started a new Unwind group. Check it out!! According to Casey, on a daily basis, Ravelry is now accepting twice as many new members as sign up, and as of yesterday there were only about 7500 in the waiting list. Go. Ravel in it!! Bwah-ha-ha!!

You Can Help

The Afghans for Afghans charitable group has a need for some newborn-sized baby hats, socks and blankets very urgently. The items should be knitted or crocheted from wool, and should *not* be preemie baby sized. The deadline is December 3. Please help!

Here's the link for more details and the address.

Don't Hurt Yourself

This was posted at the lolravelers forum on Ravelry, with the comment: "I think the cat in this picture needs a caption."

'Nuf said.

Oh, Hi! Remember Me?

Yesterday I got a phone call from a friend who wondered if I'd fallen off the face of the earth, since my email hasn't worked in ages and I hadn't posted in a while. So here's yet another catch-up post. Let's review:

Email Disaster
After extreme procrastination on my part and lots of frustrating calls to the new and rather clueless support staff at AT&T's new U-Verse service, I've had to dump my 10-year-old email address. Permanently. Argghhhh!! Changing all those accounts with online businesses is going to take even longer than fixing the problem.

For all of you who've tolerated a lot of emails to me being bounced back to you, I thank you for your patience. I'm trying to link my new email addy to the Email link in the sidebar; it doesn't work yet, sad to say. (Yes, I have backed up the blog!) If you need to contact me, the email addy is "CBM (spelled out) AT att DOT com"

What's Been Going On
I've been having some persistent but non-serious health problems, which has kept me home a lot and in a bit of a funk. I'm still reading a lot and not doing much knitting. But my MD has finally figured out what will work, and I'm coming out of the slump.

Yesterday and today have been the charity boutique sale that my seniors' group participates in. We keep back the best of the lapghans (lap-sized afghans), lap quilts, baby items, scarves, hats, etc. that we make during the year and sell them at this once-yearly boutique. Quilts and lapghans sell for $15-$25, hats and scarves for $5 or $7. Etc. Bargain city. The quilts are gorgeous, pieced tops with limited quilting, but warm and just the right size to put over your legs while you're knitting. Check out last year's post for some samples. Last year we raised over $900, which we donated to local charities who need money, not hand-crafted items.

The Knitting News
I did finish one item in the last few days, just for the boutique, and I sold it last night for $10 on behalf of the group. Yay! A couple of years ago, when novelty yarn was still fashionable, I bought some yarn for a particular project that came to mind. And I finally knitted it. I must have been channeling Loretta Young about this, since this turned into a nearly over-the-top stole, one requiring a party dress, preferably black and elegant. OK, I'm 'fessing up here: this was made from 2 skeins of Patons' Divine mohair-style floofy yarn and 3 skeins of Patons' Glitterspun metallic yarn in gold and ruby. My fun-fur urges are now all gone. Here's a picture of the 8ft x 8in stole. The close-up is pretty color-accurate; the full-length picture is doubled.

Tomorrow Knitdevil, mehitabel and others of the SnB gang are bound for the Handweavers spinning, weaving and fiber festival in Torrance. We had a lot of fun last year and I even won a skein of Schaefer's Laurel cotton yarn in the raffle.

I've been enjoying the LolCats phenom at the I Can Has Cheeseburger? website, and it's affecting my posting language a bit. The captions mangle spelling and syntax, but they're funny.

I nearly titled this post "O Hai! Rember Moi?" But I will close with a Lolcat goodbye; just say it to yourself as 3 syllables and you'll get it. I promise to post more often.

KThxBai

Catching Up, Yet Again!

Wow, where did 2 weeks go? It's been an up and down time Chez CBM. Read oh, 8 books, knitted madly, made some deadlines and missed a few others. Ya know, the usual. STILL haven't tackled the problems with my email - now I can't get to my Yahoo groups, so I guess I better get serious about fixing this.

Onward to the knitting and other news:

I finished the vest I was making for Afghans for Afghans and sent it off on Wednesday, along with a nearly-matching hat and a pair of socks. Then yesterday I found where I'd put the other 2 pairs of socks. OK, part of the next A4A campaign is already pre-knitted. I used the vest pattern linked from the A4A website, and I don't recommend it. It's a nice idea, starting at the center front and knitting vertically all around, with just the shoulders to seam. But the increases and decreases which form the V-neck are done too fast, and that makes for curling. I put several rows of garter stitch around, which covered a lot of sins and ends, though I should have decreased more around the armscyes. This was made with leftovers of WoolEase, Nashua Creative Focus Worsted, Cascade 220 and Patons Classic Wool - the back is solid dark green.



I started and finished a Comfort Shawl for my dear friend Fran, who had her second surgery last week, relating to colon cancer they found last spring. Her doctors dragged their feet for approximately forever about doing the second surgery, which they insisted she had to have. First she was too dehydrated and run down from the chemo - well, duh!! She's 82, fergossakes! Then they couldn't get her heart rate stabilized. Twice. The last time, she was *in* pre-op when the Chief of Surgery at the local hospital decided it was too risky to be done in his hospital. After more dithering between her oncologist and her cardiologist, Fran forced their hand and made her own appointment at one of the best cancer centers in the area, where the surgery had been approved. Way to go, my spunky friend!!

When I talked to her niece yesterday, Fran was still in ICU and giving the nurses occasional fits, but the reports from the surgeons said they'd found no recurrence. Happy Dancing!! Hallelujahs!! Through all of this, Fran has kept up her snappy comebacks and saucy attitude, even though she's become very frail and pretty thin in the hair department. When her niece said they'd found no new lesions, I felt like a knot came undone inside me, one I didn't realize was there.

I'd hoped to have the shawl done for her before she went into surgery, but I'll take it over as soon as they move her to a regular post-surgery room. I made the shawl from some Schoeller + Stahl Hobby yarn, an easy-care wool blend I had in stash (thanks for the reminder, MT!!)


While I was blocking it, I re-blocked my Sun Ray shawl, which was a tad too small at 56in by 33in.

This time I got another 10in across, which makes it 66in by 33in, a good proportion and a better fit.





I also blocked a Sun Ray shawl that was knitted by Gaye, one of the most talented knitters in my seniors' group, using some donated alpaca. I blocked it severely, and the alpaca blocked out farther than the wool in my shawl, plus she had more yardage; the finished shawl is 8ft by 4ft, and it's as light and airy as can be. Gaye looks smashing in it, but the shawl will be for sale at our Holiday Boutique.


While Gaye was modeling her shawl, the rest of our seniors' group was sorting our yarn into bags by color. We have to do this periodically, and it's a big project. Here's a view of *part* of the 'leventy-hundred skeins of acrylic yarns we have in our stash.


And I close with yet another picture of the inventive efforts of our resident squirrels to drag an old rug off to make nests; this morning we discovered it wrapped around the legs of our patio table and strung clear up to one of the hanging pots under our lime tree. I'd toss the rug in the trash where it belongs, but we're enjoying the fun.

No Bad Words Here

Guess I've been pretty restrained in those rants, huh??

SmarieK, dedicated mom and designer of washcloths, hats and scarves, got a PG, for saying "crap" and "knife". Go figure.