Catch Up

This may have been the least relaxing summer of my life. I don’t know that I had a single day in the whole month of July to do exactly what I wanted and nothing else. I didn’t completely realize how busy it was until today when I did only things I wanted to do. It was heavenly.

I did squeeze in some things that were fun though.

This was Jack.

This was Liz (deciding she was tired of me taking pictures)

They were some of the best kittens we have had since Cutty. Hopefully they have already found forever homes.

I baked a pie.

It was made from fresh peaches and blueberries from the farmer’s market. I used a tutorial I found on The Pioneer Woman’s website for homemade crust. It was fabulous.

I tried my hand at knitting two socks at a time on two circulars. At first it seemed to be taking forever to make any progress because I was doing everything twice.

But then at the end it was totally worth it because when I finished them I was finished with BOTH of them! I will definitely do this again.

Then I made a pair of socks and coordinating hat for baby J and my friend AO’s baby shower. I totally failed at taking pictures. This is the only one I have of the set. I did my first crocheting in a long time to make the bear. I used a pattern for the socks and hat but the bear I made up as I went along. It is truly one of  a kind. (and this was my first time working with Debbie Bliss baby cashmerino and I am in love with it)

There were cookies at the shower, too. They were the first ones since the graduation. Maybe I have lost my cookie mojo.

I also found some new blogs. This one (fieldwonderful) inspired me to make these Kalajoki socks. You can see the river pattern starting on my first sock. I chose a blue green since the pattern is based on rivers- original I know. But I truly love what fieldwonderful did with the yellow. Plus she is a fellow Kentucky girl! Yay!

I am branching out and have decided to have two projects going at once. This is different for me because I usually make myself finish one before I start another. However, I wanted something simple and mindless going while I was trying to read a charted pattern for the first time so . . .

I cast on for a shawl called pendulum last night.

So how am I going to end my hectic summer? By starting grad school in 10 days. You know, ’cause it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Hissy Kitties

Sorry I have been absent so long. It isn’t for lack of projects, I just haven’t had my camera to take pictures. I actually have some really exciting things to share with you that I have been working on for a while and just got around to finishing. One is a gift that is going to be given soon, so that is part of the hold up on that one. Hopefully I can post those pictures in the next few days.

Another delay in blog posts has been the fact that our most recent foster kittens have been a hissy, frightened mess and it was only today that I was really able to get pictures of them. We have only had one other group that was this hissy and they came to us at 8 weeks old. We tried pretty hard with them, but I don’t know how much we were able to socialize them before it was time for them to go back. This time the pair is only 4 weeks old so I have a lot more hope that with some patience they will turn into happy little lap kittens that will be easily adopted.

We went for a Mad Men theme this time.

This is Joan. (we named this one Joan because she is the fancy one)

Here is Peggy.  She was by far the most timid, which is why I was completely blown away when I walked into the bathroom where we have been keeping them today and she was purring! There has been gradual progress all week, but today was by far the biggest change. They even interacted with me when I tried to play with them.

We have never had a group that we have had to keep so isolated before, but because of their size and how scared they were (plus the fact that Cutty seems less than thrilled that they arrived) we have not let them out of their room. So please excuse the nasty grout on the bathroom floor. Our apartment has probably not been retiled for over 50 years and although I clean it regularly- thanks to my new steam mop- it just always looks gross. Sorry.

The other interesting thing today was that they seemed to be paying attention to what was happening on the other side of the door. Cutty has also started to show interest in the bathroom, while before he had been trying to pretend that there wasn’t anything going on in there.

You can see them here wondering what in the world is throwing itself against the door and meowing. Poor Cutty, he really wants in that bathroom.

I can’t wait to see how they are behaving in another week!

Confession of a Dog Person (aka I got a new camera and made a discovery)

I got a new camera for Christmas! Actually I got money to go toward the new camera. For a month I had read reviews and asked opinions, gone to the store to hold them and then debated for hours about what camera to buy. (I could write a whole post on that process) Finally I decided on a Sony Alpha NEX-3. Totally different from what I thought I would get, but once I had made up my mind I could not wait to get my hands on it. If only I had know that the day after the camera arrived on my doorstep Amazon would drop the price by 70 dollars. . . Still, I had put so much thought into this purchase I was happy with it even for the amount I paid.

Anyways, for the past few days I have been playing with my camera. Besides the beautiful flowers on my kitchen table. . .

my favorite subject has been-you guessed it – Cutty!  With my old point and shoot I could rarely capture a photo of him that wasn’t a completely blurry mess. Unless of course he was asleep.

That picture was taken with my old camera and you can see the glare from the flash, gross. I mean I have had this new camera for all of three days and I am a total lighting expert now (and chocolate chip cookies have no calories and I am going to win the lottery). More importantly Pioneer Woman has taught me all about apertures and ISO and shutter speeds.  Armed with a hazy idea of what all those words mean, I have played around with the manual settings on my camera and realized I can now do this:

Even when he would try to move away or dash under the bed, I could usually produce a useable picture! He does seem to feel the need to move as soon as a camera is pointed in his direction. Most often he walks right up to the camera and sniffs it. He has no grasp of the concept of posing for a picture.

Here comes the confession.I LOVE THIS CAT. As I was looking through the pictures I discovered I could no longer keep this a secret. You don’t understand, I grew up with dogs! I was going to get a Yorkie when I grew up. I used to tell people I hated cats. Now, I actually like almost every cat I meet (there will always be a few exceptions).

Look at that face! What’s not to love? I just want to pinch his little cheeks. He would probably let me because he is oddly tolerant of some of the weird things I do to him. He is actually oddly like a dog in many ways. He meets us at the door when we come home, he plays fetch and sits on command. He loves nothing better than to sit in our laps.  But I don’t think it is just his dog qualities that make me a newly converted cat person. I know this because every once in a while he does something that is just so. . .well, cat. And I still love him.

As soon as the box hit the floor he had climbed into it. I would still get a dog if I could (Hubby has allergies), but in the meantime the cat and I will be cuddling on the couch if you need us. I’ll just call myself an equal opportunity pet owner.