There’s no knitting to see here. Well, I could photograph another almost-completed Mad Color Weave sock, but that would steal all the fire from the FO photos. And do you really want to see another frogged piece of Petal, complete with swearing? Yup, the sleeve cap reknitting doesn’t need blog documentation.

Therefore I shall distract you with… kittens!

Clicky on the picy for extra big. How can you resist those little blue eyes?

The kittens have undergone an amazing transformation from when we found them a little over a week ago. Back then, they would huddle behind the toilet whenever we walked into the room and would hiss like crazy. Now they climb all over us and are positively jumpy. Dare I say, frisky? Definitely frisky. Also, they learned how to purr this weekend and they all purr at the same time when we enter the room. Purring in stereo! It’s pretty awesome.

We have another week of kittens living in the bathroom before they get their feline lukemia test, and then we can take them to get adopted. I’m introducing them to the other cats as soon as possible - we only have one, small bathroom, and we want it back!

Hello! It is so Friday, and I am in serious need of a weekend. Rob and I are off to the Robparents for some serious R+R in… New Jersey. Woo. Gifting of the shawl will occur, and I’m hoping for a jaunt into NYC if we can spare the time. Rob asked me what I wanted to do in the city if we do go, and I had a list already prepared. Now, Purl or Habu? Decisions, decisions. Habu is pretty cool, but I’m not supposed to be buying yarn, remember? Fabric is fair game, though.

There will be plenty of hanging out and car trip time this weekend, so I’m bringing all sorts of crafty goodness.

Petal! I have two sleeves and two bottom borders complete, and I’ve started the back. I may leave this home to motivate myself to work on other projects.

I really, really need to bust a move on the Sockpalooza socks. T-minus 32 days, and I haven’t even started them yet. The swatch is a modified stitch pattern from a japanese craft book, but I need to add about 4 more stitches per pattern repeat to make it doable. This swatch was truly a labor of love - every traveling stitch and double decrease was worked on the wrong side.

I have confirmed that the sock yarn doesn’t bleed - it’s Tess (just like the bleedy laceweight), a prize from Jess for winning her blog contest, yay!

Remember the Counterpane Clutch? Ugh, neither did I. This thing has been sitting around since August. At some point I grafted the bottom together (I had started with a provisional CO to avoid a seam), but the rest was unfinished. I picked it up about a month ago and made what you see here. You see how the zipper is pinned to a separate lining? That was version 1.0, which was about an inch too narrow. Practice makes perfect, right? All I need to do is hand-sew the thing together and I’ll be done.

Act 1: Confrontation

Blackie was on the bed, sleeping soundly, when Silver showed up. They sat like that for a few minutes.

Act 2: Rejection

Act 3: Resolution

One bed, two ok three, cats. So freaking cute! There will be some craftiness here soon, with optional sewing content. The sewing comes with swearing for free, whee!

The Airy-name-is-too-long is complete! It’s still unblocked, and I can’t bear to post another photo of that lumpy mess. I’m also sure that everyone is sick of cats-in-felted-bed photos (joe and blackie were both lying in it at the same time, CUTE), so no photos for you.

I have other exciting news - remember me mentioning the deliciousness that is sponge candy, and not really explaining what it is? Well, Oiyi made some, and she posted some awesome photos of the little morsels of YUM. How cool is that? The recipe that she found is pretty darn close to what my mom uses. The process is two-fold: there’s the dangerous make-sure-it-doesn’t-burn phase, then the tedious dip-each-individual-chunk-in-chocolate phase. The end product is completely worth it, though, and it looks like Oiyi totally nailed it. I may need to cook myself up a batch sometime soon…

Other photoless excitement:

• Rob and I had our first crawfish experience last weekend. We went to a genuine crawfish boil (118 pounds of crawfish!) which was both fun and delicious. I went in thinking that crawfish were like shrimp, but they’re really like miniature, spicy lobsters.
• The international crimefighter was in town this weekend, keeping Houston a bit safer for a short while. I also met Everwhelming Liz, and am eagerly anticipating seeing her almost-finished Venezia.
• It’s Sockpalooza time! The planning will begin soon - I just bought a couple of Japanese stitch pattern books, and I’m thinking about cobbling together a sock pattern from them.

I’m leaving on Thursday for our mini-vacation to DC and MD, and will be swinging by the Maryland Sheep and Wool festival. I’ve set some ground rules (no variegated sock yarn, no 400 yard/scarf amounts of wool, no spinning materials), and I’m ready to hit the Koigu! You see, I now need to go to the Koigu booth, because I agreed to pay Amy in Koigu for catsitting. After this weekend, I vow to not buy any yarn for the rest of the year, except for gift knitting. Really!

I’ve always been amazed at the flora in Houston. It’s very green and lush here, and there’s an abundance of palm trees and bamboo. Palm trees! So cool. This time of year is definitely gorgeous around here - there’s lots of rain, but everything is flowering like crazy and the temps are ideal.

Our backyard is a different story. There’s no grass, just a series of shrubs, each larger than the next. And ferns! Ferns belong on a forest floor, not in our backyard. Rob has Big Plans for this space.

However, it’s not all bad. All those little flowers in the background?

Jasmine! It looks remarkably similar to the Jasmine of last year at our old apartment. There’s also Jasmine growing next to our driveway, so I smell it when I get home every day. I’m beginning to associate the smell of Jasmine with spring down here.

The big shrub in the foreground has a brother next to the garage (it also has a big ass rosemary bush behind it). The garage shrub has pointy leaves that always scrape my legs as I walk by it when doing laundry. Annoying. But it’s slightly less annoying these days:

It suddenly has two gorgeous flowers, this one on a stalk about three feet tall. Ok, Rob will let this one live… for now. I’d love to tell you what this flower smells like, but I’ve developed a cold and can’t smell a damn thing. I blame the northeast - this is the first cold I’ve had since moving down here (I used to get at least one cold a year). Damn you, Cleveland!

Coming next: I slipped and fell on Yarnzilla. Lesson learned: don’t shop for yarn when tipsy.

A bulleted list of Buffalo activities from our weekend visiting the fam:

• A new haircut, with bangs. Last time I had bangs, I was 16 and my mother warned me about how horrible I would look when they grew out.
• Ate unhealthy food and drank $1.61 beers.
• We watched it snow sideways. I know, most of the northeast had much more white action than this, but still! I brought Sarcelle with me, and it made the perfect pretty scarf.
• Took photos of a Buffalo-themed license plate:

• Hung out with a Goldendoodle puppy. Rob thinks they should be called Pootrievers.
• Made sponge candy. YUM! Does anyone outside of Western NY/Southern Ontario eat this stuff?

Of course I didn’t take photos of the fun stuff, like hanging with my peeps and drinking to excess and getting STUCK IN CLEVELAND overnight because of !@#$ bad weather in Newark (which caused our plane to show up late, which then caused us to miss our connection).

There was knitting. No project knitting, but tons of swatching. I’m feeling a bit inspired from the swatching happening here, but completely noncommittal to anything bigger than a five-inch square.

Clockwise from the big black void on the left:

• Phyllo Yoked Pullover (from Knitting Nature) in GGH Safari. The black really obscures the pattern, and I want something with a shorter row gauge so the pattern is compressed, then I can maybe wear the sweater without a cami underneath.
• Shetland Triangle (Wrap Style) in Fleece Artist Sea Wool. Thanks to Amy for suggesting this in my “what to knit with Sea Wool?” post. I knit this on a US 5, I’ll probably go up a needle size if I decide to make this.
• Some travelling cables in Elsebeth Lavold Hempathy. I need to work on the increase/decrease method - there’s some seriously ugly step edges along the purl columns.
• Twisted Flower sock pattern in Mountain Colors Bearfoot. Love the Bearfoot, but I’m thinking it’s a bit too hairy for this pattern. The colorway is gorgeous - it’s teal with some green bits running through it.

My fave of the four is the Sea Wool:

The only thing better than beautiful sock yarn is SHINY sock yarn!

I’m back! I effectively hid away from the internets and email for a couple of weeks, getting my ass whomped at work and unpacking like a fiend. Rob did most of the heavy packing for us, so I’ve been in charge of unloading everything into the house. We also hit Ikea, and bought an awesome rug, I can’t wait to set it up. It’s so easy to spend lots of money there in very small increments - ooh, a cheap photo frame! And a garlic press! And a shower curtain! And a hamper! So much fun!

There has been some knitting:

A full sleeve of the Cambridge Jacket, doubling as my gauge swatch. Swatches lie, people, and that sucks. I also have the back knit up to the arm shaping, but I may have to reknit it due to the horrid lies that my gauge swatch was telling.

But mostly, we’ve been spending a lot of time out here:

Our front porch, completely worth the many zeros that it cost. So awesome. The weather has been in the high 70’s here, and we’ve been putting lots of quality porch time in before the weather turns to humid hell and the mosquitoes show up.

I have lots to post about, like a proper FO post for the Asymmetrical Cardigan and for Sarcelle (it’s finally complete and blocked, horray!). And of course some house photos, once all the boxes are long gone!

One of my favorite Valentine’s seasons involved those little candy conversation hearts.

Back in the day, pre-Rob and pre-Houston, a friend and I were alone in the lab with a bag of hearts. Writing on the hearts with edible marker is hot stuff these days, but we were old skool and used a regular old pen. We weren’t planning on eating them - those things taste like crap! We also weren’t writing love notes - we would change a letter here, add a word there, and create some decidedly unsavory valentines. My Baby Is Ugly wasn’t my idea, but was one of my favorites. I’m Sorry You Suck was another classic. Happy V Day!

A not-so-unknown kelp! fact - I am not a huge fan of Houston, the city where I happen to currently to be living. Houston makes me cranky. I’ve been known to purse my lips and mope when I think of this city. But all that’s going to change - no more blaming Houston for my problems. Why the sudden change of heart? Because we just bought a house! It’s an adorable small bungalow-ey place about four blocks from where we live now. We lucked out when we first moved here about a year and a half ago - we knew we wanted to live in Montrose, but we selected our current location pretty much by chance. I love where we currently live, and I’m pretty psyched that we found a house so close by!

I’ve love to show off some photos of the new place, but Rob was in charge of photography. Instead of sweeping views of the front porch or gorgeous shots of the interior, we have these:

Thrilling. Rob’s main concern in house hunting was the sturdiness of the roof and electrical system. My concerns were: Does it have a porch? What’s the neighborhood like? Oooh! Pretty!

I absolutely love house hunting, it’s amazing to see the crazy places that are out there. Like the vacant garage apartment (at least half the places that we looked at had them) that was stinky, moldy, and icky, but had a HUGE widescreen TV. Or the place where the owner was a complete slob, with clothing lying around in the kitchen (unmentionables drying in the kitchen!) and an open container of soybeans chilling on his bedroom floor. Or that 70’s era apartment we saw way-back-when that had a mirrored wall along the staircase going up to the apartment, and a set of gigantic stained glass windows in the dining room with shades embedded in them. So much fun!

Now for the packing and moving and purchasing. We definitely need to buy a fridge and washer/dryer before we move, and we also need some decent furniture. Between the two of us, the nicest piece of furniture we own is probably the Ikea filing cabinet we bought last year. I have my eye on a fancy-pants couch, now I just need to convince Rob that he wants it, too!

You see that line, where the tree decor begins? That’s how high Joe can jump and successfully wreak havoc!

Happy Holidays!