Paper Tiger Knits

How the big cats roll...

One of the things I've been meaning to do for ages is visit the Rocky Mountain Wildlife Conservation Center. (For any Animal Planet devotees, this is where Eddy from "Growing Up Black Leopard" was born and lives.) My friend Pamela and her boyfriend Aaron were game* to go, so as a birthday weekend treat, we drove out there--so far east it felt like Kansas, and 20 minutes down a dirt road.

And oh, what we saw! These are my faves (taken by Aaron).

Don't you just want to rub his belly? Doesn't it look soft and inviting?

They'd all been fed the day we went (they only eat 3 times a week), so everyone was sleepy and mellow.

I guess when you're at the top of the food chain you can let it all hang out.

They have over 150 large wild carnivores--lions and tigers and bears, and leopards and cervals and cougars and wolves. It was tough to read about their stories--all these animals were in need of rescuing--but they're pretty fat and happy now.

Kitty belly. :)

*Oh, the terrible pun just hit me, but I'm leaving it in...

Every knitter's dream...

Last week I had an experience that most stashaholics knitters dream of...

I got locked in the yarn store.

Seriously--lights out, just me and the cashmere and Koigu.

I took a weekend weaving class at the end of April and didn't quite finish my project, so I went in last week at the end of the day to eke out a few more inches on my scarf. The staff spoke to me when I went in, but the classroom's in the back, so I was kind of out of sight, out of mind. Which was fine with me, because I was late and didn't want to get (rightly) kicked out. So I wove and wove ad then hemstitched (which took forever), and finally I took the scarf off the loom and cleaned up the loom and tidied up, and then I went out expecting to find staff members totaling up sales, and instead I found the lights out, doors locked, no one there.

I was tempted to make myself a bed of cashmere and spend the night. Instead I called a friend for the number of the yarn store owner... Turns out she had come in to close up, and the staffers probably figured she'd find me, but I was being quiet and she didn't. And I hadn't turned on the classroom lights (lit by sunset) so I was invisible.

I called the owner and she told me how to get out. I assured her I had taken nothing but my finished weaving project and we all had a good laugh.

Here's my finished scarf. I don't think weaving is going to be my new fiber passion, but it's a fantastic way to use up yarn I don't love, and it is cool to get some different effects. This is a twill pattern.

Gratuitous kitty pictures...

Snnnchhhhargh.

That's about the best approximation I can come up with of the noises I've been making.

Spring used to be my very favorite season ever. I used to sit under the flowering trees and study... But then I developed allergies. That scourge. I think, "Oh, it's just a little allergy--buck up!" But my immune system is acting as though some terrible invader has penetrated its defenses, and now there is an all-out war being waged in my upper respiratory system.

I've been using the neti pot, which is supposed to be great for these--makes sense if it's flushing out pollen--but I think its true advantage is this: Once you've poured water up your nose, your day is probably only gonna get better.

But I can't be too gloomy! I've been a lucky girl lately. And this isn't everything!

I had been admiring (OK, coveting) a friend's Indigo Moon batt, and she was so generous that she gave it to me!

I haven't figured out how to spin it yet...

And I won the January One baby guessing contest! (Sheer luck and contrarianism--I guessed first initial M because I didn't think anyone else would...)

So even though it's a gorgeous day, I'm lolling around with the felines... (That knitting is handspuun from a Grafton Fiber batt, worked in the Harlot's One-Row Scarf Pattern. The scarf is gonna need fulling to soften it up.)

Off to drug myself to the gills and work.

What do I look like, Walgreens?

A friend-slash-colleague of mine just wrote to me--on my work e-mail account--to ask if I have any leftover psychotropic medications. The ones that made me so jittery I thought I was going nuts so I stopped taking them?

I guess she doesn't want to have to order them from India any more. Because, you know, a prescription would be way too much trouble.

Another reason I hate driving

In addition to the $18 it's cost me to drive to and from work the last 2 days, I have also gotten $105 in tickets, one for going 30 in a 20 zone (photo enforcement/through the mail, which I may contest because I don't think it's marked) and one for parking too long in a 2 hour spot (which my whole department did, but I got there 3 minutes after the meter maid and therefore warned all my colleagues to move their cars).

I know living in New York is supposed to be fabulously expensive, but when you count up the car payment, the money I put down on the car, gas, and insurance, it already costs me more to live here than there before even thinking about the damn tickets.

What day is it again?

Less than a week after deciding that I really must have more of a life outside work, I am in the midst of one of those work-all-the-time weeks. It's a project I enjoy but am completely up to my eyeballs. To relax, I'm going to watch As Time Goes By (love Judi Dench...) and work on my Sock Madness Round 1 socks.

Before the crazy week got started, though, I had a great weekend. Michaele and I went to see Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, which was a very enjoyable way to spend an afternoon. Funny and silly and a little heartwarming and all tied up in a lovely bow at the end.

And then on Sunday I did a crazy thing: I hiked 13.5 miles. The last time I traveled that far on foot was my half marathon in September, when I was about 40 lb lighter and in much better shape. The hike was fun and absolutely beautiful--Hall Ranch outside Boulder--but in the 3 hours between finishing the hike and getting home, my muscles let me know that they are good sports and all but that was very very stupid. They were so sore it was hard to sleep, and I'm still walking around like someone twice my age. There might be pictures but I'm too tired to find the camera.

So after a looong day hobbling around, I'm happily hanging out in bed with the kitty boys and hoping that fatigue gets me to sleep before the little gerbils in my head start running around making me a to do list.

Ten! Ten Big Horn Sheep! Hahahaha...

I know, so creative. But I saw these on the way home from Easter dinner.

At first we thought they were mountain goats--they look much more goatlike--but no, sheep.

(No photo of the lynx outside the window at the restaurant!)

Floppiness, and a backbone of steel beneath.

I am a flop at Sock Madness. Timed out in the first round--not even beaten by a worthy competitor but against the clock. I might yet finish them before the next pattern comes out, but it was not a very good effort on my part.

I may also be a flop as a car owner. Last night as I was driving home the passenger's side window got stuck open. A friend had her window motor go bad, so I figured that's what it had to be, and I took it in & told them that. I got a call at midday. The window lock button was on. My reply: "There's a window lock button?" There sure is, plain as day. They had taken the door apart at the dealership before they realized. Fortunately they didn't charge me. So, just to review my track record:

• Today, went in with non-functioning window, which it turned out I'd locked open.
• Last month, went in with "check engine" light on. Diagnosis: Cross-threaded gas cap.
• Last year, went in with a bad shimmy. Diagnosis: Compacted snow in wheel wells.
• A month after I bought the car, took it in for bad reception on the radio. Remedy: Extend the antenna.
• A few weeks after I bought the car, I couldn't get the sprayer to dispense washer fluid. They asked, "So you push the button and nothing happens?" I replied, "There's a button?"

Say what you will about car dealerships, but they have never once charged me for any of these things. And I get $24 oil changes.

Yesterday I had what may go down as my worst work day ever save the day I lost my job (and that actually worked out OK). Everything will be fine in the long run but it was dreadful and I have bruises on my fingers where I gouged my nails into them trying not to cry. Anyway, this frighteningly timely entry came up on Cheezburger yesterday and I printed out a copy for my secret officle* wall.

*"Officle" is the term I use when you really have a cubicle but people persist in calling it an office, or you have a cubicle and really wish they would give you an office, or you were moved to a cubicle from an office. Mine has a partial wall next to the "door" opening that no one but me looks at. Mostly I keep cartoons there, but it's also my "brag wall." And now my "The Man can be a real butthead** sometimes" wall.

**Am I the only person who reads that as "but-thead" on first glance?

Footwear insanity

Although I am in one of the busiest times of the year for my work, I nonetheless signed up for Sock Madness. If there's one thing I learned from high school cross-country, it's that *someone* has to come in last. (Also "proper footwear helps prevent shinsplints," but that doesn't really apply here.) I am in the Maryland Merino Madness, though as a Connecticut girl my heart will always be a Husky. (At least I'm not a Lady Vol--I know they're good, but they're UConn's traditional nemesis! On the women's side, at least.)

I've made progress, but not nearly as much as other people.

Please excuse my legs, which are dessicated and hirsute.

Also, I recognize myself in this...

 

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

Two Days Is Just Not Enough

Another weekend gone! Though as I get older the days in between seem to fly too.

I did a little of this, a little of that... Snowshoeing last weekend was so much fun that when I saw a fantastic deal on snowshoes I snapped them up. So my friend Monica and I went up in the mountains for a couple hours. When I was getting ready to go, I was looking through my closets and found this:

You won't even remember, but this purse went into the vortex for over a year. I just hope it doesn't take my sunglasses a year to work their way back up. (Sigh. Eyewear and I have a special relationship. It flees from me.)

Why is it that cats get yellow eye and not red eye? They have red blood like we do...