Big sulk

Not that I blame it. It gets bitten, then it gets hurty, then it gets manhandled into a basket, taken to the vet and stabbed with a syringe, and then it gets shut in and forced to use.... shudder... a litter box. (I think it's more fed up with the final point than any of the others, frankly; but we go back on Saturday morning and maybe they'll lift the curfew then...)

The Bug is better today, though (limping rather than hopping); thanks for good wishes expressed on the blog and at I Knit this evening! And yes, Katie - my manager was very cool and I am grateful for that. Over two and a half years, I've not had to take a day's leave at less than a week or so's notice, including for things like funerals; so while yesterday was pretty inconvenient in business terms, I think I'd built up a reasonable record for reliability and she did realise that as far as I was concerned it was a genuine emergency! I'm sure being a cat-owner helped with the understanding, too, though.

This morning at work was fun - met with a fellow taxonomy specialist and had a good natter about common problems; it's always good to know you're not alone (or just a lunatic); and to remember how good it is working in an organisation which takes information seriously. The afternoon was less fun, getting to grips with the new Parliamentary constituencies ahead of the election, and recording what the boundary changes/previous constituencies were - surprisingly complex.

And talking of constituencies, I was leafleted-in-person by one of the Parliamentary candidates for mine at the station in the village, at 6:56 this morning as I headed in hoping to catch up with my e-mail before my meeting. I can only commend his industriousness.

Big alteration...

... in the plans today; last night the Bug appeared after a day or so AWOL (not totally unusual this time of year but she usually comes in for food), and wasn't putting weight on one front leg; when I looked more closely there was a rather unpleasant oozy hole in her leg... So I put the cat flap on "in only" and e-mailed work to say I'd be in late because I was going to need to take her to the vet's in the morning.

At which point I made that crucial mistake of forgetting that actually she's quite a bright cat when it comes to escapology - so when I got down this morning there was no sign of her. At some point in the night, she'd worked out that if she got a claw caught in the edge of the flap, she could pull it towards her and flee; I should have set it on "no entrance or exit". GAH!

So in the end, I took a day's emergency leave; and waited (and waited) for her to show up. I asked the neighbours if they'd seen her, walked round the block repeatedly, called for her, you name it. At noon or so (by which time the day had seemed endless) she hopped in for some dinner and I called the vet; a few hours later we were home with the inevitable week's course of antibiotics, an injection of anti-inflammatories and a diagnosis of a bite-induced abscess... Thankfully a friend offered to take me there and back... And the Bug already had an appointment for Saturday morning, supposedly for a blood test which might or might not happen depending on how quickly the antibiotics kick in... So she should be fine in a few days; and tomorrow I need to catch up on quite an important work seminar which was meant to be the main point of my day.

I'm very glad my manager is also a cat-owner - she realised all I could do was wait, was great about the fact that I was going to be missing a catch-up meeting and the seminar, and suggested that I could work from home for part of the day if I wanted to rather than taking the whole day as leave. But my concentration was completely shot...

While waiting, I could have put in some quality knitting time, but again, the concentration just wasn't there. Luckily, I unearthed this: a sock started at the folk festival last year, which was then lost in one clear-up and found in another... When I abandoned them they were about halfway through the broad yellow stripe, so a fair amount of progress was made while I was listening distractedly to audiobooks while waiting for the noise of the catflap!



These are my Nymphadora socks, knitted in the Tonks [warning; Harry Potter spoilers under link!] colourway from Opal's Harry Potter range, now sadly discontinued... for this reason alone, I think I might be keeping these for myself. Tonks was a favourite character even before I discovered the library/shapeshifter connection... I bet JK Rowling was aware of it though - it's just too good to be a complete coincidence.

The day ended better than it started - having looked up the large number of cancelled trains this morning just before setting off for the station, I was somewhat aggrieved to find mine had joined them only 12 minutes later... Presumably the people who update the website don't get up as early as the people intending to travel on the trains... And of course it was raining...

However, I made an excursion to Muji at lunchtime (ostensibly for pens for Wibbo, who's exiled out of Mujiland) and the sun was shining, and after a reasonably productive day at work, I met a friend for dinner (the Papaya Tree on Kensington High Street; I'd recommend it for food and service; apparently, so would Michael Winner; but you can't have it all...) and the train home worked, albeit with only half the number of carriages.

Checking blogs when I got back, funniest LOLcats for a long while, if you've ever had one of those cats who's permanently on the wrong side of a closed door...

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

All Hallows

We don't do Hallowe'en much on the Green; no trick-or-treaters, not much pumpkinnery; it's not really a UK thing and this is a pretty traditional village. Sadly, we haven't had penny-for-the-guy either...

However, this is one of the funnier things I've seen in a while...



Those cats are so even-tempered. I know I'd be cut to ribbons if I tried this with the Bug, but I know a lot of US indoor cats are de-clawed so maybe that's it... the big one in the tutu looks so much like Tilda. She used to just sit down if she felt foolish, too...

The view from the knitting...

... on a lovely sunny afternoon in summer.

Just as well I didn't need that pattern, then - I was still garter-stitching on the Wool Peddler Shawl at that point while reading Michael Connolly's The Scarecrow... It all got a bit ugly when I started in on the lace...

London tourism, part 1

On Tuesday of the week I was on holiday, I went down to London for the day to be a tourist. I started off at Piccadilly Circus tube station...


and walked down Piccadilly, past Fortnums with its wonderfully strange lamps
to the Royal Academy of Arts which was looking very pretty in the sunlight.

On the way into the courtyard, a brief pilgrim stop at the society for the secular patron saint of classifiers.
Sir Joshua Reynolds appeared to be in fine fig, complete with garland...

I went to the J W Waterhouse exhibition, which was rather wonderful - 'mysterious females with ambiguous intentions', in the main (that was taken from one of the bits of blurb on the walls)... All but one or two of his most famous paintings were there, most of which I'd only seen in books. Lots of people doing textile-type things in the paintings - the Lady of Shalott with her tapestry, of course, but also Penelope with her loom - I love the way she's using her teeth, there... Circe poisoning the waters was a new one on me, as were many of the earlier history paintings. It was a reasonably sized exhibition, and there was enough to see without it being overpowering.

I headed south, via Jermyn Street where the traditional tailors seem still to be going strong

and down to Pall Mall heading for St James's Park; this is part of St James's Palace.

The view across the lake was, as ever, spectacular - although the pelicans were obviously a bit too hot to be bothered and were slumped on their rocks like untidy heaps of feather dusters.

This squirrel was eating pieces of sandwich people passed to him - he'd come over and take the stuff out of their hands...

And another piece of fauna from Lower Marsh, where I headed next - the cat belonging to what the butler wore squidged against the front window in the sun...

No explanation needed for why I might be in Lower Marsh...

And then it was lunchtime... More photos later when I get them cropped and uploaded...

Lovely Sunday

Gill paid a visit today... She's probably not going to thank me for this picture but there you go...


We had lunch; we nattered; we looked at the garden. Gill is a wise woman and brought both inhabitants of the house their drug of choice. [Chablis, in my case]. There are many, many reasons why the Bug loves Gill; but a new, refillable, washable, catnip mouse may well come quite high on her list.

Come back soon, Gill, or I'll come over and we can do the Midsomer Morse Murder tour! And thanks again... Even though I won't be at Wonderwool Wales, some of my hand-dyed yarn will be, on the Woolly Workshop stand!

Gill also exhibited her bee-shepherding skills. Which reminds me of the extremely funny YouTube clip that spinningfishwife had on her blog:

Thankyou, America...

... for living up to the ideals of possibility and progress many of us in Europe admire you for, and had almost forgotten in the events of the last several years ... *


And the speech was wonderful. I fell asleep at 1:30 with the radio on when everything was in the balance, and woke at the roar before the acceptance speech sometime before 5 - I had to go back this morning and look at the language again to see whether I'd been dreaming or not.


But this is a knitting blog and there's been hardly any knitting here for a while... So, on the first day of the New Era, I went to buy beads. And forgot to take my camera. Which was a shame, because Trafalgar Square had a huge group of very tired and emotional American youth who were still wearing their Obama gear and presumably had been up all night at one of the many bars and pubs which were hosting election night parties; and there were men on ladders cleaning pigeon poo off the Cenotaph in preparation for this weekend's wreath-laying; and one of the horses at Horseguards Parade was way less happy than usual about having its picture taken with flash and was getting a little fractious (there are now health and safety notices about horses being big kicky bitey things on occasion, right next to the horses, which must annoy them no end...); so it was all quite amusing. I walked up to Covent Garden to the Bead Shop (getting out with only £2.23 of damage for 100g of #6 beads...), and back, and had lunch, all in my designated hour - and bumped into an old college friend on the way back along Whitehall...



Oh yes; knitting. Anyway, the beads are here - with the yarn - and completely fail to illustrate the total perfection of the colour match. Yes, the beads look way too blue here - but they are right, honestly.

This is destined to be a shawl for my mother who has requested one - which is great. While it's a time-consuming thing (laceweight silk/cashmere and a reasonable size for keeping out draughts) it's also a much more pleasant use of time than wandering forlornly around shops hoping to spot the Perfect Thing... I'm still looking for a pattern, but she suggested the beads and the yarn colour. I spent an hour or so of my fretting-at-the-radio time last night in dyeing the yarn and I'm pleased with the way it turned out - it's a proper grey rather than being overly pinky or bluey or whatever. To my eyes, anyway.

(And to finish up, you have to admire a cat who muscles her way into a photo purely to look affronted; naming her Amelia Peabody was possibly a mistake.)

*Although, California, what do you think you're doing with Prop 8?

P.S.

We reached an accommodation of sorts, the cat, the chart and I...

(Yes, that's the rest of the pattern underneath her. You need to choose your battles wisely with the Bug...)

Helping...

For those not fond of cat pictures on knitting blogs, move away now, nothing to see, etc.; but this is the view from my knitting today:

Also known as "oh, was you trying to read that little chart thingie? Never mind... I is prettier..."

Gah. Can't blog the project as it's Christmas knitting...

7, and medals...

Happy 7th Birthday, Bug (AKA Jarrahkatt Aimee, AKA Jarrahkatt Amelia Peabody, AKA Mealy-bug, AKA Bug...).





This is an old photo but a good one... (the book is here....) I'd have taken one tonight, but she gobbled down her birthday-treat tuna and sauntered out of the cat-flap while I was still hunting for replacement camera batteries and is now out prowling the world and seeking things she may devour...


Another lovely night at I Knit. Including Wye Sue, in town for the I Knit Day. I hadn't seen her since... well, we never really quite worked this out but we thought it was probably best part of 2 years...




And a pic of Hypoteneuse. I was cursed by two separate people on the same evening for setting them off on this track....! One of them can be named; I don't know the name of the other person I infected with this stole/shawl; but she's not enjoying it and she definitely knows me now! That's it folded in two - worn over a shirt and jeans, it comes to mid-calf on me without looking too much like a horse-blanket, but I'll doubtless need to wrap it round myself more times in the autumn...


And because I'm ridiculously proud of having done both things in the period of the Olympics, here are my medals...

The weekend project

I'd like to think this was putting up pics of the very wonderful KTog 5th birthday get-together on Wednesday night - and I'll get to that on the KTog blog this weekend too - but there are a lot of pictures to crop strategically...

But no, it's finally getting round to painting the dining room. To this effect, if you've not got completely cheesed off with the irregularity and non-knitting-content of this blog over the last few months, please cheer me along. I'm intending to take a pic every 12 hours over the weekend; at 8:30am and 8:30pm; and to blog on progress once a day...

So here's the first shot - as I walked through the door this evening at 8:30pm.

Thursday, 8:30pm



Most of the pictures are down, but that's about it. There's still a very large pile of yarn on the table, and on the floor... You will note the resentful feline apparition by the door at the left. This door is not often closed and is generally wedged open. It took approximately 20 seconds - the time taken to slam the door quite hard to get it to shut, walk through two not-very-big rooms, turn round and aim a camera - for Amelia/Bug to shoot through the cat-flap from the garden at the sound of the door, notice the Problem and start doing the distraught-cat-on-the-wrong-side-of-the-closed-door thing. You'd think she'd been locked away for weeks... But she's a creature of infinite curiosity and extreme patience... always a bad combination...

More tomorrow... if the lurgy that's been stalking me for a week or so doesn't get me first, anyway...

Tomorrow - sugar soap! and Polyfilla! (and does anyone know how to glue stray flaps of ceiling paper back down/up again?)

End of an era

This should really have been posted earlier - as it happened last Friday - but I'm on holiday this week between jobs and it's making me even more inclined to procrastination than usual...


About a month ago, when I first gave notice, I made the mistake of telling another cake-maker at work, Leah, that I'd thought of making a fairy-cake for each month I'd been working for the company, but then realised that would be 165 fairy-cakes which might defeat even our workplace's phenomenal appetite for cake... At which point Leah said it was her birthday the day I was leaving so she'd share the work... and a Plan was Hatched.



This slightly strange photo (taken without flash, so blurred - it looked as if the cakes were in a cave with the flash on!) is a first and last one of my former office with five of the eight plates of cake in situ... Maddy, on the left, is taking photos of the other three plates... From the front - poppyseed and apple-pie spice with lemon glace icing and choc sprinkles; coconut with coconut icing; cherry with rose icing and Barbie sprinkles; unadorned choc chip; vanilla with vanilla icing (Leah used a recipe from here, which was absolutely delicious...) By 4pm when my leaving presentation took place, there were a couple of dozen cakes left, and people were swooping in with sandwich-boxes to take some home to their families...


The speechifying and so on went better than I'd feared - nobody dredged up anything too horrendously embarrassing, I didn't burst into tears (just as well I left reading the very sweet comments in the card till the next day) or say something inappropriate. The colleague who did the gift-choosing was pretty inspired too... raiding my Amazon wishlist for this and this; when it gets to me, one of these; and then finding this lovely mini chest of drawers...





I'm still not sure whether he's seen me vanishing into The Pier every week and looking at their pretty things, but this is great. And I realised when I put it up there that it really reminds me of The Luggage, which I've always thought was more like a merchants' chest than the pirates' treasure chest in the Wikipedia illustration... I'm choosing to believe it has the rest of its legs retracted. Cadet is enjoying lounging around on the top of it for the moment, anyway...



Even the Bug got presents - Whittard now do a Catnip tea. Theoretically, you make the tea and give it to the cat to drink once it's cooled. But I couldn't resist just giving her one of the bags and seeing how long it lasted as a cat toy. Quite a long time, as it turns out. Here's a picture no dignified cat could be proud of...

... she is indeed pushing the bag as far up to her nose as possible using both front paws, and giving herself Mickey Mouse whiskers into the bargain... She still hasn't managed to destroy the first one though!

After work went to the pub, where lots of present and a couple of past colleagues came along... I know a few people from work read this, so thanks, guys, for everything...

Happy Birthday, Bug

The Bug (officially Jarrahkatt Aimee, unofficially Jarrahkatt Amelia Peabody, Amelia, Mealybug or Bug) is 6 today. Which means, I believe, that she's (just) overtaken me in cat-years... She wears them well...

The fun thing about Norwegian Forest Cats is that they change so much with the seasons. Here's Amelia in full winter fig in early March ...



... and here she is in the Summer Short-Haired Version, this evening.


Some of my neighbours are convinced I have two similar cats...

Happy Birthday, Bug.

The kindness of (relative) strangers

So, I taught a course last week, and in the main it went very well... If I'd had the energy over the weekend to unpack my bags, I'd have some samples to show you; another time... Here - look - pretty cat!

I had to advertise for lifts to and from the college at short notice, but thankfully I'm a member of CamLETS; and Judith and Anna stepped up and were wonderful about not only driving me around but also helping with boxes and bags... And my neighbour Ian was on a drawing course and gave me a lift back on the Thursday; and completely beyond the call of duty, drove me there on the Friday despite his course having finished...

Meanwhile Sue has good news on her prospective new flat/house (Sue needs a blog; she's crocheting up a storm these days...) and I went to London and ticked another box in my Unbloggable Non-Knitting Project...

(This is the statue of Oliver Cromwell outside the Houses of Parliament - there's something of the Snape about him...)

And these arrived from Art Van Go

in the usual good time, for this Saturday's second KTog dyeing session.

MS3, stage 3

There's quite a lot of knitting going on here, but most of it of the 'move along, nothing to see' variety. Apart from Mystery Stole 3. Here's Clue 3 roughly blocked. The "shadow of the Cross" effect is slightly creepy, but the light was really bizarre and that's the window-frame in the way... At long last there was enough light to take pictures of the beads, which are subtle but lovely.

The resident inspector seems to approve, anyway.

I made a present for a friend a couple of weeks ago, which has now been handed over, so here's Sue's Pot, drying upside down over the glass jar I use for holding balls of yarn so they don't fly around the floor while I'm knitting. It was made of felted Paterna tapestry wool, a present from Jan a couple of years ago - the colours are gorgeous and it so nearly didn't leave the house...

And this is Sunday night's production - a friend came round with a couple of kilos of jostaberries, and I had a bag of birds' eye chilis left from my Chinese supermarket trip the weekend before, so jelly was made...

Rainy Saturday

Quite productive, though... I did my library shift, proofread Chart B for the Mystery Stole project, went to Ely to do my shopping (and spent quarter of an hour or so in a pub with smokers, reflecting happily that this was the last time I'd have to air out my knitting when I got home!); armed with new audiobooks, I finished Clue 1 on the stole.



This isn't a great picture - but I'm working it on short straight needles (they're Bryspuns, the points are wonderful, but they're only 10" needles). I have an Addi lace needle on order, but it's probably caught up in the postal backlog...

Back to the baby sweater - before she grows out of it...

Oh, and the Bug clearly approves of the Irish Diamond shawl...

Drying out...

... briefly, before the next lot of forecast rain ...

About the only advantage of having Tuesdays off (it's a daft day, really) is when there's a Bank Holiday Monday - the extra day always feels very decadent. I've been sitting drinking tea, thinking about all the housework I ought to have been doing, but actually listening to a rather fabulous Georgette Heyer romance on CD, sewing in ends on the front of the sweater

and knitting sleeves (keeping them in step because some of the yarns are in short supply...)

and spinning up some of the Jacob fleece I washed at the beginning of the month.

Not expertly spun, I know, but it was fun to do, and practice makes perfect and all that... this is the first bobbin, and while it does still have some bits of straw and so on in it, a satisfying amount came out during carding and spinning...

But there's no pleasing some - Bug has sat around disconsolately waiting for the rain to stop...