En Provence progress

En Provence Mystery link-up is here.  I stayed up late Monday and finished all the units, and then I took pictures of them yesterday to post but got distracted with Christmas stuff, a brief internet outage, and our family trip to see Rogue One.

So I am all caught up with the mystery quilt and I should spend any spare time I have putting the borders on Allietare. But I am dubious because there is more Christmas work to be done, including all the wrapping. And about 7 more rounds of knitting to finish.

When Grandma came over Sunday she brought the quilt top she finished last week with the fabric she picked out recently. She had the center pieced but needed more fabric for the borders, and I think it's really cute. I tried to get a picture of Daniel, home for Christmas and kindly holding the quilt for the picture, but it came out too blurry.

I haven't blogged since last week... and we had a 2-day school-closing snowstorm, rare for this area. I feel for poor Smudge, but he is certainly well-fed, so don't let his pathetic meowing fool you. I suspect he makes rounds in the neighborhood and picks up extra food that way.

North and South, on our street.

And Smudge again, telling me I should give him more food.

Meet the cats

The holiday season being almost over by anyone's reckoning, I didn't want to lose the opportunity to document one of my most challenging decorating jobs, ever.

That's Smudge on the left. He's a tuxedo cat with a smudge of white on his chin, big on lovability and very poorly-endowed in the brains department. Nickname: Thunderpurr. Sadly, Smudge is a many-times repeat offender against litterbox protocol, and is serving out his sentence as an exile in the backyard, or occasionally a fugitive from justice in the basement. He never strays far from our door, spending most of the time in his hidey-hole in the window well or underneath the deck.

Bilbo is his brother and generally the more dominant of the two. He goes outside most nights and we frequently wish we could fit him with a cat-cam, just to see what he does. Nickname: Fleabait.

Muffball was a stray kitten our neighbors found last spring, and we do call her Muffin when we take her to the vet. She shows promise, that one. Not a morning goes past that she hasn't dug a new ball of yarn out from somewhere in the depths of my stash and left it for us to find and admire her hunting prowess. She's a bit skittish, but occasionally consents to being captured and cuddled. Of all the cats, she showed the most ingenuity in the futile attempt to remove the bow.

I relented the day after Christmas, and removed the bows myself.