Toe, meet water

All the sweaters I've been snapping up - and I'm terrified to put my scissors near any of them. I'm so worried I'll mess up and ruin the felted fabric I love most! And this is especially true since my favourite changes every time I pick another one up. They are all paralyzingly unique.

However, I did manage to cut these pieces on Sunday afternoon, while watching Wuthering Heights.


They're from a pretty and very soft XXXXL men's Italian Merino cardi; too thin to be warm enough on their own, but an effective liner for another fabric, I think. I figured it was a good place to start since the sweater, post-felting, is still big enough to yield four or five pairs of mitts. That's enough to cover me while I figure out whether the pattern needs resizing.

How long do you think it will take me to cut pieces for the outer layer?

Community cat

One of the houses in my neighbourhood is a short-term rental, occupied for a few months at a time by somebody whose own house is being renovated beyond recognition. The current tenants are my favourites, though I've never met them, because they brought

A Cat.


The cat's collar doesn't have a name on it. I have a few suggestions, the first of which is "Mary's Cat."


He looks like a Mary's Cat, don't you think?

He comes over a lot, what with being so social and not having his owners around much. I'll hear him meowing and find him lingering out front, waiting for me to come out and say hello and, incidentally, leave the door open a fraction of a moment too long.

Sometimes, he'll try to make a stand about this and play hard to get, positioning himself with an expression of indifference away from me (but still near the door).


Mostly though he makes himself at home.



Aren't those markings on his back just beautiful? And he's so healthy - his fur is unimaginably soft. Purrs like a big ol' engine, too.

I have to keep reminding myself that his name is really "Somebody Else's Cat."

These pictures were taken over the course of a couple of days, during which I talked to a lot of other neighbours about him. I'm surrounded by dog people, but most of them really like this cat anyway. It turns out he's just as adoring with everybody else as he is with me, but how can I hold it against him?


You can't get mad at a cat with the cutest paws ever.

How many sweaters does one girl need?

Well, I have a pretty extensive gift list - or do I mean giftee list? - so really I do need a lot of sweaters for the mitten/glove/bag extravaganza scheduled for this year's GiftFrenzy.

But I would say too that greed has played a role in my continued accumulation of sweaters. That, and the 50% off sale on Friday at the thrift store, which was coincidentally the same day a friend asked whether I felt like heading back there:


The little red roll is representative of a large-size boiled wool jacket with knotted buttons made from the same fabric. How lucky am I? Not only can I use it for slippers and/or a bag, I will be able to use my new rotary cutter and self-healing mat to cut out little shapes for stitching onto contrasting slippers and bags. Oh, the excitement.

(we will not speak of the extra storage space all this requires, or my lack of courage this far with regard to actually cutting into any of this fabric.)

I'm especially pleased with this gorgeous thing by Bianca Nygard, which was felted when I found it and felted even more when I tossed it in the washer:


It's going to make a most awesome bag, don't you think?

And this one, whose 100% wool label I couldn't find until I got home, is from Abercrombie and Fitch:


It had a subtle pattern to start with, plus a lot of moth holes in the bottom cuff, but felted it went stiff as a board even as the pattern softened further. I think it will grow up to be a very manly pair of slippers.

Furthering the felted bounty

I found some more fabulous wool sweaters last night at the thrift shop.


The one on the left has a hole in the shoulder, and the one on the right came already felted, so I have no guilt about my plans to snip it up. Just a lot of books with ideas for felted-wool projects!

And check out the turtleneck on the right-hand sweater... it's a little tight for my head, but I think it would make a great hat for a child.

There was a third sweater in my haul, but on further inspection I discovered it didn't have any holes, wasn't already felted, is insanely soft, and fits me perfectly:


So I'm just going to wear it, to stay warm while working away in my cold sewing room.

Older: not always wiser

Growing up in a boxy unadorned 1950s house (which did have, nonetheless, heaps of sentimental value and history, but more on that another day), I longed to live someplace old, with character, and if possible, a fireplace and window seat (see: The Velvet Room, by Zilpha Keatley Snyder.)

When I moved away, I lived in as many older places as possible, and today, as what passes for a Responsible Adult, I can see what goes along with the fine woodwork and plastering genius and long-established neighbourhoods with nice big trees:

lead paint
asbestos
no insulation, leading to
mold, mildew, high heating bills

Of course, major renovations are always possible, but having watched neighbours (and the neighbours of those neighbours) go through that, I don't think I have the necessary fortitude.

Honestly, it's enough to send me to the real estate listings any time I think about doing any actual writing. If only agents would start including 'window seat' on their spec sheets...

Poppy day

One of my former neighbours, before her house was leased to a skateboard shop and the garden ripped out, had a sizable planting of poppies. I had seldom seen these flowers in real life before and never so many at once; whenever I walked past I always marveled at how strangely beautiful they are, and thought of Flanders Fields.

Though they're gone now, I was still able to spend some time remembering military sacrifices last night watching The History Channel.

And what really struck me was how much the now-elderly men who give witness to these battles remember about them. They were so young - two of them, I noticed, were just 21 when they happened - and between the bombs and the fires and the artillery, the chaos must have been complete: and yet they have every detail at their fingertips.

It's the trauma, I expect. But I appreciate that they remember so we can, too. And I'm glad to be able to do that today.

Linear vs. not

Do you know anybody who likes to do things in a nice orderly sequential fashion? The kind of person who, for example, will bake a cake by

wiping down the counter
preparing the pans and oven
measuring out the ingredients
mixing the batter
putting the batter-filled pan in the oven
and then

making four phone calls, cleaning the spilled milk off the floor, feeding the dryer and giving the washer seconds (or thirds), looking up movie times, scribbling down a birthday greeting and putting a card in an envelope, running to the back yard for a book left on the patio, and daydreaming about last winter's trip to Capri?

Well, it seems that I might be such a person. Less the stuff about phone calls and Capri and movies.

How can I tell?

I am counting five different in-progress knitting projects on my desk at this very moment, and I happen to know there is a sixth somewhere on the bookshelf, because I was working on it last night, and I still haven't done the second draft of the short story I started last spring and want to finish, and I need to find time this week to practice driving again.

And it is making me stressed.

But it is only Tuesday, and the nice thing about Tuesday is that there's a lot of week left in which to correct such overcommitments.