Belated Introduction!

I have a belated introduction to make. We've adopted another cat!

Introducing . . . Ellie!



(Yes, that is Ken's catnip mouse from Criosa that she is playing with. She's played with it so much that I'm not sure where it's gone off to.)









These photos were all taken on her first two days with us. She came home on January 14, after being spayed (we adopted her on January 12). Initially, Ken was very curious and playful with her, rolling on his back in front of her and showing off, and she wanted nothing to do with him. She even attacked him when he tried to come up on the bed at night to sleep with us, even though earlier that evening they were both on the bed at the same time.



It was like that for a few days. Then she warmed up to Ken and wanted to chase him and play, and he wanted nothing to do with her. His ears would go back and he would hiss and had a startling resemblance to Paul Naschy as Waldamer Danisky.

He also looked like this often:



There were fights. There still are some scuffles, but they have started sniffing each other's faces and nearly grooming each other (nearly, but not yet). They have bonded over watching the birds at the feeder outside the window. The other morning a fat cardinal had them very excited.

Ellie is very snuggly and loving, although she protests if you pick her up. She's VERY vocal and will practically scream for food. She's also frigging NUTS and will spend hours tearing around the house chasing a toy. The shelter had her as 1.3 years old, and she was admitted to the shelter with a litter of kittens and went into foster care for several weeks. I think she may be younger than a year, though; after all, a cat can have a litter when she is less than six months old. She will calm down, eventually, I'm sure. Solvie did eventually, and Solvie was a bloody lunatic when she was young. Even Ken is a lunatic sometimes -- last night he was tearing around the house at top speed himself. I wish I had video of that, but we were eating dinner and the camera wasn't nearby.

In knitting news. . . well, I had a brief foray into the world of crochet. I don't have pictures, so I'll share that later, but I did crochet something! I also did two swatches for Blaze (I had to go down a needle size to get gauze, as the swatch grew a little with washing. Oh, the lessons we learn, eh?). I then cast on three times -- long tail cast on, oops, not enough of a tail to cast on all 210 stitches, start again; long tail cast on, oops, not enough tail, fuck it all, I'll knit into each stitch and pass it back to the left needle to add on stitches, ouch it really is too tight of a cast on to do the ribbing properly; long tail cast on, YES! I've cast on enough stitches, now I've knit four rows of the ribbing and I made a FUCKING MOBIUS STRIP. Oh dear. So, I decided that yarn does not want to be Blaze right now, and I have cast on for another Kitty Pi so the kitties won't have to take turns using the one we have (although it is large enough for them both to squeeze into if they snuggle, and wouldn't that be cute?).

Knitting the Kitty Pi also makes some room in the stash, as I'm using some chunky JoAnn Sensations Licorice yarn in black, grey and white. I'm not sure how the white will felt; I think it is white as in bleached and not "natural". I used the same yarn in Olive for the last Kitty Pi, and I also made my Sophie bag with the purple and orange Licorice, so hopefully it will felt in spite of the white.

I did add to the stash earlier in the month, when Batty and I went to Windsor Button to celebrate her new job:







I got two skeins of the 127 print, because I loved the colors. I'm not sure what to make with it, though. The Regia Silk will be some fancy grey lacy socks for moi. I do seem to have trouble with socks that aren't plain old ribbed socks -- they often come out too large. Or they take forever to knit (like Poseidon, which is still hibernating). I have plenty of sock yarn bookmarked for plain ol' ribbed socks, though, and those would be a good subway knitting project, yet I feel guilty casting on another project. I'll finish the kitty pi and see what's up. I am going to try to work from my stash more this year -- I have about 1/8 of it up on Ravelry, and I really need to just clear it out. Much of it is bookmarked for projects, too. I won't even talk about my fiber stash, or my (lack of) spinning lately.

Now Ellie is knocking things over to get my attention . . . I must go tend to her.