Mossy Cottage Knits

Corporeally Challenged Cats

Thanks to a grammatically militant mother (and we are talking five-star-general militant here), I don't have much patience for sloppy typos in forum messages (although, ahem, in the interest of fair reporting, I have been known to make them myself). Recently, however, I came across a message, presumably about doing an invisible cast-on, with the subject line "Invisible Cat On." So many questions immediately flooded my mind like, How do you even know if you have an invisible cat on? How do you remove an invisible cat from your person? Can you hear an invisible cat purr? Where would you buy invisible cat food? Or invisible catnip? Does it chase invisible mice? Do they barf up invisible furballs that you discover only in unfortunate ways? If your veterinarian has to take your invisible cat's temperature, how does he know he's not really poking it in the eye? I know I have two cloned black cats, but is it possible I also have an invisible cat? Will I ever know?

Knitting Knews
The lace scarf is now officially called the Sisyphus Scarf or, more accurately, the &!@#$%@&! Sisyphus Scarf. For the first week or so, I knit and knit and knit and knit like a madwoman, yet when I held it up, it was only 3" long. So I knit and knit and knit and knit some more...and it was 3.25" long. Then I knit and knit and knit and knit some more...and it was 3" long again. I held it up for K to look at, desperately hoping she would reassure me that, yes, it was longer, but she just snorted. Sigh.

The breakthrough came when K went on vacation and I house- and Frankie-sat for her. I do not have cable TV and K does so, the truth be told, I spent a large part of the five days watching sixteen or seventeen shows simultaneously, knitting all the while. The scarf is now a good 40" long. I have one more foot to knit, at which point, according to the Sisyphusean "new math," it should be 36" long.

A closeup of the scarf:

Dye Garden Dyegest - A Lesson Learned
One of my most favorite dyeing outcomes was the marigold-dyed yarn. It had a wonderful golden hue and, as I described in an earlier entry, a unique metallic sheen. That is, until I knit up the swatch. Somehow, once you swatch it, the subtle shadings of yellow, brown and green blend together to make a color that looks like...well, there's no nice way to say this -- the stuff the doctor looks for in your nose to see if you have a sinus infection. Blech.

You can't really see the gross yellow/brown/greeny swirly effect in this picture but, trust me, this swatch gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "snot rag."

Posted by Ryan at August 27, 2003 10:22 AM