The Tragic Face of Tortoises on Crack

I hit my local drug pusher today, the produce department at Raley's. Between the cauliflower, cabbage, and crack, I completely forgot the other C: collards. Treppie started marching around the kitchen, then doing his annoyingly annoying attention-getter: scratching at the storage drawer under the oven. He will pace back and forth, making that (did I mention annoying) clangy scratching sound for hours unless I deflect him by putting him outside or....drugging him. With crack.

Uhm, in case you haven't read my other posts referred to tortoise crack, I am actually talking about that sugary goodness others know as corn on the cob.



Mike is still spending some time most afternoons exploring the couch and throws. Yesterday, he was on the couch when Karen stopped by to pick up some things. She sat down next to him to visit with us for a while. When she'd been sitting there for 5 minutes or so, Mike started bobbing at her because, can you imagine? She wasn't paying attention to him! The nerve of some people! So, she started petting him. As long as she pet him, he didn't bob at her or give her Stink Eye, the fading gleam of which can be seen in this photo:



Someone I know, a Canadian who became a U.S. citizen last year, just bought his first house (well, he and his wife did). I thought I'd knit them a little something. I came across a website that had designs for wash/dish cloths among which were a maple leaf and a U.S. flag. "Poifect!" I thought. However, I'd stayed away from knitting these types of 'embossed' patterns before because my brain just couldn't track the different instructions for each of the inside design rows (the space between the side, top and bottom borders).

So, before leaping in to make the CAN/US set of cloths, I thought I'd try one of the patterns first and make myself a washcloth. I grabbed the dwindling ball of leftover discontinued sky blue Cotton Ease, and made myself the Liberty Bell. I found the pattern easy to read and make, and whipped it out in one evening (if your evening ends around 1:15 in the morning).

Unfortunately, my gauge is really tight, so instead of making a 9" x 9" cloth, mine came out 8" x 8". Which is fine, but I wanted the larger size for these gift cloths. So, I added 8 sts, 2 each on the side borders, and 2 each to both sides of the inside space, and I worked two more rows on the top and bottom borders (and realized after I was done that I should have knit 3 more rows instead of 2, as the finished cloths are somewhat rectangular rather than square), and ended up with cloths slightly bigger, 10" x almost 10".

I decided to knit the leaf and flag cloths in red, figuring it was a better color for dishcloths than white, which could start looking grungy without being occasionally bleached, and blue seemed silly for a Canadian maple leaf.



These patterns were designed by Emily Jagos, and can be found at her Designs by Emily website.

(Looking at them, you can tell how much my gauge and consistency in making well-formed stitches is affected by the amount of pain, range of motion, and function (or lack thereof!) of my hands on any given day - these cloths were knit on three consecutive days, one cloth a day. Check out the samples on Emily's site - nice and neat!)

Now, back to work I go on a kitchen towel...

This n' That

Things being what they are, I alternate doing stuff with napping and knitting. Along with making some more baby hats for the hospital hat-mitt-bootie-blanket stash, I finished the following things in the last month or so:

Another pair of Socks for Soldiers boot socks, which I sent off with a previously completed pair of leisure socks:




Another of Sandi Wiseheart's Vine Lace baby cap (from Knitting Daily), along with a pair of mitts in the same yarn, for Trina's upcoming baby:




A soap sack (stuff here with a bar of shea butter soap) and washcloth for Loretta's 50th birthday (knit in Tahki Cotton Tweed):



Here's what the soap sack looked like before stuffing:




And, my first dish towel, knit in Cotton-ease:



I have decided to reduce my paper towel usage by knitting up 30-40 kitchen towels to use instead. I do not like washing kitchen towels with reptile towels or my bathroom towels, or with my clothes, and so I didn't like to use the washing machine (let alone dryer) to wash the few (5) kitchen towels i have. So, I have been using paper towels. But I hate the landfill aspect of it, not to speak of the other resource use involved in making paper towels, but I also didn't like the resource use of water and gas (for hot water and dryer) use of washing very small loads of kitchen towels.

I'm also not crazy about buying kitchen towels.

But I do like to knit. And I need to knit for therapy, physical and otherwise. So, of course! I'll knit dish towels! Lots and lots of dish towels! So, I am going through my stash looking for cotton and cotton blend yarns suitable for dish towelling, and will slowly acquire other suitable yarns to make more towels.

I am, uhm, also collecting the handled plastic bags that many stores many stores pack your purchases in. I am cutting them into loops and will attempt to knit a tote bag out the 'yarn' created by connecting the loops together into one gianormous ball of plastic bag yarn.

Yes, I am whacked.