My girls and my WIPs

When I was in high school I worked on the Yearbook one year . While I had no problems at all in writing stories, I always had difficulty coming up with headlines and succinct captions for the photos. Every time I think about starting a blog entry, it seems like I spend about 10 minutes thinking about what I'm going to title the entry. I guess I still haven't increased my headline skills. *sigh*

My girls

As I was looking through the photos on my camera, I noticed that I've collected a few nice ones of "my girls." (I'm referring to the dogs, Hannah and Sadie, and the cat, Fiona. Mark is the token male in this household.) Actually, there are only photos of Sadie and Fiona today. But, to be fair, Hannah has already had some recent photos posted. As Fiona's main play buddy, Hannah has gotten captured in plenty of photos with her.

I took this photo of Sadie late one evening just after Thanksgiving. That's Mark's toothbrush in her mouth. No, Sadie hadn't suddenly become intensely interested in oral hygiene. I think Fiona must have knocked Mark's toothbrush off the sink during her revels and Sadie picked it up and started chewing on it. She destroyed it pretty thoroughly, too, as you can see below.
Well, even if Sadie hadn't totally destroyed it, it's not as if Mark would have used this toothbrush again anyway. I usually have one or two spare toothbrushes around, but for some reason I'd fallen a bit low on supplies. Poor Mark had to make do with the old toothpaste-on-a-finger deal until the next day, since it was too late to go to the store to get a new one.

I don't know what it is about the holidays this year, but they seemed to "inspire" my girls for some reason. As Christmas rolled around -- and the veterinarian's office closed for the extended holiday weekend -- I started noticing some odd behavior in Fiona.

She was frequently rolling around on the floor and making cute little noises. She would then get into this weird sort of crouch and start sort of waddling across the floor. Most of the time, she'd waddle towards Hannah. Then, Fiona would thrust her behind in Hannah's face. In typical dog fashion, Hannah was game to take a sniff, but was pretty clueless about Fiona's real intentions. Yes, Fiona was experiencing her first heat. And, that was Fiona's ONLY heat, too.

She was spayed this week. See her little incision? She's apparently a precocious kitty, because this wasn't supposed to happen for another month.

During her "episode" she wasn't entirely focused on finding a gentleman friend, though. She still found time for some more typical mischief.

Silly me. I left some knitting out one night. Any knitter with a cat has to have experienced this at one time or another. Thank goodness it was easily picked up again.

My WIPs

I've been having problems with my knitting lately. I can't seem to focus on or get excited about any of my WIPs. On the left, is a slipper for Mark. This is actually a holiday gift that I didn't even start until well after the holidays.

In the middle is my Katrina Rib. Yep, I'm still plugging away on it, but notice that I have progressed to working on a sleeve. Techically, I could be done with this project already, but I decided that I wanted to make 3/4 sleeves instead of the cap sleeves in the original pattern. So, I have hours more of 3X3 rib left to go.

Lastly, the project on the small set of DPNs is not the beginnings of a sock, but a swatch. Eventually, this will likely be gloves for my stepfather. I say eventually because I'm not convinced that I want to make my first pair of gloves in such a fine gauge.

To be totally honest, I'm not sure I really want to make these gloves at all. See, I feel like I was tricked into making these gloves and am a bit resentful about it.

As I noted in my last entry, I've been feeling pretty overwhelmed lately. So, to maintain some semblance of sanity, I decided to do very little holiday gift knitting this year. I knit up those roses and I had purchased yarn a few months ago to make Mark his slippers, but I had already given Mark a combination anniversary/holiday gift in October so it wasn't a requirement to finish the slippers for the holidays. I'm making him slippers because he needs a new pair for the winter.

Just after Thanksgiving, there was an agreement made with my mom and sister that there would be no holiday gift exchange this year amongst the adults. Some of my family members are on a pretty tight budget, so this is a practical way of not having anyone feel bad. Then, late on December 23, my sister called me up to say that she had purchased a gift for my mother and wanted to split the cost with me.

So, here's roughly how that conversation went between us.

Me: "What happened to the no gifts deal this year?"
Sister: "Well, Mom really needed this."
Me: "OK, I'll split it with you. But what about [stepfather]? Won't that be uncomfortable that we don't have a gift for him?"
Sister: "Oh, I made him something already."

The phone conversation then ended and I started spewing many ugly words. Just a couple weeks previously, my sister had casually commented that she had a holiday gift for me that she had purchased before the "no gifts" deal was set. Now, here it was, just a few hours left for me to shop, and I find out that I will be the "bad daughter" if I don't show up with a gift for my stepfather.

What could I do? I made up a "Knit Certificate" offering to knit him an item such as a hat, scarf, gloves, or mittens. And, since it became clear there would be gift exchange amongst all the adults this year, I made up a "Knit Certificate" for my sister, too. (Although I really felt more like whipping her up a batch of Exlax-laced goodies instead. Oh, well. She wouldn't have eaten them anyway. She's always on a diet.)

I'm not sure why I added the gloves and mittens to the list, since I've never made any before. But, there it is. The reason why I am embarking on making my first pair of gloves, I mean. On the positive side, at least I'll be increasing my skills, right?

Mark really had a good assessment of the situation, though. He said that next year we won't fall for this again. Damn straight.