Caturday!

Here are the kitties!


And as a special bonus, here's a picture of the girl I took to the theater and her little brother, posted with their Dad's permission.

It's completely adorable how much Violet loves her little brother.

Blogginess!

Check it out--knitting!

I picked up a few skeins of Debbie Bliss Pure Silk, and was compelled to immediately cast on. It's the same leaf lace pattern that I'm using for the black wrap I started a little while ago, but narrower and more scarf-like. This thing is gorgeous. The yarn is incredibly soft and has a beautiful sheen to it. I wish the color were more vibrant, but I love lilacs, and this color reminds me of them, so it still makes me very happy. Click to biggify--it's worth it!


I also snagged a holiday meme for your viewing pleasure.

1. Wrapping paper or gift bags?
Both, but I definitely prefer wrapping paper. I find unwrapping much more satisfying that pulling things out of bags, and I try to let other people have that same pleasure.

2. Real tree or artificial?
We always had real trees when I was growing up, and only recently have my parents gone the artificial route--honestly, there are advantages to both. I haven't really had my own tree as an adult; still rocking the folks' place at Christmas, so it doesn't make sense for me to put up a tree and abandon it.

3. Why are you willing to answer these questions?
Fun, and blog filler.

4. When do you take the tree down?
See above, re. no tree.

5. Do you like eggnog?
I do.

6. Favorite gift received as a child?
My parents might be bitterly disappointed, because I'm sure there were plenty of amazing gifts that they put a lot more thought into than this one, but the one that really sticks out in my mind was a desk set. It came with stuff like a plastic inbox tray and message pads. I loved that thing.

7. Hardest person to buy for?
My dad, paradoxically. He always wants the same things, which should make it easy--but I want to get him some other, extra things as well, and that's always a struggle.

8. Easiest person to buy for?
Probably my mother. I always have tons of ideas for her.

9. Do you have a nativity scene?
I think I technically do, in the same sense I have a set of silver--that they're earmarked for me come inheritance time, which is slightly macabre, but my family has never been deterred by the macabre.

10. Do you send your card by mail or e-mail?
I don't do cards; I think they're a waste of time and resources.

11. Worst Christmas gift you ever received?
I honestly can't really remember any that made me cringe. Oh, wait! Yes I can. When I worked at the car rental place, the store manager made gift bags for all the employees. The men got work gloves, box cutters, and measuring tapes, and the women got cookie-making kits and his church's cookbook. He had no shame regarding his appalling gender bias. Also, who brings 9 box cutters into an airport? Seriously, people.

12. Favorite Christmas Movie?
Charlie Brown Christmas

13. When do you start shopping for Christmas?
It depends. This year I started ridiculously early, and I still probably won't be done on time.

14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present?
Not that I recall, except in White Elephant exchanges.

15. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas?
Spritz cookies!

16. Lights on the tree?
Yep. But I prefer all one color lights, not the multicolored strings.

17. Favorite Christmas song?
I love sacred carols, despite not being religious. Musically they blow the secular ones out of the water. At the moment, the winner is probably Adeste Fideles.

18.Travel at Christmas or stay home?
Travel. To home. 600 miles--whee!

19. Can you name all of Santa’s reindeer’s?
I sure can.

20. Angel on the tree top or a star?
Star.

21. Open the presents Christmas Eve or morning?
When I was a kid, we always did Christmas Eve at Grandma's, then Christmas morning at home--at Grandma's we got extended family presents, and at home we got immediate family presents. Best of all, we could open our stockings--which always contained small presents--as soon as we woke up on Christmas morning, without waiting for Mom and Dad. These days, it's pretty much all Christmas morning.

22. Most annoying thing about this time of the year?
The fact that it starts earlier and earlier every year.

23. Favorite ornament theme or color?
I do love the silver and white themes, and I also love the underwater theme on my parents' tree.

24. Favorite for Christmas dinner?
Several kinds of soups!

25. What do you want for Christmas this year?
Um... sleep?

Much Belated Caturday

Sorry, sorry--I really meant to schedule a Caturday post before I left town for the weekend, but somehow "packing" came first.

This is what most of my pictures of Pippin look like. No matter how many times you try to coax him to look at the camera, he always seems to look away at just the wrong moment.

Not so George. George loves the camera.

And Eve has a bag. This is Eve's Bag. Woe betide anyone who tries to take it from her!

Thanksgiving and Caturday

Today's Caturday is a little different than before; for one thing, it's on time! For another, I managed to grab a shot of all three cats coexisting peacefully together.

Awww!


I hope everyone had a fantastic Thanksgiving. Mine started on Wednesday, with a little baking.

I'm glad I took a half day on Wednesday, because I still had another batch of onion bread to make when these were done. I've learned that I'm not good at sharing onion bread, so it's really better for me to make more and not be grouchy on Thanksgiving when I realize there isn't enough bread left for sandwiches and toast. So, Anne gets two loaves and I get two loaves.

We really had a ridiculous amount of food for just two people.

Clockwise from the bottom, we have butter (I was going to skip that one, but I didn't want people asking what it was. It's not like we were taking spoonfuls and eating them.), a plate of onion bread, fresh broccoli, duchess potatoes, roast beast, and cranberry goo. In the center are glazed carrots, and up above the potatoes is the dish of mock hollandaise for the broccoli. Oh, and we had sparkling apple cider and sparkling grape juice, too, plus dessert--pumpkin pie and Who pudding.

The Who pudding is essentially tapioca flavored with orange zest and topped with homemade fruit topping. This was the first time I've made pudding from scratch, and it turned out wonderfully. This is some tasty pudding.

For the curious, here's a close up of the duchess potatoes.

You mash potatoes, add an egg, pipe onto a cookie sheet, drizzle with melted butter, and bake. We also added some fresh rosemary to our mashed potatoes, and these were freaking fantastic.

And the roast beast?

I violated a chicken and shoved whole cloves of garlic and sprigs of rosemary and sage under its skin, rubbed it with olive oil, and baked. Again, fan-freaking-tastic.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, the mock hollandaise was terrifically bad. Not because of any error in the cooking; it was the combination of a tablespoon of sugar and two tablespoons of vinegar that really made it... interesting. I think in the future I'll make hollandaise from a little packet I buy in the grocery.

All things considered, it was a lovely day. We cooked (Anne prefers to do sous chef stuff, which suits me fine--I like to be in the thick of things!), feasted, played some cribbage, and generally had a very quiet day. Lovely.


Yesterday, I fired up my sewing machine, which I have named Monty. A few yards of fabric and the better part of a bag of fiberfill later, this is what I had.

Things to keep the draft from freezing my feet in the kitchen! Hooray! I'm curious about how long it will be before the cats decide these are Fun Toys that need to be liberated from under the cupboards. We'll see.

Also yesterday, the Universe decided that I needed a lesson in deprivation, following Thursday's excesses. I woke up to discover my freezer wide open--and everything inside seriously thawed. Meat, veggies, ice cream, the whole shebang--into the Herbie Curbie they went. Damn. Oh, well. That'll teach me to somehow not notice that the freezer isn't closed... though I admit, I suspect supernatural forces. How would I not notice an open freezer? I'll live, though. And now my freezer is all clean and shiny.

And today, I am going to borrow my friend Kirsten's daughter, Violet, and take her to lunch and a show. We will be seeing the world premiere of If You Take a Mouse to the Movies. I also have an in to get Miss Violet backstage to meet Mouse and Boy, and sit in the giant set furniture. It should be pretty awesome. I'm seriously loving this 4-day-weekend thing.

Gah!

A few nights ago, I had a nightmare. I was in the house I grew up in, in a sort of futuristic world--think The Net. For some reason, the bad guys wanted to make me disappear. So I grabbed a few small things and ran next door, asking for a place to sit for a few hours until I figured things out. Spying from the porch, I saw someone approach my house, then relaxed--it was just a mail carrier. "Strange," the neighbor said, "our mail hasn't come yet." I looked again, and there was another person dressed as a mail carrier, and they had a huge mail truck into which they were loading the contents of my house. So there I am, in mortal danger from an unknown enemy who is doing their best to make it seem like I never existed, and what goes through my mind? I start to scheme about how I can sneak back into the house and save my yarn. Sick.


Tonight I was thinking about what to take to Stitch 'n' Bitch, and every project I was working on just sounded boring. Deadly, mind-numbingly boring. And I was seized by the desire to knit something new--something different--something for myself. So I searched and found the pattern for the Woodland Shawl. Fingering weight yarn, 460 yards, size 6 needles, and some lace. Perfect. I dug through the stash and found something appropriate in the appropriate yardage, and hit the print button. Turns out I'm out of printer ink. So I did what any self-respecting knitter would do: I wrote the pattern out by hand so I could knit and watch TV at the same time.

Of course, I left a YO out of the first pattern row, and had to go back and find the problem. Luckily I only had to tink 2 rows, and then I was off and running. That's one pattern repeat in the photo above. The pattern calls for 12 repeats, but that just doesn't seem like enough to me; I guess we'll see!

Ahh. I feel better.

Crap, I Forgot Caturday!

I have no excuse today-I just forgot.

Here are cats!

Eve is trying to take over Pippin's lair.

Thus, Pippin looks sad.

George needs no lair--the whole house is her lair!

Sunday!

I had a fantastic day yesterday. I had a meeting in the morning, which went well, and then I ran an errand, and then I shirked a minor responsibility and went home.

On my way to the front door, I saw this little guy.

This is a cold, wet, out of season, living caterpillar. I felt for it--it's pretty much doomed. But the last time I brought a caterpillar inside, it made a cocoon in a jar and stayed there forever--it didn't survive to hatch. So I decided, regretfully, to let nature take its course.

I watched DVDs, petted kitties, made dinner, baked a cake, and worked on my Special Olympics scarf.

Here the scarf is modeled by the storage ottoman I picked up for about 8 bucks on the last day my second work discount was active, and by Mr. Pointy, my trusty US 20 knitting needle.

And this morning, I looked out my window and saw something surprising.

See that white stuff on my windshield? That would be snow. See, Samara and Aaron, Alaska isn't so different from home!

So, I think that this morning I might try to put plastic on some of the windows. There is a definite draft coming in. I'm sure that for the rest of the winter I'll be playing "Don't scratch that!" with the cats, since I'm only planning to go outside for a few of the windows, but hey--a little protection is better than none, right?

And then I'll go to Stitch 'n' Bitch. Yay! I haven't been to a Sunday SnB in ages. I'm looking forward to it.