Meet Missus

This is the new Kitty round at my place - no idea how long I'll be able to keep her. I do present the lovely Missus

My daughter moved into a new place (not North Carolina, thank goodness!) where she couldn't keep her kitty, so she brought her over to my house to stay for a while. She's a sweet kitty! Very interested in Ember (my very skitzy psycho cat who does not stay still long enough to get many pictures of her). Ember does her skitz-out full-speed-ahead oh-my-god-I-have-to-get-out-of-here!! zooms through the house, and Missus goes and follows her like, What is it? I wanna see! Can't we be friends? Kind of a way, and she ends up getting hissed at. There is a tense standoff going on at my house right now. I think they'll be able to sort things out - or not. But Missus - the new kitty is a little lovey thing, which is a nice change from Ember - who will come and cuddle with me at night, but freaks out the minute anyone walks from one room to the next.

I finished plying the superfine merino from the last post. I was very surprised, there wasn't really that much of a difference between the two bobbins. I must have spun the second bobbin slightly thicker than the first, because I only had a little carmex sized center pull ball to finish the plying from at the end of it all. Who wants to guess how much yardage I got (I'm thrilled!).... It was 1170 yards!! Whoo hoo - plenty for the Wings o'the Moth shawl! Maybe even enough to do the shawl and the scarf... I really really love that scarf for some reason.



I also went ahead and set the twist on the BFL that I spun up. It floofed up nicely, and I really don't think that I need to reply it, so that's a good result.

I'm itching - I mean itching to get started on the WOM shawl... I still have to turn the yarn into center-pull yarn cakey goodness.

(Why is it that getting my skeins turned into perfect little yarn cakes makes me so inordinately happy?? Am I the only one? Is there anyone else out there that just gets a total thrill from seeing the yarn all balled up like that?) Ahem... Got a little carried away there, didn't I? Sorry!

I have also made progress on the Caramel Swirl cardigan. The sleeves and the body are all joined as one, and fitting in nicely (much more nicely than the feline contingent at my house - but we've already been there). I have a little bit of straight knitting before me to contemplate how I'm going to get the sleeves and the shoulders and the raglans vs the saddleshoulders to work out - also have to think about the neckline. Part of me wants to do a scoop neck - the other part thinks a straight V neck is much more versatile for an over-layer cardigan. Any thoughts, comments, suggestions? I'd sure appreciate it! What would you do? I can't promise that I'll take any advice, but I'll certainly take it under consideration, could even get me to go off sideways someplace else entirely different. No pics though, sorry - no light, and it looks like poo at the moment because I have a mishmashed jumble of all sorts of things to hold the underarm stitches at bay until I figure out what I'm doing with the rest of it.

I went for my walk today for the first time in about a week. I've had a kink in my neck for days now - but I did a full two miles on my lunch break, with my Emily and the Optim wrapped around my wrist... There's been some discussion on the spintalk forum about using a wrist distaff, and I took some pictures of how I hold my roving -














I just wrap it around my wrist. Basically, I just take the end of the roving and tuck it into my bracelet (or a hair tie, watch band whatever). Then I wrap the roving around my wrist until I have most of it out of my way, and just spin until I need some more roving, when I unwrap a little more off of my wrist and keep going. After I'm done with my walk - I just wrap the roving back around the spindle and throw it into my bag. Works for me. I don't need any special equipment, and I can do it anywhere - anytime.

I also saw this guy on my walk today - just a seagull sitting on a pier overlooking the Richmond/San Rafael bridge.

And just one more picture of the new yarn for my WOM