All posts by Chris

Knitting, Those Cats

Well, poop

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As I mentioned a few days ago, I started working on a pair of felted mittens for my sister-in-law. Many of you are knitters, so you know the excitement I was feeling as I finished those last few rounds on the final thumb. Elation that I was done (particularly with the thumbs – Jeanne and Ana can tell you how much I hate mitten thumbs. I know it’s completely irrational to hate mitten thumbs more than, say, sock heels, but there it is). Satisfaction. Relief that I had so much time before Christmas to felt the mittens and see if my sister-in-law would be getting mittens or the alternate present.

Imagine my dismay when I put the mittens on the table to photograph my triumph, only to notice…

Yup. Those mittens sure aren’t a matching pair. Now, I’m fine with the spiral being different. And I’m completely ok with the thumbs being striped opposite of each other. But what I can’t quite ignore (even when I squinted at them) is that one of the mittens is definitely longer than the other. Or, depending on your perspective – one is shorter. The result is the same. I must rip the longer mitten back and start the final decreases two rounds sooner. I even used a row counter so the mittens would be identical, but…

When I looked at them a bit more, I decided that the shorter (first) mitten also was knit more tightly than the second mitten. What the…? How did that happen? It couldn’t have anything to do with having two soy mochas while I knit the first mitten, but two glasses of wine while I knit the second… could it? Although I suppose that does explain my, um, difficulty with the row counter on the longer mitten and probably also why the spiral changed.

Well, poop. So much for my great triumph.

Chaos listened intently to my troubles… But I think he was just humoring me so he could go back to his bath.

“You did what?”

“Tsk, tsk, tsk.”

“So, I guess you’ll be coming back to the chair to make a lap and fix that problem, eh?”

Those Cats

Move along, move along – no knitting to see here

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Since I’ve decided to knit a few things for Christmas presents, I’m getting a spectacular amount of knitting not done. In the interest of not presenting the mittens from a slightlyl different angle to suggest progress, we’ll just move right along.

It’s snowy here today. Probably three or four inches so far and falling steadily. Chaos is busy watching snowflakes.

You’ll just have to forgive the periodic weather commentary. I’m Minnesotan. It’s what we do. Listen to A Prairie Home Companion and you’ll quickly figure that out.

A few weeks ago, I noticed that one of my handknit dishcloths didn’t look quite right and I couldn’t blame it on moths because…

Hmm. How could this have happened? It couldn’t possibly be the work of the Cat Chaotic, since we have a NO CATS ON THE COUNTER rule around here. And anyway, why would the Cat Who Ate a Potholder chew on a dishcloth? The culprit remains at large…

“Hey, I resemble that remark!”
Knitting

What the…

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I couldn’t believe it when I read about a new superwash sock yarn from Austermann called Step. It contains aloe vera and jojoba oil. Why??

I suppose it could moisturize your hands while you knit, but I’m not sure that benefit would outweigh the potential messiness. And really, only part of your hands comes into contact with the yarn as you knit – the backs of my hands tend to be driest part of my hands and to have the least amount of yarn contact.

The big questions are will it leave stains on your clothes and knitting bags? Make of mess of your laundry and leave stains on other things washed with it? Does Austermann think the aloe and oil will last through a single trip through the washing machine? It is superwash, after all.

Knitting

Those darn Christmas presents

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Before I got sidetracked by that Christmas tag last night, I had some actual knitting progress to report. The sweater for Maranda’s baby still needs the ends woven in – I’m saving that for when I knit with Jeanne on Wednesday night. Sorry, Jeanne! I just can’t read and weave in ends – but I can usually talk and weave in ends. Not always, but usually. Sometimes the talking is restricted to cursing, but hey – it’s still talking. Right?

I also decided on the spur of the moment to knit my sister-in-law some felted mittens for Christmas. The present previously intended for Christmas will now be for her birthday in March. Unless, of course, the felted mittens don’t turn out.

Since knitting the mittens with some of the black or grey feltable yarn from my stash wouldn’t have been half as much fun as knitting the mittens with brand new yarn, I picked up some black and grey Lopi at the new knitting store in Coon Rapids, All About Yarn. If you want to be boggled, just check out this list of yarn stores in our Twin Cities metro area. Yup, you counted right – 27. How can a metropolitan area of 2 million people support 27 yarn stores, plus innumerable Michaels and Jo-Anns as well?? But I digress… no surprise.

Sunday morning I cast on the first mitten and made pretty good progress. Since I know you’re all wondering how to point out its ugliness in a tasteful fashion, yes, yes, the mitten should be much less ugly after it has been felted. The funky spiraling should smooth out a bit and be kind of interesting.

(The pattern is from a knitting class I took in 2001 – I learned how to knit on dpns in that class.) Anyway, by late afternoon I was tired of the mittens, so I started to make wine charms. These will be Christmas presents for my stepmom and for my brother and sister-in-law.

I’ve never done any beading before. Dang, those beaders are some patient people! I was cussing up a storm, and a tiny amount of blood was shed. (I’d like to claim that I’ve never shed blood while knitting, but alas… I have.) Blurry results of 2.5 hours hard labor below.

My crappy digital camera is driving me insane! Usually the only part of the photo that’s in focus is the upper left corner. Strangely, the upper left corner tends not to be where the auto focus was pointed. Any of you knit bloggers who have nice point-and-shoot digital cameras (with optical zoom) – I would love recommendations at this point.

Probably anyone reading this would love for me to get recommendations, too.

And here’s today’s gratuitous cat picture:

“This shoebox is great! Put that camera away. Can’t you see I’m waiting for you to walk by so I can sneak attack you?”
Randonymity, Those Cats

Christmas cheer

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Pink Rocket got me back for the tag last week. So… I tag Jeanne, Ana, “me” from Bermuda, mama_tulip, and Carrie K (this just seems a bit long for comments, Kellie!).

1. Egg Nog or Hot Chocolate? Silk Nog! Yum. I only get to buy one carton, tho.

2. Does Santa wrap presents or just sit them under the tree? When I was a kid, Santa just left them under the tree. It’s been a long time since there were kids in our family – it will be interesting to see what my brother and sister-in-law do eventually.

3. Colored lights on tree/house or white? So, um, I don’t decorate… but I like both. There’s a classiness to all-white that appeals, and there’s a cheeriness to colored that also appeals.

4. Do you hang mistletoe? I used to when I was a wild twenty-something looking to steal kisses!

5. When do you put your decorations up? I don’t have any decorations. Well, that’s not quite true. I have a purple sequined ball that has a sun on it that’s just so darn nifty I leave it up all year. And Chaos got a Christmas stocking from my sister-in-law last year that I also leave up all year.

6. What is your favorite holiday dish (excluding dessert)? Cornbread stuffing.

7. Favorite Holiday memory as a child? I’m always the one who can’t wait anymore, so I pass out the packages and then we go around and each open one gift per round. I love watching everyone open their gifts. We’ve been doing this since I was a kid.

8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa? I can’t remember, so apparently I wasn’t crushed!

9. Do you open presents of Christmas morning or Christmas eve? Christmas Eve

10. What kind of cookies does Santa get set out for him? He would get a sampling of everything we had on hand – candy cane cookies, spritz cookies, sugar kuchen, candy, and so forth. My dad loves sweets! 🙂

11. Snow! Love it or Dread it? It’s lovely to look at out the window and fun for the occasional snow angel or snowshoeing, but misery to drive in with my rear-wheel drive car.

12. Can you ice skate? Hello? I’m from Minnesota. Like, duh. That said, I really need to have a hockey stick in my hand for good balance.

13. Do you remember your favorite gift? Last year my brother and sister-in-law made Casa de Chaos for us, which has provided much entertainment for both Chaos and I.

14. What is your favorite Holiday Dessert? Pumpkin pie with freshly whipped cream, followed closely by candy cane cookies and these amzing chocolate-covered coconut balls that my grandma used to make

15. What is your favorite holiday tradition? See #7 above

16. What tops your tree? No tree = no top

17. Which do you prefer Giving or Receiving? Both are pretty fun, but I’d have to say giving outweighs receiving.

18. What is your favorite Christmas Song? I Believe in Father Christmas by Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, followed closely by the speed-metal version of The Little Drummer Boy by the Hoodoo Gurus, and that great David Bowie and Bing Crosby duet
Edited 12/14/05: D’oh! I can’t believe I forgot The Christians and the Pagans by Dar Williams! One of the best holiday songs ever..

19. Do you have a wreath on your front door? No, but my neighbor down the hall does, so I carried Chaos out to look at it.

20. What do you want most for Christmas this year? A decent digital camera! But that wasn’t on my Christmas list. It’d be great if my brother built a shelf add-on for my computer desk.

“What the hell are you doing, Mom?”

Knitting, Those Cats

Dratted hat

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Last night I finished knitting the hat for Maranda’s baby and happily tossed it into my knitting bag with nary a care in the world. When I woke up this morning, I had one of those sinking feelings. You know what I’m talking about – the sense that something is very wrong in your knitting world. In a flash, I knew what it was: the baby hat was monstrously large.

I dragged out to my knitting bag, pulled out the hat, checked the gauge, realized it was the first time I’d checked the gauge for the project (always a bad sign after the project is complete), and determined that the hat was about 2″ too large. Instead of the one-year old size, I had the six-year old size. Um, whoops. Note to self – less chardonnay when knitting baby hats.

I played mental gymnastics for a while, trying to figure out how I could still use the hat “as is” (sew a big dart that could be taken out when the kid is 6?), but eventually realized there was nothing to do but rip it back a few increases.

Fortunately Chaos did not help with this step, because while I’m obviously pretty good at tangling yarn, he’s a master. I’ve now reknitted the hat and it’s a lot closer to the right size. I figured it was a good sign when it didn’t fit on Hat Head:

Notice Chaos with the poofy tail. Apparently I haven’t had Hat Head out of the closet for quite a while.

Aside
As you might have noticed by now, Chaos is a little deficient in the tail department – probably by about 4″. His tail ends in a dramatic kink, as if the rest were broken off. I know that’s not the case, since he was born tail-deficient (and we thought he was a girl for 8 weeks, but that’s another story entirely). At least Chaos has a much longer tail than his brother Diablo!

I really enjoyed the favorite knitting spot tag, so I’ve taken another picture of my spot – this time from my perspective as I’m knitting.

Why, yes, that is a paper bag from the liquor store lying by Casa de Chaos. 🙂

Knitting

Favorite knitting spot

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Ok, I got tagged to describe and take a picture of my favorite knitting spot at Scout’s Knitted Swag. All I was doing was wandering through the Knitted Southwest webring – I love the Southwest, so I thought I’d see what the knitters there are up to. Now I know that they’re hanging out tagging the unsuspecting!

Anyway, I tag Jeanne, Ana, “me” from Bermuda, Pink Rocket, and Kellie N. Now, I don’t think that Kellie has a blog that she’s admitting to, so she’ll just have to describe her favorite knitting spot in a lot of detail. 🙂

My favorite knitting spot is in the living room of my small…er…cozy condo. It’s a futon chair, and should I have a very scrawny guest who doesn’t move a lot during sleep, he or she could sleep in this chair when it’s pulled out flat. I wouldn’t recommend it – I think you’d have flashbacks to being in a crib as a baby.

The top of the back of the futon is lopsided because Chaos launches himself from the table to the back of the futon, thus heavily compacting the corner. The weird cushion on the ottoman is to support my knees while I knit. One of my innumerable knitting bags (this one with an active project) is beside the chair.

Of course, Chaos had to get in on the action. This picture gives you a tiny glimpse of the bottom of my living room’s most notable feature – a 15-feet long, 6-feet tall mirror. Hey, it was there when I bought the place.. but it sure does open up the living room, as well as making it a lot lighter. There’s no hiding those unwanted pounds in my living room…

Knitting, Randonymity, Those Cats

Hat, cat, and vodka

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Last night I actually got a tiny amount of knitting done on the hat for Maranda’s as yet unborn baby (due on 12/24). I’m very serious about the “tiny” part:

I would’ve gotten more done, but I sat down with everything I needed… except double points. Before I could get up, Chaos was in my lap, purring. Well, ok, I can take a hint – so I just read for a while.

The little red dot near the bottom of the picture is the nose from one of our new fleet of sparkly mice. Chaos has innumerable mice made from real fur, but prefers the fake fur sparkly mice by far. He’ll skid and flip and fly through the air playing fetch with sparkly mice (sorry, my crappy camera’s shutter speed doesn’t do that sort of action), but won’t even get off his butt if I throw real fur mice.

Here’s new red sparkly mouse (with ripped off tail peeking into the corner of the picture), good ol’ sparkly purple mouse (you can’t tell that his face is missing, but you can tell that he’s rather dented), and a blur on the right indicating an incoming cat paw. Sparkly brown mouse is missing in action, so was unable to be part of the picture.

Ok, here’s a weird thing about me: I am freaky about the smell of colognes and perfumes – and don’t even get me started on the smell of dryer sheets. Part of it isn’t so freaky, I suppose, since I’m allergic to a lot of cologne and perfume. The other part of it is… most cologne and perfume just smells like chemicals to me. Icky. I’ll take a nice clean person smell any day.

So what this is all leading up to is… there was a knock on my door at 7:30 am this morning. Now on most days, I would’ve been sitting at my happy little desk in my happy little cubicle since 6:30 am. But on Wednesdays I get to work from home, so I was sitting in my sweats at my computer in my bedroom. At the door is my poor half-frozen neighbor Ron from down the hall. Seems that when he’d started his car and hopped out to scrape the windows, the dastardly car locked itself up, leaving Ron out in the very cold weather with no keys or gloves. Another neighbor let him in the building, and he showed up at my door to use my cell phone (which is all I have, phonewise). No problem. So he used my phone to call work and the car lockout place a few times, and after about 45 minutes of trying to play with Chaos while Chaos hissed at him, he was on his merry way.

I picked up my phone and it smelled like… cologne. Ewwww. So I windexed it and let it dry, then had to take a call from work. Afterwards, I could smell the cologne from the phone on my face. Double ewwww. Obviously the windex didn’t do the trick. So I dug deep into my closet for my special bottle of smell remover:

The phone smells fine now. No, no, it has nothing to do with imbibing the scent remover so that I don’t care about the cologne smell anymore. Look at it. Have you ever heard of the brand? Would you put that stuff in your body?!

Those Cats

Chaos: A photographic journey

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Haven’t done any knitting in the past few days, so here are a few pictures of Chaos to provide a better idea of how bizarre he really is.

Why, yes, that is a paper bag from the liquor store on his head. No, no, I’m not torturing him. It all started when I dropped one of those bags on the floor when he was a kitten, and he got his head stuck in it. I rescued him… and he did it again. And again. And again. Now I leave a bag out at all times, and he’ll wander up to it, pop his head in, and proceed to walk around (with his special “I have a bag on my head” walk) and climb onto things. Which seems dangerous to me, but hey.

This shot also provides a lovely view of his jungle pouch. Ok, yeah, so he got a little heavy last year… but he did have a jungle pouch when he was born. It was much cuter then.

Chaos loves books. Please note that this is not a public library approved use of your library books.

“Hey baby, wanna get lucky?”

Knitting, Those Cats

Some WIPs…

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Beyond the active WIPs (works in progress) that I’ve already mentioned (Koigu Falling Leaves socks, blue and tan baby pullover, sock yarn baby sweater), I have a few others hanging around the house… I’m not exactly sure how many, just that they’re around somewhere (probably with the exact needles I need right now) and I have a vague sense of guilt that they’re not done. So I decided to start tracking them down.

We begin with a tote bag I never use because it’s stuffed full of WIPs that I’d rather not think about.

Below is a poorly conceived tank top. I actually like the swirling (from not alternating skeins of variegated yarn – let that be a lesson to you), but it ended up too short. I picked up around the bottom and added a spiral lace border. All I need to do is crochet around the neck and armholes, but… I don’t want to finish it because I don’t want to wear it. I’ve decided it looks silly with the lace border at the bottom. And I think I’d rather have this heavy cotton yarn (Brushstrokes cotton) as a cardigan than as a tank anyway. So really, I should just rip it out and be done with it, right? Oh well. Back in the bag it went.

Obviously, a petal washcloth. Completed, except for weaving in the ends. However, this was to be the first of four petal washcloths for my family for last Christmas. Not quite so finished looking when you consider it as part of a set of four, is it?

As I was dragging WIPs out to photograph them, I realized several things. The first is that I have a lot of projects in black. No surprise, as I wear a lot of black. Why knit hot pink when I won’t wear it?

The second is that black projects do not photograph well with my crappy digital camera. Hmm, would I wear hot pink, taking its photographic qualities into consideration? Nope, probably not.

The third is that my black cat, chosen over the white kitten because I wear a lot of black, doesn’t photograph well either. I suppose I could take him back to my brother’s house and switch him out for his snowy white brother, Diablo, but my brother has vowed that my evil cat shall never again enter his house.

The fourth is that Chaos is, well, not exactly evil, but definitely very, very busy and sometimes naughty. Knitting projects being photographed have a magnetic effect on him.

But I digress… The picture below is Door County Cable in black Cotton Fleece. The body was knit in the round up to the armpits. When I started to go back and forth, I got really confused and put the project away in a snit. Two years later, I might not find the directions as confusing… or I might still. Best not to find out.

This is a pair of black Fortissima socks for my dad, promised for his birthday two years ago… or was that three? The problem here is obvious, there being only one sock…

Yet another black project. This is a tank top knit in fingering weight (#25 from Sandnes Book 0404 in Fortissima cotton), but the cat playing with the needles on the project is more interesting than the cat-free pictures of the project itself. The tank was going quite well until I lost my mind while picking up stitches for the armhole edging, picked up far fewer than I needed, and turned the armhole into a tourniquet. This project and I are on hiatus. It’s winter. I don’t need a tank top for months.

Here’s a mobius cat bed for Chaos. Since it still has a hole in the bottom (and is definitely not felted yet), he found the row counter much more interesting. I put this project aside one hot and humid day this summer – it filled my entire lap with its way too warm self, and lured Chaos in for a nap. Sounds perfect, now that it’s cold out! But… I had forgotten that this project existed. Whoops. As soon as I get some of this baby knitting done, I’ll be back to this (if I remember I put it back in the WIP bag, that is).

If you’re wondering why the cat bed isn’t black, it’s because I was planning ahead… this time. I’ve already knit Chaos a black felted cat bed, and as you can see below (Chaos at six months), it’s quite difficult to get a good picture of a black cat in a felted black cat bed. Check out the claw action from the happy paws. He loved his felted cat bed, and still tries to squoosh into it sometimes. If he’s ever successful, he’ll have to be surgically removed. Hence the need for the giant mobius cat bed, so this one can be passed on to someone with a smaller cat.