Yarn-Themed Christmas

I no longer have 28 miles of yarn. Because I had a yarn-themed Christmas.

Or maybe I should say I had a bit of a knitting-themed Christmas because it wasn't all yarn. I got two much desired knitting books (The Knitted Slipper Book and Scottish Knits)(and used a Christmas gift card to pick up three more: Knit to Flatter, The Sock Knitter's Workshop, and the visually insane Op-Art Socks). Each book has at least one pattern that I want to cast on for right now but I am making Dan more socks, so I will have to wait a tad.

I will also have to wait until I finish a bit of lacework that I have decided I simply must do. Because I have something pretty that needs covering to keep kitties out: my brand new knitting bowl!

It's fab and I love it and it is amazing how much easier it makes knitting. It even works well to move my yarn around lap- and arm-rest-kitties. I only used it for a day before we went of to St. Louis and I missed it while we were gone - that is the kind of difference it makes. Delightful.

Of course, there was yarn in my knitting-themed Christmas. I met a new yarn store in St. Louis (Knitorious. It's awesome. If you are in STL, you should go there. Even if you don't like yarn) which was delightfully dangerous. And since yarn stores are like potato chips, I was not able to stop at just one. I ended up with yarn goodness from the in-laws and from Dan for Christmas (and a little from myself, too). Okay, maybe it was more than a little.

               

So yeah. Now I have 31.7 miles.

Eh. I'm okay with that.

Christmas

Last week, Dan & I were in the Midwest, visiting his family for Christmas. It was a good trip, but I'm not going to lie: I'm happy to be home with the kitties. I missed them a lot. (Poor Emmett is still so new he squeaks and we were worried about how he'd take us up and disappearing. (The answer is: freak out, hide from the pet sitters and be scared of us when we came back before (eventually) deciding to be a massive love Emmett. He woke me up at absurd o'clock this morning purring incredibly loudly, tromping all over my head and shoving his head violently (and repeatedly) into my hand).) The kitties are happy that we are back, too. (Gidget has stuck to my side since we've gotten home like she's afraid I'm going to leave again. She is currently using my wrist is a pillow. Not helpful while typing.)i

Anyway, while it turned out nice, the trip didn't start out all that great. This was what we ran into in Oklahoma:

Oklahoma is not normally that white and ice-covered. (Though it is normally that boring.) Of course, after the ice and snow started, the roadtrip became even less stellar as we (Dan) got a speeding ticket. 69 in a 55. Oops.

But then things got better because were got to where we were going (without additional snow or speeding tickets) and got to visit with family and do Christmas-y type things. (There might have been a yarn-buying trip or two in there, too, which I'll get to in a later post.) Aside from normal family-visiting-type things, we did have a bit of touristy fun. We went to the Missouri Botanical Garden's Garden Glow.

It was massively crowded and quite chilly, but very pretty. And I enjoyed it even more because it resulted in a picture of Dan and me that looks like it was shot on a bad 70s background.

That picture amuses me greatly.

And speaking of amusing, we ran across this somewhere in Oklahoma.

Hot Mama Pickle-in-a-Pouch. And even more amusingly, the part of the pouch that is covered by the box? It says "Sassy Pickle". Yep. Just what everyone needs when dealing with the boringness of Oklahoma. A Sassy Hot Mama pickle. Yum.

Vet Visit

Crazy big vet visit today - 5 kitties went! It was originally supposed to be four, but things happened.

Here's the news on everyone:
Cocoa: Healthy but about a pound overweight (she's 14lbs).
Chloe: Some mild dental disease so she needs a cleaning but the lump in her neck that we saw the vet for turned out to be a sebaceous cyst so yay!
Emmett: Just had a booster shot but he managed to climb up behind the moving exam table (the one they use for big dogs) and wedge himself between it and the wall. He's special.
Happy: Even with the supplement she's been taking, her potassium levels are still low. They are going to see if there is anything else they can really do or if this is just how her renal disease will go.
Gidget: She wasn't originally supposed to go to the vet today, but when she hopped up on the counter for brushing this morning, I saw that her back end had exploded. This has happened to Happy before so as much as it freaks me out (cause it looks icky) I kind of feel that this is old hat. She's been cleaned out and gotten an antibiotic and is now in the cone of shame. Other than looking silly or icky (depending on which end you are viewing from) she's in good spirits.

As for the two that didn't go:
Bitty: She's not 100% on board with the new kitties yet, but then she talks smack under normal circumstances so it's not that different from normal. She's not overly thrilled when Olive tries to chase her, though. Still a lovey, grumpy girl (that has a meow like she smokes three packs a day).
Olive: Still a tiny bit people shy, she's making great strides. She even cuddled with Dan in his chair for almost half of The Lord of the Rings: the Two Towers (which is a really long movie) so I'm a bit jealous of that but hope it's the start of the cuddle-Olive.

And there we go. Kitty updates! Hopefully we won't have any more vet trips for a while. Our kitties are worth it, but dang are they expensive!

Crazy Talk

Well, it is officially fall. Our heat kicked on for the first time a few night ago and, even though the high is near 80°F today, I'm going to say that the cold has officially begun.

I think we've sort of stagnated in getting our house all fixed up. The few remaining boxes are still remaining, our garage is still a jumbled & unorganized mess, we have paint picked out for at least two rooms that we just haven't gotten around to buying (much less actually using), and the third bedroom looks like we are in the beginning stages of an audition for Hoarders. But we've been so busy lately. This weekend was the first weekend in six or more weeks that we didn't go anywhere. Crazy!

That's not to say we weren't at least a little busy, though. We did some major renovation of the front bed - dug up the flowers and bushes we didn't want (or that were dead), pulled all the weeds, turned over the dirt and, drumroll please, planted the irises! Finally! I have irises from our old house (that I'll need to tag & mark next spring so I know which type they are), some hopefully bronze ones from my parents' old house, some purple ones from someone in our new neighborhood and four special ones that I bought from Clark Gardens last spring. Hopefully they all do great in the front bed and next year I'll be able to mark them, dig them up, separate them by color and plant them in the back yard.

Speaking of back yards, ours is in semi-bloom right now. We have some lovely fall wildflowers, most of which I have no idea what they are. Besides pretty, that is. I took a decent number of pictures this morning and uploaded about 20 of them. Don't worry, I won't post all of them on my blog, but they are on my Flickr page (link in the sidebar 'cause I'm lazy), just in case you end up bored and need to kill time on the internet. Here are my favorites, though.

Yep, all that is in our back yard! I'm still kind of floored with how large our yard is. And that it has wildflowers! (Speaking of which, drop me a line if you know what the flowers are! I'm looking at you, Pop!)

In other backyard news, we had our first meeting with a pool company! Whee! We have another one set up for tomorrow and have one more company we want to talk to, but so far they haven't called us back. So we might end up talking to a different company because I'm totally not going to chase someone down and beg them to take my money, you know? But yeah, pool planning is happening! We should get the first company's plan (and price estimate!) Friday. We already know one thing: we will spend a big chunk of change on the fence. Like, not quite pool-sized but, depending on the choices we make, big enough that it could be in wading pool territory. For real. It's crazy. Or maybe it's not so crazy and I'm just not used to spending the big bucks. I think there is still a big part of me that is that college student who thought that having three grand in the bank was amazing.

Now, that college girl couldn't even buy a fence!

We Had A Visitor

Not too long ago, Dan and I were discussing the fact that we hadn't seen the roadrunner(s) around lately. Someone on the neighborhood email group mentioned seeing a hawk eat one last week, so I think we were a little worried something had happened to (them/)him.

Happily, though, the rain over the past few days apparently brought out a lot of bugs and they, in turn, brought out the roadrunner!

The kitties were fantastically interested in watching him strut across the yard, eating bugs (and sadly, a butterfly). And, of course, I enjoyed stalking him too as he meandered across the yard snacking.

I'm pretty sure at one point he heard my camera because the little comb went up and he went into alert mode.

Once he had a little freak out, though, he seemed to realize that I wasn't going to bother him and he went back to snacking. But he did alternate eating with watching me cautiously.

Yay for roadrunners!

Now if I could just manage to get a picture of the rabbit that I think lives in the back...

Stuff

Because life isn't unfriendly enough right now, when Dan & I got up this morning, Dan discovered that the freezer in our garage had stopped working. You know, the one that we put half a cow into a week or so ago.

Fortunately, we were able to save all of the beef and most of the pork that we had in there. Some of the venison was lost but we did save a few pieces (some that we will have to eat this week). Lowe's was really great, though, and let us exchange the freezer and upgrade to a model that has an alarm on it. Because it would not be fun to lose $800+ worth of cow. Next time the possibility comes up, I'd like more warning please.

My parents came down to let us use their truck for the exchange/upgrade so we were able to get the new freezer in and running today, meaning that all the stuff we had wedged into our inside freezer and stuffed into ice chests was quickly back in a freezing-temperature box. At least that turned out mostly okay.

The rest of the day was hectic (especially after cleaning up after leaking meat - yum) since we had to pick up our food co-op box. I picked that up while Dan was dealing with freezer things and the box was filled with all sorts of goodies. Including eight small bell peppers. Sigh.

But I had promised my parents dinner as thanks for their help and we needed to use some of the pork sausage that had defrosted too much, so I used the enemy bell peppers to make olive and pork stuffed bell peppers. So not only did I get to give our helpers a good meal, I used all of my bell peppers! Yay!

And more news on the cheerful side of things: I had my first attempt at canning today. Specifically peach preserves.

I think it turned out quite well. The preserves were nicely thick and tasted delicious prior to being put in the jars, so as long as the whole preservation water bath process of the canning worked, I think this one will be a win. Tomorrow I'm going to try to can some sliced peaches (as we bought 22 pounds and the preserve recipe only used four... though we have eaten a fair number of them, too).

Busy day today. But honestly, maybe it is best to stay busy.

Where is My Celebratory Marching Band?

It's the end of an era! Our first home has passed into other hands. That's right, we have officially sold our old house. Eight days after it was listed, it has sold - papers signed, money in the bank, keys handed over, sold.

Honestly, even though proof of this event can be seen merely by looking at our bank balance, it still feels a bit unreal. I feel like balloons should drop from the ceiling or a marching band should stomp through the living room. We were anticipating this long, hassle-filled process but we ended up with a contract on the house on the second day it was on the market and closed on it a week later.

It still just feels unreal. I'm very glad it is real, though! I'm happy! Especially since that means we get to shop around for pool companies now. Yay!

Weekend Please!

Gosh, we are still busy. We've finally gotten all of the paperwork done on the house - the survey and related affidavit, seller's disclosure, etc. Otherwise, there is no real new news on the house sale. The buyer had the inspection tonight but haven't heard anything on that yet. Honestly, nothing should pop up (well, a corner spald needs covering, but we had the same thing on this house and it's not a big deal) but I have an irrational fear that they'll come back with some massive foundation repair that's needed and will cost twenty grand or something. It won't happen, but hey, that's why it's irrational. Fingers crossed that it all goes smoothly and a week from tomorrow, we will be down to one house.

In other news, last weekend Dan and I participated in a local food co-op. We got a box of food that included all sorts of goodies like mango, kale and cantaloupe... and my nemesis, bell peppers.

I'm really not a picky eater. I mean, I've eaten pickled baby squid, goat, natto... I do draw the line at eating bugs, but maybe I'm just saying that because I've never been offered any. Anyway, as much as I have a try-anything-twice attitude about food, I cannot stand bell peppers. Just walking by them in the grocery store makes me wince. Their smell. Bleck. Nails on a chalkboard to me. And I was presented two of them in my little food co-op box. But I refused to let them defeat me though. And they didn't.

I stuffed them with pork sausage, olive, onion and tomato then topped them with fresh mozzarella. I was actually pretty worried about how it would turn out, especially with the olives, but it was awesome! I think it was the olives that really made this work for me since it melded really well with the taste of the bell pepper and helped temper them. Dan even gave it a five out of five! Yay! I win! I imagine we'll do the food co-op again in the future so at least I know I can survive if and when we get bell peppers.

Speaking of olives, kitty-Olive is doing great. We had a vet appointment last week and her kidney levels were half a hair high which means she is likely a little dehydrated so we are working on that. She's still out in general pop and doing great. She does like to playfully annoy the other kitties but it's nothing problematic. The other kitties mostly ignore her.

She has amazing energy levels though. As I told Dan, she has three speeds: flat out, passed out and preparing for one of the first two speeds.

In other kitty news, Happy's report from the vet wasn't as positive as Olive's. Her kidney levels were across the board high, as was her phosphate and her potassium was a bit low. Which means she's at the beginning stages of kidney disease. Not surprising given her age but still sad. I'm not overly worried though - Ashes started having decently serious kidney issues when she was the same age and she had another ten years before she passed away. We're going to try out a new food for Happy - canned, even - so we'll see if she likes it and it helps. Fingers crossed!

Earlier, I mentioned that we had found a dresser for the bedroom but were still looking for something for our dining nook. Well, Monday, we found it! I'm really pleased with both pieces.

 

The piece of the left is the cabinet we got for the bedroom - it has socks, underthings, knitwear and our bedsheets. It's not a perfect match to our bedroom furniture (not quite red enough in all lights to match perfectly) but it reminds me a lot of my lingerie chest so I kind of love it. The piece on the right is for linens in our dining room. It needs a little love, but I adore it. I'm pretty darn pleased with our new additions! I am eying a couple of more things for other areas of the house, though, so who knows how that will go.

And in the last bit of news, I've finally been able to pick up my knitting again. I'm still working on my cardigan but I found a sock pattern that needed test knitters, so I'm alternating between the two. For the socks, I'm using some yarn I bought for my birthday. It's delightfully obnoxious.

The pic is a little outdated - I've gotten the full leg done on the first sock and am working on the ribbing of the second. This weekend, though, I had practically zero knitting time. Hopefully I'll have some downtime this week. I can't think of anything other than ironing and cleaning that needs to be done this week, but that could be because I'm a bit brain dead after such a crazy last few days.

Day Two

So... we just accepted an offer on our house.

The other couple wants to close next Wednesday so the option period is short - just long enough for them to get an inspection and for us get all the paperwork together. Which means now we get to hold our breath to see if the inspection finds anything bad. It shouldn't - our house is in good shape with no indications of problems - but there's always the fear that something will pop up.

As I told Dan, I'm trying not to count our chickens before they hatch but I'm pretty much standing over the eggs chanting, "Hatch, hatch, hatch!"

Gratuitous Sam

This weekend (week, month, any of these work) has been kind of crazy. Dan and I have finally gotten our old house on the market - we even had our first showing today (and we only picked the realtor last night!). The showing went well - they spent an hour at the house - but sadly they want a larger backyard. Yeah, our old house's one downfall. But that's okay, at least it shows well otherwise, right? Eventually we'll find someone that doesn't want much lawn to mow!

We've also finally made some headway in the third bedroom. We've moved all the beer boxes out of there (Dan now has a beer & technology closet in his office) and put up the bed. No mattress yet, but we don't have a shower curtain in the guest bathroom either so it's not like we are billing the house as guest-ready. Hopefully we'll get the guest bath taken care of this month though. I'm sure we'll have 685 other things to do before we get around to the third bedroom's mattresses, though.

Something else we've managed to check off of our list: we finally picked up a dresser for the bedroom.

Don't let Cocoa's expression fool you - she likes it.

We still have our eyes out for one more piece of furniture (for the dining area), but at least our six or so visits to antique stores and malls have paid off with the dresser. It's not been loaded up yet but it's been all oiled and the drawers are back in it, much to the kitties' disappointment.

Speaking of kitties, last night was Olive's first night to remain out after bedtime. She even stayed in general population today while we were out. She's doing really fantastic. She likes to play with gray kitty tails a bit too much (Chloe gets rather squeaky and distressed) but Olive never moves beyond playful pestering when interacting with the other kitties. I think she might actually be making friends with Sam! (Which is good, because when we first started letting her explore outside of her room, Sam liked to go in there and pee on the towel she was using as a bed. I much prefer them playfully batting at each other from opposite sides of a box.)

Friday was a vet appointment for Olive, too. Other than having ear mites, she was given an all clear health-wise. She's now current on all of her shots and has gained a lovely 1.2 pounds since we took her in. She's a little over 8 pounds now, which the vet says is great for her but I'm still giving her a bit extra food at mealtimes since I think she has a little making up to do. Oh, and the vet puts her age at about one year old (younger if her teeth tartar on the fast side). Having such a young 'un around really drives home how old our other kitties are. Bitty, the baby of the family, is nine years old! Chloe is 11! I can't believe that much time has passed.

Speaking of time, I'm glad tomorrow is a holiday since Dan and I still need more time to get stuff done around the house! I'm hoping that my stove hood will be installed, maybe even the thermostat if we are feeling productive after our grocery-related outing (so Dan can see what goodies are offered by the stores now surrounding us). Even if we do get those things done though, our list of to-dos seems fairly never ending. I have hope that we'll eventually settle in though!

Slowly but Surely

We are slowly making progress on house things. After weeks of problems, we finally have new locks installed. That's lovely. All the painting is done in the old house and we've had it cleaned and the carpet repair is scheduled for the end of the week. A yard sale and digging up some irises and we should be all set to unload the thing!

In other news, Olive now spends her days out in general pop. She's finished her antibiotic cycle and her stomach is looking fantastic and unlumpy. She still hasn't won over any kitties but at least their displeasure isn't as strong. It's only a matter of time - after all, how can you say no to this face?

In all honesty, though, Olive is kind of a mess. She's only about a year old so she still has quite a bit of kitten in her. Bitty was the last kitten we've had in the house and she's turning nine this year, so it's been a while. Dude, kittens get into everything. She plays with anything and everything, from catnip toys to coaxial cables to the wall. She hasn't fully figured out the lap thing, yet. The few times she's tried to cuddle, she usually ends up draped over both me and the armrest (sometimes with little feet hanging over) and can only sit still for a purr-filled minute or two. Once she's more cat than kitten, though, I think she'll be quite the cuddler.

I'm not fully ready to leave her out unsupervised or at night, but maybe next week. I'd like to see her interact with one kitty without any hissing first. My money is on Sam. We shall see!