Lost items, some found, some not yet

This is quite an amazing rosebush. It was way overgrown, and looks like it hadn't been pruned in years. It is along the driveway, so it makes it difficult to get the van out of the driveway.



Maybe this wasn't the right time to prune it since the house next door is for sale, but prune it we did. I hope it grows back! There already is some new growth on it, but it will be awhile before it gets full grown again. Branches were growing around and into other branches, so I know it needed pruning.I have been looking for these buttons that I bought over a year ago at the flea market for 50 cents a bag. Today I decided to tackle the under-section of a bookcase in the living room where I put crafty things.

I found the buttons, but not where I thought they were. No wonder I couldn't find them - I had put them safely into an old jelly jar (old buttons, old jelly jar) and placed them on a bookshelf, and I had been searching for the above bags of buttons. I didn't find them in the unit I set out going thru. I happened to go to another bookshelf to find an old jar to put some OTHER old buttons I came across in my search (still on their original cards) and there was the jelly jar with my long-lost buttons. Funny thing - I had re-arranged the bookshelf where the jelly jar was, or at least I had re-arranged some of the books on that bookshelf, but I never noticed the jelly jar of buttons.
The jelly jar was on a bookshelf that is behind the loveseat recliner in the TV room that I sit on every night, but somehow I didn't see the buttons. I'm just glad I found them.


Now if I could just find my favorite shoes. I called a client thinking maybe I had left them there when wearing my rain boots home one day, and she said there were some black shoes in a bag under the desk that aren't hers! I was excited. At last the mystery of my lost shoes had been solved. She mailed them to me, but when I opened the box, they weren't MY shoes!!! So now there are two mysteries - whose shoes are these? And where are MY shoes?

Knitting and cats, what else?

My camera seems to have broken. It shows "low battery" and will not function even after I put in new batteries. I thought I got a bum pack of batteries, but the same thing happened with the new batteries. A quick look on the internet indicates that the battery connection needs to be checked. I hope that works because I've been using my camera phone to take pictures, and for some reason those files are HUGE.

Since this is supposed to be a knitting blog, I thought I should post some knitting pictures amongst the random thoughts and pictures. Here is the back of the shawl/scarf I made. I usually wear it more of a scarf; that is, more around my neck.
The pictures show it worn more as a shawl so the stitches and size could be seen. I love this yarn! It's from Newton's and is soft and nice to knit with and to wear.This is a collar/scarf and fingerless mitts I knitted from yarn I got from the mother of a friend. It's acrylic and I usually knit with wool or wool blends, but it's nice yarn, and can be washed, so that gives acrylic an edge. I also made mitts from this yarn for a client I had been working with for the last 9 months. Too bad the client I worked with for years didn't get mitts made by me! She told me they are now using internal resources, only after I asked, only after she didn't respond to email messages or voicemail. Keep in mind this is a person who has a very long list of people in her life, both personal and professional, to whom she no longer speaks, and the list has grown in the last 4 years since I've known her, so it was only a matter of time that I'd be on the list. But I digress.

This set was made for the person who gave me the yarn. I mailed it off to her yesterday. I hope she likes it, but if she can't use it, I told her it's okay for her to give to someone else. Note the matching buttons. They are slightly unmatched because they are VERY old - from my vintage button colletion, and matched this yarn so well! I probably couldn't have matched this well had I tried. I prefer contrast, but how could I resist?
This set was made for the client I've been working for who just returned from medical leave after a very long 9 months. It is also out of yarn from the above stash that I got from my friend's mother.


This is part of the aforementioned stash, courtesy of my friend's mother.I knitted these socks for a gift, but decided they came out too small, so I kept them for me and was able to buy one more skein (Deborah Norville yarn from JoAnn's Fabrics) and knit a pair for the gift from what was left plus the extra skein. It's so hard to tell what the size will be while knitting, but it worked out.
Ziggy is in this cat tent toy thing we found last summer at a garage sale. Yes, that's Mow's tail. He has to check everything out. It's weird because we moved this inside the house, and Ziggy has pooped in it a few times. It's back in the sunroom.
Here is PT in its better days getting washed. It's been in the shop because the transmission crapped out while we were driving in San Jose. Luckily we had just exited the freeway, but people were just nuts while Will and a friend (who luckily had been following us in her own vehicle) were trying to wave them around us. Some were angry, one almost hit them because it appeared he didn't see them (and he's driving?) and a few stopped to ask if we were okay (probably because it looked like an accident since both cars were stopped). Cha Ching Cha Ching.
I love Niles Blvd, especially in that rare moment when there are no other cars driving on it.

I also love seeing the cows up on the hill near the Niles sign.

It's spring and the clovers are taking over our yard, but so far no four-leaf clovers that I could see!
I highly recommend this book. No, I'm not Oprah, but that's probably better. Wouldn't you trust my choices over someone you don't even know, just because she's famous and has a lot of money?

Back to cats:

Don't look now, but it's Alex, the big 20+ pounder walking behind the sheers ON the windowsill in the TV room. Always makes us a little nervous. He's tried to get down and missed, but he seems to have his 'route' down now.

And because he seems to be everyone's favorite, here's Mowry on my lap while I try to type on the laptop.

Knitting and Cats

It's a little hard to tell from this picture, but I finished the scarfy/shawl thing I made (or was it a shawly/scarf thing?) and I LOVE it. It's triangular, but not too long in the back, so it's really more of a scarf. I probably need to post the picture of the pattern, but I don't have it with me right now. This yarn from Newton's (bought at Stitches 2010) is wonderful to knit with and to wear. I will post a picture of me wearing it at some point. The one I had was not good enough to post here.

Every few months I need to post this picture of Mowry. This was his "mug shot" from when we adopted him. His eyes are green now, and he's bigger, but he's still this sweet kitty. Actually, his face has some gray (or "blue" as they call it in the cat world) so he almost looks dirty, but it's his coloring, and it's what makes him unique. We could pick him out in a crowd of orange tabbies.

And Mowry now! You can't see the gray in his face that I mentioned, but it's there. He looks a little grumpy or sleepy or something in the recent picture, doesn't he?

I think I've posted this picture before, but it cracks me up. Here he is, NEXT to the cat beds. He's yawning, but he looks mean. Those are the socks I made for Aunt Mare (of "Knit Mare Knit" fame).Mowry CAN be mean, especially to Ziggy, but here he is doing cat kisses with Ziggy. Or maybe Ziggy just smells funny and Mow is sniffing him. Whatever it is, it isn't mean or fighting.