My sweater progress continues! It is now a discernible garment. Granted, if I stopped now it would be a remarkably unflattering and unfinished cropped vest type thing, but still! You can pretty much tell now that it is becoming a sweater. I'm deeply impressed with myself. I would put up pictures, but it's quite overcast today, and I suspect pictures would not turn out well.


Not that I've actually been knitting today. I will, but at this point it's been housework and reading, emphasis on housework. The big task of the day was mopping Rusty's bathroom. Rusty is missing some of his brain (not literally, to my knowledge, but he's probably never formed certain neural pathways due to malnourishment and neglect early in life (which is to say before we or the rescue group got ahold of him)) and he is a little sketchy on litter box use and etiquette. This isn't as big of an issue as one would think, as all of his "accidents" are in the bathroom, on the vinyl floor. (And yes, he has been checked over by the vet. Nothing is wrong with him other than being temperamental and a bit dim. I've has cats in my life die of kidney problems, and I'm very conscious of that possibility.) There is, however, the matter of the cat pee smell in the bathroom (which is also where his litter box is.). (Wow am I all over the parenthesis today.)

The odor had gotten rather pronounced, so today I buckled down and started cleaning. This is a drawn out process, because beyond the normal sweeping and then a mopping, I had to give the room a few additional moppings. One mopping just made the bathroom smell like cat pee AND orange soap, which isn't significantly better. But with some efforts, and way more time than you would think such a small room could possibly warrant, it now smells like orange soap. And maybe a tiny tiny bit of cat pee. But the litter box is in there, so I'm not expecting miracles.

And I signed up for NaBloPoMo, so you will hopefully be seeing a lot of me come November. We'll see how well that works, the posting everyday, what with Thanksgiving and a wedding anniversary, as well as the possibility of guests and travel. I'm optimistic though. I want to start writing more, and I'm hoping this will give me a kick in the pants.

I continue to make toys I'm not at liberty to share right now, and my current paintings are sitting less than 1/2 done in the living room. So I bring you knitting! Both finished and in progress! I joined a knitting group here in Pasadena recently, and it's been really great. Everyone has been super nice, and it's so great to get out of the house and interact with people. Working alone can get a little lonely sometimes. Plus the concentrated weekly knitting time has really made me more productive, knitting wise at least, and I suspect more productive in general.

And so we have:



Black socks for Charlie! Plain black socks for Charlie. Really, really plain black socks for Charlie. Luckily, he has smallish feet. Plus I loves him.

They're basic top down socks, on US1/2.25mm needles, in Knitpicks Gloss.



A top down hat made from the Noro Iro I bought from Michael Levine when the knitting group made our field trip downtown to see the Yarn Harlot.



A pink top down hat, made from yarn I got by unraveling a thrift store sweater.



And finally, a green top down raglan cardigan, made in Knitpicks Wool of the Andes. It's still very much in progress, but I'm enjoying it. It's dead simple, which makes working on it very relaxing.

Anyhow, I should get on to more of my secret sewing, for the secret toy making project. Secret secret secret!

I'm such a dork.

I am awake. I would prefer not to be. Thus, rambling.

So I'm awake. Not voluntaraly I might add. It was not a good night for me getting sleep. First there was the drunken young people jambaroo outside my window. To which I say, young people, it is (or was, anyhow) Thursday night. Thursday. If you want to have a drunken jambaroo, do not have it in a quiet residential neighborhood full of working adults and families.

[A sidebar- at 27, do I still count as a young person? Considering that I'm all married and tax paying and pay close attention to things like eating lots of whole grains? Probably I do. Huh. That's fine actually, as I still sometimes feel like I am playing an extremely involved game of house that I am taking deadly serious.]

Then the dog got restless. There was a lot of kicking and squirming and snoring going on. Also, he really wanted to sleep smashed against me with his head under the covers. Which is fine, and is in fact how he usually sleeps, but last night sleeping under the covers caused the dog to inhale the sheet, and thus would need to be saved before he stopped breathing.

The dog did finely settle down, but by that point my brain, the autonomous part of my brain, had given up on sleeping. Which meant laying in bed for hours, thinking confused thoughts about sweater design. And eventually it meant giving up, and coming into the studio/study to play with my good pal the internet.


The odd thing I'm finding, as I sit here writing this, is that my fingers are making many sleepy typos, but there is still a part of my brain supplying me with words like autonomous, and even supplying them correctly (I checked). Which I think sums up a lot of my existence rather nicely. Even when I am a bit useless or slow with things, I always have a rather nice vocabulary.

Anyhow, I ought to stop rambling. As it is, I'm not entirely sure how much sense this will all make when I come back and look at it after a nap. But I hope to be back later today! I have exciting knitting progress!

Two paintings, a mask, and a toy you can't see.

I just finished the most super cool toy, and I want to show it off so much right now. Except I can't, as it's a commission piece that's intended as a Christmas gift for someone who might see this. So it'll be here eventually. But not yet.

But in the meantime, paintings! And a mask!





I'm so glad to finally have time to get back to art again. I feel so much more vital when I'm working. And the work I'm doing is coming out well. So it's all good!

Hey! I have new paintings! And I'm further along on the mask I was showing in progress in that last post. Except I can't really show any of this off right now, as I didn't get good pictures of them when the light was good. So lets all hope real hard that it occurs to me to take those pictures tomorrow. During the day. The way I've been meaning too.