Petrified Pussycat

Oh the humiliation! This Xmas weekend, we had a special visitor - Lola, a rambunctious 8 month old pit/lab puppy.

Our cats, who have never ventured more than 50 feet outside of our door were not happy with a strange animal they have never encountered in the house. After about 1 day and a half, Brownie and Fat Maggie were not as scared anymore. They still kept their distance but would perch by the window or couch and hiss at Lola whenever the dog got close. However, not our resident bully, Whitey Coyote, who hid behind our headboard in the bedroom whenever she heard the dog in the house. As it turns out, this big bully (who likes to play alpha-cat and beat up on her siblings), is the biggest scaredy-cat of all.

As she was hanging out in the living room one day, poor Whitey Coyote was caught off-guard when the dog was allowed back into the house for the evening. With nowhere to go, she wedged herself between the wall and couch. To further the humiliation, everyone in the house came to laugh at and document her predicament.

Poor Lola was so sad and disappointed that her feline cousins would not play with her. At her house, her best friend is a kitten, so she thought that these feline cousins would play with her. My sister, her boyfriend and Lola have now left to camp in Death Valley. Before their departure, I made Lola a little scarf out of some recycled felted sweaters. The toggle button is also a felted sweater piece. Doesn't she look mighty fine?

Staying In

Luckily, my home, my family and the area in which I live is safe from the multiple fires burning rampant in Southern California. However, even with all the doors and windows closed, the winds are blowing all sorts of allergens and irritants that sneak through the tiniest of crevices into the house. I already suffer from terrible year-round allergies and mild asthma, and all the dust and smoke is knocking my entire body out of whack, even with a slew of drugs. Thus, not wanting to aggravate my lungs and sinus further, I think I will remain a shut-in for the majority of the week.

Last night, instead of going to spinning group with my fiber friends, Carolyn came over to my house and spun on her Ashford Traveler. I had already finished plying "cotton candy" (but haven't yet blocked it) and didn't want to spin undyed roving, so I worked on the lace stole for my stepmother instead. It's going slowly, but I've completed half of it already. I contemplated doing 2 separate halves and then grafting it together, but the pattern is small enough that I don't think it'd obvious which way is which, and so certainly, not worth the trouble of trying to graft over 100 stitches.

I also tried to dry a couple of hats a little before I attempted to block by laying them on a towel on my kitchen table. To my surprise, I found one of the cats on the hats. I had not expected one of the naughty ones to bother with the hats because they were wet, but I guess I was wrong. The gray hat is a gift for a Buddhist nun, so now I have to re-wash it and pick out all the cat hairs. Damn cat!

This is another one of the photos I scanned Sunday night. I'm not sure when it was taken, but I'm estimating that my mom was probably about 20-23 years old in the photo.