A Note and News

Note: I know that Part II of WILOMSV is slow in coming - I haven't forgotten. The blog is on hiatus for a little bit because...

News: I have a new job as the student payroll clerk at Harding! It's a full-time job on top of my full-time student schedule, so my at-home hours are spent studying and sleeping. I hope that in a week or so I will have a little more energy to devote to the blog. Until then - hang in there!

A Brush With Death

Tonight when we let the cats outside, we heard them going crazy by the door. I opened the door to see what all of the scratching and banging was about and I saw that Cal had pounced on some kind of bug. A very large, very, very loud bug. Before I could stick my foot in his face (the preferred method of cat repellent in the manor, with 76% effectiveness) he scooted into the kitchen and deposited his treasure on his food bowl - a whirring, screeching, devilish, fat and ugly cicada. At first I thought it was a locust, but as you'll read here cicadas are often misidentified as locusts in North America.

Cicada, locust, whatever. All I know is disgusting, loud, and loose in our kitchen. Every time I got within 3 feet of it, it would screech and whir and start flying around like crazy. I'm not usually scared of bugs, but the sound this one makes activates the same nerve endings that make you scream if someone jumps out at you from a closet yelling, "Christmas Eve Gift!"(right, Matt?:) Only this was infinitely less fun than Christmas Eve shenanigans. It would whir and screech, I would scream and run away and collapse on the bed laughing.

James eventually caged it under the sink drainer and ran hot water on it for about 15 minutes. After some insecticide, liberal drowning, and more than a few death rattles, he had subdued the creepy thing enough to pick it up with a paper towel and flush it down the toilet. It was about that time when I found this sound file of a cicada online. I thought he saw what I was up to - but I pressed play, and James yelled, "It's screeching in the toilet! Go flush it!...What is that - oh turn that off! Turn that OFF! Don't ever play that again!!"

Ah, life.

What I Learned on My Summer Vacation - Part 1

It is impossible to pack a for trip without forgetting something.
AND
Baby hats are cute.

For the first half of our week-long vacation, we visited Mom, Dad, and Matt in Needville. Aunt Elizabeth came over for dinner, and she, Mom and I were in a knitting frenzy. Meanwhile, the boys went out in search of our favorite board game, Acquire. In a despicable irony, I had spent 3 hours making a special bag for the game pieces, but then I put the game away while cleaning and forgot to pack it. We realized that we had forgotten it when we were about 3 hours down the highway. Here is a picture of the bag, now a symbol of my bitterness. I take this as a sign that no matter how carefully you pack, you will ALWAYS forget something.


And here are some of the baby hats I knitted for Mom's contribution to The Premie Project (my first experiments with knitting in the round).

More installments of W.I.L.O.M.S.V. to come!

Paradise (?) Melon

Tonight, as is the custom in the manor, we went on a fruit adventure. Tonight's destination was the Paradise Melon, described on the label as "crisp and sweet."

Fragrant and firm, the melon seemed like it would be worthy of a postcard once the adventure was over. Cut open, it looked and smelled like a cantaloupe.

However, eating this melon was like seeing a beautiful resort suite in a brochure and finding chicken bones under a chair when you actually arrive in your room. It looked and smelled a lot better than it tasted. It was just a little too sweet, with a weird aftertaste. Here is James's reaction:


The only parties with no complaints about the Paradise Melon?
Of course.

The cats.

The Dino is in the Details

So I'm working on these knit dinosaurs. I think that I found the pattern linked on another knitting blog. Aren't they are cute? Right now I have the Stegosaurus in the works. I've made a few attempts at the spines, but I'm using Baby Softee instead of cotton for this trial run, and I think that's making it harder. If I can master the details of the dinos, I might make them for my nephews for Christmas. Or, I could just open a Museum of Natural (Knitted) History here in the manor.

Bad Kitty!

Ok, so we already knew that our cats are obsessed with poo. (Sorry if that offended anybody, but it's the truth.) They have to be around if anybody is messing with their litter box, even to clean it. But we did NOT know that the cats were also interested in poo accessories. That is, until we came home today for lunch and found this:

Poor toilet paper. I'm sorry that you met a violent end at the maniacal paws of our sweet little kittens. Hopefully, you were not tortured - much.

In Memoriam
Toi Let Papier (he's French)
early 2005-later 2005

CD Shucking

To everything...turn, turn, turn...there is a season....

This Sunday night was CD shucking season in the manor.

After clinging to the jewel cases from his 300+ CDs for years, James decided that the time had come to burn the tares. We transferred all of the CDs and books into a gargantuan binder, condensing the contents of a 3x4' storage shelf into a brick-o-music that, according to the Duke, "...verily did weigh 15 stone if it did weigh an ounce. Forsooth!"

Vet Visit

On Saturday we took the kitti-os for their first visit to the vet. All, in all, we escaped without incident. Minus bit the doctor as he was force-fed a pill (but who wouldn't?), and I cringed more than the cats when the needles came out. Hopefully our cat parenting skills don't say too much about our real parenting skills, because we felt pretty self-important after hearing everyone at the vet say how cute and healthy our kitties are. (Even though the kitties are cute and we are important.)

Baby Shower

I made these two hats for a baby shower honoring one of my classmates. She is from Ghana, Africa, and is about to have her first baby - a boy.

Even though I think knitting is more fun than crocheting, these hats were quick, easy, and foolproof - a bonus since I had forgotten to check my mail, hence had gotten the invitation late, hence had to make a gift in a night. The pom-poms aren't in the pattern, but they're my favorite part.

Tanya's Lapghan

All summer, Clarice and I have been working on a lapghan for our friend Tanya, who is moving with her husband to Tahlequah, Oklahoma. We know Tanya because we were all English majors and have been taking education classes together, and really wanted to give her a special going away gift.

So, we brushed up our crochet skills on a great granny square pattern with some Caron So Soft yarn. Clarice made the squares that are green and purple, and I made those that are pink and purple.

Here we are giving Tanya (center) the blanket at Midnight Oil, our favorite hippie coffee shop.