Still Life, With Cats

In our house, you cannot drink anything cold out of a regular water glass. This is because in our house, we have Rupert, a determined grey tabby who has made it his mission to tip over any glass of cold liquid he can find. And it’s not as if he’s just trying to drink out of the cup and it tips; no, he will sneak up, hook his paw over one edge, and deliberately tip it over, just to watch the mess .

This has led me to a continual search for ‘Rupert-safe cups’ – basically any drinking vessel with a sturdy lid, in which cold liquid will be safe even if overturned.

As a canner, I own a rather large collection of glass jars, in all shapes and sizes. So I was thrilled when I discovered that canning jar manufacturers have come out with screw-on lids that include a hole into which you can place a straw, essentially allowing you to repurpose canning jars into trendy ‘hipster’ glasses. Of course, glass jars are heavy, and cold liquid leads to condensation, which leads to the need for a coaster for the jar. Also, a heavy, wet, glass jar is prone to slipping when you try to grab it off the table.

So back in February, in the midst of my Dishcloth-a-Day personal challenge, I noodled around with some dishcloth cotton and came up with these. I started first with the quart jar size, because that’s what I happened to be drinking out of at the time, and then made some adjustments and did the smaller pint jar size next.

Over the past month or so, I’ve had a coworker test drive the smaller version for me, and had a couple friends do some quick tech edits of the pattern itself. I’ve also been using both cozies on a regular basis, making sure that they worked the way they were intended.

Overall, I’m pretty happy with the cozies. The ribbing allows the cozy to fit snugly around the jar, while the handle provides some much-needed stability when you’re picking it up. The cozy is knit all in one piece; so there is no seaming, and the entire thing is knit in the round. Made out of cotton, they’re easy to toss into the washer and dryer, ready to be used whenever you’re in the mood for a cold (or hot) beverage. And bonus, it means I get to have a big glass of ice cold water near me at all times, without having to worry about tracking down a coaster, and also without having to worry about chasing off a persistent grey tabby cat.

Want to make some Hipster Jar Cozies for yourself? As of today, the pattern is now available for purchase and download via Ravelry. Enjoy!

The letter J is brought to you by the Blogging from A to Z Challenge.

I like setting goals for myself. I do not always meet them, but sometimes I manage to check all the boxes and do what I set out to do. Case in point – I have now done 2 of the 4 5K runs I promised myself I would do this year. The first was in January, and the second was in May (I didn’t manage to run the whole thing in January, but I *did* run the whole thing in May. Go me!). We’ve registered for the 3rd (in October), and I have an idea for the fourth (which, depending on my own ability, might actually be a 10k, but let’s not get too excited about that just yet), plus I’m looking out more long term and have agreed to run Bay to Breakers next May with a group. I am currently ignoring the fact that Bay to Breakers involves at least one nasty hill, and more importantly, that it is actually a 12K route, but I have plenty of time to panic about those pesky little details later.

Richard decided he was going to embark on another Story-A-Week challenge, starting in July, I decided I needed to set myself a weekly goal as well. Spurred by the fact that my yarn stash is still a bit on the large side, I decided I would try to do finish one sock per week (or if not a sock, roughly the equivalent in stitches / yarn knit).

The first sock done was the second in a pair for Richard – these rainbow colored Gentleman’s Fancy Socks. The pattern comes from the book Vintage Socks, with my own modifications; I did not do as many calf decreases as called for in the pattern, and I used my regular slip stitch heel instead of the stockinette heel called for in the pattern.

Yarn is some form of Trekking XXL that’s been in the stash for a very long time.

For week 2, I decided to cast on a pair for myself. Since we spent that weekend attending a local Science Fiction/Fantasy convention (Westercon), I knew I’d have a lot of available knitting time while sitting in panels, or relaxing in the lounge in between sessions. So I cast on for a pair that would be complex enough to keep them interesting, but not so complicated that I couldn’t knit them while still participating in discussions.

Turns out that I had more time to knit than I thought, plus even with all the twisting of stitches, these knit up a lot faster than I was expecting, so instead of finishing just one sock, I actually finished the pair. Bonus – this puts me one sock ahead, which I am sure will come in handy later in the year when I am super busy with work and life and do not have as much time to knit.

Pattern is Inlay. Yarn was from the stash (Opal, I think).

After that I realized I had a lace knitting guild meeting coming up and I really needed a new lace pattern to cast on, so I decided that lace (or in fact any) projects that use up sock yarn work for this challenge.

I cast on shortly before heading off to the guild meeting, and had so much fun with it I kept on working on it pretty much every night and then suddenly it was done. Bonus – it used nearly 3 balls of sock yarn from the stash.

Having no more sock yarn on the needles, I promptly cast on for yet another. Alas, I only finished one of the two before month’s end – Gentleman’s Half Hose in Ringwood Pattern (also from Vintage Socks) in a vintage yarn (dark blue) from the stash (if by ‘vintage’, I mean ‘discontinued’, but why quibble over the details).

Grand total for the month – four socks knit, plus a bonus 3 balls of sock yarn removed from the stash for the shawl. Game on.

Yesterday, after I went for the run, I tackled a whole list of other chores. I wrapped all the presents for my little sister and her family, and packed them into a box, and drove off to the post office to pop that into the mail to them. Amusingly, I packed their presents into the same box in which my sister mailed me ours – it arrived yesterday morning just as I was about to get started with the wrapping, and it turned out to be exactly the right size I needed. Some of the wadded newspaper she packed inside ended up on the floor for the cats; the rest went right back into the box before I shipped it back to them.

I also peeled a few dozen apples and cored and sliced them and then crammed them into the crockpot to make apple butter. A pile of apple pieces so large that I can barely get the lid onto the crockpot will eventually simmer down into a thick paste of a bit less than half the volume.

I had fully intended to can the apple butter this morning, but yesterday afternoon I sat down with all the pieces for a test knit I’ve been working on, and as I started putting them together, I realized that, even though I *did* knit a gauge swatch, and I have been checking and measuring gauge all along, somehow the knitting gremlins got involved and everything was very much the wrong size. Because – and this is something a lot of knitters learn – gauge swatches lie. Always. Every. Single. Damn. Time.

Panic set in. Swearing followed shortly thereafter. I set it aside and thought maybe if I checked it later it might all be a bad dream. I checked it later. Still all wrong. More swearing.

And then at that point I realized there was really only one thing left to do. So I turned off the crockpot and put the mostly-finished apple butter in the refrigerator to deal with at some point in the near future. And then I sat down and gritted my teeth and I ripped out fully three weeks worth of knitting, down to the very last stitch, and started over.

I knit all Friday evening, until I couldn’t keep my eyes open any more. And then I got up this morning and I knit some more. I took a few hours of break to head off to practice for the Christmas cantata, but then I came back home and kept on knitting. I went down a needle size. I measured obsessively. I checked and double-checked, and as pieces came off the needles, I measured and triple-checked again, and this time things looked like they were supposed to look. We finally caught up on season 7 of Supernatural, and a few episodes from season 5 of Charmed, and I kept on knitting. I had other things I really wanted to do today – baking cookies and doing laundry and maybe finally tackling the Christmas cards and annual wrap-up letter, but ah well. Those will all keep. They will have to keep.

‘Tis the season for Holidailies.