Still Life, With Cats

Yesterday I didn’t actually make a snowflake.

I had the best of intentions When I packed up my bag in preparation for our trip down to the Santa Clara Convention Center for Stitches West, I tucked the pattern book and the cotton thread in there, prepared to spend a little bit of time working on it.

But it turns out the only time we actually sat down the entire day was when we ate lunch. Otherwise we were meandering through the market, fondling yarn and pointing out really gorgeous sweaters and shawls, and trying to make decisions on what needed to come home with us.

We also had the best of intentions for when we were going to leave. There had been plans to take advantage of the 50% discount train ticket, but it turns out you had to get that 3 days in advance and the three of us procrastinated too long, so we figured, hey, we’ll just drive. And if we’d left by 3:30 to head home, I think we would have been just fine.

But alas, no. We didn’t get out of there until after 4. Three hours later we had only made it as far as Walnut Creek, at which point we gave up, pulled off at the next exit, and found somewhere to eat dinner. Even with the dinner break, there was still enough traffic that we didn’t get back to Sacramento until close to 10pm, at which point I looked blearily at the pattern for snowflake #19, and thought, nope. Ain’t going to happen today.

So…here is Friday’s snowflake, which I whipped up this morning, because it turns out it didn’t take nearly as long to make as I was expecting (although I suspect if I’d attempted it last night that wouldn’t have been the case).

And here is today’s snowflake, which took far longer than expected, considering it had two fewer rows of patterning than the one above.

Making a snowflake a day for Thingadailies.

We have a coffee table we got years ago from Ikea, that is basically a set of six cubbies on feet. The best part is that the little cubbies are just the right size for a stack of books, or some baskets that attempt to hide knitting / media-related clutter, or if one leaves the cubbies empty, cats.

Ingrid is the usual cubby cat. She seems to love crawling into it and then flopping upside down (although here she’s right-side up, just snoozing).

But the other night, we had a different cubby cat, which made me pretty happy to see.

Ruby’s always going to be a bit nervous, I think – you don’t really ever get over a couple years of being a scared little stray. But she’s really showing progress, coming out from under the sofas more and more; hanging out in the middle of the floor when both of us are in the room, and even standing up to Ingrid (who stares intently at her, but doesn’t seem to otherwise care about Ruby at all anymore, thankfully).

Some day it’d be nice to have both of them in the cubbies at once, but I have a feeling it’s going to be a very, very long time before we see that happen.

*****

Snowflake #16! This one also has a teeny tiny star in the middle.

I suspect this one would look nicer if I’d bothered to pin out all the teeny tiny little nubs around the points. But we all know how *that* will end, now don’t we.

Making a snowflake a day for Thingadailies.

Last rehearsal tonight before the concert this coming weekend, which means things went a little long and a long day was even longer. At least this time I didn’t have to chase Sherman around outside when I got home, though, so at least there’s that.

Here is the 15th snowflake, which means we are now more than halfway through this challenge. Yay!

I like this one because it has a little star in the middle.

Making a snowflake a day for Thingadailies.

We don’t really do Valentine’s Day, primarily because neither of us can be bothered, so today has really been a mostly ordinary day. I do admit, though, that we were both highly amused by this headline that was trending on Facebook today. It seems somehow peculiarly appropriate for a day that is supposed to be all about hearts and candy and love.

Poor little octopus. Denied her true passion.

*****

I was doing really well on the whole 10,000 steps a day challenge until it got to yesterday, when due to a combination of ‘my sinuses want to kill me’ and sheer laziness, I didn’t even crack 5000. So today I walked the long way to the bagel store in the morning, and I parked extra-far away from the yarn shop when I went to the lacy knitting guild meeting (where I knit lace and did *not* crochet snowflakes, because I have learned my lesson, oh yes), and we parked in the back lot when we went out to dinner, and then I ended up walking in place throughout most of the old episode of Face Off we watched last night (It’s our current favorite ‘doesn’t require much thought so we can watch it while doing other stuff’ show, especially since there’s a whole bunch of seasons to work through). And with all of that I finally cracked 10K again, so now I am back on track. Yay.

*****

Technically I made lots of things today, including 7 new header images for the random images that top this blog. And yes, because some of you may wonder, every single header image is a picture I took of one of our cats (some of whom are no longer with us, alas). But I know you’re all here for the snowflakes, so here is today’s.

I suppose I could have flipped through the book to find one with hearts or something that is otherwise Valentine’s Day-ish, but I am doing these in order primarily because there are 99 of them and if I mix them up I will forget which is which and then where will we be? So here is Snowflake #14, which is completely free of hearts or anything else that looks like love. I don’t like the awkward jog where the ends meet, but otherwise it’s passable.

Making a snowflake a day for Thingadailies.