What do you mean, you haven’t been knitting? I am shocked. Shocked and horrified!

Happy Feline Friday! :)

I was hoping one of them would pull a Maru and go diving through the box. No such luck.

If you don’t know of Maru the Cat, you probably should go check out his videos.

3KCBWDAY5 – Something A Bit Different
This is an experimental blogging day to try and push your creativity in blogging to the same level that you perhaps push your creativity in the items you create.There are no rules of a topic to blog about but this post should look at a different way to present content on your blog.

What’s this, mama? Yarn! You’re playing with yarn! …what do you mean, I can’t play with you? You’re a yarn-hog. Look at you sitting there keeping all the lovely yarn to yourself. Come on, let me play too! Let me at it! Won’t you drag it around for me to chase? Pleeeease? Not even a little bit? Hey, why are you pushing me away?

You know I love yarn. All strings, really. I can’t resist it. How about I play with your shoelace instead? …Fine. You’re no fun. Never let me do anything I want. Hrmph. See if I care. I’m going to sulk right here in front of you so you can feel bad. I don’t care if you say you’re making the best thing ever, you’re not sharing and that’s not right. I heard you tell the other cat just the other day that he needed to share with me. You should take your own advice, mama. Sharing is caring.

Totally not looking at you. That’s what you get for not sharing the yarn. I don’t care if you say that it’s bad for me, all I know is that you’re not sharing. Do you think I care that loose fibres could give me a stomachache? No. Not at all. It’s *yarn*, mama. Why are you being so mean to me? What did I do to deserve this?

You just wait. When you go to bed tonight I’m going to figure out how to get at this ‘intar net‘ you keep talking about, in the warm box with all the buttons I’m not allowed to touch when you can see me. I’ve been watching you and I think I know how it’s done – and you thought I was just sleeping next to you the whole time. I’m going to paw at all the buttons until I get to ‘rowvr ree‘, and then I’ll tell everyone just how mean you are.

…Can I have some yarn *now*? Look, it’s just the littlest bit of yarn left. Hey, where are you going? Come back here with that yarn! I hate you forever! Or until dinnertime, whichever comes first!

(Happy Feline Friday!)

To read what other people are writing for today’s prompt in Knitting and Crochet Blog Week, search Google for 3KCBWDAY5 or click here.

I’m bored of these toys. Can’t I have some new ones? How about that yarn you’re always dangling just out of reach?

He is such a handsome cat.

I totally rocked my Saturday.

There was a lot to do: garbage dropoff, a trip to the hardware store, grocery shopping, fishpond maintenance, cat brushing and yardwork. To be honest, it was a little overwhelming to face a day like this for the first time on my own. But I sat myself down with a cup of coffee (which I made without any sort of coffeemaker at all, because all the coffeemaking devices left with Pirate-Ex, but which was awesome nonetheless and possibly even more awesome for not needing a specialized device) and told myself, “Self, you can be anyone you want to be. Do you want to be someone who goes wah wah wah I can’t do this it’s too much, I hate being a girl in a hardware store and I know nothing about fishponds or do you want to be someone who goes HECK YEAH (I may have used a stronger word than ‘heck’) I can TOTALLY do all this! RAWR! I am going to STEP UP!

In a move that should surprise absolutely no one who knows me, I chose RAWR over wah wah. (Useless trivia: my desktop computer is named RAWR.)

And to reward myself for being RAWR I stopped at the local artsycrafts store and bought the sock yarn I’ve been ooh’ing at – do those stripes say “I want to be Jaywalker Socks“? Maybe! or maybe they’ll just be plain socks! – as well as three colourways of Sugar and Cream for washcloths and a new swiffer mop cover as the old one doesn’t fit quite as well as I’d like anymore. The mere thought of knitting anything else in cotton makes my fingers seize up in protest, so I’m going to make up a crochet pattern for it if I can’t find one I like.

(Conveniently, I had a 20% off everything coupon for the artsycrafts store in my pocket.)

I expected the cats to get between my camera and the yarn, but for the most part they were quite well-behaved. Kipling snuck into the frame once or twice…

Anyway, it was such a successful day. I tossed garbage bags and didn’t hesitate to ask for help in the hardware store and bought only healthy groceries within my budget, and I fixed the fishpond all by myself without even getting too wet, and raked leaves and cleared two flowerbeds and I even ran up the driveway, and despite (because of?) all this activity my back isn’t even complaining too much. Also, I brushed the cats, since they’re shedding for springtime. One cat absolutely loves being brushed and the other only barely tolerates it. Can you guess which cat is which?

Oh yeah, so making coffee without any coffee-making devices! You’ll need a heat-resistant glass measuring cup (I’d say a Pyrex, but mine’s actually Anchor Hocking. Either way, one of those.) and a good strong paper towel, like Viva. Add the right amount of boiling water into the measuring cup. Now, you don’t actually want your water to be boiling when you put the coffee in; you want it to be a few degrees less, but when the water hits the glass it’ll cool down just enough. Then put coffee on top of the water. The general recommendation is for two tablespoons of coffee per eight ounces of water (about 240 ml). Don’t stir for 90 seconds, just let it float and bloom on top of the water. Then stir and wait another 90 seconds or so. The coffee shouldn’t be in the water for more than four minutes total, or it’ll get bitter. Pour through the paper towel into your mug; most of the grounds should have already sunk to the bottom of the measuring cup anyway. Et voila, coffee sans coffeemaker!

I bought more coffee at the grocery store. I’m determined to perfect this method. My first attempt was strong but sour; the suggestion I found was to use *more* coffee rather than less to avoid sourness.

He really is the upside-downiest cat of all time.

No paparazzi! No paparazzi!

Finally, this sock that’s been traveling around with me since Thanksgiving is finished. (Now I have to knit its mate. Such is the way of socks.) I wanted to do a toe-up sock, but the usual short-row heels don’t fit entirely right, so I went looking for different methods. This pattern from Wendy Johnson has a gusset and an interesting heel shape. It fits pretty well, though I’m not sure about the thick stripes on the heel section. This pattern would probably look better with a semi-solid or variegated yarn. I made the socks quite tall – almost too tall, as the ribbed cuff is stretching to fit over the bottom of my calf muscle. Once they’re washed they’ll probably be just perfect.

I used a figure-eight toe with sixteen loops, which has worked well, but on my next toe-up socks I’m going to experiment and try fourteen loops for a slightly longer toe with a wee bit more tapering. One change I made to the pattern was to extend the length of the gusset, and I’m glad I did. I snuck in six extra rounds during the gusset increases to accommodate my extra-long feet. The socks would have been too short otherwise, and probably too tight over the instep. I’m glad it worked out well; I would have been grumpy if they hadn’t fit right and I had to rip out the whole heel and gusset section!

I couldn’t resist taking a picture of the sock perched in the redbud tree. This is the only one in my yard, but I see them everywhere and I love them. Maybe this year I’ll take some cuttings from my tree and try rooting them! Having a line of redbuds in the yard would be beautiful. I could alternate them with forsythia for the best spring colour ever. We’re supposed to have nice weather this weekend; perhaps I’ll put in some time outside working on the flowerbeds… when I’m not working on the second sock. I’d like to go for a walk too, or maybe get back on the bike. Lots to do!

Spring on the mountain is just so pretty.

Go away, I’m sleeping.

Can’t you see, I’m all curled up and sleeping.

Come on, really? I was sleeping…

One evening I was sitting on the porch, enjoying the warm spring weather, when I noticed a movement behind me. It was Kipling, staring at me through the window, looking very much as if he wanted a headscritch or two. “Do you want to come outside?” I asked him, and he chirped back at me. That must mean yes, right?

I went inside, got the harness, and put it on him. He didn’t argue about it at all, so I thought that perhaps he’d been on a harness before, and would be fine. He tried walking backwards out of it, and slinking out from underneath it, but after a few minutes seemed to forget it was on. (This bodes well for next winter, when I will try to put a sweater on him. He was so cold this past winter that he learned to roll himself up in one of the couch blankets. Cute, but probably not so comfortable. And he’s extended the trick to burrowing under the bed blankets when I’m trying to sleep.)

We went outside together. First he looked around a bit. So far, so good. I thought he might be so distracted by birds and other wildlife that he would forget his apprehension and enjoy the breeze as much as I was.

Then he cowered under a chair and made unhappy noises. I hate to laugh at him, but he sounds as if he’s crying “woe!” and it’s really quite funny to hear. Laughing only made him cry more, so I tried to hold it in to save some of his dignity. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t fooling him at all.

Floyd was brought outside as well, hopefully to be a calming influence. It worked the last time the cats had to go to the vet, but it didn’t work so well today. (Perhaps the heavy doses of pre-vet catnip helped more?) He produced the most pathetic mewing when he first set paw on the deck.

Floyd doesn’t like the Big Room With No Walls very much at all, and after a quick sniff at Kipling he made a beeline back to the door.

He’s a smart cat.

His short stature and lack of opposable thumbs seem to be a constant source of frustration for him.

Kipling, on the other hand, had trouble figuring out how to go through a glass door.

He looked this way and that way.

No amount of encouragement could convince him to look around the door to the inside of the house. His small brain couldn’t quite comprehend the glass.

Finally he wailed, “I just don’t understaaaaand!” It’s a good thing he’s cute, because he’s certainly lacking in the intelligence and courage departments.

I tried going inside to see if he would follow me, but he was still confused and probably too scared to move anymore. Eventually I had to go out, pick him up, and carry him through the door.

It was dinnertime for the cats, and I thought feeding them would be a positive reward for their good behaviour with the harnesses and going outside for a little while. I would love to spend a good chunk of my summer reading books on the front porch with the cats keeping me company. Unfortunately Kipling was still so nervous about his experience that he ate his dinner and promptly yarfed on the kitchen floor. I don’t think I’ll try taking him outside again if he’s going to react like that – who’s training whom, here?

There is a big change happening at Up Mountain, one that’s been in progress for quite some time, but is finally happening: Pirate-Husband is moving out. We’ve had a good run together, but it’s time for both of us to move on. It’s a bittersweet thing for us, but we’d rather end the marriage so that we can be friends, instead of hanging on and growing more and more resentful of each other.

…so we bought lottery tickets, because winning the Mega Millions would solve our remaining problems. :)

I’m looking at this as an opportunity. I’ve never lived on my own – I went from my parents’ house to university to an apartment with him – and I’m excited for the chance to do everything my own way. Over the past few years I’ve been putting quite a bit of effort into remaking myself to become the person I really want to be, and this is the final stage. When I look back on it, I want to be proud of what I see.

April is going to be a big month for me. I work well with schedules, so I want to get myself into a healthy routine of exercise, keeping the house clean, and working on my creative projects.

Here’s to new beginnings!

It was recently pointed out to me that my house is the sort of place that creative people might rent in order to escape from the world and write the Great American Novel or paint a series of landscapes. I’m so lucky to live here, and I want to make the most of what some of my friends refer to as “their mountain vacation house.” It’s a beautiful place, and there’s lots of inspiration to be had just from living up there. Then another friend (Hi, Monica!) wrote, “what if I thought of EVERY day like that; just a vacation with some mandatory stuff thrown in?”

She hit the nail on the head. I look at life as an adventure: some parts are more difficult than others, some challenges seem as if they may never be overcome. All in all, though, almost every little thing in life can be made good and exciting, and I try to look for ways to make everything into a quest or a challenge or a mission. It’s turning life into a fun game instead of a dreadful series of boring responsibilities like going to work and paying the bills.

Instead of thinking of the house as just a house, it’s become the exclusive Up Mountain Bed and Breakfast. Instead of having to run errands, I go on missions to restock the pantry with the best food I can find (and then there’s the challenge of keeping to my grocery budget). Exercise isn’t just having to work out, it’s a part of Operation: Badass. Everything can be turned into part of the fun and the game.

Lately I’ve been feeling as if all my projects are crawling along slower than a turtle, so I started thinking of ways to rekindle my excitement about them. Keeping on with the vacation home metaphor, what do resort vacations have? Scheduled activities. I’ve always done well with schedules and routines; they help keep me from procrastinating. “Oh, I’ll just check a few things on the internet” turns into “now I’m too hungry to exercise, I’d better make dinner,” to “this show I want to watch is on,” and the next thing you know, I’ve stayed up too late doing nothing at all. Then I feel guilty when I realize that I’ve wasted my day putting off the things that I say I want to do.

So I’m going to try an experiment for the month of April, and plan out my time after work to make the most of everything. I’ve written out a schedule which includes the new start to Operation: Badass, enough time to cook and enjoy good food, an hour of a specific creative activity every weeknight, and also time for the slightly more mundane stuff like cleaning the house. I’ve even remembered to give myself some free time to do whatever I want.

As I get more done, I should have more to blog about as well. Now that the days are getting longer and there’s more light in the afternoons, I should be able to take more pictures. I’m going to keep my camera close by so I don’t miss any opportunities. I’m really excited about turning over this new leaf, and I hope you’ll enjoy reading about my adventures – and please do cheer me on, because that will definitely help me stick with it!

Last week I visited my kitten dealer Dawn and her husband John. There is no way I’m getting another kitten, but they had a foster mama and three babies with them for a few days. When Dawn offered me the chance to come over for a little bit of kitten therapy, I couldn’t turn her down! (Not to mention the chance to hang out, have dinner and a few drinks, catch up, and play games. That part was fun too.)

This little girl was only three or four days old when I took her picture. Her eyes and ears are still shut, and I didn’t get to hold her long before Mama Cat was chirping for me to return her. I would have been happy to let her sleep in my hand all night, but she needed Mama’s warmth and milk, not to mention the companionship of her brother and sister. While Mama Cat is mostly a solid gray, all three kittens were tabbies. The two girls had stripes and white chests, and the little boy had a classic tabby swirl going on. All three kittens were (of course) absolutely adorable.

At one point I shifted her around in my hand and she fell asleep upside-down. When we gave her the tiniest of bellyrubs with just the tip of one finger, she squirmed and waved her little paws around, and opened her mouth as if she were giggling. I’ve never seen a ticklish kitten laughing before. It was the cutest thing ever! As soon as we stopped, she fell right back to sleep.

It’s coming up on kitten season, and I’m looking forward to helping Dawn “torture” the little ones with lots of snoogling, paw-touching, and ear-rubbing. The more kittens are handled when they’re really young, the better they’ll be about it when they grow up. Floyd doesn’t like when I trim his claws or clean his ears, but he doesn’t put up any arguments about it. Kipling seems to have missed out on his early torture sessions and is touchy about letting me touch his paws… though he doesn’t mind having his tail pulled.

The light was perfect, and Floyd was too sleepy to put up any objections to my pointing a camera at him.

While he doesn’t like having his picture taken, Floyd has become more affectionate in the past few months. A few nights ago he demanded my attention while I was washing up after dinner, meowing at me insistently until I got down to his level. Then he followed me upstairs, squawked his annoyance that I was taking so long with teeth-brushing and clothes-selecting, and immediately hopped up onto the bed with me when I climbed in. He made a nest of the blankets and was still there the next morning when I woke up.

Kipling is much more of a ham for the camera than Floyd is. He let me snap several dozen shots, all the while squiggling around into cuter and cuter positions.

Last night it was Kipling who slept next to me. I woke up in the middle of the night and found him there, upside-down, his face under my chin, purring like a motor. He reached both front paws out to grab my hand, and I fell asleep again in the midst of giving him a belly rub.

It’s good to be loved by cats.

Kipling, play dead! **BANG**

(No, he doesn’t actually know this trick. But wouldn’t it be cool if he did?)

I found the most adorable pattern for a knitted kitty in one of Eskimimi’s older blog posts, and immediately added it to my favourites list on Ravelry. I might knit a few of these, stuff them with yarn scraps and catnip, and give them to the cats as toys.

Of course, there’s a possibility that they won’t be appreciated; Floyd’s favourite toy is a fur mouse, and Kipling’s is any string that a person is willing to drag around for him. Floyd will entertain himself with the mouse – tossing it up in the air and pouncing on it, carrying it around the house, leaving it in Pirate-Husband’s slippers, and so on. Kipling, on the other hand, only seems to want to play if a person is at the other end of the string. The other day I caught him chasing the shadow of his own tail, whirling around and around but never quite catching it. His efforts built up one heck of a static charge, and when he came over to see what I was laughing at, he zapped his nose on my finger. I felt so bad for him!

Friend Erika and Floyd, presented without comment.

(Technically, I was the guest in the cat’s house. She’s just a guest on my blog.)

Today’s Feline Friday is brought to you by Keta, small and grey, who lives with my sworn-brother Stephen. Every so often she would look up at me and say “mraaaaaaah.” I’m not sure if that means “give me treats,” or “what the heck are you doing in my house, human?” or if it’s just a friendly hello.

She was very patient about letting me take pictures of her. Here she is showing off her super-fancy Soft Paws, which prevent her from tearing the carpet into small ragged bits. I have been tempted on more than one occasion to apply these to Floyd and Kipling’s claws, but I think I could probably only successfully get them onto Floyd. The claws still need to be trimmed before the Soft Paws go on, and if I can get Kipling’s claws trimmed then he wouldn’t need the Soft Paws in the first place.

Unlike Floyd and Kipling, Keta is happy to sit right beside the fire. (Unlike my fireplace, this one is gas and less likely to startle cats with sudden noises.) Whenever we had it burning, she was up on the hearth soaking in the warmth. I can’t say that I blame her!

Keta’s favourite toy is a small rubber alligator, which she carries around the house with her. It seems to be the only toy she’s interested in, though she did stare pretty intently at my yarn while I was finishing up the Warm Hat, and once or twice considered making a grab for the dangling ends.

Thanks for being a guest cat on today’s Feline Friday, Keta!

My name is Floyd, cat of cats. Look on what used to be your slippers, ye human, and despair! (He actually doesn’t really mess with the slippers too much. He just likes to guard them so that no one else can have them.)

He is such a handsome and dignified cat. At least, he likes to pretend that he’s dignified. There is something incredibly undignified about falling off the back of the couch, or deciding that one’s left rear foot has become a mortal enemy.

Kipling is considerably less dignified. What can you say about a cat who sleeps upside-down, other than “awwww!”

He sure does know how to work his cuteness to its maximum potential.

Thanks to my new camera, I was able to get some pictures of Floyd that are more than just a black silhouette of a cat against a blurry background. Here’s my sleek and handsome cat-loaf sitting by the front door, pretending that I don’t exist. It’s better than running away and refusing to have his picture taken!

Floyd has actually been very lovey lately, which is a nice change from his previous emo-cat behaviour. He likes to sit on my lap when I’m on the couch; there is no convincing him to sit next to me the way Kipling does. I think this is just fine except that it’s very difficult to type with his head draped over my wrist and his paw covering the spacebar. I also have a hard time knitting with him in my lap, because he hasn’t yet learned to leave the yarn alone.

And, marvelously, he’s been better-behaved through the night. A few nights ago I had to evict Kipling from the bedroom at 04:00 when he had an attack of the crazies and started building a fort with the surplus sheets at the bottom of the bed, but Floyd stayed with me, curled up against my side, and snoozed quietly until my alarm went off.

Because he was so well-socialized as a kitten, we can do all sorts of torturous things to him like pick him up and snoogle the daylights out of him, as demonstrated here by friend Stef. He just sighs, puts on a long-suffering look, and lets us do whatever we need to do. I can even trim his claws by myself without assistance! Even his rare baths usually go smoothly, though that’s better managed with two people involved. He might complain about it and give us the cold shoulder for an hour afterwards, but he rarely argues (and he never turns down the treats afterwards). For all his quirks, he’s growing up to be a great cat.

Kipling, on the other hand, is not at all fond of being picked up and snoogled. Have you ever seen a cat look so worried? We’re trying to teach him that being held is a good thing. With gentle patience I think he’ll eventually come around.

Unfortunately, all the pictures I tried to take for this post came out horrifically blurry. Oh cats, why won’t you hold still for me? Don’t you know how many people wish to admire you?

Fortunately, my incredibly talented sister the Ninja drew an adorable portrait of Kipling, so this post isn’t completely without pictures! She is having a sale on toony-style pet portraits this month. If you’re interested, you can read more here, and see some pictures of her border collie Finnegan looking ridiculous while playing “catch” with snowballs.

Unfortunately, Kipling’s sensitive stomach is acting up again, so he’ll be visiting the vet next week. We’re not sure if it’s just stress from having bunches of people in the house over New Year’s weekend, or if it’s something else. Floyd has been turning into a nine-pound Napoleonic bully about the litterbox, lying in wait for Kipling to step out of it and then pouncing. That probably doesn’t help much, either, although I can’t blame him for being annoyed about the smell. My ninja-sister (who knows a *lot* about pet care and nutrition) suggested adding a little bit of canned pumpkin to their food, and I started that this morning. I was afraid that the cats would turn their noses up at the new taste, but both of them dove right into their breakfasts and happily nommed away. Floyd doesn’t need the pumpkin, but since the cats switch off on their bowls, I’m putting a little bit into each dish. Hopefully it helps, because the next step for Kipling might very well be an expensive biopsy to find out what’s wrong with his innards.

Fortunately, I got a new camera, and that means there should be much better pictures on the blog from now on. It’s a Canon SX230HS, which is one of their medium-level point-and-shoots. It’s a lot more complicated than my last camera, with all sorts of scene settings and facial detection. It even has modes for aperture priority and shutter priority, which I didn’t expect on such a small camera. And, friend Stef is going to lend her DSLR to me for a while, since she isn’t using it very much at the moment. It’s a Canon T1i, very similar to the one I’d buy if I won the lottery, so I’m really looking forward to the opportunity to learn how to use it properly, and to taking non-blurry pictures of the Dynamic Duo. Especially Floyd – I realize that I don’t write about him nearly as much on Feline Friday, but he’s so hard to photograph. Having a better camera should help with that.

It is the final Feline Friday of 2011!

Kipling is snuggliest in the mornings.

It’s my favourite time to spend with him.