Giselle

My cat, Giselle, is a great cat. At least I think so. Most of my visitors don't take to her because she doesn't like people very much, she doesn't come out to see them and rub against them to get her ears rubbed. She hides under the bed like she's nuts. In fact, she very likely IS nuts, but that's only one of the reasons I love her so. The other is that she doesn't exhibit any of the aforementioned behavior around me. She loves her mommy and no one else. She doesn't even like her daddy very much. She takes to very few people. She and I chat all the time and she sleeps in the bed with me. She has a few strange quirks (a few?) such as playing in clean laundry. When I come back from the laundry room with a fresh bag of laundry she follows me into the bedroom, watches me pour it onto the bed to be folded and then jumps right in the middle of it and plays around in it before curling up to go to sleep. Sometimes, I can't bear to fold it right away so I let her sleep for a while. I've also got a great photo of her sunbathing. I have two other cats that I love dearly, but I don't have quite the same connection with either of them. Princess is my husband's cat and she doesn't let me forget it. Teacup is so friendly that he's everybody's cat. If you come to see either Joe or myself, you will be fondled, end of story. You will probably be drooled on as well.





So all of this was to sort of hide the fact that I don't have a lot of knitting news to report. I have made some progress on my sock, although it seems very slow. I'm tired of these socks and I just want them done already! But my package with the Birch pattern hasn't come anyway, so I don't have any excuse for not working on them. Here is my progress so far. It seems to be fitting well. I have made the gusset shorter because the first sock was a little baggy around my arch.




Last night when I got home from work, I was so tired that all I could manage to do was knit a swatch. Isn't that pathetic? I've been eyeing some Rowanspun Aran that I got at a 50% off sale for Samus from knitty. The published gauge s 15 - 16 sts/4 in and I need 19 sts/4 in. I figured I'd do a swatch on size 8 needles and see what I got. My 19 stitch section is LESS than 4 inches, if you can believe that. It's very close though, so I think it will work perfectly. This yarn was very interesting to work with. It's a traditional wool, but it's felted which gives it a sort of softness, although I still wouldn't use it right next to my skin. It's also the first yarn that I've used that is coated with lanolin. I could really feel it rubbing off onto my very dry skin as I was working the swatch. The photo is a little bleached out, but that's OK because it really lets you see the tweedy bits that are in there. It's a great looking yarn. So that's all of my progress for the last few days. Not so great, huh? Well, maybe next time my socks will be finished. Ya!!!!