Randomday with Catastrophe

 First the good news. Celtic Solstice has been finished for about two weeks, and is going to live with my brother in Virginia. I haven't been finishing quilt tops very fast for several years, and I would like to do better at supplying my family and friends with quilts. So this one's for Andy.

 She looks so innocent, Muffball does. But no!

This is the brain of the stitch regulator that was attached to my Megaquilter setup. I took the machine off the carriage so I could replace some worn carriage plastic tracks, as I blogged about after finishing Celtic Solstice. I was very optimistic that I could whip out those six quilt tops that need quilting. But I dawdled a bit with re-lifting the machine onto the refurbished carriage. And yesterday when I came home, I realized the entire carriage had been toppled over off the tracks, and the framework of the apparatus that goes around the heavy machine had fallen sideways onto the far end of the frame. This caused the wires leading into the red box to wrench out, and broke at least two of the black components on the circuitboard. It's a $500 piece of high-tech equipment that I can't possibly fix and can't really justify replacing right now. So now, instead of looking forward to zipping out lots of quilts, I'm going to have to try quilting with no real control of stitch length and speed. I used to do machine quilting on my little machine, not the frame, without a stitch regulator. But... grr. I can't even figure out how to dis-assemble the stitch regulator and replace it with the speed control switch that came with the frame, or whether that will even work. It unquestionably deflates my happiness in being able to solve the (relatively inexpensive) problem of wobbly tracks. Technology and I do not get along.

It was almost certainly the cat. Wish I could have been home to see her terrified reaction to jumping on the carriage... but only if I had hidden the stitch regulator first!

Random Monday and Summer Stuff

I missed Randomday on Saturday.  Friday, as the 4th of July, was very, very noisy.  "the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air, gave proof through the night" that Vancouver USA was still there.  I had to shower off from all the gunpowder smoke and the last explosions were somewhere around 1:00 a.m.

Here's a little photo essay from last week, before the noise of the 4th.

 This is not our cat.  It comes to hang out with Smudge and scrounge what food it can.  We started calling it Madeye Moody because its right eye and ear look like it's been in a nasty fight with Dark wizards.  I snapped this picture through the back door window as Madeye waited for Smudge to finish eating his food.  Madeye does not let us approach yet.

 This is Smudge.  He is an outside-only cat after repeated breaches of litterbox protocol, but he seems sleek and well-fed, with little desire for adventure.  He has been sharing his hidey-holes with Madeye lately.

Muffball is an inside-only cat, having been rescued from the life of a stray when she was a tiny kitten.  She now gazes on the drama unfolding between the outside cats.  She knows Smudge and accepts that he is allowed on the premises (because he has shared housing with the inside cats on occasion in the basement) but she most decidedly does not recognize Madeye's right to coexist in the catosphere.

Bilbo, being the cat's cat that he is, was roaming the neighborhood and not available for pictures when I took these.

On a slightly related note, the Tour de France/Fleece has begun.  I am not doing anything official on Ravelry at this point, but... I am spinning Muffball's fur again.  It is going better than the last time I tried, two years ago.  I am using the Kuchulu Turkish spindle.  Pictures when I actually get around to it.  It's summer -- the time to do crazy stuff on the blog, and to be as lazy as I can get away with.

Randomday with Raccoon

Forget everything you've ever learned from Ricky, Pocahontas, or any of the children's literature offerings that glorify the cute little raccoon.  This is public enemy number one.

 Need a closer look?  There you go.  Okay, so I can understand how he might be called cute.  In a "not in my backyard" kind of way.

Steve chased him up the birch tree this morning as he was sauntering casually down the driveway.  Steve was really hoping he'd run into the street and get hit, I think.

He got nervous from all the camera activity and climbed higher.  If I had had a pellet gun I would have tried it on him.  Anybody who lives near us and wants to try for a coonskin cap, be our guest.

 Establishing shot with his approximate location outlined in red.  I guesstimate about 35 feet high.  The Japanese Cedar where he hangs out most of the time is about twice as tall as this birch.

He's not stupid.  He apparently knew my threats to chop down the tree with him in it were not sincere.  I sawed off a large dead branch from a rhododendron this week and that pretty much exhausted my woodcutting muscles for the next month.  He settled down to wait until things got quiet, and he wasn't there when I checked later on in the morning.  We've been vigilant about taking in the cat food after feeding Smudge so I don't think he'll get fat from that source, but he still has the compost pile to dig through.

 Muffball was oblivious.  The warmer weather is making her frisky and she's starting her shedding season.  This morning she ran off with a ball of yarn.

 I've been addressing the organization of scraps this week.  Here are some of the strip bins, and in front is the bin of larger small scraps.

I just finished organizing all the scraps Grandma gave us over the last several weeks.  Some of them get put in the crumbs bin for use in a future crumbs quilt.

 Most of them I have been cutting into squares...

... or bricks, to be used in future "planned scrappy" quilts.  My arm and wrists are sore from all the cutting (plus the rhododendron cutting), but it's kind of fun to have it completed this far.  I'll dig from the two messy bins pictured above to create more squares and bricks until I just can't stand it anymore, and then put away the bins for awhile to work on other projects.  But I'm enjoying the organization aspect of it.  It's time for spring cleaning!

I have plans to share some of the bounty of my scrap bins as a giveaway next week.  Check back Monday!

Wednesday Funnies

I do not feel like writing a blog post today.  Enjoy the funnies from my Pinterest board.  It's rather cat-heavy for some reason.

Source: latinviaproverbs.blogspot.com via Katherine on Pinterest

Latin has Lolcats.  Who knew?

Source: readtome1830.tumblr.com via Katherine on Pinterest

Source: 500px.com via Katherine on Pinterest

When Mom gives you "the look."

Source: Uploaded by user via Katherine on Pinterest

Source: shellsonthebeach.tumblr.com via Katherine on Pinterest

Like Spinning Cat

It was hubris.  I should have listened to the few posts about spinning cat I could find on Ravelry: slippery fibers, need to be blended with wool, tend to shed, felt and break.  Well, duh!  Of course cats tend to shed, that's why I had this crazy idea in the first place.  I should have taken warning that Challenge Day in the Tour de Fleece was on a Wednesday... and I've never gotten the hang of Wednesday, somehow.  I should have paid attention to my own screen name, for goodness sake.  Seize the wool!  Not the cat.  Cats don't like to be seized.  Cats are terribly, fiercely independent.  Especially Muffball.

Did I really think this creature would make a good fiber animal? If domestic longhair cats in general were a good source of fiber, don't you think we'd all be more familiar with cat yarn in the knitting world?  Don't you think maybe there would be cat farms where kitties were raised to supply fiber for the hobby spinning market?  Maybe even a reasonably priced cat-fiber sweater in the Land's End catalogue?  But I thought I would be able to do it.  Because I'm so special and talented.  I had visions of blissfully spinning a soft, fluffy laceweight yarn, maybe fine enough to make a lovely lacy "smoke ring" style cowl.  Ha!  I saved her fur for over a year.  I washed it gently.  I combed and brushed it as best I could, picking out clumps that were too matted.

Cats attack your spinning wheel when you're using it.  Apparently their fur has an aversion to being spun on the wheel.  So I tried a spindle.  A spindle is a little like a cat toy.  I think the fur tolerates that because it is curious about the toy, just like the cat would be.  I managed, with lots of clumps and lumps and breaks, to spin all the fiber up on a spindle.  Never mind that it was not the lovely fine yarn I had envisioned.  Never mind that parts of it looked like a dryer, cleaner version of the hairballs that occasionally get deposited on my floor.  I finished spinning that ugly lumpy yarn because I'm just as stubborn as any cat.

I was determined to ply it right away.  Maybe salvage what I could of the challenge and come away with enough to knit a cat toy.  Or a cat finger puppet.  So I wound the single onto my right hand to make an Andean plying bracelet.  There wasn't much; I made the bracelet before the circulation was completely cut off to my middle finger.  And then... I lost the other end.  I couldn't find it.  So I started winding the end I did have onto a bobbin.  And I discovered something.  You know how cats always land on their feet?  Well, cat yarn always breaks right about at the halfway point.  Or at least it did this time... only I didn't know that yet.  So I wound the rest of the yarn onto the other spool-like item I had handy... the handle of a cat brush.  THEN I plied the two yarns together, back onto the spindle.  It worked, kind of.  I mean, I have a little bit of cat yarn.

I wound it off.  It's about 15 yards.  That's how much yarn I got from more than a year of saving Muffball's fur.

Some cat owners will tell you their cat sheds enough to knit a whole new cat.  I'm here to tell you that's not true, even though I thought it was.

What do you think?  Enough to knit a cute little kitty finger puppet?  Maybe after my feelings have recovered a bit from the ordeal?

Humph.  I'm going to go spin some wool.

The Making of Yarn

The Tour de Fleece is when I kick into production spinning mode.  Last year and this year I estimate I made about 80% of my handspun yarn during this one 3-week stretch.  I like the idea of "spinning Tuesdays" but it hasn't worked out as a regular thing I do.  But I'm pleased to report that all 2.5 pounds of orange-dyed superwash wool has now been spun and plied.  This bowl is the final 12 skeins, about 800 yards all told.  When the Tour reaches the finish line I'll have to take some more photos.  And then I'll have just a few more days before I start knitting my Ravelympics project with it.

I started this new braid of combed Targhee top from Sweet Grass Wool.  I've never spun Targhee before.  I'm thinking I'll try to Navajo-ply this to keep the color progression in the finished yarn.  My N-plying is far from perfect yet.  I've noticed I'm not really a technically proficient spinner at all.  I just make yarn the way it feels right to make it.  Our Knit Night has had to relocate away from the local Starbucks for a few weeks while they renovate; I spun this at the Starbucks cafe of the local Barnes and Noble.  Felt awfully self-conscious dragging my Traveller into the bookstore!  But I was in good company.  I don't get a chance to spin socially that much, and I enjoy it.  I got a chance to see Patti spin on her Lendrum, Stephanie on her Hitchhiker, and Carol on her Turkish spindle.  She also had a Russian support spindle, which is beautiful.  Now I want one!

This is "challenge day" in the Tour, and here's my challenge, to be started as soon as I fill the first bobbin with a little more Targhee.  This is Muffball fur.  You remember Muffball?

She's grown some since this was taken and the above fur is combed and brushed (I don't own hand-cards) from over a year of saving her fur.  She's like one of those primitive breeds of sheep or musk ox that you have to collect the clumps of fiber from wherever they snag: the carpet, mostly, but sometimes I find them on top of a table!  Since it's summer she's been having hairball problems (she's a longhair even though in this photo, when she was a kitten, it was shorter).  She has the most adorably soft fur, like angora or cashmere.  I think the fiber is from her undercoat mostly -- it's fairly short hairs.  There was one time last week where I captured her for a much-needed brushing session and actually cut out two large felted clumps under her kitty armpits.  Poor thing!  I'm looking forward to the challenge of spinning kitty fur.

My other projects, quilting and knitting, have been taking a bit of a backseat during the Tour.  But I am in the final, beaded section of the Rose Lace Stole, a.k.a. Lady MacBeth. (Using last week's photo since I haven't been taking pictures of it).  I should really have someone take a photo of my hands after knitting for awhile: stained fuchsia with the Wilton's food coloring I used to dye the cashmere.  I'm still trying new recipes from the Madhur Jaffrey cookbook, too.





In quilting I'm laying out my July UFO challenge quilt blocks (same picture as Monday).  My machine quilting setup is back together with replacement parts, but I still haven't reconnected everything and plugged it in for a test drive.

I should have enough blocks for at least an 8x8 layout.  That will be a nice lap or wall size.  At this point I don't see making enough blocks for a bed size quilt; any extra blocks can just be saved for next year's Cedar Tree crumb signature quilt.

No progress on the puzzle

There's this cool jigsaw puzzle we've had out for a few weeks now.  It's a panoramic night skyline of New York City, and it's supposed to glow in the dark.  We haven't made a whole lot of progress on it. But Muffball seems to like the box.

We have to check her fur for any clinging pieces when she does this.  We'll let you know if any end up missing when we finally do get it together.

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.