The humans in this household, Loki had decided, were smarter than the average. They provided canned cat food every morning, one can for him and one for Thor. They cleaned the litter box as soon as it was used so that the dog, the big black one with small brains, would not contemplate a raid on its contents. They staged soft pillows near the walls you could see through, inviting felines to sit in comfort as they observed the neighborhood. Still, they could use coaching when it came to their bedtime.

Last night, Loki had decided it was time for a lesson. He was once again stuck inside the cave that contained the big box upon which they slept. They had pushed the big board into the wall all the way, and no cat could open it from within. Loki had heard of an ancient feline ancestor reputed to have worked out the secret of the shiny ball halfway up the board, but he did not know whether that was true or just pure catlore.The holes to the outside were open, but the invisible shields had been locked into place behind them, effectively keeping every creature inside from tussling with any creature outside.

He walked over the sleeping female. The weight of his body was considerable, and each paw contained pressure equivalent to the weight of five fat chickens. She responded by petting him and murmuring that he should “lie down”. He tried again, and a third time, but the response was the same. It amused him that humans thought catkind would respond to commands. It was time to put The Plan into action.

Slowly, he wandered away as she slipped back into her dreams. Leaping onto the top of the high box that reached nearly to the ceiling, Loki selected his target. He considered the male, but he knew that the repercussions from the big strong man might be more severe than he wanted. It would be the weak female, then. The vulnerable spots would be… yes. The two lumps that protruded from her front when she walked upright. He would have to wait until she turned onto her back, but he didn’t mind waiting. He was very good at it. He remembered back when the humans had read the book about the Apache Indians, how one of the Indians could sneak up on a horse and steal him even when his owner was sleeping not five feet away. Scornfully, Loki assured himself that he could have stolen the horse even if the owner was awake! He sighed, stretched, and waited, his green eyes reflecting moonlight as the night progressed.

Eventually she did turn. Her breathing was soft and steady, and Loki could tell she was dreaming happy dreams. He could see the lumps underneath her sleeping furs, visible and vulnerable. Perfect. He crouched down, head over the edge of the tall box; shifted his paws for the best leverage. He launched himself, then plummeted downward like a diving eagle, turning halfway through his descent so that his front paws landed on one lump while his back ones landed on the other. CATTACK!! he screamed silently as the effect of his leap took immediate shape. The female grunted in surprised pain and would have thrown him off the box had he not anticipated the move and stepped gracefully aside. He heard the black dog respond to her screeches by scratching on the outside of the big board. The little curly dog growled and snapped, and the big male jumped up and opened the door. The female continued to writhe in pain, covering her head with the furs they slept under and curling up into a ball for protection. Too late!

Loki smiled and walked nonchalantly out of the sleeping cave, planning the words with which he would relate his adventure to Thor. It would be a long time before they locked him in again.

Today I finished weaving the second snowflake runner, this one using the same blue warp but an almost-white linen for the weft. It turned out beautifully and I am glad to be done with it. I think my mother-in-law will like it, and it will look stunning under her traditional Pfaltzgraff dinnerware. The other runner was given to my brother-in-law and his wife last Christmas, and they absolutely love it. I hope I’ve convinced them that yes, you do wash it in the washing machine and yes, you do use hot water. Then you just iron it dry. The fancy word for this is “wet finishing“. There are different ways to wet finish different fibers, but linen is one of the easiest. I’ll be ripping the rest of that warp off the loom in a blur. I don’t know what goes on there next, but I can tell you for sure it will NOT be BLUE.

Outside, Annie Oakleaf shows us her fall wardrobe. This is the first time we’ve seen her true colors. She was planted in the front yard last November, but she has adapted beautifully to her new home.

And inside, the newest critters have taken over Sherlock’s basket.

Mom! He's touching me!

If I die from swine flu, will I go to Hog Heaven?

Not that I have the flu, mind you, but I want to be mentally prepared in case people start dropping like pigs around me.  My employer has created a whole Pork Pandemic Plan (my name, not theirs) and is generously telling folks that if they have flu symptoms they should stay home even if they have no sick time left… they will be paid nonetheless.  It heartens me that in this economy and this century companies will actually do what is best for their people.

What would Hog Heaven be like, anyway?  Would we wallow around in mud-colored happiness?  Would there be  bacon substitute?  Would boars be allowed?  One does wonder.

But  I am perfectly healthy and these ruminations are simply the product of my addled pate.  I have the day off today and the luxury of doing nothing is going to my head.

I didn’t get a whole lot of knitting done on my Project, which I am temporarily referring to as “Icy River” although I think it once had a different name.  If a better name pops up I will switch names with no qualms.  I will be qualmless.

If the truth be known, three rows had to be ripped back because I used similar symbols on my chart and chose the wrong color because of it.  This didn’t bother me much.  Mistakes are a part of the process, and knowing how to fix them is part of being a competent knitter.  If I were a surgeon, I would be far less tolerant of error (and if I were a surgeon, you should run far, far away from me). 

And now, because I enjoyed ranting so much in the last post about the use of the French language, I’d like to rant about a gross misuse of our American English:  “flesh” vs. “flush”.  As in, “I need to flesh out this plan.”  Time after tired time, I wince audibly as I hear this instead:  “I need to flush out this plan.”  Does the plan already exist, hiding under some bush to which you will send your hound to scare it out?  No.  Do you want to write the plan on paper and send it swirling down the toilet?  No.  Are you planning to paint rosy cheeks upon a picture of your plan?  No.  What you really mean is that you have, in essence, the skeleton of an idea, and you need to put “flesh” on that skeleton, or “flesh it out”. 

I will indeed be needing to flesh out my design, as it currently has nothing but a sort of swirly haze hovering above the waist area.  In good time.

Here is a fuzzy picture of Malin’s front that I spoke of a couple of posts ago:

Not a Dog Bed. Is a Cat Bed. See?

This weekend I chose to direct my attention to creating a simple cardigan design for a fair isle pattern I worked up three or four years ago, when I still lived on the eastside and didn’t work full time. This was a fulfilling exercise, since it required a complete focus on math. Can I just say here that I admire and adore the folks who created Microsoft Excel? I don’t mean Microsoft as a company– I certainly respect many parts of it, but not every aspect.   Excel, however,  is a powerful and wonderful tool in the belt of a financial analyst, on the desk of a spreadsheet addict,  or in the hands of a middle-aged knitter who simply wants to know how she’s going to knit something before she starts.

I had two goals in mind, really. First, I wanted to know how many stitches to cast on in order to approximate the size I needed and to accommodate an equal number of repeats. Second, I wanted a legitimate approximation of how much yarn of each color I should expect to use.

To accomplish these goals, I used as a template a pattern in a book that had basically the same shape as the garment I want to knit– a long cardigan with side welts at the bottom. The gauge for it was different than my gauge, and so I had to do the math. Then I counted up the stitches of each color in the repeat of the referenced pattern and got a percentage of color per pattern repeat. I looked at the amount of yarn called for in that pattern and extrapolated a range of percentages per count of skeins. For example, 1-3 % of the design would require 1 skein; 4-8% would require 2, and so forth.

To make it even more fun, the put-up for this type of yarn has changed since my reference pattern was printed, so my friend Excel did the calculations for me, including taking into account what yarn I already have, what type of put-up, and what will be required in addition to that. Et voilà*! I had a shopping list that I could send to my favorite tax-free source.  Being paranoid (that is my motto: “Be Paranoid!”) of course I added one skein to each of the twelve colors.  You never can tell.

Breathing a satisfied sigh of accomplishment, I immediately cast on and knit the bottom border while listening to poor Nate Starbucks’ latest predicament.

*This prompts me to rant about the number of people who have no clue about this word.  I see these people writing “walla!” in patterns or on blogs and it just makes me embarrassed for them.  “Walla” is one-half of the name of a particularly sweet onion from the U.S. Northwest, and one-half of the name of a city from the same area, but other than that, it is not a word.  In any language that I know.  So if you want to tell me that you’re excitedly pointing out a Walla-Walla Sweet or that you’ve been selected to receive a key to the city of Walla-Walla Washington, then by all means, say “walla!”.  But if you want to declaim to an interested party that an item is finished and said party should take a look, then say or write ”Voilà!” (complete with accent, and pronouncing the “v” like an English… “v”) which is French and means basically “see, there it is!”  And if you forget how to spell it or how to use it… just don’t try.  Use the rather pedestrian but well understood English:  “There you have it!”  Okay?  Okay.

This week has been one of the busiest my working life has ever seen. Some folks are on vacation, others are ill– those who remain (like me!) shoulder their workload and life goes on. But I need to take a little break here in the middle of my day, and so I will write many tiny words on a neglected blog.

The beautiful summer has ended, and with it goes the obsessive gardening. Instead an urgent need for order and a place for everything has taken over. Each weekend sees me closer to my goal. Most of my yarn is now in accessible storage in my sewing room. I can look at it any time I want, and this of course leads to… knitting.

Recently completed except for a bit of fringe is a Faroese shawl from that shawl book that Schoolhouse Press sells along with a translation by… hmm… is it Marilyn Von Koeppel? Something like that. I used Deerfoot yarn in a blue heather for it, and it turned out quite nicely. This was after I had knit one using Faroese yarn. It turned out okay but much smaller than I had intended, and it needs a lining. I’m not in the mood for a lining.

Also finished is the back of the Starmore Marlin (?) aran that is in Pacific Coast Highway. I think that’s the name of it. I used Jaeger Shetland Aran in a nice brownish wine color. It was great knitting accompaniment while I listened to my husband read Bernard Cornwell’s first book in the Viking series. (I would often find the cable needle stuck behind my ear when we were eating out or going grocery shopping. My daughter threatened a knitting intervention.) After finishing the back I completed the Curve of Pursuit afghan– I do love Blackwater Abbey worsted, but it is not something that is easy to work in garter-stitch– while listening to another Cornwell book, Rebel, from the author’s civil war series about a young northerner-turned-rebel, Nathaniel Starbuck. Of course we all know that it was really the War of Northern Aggression, right?

[During the same time frame that we were respectively knitting and reading those books, I managed to read the new Gabaldon book, An Echo In The Bone, as well as the second book in the Dorothy Dunnett series, Queen's Play... both were quite satisfying.]

I then tried to start Beadwork using some gray Wendy 5-ply Guernsey, but I had two problems with it. First, the heatheriness of the yarn obscured the texture of the design too much to suit me. Second, knitting this design back and forth is too torturous. It begs to be knit in the round, because every row has crossed stitches that include at least one twisted stitch. It’s a lovely design (Jade Starmore) but not for after-a-long-hard-day knitting.

So, until I’m ready to knit the front of Marlin I’m temporarily knitting on Lochinvar (which I started a couple of years ago using navy Guernsey) while we go on to the second Nathaniel Starbuck book. Meanwhile, I’m waiting for the Jamieson & Smith yarn to arrive from Schoolhouse Press so that I can started on the Bressay jumper from Ann Feitelson’s book, and wondering whether I have all the ingredients for Stillwater from the book of the same name.

As far as other fiber arts go, I’ve managed to get both looms in the same area, along with all the weaving yarns and equipment, which is a huge win in the organization department. They are both calling for new projects, and I’m thinking of weaving ripsmatta carpet squares one of these days.

Quilting has been on hold for now, but the sewing project on deck is recovering sofa seat cushions, which is a duty rather than a pleasure, but will surely bring us all pleasure when it is done.

Perhaps I will augment this post with pictures in the next couple of days. Or maybe I’ll be too busy with other projects.

Ten years ago the notion that I would voluntarily spend hours gardening would have amused me and everyone who knew me. But this year, given a largely unpainted canvas of dirt and a willing partner, the gardener within me decided to emerge. There have been many days since May when I dig and weed and plant for hours at a time. At day’s end I take off my gloves, put away my tools, and come inside tired but satisfied.

I am rewarded for my efforts every time I go outside. I walk along the paths and take in an amazing variety of plant life. I notice everything about them– new growth, signs of stress, scent and blooms. The stands of iris and spiderwort around the pond; the calla lilies and Lilies of the Nile, the freesias and hosta, lobelia, rock roses, lilacs, and countless other plants: each have their own particular sort of beauty. I am humbled by my lack of knowledge about the world of gardening, but I am learning a little more every day.

It is a joke between us that my trips to the nursery are worse than the stereotypical man’s trip to the hardware store. Often I come home with more than can be planted before the day’s end. Yet there are still spaces to be filled, and the work will extend into the years ahead. The atypical beauty of this Seattle summer has been a catalyst for my sudden passion. I am grateful that for once the temperatures have been above normal and that unlike most years, this summer began well ahead of the fourth of July holiday.

It is not suprising, then, that my devotion to gardening has taken considerable time and interest away from fiber arts. But my loom, my glorious Glimakra, does not go ignored and there is a shawl on the knitting needles that gets enough attention every couple of days to grow by a few rows.

In April we lost our Whiskers to advanced kidney disease, poor old thing. We do miss him, but he had lived a long and happy life. We buried him in the back yard beside the koi that preceded him by two years; we like to think he gets a good laugh out of that.

Not too long ago we went in search of a feline replacement, for a home is incomplete without a cat.

“Let’s get a female this time,” I said.
“Let’s get a kitten, or at least one that is six months old or younger,” we said.

Thus it was agreed that we would look for a female kitten. And some days later, we brought home our new addition: two male cats, just over a year old. We thought we went to choose a cat, but it turned out (as it so often does) that we were the chosen ones.

The two who adopted us had always been together. They had been living with a bachelor who acquired a girlfriend who claimed to be allergic to cats, so he dumped them unceremoniously into an already crowded cat rescue house. The bachelor had given them the names Goose and Maverick, but this was all wrong. We knew right away that these two were Loki and Thor. Loki has proven many times that he is indeed like that mischief-maker of Norse mythology. For example, sitting atop the kitchen counter, he stages an object at its very edge and patiently waits for Claire (the lab mix) to pass by. He then pushes it ever so gently off the counter so that it will land on her head. He also thinks he can help me weave, though keeping his balance on top of the beater bar defies even his cat powers.

Thor is much more serious. A silvery Siamese mix, he sits gazing over all of us with icy blue eyes, surveying his new kingdom with satisfaction. He prefers to be affectionate on his own terms. He is a literary cat and will most often sit on my lap when I am reading.

I’ve hung up my knitting needles for a while, but have not at all ignored the material girl within.  Instead, after a bit of work to get my sewing room established, I have been enamored of making the quilt tops, both hand and machine pieced.  The actual quilting part is a long way away.

I investigated the national quilt registry, looking for quilts that were similar to those of my childhood visits to relatives, and came across a very old seven sisters pattern.  I was so entranced with that worn and stained rag that I have begun a seven sisters quilt, using the technique of English paper piecing and employing a variety of civil war reproduction fabrics.  It has only taken me two weeks to create only one half of one block; it may be a while before a whole quilt top appears.

Meanwhile, I look forward to warmer days when I will finally get to see our new tree (planted in November) bud for the first time.  Her name is Annie Oakleaf; she is a tall slender beauty, about 15 feet high.  She was our answer to the brutal murder of the neighbor trees, though it will take many years before she provides the same grandeur and shade as the old walnut.

The economical news has been so depressing that I have taken the ostrich approach, reverting to my former tactics of not listening to the radio or reading the newspaper.  It still leaks out, though, the depressing news of foreclosures and bankruptcies and bailouts.  It permeates the workplace and is visited upon me in the form of friends and relatives being laid off; it shows itself in the lighter commuter traffic and the number of shops I visit only to find closed.

A co-worker returned from a three week visit to Ireland this week, and when I asked him had he visited Waterford (the factory) he informed me that it had closed.  Apparently our young people are not continuing the tradition of using real crystal, and the whole industry is in decline.  The artistry and knowledge that went into a legendary product will no doubt be gone in a few years, replaced by plastics and gauche glass masquerading as elegant tableware.

Sherlock was disturbed to hear this news.  He always enjoys the use of fine crystal.

I wandered over to Ravelry a few moments ago to delete my account… only I found that there is no way to do such a thing.  Let’s see, I believe you can delete your profile on almost every other “social” network, so why not on Ravelry? 

I gave it over a year.  I’ve checked on my friends’ activity, read their blog posts when notified through the friends’ pages, and conducted fruitless searches for patterns that were exceptional.  In short:  I’ve wasted enough time.  And my feeling is, that if you can’t support a thing you shouldn’t be part of it.  I don’t want to be a part of it any more, but apparently all I can do is send an email and be patient until some unknown person deletes my account, but of course, that person is preoccupied with other things, and my account is their lowest priority.  Honestly, you can’t’ tell me that someone who can program an entire social site (good or bad) can’t figure out how to allow users to delete their own accounts.  It would be to their advantage, after all, to rid the database of extraneous data that consumes space and bogs down performance.  Perhaps it’s the bragging rights that are at stake here… it’s much more impressive to your geek friends if you “own” a few terabytes of data rather than just a few gigs.  But that doesn’t compute when you run a “free” website.  Maybe advertisers bank on x number of accounts being present, and therefore the accounts should persist even though they are inactive?

The thing is, things never change.  Knitters are still knitting essentially the same things, over and over and over and over.  Would I wait breathlessly for the reviews of the very same books over and over again, even though I’d already read the ones which sparked an interest?  I think not.

If you really want my opinion (too late!), Ravelry was a handy excuse for a cowboy programmer to create his own social site.  I could be wrong here:  this programmer could have had thousands of destitute knitters begging him to create the site.  And admittedly,  thousands of knitters, like sheep, came to graze in his grass.  Millions of forum posts attest to the fact that people just don’t have a rich enough life in the real world; they must augment it with forays into the imaginary worlds of other people. Not only that, but they must crown the King and Queen (unlike real social networking sites) and their little dog, too.  [yes, I detest Boston Terriers, even though I have a sister who breeds them].  I don’t know these people, and can truthfully state that I have no opinion as to their goodness or badness; I can only form opinions based on their output.

So, sounds like I have a mouth full of sour grapes, does it?  Actually, I haven’t been happier in my entire life.  It’s a situation that highlights things like Ravelry, for which I have no need and which stand in the way (if used frequently) of doing the things I really enjoy, like spending time with my husband and children.

So, if you find yourself sitting in front of the computer glancing with glazed eyes over all the Ravelry …. um… content, just ask yourself if there’s something that people you love might want to be doing with you right now.  Because if the answer is yes, even just once, you should turn off the computer and be with real people.