Fresh, Hot Wastes of Time

Sister-love-letters

Originally uploaded by addlepated

An artifact found downstairs; the front and back of a crumpled letter that my daughters wrote each other. Ah, sisterly love.

Red and Jasper

Originally uploaded by addlepated

Have I introduced you to Red yet?

Red is Jasper’s littermate. How we came about him was this:

When we were out of town and had the cats boarding at the vet, Jasper developed a cough. The vet x-rayed his chest to make sure his lungs were clear and discovered that he had an enlarged heart. I took him to a veterinary cardiologist for a sonogram and she confirmed it.

Diagnosis: Possible early stage dilatative cardiomyopathy.

If you remember, Jasper came here to live after we lost Icey to a nasty battle with leukemia.

I called Jasper’s breeder and she was really upset about the diagnosis. Because of the cost we’d incurred with vet bills, and because she really liked the girls when we came to get Jasper, and because Red had a kink in his tail and couldn’t be a show cat, she wanted us to take him home with us. So we did, on a trial basis.

Red’s first few days at our house were not great. He was really freaked out and hid inside of the box spring about 23.75 hours of the day. But over time, he got happy (Feliway dispenser helped a lot) and now he’s a full-fledged member of the household. He plays fetch. A lot. And attacks my daughter’s pink poodle toy and carries it around the house, howling like a mighty warrior, and drops the nasty wet thing on my head while I sleep. Oh thanks. A gift.

Jasper still has an enlarged heart and we’ve started a beta blocker in the hopes that it will control or reverse it. Still not sure what this means in the long run, other than another cardiologist visit in six months. But he’s a happy boy who likes pats on the haunches and he pounces on people as they walk by the back of the armchairs in the living room. And for now, I’m just enjoying him.

Shipwreck Shawl – blocking

Originally uploaded by addlepated

I had great fun with this shawl, even though I had some “adverse events” take place during its construction. I really need to take a whole-shawl glamour shot where it’s not all full of pins.

The pattern is from Knitty, the yarn is from Perchance to Knit, and the beads are from Legendary Beads.

Springtime Bandit

Originally uploaded by addlepated

This was a side project that I started to work on while I was traveling. I couldn’t work on my Shipwreck Shawl outside of the house because of all the beads! Anyway, I tried to squeeze an extra body repeat out of the yarn and didn’t quite make it all the way through the pattern. It’s missing about 3 rows from the bottom edge.

The yarn is Studio June Star Struck, which is a merino/silk blend that has strands of silver running through it. It’s a wee bit scratchier than I hoped it would be, but it makes a very pretty shawl.

Norwegian Woods wedding shawl

Originally uploaded by addlepated

I made this shawl for my friend, who is getting married this summer. There are a lot of details in it that I’ll explain further once she has received it and had a chance to look at it, but if you’d like to look at more pictures, they’re in this Flickr set.

Aestlight shawl

Originally uploaded by addlepated

I finished my version of the Aestlight Shawl over the weekend. It was a really enjoyable knit, although the edging got a little tiresome after a while. You can see more pictures of this shawl here.

Forest Canopy Shawl

Originally uploaded by addlepated

Woohoo, I’m back on the needles again.

I did the Forest Canopy Shawl in Wollmeise Vergißmeinnicht.

Mods: I repeated the body pattern 15 or 16 times, whichever got me to 307 stitches on the needles. I did 12 rows of the border repeat, adding beads on each twisted stitch. I blocked the bejeebies out of it.