Random Friday

1. It's sunny today. 7th day in a row. I'm kind of in shock.
   
   
2. I'm going to a quilting retreat this weekend but I have not been quilting for a while now. I did make my neice a smock/apron. Does that count? Sigh. I have no earthly idea what I'm going to take with me. Hopefully they will not mock me too much.
   
   
3. K brought up getting a kitten last night. We've talked about it before but never acted. He thinks Frances is sedentary and lonely. She has been more insistent about sitting on us and asking for playtime lately (she has a really limited number of things she likes to play with. Namely, the plastic tops off of milk-jugs, with which she plays a kind of personal hockey; string (no comment); and "da bird", a bunch of spinning feathers at the end of a string attached to a pole. The latter 2 require one of us to play along).
   
   While she isn't an exclusively indoor cat, she rarely ventures farther than the backyard and during the winter hardly goes out at all. We have no cat door so she's inside all day.
   
   When we first adopted her (ha, more like she adopted us), I was working from home every day and could take breaks to go play with her. She could also jump up on my lap, as long as she didn't mind me typing over the top of her.
   
   Did I mention that she's EXTREMELY territorial? She hisses at any other cat that enters her yard. As much as I would prefer adopting an older shelter cat, there is no way she'd get along. We thought maybe we'd get a kitten so 1) she wasn't so threatened by it, and 2) they could entertain each other.
   
   But I'm very worried, because I'm not sure she'd go for it. She seems very territorial about US. We are HER PEOPLE. I'm not sure she'd take well to any division of our attention.
   
   A few years when it first came up I did a bunch of googling and all the stories I found seemed completely binary. Either it worked brilliantly and the two cats ended up getting along marvelously (after the inevitable first few spats), or it failed badly and the cats were trying to rip each others' throats out, even months later.
   
   Also there was at least a couple stories about how a cat that used to be an Only Cat sort of faded into the background and wasn't as friendly or affectionate as before. As much as I complain about her sleeping on top of me all the time, I really like it. Frances is very sweet and I'd feel awful to disrupt that. I guess that's basically selfishness.
   
   Could any of you multi-cat people weigh in with any ideas? I'm feeling kind of damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't right now.
   
   
4. Halloween was very bad for my eating habits. I'm hoping I will remember how crappy the sugar overdose made me feel whenever I waver about going to the gym.
   
   
5. I'm really looking forward to the Daylight Savings switch this weekend, because it'll be easier to wake up for gym time when it's not so dark. I know that light'll disappear again soon enough but I grasp at whatever straws I can. It's all about me me ME
   
   
6. I sucked it up and backstitched my first shoulder seam Halloween night. It actually turned out pretty good, I think (although I redid the 2nd shoulder about 4 times before getting it how I wanted). I don't know why I wimped out on this for so long.
   
   I am still undecided about what to do with the arms. I think the pattern is krak-laden though, my row gauge is spot-on, and there's no way the sleeve as written would fit this armhole without some ugly stretching. Current favorite is to knit the sleeves in the round, top-down, in the ribbing pattern and casting on the number of stitches *I* think is correct. Then I'll backstitch the sleeves on (it definitely does make a much firmer seam). If I do them top-down, I can try out my modified stitch-count much sooner than working the whole thing bottom up.
   
   I've got to finish this, it's already November. NY neice grows bigger every day!
   
   
7. Michelle came over for some kettle dyeing a couple weekends ago. We were aiming for a slightly variegated rust, but I am evidently not so good at the rust (I was in charge of color mixing). I seem to be best at the Various Shades of Blood colorings.
   
   Try #1:
   
   
   Try #2:
   
   
   It was hard to get images of the different reds, so the top one isn't quite so deep and the bottom one isn't quite so vivid. Also, I am too lazy to get out Photoshop or anything and adjust the colors.
   
   Each is about 1300 yards of laceweight merino. It's lovely stuff, but I am not looking forward to balling it up. Even more fun: I think it's too thin to risk using a ball winder.
   
   I also overdyed one of K's sweaters (which was an unfortunate REALLY! BRIGHT! RED! We're talking full Christmas cherry red, here) with plain old black. That worked beautifully, it's now a deep black cherry color. It looks black in some lights and reddish in others, and he WEARS IT NOW. yay! Note to self: a little bit of black (1/2 tsp) goes a long, long way.
   
   
8. I really really really need to get my hair trimmed. My split ends have split ends.
   
   
9. I have no idea what to cook for dinner tonight.
   
   
10. What, you thought there should be a 10?

Alien puppet says: Beware the blood!