Fluffy Fodder

It's reassuring to know that when I have nothing to talk about, I can always fall back on my kitty.

Behold - the Fluffy Bear Trap:

It didn't take me long to learn the hazards associated with this cat. That fluffy belly looks terribly tempting, doesn't it? But know that if you were to succumb to that temptation and sink your hand deep into that fluff, you would come away with a bloody stump, after the teeth and hind claws snap together on your wrist.

He looks so sweet when he's sleeping, though.


The photography is tolerated only so long.

"Piss-off, lady."

Everlasting Procrastination

Like many people, I work well under pressure. If I have a looming deadline, my decisions become faster and more decisive; my fingers fly across the keyboard; my yarn across, under, around my needles is a blur.

But I need to be right up against that deadline for that incentive-fueled speed and agility to set in. So now, when I have Christmas projects planned, and the yarn is sitting hopefully on my shelves, it becomes vital for me to knit myself a market bag.

So I cast on the Everlasting Bagstopper, from Knitty.

To be fair, it is a very quick knit, and I was done in just about two days. At first, I thought it would be a serviceable little bag - handy, but not big enough to be used for a real grocery shopping trip. Until I was actually filling it. I kept adding more and more and more, and the bag just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger. I had three boxes of cereal, bread, bagels, salad, cans of soup, a pork loin roast, a brick of cheese, toothpaste...

The bag said, "Bring it on."

So shown here is the amazing, magic stretchy bag, full of pretty much a couple of weeks' worth of groceries.


(Large) cat shown for scale.

Overall, a very satisfying project. The only change I really made was to knit the handles. I did this because I didn't have any non-Christmassy ribbon on hand, and didn't want the bag to sit around forever, waiting for me to remember to buy it a handle. As a result, the handles really stretched out, but they're still not so long as to make the bag unwieldy.

I would definitely make this again. With shorter handles, maybe.

Hatty Goodness

So, apparently, when I decided not to do NaBloPoMo this year, the blogging mechanism in my head took that as instruction to shut down entirely.

Like a lot of people, I suspect, I've been kind of in the doldrums lately. Not only about blogging, but just about life in general. It might be the shorter days, but the majority of my time has been spent slumped on my little loveseat, eyes on the tv and/or the laptop. Of course, this means lots of knitting time.

But the doldrums mean that I haven't been interested in anything fancy or complex. I've been in the mood for meaty, mindless knitting that doesn't require me to think, do math, or pay any particular attention to what I'm doing. For me, that means hats.

I grabbed some random, bulky blue acrylic/wool yarn that someone gave me a while back, and cast on. By the end of the week, I had three serviceable, warm hats.

These were super fast and easy. I got a lot done during tv shows, and a lot more done during some particularly boring conference calls. Er, boring personal conference calls. Yes.

The last one was the most fun - I just kind of randomly stuck in a crossover whenever the mood happened to strike. I have a fourth hat on the needles now, and that one will be cable-licious, as well. In a more ordered kind of way.

All these hats will be donated to the StreetKnit project, which collects donations for people in need of warm knitted goodness . They have several drop off points in Toronto, conveniently located in lovely yarny places, including Knitomatic, and the Knit Cafe. Which I will be visiting next week when my enabler - er, I mean friend Charlotte will be visiting for another little yarn crawl.