What I did (and didn't do) on my summer vacation

AND - I seem to have created a monster...... More on that later.

I didn't get much knitting done on my summer vacation. I took along four pairs of socks, a stole UFO, and some scarf stuff. I finished the basket weave socks. I restarted Nagini, and made it as far as the gusset increases. I got the heel flap done on Bellatrix. I frogged the stole UFO, and decided to give the pattern a time out. I made a mistake, though - The current (nearly ending) Six Sox pattern, "I Love Gansey", has heart motifs on them.... the designer offered alternatives, fo those who wanted to knit them for men/boys/others.... One pattern offered was a skull - I conserved paper by printing on the back of a page from the stole - I frogged the stole, and on a trip home for laundry etc. brought the stuff home - forgot that I had the skull chart printed on the stole pattern.... So - I couldn't work on the gansey socks. Ended up getting mixed up on where I'd left off - not in the pattern, but for some reason, something twisted, and I couldn't for the life of me figure out what needle was which... So, I frogged that sock, too....

I worked on the first of the Week in the Life of a Cat scarves - the Monday scarf. A very simple one row pattern, with one purlback row. The kind you can knit in your sleep.... I am almost finished the first half of the pattern section - it is a seaman's scarf style - and I've been working on it as my mindless takealong project. It resides in my purse right now....

Also, since I feel like I've been knitting socks forever, and am sort of "socked out" - like burned out on socks - I'm putting them all sort of aside (only doing maybe one round or so at a time) for now, and am more actively knitting on a Kitty Shawl pattern - Kilimanjaro Kat - still can't find my Day in the Life of a Knitter's Cat pattern that was gifted to me.... So - the current WIP's are the KK shawl, and the Monday Scarf. There are a couple shawl/stole KAL's starting soon. And like I said, I'm still going to keep the socks active, not UFO's....

Mostly, though, I read. I had been to the library, and "tripped over" a book - I have a few favourite authors. Mostly cat books, of course, but a couple others. Among the other books, is John Sandford (pen name), the "Prey..." series.... First book is "Rules of Prey", and of course, the word "prey" is in all subsequent titles (there are way too many to list here). Anyway, I found this other book, called "The Fool's Run", by John Camp. (Sandford's real name). I am not sure if I really noticed it before or not - along with Night Crew - being books that do not contain the same characters as the Prey books. I probably saw the title(s) in the first few pages of one or more of the Prey books, but probably didn't pay them much attention. Anyway - for some reason, I decided to pick up the "Fool" book. And, I planned to share the information with a dear friend of mine, who is also a "Prey" fan.

Well, turns out, that in her wanderings in used book stores, she had already found the other Sandford books, and loaned me the others she had, that I hadn't read yet. I read my library copies of "The Fool's Run" and "The Empress Files", and her copies of "The Devil's Code" and "The Hanged Man's Song", as well as "Night Crew". Well, "Night Crew" is different - very different - from any of the others. I liked it, but it was not as gripping a read as his usual style....

The other four books were great.... I hope he writes more in that series.

I'm still reading- and not so much knitting.... I also read and am reading some non- fiction. Roger Caras - I read "The Cats of Thistle Hill" and I am reading now "A Dog is Listening". I own, thanks to DH, "A Cat is Watching". We were at a thrift store, and I was browsing the paperbacks, and DH was in the hard cover books, and found the cat one - handed it to me, saying he thought I might want it.... such a sweetheart :)

Speaking of the sweet heart.... I seem to have created a monster... in more ways than one, I discovered last night....

Ok, first of all, this week I've been making jelly. Friends of ours, they have a vine in their yard. When they bought their house, it came with a grape vine. There is only one plant, but it pretty much covers their back yard.... Ok, so the yard isn't huge, but it isn't tiny, either. I'm thinking - oh, twelve to fifteen feet wide, by - oh, I dunno - twenty, thirty feet deep? Anyway - lots of grapes... LOTS of grapes. I picked a whole bunch - LOTS, and you really couldn't tell that any were picked....

So.... I was toying with an idea, but figured, nah... maybe another time.... BUT - last night, DH mentioned that the leftover mush - I could maybe boil it up again and dye some wool with it.... After all, it still should have some colour left, and it isn't like I need the flavour....

So, I now have a pot of wool on my stove - I left it overnight....need to squeeze it out and hang it to dry today....

DH is as interested as I am in the natural dyeing thing.

The other part of him being a monster - well... When I met him, he wasn't much of an animal person. Or should I say, much of a house-pet person. He grew up in the country, where animals were more functional than family. And he did have his own horse. Well, after thirty years of being married to me, he's turned into a pet person. I mean, he's almost directly responsible for Ashleigh being part of our family. When we were going to let Roxy go two years ago, he is the one who said we had to get another kitty to keep Mica company.... When we stopped at the place to pick a kitten, he is the one who kept saying, "What's wrong with this little kitty?" while I was trying to select one of the other ones.... So, now - last night, I happened to mention that I'd seen a sign a month ago, offering puppies... Of course, I was only talking about the sign, in relation to a few other signs and the place they were posted. I said that I didn't want or feel we needed a puppy - we *have* two dogs already....

So, he says, "well, when this one goes (referring to Spud, who is old and her health is failing) we need to get another one for Bear".

*

Oh, right - what else I did on my summer holiday....

I did see a lot of wildlife. Especially frogs... this year, there seem to be a lot of frogs. Seems like you can't walk more than a couple dozen feet without seeing one or more hopping around, trying to "escape". But, I *was* able to get some pictures....

We had a tree frog on the window of our trailer...

I was keeping an eye on him, and watched him start moving down the window.... I wondered why.... till I saw.....

Tree Frog Love!!

While taking a short stroll down the bush trail that is behind our place - A trail that is wide enough to drive a small vehicle down, but is more of a hiking trail, and mostly for things like going to get firewood and such, as well as part way is our outhouse. And just past the outhouse is the spot where Roxy and Bone are buried, and where Spud will be when her time comes. Anyway - the trail goes "straight" back from our place, then there is a Y fork, or more of a T - these trails are not super straight - like, from the Y point, you can look back, and sort of see our place, but not clearly... and from our place, you can't really see the Y point, unless you walk over to the side... Between bushes and trees and stuff - well, anyway - I had walked just up to the Y, and looked down, at some wild mushrooms. I saw something - and called to DH to bring me the camera. I didn't want to move, and I was hoping that Bear, who was with me, wouldn't move too much either. (Bear often comes with me on bush walkks, which is a good thing, 'cause he's so protective of me, but it can get confusing with his name.... one time, I was talking to some people who were casual campers - tenters - and had introduced myself and the dog - the guy said, "oh, so that is the bear they told us to watch out for", and I said, "No, that is Bear the dog. *THE* bear is in that tree right over there....")

Anyway - DH brought me the camera, and even though he thought I was being silly taking the picture, I said, Yeah, but how often do you get to see a cliche?

Back to what passes for normal

Ok...on the craft front - I didn't do much while I was on holiday. I decided to frog entirely the Sheharezade stole. I like the stole, just wasn't enjoying the knit. So, it is frogged until it wants to be made.

I did do a bunch of rounds on several socks - but I think I'm socked out for a bit. I mean, I love the socks that I have in progress, but I am not feeling much like knitting on them for now. I will likely keep plugging away on them, as they are still good portable projects. And besides, I can hardly wait to be able to wear the Potter inspired ones. Oh, and I`m still hoping to get away with making a couple pairs as Christmas presents....

I did, though, finish the basket weave socks for DH. Now to finish typing out the pattern....

Ok, I thought I had a picture.... I know I do, guess I didn`t resize it yet....

In that case, I`ll do these pictures:

By request - the slipper collection!!

First up - my oldest slippers. The pink `mules`, I think they are called. And a short story to go with them. I got these slippers for Christmas one year, by request. I also got a housecoat. In burgandy. The house we live in - the bedroom is painted a `mystery colour`. It isn`t white - the door is white, and the walls definitely aren`t white. I am not sure what colour the walls are, though - maybe a grey, maybe an offwhite - but whatever colour they are, they take on a different tone at different times of the day - and different weather or lighting conditions.

Anyway - I didn`t give a lot of thought to decorating the bedroom when we moved in. Other rooms were of more importance. I did do things, though, like toss some afghans on the bed. DH`s favourites - the Confederate Flag afghan I designed (yes, there *is* a link to that pattern - supposed to be on the side, but you probably have to scroll way down to the bottom of the page), the not yet photographed double knit Christmas afghan - both made with lots of burgandy yarn. A knitted afghan in pink.... a blanket that we inherited from my MIL, heavy wool - in burgandy and cream. I got a night table, and wanted to cover it - found a small table cloth, red and white checked.... One day, standing in the bedroom door, I realized, the room had decorated itself!!! I found a pair of boudoir lamps in burgandy at a garage sale, and found some burgandy bedsheets and pillow cases at Walmart.... and the walls seem to have taken on a rosy glow.....

Next - pictures of the doggy slippers, that I found at a yard sale:

Of course, I couldn`t resist them. They were just way too cute. I was rather disappointed, though, that the live dogs weren`t affected by them.... these stuffed furry things attached to Mommy`s feet.... The cats didn`t care, either....

So, here are the yellow slippers I mentioned that sort of match my totebagpurse, as well as another pair that match a pair of jammies (and that I somehow managed to forget to mention before!!)

And the kitty slippers - got these for Christmas a couple years ago:

Again, no strange effect on any of the animals.... not even Bear, who knows there are two types of stuffed animals. Ones that (usually) have squeekers in them, and are for him to play with, and ones that are called `Mommy`s Kitty` - stuffed cats that are part of the kitty collection (yes, one day, I`ll take pictures of all the stuffed kitties, but not yet....I have some of them in boxes in the living room until we re-do the floor - I will take pics after they`ve been restored to display status). Anyway - he just looked at these two stuffed kitties at the end of Mommy`s legs, and rolled over and went back to sleep.

Finally (since I didn`t take a picture while at the cabin of the knitted gifty slippers - just a basic knit `booty` style slippersock) pictures of the white kitty slippers that Lady Ashleigh is determined are made of catfood. (I think I`ve mentioned before that Ashleigh will eat anything that cannot run fast enough to escape her, whether it is normally edible or not, and that she is OC - obsessive compulsive. If she decides on doing something, there is nothing that will stop her until it is accomplished. ) These slippers, despite being high on the cute scale, must live in the closet....

Ashleigh's favourite part is the tail:

The one on the left doesn't sparkle so much anymore, what with it being coated in cat slobber and all.....

Next post will be along the lines of 'what I did on my summer vacation'.... :)