Wintry Mix

It's snowing here, for the 2nd time this week. We got a shitload of snow on Thursday, and apparently everyone in the city left their jobs between 1:30 and 2:00 and traffic was all snarled up. It took people hours to get home. I stayed behind to cover the phones, left at 4:30, took the commuter rail home and got in the house aroud 5:15-5:20, so I proved to be smart for once (although I was kicking myself for offering to stay for a while there -- hey, I didn't know!).

I finished something recently, and haven't blogged about it, probably because I tried to take photos of it myself and they came out crappy. ZMrK took a photo last week which came out much, much better.

I have a feeling y'all are just looking at Ken, so let me direct you to the top of my head. See? It's a hat! It's the Folded Brim Cloche from Maggie Pace's "Felt It!" book, and it's probably the project that made me buy the book. I knit it up within a week using size 10s and the 2 skeins of Cascade 220 that I purchased at Rhinebeck. Then, over the Thanksgiving break, I threw it into the washer with jeans for two cycles to get it felted to the right size. We have a styrofoam head that I used to block and dry it, and then I had to sew the two parts of the flower together and sew them to a metal pin back. The instructions have you sew the flower right onto the hat, but I wanted the option of removing it. I just have to be careful of it rusting when the hat gets wet (which it did when I came home Thursday night). It's really warm, but it's not really tight and I'd be afraid of a strong wind blowing it off. I think it goes really well with my hair though -- I've been getting more into a 20s-30s look, and this hat has that sort of feel to it.

I have also finished one of ZMrK's basketweave rib socks:

I was afraid of running out of yarn, so I decided to do the toes in a different color. I was going to look for black, but a run through a couple of LYSs didn't produce any black sock yarn. *big sigh* I realized that it's a little difficult to find solid colored sock yarn. I did, however, have a skein of red Schaefer Anne that I had purchased at lunch when I was having a stressful day at work and badly needed something to pet. I think it fits the bill, and since Schaefer Anne comes in very generous amounts, I knew I wouldn't be sacrificing a pair of socks for myself by using some for the toe. I really like the way it came out, and if I were to do it again, I'd make an afterthough heel in the same yarn. I started the second sock this morning.

I haven't worked on Poseidon or Branching Out in about a month. don't ask.

I did spin a little last week!

The above is this fiber that I dyed a couple of months ago. Amazing, isn't it? The dyed fiber looks very loud, but the yarn comes out really subtle. I'm tempted to keep it as a single, but I'm undecided. My spinning still isn't completely even, but I don't really do it much. My plying sucks. I did some Andean plying (I think -- the one where you wrap the single around your wrist and ply the two ends together ) recently, and it was much easier than using two bobbins. The problem with that is that you have to do it all in one sitting, and if you had a pot of tea right before you started spinning and then realize you have to pee while you're in the middle of plying, well . . . you just gotta wait. And you can't cross your legs while using foot pedals, so, believe me, it can get ugly.

Today is baking cookies day at Chez Zanti. Of course, ZMrK is DONE with his baking, so that's done. He did find time to antique the cat:

It's hard not to pat Ken, you know. He's so soft and cuddly.

By the way, that window is his favorite spot right now. ZMrK put a box of suet in the evergreen tree outside that window, so this has been a common sight:

Blue Jays are funny -- I have long been convinced that they realize the cats inside the window can't get at them, and thus taunt them. There was one that used to sit on the telephone line outside my parents' bedroom window and screech at their cat Amber all summer long. This one has been around a lot, and Ken is fascinated and will do all the funny things cats do when they watch birds -- his mouth moves around, his tail twitches, and he stands up on his hind legs.

The only thing he is more obsessed with is the Christmas tree, which has been removed until Christmas Day. We decided we had to get an artificial tree when we had a centerpiece with pine in it from my holiday party at work, and he would not leave it alone. So ZMrK bought a $13.00 fake 3 foot tall tree at Target, and was putting it up in the kitchen this morning. Several squirts of the water bottle later he had to remove it. Ken just would not leave it alone -- he tried to eat it! This is what he looked like lurking around it:

Bad kitty.

I'm fairly obsessed with word games, and have been all my life. I think I get it from my mom. My obsession comes and goes, but it is something I like to do in the bathtub or before I go to bed. My favorite is word fill-ins but my book of those was done, so I found a book of crosswords and word finds that ZMrK had bought me back around 2002 and started doing those again. Imagine my shock and horror (not really, it was more like mirth) when I was doing a word find with the theme of "a.m. TV" and found the grandmother of all bad words hidden in there:

Notice how its connected to the word "Couric". Dude, someone at that publishing company does NOT like Katie. I about busted a gut when I noticed this one. OH, and the next word find had the word "MEOW" hidden in there, so perhaps it was a second person's response to this person's comment on Ms. Couric? I'm sure whoever it is who created this will say it is all accidental, so I'd rather not know the story. I'd rather think that someone hates Katie Couric, and decided to slip his/her little commentary in there, and another person slipped his/her little commentary into the next puzzle. Do you think there is more than one person making these?