I'm So Proud

The other day my husband came home and said, "I saw a woman sitting and knitting socks at the train station today. In self-patterning yarn."

"Cool," I said, nodding.

"I've been around knitting long enough, I guess."

"Hmm?" I said encouragingly, counting stitches.

"Well, I not only recognized what she was doing," he explained, sounding rather surprised at himself. "But I also recognized the sort of yarn she had."

"Were they toe-up or cuff-down?" I asked.

He thought for a moment, then answered confidently. "Toe-up."

He's going to learn to knit in spite of himself, I swear.

Biscuit and Cookie have continued as happy playmates. The other day, they both cuddled up side by side. On my favorite polar fleece jacket. No wonder it looks more like a cat fur jacket most of the time. (Before you ask, I didn't throw it on the floor- it was over the back of a chair when I set it down. How it got on the floor, I couldn't say. But I don't think it was an accident.)


Which is not to say that all is sunshine and kittens. Biscuit has continued to wander the house meowing in the wee hours of the morning. Sometimes he's looking for Cookie (in which case the meowing is followed by a thunder of paws racing around the house, interspersed with mysterious thumps, sounds of things being knocked over, and the occasional yell when someone nips too hard). And sometimes Biscuit just seems to want people to Do Something Interesting. He hasn't quite figured out yet that what he tends to get under these circumstances is a human who scoops him up and banishes him to the sun porch, where he can talk indefinitely without waking us up. But then we've concluded that figuring things out is definitely not Biscuit's strong suit. For example, here he has failed to figure out that there is a mouse on his head.

What? Why is everyone looking at me?

And in knitting news, I took a break from knitting mittens only to be caught by a hat pattern. It's the Thorpe hat. It's a fast knit and very charming. I cast on one Friday, finished it Saturday, cast on another Saturday, finished Sunday...at that point I wanted to knit one in a different color, but I've got almost no suitable bulky weight besides the red at the moment. So I converted the pattern for worsted weight, of which I have a plenitude, and improvised some colorwork. Thanks to the vicissitudes of employment, I didn't finish the third one until today.

Here they are, in all their FO-ness:


Such delightfully cozy earflaps and cute little braided ties...I may have another one coming on.