Things That Distracted Me

I missed a whole month of posting due to my  preoccupation with (i) work; (ii) my favorite television show, Mad Men, and the newest season; (iii) knitting; and (iv) everything else that interferes with sitting in front of the laptop.

As you know, I adopted another cat.  I have promised myself  that I will stop at two.  No more pets; I haven't even told my mom about Macy yet (she's severely allergic and Delilah was not a welcome addition for her).  Macy is doing better these days - we've had her since July 30 and now, almost 7 weeks later, we see definite improvements with her.  She is much more relaxed around us and she frequently joins me on the couch.  Also, she is much more playful than Delilah Bug and I try to make a habit of engaging Macy with one of those cat teaser toys.  Macy also gets a kick out of messing with me while I'm knitting.  The movement of the yarn makes her jump at it and that's when the cat teaser comes out so I can distract her from my yarn.  

I knitted a mat to use underneath the litter box (using up my scraps of cotton yarn) and then got an idea to knit a blanket for Macy to use.  So I got more scrap yarn together and made a mismatched, patchwork blanket using a Quaker Rib Stitch.  I made a real effort to get it done quickly, and every day I would find Macy laying on top of the work-in-progress.  Today, I finished the blanket, snapped the obligatory pictures, and handed it off to Macy for her total use.  Of course, she wants nothing to do with it now.

Maybe I need to wash it in catnip

It's hard to see the stitch pattern in the picture and some of the yarn I had really shows it off nicely.  I ran out of the chunkier yarn so I started using two strand at a time of the thinner yarn.  I'm glad to be using up my stash because then I can buy more yarn - Steve will not let me buy new yarn unless I make a serious dent in what I have already amassed.

I need to figure out how to make my edges cleaner looking.  The cast-on and bind-off edges are fine, but the selvage is a mess of weird bumps.  Perhaps I need to just slip my stitches at the start of every other row (when knitting flat).  I am considering knitting a nice afghan for my mother for a homemade gift, so I want that to look as finished as possible.

Finished Product

My big news is that I finally decided to start looking into buying a house.  This process requires me to be secure in my job and to have a generally positive outlook on life.  Therefore, you know this will be a challenge for me.  However, I don't want to jinx my plans already in progress, so I will not be saying anything specific until I actually have closed on a home.