I Got the Cat to Behave....

...now for the husband. It's no secret that I completely and utterly adore Mr. K because he is thoroughly loveable and wonderful. That said, I managed to convince the Thumbless one to leave me alone in the wee hours this morning, only to be thwarted by

snorting.

No, not snoring. Snorting. As in, he sleeps completely quietly until I believe that all is well and actually dare to drift off; then, once my REM cycle is firmly established, he rolls towards me, takes the covers, and snorts in my ear so loudly that I am halfway from the bed with my feet tangled in the sheets and slipping on the stack of knitting magazines on the floor next to my side before I realize what's happened. And, given that my heart is now threatening to pound out of my chest due to the fear--however brief and sleep-deprived-irrational--that the house has somehow been invaded by giant carnivorous pigs, it becomes somewhat less than likely that I will return to anything resembling slumber. Not that he won't snort again many more times if I do. Mr. K is a multi-pig talent.

Monica, to answer your question about my cat rump, I definitely didn't push it away with my face but rather had it placed rather rudely IN my face and had to bring a hand up to shove it away. But your mental picture was funnier.

Kitty Mommy mentioned her cat and his loving determination to share his "little orange rear end" (I don't know why that made me giggle until I snorted, but there you are), and this reminded me of a co-worker I once had. No...she didn't have a little orange rear end....at least, I don't think so. But she did have a cat with a similar determination to offer close-up and personal views of his nether regions, preferably when she was attempting to watch television. Now, my co-worker (with or without orange rear end) was not much of a fan of our president (yet another reason I liked her) and one day she got to thinking about those campaign buttons you used to see--you know, the ones with a photograph of the candidate's smiling face and their name under it and the word Vote! above it that you pinned to your lapel? Yeah, those. And so it was that, after an evening in which her cat was especially determined to share of his tushie, she suddenly came out with one of my favorite sayings ever as she pushed the cat away and told it to "Stop showing me your Bush button! I don't CARE who you voted for!"

Armed with this new insight, I've been forced to the conclusion that my house contains a number of hairy little Bush supporters, none of them the slightest bit interested in keeping their politics to themselves. Kitty Mommy, it's possible that your cat is, in fact, a Republican.

I finally figured out the problem with my sock mojo just recently. Specifically:

this yarn. Or rather, the yearning voice of this yarn, begging from the depths of my stash to be made into something lovely. It's Atacama Alpaca and it is so soft that I knitted up an entire skein of it last night and it was like a sort of handgasm. The pattern is the Lake Tahoe cardi from Knitty, but I'll be modifying it a bit. For one thing, I think it's quite busy enough with this yarn and so won't be adding a border in Koigu (I fear it would keep the rest of my sweaters up at night if I did). For another, although I wear cardigans frequently, I never EVER button them and so am hard-pressed to find a reason to subject myself and my loved ones to the swearing and hair pulling necessary to make a a button band and buttonhole band which I can tell you right now will not line up the first or possibly even second time I make them. And which would require picking up eleventy hundred stitches cleverly along the edge, an activity I believe to be somehow evil. However, the cardi is stockinette and so something must be done to keep the edges from rolling inward until I have a wooly back with shoulder straps and no front. I think I'm going to do a border of some sort of wonderful cabling on each front and then make a tie or frog to close it just at the point of the V. I am much pleased by this.

Meanwhile, the Adirondack silk blend sock is waiting patiently for me to stop slutting around with the alpaca:

While having a bit of a diagonal, it is significantly less so than the mermaid sock and is, in fact, a sock pattern of my own devising...sure proof, if ever any were needed, that my senses and I have taken some time off from one another. I think it's vacationing in Albequerque or something. Hey, maybe it's gone off to England for more butt wideners? Ang or Jo--if you see it, will you send it my way? Awesome.

In truth, the pattern is made up of a number of slipped stitches and psso's in an attempt to break up the colors and it's working pretty well. It's just...well..it's not the alpaca. What can I do--I'm a fickle fiber lover.

Miss either wants to remind me to vote or is starving to death. Since it's not an election day, I think I'll try the food. Love and good yarn to all of you.

Totally spaced off my "quotes of the day", didn't I? I thought I might...but "quotes when my aging and totally inelastic brain actually gets it together" just didn't sound as snappy. Heres a quote for today, in any case, source unknown: "The flower doesn't dream of the bee. It blossoms, and the bee comes."