OMG, LOL

Catching up

Oh, boy, I'm really behind on blogging. Well, as you probably guessed from our photos, we had a great time our first week at the beach:



and our week there flew by. We had amazing weather.



There were two days when it started out kind of gray but the clouds burned off and we ended up with good beach days anyway. We had only one rainy day, and on that day, we decided to take the kids to a small aviation museum in Cape May. We didn't expect that we'd like it so much, but it was a wonderful place, with lots of hands-on exhibits relating to the science of flying,

Elvis tries out a Coast Guard rescue basket

and all sorts of planes, jeeps and other vehicles that the kids were allowed to sit in and on:




They also had some interesting memorabilia from the war years, like posters:



and an exhibit set up to look like a typical 1940s house, complete with real live cat snoozing on a chair:



So if you are vacationing on the southern part of the Jersey shore, and end up with a lousy weather day (or want to take a break from the sun for a little while), I'd recommend the Cape May aviation museum as a great way to spend a couple of hours.




Unfortunately, our vacation clashed with the arrival of Wendy, of Wendyknits fame, who was in town to teach some toe-up sock classes at Loop and to show off the sample socks



from her wonderful book, Socks from the Toe Up.



Even though I wasn't able to make the Friday night gathering, I stopped by on Saturday in order to say hi to Wendy (and send personal regards from Charcoal to Lucy). The socks are gorgeous in real life, so if you haven't already picked up a copy of this book, I highly recommend it (my No-Bull Review is here).


(Rumor has it that Wendy is an excellent teacher and both workshops were great...)

While I was there (cough, cough), I could not help myself; I had to try out some of the new goodies from Blue Sky's new Spud and Chloe line. And of course Laura next door at Spool tempted me with some lovely fabrics. I'll do some photos next post...

Kitteh-topia (or Bridget C. is a big, fat liar)

I've been feeling my lack of kittehs deeply lately. It might have something to do with Mindy's little CJ or the Amputeehee's Ganja or whatever the hell her kid named it, and I'm sure it has something to do with stress.

Luckily, Bridget had invited me over for lunch today. She had been threatening me via email bugging me sweetly inviting me for a while now, and we finally found a date that worked for both of us.

Bridget sets out a really nice lunch table: four (4!) kinds of cheese, homebaked bread (Tim rocks), and all sorts of other delicacies, including freshly-baked brownies. Also real ice tea with real lemon. And we laughed and had a great time, yada, yada, yada.

But I really went over for a dose of kitteh therapeh.

There's Tess, who's a little old lady (did you know that "senile felines" is a palindrome?):



and friendly and playful Jetsam:



and then there's the matter of Garden Kitty. Now I think that the poor cat should have a real name instead of an adjective and a noun, but whatever. According to Bridget, this cat is terrified of strangers, hides under furniture when guests come, quakes and will never let new people pet him.

I don't know what kind of airplane glue Bridget's been sniffing, because this kitteh was perfectly sweet and friendly, and as you can see, quite willing to let me pet him and take his picture.

Thus



and



and



Does that look like a scared kitteh to you??

Itteh Bitteh Kitteh Sweateh

If you read Mindy's blog, you know that there are very few people in the world who love animals more than she does. And you also know that she has a soft spot for animals who need extra care. So Mindy recently brought home a little kitten with a parasitic infection who likely would not have made it had she not brought it home from the crapful pet store in which it was living.

Mindy knows that whenever she wants to adopt another critter, all she has to do is email me and ask me if she should and I will tell her to go for it, because (and it's the God's truth) any animal that is lucky enough to be adopted by Mindy will live a better life than it could almost anywhere else. So I egged her on to bring home this kitten, this itteh bitteh kitteh, and out of gratitude (or revenge?) she named it "C.J." (My middle name is Jean.)

Now I feel a proprietary interest in this kitteh. The kitteh needs to be kept extra warm while it recovers and so in an attempt to procrastinate from redoing the buttonhole band on my second sweater for KnitScene, I knit this:



An itteh bitteh kitteh sweateh.

Because I piteh the itteh bitteh kitteh. And I don't want the itteh bitteh kitteh to feel shitteh.

Special blog appearance: Donna Druchunas

Charcoal is not a companion animal snob. In fact, so gracious is the black bun that he has invited Donna Druchunas, author of the newly-published Kitty Knits: Projects for Cats and Their People (Martingale 2008) to make a special appearance today here on Go Knit In Your Hat.



You may recall that Donna guest-blogged a few months ago, when she released Ethnic Knitting Discovery and before that, upon publication of Arctic Lace, a book inspired by the knitting of Inuits and other Native Americans living in the Arctic. She has also written The Knitted Rug
and blogs here.


Donna's latest book was inspired by her kitties, and includes items for cats (like cat beds and toys), items for people who love cats (like these cute kitty socks)



and items for the cat-lover's home. In honor of this cat-themed post, I shall liberally spinkle throughout adorable photos from my archives of Kute Kitteh Fotoes.

GKIYH: Tell us about your first cat, Donna.

Donna: My first, first cat is a sad story. When I was about 12, my sister and I talked my mom into letting us get a cat from my uncle. My mother acquiesced, but she wouldn't let us keep the cat in the house. We also didn't know enough to get her fixed. So our little kitty lived in the garage and outside, and killed too many birds to count. Then she got pregnant. My mom really didn't want a cat at the time, so we ended up giving her to a friend who had a farm. I hope she lived out a full and happy life there.My first cat as an adult was a member of the family. We got Kittens when he was only about 4 weeks old, not really old enough to be taken away from his mommy. But they owner was going to have him put to sleep if we didn't take him, so he came home with us. He was my best bud, and would ride around the house on my shoulder, and sleep in my briefcase. He only lived 3 years, and died of congestive heart failure with absolutely no advance symptoms. I still miss him!



GKIYH: How many cats do you have now? Tell us about them.





Donna: I have two cats right now, but will have four in a couple of months when my mom moves in with us! My two cats are Uno and DeeDee. The both came to us from the humane society. DeeDee came after another of our cats died of cancer, and Uno came when I went to the humane society with someone else to help them pick out a cat. Uno stuck is foot out of the cage and patted me on the head as I was walking by, and I knew right away he was going to come live with us. It was mid December, so I went home and told my husband, "I found what I want for Christmas!" We went back the same day and filled out the paperwork to adopt Uno.





GKIYH: Do you have other pets? Are you partial to cats as opposed to, say, dogs or hamsters? If so, why?

Donna: We have no other pets right now, although I'd like to get a fish tank with fancy goldfish. Is that really tacky? I think they're beautiful and they would also entertain the kitties. My grandmother always had goldfish in a tank in her kitchen, and I think they'd remind me of her, too. I am not sure why I love cats so much more than other animals, but I do.

GKIYH: What inspired you to create a book with this theme?

Donna: An accidental discussion where I was complaining about all the dog knitting books that had come out over the past few years. I am pretty sure that more knitters own cats than dogs, but no one in the publishing industry had figured that out!

GKIYH: Did you road test the kitty items on real cats?

Donna: It's impossible to keep knitting away from my cats. They don't eat yarn, thankfully, but they do like to test out everything I'm knitting. They love the toys, especially the felted balls with the bells in them, and my mother's cats have used the cat beds so much that they are totally smushed!Speaking of the toys and beds, I'd like to mention the eyelash yarn that I used on those. This is only appropriate for older cats who do not eat strings! Some cats like to eat strings, and kittens are especially prone to this. But it's very dangerous to let cats eat threads or strings, because they can get tangled in their intestines and cause injury or even death. I did put a warning about this in the book, but I want to point it out here because we have to make sure to keep the safety of our kitties our first priority! The projects I made with eyelash can be made with faux fur yarn or plain by simply leaving out the carry-along yarn.

GKIYH: What is your favorite project in the book and why?

Donna: Well, there are a lot of projects that I love. I am sure several people will ask me this question, and I'm going to try to answer it differently every time! I designed the Men’s version of the Scandinavian Kitten Fair-Isle Sweater with my husband in mind. He doesn't wear a lot of sweaters, and he wants everything to be pretty plain. I knew he would never wear something with a blatant cat design, so when I saw these little Scandinavian kitties, I knew they'd be perfect for him. He wouldn't even realize there were cats on his sweater, but I would always know! Thanks so much for letting me visit your blog to talk about my book and cats. There's nothing better than cats & knitting!

The Beu would heartily agree with that...

Knitting stage fright

I have knitting stage fright. When I'm around other knitters, even in a casual and comfortable setting, I often find myself too self-conscious to knit. This is not, however, the case when I'm around non-knitters. Then I feel perfectly comfortable knitting away. Weird, isn't it?

Today I had the pleasure of getting together with a few folks that I met through my LYS. Now that I've phased my hours out, I hardly ever see them anymore and it makes me sad. So they invited me to a Saturday afternoon "Knit and Knosh" to hang for a while. There was some yummy pear cake involved, and I visited with the initimable Knitty D, Purl MiaLoggia and some really cool blogless folks, too.

My schedule has been so unpredictable lately, that I haven't been able to see Anne Marie and her ragtag band of fugitive knitters at the Wednesday night SnB for a long time. So this was my first group knitting experience in a while, since maybe Stitches?

So I knit a few rows on a sock and then just petted the closest cat, which for a time, was Hobo here:



Not that petting Hobo was a hardship, mind you....