Bad Cats

Sometimes I don't like my cats very much.

It can be hard to wrap my head around their duality. Right now Sachi is laying over my forearms as I type, purring, snuggling, doing the happy cat march on my boobs. Occasionally she will reach up with a loving paw and pat my face. (Of course, right now she's started licking her butt -- how utterly charming.)

Then I walk into a room and find something like this.

Sachi, Kitsu, both of them are bloody little predators. They kill with joy. Even though their tummies are full of the expensive canned cat food, even though they have crunchies in their dish 7/24, they delight in slaughter.

I never used to understand when my Mom told me when I was a kid, "I love you, but sometimes I don't like you at all."

Now I do.

Bacon and Wonder Bread

My Mom was never much of a cook, so I grew up on Velveeta and frozen vegetables. We always had good bakery bread, though. Wonder Bread was not on the menu.

Even as a child, if I had a slice of Wonder Bread I thought the only reasonable thing to do with it was pull the crust off, roll the middle into hard little balls and flick the balls at the other kids. Even better to put a little spit on them right before you flicked so they'd stick.

I was also known to call it "marshmallow bread" and say the "Wonder" was on the name because you wondered if it was really bread.

Yes, I'm a bread snob. I usually won't eat grocery store bread unless it's Le Brea, which is one of the best breads ever. Its only real competition is homemade bread or Spatz bread. I would commit minor crimes for a loaf of Spatz bread, but, unfortunately, you can only get it right around Saginaw, Michigan.

The best breakfast in the history of the universe (and I am not indulging in hyperbole) is a bacon sandwich. Not a BLT, nothing so fancy as that. You simply toast two pieces of bread, butter them and fill 'em up with bacon. It is heaven.

It cannot be just any bread, though. Wonder bread would be sacrilege. It has to be a bread with character. Spatz is best, but homemade or Le Brea will also work. My mouth is watering just thinking about it.

My Mom might not have been a cook, but she did teach all her kids about the best breakfast ever.

Oh Happy Day!

The Remorse Hat has been rechristened the Happy Hat.

I made the hat last month and sent it off last week to a long lost (totally my fault) friend, along with a card and a letter for her birthday.

She called today. She's not mad, just glad to hear from me after all this time.

I am so happy!

Male Psychology

Read an interesting article today.

In the Shivpuri district of the state of Madhya Pradesh, India, the government is giving gun permits to men who get vasectomies.

Seems shooting bullets with a gun more than compensates the macho men for shooting blanks biologically. I don't even want to begin thinking about the ramifications of this.

God, I'm glad I'm a woman.

Mourning

There was an Amber Alert in Salt Lake City yesterday for a seven year old Burmese girl. They found her last night. Dead. In an apartment in the complex where she lived. She and other neighborhood kids played and watched TV in the apartment she was found in. The man who's been arrested is also a refugee from Burma.

Why do people do these things? How can they live with themselves afterwards?

I didn't know the little girl or anyone involved, but there's a big burning hole in the middle of me thinking about her and the family who loved her.

It's not right, it's not fair.

Why do these things happen to the innocent?

Interim Knitting

The Engineer has been watching me as I've learned to knit and I've been asking him what I could knit for him. He doesn't wear knit hats except for an ancient, raggedy, pale blue doubleknit. My Mom knit both the Engineer and the Twin hats for skiing last year and neither hat has ever seen the light of day.

The Engineer never wears a scarf or mittens.

My Mom also made him a beautiful fisherman knit sweater a few years ago which has lived at the bottom of a drawer since he received it.

Now I'm not implying that I could even begin to contemplate knitting him a whole sweater. With his track record, I assure you, I'm not ever going to try. It would be a total waste of time.

But the light bulb finally went off yesterday. He likes to wear ear warmer headbands when he skis. The one he has now is pretty ratty, so...

I remembered an old, old partial skein of 100% wool worsted tweed in my stash, so I dug it out.

I wanted something that would knit up fast in case it got deep-sixed like so much other stuff, so I decided to knit with the yarn doubled. I looked on-line for a pattern, but didn't find anything that tickled my fancy. I decided to go it alone, knitted up a swatch to get the gauge, did the math, and set to. From swatch to weaving in the ends, it took me about two hours.

Here it is.I rolled it up and tied a gold ribbon around it then stuck it in the fridge on top of his beer. (It's a place he's always bound to look.)

His comments upon finding it were (in order):

"What's this?"

He untied the ribbon and unrolled it. "A headband. I like it, it's a good color."

He tried it on. It fit. "It's not lined. The wind will whistle through my ears."

"And all the way through your head," I wanted to reply.

Ah well, I've got one ball of a very soft and lovely gray merino that I will knit into another headband. I will put it inside of this one and he'll have a fancy-dancy reversible headband.

Which he'd better wear if he wants to live.

Ribbed Ski Headband

Worsted weight yarn, unknown yardage, but less than 3 oz.
Size 13, 16-inch circular needles
Knit with two strands of yarn held together
Gauge: 10 stitches / 4 inches
Finished size: 21 inches circumference by 5 inches

Cast on 61 stitches

Round 1: Slip last stitch cast on onto left side of needle and knit it together with the first stitch that was cast on to make 60 stitches total. Perl one, then *knit one, perl one* until end of round.

Slip a ring on the needle to mark the beginning/end of the round before beginning next round

Rounds 2 & 3: *Knit one, perl one*

Rounds 4 to 13: *Knit three, perl three*

Rounds 14 to 16: *Knit one, perl one*

Bind off.

Out Like a Lion

March 31, 2008

It keeps on coming. We got five or six inches here last night, but I'll bet Kate of High Altitude Gardening has it up to her belly button again.