Cats, Knitting and Garage Sales. Is there anything else?

Yes, that's the beautiful Alex on my lap. He didn't stay long, but that he was there at all is amazing. I love his one white "antenna" whisker. Ziggy has the same whisker, but his is on the other side.
"Mad Fish" is probably a very good restaurant, but it sounds too much like "Mad Cow" to me. Just saying.
A woman on Freecycle advertised that she was giving away yarn, mostly wool since it was for a felting project she never did. I responded, but a school responded first, which is great. She then told me the school didn't take it all, so I could have the rest. Unfortunately, when I felted a small swatch of this (yes, Diann, I really did knit a swatch!!!!), and then washed it and dried it in hot water, it didn't felt, so I don't think it's wool. I was thinking of making a cat bed but now I'll have to rethink this. There was lots more. I wonder if any of it is wool? Unfortunately, a pair of socks I knitted and washed in cold water and then dried did felt. Go figure.
I paid $3 for this metal plant holder thingy at a garage sale. I just had to have it. This is why I love going to garage sales.

It's all about knitting this post....

I bought this blue rayon yarn at Stitches West 2011 earlier this year. It's a lovely color (even Mowry thinks so) but I'm sorry to say that I'm just not feeling the love for it.
It's got a lovely texture, and I like the colors, but I started knitting a moebius scarf with it (this is the pattern, although the yarn is VERY different s0 it would have been thicker and wouldn't have looked like this).Here it is on the needles.
Up close you can see the loops from where it pulls. There were so many pulls that you can see the loops (look at the bottom of the picture). I am not happy. Some of it may be from the plastic that goes between the bamboo needles; I prefer something other than plastic as I find the yarn gets caught at the connection between the plastic and the needles, but I think the yarn itself pulls before I even knit it.
I ripped it out, and now I'm not sure what I'm going to make with this yarn. I really like the colors and the feel of the yarn, just not the loops made when it pulls and separates. Hmmmmm.

There's no place like home...

Dorothy was right. There's no place like home.

We took a road trip to LA and visited the parents, some old friends, and Aunt Mare, for whom this blog is named. She's amazing at 94 1/2 years old. I told her I want to be like her when I grow up! Visiting with a friend I hadn't seen in over 30 years with whom I hung out in junior high and the first two years of high school was fun. Next time we pick a quieter restaurant where we can actually hear each other! Seeing two friends I worked with at different jobs in the 1980s was fun, but I've kept in touch with them.

Traffic in LA was, well, traffic in LA. That's why I left LA 20 years ago. Too much traffic, too many people, too much crime, too much too much. This was around 3:00 pm on Saturday.

We were amazed on Sunday morning when we drove down to Long Beach to the best antique flea market ever - no traffic! This is south of LAX on the way to Redondo Beach where we met a friend who drove the rest of the way.

On the way down to LA off of I-5 we used to stop at Red Robin for a burger, but one trip down it was gone. One time someone (not me) drove right by the offramp to Red Robin. Since it's right near the smelly cows (if you've driven down I-5 you know what I mean) I don't know how anyone could miss it, but I was not watching the road (nor was I driving) and I realized we had passed it when it was too late. An offramp or two later was the ubiquitous Denny's, and so we stopped at Denny's. This time, however, we stopped at Mike's Roadhouse Cafe in Kettleman City. We don't like Harris Ranch - the one time we went there it took way too long, and they didn't understand "NO MAYO". I make it pretty clear. "NO MAYO". Mike's had this cool display of old pedal cars, and the hamburger we shared was very good.
It's always hard for us to leave home. We're homebodies, and we just like being home. It's not easy leaving this.....

Or this.... (my 94 1/2 year old neighbor has the most beautiful roses)!
When I was younger, I hated coming home after a vacation, but these days, I like the visits, but I'm happy to be home.

Side story: After finding the long-lost buttons I've mentioned earlier, I went to an estate sale a few weeks ago and bought these (with the jar) for $1. I think I now collect old buttons!

Cats and things

One of my two followers (LOL!) asked how many cats I have - THREE! Ziggy (black cat on the left) was given to us by friends who adopted a baby and Ziggy did not like him. Most cats adapt to new kids, but once the little boy turned two and wanted to hug Zig, Zig wanted no part of it. Mowry (orange tabby on the right) came from a local rescue group. We adopted him when he was around 3 months old. He's named after a street in our city that sounds like a cat saying his name - Mowry! If we lived in Hawaii, he'd be Maui!
Mowry seems to be everyone's favorite. He has a nice personality, but he can be destructive when he decides to scratch the furniture.
Alex and Ziggy look very much alike. They are about 6 mos apart (Zig is 10 1/2 and Al is 11). We had to look closely to tell them apart like parents do with their twins. Alex has white on his paws and ears, and Zig does not. Alex has ONE white whisker on his left as we face him, and Ziggy's ONE white whisker is on his right as we face him. Ziggy is now very matted, so if we touch him, we can tell. Come summer he will have to be shaved. He's a little more round than Alex, but both are identical to the "naked eye". >^..^<

That's Alex in the front, and Ziggy peeking out by the pillows. They prefer when we don't make our bed.



Earlier this week you'd have thought spring was here and garage sale season would be in full force this weekend. There were a lot of garage sales, but they weren't all that good, and it was a bit chilly, especially compared to a day or so ago. We managed to find a few good things: Timberline shoes that look new for Will for $5, a book about felting knitting projects for $1, and a few books at the library book sale.

I love watching these baby hummingbirds. I never liked hummers, thinking they were kind of creepy, but after watching this live website (only on in sunlight hours) at www.phoebeallens.com, I LOVE hummingbirds.

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.